The Digital Continuum: 'Comfort' grind

by Kyle Horner on Oct 26th 2009 3:00PM

MMO industry, Opinion, The Digital Continuum

Often times grind is lambasted as the worst part of this genre, something to be minimized and removed to any and all extent. I understand all too well why; hundreds of hours of brain melting repetitiveness. Only here's the rub: the very nature of MMOs -- persistence -- creates a grind. Unless you keep it under a reasonable number of hours played, it'll turn into a festival of grind.

I used to think this was a colossal problem, yet lately I'm beginning to rethink my stance.
This last weekend, I moved into a new place and it basically obliterated me into exhaustion by the end of the day. Afterwards, I really didn't feel like doing much for the next day or two. It just happened that I had new roommates and we recently purchased Borderlands. Now, I was planning on getting plenty of time in with Aion but just couldn't muster the mood -- these things can't always be forced.

Several hours of playing Borderlands later, I realized an old feeling had soaked its way into my brain. The mission pacing, leveling and loot droops were all incredibly familiar, so why didn't I come to hate it after a full weekend of playing? Why wasn't I loathing the grind? Something ineffable about this game took hold of me and wouldn't release its meaty grip.

There are all sorts of things about Borderlands that I could list off in a positive light. You can objectify it all you want, but what it really comes down to is satisfaction. A good grind rewards you with a constant -- but not overwhelming -- stream of treats. Sometimes you gain a level, and others you earn a piece of better equipment but there's always a treat right around the corner. And you know, it's a really comforting feeling.

Much like certain foods, movies or blankets a comfort grind is reassuring, if not precariously addicting. You can have too much of a good thing. At one point or another in all our lives, traditional MMOs were a good thing. Whether it was EverQuest, World of Warcraft or something else entirely, everyone who'll 'never do that again' had too much of a good thing. The fault is both no one's and everyone's, because nobody has been able to come up with the perfect solution and we just keep playing the friggin' games all the same.

Do developers realize this, and if so should they be trying to minimize 'grind' from their game? Grinding can be good if it doesn't demand more time than a newborn child. Not all grinds are created equal, but no grind should be overtly epic. This could be my biggest grief with Aion, and indeed with many MMOs -- although with Aion more than any other.

I don't want a mind-numbingly slow grind. Maybe some people do crave it, although I question the validity of even that small number. The key to doing what Borderlands did to me is pace, structure and reward. If grinding is too slow, too abstract or insufficiently rewarding it won't comfort, it'll frustrate. The very last thing I needed after all that exhausting moving was frustration. I didn't want to play for hours only to see very incremental improvements.

The requisite slower pace of an MMO means they'll only ever appeal to set number of people with the current model. Community and massive persistent worlds give them an edge over the Borderlands of the world, but the MMO grind is being liberated and repurposed in a way that makes me question whether or not MMOs have got their version of it wrong. It would seem to me that time is -- as it will probably always be, short of a time machine -- everything.

Tags: aion, blizzard, borderlands, comfort, eq, everquest, featured, gearbox-software, ncsoft, opinion, soe, sony-online-entertainment, the-digital-continuum, world-of-warcraft, wow

Reader Comments (25)

I remember finding a field of high-level Leprechauns in Dark Age of Camelot and started kicking their behinds just for the fun of it. They had great sounds, animation and spewed insults about my mother.

For whatever reason, they were just a perfect level to make it a great deal of danger and yet a lot of fun. When one of them dropped a great weapon for me I was sold. I spent WEEKS killing those little creatures (and dying quite a bit due to their habit of respawning in a horrible pincer movement) and loved every second of it.

It was just a GREAT mix of danger, combat, comedy and loot.

What I define as a "grind" is when a mob is not interesting, no danger and just NEEDS to be endlessly slaughtered to reach a game goal. That is what got me to quit WoW.

I know exactly what you're talking about. Not the same game but for me, taking out orcs and goblins in Lotro with my hunter is endlessly entertaining for me, wolves, not so much.

I'm actually taking a break at the moment from hunting orcs outside trestlebridge for a deed, didn't bother me at all. Salamanders in Evendim? Screw them.

Two things set off the grind alarm in my head: The monthly fee and the Fun factor.

I know WoW Wants my 15 bucks. I know it has been meticulously tweaked to trigger my gamblers instinct to hit a lever 100 times if a food pellet falls out 1% of the time. If what I am doing in games has even the faintest whiff of 'you could have done this part of the game in half an hour but we made you do it in 8 hours so you won't cancel your subscription for another month' I am outta there. Wow, Aion, etc. etc. have this stink in spades.

And with any game, from flash based puzzle to fancy alternate reality mmo is not worth playing if you are not having fun. Clicking 1-2-3 over and over while eating a sandwich and watching a rifftrax may be fun but it's not the game providing the entertainment there. If the actions I am taking to play the game are not in and of themselves enjoyable, just a means to an end the is enjoyable then to the dumpster it shall go.

Well put. I'd much rather play single player RPGs than an MMO like WoW.

Oh how short everyone's memory is. You haven't experienced an exp grind until you played RF Online. Both its level exp and skill exp were grind based and not balanced to a generation of westerners that came from WoW. To level up your skills you have to use them, which most people resorted to shoving a coin under a key in your keyboard and leaving it connected overnight casting the same skill over and over again when the timer ran out to level it up. Spending a few hours to grind a level was nothing when you could spend weeks straight grinding for the next skill level. There was a reason that no one played RF in the end and it went under. They never reached the right balance in the way exp was handed out to make the people happy. (plus everyone wanted a giant bot and the teams were never balanced).

I always found a good grind relaxing. If done right, it's just repetitive enough, yet requires just enough skill, that it sucks me in, and calms me down at the same time. I never understood people who complain about the grind. It's not the grind itself, it's the 'feel' of the grind that is either good or bad. And maybe that's a big part of the ineffable artistic nature of MMOs, which can't be planned no matter how much developers try.

I mean, frankly, if I wanted a huge amount of story I'd play a single player game. But when I want to play, and chat, and exercise my skill in a social environment, I play MMOs. In other words, every one who wants to play a MMO should realize that they're playing a game that's supposed to be 'grindy'.

And the endgame is, essentially, extending the grind. As it should be. Running instances over and over, raiding the same things, farming materials - it shouldn't be too easy, or too hard, and should be fun, but the fact is, it's repetitive. That, of course, isn't to say it's always going to be the same. Slight changes in raid makeup can't change the entire run, same with instances, so skill is involved. But still, grindy. And that's always why I've liked MMOs. :\

A grind does not feel like a grind if the gameplay mechanics themselves are just plain fun. Borderlands is fun because you’re actually doing stuff, running around, shooting things, aiming, driving vehicles, all viscerally exciting activities that suck you in and keep you entertained. No matter the end goal, you’re always doing something explosive and attention-demanding.

MMO’s on the other hand, don’t always ask this. You’re frequently just clicking the same buttons over and over again and most of the enemies just require you to memorize patterns and spell rotations. There’s little to no AI, meaning at some point, the realization that you are in a very meticulously constructed grind machine comes to light. I can play the same level of Halo over and over and still find the enemy reacting in interesting ways. In turn, I feel more immersed. I can run the same dungeon twice in WoW and be bored out of my mind. I know the fights. I know what the enemies will do and I know that if even if I kill all this guys friends at least fifty yards away while he’s looking right at us, he won’t attack for some strange reason.

MMO’s have always been and continue to be too mechanical and too predictable in their design, only being saved by their ability to create a sense of vastness and socialization. I’m happy to see more mmofps emerging on the scene. Someone needs to shake things up and move us away from the point and click snorefest.

Spot on. A grind isn't a grind if you're enjoying the activity for itself, not just for the merited rewards. Borderlands is a game of keeping busy for entertainment, not for profit.

A big fat no thank you to the grind. If you love it that's great and I hope that there will always be an MMO to cater to your tastes but I prefer it when my skills are challenged, not my patience.

If you play MMOs, you like grind. You may not like to call it grind because the word itself has some negative connotations which imply pointlessness, but the central fact remains: you like it.

I play MMOs, and I like grind. The thing is, the MMO can't JUST be grind or else people flee quickly. 'New experiences' account for .000000001% of what you see in an MMO. An area is only new the first time you see it (obviously), and subsequent play throughs on alts 2-100 are all just rehasing the same assets.

That's why there are other types of games out there. If the gamer wants a novel, 'virgin' experience, there are always new titles being released with tens of hours of never-before-seen gameplay. If they want the comfort of the familiar, they have their MMO and it's grind.

As a side note, that's why sports games tend to be so successful. Every game, be it football, basketball, hockey, soccer, whatever, will happen dynamically. While there is a certain degree of repetition and/or similarity, there will also tend to be those 'whoa!' moments where the player will do something either surprisingly good or suprisingly stupid to make the experience novel.

I liken the grind in MMOs to the satisfaction people have re-watching a movie. You may or may not pick up a detail here or there that you missed the first (dozen) times, but the vast majority of what you're seeing you expect. That doesn't mean you don't enjoy it, or that the same joke you laughed at the first time won't make you at least chuckle the tenth time... just maybe not quite so hard.

I understand this... I am so looking for a MMORPG that gives me that feeling. Or rather its grind but I am still enjoying myself rather than its a task. If it seems like "work" there is a problem.

Borderlands has a story and voice acting, most MMOs don't bother with that. No, the walls of text that have a thin relevance to killing X number of creatures aren't stories nor are books or website stories lore.

The grind in MMOs happens because people get in a game, they play it for a while, figure out all the ins and outs of the game, and get bored of the same repetition. There are a few ways to get rid of the repetition grind, and it's through change... yes, the world that everyone seems to hate.

Create a smart AI, not much is worse than a stupid AI in any game. I'm not talking the ones that somehow manage to hump a wall, I'm talking about the ones that have 2 attack patterns, melee and ranged, WAR is a good example of that... you'd think zombies and High Elves would attack you differently... nope... every NPC encounter is pretty much exactly the same and creates a grind of the exact same scenario over and over again... Sick em', plink, plink, plink, plink, dead. Rinse and repeat.

Next, every faction needs to be different! As long as every faction is different, and every class within that faction is unique, you create a different strategy for each faction. City of Heroes did a good job with this, Sappers of the Malta drained endurance like crazy, Bane Spiders of Arachnos had stealth strikes, Rikti had Comm Officers which spawned more enemies, Carnies have Illusionists that can phase shift and spawn other Illusionists and pets. They all had a different dynamic to each faction that made them unique and changed the way you played against each faction. It creates strategy, a new dynamic to each different scenario. It doesn't matter how smart your AI, or how different your levels are, if the enemies are all the same, players will get bored.

Now those two things aren't enough, eventually you can figure out an AI system and master how they respond you the environment and your actions. So the next step is a dynamic world, how many quests have you done where the quest giver says, "this is of the upmost importance, you're the only one that can help me!" Well turns out that NPC is lying, because the last 100,000 people that came before you saw the exact same message, and already did it, so that super rare amulet, is one of 100,001 that NPC has in their possession. A dynamic world that changes based on your actions would be kickin'. Look at EVE Online for instance, you can choose to do decline certain quests and it will hurt your reputation with that faction, and even if that faction was your friend at the start, if you piss them off enough, they can get to the point of trying to kill you. If all of your actions in the world reflect on the path you follow in game, that would be a winner, because people stop playing games when they've seen it all, and if you can't see it all... when do you stop playing?

What I'm saying, is if a game is dynamic enough, you don't go through the game watching your xp bar wondering when you're gonna hit the next level, instead you're looking forward to what happens next in your path through the game, that's when you're free of the grind.

There's a difference between a grind and a mindless grind. A game like Bordlerlands has dynamic combat and intelligent enemies. Many MMOs, on the other hand, have static combat and brain dead enemies. There is no chance you will lose if you use your skills in a predefined order. Even this is a step up from the days when you simply had to have a higher HP and a stronger auto-attack to win versus a mob.

Grats, you can PLAY Borderlands - up until 2am last night, steam was telling me it'd unlock then - then 20min before it unlocked, they "corrected a mistake with the release date" and it ticked over to the 30th. GG Steam for messing up, and GG 2K for making NZ players wait for the EU release date.
/rage off

On topic, I don't mind the grind as long as it is, as you said, punctuated by interesting things happening - kill ten rats quests mixed with "other" ones, or even just extending the quest slightly, like having the mob's ghost rise up and say something.

I find grind also works well if the progression is visible to the naked eye - I'm levelling a somewhat Heirloom-covered warrior (in WoW, heirlooms increase experience gained by a %) and am finding I can put up with longer grinds between questing because

1: the experience gained is a fairly large number, eg "+880!" for a kill feels a whole lot better than "+75!"
2: if a bar visibly moves, you feel better about it.

both are just things that fool us into thinking less of a grind, but hey, they're effective.

"The Grind" does not happen because you are in an MMO. "The Grind" happens so MMO developers can "prove" to the financial types that people will be entrapped into playing by taking your time to level, putting it on a spreadsheet, and estimating what level you will get to without quitting, then multiplying that figure by the monthly sub.

This is a false, unsupported "proof". The best way to keep a person playing is pure FUN. Unfortunately, that concept cannot be measured on a spreadsheet and so is something MMO business types just cannot grasp. Therefore, they "go with what they've got" which is the grind.

I have played 1 and only 1 MMO that did not have a grind. Instead, it gave you *gasp* an actual purpose for playing! What a concept! And lo, with a purpose and without the grind, it was fun as hell. This same game, even now, is remembered with - prepare to gasp again - PASSION by its former players. Only the retardedness of its company's legendary chief asshat and his cronies ruined this fun for us players, and that's the only reason I am not still playing this game (which would make it 6 years straight btw).

I am absolutely certain that if they rolled this game back to before their idiot gamebreaking changes, fixed the bugs and updated it to play on today's systems, an amazing amount of former players would be right back in the game today. I kid you not, we had that much friggin' fun.

So that's the real draw to an MMO, just as it is for any other game - give people a chance to have fun playing. Only failgames that cannot do that have to resort to "the grind". Unfortunately, the entire blargin INDUSTRY is so full of failgames, most people have no idea that there is any other way to play but "the grind" :(

In Tabula Rasa it was easy to fall into a grind & to keep hunting for the next mob to kill... and it was fun, because that constant hunting for the next mob was so that you could keep that kill streak going and keep racking up kills to increase that bonus xp multiplier (and being able to auto-loot just by being close to a corpse meant that you didn't have to slow down for loot during the "grind")... and then of course you'd always get that little bonus treat of getting a crit kill & being able to kick your dying enemy into a pretty explosion :)

If a MMO has good combat AND semi-challenging enemies grinding can be both fun and relaxing.. I have yet to find a game that has perfected this formula. Champions Online and SWG (pre-CU) is probably the 2 games I have played that has come closest. (And both missed by over a mile)

Champions Online has decent combat, but grinding in that game sucks because the enemies are either have REALLY annoying abilities, or they are simply too weak.. Thankfully there is not much grinding to level in CO, but grinding for money to retcon is a pain.

Grinding was pretty much the only thing to do in SWG pre-CU, but somehow the grinding didn't feel too bad. Some of my fondest memories of that game and time was when I was grinding in Tusken Fort - I think that was the name - and almost getting killed several times because I attacked the wrong kind of tusken. The combat may not have been the best, but it was pretty challenging if I remember correctly and I had the added benefit of sitting on vent with a few friends that were grinding with me.

Grinding in WoW imo feels like swimming in deep, sticky mud. I don't like the combat, normal mobs are too easy and it feels very little rewarding.. Despite all this I'm tempted to reopen my WoW account... I think there is something terribly wrong with me :S

No, I just think Borderlands kicks ass!

Like JoeK for me Tabula Rasa was one of those games where you could loose yourself in grinding for hours. The action was pretty fast paced and rewards were actually not that important.

It helped that the enemies (sometimes) used tactics (cover, storm,retreat) and helped each other. Even though they were still dumb compared to the AI of shooters like Crysis, it still gave you a feeling that you're not just killing papertargets.

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The Digital Continuum: 'Comfort' grind

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