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What do we consider Grinding In MMO ?
Lucioon
Member UncommonPosts: 819
Last time I checked, RPG or MMORPG are about starting fresh like a nobody, and fight and quest till you become the hero that everyone talks about. Along the way you will fight mobs after mobs and get loot and grow more familiar with your character and the way you can react to the virtual world created for you.
But recently I have been reading more threads on the hassals of having to grow your character, and that leveling as an indicator of your accomplishments are no longer necessary and has been labeled as an Grind. Are instant gratification what everyone is looking for now.
Do we all want to start as a decked out hero killing dragons and Titans the first time we get into a new world?
Are we tired of starting as a newbie because we are so familiar with the genre that everything to us is old, and that we are all veterans now ?
What is really a Grind, whats the definition of Grind now?
Does anything that takes longer than 1 week to get to the max level now considers a grind ?
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
Comments
I believe this image sums up how I feel about the situation
I never really considered killing mobs, for XP or rep, grinding. Farming mats for profs (including killing mobs) has been the the main thing I consider grinding. Never really minded it though, good way to kill time when I'm trying to wake up.
Grinding is repeating things over and over again for a reward....
Heroes don't repeat the same battle over and over again...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
End-game instanced static map 10-player Raiding and 10 v 10 player Battlegrounds of the same exact content over and over, towards achievement of a purple item. Game-play boiled-down to running that redundant content ad nauseum' now that's grinding.
And there is more than enough threads on how much disdain has developed over the years in most of these mmorpg's for such unentertaining repetitive content.
Grind just seems to be a negative way of talking about anything repetitive. One man's grind is another man's content.
This is brilliant. (On the difficulty of games, imo. 2010 refects that games aren't that difficult anymore, but imo...they ARE mindlessly grindy.)
In my opinion a "grind" is when you are required (for whatever reason...leveling, gaining gear you need, etc) to do something REPEATEDLY that you do not enjoy DOING repeatedly. If it's something I ENJOY doing....I'm not grinding.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
perfect wish we could have 1994 gaming again, sorting out all those instant gratification, carebear kiddie crowd.
Most boring and braindead grind is named quests. You know, handholding stuff guiding you from zone to zone while you repeat the same NPC task over and over and ovber and over...again.
Rather killing some elite stuff in the open world with a bunch of others or start some dungeon crawling instead of hanging out in stupid farming instances.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
In most RPG's I was so used to getting to a unknown location, get killed, go back and kill some low level mobs get experience, level up, go back to the unknown location get more levels, go to new area, get more levels, go to new area and so on.... I never thought that was grinding, it was just necessary.
That was the experience that I was used to, sometimes I stayed at a easy to level location longer and get abit ahead of the new area so that I didn't have to worry about dying.
And Quests are a way to help me navigate through this gaming world that is new to me, it helps me get off the normal road path and directs me to this swamp camp, and to the other hidden camps that I normally wouldn't find on my own, unless I start exploring endlessly once i am bored.
Don't get me wrong, i do know that changes are needed, but why is it a grind when its a necessary tool to help dissipate the population..
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
I think they're not discontent with grinding as a concept to playing an RPG. It's the prospect of being forced to grind before you can enjoy your game.
Example: In the first Guild Wars, there were 20 levels. The levels, in fact, served more as a tutorial. There was no level grind, and you'd reach level 20 before you were even half way finished with the first campaign. Most of the game is for level 20 players. There was also a maximum on armor and weapon stats, and you could get that max extremely cheaply... so it was easy to get the statistically best gear in the game. But what Guild Wars offered was prestige gear, that had the exact same stats as normal gear, but visually looked exponentially better than the others.
Where normal max gear would cost 7k, a piece of prestige gear would cost 75, 200, 500, or even 1000k. This meant that Peasant Striped Ascalonian doesn't have to grind to stay competetive since they can fight just as well as Awesome Liberating Harbinger of God Obsidian Armor Wearing Warrior With Tormented Spear of Destruction and Awesome Explosive Lightning Imbued Shield of Fortitude and Protection. But that ALHGOAWWWTSDAELISFP looks a whole lot cooler than Peasant Stripes, and worked a whole lot harder than Peasant Stripes. ALHGOAWWWTSDAELISFP wasn't handed anything, and rightly feels the satisfaction and sense of achievement from the effort it took to become ALHGOAWWWTSDAELISFP.
