Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
General: Editorial: DING! by Aaron Roxby
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Aaron Roxby has some distinct opinions on the grind. In this new editorial called "DING! Or why I killed several thousand innocent goblins and rats", we learn what they are.
| DING! For anyone who has spent any amount of time in a virtual world, those four letters carry great significance. Even typing them into MS Word gives a bit of a tingle, a slight sense of accomplishment. In fact, I am going to type it again. DING! That feels good. In this context, there is little meaning behind it. In an online game, however those four letters mean that you just leveled and that is, of course, why we play online games. To level. To press a series of buttons that make a little bar fill up, which in turn will usually make a satisfying little sound (or in EverQuest, a nerve-scraping clang) and a little number will go up by one. Truly exciting stuff, and well worth the massive amounts of time and money that it can take to get there. I cant help myself
DING!
Of course, not all words are so electrifying to type. Here, Ill show you: Grind. That was no fun to type at all. Typing Grind fills me a sense of impending frustration, a sense that I might just be wasting my time. Lets try another: Treadmill. No, thats no good. That one gives a sense of futility, a sense of expending energy but getting nowhere. Excuse me a moment DING! There, thats better. |
You can read more here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
D&D was about group comraderie and journeying to accomplish a mission. No one deliberately set out to kill wolves for experience. You never heard someone say "hang on - just need to kill a couple more wolves so I can level". The experience was awarded for successful mission completion, extraordinary "in character" actions, and sometimes random whims of the DM. You could get experience from successfully bypassing a fight, too, because the fight wasn't necessarily the objective. I've never gotten experience in an MMO for not fighting.
One MMO problem with journeys is that someone, somewhere decided that time had to be the same for every character. In D&D, you told the DM "we head from town A to town B", the DM replied how long it would take, and you may or may not have to "play" the journey. If something interesting was to happen along the way, you did, but not the entire minute to minute journey. If you camped (because your character does have to sleep now and then) or there were random encounters, the DM had you deal with those. Otherwise, the DM said "you arrive at Town B", and that was it - no long runs through desolate newbie areas or uber-mob filled fens.
I play my character as if I am in the world, I follow quest lines to the end while reading the lore and enjoying the landscapes. As a residual effect, I level.
I also take the time to enjoy tradeskills and run a business.
I have been playing EQ2 for a long time and I am level 53. Many of my guildies have past me up to max out at 70.
I can only hope they enjoyed the journey as much as do.
He was actually better at playing this game than I was, because he was actually experienced. - Aaron Roxby
You werent the first to say it but damn its good to hear another person with a similar view.
Horses for courses. Rock, pop, roots & rap. Single player, multiplayer, MMO-(RPG; RTS; FPS; G).
Define definition. Your bound to get different answers. Just like you would with whats an MMOG mean? Explorers, Socialisers, Achievers & Killers? Questers, Griefers, Lamers, Carebears.
The real reasons are for a sense of community (a graphical chatroom) and so through playing and grinding we can actually measure our achievements agaisnt someone elses, unlike single player games.
Other than the thousands of players populating these games you barely have a game to play. If you took the massiveley multiplayer out of it you would have a game even william hung could play(noone will convince me he is not retarded) Everyone will obviously say DUH to that, but then they should scratch their heads and wonder why they are playing games with their friends which are utter crap.
It's better be hated for who you are, than loved for who you aren't.
Insteresting article.
Issue I have with it is this (in his comparison to FPS'): an RPG, IMO, should not be based on someone's twitch factor. If I'm 80 years-old and still playing MMO's (God willing!!) should I get my lvl 127 Uber Battle Mage's @ss handed to me by a 12 year-old and his lvl 5 Newbish Warrion just because his twitch skills are better? I think not. I don't even think it should be a contest. No matter that this 12 year-old has 5 level 200 Elven Fairy Monsters and has tons more "experience" playing the game. The whole point is the "RP"... We're "role playing" these avatars. Not merging them with real life.
And although I do agree, the "grind" is evil, it's a necessary evil. I think one approach would be to institue dynamic questing and longer quest lines with more story telling involved.
But, that's just my opinion.
