Welcome to Massive Multiplayer Online games, either RPGs or with RPG elements. Where grinding is always part of the game. From WoW to STO and from LoL to Tribes... hell, from Skyrim to Dark Souls if we wanna talk single-player RPGs even. In some it's better, in some it's worse, but anywhere you put skill trees and levels, grind will always follow. Except for games like NWN and ME, not because they found a magic trick or anything but because there was nothing to grind left after you cleared each area.
In WOW there was Glider, an app that you could download that would collect gold for you while you slept, (by killing monsters along a predefined path and such) Using the app was of course against the TOS but I never really understood why. If someone wants to pay to have a piece of code interact with the game instead of themselves directly, so be it.
The developers should not dictate how the player plays.
I quite enjoyed Vanilla DDO before they added the Grind element, There was a small amount of quests and you ended up running through them multiple times but I never felt like I was grinding.
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iamtruthseekerMember, Moonstars, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
In WOW there was Glider, an app that you could download that would collect gold for you while you slept, (by killing monsters along a predefined path and such) Using the app was of course against the TOS but I never really understood why. If someone wants to pay to have a piece of code interact with the game instead of themselves directly, so be it.
The developers should not dictate how the player plays.
I quite enjoyed Vanilla DDO before they added the Grind element, There was a small amount of quests and you ended up running through them multiple times but I never felt like I was grinding.
For clarification, what was considered "the grind" they added in DDO?
For clarification, what was considered "the grind" they added in DDO?
Grinding is a state of mind. To me it was when they added the super item that you could only get by collecting and combining together enough random boss drops.
Designing in timesinks has been and will always be a flawed system of design.
Grinding is a state of mind. To me it was when they added the super item that you could only get by collecting and combining together enough random boss drops.
Designing in timesinks has been and will always be a flawed system of design.
That's the truth. DDO became an excessive timesink grinding machine. Thats why I left WoW, I'm sick of time sink mechanics as companies use these instead of actually putting out some quality content or features.
Yes time sinks, horribly idea. Just design content we want to play.. much better. While you want some things to be rare, they should not be must need items or only slightly better than highest normal type.
One thing I said was that it shouldnt be P2W, which they have said, however, P2catchup might be ok. IE after some time the equipement is going to get better and better untill it takes a fair bit of time to catch up if you are new. So putting in equipement packs that are say 1 or 2 dungeon/tier behind the best at some point might be ok. You can still go the old way but could bypass that if wanted to so could play with friend etc. (wow does this with expansions but I do not thinkt hat will work with this game)
But yes make conent poeple want to play means you will not feel any grind.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] I am not evil, I am just cursed.
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iamtruthseekerMember, Moonstars, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Yes time sinks, horribly idea. Just design content we want to play.. much better. While you want some things to be rare, they should not be must need items or only slightly better than highest normal type.
One thing I said was that it shouldnt be P2W, which they have said, however, P2catchup might be ok. IE after some time the equipement is going to get better and better untill it takes a fair bit of time to catch up if you are new. So putting in equipement packs that are say 1 or 2 dungeon/tier behind the best at some point might be ok. You can still go the old way but could bypass that if wanted to so could play with friend etc. (wow does this with expansions but I do not thinkt hat will work with this game)
But yes make conent poeple want to play means you will not feel any grind.
As long as it doesn't take months to get those items compared to somebody buying it that day, that sounds fair.
ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited August 2012
Grinds are an unfortunate side effect of the human psyche.
Look at it from a developer's point of view, they put out good content players love that is very enjoyable. It took them six months to develop this content...and the players beat every aspect of it within a week and get bored.
Grinds suck but they keep people playing. It might be a good quality piece of content without any grind but it won't keep people playing long.
To me grinds are fine but they need to be properly balanced. The last game I truly played for years was a grinding game and I thoroughly enjoyed it and prided myself on all the work I put into it. Some aspects needed to be quickened and they did a great job for years adjusting the pace of leveling to both reduce the excessive grind while not destroying the work already put in by players.
After the company was invested into their model changed completely. They first off all stopped caring about their rules and their stance against micro-transactions.
After that they then "listened" to the players and recuced the grind of...everything...especially by selling xp for real life money. I logged into the game a few weeks ago and spoke to a friend and he was cruel enough to tell me that something which took me five months of grinding to earn was gained in a week by another of his friends.
