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Why the hate against gear grinds?
Alverant
Member RarePosts: 1,320
It seems like every game has a few people going on about how it's a gear grind at the end. Don't they get it? If you have gear in your MMO there's going to be gear grinds. It doesn't matter if it's level based or not, if you have some form of equipment or bonus you're going to have people doing everything they can to get the best bonuses they can. So why all the hate? More importantly what else can a game do as a reward once you hit max level? The more you play the more points you get, that's the core of every video game. These points take on different forms, leveling, story progression, etc. For an MMO you get gear.
Seriously, do you want to put in a day's worth of work into a game and have your only reward be a badge?
Comments
Because gear grinds are boring.
Guild Wars 1 had gear, but no gear grind, unless you count grinding for cosmetic stuff, which you could readily skip if you didn't like it.
It's like anything else in games. Once you've done it a few times it's not new anymore even if you change games. Most mmos don't even try and make it different anymore either. Raid, kill boss, get 1/10th of what you need to get to the next level of gear. Start all over again on your new tier....
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In six months we'll have more powerful forum loot for you to do this all over again.
In six months we'll have more powerful forum loot for you to do this all over again.
In six months we'll have more powerful forum loot for you to do this all over again.
In six months we'll have more powerful forum loot for you to do this all over again.
Gear grinds are not inevitable, there are MMO's designed without them. EVE is one right off the bat, always new gear to get, but I'm not grinding in a dungeon to get it.
Progression can come in many forms, in DAOC before they lost their way with TOA it was great, sure, you could get some cooler weapons in DF or something, but overall, you were more defined by your realm abilities in PVP than anything else, gear was a important but not the be-all of everything.
It's unfortunate when some players have never experienced a MMORPG without a gear grind, you just can't give them a point of reference really.
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Why have a level cap at all? Design the game so people can keep progressing their character in small ways infinitely and you don't need a gear grind. It's very possible to do this.
Gear grind is awesome. Not only it allows you to become much more powerfull over time and work long and hard for something worthy but it also allows you to see how far uve come within that game. Progression, god i hate gw2 horizontal progression. Who the **** wanna grind days just for a simple skin, wouldnt you want to attack faster and harder with that amazing new skin?... I liked gw2 but hated horizontal progression.
People want and like different thing. Some people are more casual than others, some just like esports and couldnt careless about in game achievements or accomplishments. Some just wanna have fun and kick some ass. Its ok too, gotta respect that.
This is what is generally accepted as settling for the status quo.
Snap out of it, my friend. Gear grinds are nothing more than adding a plus one to the same gear with a different skin, so that you can fight the same monsters with a +1 and a different skin. Certainly we deserve to have evolved from this type of gaming? I am not a hamster. I expect more from this and future eras of gaming. There are many more innovative ways to design an end game. It is my hope that gear grinds go the way of the Dodo bird.
Well they could reward you with new experiences and fun engaging encounters. I always like to bring up borderlands when gear grinding comes up because it adds one little change that totally blows it up. The weapons you grind out in borderlands all feel and play differently. They aren't just numbers upgrades, they are new experiences. If you pull out a elephant gun, your going to move and fight differently then if you pull out a carnage shotgun. Compare that to a mmo were finding a new sword doesn't really change how you fight. It just lets you do more damage.
The issue is not getting better gear. the issue is getting better gear for the sake of getting better gear.
It's like crossing a line in the sand and then having the player step over it and the "well, let me draw ANOTHER line in the sand" Rinse and repeat.
If there were real reasons why better gear was needed such as pvp or or interesting pve reasons then i could see it.
But if all I'm asked to do at top level is to run instances/raids over and over again so that I get better gear so that they give me five more levels so I can run instances/raids over and over again then I'm really not interested.
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The big problem I have with gear grinds is how very linear it is. You get your tier 1 gear and your tier 2 and your tier 34 gear ... Up until those levels, you can choose to focus on different stats which allowed classes to play in various ways with different weaknesses. Then you get to the endgame and your gear is a specific set with no choice whatsoever.
In earlier games you could still choose to work towards different goals through gear. In say Everquest different raids dropped different acceptable items that you could choose to wear in different slots. They weren't tiered. Variety meant something. At times, there were items back several expansions even that were superior in some way that you might want.
Of course the best in that regard was Asheron's Call's loot system where the gear was free-form.
Nope, EVE has it's own gear grind. You just have to keep making the same gear over and over again as your ship gets ganked by other players. It's nothing BUT a gear grind.
