next »

[Gimym TILBERT]

What would replace grinding if you toss it?

(I mean a progression mechanics that is for padding content)

[SirNiko]

Whatever the reason, they like it,

That doesn't follow.  Skinnerian Conditioning is a successful motivator; doesn't mean people like what they're doing.  Can you ground this in a tangible?  Find one of these players who really really likes grinding for its own sake?  I've never met one, but I don't try to meet every player out there.

My anecdote was triggered because I met a player who stated that grinding was the central mechanic for a game (Aion: Tower of Eternity was the game in question, though it is known by many former players like myself as Aion: Grind of Eternity) and said he was upset by players who didn't accept the grind and revel in it. If not for him, I would have never brought it up.

He's not the only one I know, especially if you talk to fans of Korean MMOs (Like Aion and Lineage 2) you'll hear a lot of talk about pampered players, or hatred of games with soft EXP curves. "WoW ruined the genre" is a common mantra, suggesting that casualizing MMOs by making the grind less severe and making short play sessions rewarding is destructive to the true benefits of MMOs.

But otherwise yeah, I agree. Grind mechanics are cheap to produce (and not in a good way) for the playtime they provide. The difficulty is artificial, and taken the wrong way and in the wrong doses it can be destructive to the player. You're preaching to the choir on that.

[Muz]

How someone can argue for grinding is beyond me.

Because thousands (millions?) of players play games with heavy grinding involved. Some enjoy it, some see it as a "the lesser of the evils", while the creators just see it as the easiest way to make money. Charge $30 for every player or convince a single player to pay $300 to skip the grind... it's a win/win situation for a lot of people.

The point is, grinding is a lazy mechanic because it says "You are not Number enough to do this action. Play our game for hours (without any real challenge) until you are higher Number".

To me this is mostly the reason I consider it bad. It serves as a lock for further content. The player is no longer playing for fun, but rather, they're weighing the cost of unlocking that content with the entertainment they will gain from that content. You could let the player move on to interesting content now and they would lose that boring time-sink. To me that is grind executed poorly.

The purpose of grind is always a content lock/dilutor. It's not always a bad thing, only when it's overdone or noticable. The reason most people like the grind is that it lets them unlock unique content, but doesn't allow others. You could be the only person in the whole game world to get the +300 Crystal Sword of Norath after clicking in a certain location for 3000 hours. That's the kind of achievement people go for it. Others may be able to buy 1000 hours of clicking for $20 (which may just be an hour of RL work for them).

[bvanevery]

said he was upset by players who didn't accept the grind and revel in it.

Hm, in his case it sounds like some kind of badass cult.  Compare permadeath or "no save" fanatics.  A question however is whether the grinding is difficult and demonstrates skill, or whether it's an easy task done forever.  People racked up ridiculously high scores in the days of classic arcades, but it was a demonstration of skill.  Also, it was not possible to play an arcade game for months, as one couldn't take a break.  One had to gain the high score in 1 session.

suggesting that casualizing MMOs by making the grind less severe and making short play sessions rewarding is destructive to the true benefits of MMOs.

Perhaps also it is a social exclusion filter.  If you don't grind then you shouldn't be part of the club.  Grinding is merit.  Grinding is a Protestant Work Ethic?

[Gimym TILBERT]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWI5XTmGrmo&feature=player_embedded look Wow solve it on one quest! Did i see that gameplay somewhere?

[Sorano]

Yea, WoW as always handled questing with less grind than other mmo's. Cataclysm will again push more diversified quests, area and content. So far the leveling seems to become more interesting than the end-game.

Peacebloom vs Ghouls. Really now.

[C.A. Sinner]

Yea, WoW as always handled questing with less grind than other mmo's.

That's still a lot of grind by general game standards though (at least last time I played, which was before any of the addons came out), and therein lies the problem.

[SirNiko]

The grinding is sort of shifted off to a secondary activity, though. For the most part you can just wander around and do whatever you want. Run instances with friends? Run PvP Battlegrounds? Do quests by yourself? Craft stuff?

You can basically pick one activity you like and do they to the exclusion of everything else in the game and still unlock pretty much everything. You can even be choosier than that, by ignoring entire zones of content if you have no interest.

There still exists grindy content, like mounts you get only if you kill ten thousand murloc or a 0.01% drop rate pet for farming a boss for weeks, but they're things you can easily ignore at no degradation to your play experience. It's really no different from, say, that 1/256 drop rate frying pan in Earthbound or fighting 255 battles in Final Fantasy 6 to uncurse the cursed shield and for the most part I considered both of those games to have lite to nonexistant grind.

[bvanevery]

The grinding is sort of shifted off to a secondary activity, though. For the most part you can just wander around and do whatever you want.

