The grind is good, nothen worth while comes free, and free stuff never holds value, but.. finding away to make the grind fun is a quest in itself, or a grind if you will.
Guild Wars 2 will show what can be done differently. But will be ignored like GW in this aspect by other developers. Most of the mentioned MMO's in the article will have the classic grind.
Agreed..sadly.
Gw1 was a zero grind game. Once you got to level 20 ..just by pplaying the story line it was all about content. Lev 20 wasn't the end by a long shot. There were elite skills to cap, goodies to add mods to weapons, and armor. The game began at 20 and ran on a great story line all the way. Each campaign added to the game..not a grind so you could get X cause you needed that to move.
A huge plus was the way PVP was handled. I believe that many games use PVP in place of actual game content, not, as GW1 did which was an enhancement to content. To many 'open world' pvp games have very little to offer without it.
Better (imo) and more able to hold a large, diverse player base was the G vs G along with a bunch of other PVP offerings in GW1. Carebears were happy, HC PVP was there for anyone who wanted it. The better PVPers loved it because it was actually a challenge to reach a high ranking. Loved it!!!
Go figure for SOE to try and "spin" the grind for us. After all they really originated the concept. It happens in most every mmo and typically a grind occurs when you've ran out of content so that you must go back and repeat all of the prior content in an attempt to level up. So imo most grind is either built into a game on purpose or theres a gap in the quest arc of a game where you've hit the wall on your content. Both are design issues one on purpose and the other due to either lack of knowledge of the problem or lack of caring by the devs.
I like how the LOTRO dev is quoted in this article. I am a big LOTRO fan, but lets call a spade a spade. Lotro seems to have purposley built grind into their game.
kill 300 spiders. great! you did it...now kill 600 spiders!
use x skill 250 times. great! you did it...now do it 500 more times!
It's a proven historical fact that beer saved humankind.
I only have to grind it out if I can'f find any chicks at the bar.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.- -And on the 8th day, man created God.-
I semi agree with him on some points. Yes, there is a grind. But is that not more a state of mine? Lets look at it from that point of view, on each person instead of each game. I could technically say college was a grind. I had to endure a lot of crap just to get a degree including stuff that have zero relation to what I do today.
If your goal in a game is to get to X level to do X raid, instances, whatever: It is a grind for all purposes. I do not care if you load it with content and keep me actively doing something. It is a grind to me. Endgame for games: A grind. How many raids/instances do I have to do to get said upgrade for me?
A grind is nothing more than a state of mind each player finds him/herself in. If you read each quest log and feel a connection to helping that poor chum, it probably is not a grind to you. To me, its I grinded out 10 quest today as I could care less about what he/she wants me to go kill, steal, loot, transport, etc.
I like grinding i'm probably in a very small minority in this thinking but if you just mix quests in with your grinding its much more rewarding and if you start more then one quest around the same area or on the same monster even you'll level a lot faster.
If you're just going to total grinding you're not going to get far, if you're going to do just quests but most likely do one at a time you're going to get bored and should have been grinding because most quests can be a little time consuming.
Mixing multiple quests with grinding is the most effective thing you can do, at some levels that wont be possible but doing this you'll have a nice boost of % from earning additional experience points from the completed quests unless you only come a little more or less of 100%.
In reality you'll be wasting your time playing mmorpgs but at least this way you feel like you accomplish something when you level from grinding.
When I first started playing mmos, there was no word called "grind"... I'm only 22 it wasn't that long ago.
I played an mmo because it basically was a different world that thrived and didn't care about what real life had to offer.
I found the mmo genre fun because it was its own fantasy and not just like plain old games. The genre is turning itself away from being more compelling than a good single player console rpg is. Often, the games that come out are single player until the end. This "grind" is just meant to explain how one shouldn't instantly be the strongest. How no one starts out as a hero. How a gaming world must let the player feel both comfort and discomfort as pertains to the character and not to reality. The game world should not care how much real life time it takes you to play it. The progression may or may not be long, but it is used so that one can look back on how far they have come as a character doing 10 damage on rats and now several months later they are storming a castle as a hero in their clan. That makes a lasting experience. Difficult? It is if you really can't sit still and set your mind to a goal and complete it.
