I enjoy grinding, when it's engaging. One of the things I *loved* about EQ was the group dynamics. There was a big difference between a group that worked hard and one that was just messing around and facing a possible wipe on every other pull. When the CC'er is on their game, the puller is disengaging at the right time to get another mob into the camp just as the last one falls, the tank is holding aggro and the debuffers are hamstringing the mobs early in the fight (but not too early), it was very satisfying. Everyone put forth effort to play their role well, and the xp seemed to stay at a steady flow.
It's sad in games like WoW, when coming upon a camp of mobs, while running from one quest to the next, to just pass them by, because it just wasn't worth your time to clear them.
I like questing as well, even better than grinding when it's done well, but not when it's just boilerplate fedex or killx quests. I think quest rewards should be the reason for doing them, rather than simply knocking them out as quickly as possible for leveling purposes. Additionally, quests are typically a solo endeavor, so too many quests just tends to give everyone more self-serving agendas, and unless part of the quest involves getting a rare drop from a particular camp that provides decent grind xp and requires a group effort, you end up with everyone solo'ing all the time, even when it's not the play style they prefer.
Fewer more meaningful quests and productive grinding opportunities. That's what I want. It would also be cool if group quests could be implemented.
Loved the grind in EQ it was perfect the grind in other MMO's were meh, some pullers could really push the limits of my class as a tank and my mechanical abilitys with a keyboard and mouse! I hate to keep refurring to EQ but it sure had alot of the forumla right! I guess if we get a clone of EQ I would probably be alright with that!
Garmr said:I enjoy it personally. Last night I was in an xp camp for 5 hours just grinding away (EQ1 Phinny server) and bullshitting with new people I'd met that were in my group. It can be relaxing and fun as long as you dont think of it as a grind and think it more a social oppotunity to meet folks. Hoping Pantheon has the same. I want xp to be slow and grindy.
Garmr
I have the same mindset as you.
As long as there is room in combat for conversation, bullshitting, etc, I would PREFER an exp grind.
If there is no room for socialization, as seen in WoW and the notorious "korean grinders", then I would say NO to exp grinding. I suppose the alternative would be "quest grinding", which I would also say NO to.
In my opinion, combat pace and downtime will be very important to ensuring an exp group doesnt feel like only an exp grind. If there is no room for anything other than button mashing, then it's going to feel boring and tedious after a few minutes.
Sorry for the necro.
Kayo said:I dont hate grinding away a few hours for a day here and there. Its that monotonous non-stop, weeks long grind I hate. Then again I dont hate questing... but that hand-held point A to point B thing is way too boring as well, but at least it ends much faster, lol. I think a nice balance between the two is ideal... the kind that a player who explores every nook and cranny, killing every mob and critter along the way to his quest objective would find plenty of XP from to level up (along with crafting, farming, dungeons, PvP, etc).
This is exactly how I feel. I do not enjoy a game where I am just constantly running from spawn to spawn hours a day doing the same exact thing. I feel like I will not learn to enjoy my class properly if im using the same 2 buttons to aoe or to wombo combo an enemy and repeat.
However, just going from quest hub to quest hub, not even reading the quest and just following the marker on the map also gets boring. Maybe getting a quest thats fairly generic that gives me a hint on where to go or what to do will make the game more enjoyable. A heathy mix of farming/questing/exploring/gathering/crafting would make the game better.
Yes, being in love with "gathering" I thoroughly enjoyed grinding - getting cloth, bones, skins, herbs, trees, nodes, whatever I needed.
With my guild in WoW we would often get us a group together and head out towards an area with a specific grind in mind ... or killing humanoid mobs for their cloth, or clearing out a wealthy area for mining nodes. Sometimes the guild did competitions with "go out and get thousands of x Cloth" so that the crafters could make bags that were then given away to the guildies. We didn't need quests, but that would've been awesome.
I also enjoyed the grind for reputation, I know right? Remember the WoW insane title? +1 pt rep gain per mob kill - those were the days /sigh
I know that grinding for stuff isn't the play that others enjoy necessarily. But if you get a group together with a specific goal in mind ... it can be hilarious and not tedious. After all its your game, and you can make your game as fun as you need it to be.