Also, there was prestige in obtaining rare weapons, which a lot of times could not be bought. And in collecting maxed titles, which you could display beneath your character and everyone would know you are a "Conquering Lightbringer of Evil Everywhere" because you conquered evil everywhere with the light that you brought.
Grinding happens when you have to keep repeating the same thing long after it has stopped being fun in order to advance a goal you are working on. I'll jump back to a solo game like Final Fantasy 6 (my personal fav). During this game, you get most of your level ups while simply playing the story. You enter a dungeon at lvl 1, play through the dungeon, come out level 3. You didn't grind away to get those levels, they came DURING NORMAL PLAY.
Later in the game, when you are ready to go after the final boss, and thats the only content left. You find you aren't strong enough. At this point you find a little island in the NE part of the map that contains dinosaurs. You spend the next few hours walking back and forth inside of a little forest about 6 squares wide waiting for a random monster to spawn so that you can kill it. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. At this point, killing these guys with no further goal in mind except getting stronger bit by bit is what constitutes a grind.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Grind is any repetitive, monotonous task. The first part is objective - repeating content, the second part is subjective - monotonous.
Sometimes repetition can be fun. Monotony is never fun... it's monotonous.
<---- sig.
Venge
Reading your post brought back up a special memory in EQ for me. I was on my fresh little hafling druid back in 2000, about level 13 or 14 heading over to the Karanas to hunt me some wolves and bandits. I was in the zone and did a who all to check for any people that I might want to group with. Low and behold on the list I saw, 50 [Champion], this was the first 50 I had ever seen and was amazed. I did a /ooc something like, "Hail Mighty Champion so and so, what brings you to this lowly zone for such a warrior as you!" He laughed and we chatted for a bit. I have never had that kind of awe again since I left EQ since you can level up to max on most MMOs today in such a short time. Sigh, nostalgia.
This... Any repetitive task is what is considered 'grinding'. No one has come up with any kind of character progression system that doesn't involve a grind of some sort although some hide it better than others. As long as there is character progression there will be a grind aspect to any game.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
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Any repetitive task that is also unenjoyable. Diablo 2 is filled with repetitive tasks in the search for loot but I found it mostly fun for quite a while. Some people claim that leveling up is a grind even if it's all quests, but most people agree that level grinding is only when you are killing mobs over and over because there aren't enough quests available.
The genre is stale and I find that most of the MMOs I have tried have horrendous leveling experiences. I wouldn't call them a grind, but I would call them boring as hell.
anything that have repeating task is consider a grind like Dailies. I wouldn't consider quest to be grinding. But only specific quest is very grindy like "kill 20 boars". There is one quest in WoW that actually made me hate that quest so badly that I want to throw my computer out of the window. There a quest that I have to go other side of the map and there is no camp in that area. Then I did the quest then went back to the quest npc, then that quest npc told me to go back again, killing the same mob but pick up a different loot. Then I did that and went back again, then quest npc want me to do it again but different loot. I was really ready to punch that Quest Devs for thinking of that quest. and that is during the time, land mount is like 40 only and i am lower than that -_-
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
You're right, but as you said, that's the RPG way of doing things. However, there are currently many players in the genre that play an MMORPG but would want to play a MMO-whatever instead. Basically they don't like the RPG part and would like it to go away.
That's why they race to level cap and complain about grinding XP, for those players the game begins at level cap because they only like PvP, e-sports or raiding but not the journey and the exploration. I'm certainly one who likes the more traditional RPG way of things but we see more and more developers providing games for the fast levelling crowd.
Whether a grindless actiongame as MMO is financially viable though remains to be seen - I suspect it isn't.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
Being forced to repetedly do something you don't want to do for an insignificant reward.
FEEL THE FULL
FREE-TO-FLAME
FANTASY.
You are incorrect in your assumptions in every concievable way at least in my opinion. Grind is doing repetetive monotinous actions.
No one is asking for instant advancement, they are looking for fun means of advancement.
I mean doing the same dungeon 50 times to get the gear you need to do the next dungeon 50 times to get that gear just isn't fun.
Doing the same thing over and over and over and over just isn't fun. That is a grind. It's a lazy ass way for a dev to stretch out content and many of us just do not find that acceptable this day and age.
Variety is what people are asking for when they ask for the end to grind.
Killing 500 goblins, doing errand quests one after another that are so alike in design that you might as well be doing the same quest over and over, repeating dungeons for years just to get your new shiney armor!