The aesthetics that made up mmos is now leaving quickly (or mutating) because the developers now create their game purely on maximizing subscribers when most of the subscribers are selfish players with one thing on there mind.... a quickie. Mmos are now all about stringing the player on with the story and letting go of them when they've reach end game. The story was supposed to be found by being in the world, not forced. And in some cases, the players were the story.
I don't really play mmos now because I realize that they are for people with time on their hands. I thought that before as well. I would not mind it if the developers made their games, knowing that the people that play them have a lot of free time. It doesn't mean that it won't be fun, it just might not be fun for everyone. The genre doesn't have to be for everyone. You can call it a grind or whatever... sometimes it might seem more repetitive, but what others might have fun with someone else will not. What people see as necessary, others will see them as unnecessary. People insist that their ways are right, but really there is no right way. Do you want to solo? Do you want to group? Do you want pvp? A fun game? Or do you just want a different world with rules of its own that you must follow when you're in it? I guess I'm talking about immersion. People don't want to be immersed, they just want their quick fun. Often that's why the games taste stale.
An mmo is always a waste of time when you're lookin at it from a real life prospective.... always.
Ive played CounterStrike Source for many many years. Until recently, when they decided to add "stats" and "achivements" and forcefully display these ingame in the heat of battle. Its not optional, and unless it changes in the near future, ill leave that game.
CSS is a game of quick reflexes and real skill. Theres no levels or character stats exept from health and armor. Its a VERRY repetitive game typicaly placed on a few maps, with the same guns and stuff every time. The mortality rate is verry high, and if you screw up you wont be rewarded.
Its not an MMO i know, but bear with me. Theres no rewards for playing, theres no fancy armors and pices of crap to collect. I can play it for hours, doing the same thing over and over and be entertained.
As a gamer that really HATE grinding. What makes such a repetitive game appeal to me? If a developer reads this and cant figure it out, then what are this person doing in the games business?
Grind is an excuse. Thats what it is, plain and simple. It dont matter if its covered up or not, its still as worthless as the developers making it.
I find it kinda ironic to see a reference to zen in a discussion about grind. Zen beeing the medative state to detatch from all material things, and MMO grind beeing mindless strife for material rewards over and over. Or maybe theres some other form of zen iam not aware of?
If these are the people that is supposed to make things fun. Iam tempted to give up on MMOs.
"I'd just like to see more games that focus on the world, and giving the people in it more of a role, im tired of these constant single player games that you can walk around with millions of people."
When I first started playing mmos, there was no word called "grind"... I'm only 22 it wasn't that long ago.
I played an mmo because it basically was a different world that thrived and didn't care about what real life had to offer.
I found the mmo genre fun because it was its own fantasy and not just like plain old games. The genre is turning itself away from being more compelling than a good single player console rpg is. Often, the games that come out are single player until the end. This "grind" is just meant to explain how one shouldn't instantly be the strongest. How no one starts out as a hero. How a gaming world must let the player feel both comfort and discomfort as pertains to the character and not to reality. The game world should not care how much real life time it takes you to play it. The progression may or may not be long, but it is used so that one can look back on how far they have come as a character doing 10 damage on rats and now several months later they are storming a castle as a hero in their clan. That makes a lasting experience. Difficult? It is if you really can't sit still and set your mind to a goal and complete it.
The aesthetics that made up mmos is now leaving quickly (or mutating) because the developers now create their game purely on maximizing subscribers when most of the subscribers are selfish players with one thing on there mind.... a quickie. Mmos are now all about stringing the player on with the story and letting go of them when they've reach end game. The story was supposed to be found by being in the world, not forced. And in some cases, the players were the story.