Grinds separate those who *earn* their rewards from those who are given it. They are not bad...it took me five months to do something but I was ****ing proud of those five months of work...not anymore.
While I don't think things should be made an excessive grind, such as five months, grinds in their own right aren't bad. They are, in essence, a required part of earning anything. Simply put it's not fun or noteworthy if anybody can get it in a week.
So ultimately I guess my point is don't complain about grinds just because they are grinds. We wouldn't play a game which didn't take time and effort to "beat" and sadly the only way to really made something take time is to add in a grind.
Look at the bright side, the saving grace of NW is that it has the Foundry. That alone should reduce a large amount of the grind.
Well, if you had fun playing and enjoyed the reward I wouldn't call what you were doing grinding.
The allure of a game like NW is that the community is going to be designing the content, so in theory we won't run out and won't need any sort of grinding mechanic.
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iamtruthseekerMember, Moonstars, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Grinds are an unfortunate side effect of the human psyche.
Look at it from a developer's point of view, they put out good content players love that is very enjoyable. It took them six months to develop this content...and the players beat every aspect of it within a week and get bored.
Grinds suck but they keep people playing. It might be a good quality piece of content without any grind but it won't keep people playing long.
To me grinds are fine but they need to be properly balanced. The last game I truly played for years was a grinding game and I thoroughly enjoyed it and prided myself on all the work I put into it. Some aspects needed to be quickened and they did a great job for years adjusting the pace of leveling to both reduce the excessive grind while not destroying the work already put in by players.
After the company was invested into their model changed completely. They first off all stopped caring about their rules and their stance against micro-transactions.
After that they then "listened" to the players and recuced the grind of...everything...especially by selling xp for real life money. I logged into the game a few weeks ago and spoke to a friend and he was cruel enough to tell me that something which took me five months of grinding to earn was gained in a week by another of his friends.
Grinds separate those who *earn* their rewards from those who are given it. They are not bad...it took me five months to do something but I was ****ing proud of those five months of work...not anymore.
While I don't think things should be made an excessive grind, such as five months, grinds in their own right aren't bad. They are, in essence, a required part of earning anything. Simply put it's not fun or noteworthy if anybody can get it in a week.
So ultimately I guess my point is don't complain about grinds just because they are grinds. We wouldn't play a game which didn't take time and effort to "beat" and sadly the only way to really made something take time is to add in a grind.
Look at the bright side, the saving grace of NW is that it has the Foundry. That alone should reduce a large amount of the grind.
Agreed. I just think top tier items (each) should not take longer than weeks to get instead of several months at most. Worst case scenario, if the model changes, you don't feel betrayed for something taking longer than 60 days, and it is closer to 21-28 which would feel more reasonable after the excessive models of some other games.
hmm , if you enjoy it then that's not really grind, that's different game play. Though it does point out what is grind for one might not be seen as grind for another.
Grind is not the only way to keep people gaming. making dungeons that are not easy for a group to complete, be that in a certain time, hard boss mobs, puzzles or whatever will also keep you coming back. The problem i see is 2 fold, making the dungeons hard for any group set up while not making it impossible or too easy for others. Whether they can adapt the dungeon to the group?
The other problem i see is that once you work out how to do a dungeon it then becomes, if not easy a lot easier usually. Some way to kinda randomize what happens in a dungeon would aid this, but again with safe guards not to make certain random events come together and make it impossible.
If you could i would want a MMO that had various levels(hardness) dungeons that where never the exactly the same, so you would have surprises and need to react to succeed. I would not want the harder dungeon gear to be hugely better then normal but it would be better, maybe just an effect or better effect if it had one already? likely better looking too, poeple can go through a lot just for better looks:) And hard enough to create a challenge for good players. Mind with this being more (least from looks ) a 1 group dungeon , rather than a multi group raid, less difference between loot would be better. Hopefully I explained that ok.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] I am not evil, I am just cursed.
Simply said, grind is lack of content. If there is no restriction on playing foundry missions and if there are thousands of foundry missions submitted every year, I don't think there will be any grind. (Unless you are a powergamer who wants to race to end level without playing most content.)
Comments
In WOW there was Glider, an app that you could download that would collect gold for you while you slept, (by killing monsters along a predefined path and such) Using the app was of course against the TOS but I never really understood why. If someone wants to pay to have a piece of code interact with the game instead of themselves directly, so be it.
