Curse

Grindwarrior · Aug 23, 2005, 04:10 PM // 16:10

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Originally Posted by SOT

Well no, no one has disagreed with me. In fact no one reacted to my post at all, which was written from past experience. People do not want to grind because they want instant gratification was all I said. the fact you chose NOT to read it and at least disagree or not is not my fault.

I did not say the thread sucked. I said the thread is doomed because people skirt the issue because they refuse to see how human nature, not videogame idiosyncrasies destroy the experience.

People, not the game designers, ultimately make a game experience what it is for them, and their peers.

Your post was useless. Try again.

Maybe people arn't responding to your post since it just tried to hide your opinion "I dont like ppl who dont want to grind" behind a huge amount of BS?

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Originally Posted by SOT

agree 110% and here is why:

Ok, so your in the "I like to grind" camp.

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Originally Posted by SOT

I am 26 years old. My generation (okay that was a blanket statement so those in my life that are that age, sue me) grew up with Nintendo, Atari, etc. Those of us that have been gamers all that time, from childhood on up, have come to believe that we, as gamers in general, are somehow entitled to shit.

We are used to being gratified right f-ing now, and just how f-ing we want it. I see daily, especially in my local gaming shop(s) that people beneath my age level have had this upbringing in far more pronounced ways. Instant gratification, email, the ability to have it now, pay for it later, have the perk but not the sweat and toil, these things define a HUGE chunk of popular culture these days. If we cannot have it now, we have a shit fit.

So you are giving us a bunch of useless background information about yourself to try and convince us your this know it all uber gamer then come to the conlusion that some gamers want to have stuff on a silver platter AKA not grind for their stuff? No shit.

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Originally Posted by SOT

Games are supposed to entertain you, but part of that entertainment aspect is the feeling of success or accomplishment when you achieve a goal, obtain a significant or insignificant (in the big picture) victory over an opponent. In the case of a video game or pc game, it is monsters, AI, and sometimes other players. If you want to be Billy Badass, you need to realize that even back on pacman, I started out level one, and had to advance the mazes. There was no tech support department that could "nerf this" or "rebalance" that.

Ok so your telling us random irrelevant stuff like "there was no tech support". It's interesting you mention "victory over an opponent", "sometimes other players". I thought you were just interested in progressing your levels and upgrading your equipment through a few hundred ours of gameplay? Oh wait, maybe you like using all that stuff to gank someone who spent less time grinding? Since you "worked so hard" in your game, your entitled to this right?

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Originally Posted by SOT

Spoiled brats will be spoiled brats. Working for something is a world removed from many, and is lost on them.

Yeah ok, we get it. Games should be about WORKING, SUFFERING, PAIN! and hundreds of hours grinding. It's just some spoiled brat who thinks he should "HAVE IT ALL NOW!! ON A SILVER PLATTER!!!". Thanks for your useless opinion.

Sanji · Aug 23, 2005, 04:41 PM // 16:41

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Originally Posted by SOT

Please read my first post in this thread again to see why this thread is doomed.

No amount of debate can save it.

Well, it's doomed because this is just another instance of people stubbornly trying to defend a game design flaw by saying it's human nature that is making people quit this game.

If anything, it's because Anet ignored human nature that this is a problem. Guild Wars is ambitious, but in some ways not very well thought out even for a hybrid that is trying to do too many things at once.

Going "Guild Wars is an RPG, that means you got to spend hours getting numbers by killing things to get what you want!" is all fine and good, but that doesn't excuse the PvP unlock rate for being unnecessarily slow.

Roleplaying games use levels and equipment as a carrot on a stick.

Guild Wars put a cap on levels and standardized equipment. Unlocking skills does not compensate for that, and does not warrant the hundreds of hours of redundant gameplay. Unlocking skills for PvP is a barrier to gameplay, not an incentive.

The current rant of unlocking skills is a worthless timesink and something that ultimately will prevent most from taking Guild Wars completely seriously as a PvP game. It's the depth of the skills, not the depths one must go to unlocking them that's great about Guild Wars, and unfortunately, that's hidden from most players.