I don't really play mmos now because I realize that they are for people with time on their hands. I thought that before as well. I would not mind it if the developers made their games, knowing that the people that play them have a lot of free time. It doesn't mean that it won't be fun, it just might not be fun for everyone. The genre doesn't have to be for everyone. You can call it a grind or whatever... sometimes it might seem more repetitive, but what others might have fun with someone else will not. What people see as necessary, others will see them as unnecessary. People insist that their ways are right, but really there is no right way. Do you want to solo? Do you want to group? Do you want pvp? A fun game? Or do you just want a different world with rules of its own that you must follow when you're in it? I guess I'm talking about immersion. People don't want to be immersed, they just want their quick fun. Often that's why the games taste stale.
An mmo is always a waste of time when you're lookin at it from a real life prospective.... always.
This is a good post and a lot of what you say I'd agree with. However, it's not the fact that I want to log-on and within a week or a month be a 'hero' that bothers me about grinds. I'm not looking for a quick game but I am looking for a fun game that doesn't feel like a second job.
I've enjoyed games in the past that take a long time to max out your character because they feel like you are less aggressively funnelled toward the end-game and, on the way, some of them even included fun meaningful content that wasn't simply designed to get you to end-game.
Grind during leveling is very much a player created problem but what I do have a problem with is developers deciding that once you have gotten to end-game the only way of adding content is by including more gear, rep, deed and gate grinds.
Developers need to think about adding more ways for a player's presence in the game to have a meaningful effect for their faction/community in both the PvP and PvE spheres at all level ranges if they want to get back to pushing the boundaries of the genre.
A lot of games today have no meaningful content for the lower levels which drives players on to the end-game (surely that's where the fun meaningful content is if I havn't found any so far, right?) only for players to find there is little meaningful content when they get there. All they find is a different flavour of grind and the only consequence of it is in bragging rights and access to the next grind.
I'm all for wasting some of my spare time in a MMORPG - if I'm having fun while doing it.
Who says guys in the industry don’t have good, innovative ideas? But convincing the money men to take a chance…that just does not happen. If you can sell it as a unique aspect of the game you have a chance. But wings which allow you to temporarily fly cause much less concern than a new combat mechanic. Thats why we have wings, mounts and ships but not serveral ways of fighting in MMO's.
After re-reading the article I feel compelled to post again.
“And three – vary the experience. Offer a number of different flavors of grind. Instances, crafting, collections, kills, daily quests. If a player gets to the point where they are really burned out on one, they can go do something else for a while. Also, whenever they can multi-task (collect crafting components WHILE achieving kills), players generally feel a lot better about the process.”
Aboslutely, the best way to make grinds more fun is to include more of them. /sarcasm off
I don't mean to be riding on Jesse King so hard but, really, this is an absurd thing to say.
We play MMORPGs to have fun, don't we? So why would you want to include even more boring, repetitive tasks? This seems so counter-productive to the service you are there to provide.
If you want to create the next sensation in the genre then keep the gameplay fun for goodness sake. This should be self-evident.
indeed hate that EQ2 included more grinds, got several daily quests and battleground token grinds, sure its up to the players if want to do them, but no longer they have the massive quest lines that you needed your guild and online friends to complete, quest lines with no real rewards until the very end of them.
sure they have quests with big rewards now but since the whole game world is instance grinding it never become the reason for those instances, ppl doing those instances every single day in the week.
either way am sure alot doesnt miss those quests as it were "painful" to find groups for the updates, but to me the expansion always were over when the big quest lines were completed....now we got more grinds with no other purpose but gear.
well whole reason looking forward to FFXIV, not the games combat and killing some dodo´s, but for a game that put some adventure back into the MMOs...hope that game can deliever on that point, and not just turn the whole game into a faction grind for some goodies at the faction merchant.
can tolerate quite abit of grind but not if that is all there is to a game.
Developers - you need to think outside the box and come up with new quest fare. The old stand bys have to go.
Agreed!
Developers need to think about adding more ways for a player's presence in the game to have a meaningful effect for their faction/community in both the PvP and PvE spheres at all level ranges if they want to get back to pushing the boundaries of the genre.
Agreed!
What makes such a repetitive game appeal to me? If a developer reads this and cant figure it out, then what are this person doing in the games business?