Well that sounds more like crafting to me and if you don't die then you have no gear grind
Seems like PvP leaderboards, territory control (persistent world), Global PvE bosses, conflicts between guilds, some kind of political system, perhaps some compelling RvR, and raids that are more skill dependent than gear dependent all sound better than gear grinding. I remember the days of going from T4 to T5 in Burning Crusade, and it was a huge pain in the ass for the most part. 10-25 people going so that two people can get rewarded while everyone else awkwardly stands around and says "well, maybe next time," and then they do that same raid every week for months? Killing the same boss over and over and over again? Then T5 comes and you just do the same cycle in a slightly different locale?
Boss fights are fun. I'd go so far as to say they're awesome. I like PvE even though I like PvP better. But seriously, why would anybody be interested in entering the same raid more than twenty times? I remember doing Karazhan from Burning Crusade about ten thousand times before getting all the stuff I'd needed there. It's just not fun at a point. And I loved that instance. I loved every aspect of it, but come on. I got tired of doing that dumb Curator fight after a the twenty-first time. Let alone all the times you'd die learning those fights, all the times you'd have to run those raids on off-days to catch up everyone who isn't geared up to face the raids the A-team is doing. It's enraging.
At the end it's just gear for the sake of gear. I want to play an MMO to win some battle or prove I'm better than someone.
Gear grinds are temporary progress , the old get throw away as soon as you get the next new one.
in gear grinds , people show they greedy desire to get the item before other , they will do anything like ninja loots or even use hack .
And with currents game where community replace by group finder , worst things will come out , since most gear grinds require numbers of player to able to start.
Of course there are people who enjoy it , i also once .
But now i tired of it and soon , most people will , after few game play serious gear grinds .
agree , it fine to keep trying after lost , but when you win , you feel accomplished .
After that you may try few more time for fun , but repeat it multi time just to get all the gears you need (and your team need) to next dungeon feel like work ,
It put more stress to player than simple mobs grind for exp , special when some as***le go ninja loots .
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
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I don't know OP. Maybe because I don't like playing catch up or getting smashed by someone just because he or she has the latest and greatest stat gear?
Gear grind is only good for basement dwellers and those who devout %100 of their non-work time to an MMO.
The rest of us would rather rely on our actual skill than a few pieces of clothing that makes us rofl stomp anything.
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Not really and you clearly dont understand the game.
Yes EVE does have gear grind in the form of faction points to get faction gear n ships, but that typically is only for your mission ship and certainly not your PvP or where PvP is likely or decent chance.
EVE's real grind is ISK to buy your ships and modules, however there are many forms you can get this that sets apart the gear grind where you have only one source.
Any game is going to be a grind some form or fashion. I hate the typical gear grind where you effort is wiped every 3-4 months and you only have one souce, i.e. raiding. DDO is very grind but that grind is is mostly stays with you always as the real grind is in your character development and build where gear can last you for a very long time.
Because gear grinding is the laziest, lowest common denominator, Pavlovian-psychology exploiting design in existence.
Diagram:
I play games to have fun. Not to do chores so that I can get the treat/gear at the end.. Which is what most of these games boil down to with their so-called 'end game.'
In Eve, you have to earn the isk to fly the ship you want to fly. And if you get the ship blown up, you have to earn the isk to replace it.
If the player chooses to partake in activities that aren't fun to them to earn the isk, then to them its a grind. It totally falls upon the person behind the keyboard to make their in-game time fun.
And this is the reason why a sandbox will never be more than niche. Only a small portion of the gaming community can actually create their own fun. Most expect others to do it for them.
People hate gear grinds for the same reason they hate quests... honestly, there isn't anything in an MMO that isn't rinse/repeated over and over again... so in essence, the entire game is just one big grind. The point is, to waste time... if you had something better to do, you'd be doing it.
Heck if you really think about it, most of us would die if we literally had nothing to do. Believe it or not, jobs give people purpose in the world... without them, they would literally go insane with boredom. Our entire lives are made up of grinds... you can't remove them from life, you can't remove them from our games.
The trick is to convince yourself that what you are doing is fun... it makes the time fly. Sometimes you're really lucky and what you do is fun... particularly helpful in the work world, but few are so lucky. So if the game you are playing, feels like a grind, you failed to convince yourself that this is more entertaining than watching paint dry. Try a different game... it's all a matter of finding the right placebo.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson