“One – The minute-to-minute gameplay should be as entertaining as possible. This mainly rests on the movement and combat systems. By providing a mix of some Challenge (mistakes can hurt you), Mastery (it is possible to become very good/efficient), and a very smooth, responsive UI you can make the moment to moment play amusing enough that it doesn’t grate as much over time.
“Two – the incentives should reflect the effort required. If the effort is extensive, then rewards should be parceled out in parts so that the player doesn’t have to go many hours without some return for their effort. Players hate feeling like they’re being asked to put in a lot more effort than they’ll be rewarded for.
“And three – vary the experience. Offer a number of different flavors of grind. Instances, crafting, collections, kills, daily quests. If a player gets to the point where they are really burned out on one, they can go do something else for a while. Also, whenever they can multi-task (collect crafting components WHILE achieving kills), players generally feel a lot better about the process.”
This should have been in the bible. Not some obscure dev one but that amazingly popular christian one.
This was a fantastic article (typos and mechanical errors aside)! I'm truly impressed with the presentation of the material and the interviews were top notch. Truly a great read, though I do have some reprisals of my own.
Laralyn McWilliams brought up a very good point regarding the nature of grinding with her "bejewled" example. At first I thought this was an exceptional example, but then the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to not fit. Sure, plenty of people play Bejewled and try to beat their friends high scores. But they usually play for... what, an hour at a time? Two hours tops? Ask a majority of the MMO community how long they play a single game in one sitting, I'm sure 2 hours-at-a-time is the lower end of the spectrum. Having been on both the hardcore and the casual end of the MMO-gamer spectrum I can honestly say I've had 12+ hour sessions with not much more than a 5 minute break here and there. The example makes sense to a point, but it does not serve as a strong enough example to defend the concept of a grind.
However, she did present that point as a mere tie in to a point that makes far more sense, a point that King and Gerogeson also chimed in on: If it's fun, or if there is enough diversity, you will be distracted from the grind.
The honest truth is that the grind is necessary, in some form. You simply cannot have people achieving rewards in mere minutes. There needs to be a separation such that hard work and/or skill is rewarded. These devs know their stuff. and while I don't gather that ANY successful MMO from here to eternity will ever completely remove grinding as an aspect of the game, I do honestly believe that newer MMOs are looking for a way to fulfill these important elements of disguising-the-grind that the devs so introspectively recognize.
Someday we'll all look back on the age of computers - and lol.
I agree with Dave Georgeson that “I personally consider ‘leveling up’ to be entirely separate from ‘grinding".
I like the simplicity of leveling and I get my serotinin fix every time I accomplish something. And especially in the beginning levels of a game, those early leveling activities establish the lore and storyline foundations, produce opportunity to learn the UI and open up previously unexplored territory you might not even know exists if it is subject to the "Fog of War".
"Grind" to me is any repetitive activity foisted upon the player because there are no other options. If I find a grind like that in a game, I immediately unsub and move on.
learn to spell before you talk about anyone else hehe. i love grinding its fun and you get to be in the open for some pvp action.
Learn to read the article before making an irrelevant comment. +1 sheep in the flock.
Mr. King makes some excellent points. Why the fudge no one's really followed it is beyond... well, a lot of us.
“One – The minute-to-minute gameplay should be as entertaining as possible. This mainly rests on the movement and combat systems. By providing a mix of some Challenge (mistakes can hurt you), Mastery (it is possible to become very good/efficient), and a very smooth, responsive UI you can make the moment to moment play amusing enough that it doesn’t grate as much over time.
“Two – the incentives should reflect the effort required. If the effort is extensive, then rewards should be parceled out in parts so that the player doesn’t have to go many hours without some return for their effort. Players hate feeling like they’re being asked to put in a lot more effort than they’ll be rewarded for.