Phades · Aug 23, 2005, 04:43 PM // 16:43

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Originally Posted by Algren Cole

you've either never played final fantasy or never even came close to finishing one. I've played 11 of them(not including the MMORPG) and every one of them requires you to level your character so you can continue playing. No you don't map in and out of an area and kill the same monster over and over(the game isn't designed that way)...but you do have to run around the world hoping something will aggro so you can experience from it. It's a simple fact, Role Playing Games have grind...and they always will.

Actually a few of the FF games had segmented zones/maps and frequently were the stages for fast leveling locations. A notable example of this in FF7 was in the first train railway when escaping from a shinra power plant. If you spent 30 mins or so there, you saved yourself several hours down the road.

Most of the console FF games arent long enough to even warrent them being called a grind. Then when you combine it with above average storytelling to mask the grind between points of interest, then the time spent "grinding" is hardly noticed. Virtually all of the final fantasy console games can be finished with the story in under 24 hours played (ie a weekend). There are other side quests or somewhat hidden things that extend it, but depending on how efficently played through the storyline, it can easily be less than double that amount of time to knock them out as well. ~48 hours played total, is hardly a grind in the grand scheme of things. Hell even final fantasy tactics is extreemly lightweight when compared to hoshigami or tactics ogre (pick any of the series). The funny thing with hoshigami, when compared to FFT, is that by the 5th battle if you havent stopped to level up and gain skills/customise the coinfeigm; you will lose the fight 100 of 100 times as your opponent is 3-4 times your average party level and you just run out of steam by the last group. It doesnt help that they used upgraded skills and equipment on some of the characters as well. Stopping to level up takes hours, but its neccacary in that game. While in FFT i have to find ways to stop getting experience in the normal missions, so that when a random map fight happens i wont get owned by level 99 red and black chocobos later in the game.

In other more traditional role playing games, the emphasis is more on the story telling as well and the character advancement is more of a side thing that happens as a need in order to allow the players to interact with the content properly. The only real tradition of a "grind" comes from muds really and those were fairly extreeme in some cases, which lead people to do things like run scripts at night and durring the day, while at work or school, so that the character will actually make meaningful progress day to day or week to week. Of course i hated scripters back then and now people just call them botters, but it was reasonably accepted behavior then considering the scale of the game involved. I do find that it is rather telling how people think its fine to do such things when there is not much more to the game aside from the grind.

Grindwarrior · Aug 23, 2005, 04:59 PM // 16:59

Best grinding game ever:

http://www.progressquest.com/

Algren Cole · Aug 23, 2005, 05:01 PM // 17:01

Phades, you should call nintendo power and demand a job. You mysteriously beat the majority of Final Fantasy games in less than half the time it took them to do it.

Nintendo Power recorded 67 hours of gameplay to complete FF7. They post an 84 Hour time for FFX...

Koroh · Aug 23, 2005, 05:07 PM // 17:07

Nearly every RPG on the market has level advancement, and thus the potential for grind. In fact, I think the advancement of a character's levels has become synonymous with RPG.

Grind only exists when the player gets tired of the current in-game objective and is prevented from proceeding in the game because their character level (or some other statistic) is not high enough.

Some players want instant gratification and thus see "GRIND" when they're not the most powerful character in the game from the minute they buy the box. These players should not be playing any online RPG.

Other players enjoy the progression through the levels based on time and a steady input of player hours.

Both groups can potentially encounter "grind", but it's usually the former who are most affected by it. The goal of any online RPG is to reward the player in accordance with the expectations of the player. If a player is getting squat but thinks they are being adequately rewarded, there is no grind. If a player is being rewarded handsomely for their efforts but still thinks they should have more as a reward, you'll hear a complaint about grinding.

I have wondered why people play MOG's instead of single player RPG's, but I can only offer what I have discerned as my own reasons for playing.