Something is a 'grind' when the lure of gameplay has been overtaken by the feeling of 'why isn't this done yet?'. Considering that most MMOs / RPGs in general run off of generally simple and repetitive control setups, that has a lot more to do with overall design or--far more often, imho--player attitudes.
My bf is a huge achievement nut in WoW. We do stuff most people wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, like spending an afternoon farming in Feralas to try and get a darter hatchling. By myself that would be about as fun as watching paint dry. With him six hours can feel like fifteen minutes, whether we get the pet or not.
That, to me, is the power of people. And that (in an MMO) is one of the most key things that will determine whether something is a grind. I totally agree with those who say that being able to socialize is key. Pretty much every big memory I have in any of the MMOs I've played was because of the people I was playing it with.
I just started playing FF XIV and it is pretty much exactly what I dislike. TONS of meaningless quests just to advance. You can play any class at any time (only if you do the tons of previous meaningless quests). If you played Skyforge, or if you played FFXIV pretty much the same but one has a PTW scheme. I get pretty disheartened looking at the state of MMORPGs out there now.
Grinding is great with good company! Its especially great when it is a challenge... Hopefully Pantheon is going to bring good company and challenge so with that in mind bring on the grind I say!
Quests are great when you have to work things out and not just follow markers from A to B, and more fun when you have to work them out / complete them with others... so bring that on too!
I vote for EQ1 style grinding.. It's how I learned all the intricacies of the class I played; it's how I met most of the friends I made from EQ. The sense of camraderie and achieving shared goals is what made that game rewarding.
I'm not saying anything that hasn't already been said, just piping up as someone who's also looking forward to what I hope is that slower style of combat, slower progression, etc. I'm not a masochist and don't want to spend weeks on a single level, but racing through the quest grind of WoW or other modern MMORPGs is a yawnfest. And most other players in those games just end up being more NPCs to me because of it.
What im scared of is that this game will be almost like Black Desert in terms of everything is just grind grind grind. Every streamer you watch is, you guessed it, grinding. I know there are those people who enjoy that type of thing and find it "relaxing" and finding a spot to just socialise with people make it more fun. I agree with this a bit, it can be fun. But more times than not it will be annoying, boring, not fun at all. Especially in the early stages of release. It sounds like it would be almost like elder scrolls online before all the changes, where the best way to level was to grind. Well you are fighting against 1102581850284 people and every part of the game so that was almost impossible.
I hope they make a good balance between maybe having many different starting zones (to keep areas a bit less crowded), quests, and grinding spots.
As Many before me have mentioned Grinding Xp, or loot Etc can be very relaxing and fun, when your in a good group pulling mobs and killing, Bsing while meditating or learning languages in downtime it Never Felt like a grind.
Even Hell levels Spending 8 hours in a group pulling mobs all day and only getting Half a bubble of Xp didnt really fell like a grind, because we were having fun and each pull was a challenge in its self rooting/messing Etc, with each pull it could mean a potential group wipe So it kept you on your toes and also stopped us getting bored :) and downtime while our healer and casters meditated for mana we spent learning languages, chatted, etc there was So much to do, the downtime also apart from the social aspect gave people a few mins break to do RL things, like grab some food, use the bathroom, change the babies diaper etc etc
Just as others have said I too Hated the Quest grinding, Being lead around by the hand from hub to hub kill Xyz Etc over and over and over, clicking on the Npc with the big glowy above they head and click the quest, Skip all the Text because why even bother Reading the dang quests to figure anything out because you are AGAIN Hand held and giving GPS mark on the map to the Exact location on the Map, So there is no point in reading it, just do to Gps Kill/collect what you have to , Go back to Npc with glowy above head Hand in quests, move on to next hub and repeat, its mind numblingly boring and kinda an insult to gamers too. I mean Why bother putting in the Text for quests in the first place if your just going to put Big glowys above Npc's heads saying here i have a quest, and then No point in reading said Quest to Figure out what to do next and Gasp use our Brains...NO, you Give GPS mark on map to the EXACT spot we have to go to do our quest totally removing Any need for thought or reading the quests or even talking to Npc#s to find quests its all signposted and hand held the Entire way, totally Boring. THAT to me and i dare say most of us is why we hate Quest grinding so very much.
Another thing i hate is Gear grinding, Now dont get me wrong i LOVE raiding and grinding for gear...What i mean is the grind to get a set of gear from a raid/dungeon Etc So that my Ilvl goes up 5 points higher So that i can now do the Slightly higher version of the SAME Raid/dungeon and get the SAME armour set with just very slightly higher stats So that i can AGAIN do the SAME raid/dungeon AGAIN to repeat the process over again, and THEN a patch comes out and releases a new raid and makes all my hard work totally worthless and i have to repeat this process over again in the new raid/dungeon. THIS to ME is totally boring and Annoying, I am not Seeing anything new, i am not Getting anything new, its just the Same Stuff rehashed over and over again with slightly higher stats / hardly difficulty.
Kilsin said:A dreaded word to some but music to others' ears, what are your thoughts on grinding any type of content in MMORPGs? :)
I am perfectly fine with a grind. Grind XP, loot, keys, rep, money, materials, guild rep, etc etc. I've done it all and enjoy it all. I don't mind farming for myself or the guild either. I do feel that if grinding is necessary, it makes it more palatable if it can accomplish two or more things such as rep and an achieve, mats and xp, quest and guild rep.
Argh just lost a big post. I hate these forum web interfaces... It's always better the second time though, yeah? Hurumph...
Grinding, if done right, is good (ooer).
Killing the same monster 100 times is good if it's still challenging your abilities and resource management all the way. Adding in challenging the coordination of a group and it can be as complex and demanding as you can cope with and if there's a reward too, it's all good.
For me, this touches on a fundamental problem with MMORPGs and the video game industry as a whole these days (What? Really? Yeah!)
Some measure of fortitude, persistence and effort was needed in all the best games in the past. Even in Mario Bros you sometimes had to do the same thing 100 times in order to get it just right and progress. In RPGs I read several 100 page A4 hardback rule books in order to even begin playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons while some of my peers were struggling with even the soccer off-side rule or a 'long game' of Monopoly.
Computer games and role-playing games required some effort to get the most from them and that 'effort' required some maturity to appreciate. Compared to my peers I was a geeky, nerdy type, but I was, in that way, much more mature than them and that reflected in the 'effort' needed and rewarded by computer games and role-playing games and the eventual computer-based role-playing games were a perfect storm of both fields.
I spent many hours preparing for and then many hours playing D&D at university (sometimes several nights preparing then several 8+ hour play sessions for one 'module'). I spent many hours preparing for and then many hours playing EQ (several nights coordinating a guild raid on forums then the actual raid once lasting Friday night through to Sunday morning). Whilst I don't expect that level of 'effort' from every session on Pantheon, I also do not want 'the opposite'.
Most game these days are 'produced' by a big company that has a priority of achieving market share and making money. They aim for the lowest common denominator and produce shiny, shallow pulp. Just developers 'making a good game' and hoping it is successful is a thing of the past.
The best thing to do to try and achieve both a 'good game' and a 'success' is to aim for a niche audience and stick with it. I believe this is what VR are doing, thankfully, and thankfully that niche appears to be me and people like me for once.
Yes, we can handle a grind, done well.
I mostly agree with Disposalist, and share the nerd/geek background and early experience with D&D/AD&D.
I would prefer spending my time in a MMO doing more story-driven content and quests/dungeons rather than killing the same orc and her kin 200 times. But I know that most of us can kill our way through content a lot faster than it can be created, so I am afraid that the real choice Pantheon faces is making us grind endlessly to get to level-cap or making us grind *at* level cap using the time-tested approaches of dailies, dungeons that need to be done endlessly to get top gear etc. Between these two approaches the only possible approach for a game with Pantheon's objectives are grinding as we level, with each level after the early levels both slow and rewarding.