“And three – vary the experience. Offer a number of different flavors of grind. Instances, crafting, collections, kills, daily quests. If a player gets to the point where they are really burned out on one, they can go do something else for a while. Also, whenever they can multi-task (collect crafting components WHILE achieving kills), players generally feel a lot better about the process.”
Opinions on what grinding is seem to vary. To me grinding is repetitive action that is boring. I think battleaxe gave a very good definition saying that it is grinding when you start counting how many times you have to repeat something and how long it will take. Another definiton would be that it is grinding when you switch you brains to standby and become a human bot.
The idea of disguising grinding to make if more bearable sounds good to me. After all, if the disguise makes it enjoyable it is not grinding anymore. I don't mind short bouts of grinding in the form of "kill 10 rats" unless it becomes "kill 10.000 rats" through repetition. Most MMOs have managed to avoid extensive grind while leveling but not in the end game, where it is used to get trinkets that make you more competitive in other end game content and (more) valuable to your guild or friends. Lolz, I think "more valuable to your friends" illustrates pretty well the absurdity of the need for such trinkets and of the grind to obtain them. This is actually my biggest grudge with MMORPGs: the need for various crap to achieve the optimal stats that will maximize one's performance and the grind required to obtain that crap. I don't want to be calculating how much of each stat I need to maximize my power and selecting my gear so that I get the required stats. I simply fail to see the fun in that. End rant.
I am not saying that repetitive content should be removed altogether, because we just can't give valuable rewards for too little effort. However, the repetition must be made more interesting so that it does not become grind. The variety (as in "more ways to grind towards the same goal") is an acceptable method but does not really solve the problem. The action itself should be made interesting enough so that it does not become boring no matter how often it is repeated. Interesting action coupled with variety should be able to remove grind. Somebody suggested more randomness in grind quests. A good idea. Designing the action so that it actually requires skill and brains is a good idea too.
Ideally there would be only very little repetition or none at all while still retaining the effort but I'm afraid that requires either an insane amount of variety or rather high level artificial intelligence that is able to generate more stuff for the player to do.
I think I like the notion that the term 'grind' is just applied to an aspect of a game that players dont' like. A lot of players lack the ability to just admit they dont' like something so they should do something else, so they put on their expert hat and blather out terms they probably don't really understand.
I hate crafting. I'll never like crafting. It's a grind!
Well it's a grind to me.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
Yes. Good article! There is not any one specific activity that is "grinding". Leveling up is not in and of itself grinding either. Grinding for me is that moment where I have learned everything there is to know about some activity - my chance of success at that activity is 100% - and yet I still must perform that activity for x amount of time before the challenge increases.
Grinding is those points in the leveling train where the mobs in my zone are too easy, and the mobs in the next zone are too hard. It happens with crafting when I have x materials, need y materials, and the only thing to do is roam around a few hotspots I already have memorized until I actually have the y materials to progress. I think a lot of people also apply the term to random elements in a game that are boring to them, but I would prefer those to just be called "boring" rather than "grindy". Maybe, if an activity does have a lot of those lulls in progression that I call a grind, then that activity is grindy.
It's not the nature of an activity itself that makes it a grind. It's the map of fun over time in the progression and gameplay of said activity throughout the course of playing the game. Either too little amount of fun, or stretched over too much time.
I also agree that if games had no grind at all. There is a section after you learn a skill (player or character) that it's nice to have that skill actually work for you without having any serious opposition. Outlevelling an area and sticking around to feel the power increase is an important part.
I think the feeling of grinding comes when a game starts to feel too predictable. Not just easy, or repetitive, but when you know pretty much exactly what's ahead of you. The more you learn a game, the more it feels like a grind, because none of it is a new experience anymore. Even as you level up into new areas, they're too similar in gameplay to previous areas. New abilities, new items, it can all feel too familiar, because the core mechanics are what we've already learned, all too well.
I think there are all sorts of ways to offset the grind, but nothing that would eliminate it - who wants to play the same game forever anyhow? The main thing is just offsetting it enough to retain player interest a little longer. Maybe even if its just three months instead of one. Six months instead of three. Depending on the player, just holding their interest a little longer. Just remember, the point isn't to hold them forever, and that it starts with lacking variation and predictability.
Not on a superficial level, but in terms of underlying mechanics. That's why it helps to add an interesting crafting system, or different types of grinding. Or accessible PvP. Just mixes up that predictability factor. Think of the most grind-heavy games, and I think the main area they lack in is variation. Everywhere you go, just more of the same gameplay mechanic. Add to that the attempt to stretch it way too thin, and you've got the worst of the worst.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
when world of warcraft first came out, the leveling process was disjointed at best. often you would finish one line of quests before you were high enough level to start the next ones, forcing a grind to reach that next starting point. alternately, the next set would begin all the way across the game world, requiring a solid 45 to 1 hour of real life travel time in a virtual world just to get to the location where you could continue adventuring.
since then they have drastically improved this, increasing exp to make sure you were ready for the next zone, condensing quest hubs, and reducing travel time immensely. after all this however, the fact remains that the aspect of any mmo that creates a grindy feeling is the fact that players have to learn to play a game before they can be max level. if anyone could create a max level character and start playing, it would ruin the game for skilled players because the chances of grouping with another decent player would be almost impossible to determine. what so many people overlook is that during the process of a grind in any game, you learn how to play your character-- you learn your attacks, your combos, your skills, your defenses, your optimal gear setup, and your role. imagine for a moment trying to form a pickup group for some random 5 man dungeon and not being able to determine if any given player had ever before even killed a single mob on that character? while great skill is something that escapes many players, you can assume with some confidence that any max level character in any game atleast knows what they are supposed to do (not implying that they always choose to do so).
the antithesis of this is first person shooters, where every player starts every game on equal footing, and i trust we all know how that goes. how many times have several of your team mates simply ran out and essentially committed suicide or failed at your objective in some way because they have no idea what they're doing? warcraft has made great strides to reduce the grind and streamline it for skilled players -- ive taken multiple characters to max level in under 2 days played -- but the fact of the matter is that going through the motions of leveling is and always will be essential for any newcomer to any game.
I really like the discussions being had and would like to share some thoughts.
Having played UO where you set your own future and pursued your own objectives it is nice that devs have added a storyline to immerse you in the lore of their Genre. The open ended nature was nice and the grind was somewhat transparent - harvest 100 logs from nearby trees to make enough staves to advance your carpentry skill by 0.2%
WoW makes you grind at high levels for achievements and rewards that allow you to tackle harder content with greater confidence in your often dubious PuG setup.
The most transparent grind for me would be the EvE mechanics. Ok so you need ISK in order to breathe however it can come in many sources - some of which can be done in parallel. It is possible to play the markets and establish station trading, at the same time as having research agents giving you saleable commodities, all while you can be out ratting or mining or running trade missions for NPC factions. Multiple sources of ISK help to make the grind bearable and usually the rewards from the missions are worth the risk (200 mil fitted battleships anyone ? faction ships!?).
But my fondest memory of EvE was jumping into my level 1 frigate with jammers and scramblers and being able to actively compete in group battles. My skills as a complete EvE noob were just as essential as the supercap pilot with maxed skills. I would get better at my role over time in skill levels (passive real time level ups) and through playing skill (engaging in battles / missions).
So the vets and new players would play together and help each other out to achieve a common goal that ultimately was fun whether you won or lost. I haven't seen this format in any of the other MMO's which I think is a shame.
I admit it would be hard to take a level 1 wow character on an end game raid but that's how that type of MMO is designed. Yes playing for longer (or playing smarter) should give you benefits over more casual players but it shouldn't preclude them playing together. The maxxed out miner in EvE with a separate hauler account would benefit from another player acting as a hauler so he could bring out his second maxxed miner - for example - and split the profits appropriately between the three ( I know there are ways of mining that may be more profitable but bear with the analogy)
Sorry, I dont buy it. These devs are just making excuses. Look at EVE - very little grind is forced on you. There is simply no excuse for the laziness in other MMOs which results in 'kill 10 rats'.
Have we played the same eve? The grind for ISK is always ongoing. Also most of the mission in even consist of the same basics as any other MMO. Take something from X to Y, kill target X or clear area X (This would be the same as kill 10 spiders).
Now the benifit of EvE is that there are a lot of ways to grind your ISK, but it is still an importend factor.
Grinding is the easy and obvious way to make ISK in EVE but it is by no means mandatory to do it that way. Trade, Industry, scamming, and numerous other less obvious niches can yield a very fine income indeed.
And there are more and less smart ways to grind. Mining veldspar in empire = less. Farming FW missions for Navy Battleships = more. If you do a little research and you're smart about it, even if you do "grind" for ISK, the rewards can easily be high enough that you really dont need to do all that much of it.
Comments
This should have been in the bible. Not some obscure dev one but that amazingly popular christian one.
This was a fantastic article (typos and mechanical errors aside)! I'm truly impressed with the presentation of the material and the interviews were top notch. Truly a great read, though I do have some reprisals of my own.
Laralyn McWilliams brought up a very good point regarding the nature of grinding with her "bejewled" example. At first I thought this was an exceptional example, but then the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to not fit. Sure, plenty of people play Bejewled and try to beat their friends high scores. But they usually play for... what, an hour at a time? Two hours tops? Ask a majority of the MMO community how long they play a single game in one sitting, I'm sure 2 hours-at-a-time is the lower end of the spectrum. Having been on both the hardcore and the casual end of the MMO-gamer spectrum I can honestly say I've had 12+ hour sessions with not much more than a 5 minute break here and there. The example makes sense to a point, but it does not serve as a strong enough example to defend the concept of a grind.
However, she did present that point as a mere tie in to a point that makes far more sense, a point that King and Gerogeson also chimed in on: If it's fun, or if there is enough diversity, you will be distracted from the grind.
The honest truth is that the grind is necessary, in some form. You simply cannot have people achieving rewards in mere minutes. There needs to be a separation such that hard work and/or skill is rewarded. These devs know their stuff. and while I don't gather that ANY successful MMO from here to eternity will ever completely remove grinding as an aspect of the game, I do honestly believe that newer MMOs are looking for a way to fulfill these important elements of disguising-the-grind that the devs so introspectively recognize.
Someday we'll all look back on the age of computers - and lol.
I agree with Dave Georgeson that “I personally consider ‘leveling up’ to be entirely separate from ‘grinding".
I like the simplicity of leveling and I get my serotinin fix every time I accomplish something. And especially in the beginning levels of a game, those early leveling activities establish the lore and storyline foundations, produce opportunity to learn the UI and open up previously unexplored territory you might not even know exists if it is subject to the "Fog of War".
"Grind" to me is any repetitive activity foisted upon the player because there are no other options. If I find a grind like that in a game, I immediately unsub and move on.
learn to spell before you talk about anyone else hehe. i love grinding its fun and you get to be in the open for some pvp action.
Learn to read the article before making an irrelevant comment. +1 sheep in the flock.
Mr. King makes some excellent points. Why the fudge no one's really followed it is beyond... well, a lot of us.
TGWTETIPTNMAITC! -Gary Whitta
Opinions on what grinding is seem to vary. To me grinding is repetitive action that is boring. I think battleaxe gave a very good definition saying that it is grinding when you start counting how many times you have to repeat something and how long it will take. Another definiton would be that it is grinding when you switch you brains to standby and become a human bot.
The idea of disguising grinding to make if more bearable sounds good to me. After all, if the disguise makes it enjoyable it is not grinding anymore. I don't mind short bouts of grinding in the form of "kill 10 rats" unless it becomes "kill 10.000 rats" through repetition. Most MMOs have managed to avoid extensive grind while leveling but not in the end game, where it is used to get trinkets that make you more competitive in other end game content and (more) valuable to your guild or friends. Lolz, I think "more valuable to your friends" illustrates pretty well the absurdity of the need for such trinkets and of the grind to obtain them. This is actually my biggest grudge with MMORPGs: the need for various crap to achieve the optimal stats that will maximize one's performance and the grind required to obtain that crap. I don't want to be calculating how much of each stat I need to maximize my power and selecting my gear so that I get the required stats. I simply fail to see the fun in that. End rant.
I am not saying that repetitive content should be removed altogether, because we just can't give valuable rewards for too little effort. However, the repetition must be made more interesting so that it does not become grind. The variety (as in "more ways to grind towards the same goal") is an acceptable method but does not really solve the problem. The action itself should be made interesting enough so that it does not become boring no matter how often it is repeated. Interesting action coupled with variety should be able to remove grind. Somebody suggested more randomness in grind quests. A good idea. Designing the action so that it actually requires skill and brains is a good idea too.
Ideally there would be only very little repetition or none at all while still retaining the effort but I'm afraid that requires either an insane amount of variety or rather high level artificial intelligence that is able to generate more stuff for the player to do.
I think I like the notion that the term 'grind' is just applied to an aspect of a game that players dont' like. A lot of players lack the ability to just admit they dont' like something so they should do something else, so they put on their expert hat and blather out terms they probably don't really understand.
I hate crafting. I'll never like crafting. It's a grind!
Well it's a grind to me.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
what are the games in the last 2 pictures
Yes. Good article! There is not any one specific activity that is "grinding". Leveling up is not in and of itself grinding either. Grinding for me is that moment where I have learned everything there is to know about some activity - my chance of success at that activity is 100% - and yet I still must perform that activity for x amount of time before the challenge increases.
Grinding is those points in the leveling train where the mobs in my zone are too easy, and the mobs in the next zone are too hard. It happens with crafting when I have x materials, need y materials, and the only thing to do is roam around a few hotspots I already have memorized until I actually have the y materials to progress. I think a lot of people also apply the term to random elements in a game that are boring to them, but I would prefer those to just be called "boring" rather than "grindy". Maybe, if an activity does have a lot of those lulls in progression that I call a grind, then that activity is grindy.
It's not the nature of an activity itself that makes it a grind. It's the map of fun over time in the progression and gameplay of said activity throughout the course of playing the game. Either too little amount of fun, or stretched over too much time.
I also agree that if games had no grind at all. There is a section after you learn a skill (player or character) that it's nice to have that skill actually work for you without having any serious opposition. Outlevelling an area and sticking around to feel the power increase is an important part.
I think the feeling of grinding comes when a game starts to feel too predictable. Not just easy, or repetitive, but when you know pretty much exactly what's ahead of you. The more you learn a game, the more it feels like a grind, because none of it is a new experience anymore. Even as you level up into new areas, they're too similar in gameplay to previous areas. New abilities, new items, it can all feel too familiar, because the core mechanics are what we've already learned, all too well.
I think there are all sorts of ways to offset the grind, but nothing that would eliminate it - who wants to play the same game forever anyhow? The main thing is just offsetting it enough to retain player interest a little longer. Maybe even if its just three months instead of one. Six months instead of three. Depending on the player, just holding their interest a little longer. Just remember, the point isn't to hold them forever, and that it starts with lacking variation and predictability.
