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[Christian223]

Grinding is pretty boring isn't it?. But in most mmo's grinding is one of the most important factors that allow a game to generate real income.

Basically they offer the alternative to buy things with real money to skip the tedious and boring grinding, or at least make it shorter and bearable.

Grinding also make the game more addictive because it is always harder to quit something in which you have invested a huge amount of time and effort.

Grinding is also a passive type of experience, very casual, it does not involve high skills, just repetitive actions, which makes it attractive for certain kinds of players who find more complex things to be away of their reach, like hardcore tournament FPS games.

But many people quit this types of games because of the boredom of grinding. Could there be a balance that would allow both kind of players to enjoy these games?. Is there a better alternative to grinding that will satisfy the need for profit?.

[ZOMGBananas]

I've been thinking a lot lately about this to be honest. When I used to play World of Warcraft, I didn't mind all that much about grinding. Most of the time I wasn't raiding, you could find me running through old low-level dungeons, for no reason other than I could. I wasn't getting any items I could use, nor any substantial amount of money, but I still did it.

The problem with a grinding mechanic is in making it so it doesn't feel like it's a massive chore to do. I hate achievements that require you to kill 10,000 of any type of enemy, as that's just a massive and arbitrary extension onto a game.

I think Valve got it mostly right with Team Fortress 2, with their unlocks system. You can spend a lot of time deliberately playing as, say, the Pyro, with the intention of grinding out an "ignite x amount of players" achievement, but if you just play the game normally, you can, and most likely will still gain that achievement.

Guild Wars 2, from what I can see, is dealing with the grind factor by making it actually mean something. In a recent gameplay video I was watching, the player come across a farm attacked by bandits, and the farmer asks for help. It's still a "kill x" kind of deal, but it has an effect on the world - if you fail to beat the bandits, the farmer can't make produce, and thus vendors in that area will have a much more limited stock of items. They changed the grind from a task you *had* to do, and turned it into a task you *want* to do, which has a meaningful outcome.

At the same time, there probably is a market for games which are mostly all grind, as there are people who are just into that whole idea. For the typical gamer though, make the grind fun or exciting, and have a meaningful reward, and you'll do well.

[SirNiko]

The grinding also helps to meter out rewards in a way that does not favor skilled players. If you had an MMO where players had to clear Super Mario Bros to achieve some goal, some players would complete the task very quickly, and others would fail and never get the prize. By making the task something simple and repetitive (stomp 100 goomba) you ensure that everyone gets the feeling of accomplishment even though the task was rather meaningless.

It's a mixed bag that depends on whether or not you think that meaningless positive reinforcement is okay as a leisure activity.

Also, you've missed the most important point - grindy content is incredibly easy to generate. Palette swap a monster, copy/paste a hundred over the map and then add quests to kill 10, 100, and 1000 monsters for a prize. You've generated hours of content for each player with only a few minutes of work. This is the single greatest reason it's used, because it extends playtime at little cost to the programmer.

One method is to mix things up, create grindy content for those that like it and then also include skill-based content for those that just want to try and complete a difficult task and log off. Kingdom of Loathing the online MMO (it's free and browser based, I highly recommend trying it if only for a few days) does this by making tasks that can easily be completed by throwing turns at them mindlessly, but careful management of resources can result in cutting the turn cost down by 50-99% depending on the task. Grind-lovers can get access to everything in a slow and plodding way, while achievement lovers can strategize and win and move on to the next.

Another method would be to adjust the model, maybe follow the tabletop RPG strategy of only running a game once a week. It'd be pretty drastic, and you'd automatically lose out on anyone not in your limited window of time to playtime, but I think you could get concurrency up without having to rely on time consuming content.

[gimymblert]

Sirniko is right.

Also, there nothing stimulating happening between two level, maybe if there was "grinding event" it would help keeping the player a bit more interesting. The only event meaningful event is getting the level (and then make a choice in thelevel tree).

[J. R. Hill]

You could just forgo grinding altogether and make legitimate training schools.  Military academies, bootcamps, dojos, etc.  That would turn "leveling up" into a series of battle-related minigames instead of going out and killing a million bubble crabs.  That would still mean making the minigames interesting and have variable difficulty, but perhaps it could be less monotonous?

Plus I think that would not only make the game more realistic, but would also put more suspense into actual battles and quests, since it wouldn't just be the same thing you are always doing.

[Sorano]

Grinding doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. I've encountered situation and moments in games where of structured grinding that were entertaining enough.

For example, FFX-2 had an amazing battle system. It was amazing because it offered various classes that were fun and engaging to play. It was simple, effective and offered a lot of customization and depth. Sometimes I would just stop doing quests and keep doing random battles, gaining levels because of the simple engaging gameplay.

If there's deth, structure or secondary objectives, grinding periods don't have to be a negative impact. It can lead to downtime where the player can learn a little about the game.

[s0]

Forced grinding sucks, but optional grinding can be a great way to introduce a "dynamic" difficulty system into a game. Demon's Souls does that. Leveling up is optional and it's realistically possible (if hard) to beat the game without ever doing it at all. DS also couples the grinding with a bit of risk/reward because it's never 100% "safe" to grind, and if you die twice in a row without reaching the spot you last died at, you lose all your soul points.

[ChomperTheSharptooth]

I'd have to add Persona 3 to that list, I haven't played 4 so I can't say I'd put that for sure.

Many didn't like not directly controlling their party members in boss battles (I likd it a lot though, felt more immersive and made me a charactr instead of an omnipresent diety with nothing better to do than control 4 teens) but in regular encounters it cut down on time tremendously. The game had a beautiful level curve and it always seemed you'd know when you are high leveled enough by your exp gains suddenly slow down by a whole lot. Grinding was not mindless, many battles put you in a favorable position but never guaranteed victory which means a lot when defeat of just the main character equals a game over.

There are many othr things this game had that made it a standout JRPG but making grinding fun (for me) is a huge one.

[supershigi]

I think World of Warcraft strikes a pretty good balance because it gives the player a number of options for leveling, so straight up grinding isn't mandatory.  This is nice because casual players (like my mom for example) never have to grind unless they feel like it; she ends up spending most of her WoW-time exploring or doing quests with friends as opposed to grinding mobs in order to buy particular items. 

[Sorano]

Yeah, WoW as really pushed forward to try and incorporate storytelling in their huge world. The Death Knight starting area in Wrath of the Lich King was actually quite well done. Every quest changed the world state a little bit and helped advance the story in the area further. I was kinda happy when I learned that Blizz wanted to apply a similar process to the entire world in the Cataclysm expansion. Should be very interesting

Looking forward to see what innovation Guild Wars 2 brings to the interactice storytelling front.

[Squiggly_P]

I think I put this idea in the random game ideas thread a while back, but I'll pose the question here:
What would happen if you removed all the numeric feedback from a game like WoW? Don't tell the player how much experience they have, what level they are, give them a vague idea of their health and mana, don't show them how much damage they do or how much health the other guy has.

They would still level and gain experience, but they wouldn't see it. They wouldn't be able to see how much damage sword X does versus sword Y. Remove any number from the game that isn't representing a quantity of something, like how much money they have or how many potions they have, etc.

Would they still grind? Would the game cease to be fun? Is the point of MMO's to make the numbers get bigger? Would people still go on dangerous raids without knowing for sure if they're character is optimized to ensure maximum damage / defense / support?

[Sorano]

You'd probably get something a lot like Monster Hunter.

[sodap]

Players would sooner than later discover they are leveling up and gaining skills and start the grinding, it will become obvious when some monsters die faster than they used to, and faster than if other player kills them. Then someone will hack the game and make cheats to monitor advances in skill, experience, etc. then the game is broken if you dont cheat because cheaters would be miles ahead of legit players.

[s0]

You'd probably get something a lot like Monster Hunter.

Monster Hunter is great. I think the lack of enemy health bars accounts for a lot of the incredible tension in combat, particularly the boss battles.

[Dustin Smith]

As mentioned earlier, I can only enjoy grinding when there's a large element of risk involved (via permadeath) or when it's optional. I dropped hundereds of hours in Strategy RPG's back in the day but I can't stand the grinding in them nowadays. I'm replaying Earthbound but I couldn't stand the combat -- I put on the invincibility cheat.

I'll still drop inordinate amount of time in roguelikes though.

[SirNiko]

WoW originally didn't display a lot of that information. Monsters didn't show their HP numerically, they just had a bar. The first thing players did was calculate the amount of HP and make a mod that lists it. They would have done that if no bar exists. It's the nature of MMO players to be inquisitive and try to figure these things out if it can be done scientifically.

There are also players that enjoy learning and exploiting the mechanics, not in the sense of cheating but in the sense of exploration. It isn't just hacking the game, often it's done by creating carefully crafted software that tracks data, records large numbers of trials and narrows down exact values over time. They organize large scale attempts to collect lots of good data by setting groups of players in under known circumstances like with the basic weapon and no armor just to test. Many times they apply the scientific method in a very strict sense in order to determine just how the game makes certain rolls and what the best course of action is to maximize success. That's impressive to me, not cheating.

I don't see a reason to hide the numbers anyway. The players that don't care about the numbers will ignore them anyway, excepting perhaps they will use equipment with progressively bigger bonuses.

[Sorano]

I actually want to write an article about treating metagame/theorycrafting as a feature. I know it's a lot of fun (to me) figuring out what's currently considered best and worst in large scale games.

[Xecutor]

In zOMG MMO player can either grind his orbs out of mobs,
(try to) open chests in an area or
try to clear instance with a crew.
Every instance have 3 difficulty settings.
Clearing it on hard will give you a lot of orbs.
But hard is ... hard!

If you don't have time for instance,
you still can get repeating quest of 'kill X things' kind.
And there are 'freebies' scattered around.
You can spend a few minutes walking around collecting them

In roguelike games there is number of ways to prevent win
with grinding. Like food clock.

[antymattar]

I have been trying to inpact several games with this. I hate it when you get to a point where the 1000000000000 dollar reward for killing death it's self is common. The normal thing to do would be to make it so that the player is less used to money.

[SirNiko]

I actually want to write an article about treating metagame/theorycrafting as a feature. I know it's a lot of fun (to me) figuring out what's currently considered best and worst in large scale games.

There are even some non-online games that do this. Final Fantasy 12 was designed with a lot of content that could never be discovered by an individual player (because it was time consuming and random unless you knew what you were doing). For example, a monster that only appears in a specific place 10% of the time, or another one that appears only when you explore a whole zone without killing any monsters. The idea was that players who didn't care simply wouldn't see those monsters, but the ones that did would use forums and chatrooms to trade findings and eventually track down the whole list (and they did, shortly after release there was a full list of where to find all those rare monsters).

Kingdom of Loathing, which I mentioned before, has a pretty active community of theorycrafters and experimenters. Each month when a new item hits they immediately start a forum thread, start posting charts and tests, and coming up with things to test to determine where and when the item would be used to get faster times in speedruns or other activities. They currently have a thread open where they are trying to figure out if there's a pattern to rewards you get from mining in order to determine the most efficient way to complete the mining quest. At one point, the devs even put a special piece of armor in the game called a Spade's Jacket that had a question mark listed for its enchantment. The whole idea was that it was a puzzle for the theorycrafting / spade community to figure out what it does (turns out it gave +1 to +3 to three really obscure stats and was different but consistent for each person).