Your saying you enjoy this and these are things that should be enjoyed? Thats like reading the same generic book every day for a year or more. Not very interesting, not very entertaining, simply put not my idea of fun.
The whole "Instant gratification" copout is simply to try and invalidate a legitimate gripe.
The key difference between grind and not grind is whether or not the repetetive task is geared directly towards your end goal or not.
If you are doing X over and over merely because you are trying to reach Y (next level, new gear, etc) then you are grinding. On the other hand, if you are doing X for some reason to reach Z and Y just also happens to come your way you are not grinding.
For example. Lets say you want to get strong, IRL. You turn around and you do pushup after pushup after pushup, you turn around you lift weights 3 hours a day for months on end. Congratulations, you got strong by grinding. On the other hand, you could be a guy who decided to build a house made out of bricks, and do it by hand. All day long you move piles of bricks, work the tools, etc etc. You got strong by repeatedly doing that stuff, but since you weren't focused on doing it to get strong, it wasn't a grind. (you could, on the other hand say that you built your house through grinding, but thats another concept).
The key to removing grinding isn't necessarily to hide it, but to give you a number of different goals to achieve while playing. Working towards these goals cause the progression in other areas, which, in turn, causes the grinding to really disappear.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Thats where the main problem occurred, your Journey from X to Z in modern player's mind is the Grind that they are tired of, moving from Quest to Quest. Moving from one Dungeon to another, althought you are leveling up as you go, the constant Quests you need to complete has become the Grind in many's viewpoints.
And to me thats is scary, The Term of Grind has been placed on too many non grind aspects of games. Alot of people is forgetting whats really a Grind. And whats is the journey.
Because I enjoy quests and explorations I never feel walking from point A to B as a grind.
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
I blame that on WOW. WOW doesn't have the monster grind that EQ or FF11 had. But the way they set up the quests does create a grind unique in itself. Many of the quests are the same thing over and over. And you don't have the option to NOT do them, as your progression is tied to walking that path. Also, if you create a second character, there a good chance that you'll be walking nearly that exact same path again. It may not be a grind the first time through, but the second? Grindy. I'll say that its BETTER than EQ's grind, but its still grindy.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
i like to grind.
why? because my favorite things to do in a game are to explore, hunt, harvest, craft.
so, just by default, i end up grinding, in the old timers sense. but what i cant stand is the forced questing.
i really dont give a damn about where Mankrik's wife is, nor do i want to run back and forth 5 times to find out and then seek the revenge he wants. back and forth, back and forth, back and forth---to me? thats a grind.
id rather go roaming regions on an open map and finding what i find. and if there are some locals that need help with the wolves at the door, i ll be happy to help. im just not going to run between them and the quest object more than once. maybe twice if its a good storyline
and isn't that how so many hero stories start out? the hero(s) are just minding their own business tootling along and suddenly, wham! something extraordinary happens.
how many quests do you think Clark Kent had to run before he could move on to the city zone? and once there how many quests before he ... whatever.
its the surprise in the midst of everyday life that is an adventure. and for me, as an old pnp player, quite often 'going adventuring' just meant putting your foot out the door and on to the road, as Bilbo warns, because you just never know where it might take you.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
Except generally you already know exactly where it's going to take you. Outside of Guild War's Dynamic Events system, MMOs cannot generate that kind of 'adventure' because the mobs and dungeons will be static.
Unless of course you're in an open PvP game, where the sense of adventure is that you might get ganked.
while i will give you the point on a technically correct for the most part, basis. that kind of adventure is self created. i dont typically read game guides (though for some its just plain necessary they are so old and have so much content).
instead as i mentioned i wander. i just head out in a particular direction and go till i find something interesting or have to stop because of level/skill issues. which turns my straight line into a zigzag and i end up leveling in a region for a while and then moving on. more often, however, i ll simply just start wandering in a different direction till one of those 2 things happens again.
so you are correct in that devs cannot create that kind of content. the only way to personalize an mmo is to do it yourself, by whatever techniques that the game mechanics will allow. for instance i am grinding right now in L2. so i hop over to a town or village and start running till i find decent xp/hour kills. then i grind away. sometimes this leads me down a certain valley or path and i find osmething interesting. which i thoroughly enjoy.
now i do think that devs can encourage that kind of play, but i certainly dont expect them to in any recent titles.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse