The Inquisition: Do You Mind The Leveling Grind?
We touched upon it in the last Free-To-Play Cast, and later Magicman and I discussed grinding in TERA. After I obliquely accused him of just taking advantage of that level 58 boost to speed along getting to max level, he said that he leveled one character naturally. His way of dealing with the leveling? “Turn on Netflix and zone, brother, lots of it.” Yes, you just read that in his voice, don't deny it!
I told him that I just couldn't do that, that I want a game to take up my full, or nearly full, attention when I play it. If it doesn't do that, why am I wasting my time (and perhaps money) with it? This isn't to say that I play my games in a sensory deprivation tank or the Cone of Silence or anything like that, but if I do have anything going in the background, it's something I don't feel like I have to concentrate on, like music or a sporting event, where I can just look up every other inning or during a big play. Watching a show on Netflix, or even on TV, that has a plot that I need to pay attention to just doesn't work for me when I'm trying to concentrate on a game.
Maybe Magicman just has a more compartmentalized brain than I do. Just further proof that he's really an alien.
I've often said that the only reason people accept the leveling grind in MMOs is because it's there, because we're rarely given another choice but to do it if we want to get to the “good stuff.” I've believed that if we could eliminate mindless grinding, we'd all be happier... but now I'm wondering if that's true. Is there a large number of gamers out there who are perfectly happy with “distracted gaming,” with doing some other task that requires your brain while you mindlessly skip quest text and watch your numbers go up?
On another show, with Magicman as co-host, I think, we discussed Final Fantasy XIV and its old-school tab-targeting and lengthy global cooldown. Someone said semi-jokingly, “that's what Asians want,” to have a game that they can play in their Internet cafes with one hand while they smoke a cigarette in another. (It also might explain a game like Scarlet Blade, where you can use your free hand for... other activities.) Considering that so many Asian-imported MMOs are mindless grindfests for the vast part of their early game – and sometimes later game – I'm inclined to believe it.
What's your take on things? If you could eliminate the leveling grind in your favorite MMO, the endless repetition of “kill 10 rats” quests, and get more quickly to the “good stuff,” would you? Do you tolerate it and find ways to distract yourself from the tedium? Or do you even like it, and are happy to do it while enjoying your "side activity?"
About the Author
Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.
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He states that the second version of a game rarely does as well as the first.
We also could say that there is grind and grind, warframe is very grindy but you can already enjoy the gameplay from the start and soon you can be well equipped and enjoying it with the old gamers. The problem about mmorpg's grinding is that is neither enjoyable, as you said it's possible to see a movie while clicking ang getting levels and stats, neither serious. Oh, look at that rat, it dropped a longsword!
What about going for something similar to Mount & Blade leveling system, where you are more worried about surviving against those bandits and later about defending that hard earned castle than getting x levels. M&B Levelling is really clear and the combat simple and intuitivew the gameplay is really repetitive but it keeps you there because it's FUN, the f word that game developers are forgetting nowadays. And look, that bandit swordsman dropped a sword!! Dang, it's chipped...
Suffice to say, I think you are incorrect in your assumption that everyone would do away with grinds if they could.
Without grinding the game becomes an absolute bore. Have you ever used cheat codes or used a short cut in a game? Name one instance where you found it fun 1 week later - Yeah, that's what I thought.
I actually ruined Borderlands 2 because I used a save editor, even though I was only using it to go to level 30 and hit true vault hunter mode.
I standbyed in Halo 2 at a very high level, I got there legit (level 46) then started to get semi bored of the game, decided to see if standbying would make it fun, it didn't at all, quit the game 3 days later after 2 years.
Botted in world of warcraft - Did I get the full PvP set that I wanted? Yep, but something felt off about it, I didn't earn it with time.
I think there's a certain quality about putting work into something, pouring your heart and soul into something, that makes it great, without doing that you feel empty while playing your cheated character, money, or gear.
Grind is also required to enjoy a game for a long time, I played WoW for 10 years, why did I keep playing? The boss grind. Kill every boss in Kara so you can move on to Gruul, kill Gruul so you can move on to SSC/TK, finish that and do BT. That's what it's all about.
It's about the journey, not the destination. You might see high level characters running around and think "I want that" - but a lot of those people now have nothing left to do in the game, their journey is over for the time being.
Of the two types of grinding, I actually find passive grinding to be worse. In general, the desire to improve is there but your heavily restricted by how you accomplish it. It starts bleeding into casual play and suddenly you are "feeling" the grind in every quest or every random battle. It's very draining to me. In my opinion, the world would indeed be a better place without this type of grinding.
Active grinding is the truly "boring" grinding, constantly repeating the same task in the same area for the same reason for hours on end with little or no real engagement. That said, a well implemented active grind can be almost therapeutic. It's basically a state of meditation and honestly after a stressful day, week, month, year, decade, century, mil.. you get the point, it can be relaxing. With that said though, most games fail to implement the active grind in such a way. This is when it gets boring. You are too engaged in the game to relax, but the activity is too repetitive to be interesting. Too many games try to follow the same formula without bothering to understand the how or the why of it working in successful games.
The biggest problem I see with grinding is actually in how the games are implemented. A lot of games are implemented with the grind being the only real activity in the game. There isn't a separation between grinding and gaming. Sure even pure PVE grind games have "something" to do other then pure grind, but they are afterthoughts. Not many games have been specifically designed to have that separation. A few more of the rare ones ruin that separation by making the grinding mandatory, and this more then anything is probably why many people feel grinding ruins a game.
$0.02
Some mmos at least supply you with a more or less nice atmosphere that includes (yes, really) actually interesting to read stories in quests, atmospheric music, nice and flexible ui, etc etc.
But there are many more mmos that don't bother even with this much, just whoosh.. get some exp orbs showed in your face and see you at max level.. where it is not guaranteed that anything will change for the better or become more fun... ugh. Those mmos make me wanna vomit.
You are correct that eliminating "grind" will do nothing, solve nothing, accomplish.. nothing.
Not because some just like mindless grind but because there must be road to power it is not simply granted to you out of nowhere, there must be a path to traverse filled with perils and joys.. It's just that all those mmo devs just unable to create a fun journey..
For the love of me, they should just pay some nice authors and build games using their books as a base if they lack any imagination and/or vision themselves.
What MMO companies need to do is stop focusing on how quickly can we help the player get to "end game" so they can enjoy themselves and instead make the journey part of the "end game". What Blizzard and WoW has done is created a bunch of elitist that zerg to what they think is more meaningful content and to some extent is because that is the focus the developers have placed on it.
STOP the rat maze race! What happened to the story telling? What happened to allowing for players to fill in the gaps? Where has the adventure gone? Most MMOs just do not put adventure and creativity into their content and then they wonder why players are bouncing around game to game. Look at the huge zerg of players that rushed ArcheAge..... they were hungry for something more, unfortunately for many they didn't find it there either and many have moved on or went back to the previous game. Myself, I went to FFXIV to fill the gap for a bit... with a bit of ESO in between.
Some games examples of systems that kind of worked would be Wizardry Online, which had really tough quests within dungeons full of puzzles to solve as well as monsters to kill, GW2, You probably tried this already, and Dungeons and Dragons. None of these got it perfectly but the quests were a lot more interesting than, say, Perfect World or pretty much any other MMO.
best line ever!