No, you can't. You can claim you purchased gear that allowed you to pwn other players without having to put any effort in. That doesn't make you good at the game though... "hahah".
If it only takes a huge amount of time to sink into a game, do the same thing over and over and over again a zillion times without adding risk to the challenge, how does that make the grinder better then a P2W customer?
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
No, you can't. You can claim you purchased gear that allowed you to pwn other players without having to put any effort in. That doesn't make you good at the game though... "hahah".
If it only takes a huge amount of time to sink into a game, do the same thing over and over and over again a zillion times without adding risk to the challenge, how does that make the grinder better then a P2W customer?
You improve at a game the more you play it regardless of how repetitive the content is. A new player isn't going to be good at an MMO simply because he bought a bis character.
In the early days of MMORPGs, it was common that whoever spends the most time grinding something stupid gets the best gear, the highest levels, or whatever. More recently, it has become common that whoever spends the most money gets the best gear. I'm not a fan of the latter, but the former is even worse. Publishers often prefer pay to win over grind to win because it makes them more money.
I'm sure you've heard it said that time is money. But if that is so, then why do billionaires get old and die? They had plenty of money, but ran out of time because it's not the same thing as money. Rather, time can be converted to money (get a job), but not the other way around. Time, not money, is the precious resource in life.
Pay to win tries to lay claim on your money. It's reasonable to dislike that. But grind to win tries to claim your time, which is even worse. Ultimately, either of them is a pretty good reason to quit a game and find another. But grind to win is more insidious and harder to spot, as it's much easier to keep track of exactly how much money something costs than how much time.
All of this goes out the window if the activity is fun in itself, of course. If you're having fun, it's not grinding. Not just hoping that it will be fun to eventually have what you're grinding for, but doing an activity for fun that you might still do even if it gave no experience or loot. Doing what you like to do and getting in-game rewards as a bonus is the ideal situation, of course, but it's hard to design that into a game very consistently.
Grind to win is making you play the game as intended, whereas pay to win is not making you play the game and get significant advantage over players that grind to win. P2W games die whether you like it or not community wise, look at archeage or lineage 2, the only players that are left are the whales and those whom have spent too much time that would feel like a waste if they left. I know several players in WoW that just don't want to stop playing, they played it too much already to just stop playing.
Look at Black desert online for example, it's a huge grind but slowly turning p2w and many players being turned off by it. It's more factual that opinionated to be honest, p2w will always target big whales and inexperienced casual crowd. It's just how it is.
A game where the intended way to play is to do something stupid a zillion times to advance is a bad game.
If you can't handle repetition boy are you in the wrong genre.
In the early days of MMORPGs, it was common that whoever spends the most time grinding something stupid gets the best gear, the highest levels, or whatever. More recently, it has become common that whoever spends the most money gets the best gear. I'm not a fan of the latter, but the former is even worse. Publishers often prefer pay to win over grind to win because it makes them more money.
I'm sure you've heard it said that time is money. But if that is so, then why do billionaires get old and die? They had plenty of money, but ran out of time because it's not the same thing as money. Rather, time can be converted to money (get a job), but not the other way around. Time, not money, is the precious resource in life.
Pay to win tries to lay claim on your money. It's reasonable to dislike that. But grind to win tries to claim your time, which is even worse. Ultimately, either of them is a pretty good reason to quit a game and find another. But grind to win is more insidious and harder to spot, as it's much easier to keep track of exactly how much money something costs than how much time.
All of this goes out the window if the activity is fun in itself, of course. If you're having fun, it's not grinding. Not just hoping that it will be fun to eventually have what you're grinding for, but doing an activity for fun that you might still do even if it gave no experience or loot. Doing what you like to do and getting in-game rewards as a bonus is the ideal situation, of course, but it's hard to design that into a game very consistently.
Grind to win is making you play the game as intended, whereas pay to win is not making you play the game and get significant advantage over players that grind to win. P2W games die whether you like it or not community wise, look at archeage or lineage 2, the only players that are left are the whales and those whom have spent too much time that would feel like a waste if they left. I know several players in WoW that just don't want to stop playing, they played it too much already to just stop playing.
Look at Black desert online for example, it's a huge grind but slowly turning p2w and many players being turned off by it. It's more factual that opinionated to be honest, p2w will always target big whales and inexperienced casual crowd. It's just how it is.
A game where the intended way to play is to do something stupid a zillion times to advance is a bad game.
If you can't handle repetition boy are you in the wrong genre.
Wrong hobby really all games are repetition
They are also time sinks. People are taking it too seriously.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I dont mind grinding, grew up with it in DAOC's early years. BUT, what i dont like is grinding + trifling other tasks you need to do to stay ahead. So I have to 1. grind exp, then 2. spend all my ingame energy doing quests to get some kind of "points", then 3. grinding crafting to make money 4. grinding some skill for offline bonuses. I dont mind just grinding mobs to get all the stuff I want. Its the fact you have to juggle 3-4 other tasks in order to stay ahead. then throw in spending real money as a 5th horrible task in some games.
THEN lets not forget the task of managing inventory bags because I have 5 types of tokens I need to turn into 5 different people, mixed in with the crafting stuff in those same bags. Well I can spend $ and buy a bag upgrade.
Then I have to manage my auction house listings and sell certain gear and vendor the rest because I dont have enough auction house listings, but can prob buy more through the cash shop.
Diablo 3 is an ARPG but they did a good job streamlining a lot of stuff as I've returned to that game. There are 2 core areas you need to grind, Rifts & Bounties.
IMPORTANT: Please keep all replies to my posts about GAMING. Please no negative or backhanded comments directed at me personally. If you are going to post a reply that includes how you feel about me, please don't bother replying & just ignore my post instead. I'm on this forum to talk about GAMING. Thank you.
olympic...u grind in a healthy way......computer games..u grind, sitting all day, your eyes will damaged as well by the monitor...
i prefer pay to win. it advocate healthy life, get a job, be good at life and game
And you can do both. But if really don't have time for a hobby don't do it. I am not going to get into wood carving and pay some guy to do 90 percent because I don't have time.
But a lot of MMORPG grind is because progression is used as a crutch. Instead activities that are just fun to do we are placed on treadmills to cover for impossible content requirements. The flaw in vast vertical progression in MMORPG. You will always have a grind or too easy from player to player and game to game the way MMORPG are now.
If this genre focused on a mix of renewable content, player content and developer content that wasn't a barrier to shallow progression we would have less of a grind.
olympic...u grind in a healthy way......computer games..u grind, sitting all day, your eyes will damaged as well by the monitor...
i prefer pay to win. it advocate healthy life, get a job, be good at life and game
I don't see how pay2win actually makes you good at gaming. I guess you kill stuff since you have good gear but that doesn't actually make you good.
One could argue and say that grinding don't always make you good either, and that is certainly true of incredible easy grind (like dailies) but generally speaking you still learns more that way.
Solving all your problems with cash is not what I would call a "healthy" life. And yeah, I have a job (with more then average pay for that matter) but paying to get ingame advantages just seems too much munchkin for my taste.
Personally I think MMOs need some grind as I said a bit up, but I also think the difficulty need to go up and made so you can't outgrind or outpay it. The way to shorten the grind should be by playing well, not by using IRL money.
Easy content will never make you good at games no matter how much you pay or how much you grind that easy stuff.
I didnt read the entire thread but I understand OP sentiment on the matter, I disagree with it.
Like other posters have said I dont love or hate grinding, but I accept it because I understand why it's there. Now if we're strictly talking about MMORPG i feel it should be kept away from anything Pay to Win related. I dont want to feel like I should shop on some virtual mall to get a full experience, if the company is looking for more revenue increase subscription, sell physical goods, ect. Make a great game and I will support you. I understand people dont like grind because they see it as an inconvenience, then I would say you have plenty of options with other genre, while people like me dont have much of it.
Now on the matter of time is money. I use to work 40-80 hours a week while still finding time for gaming. Today, I have a wife and kids and own a small business so I get to make my own hours, I have more time for gaming more than ever. While i understand not everyone can be in the same position, it doesnt mean you should change an entire genre to fit your needs.
This is a very simple matter. Everybody in this world has the same amount of time. However, almost everyone does not have the same amount of money.
If people were to be given a choice which one, money or time, to be used as currency, which one do you think people will choose? The answer is, whichever ones they have more.
Now, should the trend in game resulted that people prefers time, means that the majority of people consider that they would be more willing to part with their time rather than their money.
I think many posters are agreeing with me when I say grind can be a subjective term. I think one possible definition we can all agree on is it's a UNLIKED repetitive activity. However, beyond that, I think there's much dispute, arm twisting and hand waving. For example, I like many older MMO's because there're less invisible walls, less instances, more consequences (like death pentalty or aggro trains), less hubs or main quest lines and less radars/maps/guides. And yet many players consider those things tedious and contributors to the grind. They consider traveling grindy. I love traveling and exploring. I know it can be grindy if you're having to travle for long lengths of time repeatedly, but there're ways of reducing it too which don't destroy its meaningfulness. Still, I want and like travel to be meaningful. If you can just skip it or be told where to go in everything you do, it destroys that that sense of exploration and immersion in the world.
I also want to bring up how some repetition is good because our brain doesn't immediatley absorb everything around us. It takes repetition to remmeber and to get good at something. Practice makes perfect, remember?
And lastly sometimes we like repeatedly visiting teh same places. In many MMOs I'll revisit old places because I like them. Just always going to new places and never revisting anything previously visited is like spinning around rapidly or speeding so fast you never get to appreciate what's around you. To me that's just disorienting. And also I find out many new things about old things, strengthen my attachment.
I know many posters will dismiss everything I say and even use it against me and argue I really mean the opposite of what I say. For you, I say, whatever. Look, I've been involvedi n forums for a long time. I know the routine. No thanks.
No, you can't. You can claim you purchased gear that allowed you to pwn other players without having to put any effort in. That doesn't make you good at the game though... "hahah".
If it only takes a huge amount of time to sink into a game, do the same thing over and over and over again a zillion times without adding risk to the challenge, how does that make the grinder better then a P2W customer?