"I
think one approach would be to institue dynamic questing and longer
quest lines with more story telling involved."
I completely agree.
While I did use a First Person Shooter as an example, I didn't mean to convey that "Twitch" gameplay is the only way to go. Skill can mean more than just reflexes. I also believe that there is room for many types of online games. I don't think that we need to "get rid" of the old style, simply that we should have more alternatives. That way, 40 years from now, I can sit and grind in my old age, but grandson will be able to jump into his holodeck and actually kill an ogre.
Notice: The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the reviews of MMORPG.com or its management.
i also think the evil grind is necessary as well, hell some of my best times were at camps bs with friends with the occassional wipe because no one was paying attention or that we did something stupid.
there has to be some long journey or tough battle or i wouldnt feel any accomplishment, epic quests in eq1 are a good example after a certain time afraid to make a mistake because of the long journey it has been. And when it all over you have such a feeling of accomplishment.
its the journey not the destination that makes these games fun along with the friendships
You need more bait. You dont need a level grind to feel a sense of accomplishment. Yea there should be a journey and a destination. But the destination shouldnt be Max level. It should be the furthest reaches of the planet or a X on a map you found, or infiltrating an enemy clan to feed information to a rival. Chosing your destination is what im after. The open fields, not a Motorway/Autobarn game design.
When people talk about endgame thats when there's supposed to be choice. But most games dont even have it then. We arent all accountants or math wizz's. We dont want to live and breath numbers. Maybe thats not possible in a game. To do whatever you want. But then if thats true, why bother with an MMOG and a monthly fee?
Ok some people like it. Fine. I dont, gimmie something different. Try expanding you customer base instead of going after the same old gamers and simply try and outdo the most popular game.
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
-- The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Good editorial... as it lets me get in another plug for the idea that MMORPGs don't need character advancement.
It's this notion that characters have to "level up" that leads developers to implement repeatable content -- i.e., The Grind. Suppose instead that you had a really deep character creation system, and that once you'd developed a character to your liking you could enter the game world and just start playing. Why would that be worse than what we have now, which is that you have to spend weeks levelling up just to get to the fun high-end content?
If the journey is what matters, then not having to worry about climbing the ladder to the level cap lets you focus on the journey instead of the destination. Without levels, you simply play the game -- you travel, you explore, you interact with the game world and the people in it. Your character still has adventures; your charcter still develops (with a personal history, scars, gear, faction changes, etc.); and you the player still gain all the fun memories of adventures in a distinctive game world.
Finally, I'd point out that this has already been tried in PnP RPGs, where it worked Just Fine. A great example of this was Traveller/MegaTraveller. There weren't any character levels to be focused on while you played the game; you just traveled the galaxy having adventures with your friends. There's no reason why this approach can't be equally successful as a MMORPG.
So where are the publisher and developer who are ready to win big by funding this kind of game that eliminates the dreaded grind problem?
--Flatfingers
It's better be hated for who you are, than loved for who you aren't.
MMORPGs are pulling increasingly away from the RPG, and closer to the grind engine....
In most of them, ther is little (or none) sense of story, ther is no ultimate goal in the game (except having the higher number)...
That is something that i've always tryed to find in MMOs, but to no avail...
Some games still give us some excitement, and some fun, but most of them just grow tiresome, and you end up wasting your time just to keep your number on par with other ppl's numbers... By this time, the fun is over, and its just a blunt competition, and in no time, you'll start discarding the game...
For the most part this article consists of: words words words, we hate grinding, more words.
But I'm glad he pointed out the fact that the standard "grind" in MMORPGSs comes from a paper and pencil game that most MMO gamers have never played. I think developers and players have come to accept this grind needlessly. Hopefully this sort of thinking can help burst the bubble when it comes to this idea that MMORPGs need to be a grindfest.
Unfortunately, no one has developed an alternative yet. EvE doesn't require a grind, but the amount of time a character has been around still determines their "skill" level. As long as people will pay for a game with grinding (wheter that's quests or grinding on mobs) publishers will keep producing grindfests. If it takes you 3 months to reach level xxx, then that's 3 months they could keep the carrot in front of your nose.