The developers should not dictate how the player plays.
I quite enjoyed Vanilla DDO before they added the Grind element, There was a small amount of quests and you ended up running through them multiple times but I never felt like I was grinding.
For clarification, what was considered "the grind" they added in DDO?
Grinding is a state of mind. To me it was when they added the super item that you could only get by collecting and combining together enough random boss drops.
Designing in timesinks has been and will always be a flawed system of design.
TRs
Epic Crafting
Shroud Crafting (doing your 10th shroud and still no lrg devil scale got old real quick)
Cannith Crafting
That's the truth. DDO became an excessive timesink grinding machine. Thats why I left WoW, I'm sick of time sink mechanics as companies use these instead of actually putting out some quality content or features.
One thing I said was that it shouldnt be P2W, which they have said, however, P2catchup might be ok. IE after some time the equipement is going to get better and better untill it takes a fair bit of time to catch up if you are new. So putting in equipement packs that are say 1 or 2 dungeon/tier behind the best at some point might be ok. You can still go the old way but could bypass that if wanted to so could play with friend etc. (wow does this with expansions but I do not thinkt hat will work with this game)
But yes make conent poeple want to play means you will not feel any grind.
As long as it doesn't take months to get those items compared to somebody buying it that day, that sounds fair.
Look at it from a developer's point of view, they put out good content players love that is very enjoyable. It took them six months to develop this content...and the players beat every aspect of it within a week and get bored.
Grinds suck but they keep people playing. It might be a good quality piece of content without any grind but it won't keep people playing long.
To me grinds are fine but they need to be properly balanced. The last game I truly played for years was a grinding game and I thoroughly enjoyed it and prided myself on all the work I put into it. Some aspects needed to be quickened and they did a great job for years adjusting the pace of leveling to both reduce the excessive grind while not destroying the work already put in by players.
After the company was invested into their model changed completely. They first off all stopped caring about their rules and their stance against micro-transactions.
After that they then "listened" to the players and recuced the grind of...everything...especially by selling xp for real life money. I logged into the game a few weeks ago and spoke to a friend and he was cruel enough to tell me that something which took me five months of grinding to earn was gained in a week by another of his friends.
Grinds separate those who *earn* their rewards from those who are given it. They are not bad...it took me five months to do something but I was ****ing proud of those five months of work...not anymore.
While I don't think things should be made an excessive grind, such as five months, grinds in their own right aren't bad. They are, in essence, a required part of earning anything. Simply put it's not fun or noteworthy if anybody can get it in a week.
So ultimately I guess my point is don't complain about grinds just because they are grinds. We wouldn't play a game which didn't take time and effort to "beat" and sadly the only way to really made something take time is to add in a grind.
Look at the bright side, the saving grace of NW is that it has the Foundry. That alone should reduce a large amount of the grind.
The allure of a game like NW is that the community is going to be designing the content, so in theory we won't run out and won't need any sort of grinding mechanic.
Agreed. I just think top tier items (each) should not take longer than weeks to get instead of several months at most. Worst case scenario, if the model changes, you don't feel betrayed for something taking longer than 60 days, and it is closer to 21-28 which would feel more reasonable after the excessive models of some other games.
Grind is not the only way to keep people gaming. making dungeons that are not easy for a group to complete, be that in a certain time, hard boss mobs, puzzles or whatever will also keep you coming back. The problem i see is 2 fold, making the dungeons hard for any group set up while not making it impossible or too easy for others. Whether they can adapt the dungeon to the group?
The other problem i see is that once you work out how to do a dungeon it then becomes, if not easy a lot easier usually. Some way to kinda randomize what happens in a dungeon would aid this, but again with safe guards not to make certain random events come together and make it impossible.
If you could i would want a MMO that had various levels(hardness) dungeons that where never the exactly the same, so you would have surprises and need to react to succeed. I would not want the harder dungeon gear to be hugely better then normal but it would be better, maybe just an effect or better effect if it had one already? likely better looking too, poeple can go through a lot just for better looks:) And hard enough to create a challenge for good players. Mind with this being more (least from looks ) a 1 group dungeon , rather than a multi group raid, less difference between loot would be better. Hopefully I explained that ok.