In no particular order:

1. It's fun to find a cool item or gain a level, but it's even more fun to show it off to a real person who also plays the game.

2. I'm a social creature, but I'm also a gamer. Playing a single-player RPG I need to take a break about once an hour just to talk to a living person. MOG's allow you the illusion of human interaction. Just remember that you're still sitting in the dark in the middle of a beautiful summer day, and that most girls don't dig a total geek. Also remember that the girl you just met in your favourite game is probably a guy.

3. It's an escape. When the real world gives me a kick in the nuts, I can escape into a fantasy world where I'm very successful and powerful. Some people use alcohol or drugs, I use this. Just remember that it can keep you from dealing with your real world problems. The real world has much harsher penalties and isn't always fair, but it's also more rewarding and will never have server issues.

4. Power. There is an artificial sense of power when you kill another player online. This is where griefing comes in. To most gamers it doesn't matter if the other player was at a disadvantage. Hell, most enemies in PvE are at a severe disadvantage so we've been conditioned to accept that we're just plain "better" than our enemies. The thrill is in knowing that some stranger sitting in another dark room in the middle of summer is cursing and throwing his wireless mouse across the room. I don't know what this says about the human psyche, but it's true. Unfortunately this type of conflict also has the potential to have me throwing my mouse across the room, so it's a risky proposition.

5. Exploring. These games really are beautiful. To see real world terrain and landscapes like these, you'd have to travel 12 hours by plane and probably 6 hours by Llama. Some of these vistas just don't exist anywhere but in a game. One of the most satisfying aspects in any game is finding an amazing backdrop and hitting [Prnt Scrn].

I realize these goals might seem off-topic, but there is a method to my madness. These are all reasons I play GW. If I don't feel I'm meeting one of these criteria at any given time, chances are I'll shut off the game because it's too much of a grind.

Koroh

Phades · Aug 23, 2005, 05:13 PM // 17:13

Nintendo power, along with most other gaming mags, stopped being useful in the early to mid 90s. Occasionally there are useful tidbits here and there, but it was way easier to just phone up a friend and see if they caught anything i missed. It happened frequently enough that i would catch things that they wouldnt and they would catch things i wouldnt. Through colaboration it ended up with more streamlined times and completion amounts.

There are ways to very easily power game sections of the various final fantasy games. Many of those sections save time later on, which allow for the other luxuries like the no-encounters style items so that you can jump to the parts that are more time efficient to do. In every instance you power game most of the time, it raises the bar for the rest of the characters you add to your party, which also lessens the amount of time spent wandering around and fighting. 67 hours and 84 hours sounds more like having every character with every single option and wasted time failing some of the side games once or twice. Its not neccacary to do that in order to beat the post game stuff like the weapons or the arena challenge monsters.

I still cant beat a few of the times put forward by my friends in some games, like the resident evil series. I have difficulty getting under the ~10-12hr mark depending on which version it was, while they were getting closer to 8hrs complete per run.

Creston · Aug 23, 2005, 08:19 PM // 20:19

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Originally Posted by john little

Grinding is a fault with players, not the game. If you play GW normally till the next expansion, you will be able to afford 15K armour. If you do UW regularly you *might* have enough to get fissure armour (I imagine that was intended as an even longer term goal).

I would say that "doing UW regularly" is in itself pretty much a grind, as that's the whole definition of grind. Doing something over and over again for a tangible reward, be it XP, items or plain gold.

Most games will feature a grind of some kind, but I would supposition that there has to be a reward at the end for it to constitute being a grind. Someone provided Counterstrike as an example of a game without grind, and it's true, because there's no reward at the end.
Battlefield 2, however, is a monstrous grind fest. Why the distinction between the two? Because Battlefield 2 has tangible "rewards" for the players (in the medals, the ranks, the unlockables) which in a way influence the way they play. Noone in their right minds would ever play a map using just the knife, but if you want to get the medal for it, that's exactly what you have to do.

The gameplay between the two (CS and BF2) is in essence the same. Groups of players on one side fighting groups of players on the other side, with some goals built in.

GW is guilty of grind as much as most mmorpgs, for the skills that you want to unlock. People will say "Well, then play through the game again with a different character."
How is that NOT grinding? You're doing the EXACT same thing over again, just for that tangible reward at the end. I fail to see how it's different from a grind where you just kill the same monsters over and over hoping for that rare item to drop. Just the reward is different.

Anet keeps saying "there is no grind in Guild Wars", but they are deluding themselves by doing so. A quest that makes me "kill ten earth elementals" for 500 xp is the very DEFINITION of a grind. Having to gather ten Losaru Manes for a collector to get an item is most assuredly grinding. But it's also fun grind, because it gives you a substantial reward. So why the hatred against it?

(In fact, since items supposedly have no real value in the game anyways, and they don't make a difference in the outcome of any battle, I don't understand what Anet's harsh stance against farming is anyways. If people who are bored with your storyline want to farm for the fun of finding some better items, why not let them do it?)

Every game where you experience character growth will have some form of grind in it. The real question is whether or not that grinding becomes NECESSARY in order to advance through the game. Say for example that Guild Wars has an arbitrary rule that you'd HAVE to be level 8 before you could get out of the newb zone. That would be a necessary grind, and a Very Bad Thing. But if someone enjoys ganking a few minotaurs over and over to get to that next level, he is grinding, but what's the problem with it?

Good thread.

Creston

Luna Thirteen · Aug 23, 2005, 08:33 PM // 20:33

What the... I wake up this morning and suddenly the only thing most people got out of my post is that I love grind? Wow...I'd like to thank people's intellegent responses first of all, but I really want to enforce the fact that this isn't me trying to rally everyone onto the "grind 4 lyfe" bandwagon here, I only wanted to make people who wimper all day about the game making them grind in order to compete aware that it's only natural for people that play more (be it via bots or otherwise) to have more of an edge. Also, please keep in mind I'm using the word "grind" very loosely, to basically mean repeating parts of the game again and again in order to gain an advantage over someone who doesn't. Thanks again for your opinions, and thank you Mr. SOT, I feel like you're dead on as well, but it's impossible to say who is right and who is not right on things like this...so let's leave it at we're all at least a little wrong

Algren Cole · Aug 23, 2005, 08:33 PM // 20:33

Nicely put Creston...the real difference is that Guild Wars doesn't have a necessary grind for the PvE portion of the game. And with faction they've limited the grind for PvP players. If players WANT to grind because they are bored and still want to play the game....why is that a bad thing?

p.s. back before I started playing Guild Wars my CS Cal team would play entire matches with just a knife and a hand grenade

Epinephrine · Aug 23, 2005, 09:02 PM // 21:02

I won't get into this argument much, having done all this before. But to the person who said that other games like counterstrike have their own kind of grind - you are so wrong. Playing a game and developing skill isn't grind. You are learning and practicing - that's not "grind". There is no skill development in slapping a known build together to go farm experience or items - there is a skill development in playing a game against various opponents.

There is no "grind" in DoD to get to a level playing field - you start on one. Nobody objects to the fact that it takes work to get good at PvP. That's practice, that's learning, thinking... what people object to is that you have to do mindless crap just to have a fair starting point. To those who think it's "earning" the right to play that way you are totally misguided. Do you "earn" the right to use a queen in a game of chess? It isn't part of some "modern age" that expects everything handed to them on a silver platter to expect that when you start a game of chess you'll have as many pieces as your opponent - that's been common sense for centuries. And no, for PvP the game doesn't start at level 1, and doesn't consist of levelling. PvP the game starts when the game loads, and it is at that time that teams should have an equal start.

xlarisux · Aug 23, 2005, 09:26 PM // 21:26

Hi. My first real post here. I randomly decided to use Sanji's post to reply to. I'm just going to post a few opinions that don't really matter since I'm only one person of many playing this game, and it probably won't change anyone's mind anyway (Not that it's really meant to). I find that that is human nature.

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