Sorry, I dont buy it. These devs are just making excuses. Look at EVE - very little grind is forced on you. There is simply no excuse for the laziness in other MMOs which results in 'kill 10 rats'.
Have we played the same eve? The grind for ISK is always ongoing. Also most of the mission in even consist of the same basics as any other MMO. Take something from X to Y, kill target X or clear area X (This would be the same as kill 10 spiders).
Now the benifit of EvE is that there are a lot of ways to grind your ISK, but it is still an importend factor.
My point exactly. Its not a grind if you arent forced.
I am a afterworkplayer, so it isnt fun, if you have only 1, 2-3 hours an evening, and you have to grind. if you need 1 hour or more to form a grp to do a quest/instance , believe it isnt fun.
If you can grind only , cause there are no players in your lvl range and you lack a masterquest for special items, believe it , its no fun.
To run from a to b, and back and to c its no fun, its like grind again.
I think thats the mainproblem of any MMÖ, so many games appear on the market, with less or better graphic, but the main thing is allways the same.
to make a game really adventures, you would need a staff , who would add every week new content/events/items, To produce that it not possible without a big raise of Fee for play, so its also a question , whether the gameers will pay a higher fee ( for example 50 bucks per month, or something like that ), i think its impossible to handle that.
Aplayer like me is more a soloplayer, so its importaant to have fun in the time i play, and not to put the mainpoint on grp or guildplaying, there is a lot to think about, what is possible to change or develop in future games, with different kind of gamplay as it is today, maybe a big thread for sampling ideas could be fun
Basically MMOs need to drop the awful combat mechanics for FPS or action controls and remove character progression and items that separate new and old players. Once that is done players will play for fun and not put up with lame game mechanics just for new items or levels.
MMOs need to give you stories to tell, not just "I got level 36" or "I've got a +5 sword of awesome".
Loot X items becomes an effort in futility at points because the developers decide that I have to loot some mundane organic material from a quadroplegic, toothless, tongueless, noseless, blind, deaf, peltless, gutless, tailless, skinless, boneless, clawless, pawless, hairless, whiskerless, tendonless wolf that still manages to find me and hit me for a fair amount of damage. If I'm going for wolf eyes, for example, it needs to drop two per kill. Otherwise gamers are just going into disbelief and developer hate mode.
Oh come off it... are you really going to complain about the believability of drops? If you can accept the fact that a vendor trash broken beetle shell off a level 70 beetle is worth tens of thousands of dollars to every vendor everywhere in the world, I think you can accept anything. Nevermind the fact that the same beetle might drop a magical halbard or platemail pants.
Loot X items at least has an element of chance to it and adds a small moment of "does it have one this time?" to the monotony. If the drops are guaranteed drops, then "loot 20 eyes" is 100% identical to "kill 10 wolves" except that the latter saves you from losing an inventory slot.
Sorry, I dont buy it. These devs are just making excuses. Look at EVE - very little grind is forced on you. There is simply no excuse for the laziness in other MMOs which results in 'kill 10 rats'.
Ah...no grind in EVE? What do you call Ratting in 0.0 for isk or Sec-status? Isn't mining another kind of operation like a fantasy mmo resource gathering grind? Station upkeep is it's own kind of maintenance grind.
Don't get me wrong. I love EVE. No doubt it is a ground breaking and unique experience. And it's much more than spreadsheets in space too. There's no PvP thrill like living life in the brutal and beautiful EVE sandbox. But to say EVE has very little grind is misleading. It's just a different grind, much of which you can elect to avoid if you are patient enough to find other opportunities to fund your empire.
Basically MMOs need to drop the awful combat mechanics for FPS or action controls and remove character progression and items that separate new and old players. Once that is done players will play for fun and not put up with lame game mechanics just for new items or levels.
MMOs need to give you stories to tell, not just "I got level 36" or "I've got a +5 sword of awesome".
MMORPGs, emphasis on the RPG, are largely about character development. That's a major part of the draw that keeps people playing (and paying).
This was true even for most paper and pencil RPGs. Advancement and development might vary, but without it, stagnation leads to death.