In other words, grinding is an evil not a good thing but it is a *necessary* evil and much better to have it come way before level-cap (when many people would just declare "I won" and leave the game if they weren't the type that wanted alts)
Grinding is a point of view. When you log on, your grind toward your own goal starts. You spent time to reach a goal, its just the way you do. The entertaining way, the fast way, the most efficent way etc.
The bad stuff is like to kill 1 quadzillon Mobs to unlock access to something you want to. I remember the Isle in VG where you have to raise faction with repeatable Tasks. One way, one goal, boring.
On other had there could be some other stuff you need. A certain Tradeskill level, a certain langueage you need to learn, some trials to get access. Best thing in my opinion ist to avoid the possibility to shorten the way to the goal. For example dungeon: If you want to come to the Bossmob, you need to kill the way to it. If you have the posibility to summon your group to a safe spot could shorten the Boss kill from like 2-3 hours of dungeon run to 30 min summon, prepare an kill. So reward what is planned for 2-3 hours game time session can be done in 30 min or less. So the content get consumed pretty fast, and if the devs cant deliever more content in time its a problem. So for me is grinding the bad way to repeat content over and over again, no grind i feel when i have lots of different tasks to reach the same goal. For example: few Play sessions to get factions to "unlock" a area where the bossmob is at home. Few play sessions to find parts of a certain tool part you need to plug together to unlock the Throne Room, and a few play sessions to get some special Items (for example resists) to stay alive in the Bossmobfight. The more special itmes you have, the better the chances to beat the encounter. All the way i was busy to do different things to get it done.
Just a sidenote: I loved and hated the Trials in the Plane of Justice in EQ. It was repeatable content, most had to do it like 30 times till it was successfully done. But this feeling once i beated the trails .... made me happy, was feeling like something special. You made it while others keep failing :P
dorotea said:I would prefer spending my time in a MMO doing more story-driven content and quests/dungeons rather than killing the same orc and her kin 200 times.
Kaen said:dorotea said:I would prefer spending my time in a MMO doing more story-driven content and quests/dungeons rather than killing the same orc and her kin 200 times.
I'm the opposite. I'd rather park somewhere and murder/kill mobs for hours and hours and spend weeks and weeks in the same dungeon than run around the map running errands for NPCs / doing quests that feel like RL busywork (all of which, to me, feels especially contrived). I've also found every single MMO that tried to include some grandiose storyline to be severely lacking in gameplay content. Like they become so focused on leading the player around with the story that the game's actual content is just a side note. ESO, Rift, Aion, and a dozen others are prime examples of this.
If I want a good story I read a book. Games just do not do stories well IMO, especially in MMOs. Fighting mobs and camping dungeons and trading and selling is MY story within a MMO. Don't need or want anything else. And as stories go, this is much more immersive to me than being led around.
That being said, I'm perfectly happy with meaningful quests and tidbits, but even those I'd prefer to be mostly a choice the player makes. Very much like EQ. Like / want an item that you can't afford but is available through X quest? Go do the quest... You're not being forced to do it, so chances are much greater you'll enjoy it. Or at least tolerate it.
Just my personal thoughts and hatreds :D
Apparently you haven't played The Last of Us...or To The Moon, or Bioshock...just to name a few. Games can make amazing stories. Sadly, only few groups are capable of doing it. RPGs make great story driven content, but MMOs should be more centered around lore.
Edit: crappy spelling
"Parking" somewhere and hours and killing things over and over is not going to make the world immersive in anyway. I would be stuck looking at the same couple of groups of enemies and that same rock i've now memorised to jump over or that bush that I cannot run through. Where is the fun in that?
Now if I was grinding that set of enemies for hours for maybe a rare crafting material or for a quest thats different. As long as the quest objective isnt like the WoW "troll ears" quest where im killing hundreds of trolls who clearly have ears and getting 1-2 drops an hour.
Like I mentioned earlier if they can just find a healthy balance between crafting, questing, grinding, gathering then im sure many people would be happy.