Actually you cannot.  When you do try to wander, you find out you're not powerful enough to wander indefinitely.  The only way I could wander a lot was when dead.  At the slowness that WoW allows you to move, it gets old after trying it for 1 day.

Run instances with friends? Run PvP Battlegrounds?

Unappealing to the soloist.  I'm not convinced that anyone sticks with WoW unless they primarily value the social club.

Do quests by yourself?

I played a 10 day demo rather intensely 2 years ago.  A few of the quests showed some creativity, like the pumpkin poison quest, and beating slaves with a cudgel to make them work harder.  Otherwise, most of the quests were either "take A to B," "clear out this dungeon," or "kill X for bounty."  Rather grindy in my experience. 

Craft stuff?

Gaining crafting ingredients is grinding.  Particularly in WoW, which is deliberately designed to take a long time to get from A to B.

[C.A. Sinner]

he only way I could wander a lot was when dead.  At the slowness that WoW allows you to move, it gets old after trying it for 1 day.

Run instances with friends? Run PvP Battlegrounds?

Unappealing to the soloist.  I'm not convinced that anyone sticks with WoW unless they primarily value the social club.

In all fairness though, if you prefer singleplayer experiences, maybe a massively multiplayer online RPG just isn't the right game for you.

[jethrolarson]

Grinding can be plenty stimulating. But only if the genre is dance game

[bvanevery]

Run instances with friends? Run PvP Battlegrounds?

Unappealing to the soloist.  I'm not convinced that anyone sticks with WoW unless they primarily value the social club.

In all fairness though, if you prefer singleplayer experiences, maybe a massively multiplayer online RPG just isn't the right game for you.

DDO gets it.  They have solo content.  The user base of WoW has plateaued, they don't get it.  I represent a potential market, people who want "a big ass world to explore."  WoW doesn't want my money, they want the social club for some reason.

[SirNiko]

I actually have a lot of friends who play WoW solo. As in, they play with friends, but then they make a separate character or even account just to wander the world, see the monsters, do the quests, play with the crafting system. You can even jump into an instance with a random group you will never see again just by hitting a button, no need to even ask in the local chat. WoW is exceptionally well suited to the soloist, which I think is another huge reason for its success. It's the exception when you encounter content that requires a coordinated team.

I don't see how DDO is solo friendly. When I played, the only solo quests were a half-dozen quests in the first three levels. You could solo the other quests, but only if you were exceptionally patient and had a very specific build. Even then they changed stealth (Made it so monsters eventually aggro if you hide for too long) to purposely prevent players from completing quests by hiding from everything. I don't see why you think WoW is unfriendly to the solo player and DDO is friendly, because I saw the exact opposite when I played.

[bvanevery]

WoW is exceptionally well suited to the soloist, which I think is another huge reason for its success. It's the exception when you encounter content that requires a coordinated team.

But what is there to do other than pull mobs over and over again?  That was 95% of the content I saw 2 years ago.

I don't see how DDO is solo friendly. When I played, the only solo quests were a half-dozen quests in the first three levels. You could solo the other quests, but only if you were exceptionally patient and had a very specific build.

Now that you mention it, I do remember a sticking point around Level 4.  I was running out of "free to play" dungeons that were appropriate to my level, and it was becoming difficult to progress.  I wasn't going to grind by repeating levels over again.  If I've seen the content, I've seen the content, probably too much already the way DDO was going.  It would bore me to death to do it even more times.  I remember now, there was this totally obnoxious thieving level with an acid floor.  I think I tried to get through that thing 3 times, only to come upon more horrific barriers to completion.  The DDO business model became clear: once you get past the intro stuff, offer very long tedious quests that goad you into paying real money to heal and whatnot.  No thanks.  I'm not going to pay real money for an obnoxious acid floor.  Ok, I guess you're right.  DDO has a decent intro for soloing, but you hit a brick wall around Level 4.

Even then they changed stealth (Made it so monsters eventually aggro if you hide for too long) to purposely prevent players from completing quests by hiding from everything.

That last char I played was a Rogue, so I did a lot of sneaking.  I was hoping it would give me a "free pass" to see all the content.  But, plenty of dungeons had anti-sneaking measures.  In practice, when you try to sneak past all the guards, eventually some kind of alarm sounds despite your best efforts.  Then you're surrounded by hordes of enemies with no safe area to run to.  You tend to be summarily killed.

I don't see why you think WoW is unfriendly to the solo player and DDO is friendly, because I saw the exact opposite when I played.

My memory was bad on DDO.  I played it in 2 distinct time periods, separated about 8 months apart.  The 1st time around I quit due to inadequate network bandwidth.  The 2nd time around I quit because the game itself became frustrating, I had forgotten that.

[C.A. Sinner]

Oh, so "soloing" is some kinda MMO jargon term that doesn't mean the same as "playing the game singleplayer", am I getting that right? In that case my earlier post makes no sense, forget I said anything.