I think you have "the grind" backward. You don't really see grind much at the lower levels, but it is almost always there at the higher levels. Mainly because many of the games just don't have much content at the higher levels as they do at the lower ones.
The grind usually is not too bad in most of the western games, but the eastern designers seem to delight in putting it in, especially at the higher levels. That is why many western players never reach end game in many of these eastern "grinders".
MMORPGs, emphasis on the RPG, are largely about character development. That's a major part of the draw that keeps people playing (and paying).
This was true even for most paper and pencil RPGs. Advancement and development might vary, but without it, stagnation leads to death.
AoC learned that the hard way.
I completely agree. If you remove the progression and the power difference between brand new characters and veteran characters, you can't rightly call it an RPG anymore. You've just got a big multiplayer game.
Grinding is doing the same thing over and over and that is what you do in almost every MMO. It isn't true grinding as long as it is fun but killing hundreds identical easy mobs isn't fun, it is a grind. So is doing the exact same raid over and over so you eventually collect the armor you need to do it all over again with the next dude.
The thing I think would help would be if some or all mobs were just a little different. All gnoll schamans that isn't nameds are exactly the same, They attack in the same way and you defeat them in the same way. Some random element, a little better ai and a little surprise at times would cut down the grind a lot.
If you actually have to think and react to what the mobs do it wont be so boring anymore.'
Think about it, in pen and paper RPGs are there no such thing unless you have a really crappy gm. Sometimes the easiest meeting turns out to be a disaster or what seems to be really hard turns out to be easy. In P&P games you get surprised sometimes, and the problem here as I see it is lazy devs.
The devs think we should kill 200 identical rats because it builds up character or something, it is easier to program than giving some of them a random element (say that a few rats have rabies or something like that without it saying so. One or 2 might be really strong rats while some others are weak).
I rather have a game with few monsters that differs slightly from eachother than a thousand that more or less is 5 monsters with different skill and maybe a few more or less HP and DPS than the others.
If you don't like what the dev's are saying, you should probably do that. I don't think anything too big is going to change in the next year or two from what we're playing right now.
Lucky for people like me, I still somewhat enjoy the current batch of MMO's. I'm really looking forward to the slight (but much needed) tweaks to the forumla that the upcomming batch of MMO's are bringing.
GW2, WoDO, TOR and TERA all seems pretty different from what we are playing today ( well maybe not TOR but at least it will have a story, most MMOs have a sad excuse instead of a real story).
Things are changing, at least if any of those games will become a hit. Then you will be like the old UO players complaining over how much better MMOs were before .
Well, I at least believe that no genre can stay the same forever and still be popular. The devs have also realized it but it takes longer for MMOs than most genres because most MMOs takes around 5 years to make.
Comments
The grind is good, nothen worth while comes free, and free stuff never holds value, but.. finding away to make the grind fun is a quest in itself, or a grind if you will.
Go figure for SOE to try and "spin" the grind for us. After all they really originated the concept. It happens in most every mmo and typically a grind occurs when you've ran out of content so that you must go back and repeat all of the prior content in an attempt to level up. So imo most grind is either built into a game on purpose or theres a gap in the quest arc of a game where you've hit the wall on your content. Both are design issues one on purpose and the other due to either lack of knowledge of the problem or lack of caring by the devs.
I like how the LOTRO dev is quoted in this article. I am a big LOTRO fan, but lets call a spade a spade. Lotro seems to have purposley built grind into their game.
kill 300 spiders. great! you did it...now kill 600 spiders!
use x skill 250 times. great! you did it...now do it 500 more times!
It's a proven historical fact that beer saved humankind.
I only have to grind it out if I can'f find any chicks at the bar.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
I semi agree with him on some points. Yes, there is a grind. But is that not more a state of mine? Lets look at it from that point of view, on each person instead of each game. I could technically say college was a grind. I had to endure a lot of crap just to get a degree including stuff that have zero relation to what I do today.
If your goal in a game is to get to X level to do X raid, instances, whatever: It is a grind for all purposes. I do not care if you load it with content and keep me actively doing something. It is a grind to me. Endgame for games: A grind. How many raids/instances do I have to do to get said upgrade for me?