Not on a superficial level, but in terms of underlying mechanics. That's why it helps to add an interesting crafting system, or different types of grinding. Or accessible PvP. Just mixes up that predictability factor. Think of the most grind-heavy games, and I think the main area they lack in is variation. Everywhere you go, just more of the same gameplay mechanic. Add to that the attempt to stretch it way too thin, and you've got the worst of the worst.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Can somone tell he from what game is photo nr 5?
when world of warcraft first came out, the leveling process was disjointed at best. often you would finish one line of quests before you were high enough level to start the next ones, forcing a grind to reach that next starting point. alternately, the next set would begin all the way across the game world, requiring a solid 45 to 1 hour of real life travel time in a virtual world just to get to the location where you could continue adventuring.
since then they have drastically improved this, increasing exp to make sure you were ready for the next zone, condensing quest hubs, and reducing travel time immensely. after all this however, the fact remains that the aspect of any mmo that creates a grindy feeling is the fact that players have to learn to play a game before they can be max level. if anyone could create a max level character and start playing, it would ruin the game for skilled players because the chances of grouping with another decent player would be almost impossible to determine. what so many people overlook is that during the process of a grind in any game, you learn how to play your character-- you learn your attacks, your combos, your skills, your defenses, your optimal gear setup, and your role. imagine for a moment trying to form a pickup group for some random 5 man dungeon and not being able to determine if any given player had ever before even killed a single mob on that character? while great skill is something that escapes many players, you can assume with some confidence that any max level character in any game atleast knows what they are supposed to do (not implying that they always choose to do so).
the antithesis of this is first person shooters, where every player starts every game on equal footing, and i trust we all know how that goes. how many times have several of your team mates simply ran out and essentially committed suicide or failed at your objective in some way because they have no idea what they're doing? warcraft has made great strides to reduce the grind and streamline it for skilled players -- ive taken multiple characters to max level in under 2 days played -- but the fact of the matter is that going through the motions of leveling is and always will be essential for any newcomer to any game.
I really like the discussions being had and would like to share some thoughts.
Having played UO where you set your own future and pursued your own objectives it is nice that devs have added a storyline to immerse you in the lore of their Genre. The open ended nature was nice and the grind was somewhat transparent - harvest 100 logs from nearby trees to make enough staves to advance your carpentry skill by 0.2%
WoW makes you grind at high levels for achievements and rewards that allow you to tackle harder content with greater confidence in your often dubious PuG setup.
The most transparent grind for me would be the EvE mechanics. Ok so you need ISK in order to breathe however it can come in many sources - some of which can be done in parallel. It is possible to play the markets and establish station trading, at the same time as having research agents giving you saleable commodities, all while you can be out ratting or mining or running trade missions for NPC factions. Multiple sources of ISK help to make the grind bearable and usually the rewards from the missions are worth the risk (200 mil fitted battleships anyone ? faction ships!?).
But my fondest memory of EvE was jumping into my level 1 frigate with jammers and scramblers and being able to actively compete in group battles. My skills as a complete EvE noob were just as essential as the supercap pilot with maxed skills. I would get better at my role over time in skill levels (passive real time level ups) and through playing skill (engaging in battles / missions).
So the vets and new players would play together and help each other out to achieve a common goal that ultimately was fun whether you won or lost. I haven't seen this format in any of the other MMO's which I think is a shame.
I admit it would be hard to take a level 1 wow character on an end game raid but that's how that type of MMO is designed. Yes playing for longer (or playing smarter) should give you benefits over more casual players but it shouldn't preclude them playing together. The maxxed out miner in EvE with a separate hauler account would benefit from another player acting as a hauler so he could bring out his second maxxed miner - for example - and split the profits appropriately between the three ( I know there are ways of mining that may be more profitable but bear with the analogy)
Grinding is the easy and obvious way to make ISK in EVE but it is by no means mandatory to do it that way. Trade, Industry, scamming, and numerous other less obvious niches can yield a very fine income indeed.
And there are more and less smart ways to grind. Mining veldspar in empire = less. Farming FW missions for Navy Battleships = more. If you do a little research and you're smart about it, even if you do "grind" for ISK, the rewards can easily be high enough that you really dont need to do all that much of it.
Give me liberty or give me lasers