You improve at a game the more you play it regardless of how repetitive the content is. A new player isn't going to be good at an MMO simply because he bought a bis character.
I think in most MMORPGs this has been true, especially in the past. Some of it was twitch based, like properly timing a recast. Some of it was learning obscure things by pouring over posts and stats. Some of it was organizing and using your GUI optimally. A proper MMORPG will have you learning about it years after you start. HOWEVER, there was still a LOT of grind, meaning you were learning nothing--like killing something over and over and never changing how you do it to improve. Rerolling was extremly common in hte past--for example. Sometimes it was ok if you were playing in different content--often not. The problem is the OP and others are seeing in black and white--all or nothing. Just because there's a lot of grind htey throw everything to the fire. They also miss the point about subjectivity, using a broad brush, so being inaccurate.
I'd also like to bring up studies on stressed mice. The researchers found that the part of the brain used for learning was shrunken in stressed mice. The part of the brain which deals with repetition was bigger. The stressed mice turned to repeititive activities (as a security measure?). Almost like a baby sucking its thumb. They could cause this effect to occur. The mice weren't born with it. I'm not sure if they were able to recover formerly stressed mice, so that they became explorers again.
Comments
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
They are also time sinks. People are taking it too seriously.
What is up next? Play to win?
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
THEN lets not forget the task of managing inventory bags because I have 5 types of tokens I need to turn into 5 different people, mixed in with the crafting stuff in those same bags. Well I can spend $ and buy a bag upgrade.
Then I have to manage my auction house listings and sell certain gear and vendor the rest because I dont have enough auction house listings, but can prob buy more through the cash shop.
Diablo 3 is an ARPG but they did a good job streamlining a lot of stuff as I've returned to that game. There are 2 core areas you need to grind, Rifts & Bounties.
But a lot of MMORPG grind is because progression is used as a crutch. Instead activities that are just fun to do we are placed on treadmills to cover for impossible content requirements. The flaw in vast vertical progression in MMORPG. You will always have a grind or too easy from player to player and game to game the way MMORPG are now.
If this genre focused on a mix of renewable content, player content and developer content that wasn't a barrier to shallow progression we would have less of a grind.
One could argue and say that grinding don't always make you good either, and that is certainly true of incredible easy grind (like dailies) but generally speaking you still learns more that way.
Solving all your problems with cash is not what I would call a "healthy" life. And yeah, I have a job (with more then average pay for that matter) but paying to get ingame advantages just seems too much munchkin for my taste.
Personally I think MMOs need some grind as I said a bit up, but I also think the difficulty need to go up and made so you can't outgrind or outpay it. The way to shorten the grind should be by playing well, not by using IRL money.
Easy content will never make you good at games no matter how much you pay or how much you grind that easy stuff.
Like other posters have said I dont love or hate grinding, but I accept it because I understand why it's there. Now if we're strictly talking about MMORPG i feel it should be kept away from anything Pay to Win related. I dont want to feel like I should shop on some virtual mall to get a full experience, if the company is looking for more revenue increase subscription, sell physical goods, ect. Make a great game and I will support you. I understand people dont like grind because they see it as an inconvenience, then I would say you have plenty of options with other genre, while people like me dont have much of it.
Now on the matter of time is money. I use to work 40-80 hours a week while still finding time for gaming. Today, I have a wife and kids and own a small business so I get to make my own hours, I have more time for gaming more than ever. While i understand not everyone can be in the same position, it doesnt mean you should change an entire genre to fit your needs.
Whats the point? Its just a game, if you good at it so what?
Did it will solve the world problem? did it will solve terrorist, refugees, poverty problems?
More grind = more skills? Pay to win = less skills?
What benefits you get for being a skilled player in a game?
Can it insta nuke ISIS? save the world?
If people were to be given a choice which one, money or time, to be used as currency, which one do you think people will choose? The answer is, whichever ones they have more.
Now, should the trend in game resulted that people prefers time, means that the majority of people consider that they would be more willing to part with their time rather than their money.
I also want to bring up how some repetition is good because our brain doesn't immediatley absorb everything around us. It takes repetition to remmeber and to get good at something. Practice makes perfect, remember?
And lastly sometimes we like repeatedly visiting teh same places. In many MMOs I'll revisit old places because I like them. Just always going to new places and never revisting anything previously visited is like spinning around rapidly or speeding so fast you never get to appreciate what's around you. To me that's just disorienting. And also I find out many new things about old things, strengthen my attachment.
I know many posters will dismiss everything I say and even use it against me and argue I really mean the opposite of what I say. For you, I say, whatever. Look, I've been involvedi n forums for a long time. I know the routine. No thanks.
I'd also like to bring up studies on stressed mice. The researchers found that the part of the brain used for learning was shrunken in stressed mice. The part of the brain which deals with repetition was bigger. The stressed mice turned to repeititive activities (as a security measure?). Almost like a baby sucking its thumb. They could cause this effect to occur. The mice weren't born with it. I'm not sure if they were able to recover formerly stressed mice, so that they became explorers again.