A grind is nothing more than a state of mind each player finds him/herself in. If you read each quest log and feel a connection to helping that poor chum, it probably is not a grind to you. To me, its I grinded out 10 quest today as I could care less about what he/she wants me to go kill, steal, loot, transport, etc.
I like grinding i'm probably in a very small minority in this thinking but if you just mix quests in with your grinding its much more rewarding and if you start more then one quest around the same area or on the same monster even you'll level a lot faster.
If you're just going to total grinding you're not going to get far, if you're going to do just quests but most likely do one at a time you're going to get bored and should have been grinding because most quests can be a little time consuming.
Mixing multiple quests with grinding is the most effective thing you can do, at some levels that wont be possible but doing this you'll have a nice boost of % from earning additional experience points from the completed quests unless you only come a little more or less of 100%.
In reality you'll be wasting your time playing mmorpgs but at least this way you feel like you accomplish something when you level from grinding.
When I first started playing mmos, there was no word called "grind"... I'm only 22 it wasn't that long ago.
I played an mmo because it basically was a different world that thrived and didn't care about what real life had to offer.
I found the mmo genre fun because it was its own fantasy and not just like plain old games. The genre is turning itself away from being more compelling than a good single player console rpg is. Often, the games that come out are single player until the end. This "grind" is just meant to explain how one shouldn't instantly be the strongest. How no one starts out as a hero. How a gaming world must let the player feel both comfort and discomfort as pertains to the character and not to reality. The game world should not care how much real life time it takes you to play it. The progression may or may not be long, but it is used so that one can look back on how far they have come as a character doing 10 damage on rats and now several months later they are storming a castle as a hero in their clan. That makes a lasting experience. Difficult? It is if you really can't sit still and set your mind to a goal and complete it.
The aesthetics that made up mmos is now leaving quickly (or mutating) because the developers now create their game purely on maximizing subscribers when most of the subscribers are selfish players with one thing on there mind.... a quickie. Mmos are now all about stringing the player on with the story and letting go of them when they've reach end game. The story was supposed to be found by being in the world, not forced. And in some cases, the players were the story.
I don't really play mmos now because I realize that they are for people with time on their hands. I thought that before as well. I would not mind it if the developers made their games, knowing that the people that play them have a lot of free time. It doesn't mean that it won't be fun, it just might not be fun for everyone. The genre doesn't have to be for everyone. You can call it a grind or whatever... sometimes it might seem more repetitive, but what others might have fun with someone else will not. What people see as necessary, others will see them as unnecessary. People insist that their ways are right, but really there is no right way. Do you want to solo? Do you want to group? Do you want pvp? A fun game? Or do you just want a different world with rules of its own that you must follow when you're in it? I guess I'm talking about immersion. People don't want to be immersed, they just want their quick fun. Often that's why the games taste stale.
An mmo is always a waste of time when you're lookin at it from a real life prospective.... always.
Ive played CounterStrike Source for many many years. Until recently, when they decided to add "stats" and "achivements" and forcefully display these ingame in the heat of battle. Its not optional, and unless it changes in the near future, ill leave that game.
CSS is a game of quick reflexes and real skill.
Theres no levels or character stats exept from health and armor.
Its a VERRY repetitive game typicaly placed on a few maps, with the same guns and stuff every time.
The mortality rate is verry high, and if you screw up you wont be rewarded.
Its not an MMO i know, but bear with me.
Theres no rewards for playing, theres no fancy armors and pices of crap to collect.
I can play it for hours, doing the same thing over and over and be entertained.
As a gamer that really HATE grinding. What makes such a repetitive game appeal to me?
If a developer reads this and cant figure it out, then what are this person doing in the games business?
Grind is an excuse. Thats what it is, plain and simple.
It dont matter if its covered up or not, its still as worthless as the developers making it.
I find it kinda ironic to see a reference to zen in a discussion about grind.
Zen beeing the medative state to detatch from all material things, and MMO grind beeing mindless strife for material rewards over and over.
Or maybe theres some other form of zen iam not aware of?
If these are the people that is supposed to make things fun. Iam tempted to give up on MMOs.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/261448/page/5
"I'd just like to see more games that focus on the world, and giving the people in it more of a role, im tired of these constant single player games that you can walk around with millions of people."
- Parsalin
This is a good post and a lot of what you say I'd agree with. However, it's not the fact that I want to log-on and within a week or a month be a 'hero' that bothers me about grinds. I'm not looking for a quick game but I am looking for a fun game that doesn't feel like a second job.
I've enjoyed games in the past that take a long time to max out your character because they feel like you are less aggressively funnelled toward the end-game and, on the way, some of them even included fun meaningful content that wasn't simply designed to get you to end-game.
Grind during leveling is very much a player created problem but what I do have a problem with is developers deciding that once you have gotten to end-game the only way of adding content is by including more gear, rep, deed and gate grinds.
Developers need to think about adding more ways for a player's presence in the game to have a meaningful effect for their faction/community in both the PvP and PvE spheres at all level ranges if they want to get back to pushing the boundaries of the genre.
A lot of games today have no meaningful content for the lower levels which drives players on to the end-game (surely that's where the fun meaningful content is if I havn't found any so far, right?) only for players to find there is little meaningful content when they get there. All they find is a different flavour of grind and the only consequence of it is in bragging rights and access to the next grind.
I'm all for wasting some of my spare time in a MMORPG - if I'm having fun while doing it.
Who says guys in the industry don’t have good, innovative ideas? But convincing the money men to take a chance…that just does not happen. If you can sell it as a unique aspect of the game you have a chance. But wings which allow you to temporarily fly cause much less concern than a new combat mechanic. Thats why we have wings, mounts and ships but not serveral ways of fighting in MMO's.
indeed hate that EQ2 included more grinds, got several daily quests and battleground token grinds, sure its up to the players if want to do them, but no longer they have the massive quest lines that you needed your guild and online friends to complete, quest lines with no real rewards until the very end of them.
sure they have quests with big rewards now but since the whole game world is instance grinding it never become the reason for those instances, ppl doing those instances every single day in the week.
either way am sure alot doesnt miss those quests as it were "painful" to find groups for the updates, but to me the expansion always were over when the big quest lines were completed....now we got more grinds with no other purpose but gear.
well whole reason looking forward to FFXIV, not the games combat and killing some dodo´s, but for a game that put some adventure back into the MMOs...hope that game can deliever on that point, and not just turn the whole game into a faction grind for some goodies at the faction merchant.
can tolerate quite abit of grind but not if that is all there is to a game.
I think most of ya have said it already:
Developers - you need to think outside the box and come up with new quest fare. The old stand bys have to go.
Agreed!
Developers need to think about adding more ways for a player's presence in the game to have a meaningful effect for their faction/community in both the PvP and PvE spheres at all level ranges if they want to get back to pushing the boundaries of the genre.
Agreed!
What makes such a repetitive game appeal to me? If a developer reads this and cant figure it out, then what are this person doing in the games business?
Agreed!
Grinding is being 8 years old and cracking out on confectioner's sugar and Excedrin while leveling weapon skills and spells in Secret of Mana. -.-
My point exactly. Its not a grind if you arent forced.
I am a afterworkplayer, so it isnt fun, if you have only 1, 2-3 hours an evening, and you have to grind. if you need 1 hour or more to form a grp to do a quest/instance , believe it isnt fun.
If you can grind only , cause there are no players in your lvl range and you lack a masterquest for special items, believe it , its no fun.
To run from a to b, and back and to c its no fun, its like grind again.
I think thats the mainproblem of any MMÖ, so many games appear on the market, with less or better graphic, but the main thing is allways the same.
to make a game really adventures, you would need a staff , who would add every week new content/events/items, To produce that it not possible without a big raise of Fee for play, so its also a question , whether the gameers will pay a higher fee ( for example 50 bucks per month, or something like that ), i think its impossible to handle that.
Aplayer like me is more a soloplayer, so its importaant to have fun in the time i play, and not to put the mainpoint on grp or guildplaying, there is a lot to think about, what is possible to change or develop in future games, with different kind of gamplay as it is today, maybe a big thread for sampling ideas could be fun
greetings
Basically MMOs need to drop the awful combat mechanics for FPS or action controls and remove character progression and items that separate new and old players. Once that is done players will play for fun and not put up with lame game mechanics just for new items or levels.
MMOs need to give you stories to tell, not just "I got level 36" or "I've got a +5 sword of awesome".
Sorry for this offtopic question.
What game is the screenshot with the ranger character?
Oh come off it... are you really going to complain about the believability of drops? If you can accept the fact that a vendor trash broken beetle shell off a level 70 beetle is worth tens of thousands of dollars to every vendor everywhere in the world, I think you can accept anything. Nevermind the fact that the same beetle might drop a magical halbard or platemail pants.
Loot X items at least has an element of chance to it and adds a small moment of "does it have one this time?" to the monotony. If the drops are guaranteed drops, then "loot 20 eyes" is 100% identical to "kill 10 wolves" except that the latter saves you from losing an inventory slot.
Ah...no grind in EVE? What do you call Ratting in 0.0 for isk or Sec-status? Isn't mining another kind of operation like a fantasy mmo resource gathering grind? Station upkeep is it's own kind of maintenance grind.
Don't get me wrong. I love EVE. No doubt it is a ground breaking and unique experience. And it's much more than spreadsheets in space too. There's no PvP thrill like living life in the brutal and beautiful EVE sandbox. But to say EVE has very little grind is misleading. It's just a different grind, much of which you can elect to avoid if you are patient enough to find other opportunities to fund your empire.
MMORPGs, emphasis on the RPG, are largely about character development. That's a major part of the draw that keeps people playing (and paying).
This was true even for most paper and pencil RPGs. Advancement and development might vary, but without it, stagnation leads to death.
AoC learned that the hard way.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
I think you have "the grind" backward. You don't really see grind much at the lower levels, but it is almost always there at the higher levels. Mainly because many of the games just don't have much content at the higher levels as they do at the lower ones.
The grind usually is not too bad in most of the western games, but the eastern designers seem to delight in putting it in, especially at the higher levels. That is why many western players never reach end game in many of these eastern "grinders".
I completely agree. If you remove the progression and the power difference between brand new characters and veteran characters, you can't rightly call it an RPG anymore. You've just got a big multiplayer game.
Grinding is doing the same thing over and over and that is what you do in almost every MMO. It isn't true grinding as long as it is fun but killing hundreds identical easy mobs isn't fun, it is a grind. So is doing the exact same raid over and over so you eventually collect the armor you need to do it all over again with the next dude.
The thing I think would help would be if some or all mobs were just a little different. All gnoll schamans that isn't nameds are exactly the same, They attack in the same way and you defeat them in the same way. Some random element, a little better ai and a little surprise at times would cut down the grind a lot.
If you actually have to think and react to what the mobs do it wont be so boring anymore.'
Think about it, in pen and paper RPGs are there no such thing unless you have a really crappy gm. Sometimes the easiest meeting turns out to be a disaster or what seems to be really hard turns out to be easy. In P&P games you get surprised sometimes, and the problem here as I see it is lazy devs.
The devs think we should kill 200 identical rats because it builds up character or something, it is easier to program than giving some of them a random element (say that a few rats have rabies or something like that without it saying so. One or 2 might be really strong rats while some others are weak).
I rather have a game with few monsters that differs slightly from eachother than a thousand that more or less is 5 monsters with different skill and maybe a few more or less HP and DPS than the others.
GW2, WoDO, TOR and TERA all seems pretty different from what we are playing today ( well maybe not TOR but at least it will have a story, most MMOs have a sad excuse instead of a real story).
Things are changing, at least if any of those games will become a hit. Then you will be like the old UO players complaining over how much better MMOs were before
.
Well, I at least believe that no genre can stay the same forever and still be popular. The devs have also realized it but it takes longer for MMOs than most genres because most MMOs takes around 5 years to make.