The Daily Grind: How much grind is too much?

Grind necessary? That is about the same pervasive flawed thinking that says travel time in MMOs is necessary. Spending countless hours on a treadmill might appeal to some, but I believe the vast majority of gamers tolerate it more than embrace it. IMO, the future of MMO gaming isn't going to be in endless meaningless quests and farming at least not in a conventional sense. As was pointed out GW had a story driven architecture and built their continuing content around max level characters with very little grind and they did it successfully. While DDO still has grinding system, it is a step in the right direction by leaving XP for monster kills and rewarding players for completing missions which often include avoiding the killing treadmill completely.

Grinding isn't necessary, but it will require more in depth story telling, designs beyond kill X to get Y and a shift away from cookie cutter design. Much like the move from Zork to Bards Tale to real time combat in games like Fallout or turn based strategy to RTS, gaming systems will often evolve but in time we get to see true revolutions and that can't come soon enough to MMOs.

I play Dungeons and Dragons Online for my MMO fix and the "lack" of a grind is a big part of why. I just recently got halfway to the level cap on my main character and I haven't grinded (as defined by the usual "collect 10 rat tails" or "kill 15 orcs" thing). You can repeat quests to get experience from them over and over until there is no more experience left, but that's about it.

For those that don't know, how most quests in DDO work is you enter a scripted instance with various main and side objectives and you can boost your experience by completing these objectives and you get the main quest experience at the end (you also get experience from side objectives as you complete them inside the quest). After about 2-3 repeats, you start losing 10% experience off your total main quest experience each time you redo the quest.

So, technically, you can repeat quests until you get no experience from them (which happens after a small handful of repeats) and I suppose that'd be the grinding in DDO and I'll take repeating a scripted instance over collecting 10 salamander tongues any day).

There are wilderness areas which have a "slayer" quest in which you basically grind like any other MMO and just mindlessly murder until you hit the quota, but you can simply not do the slayers, or you can attend to them when you're feeling grindy (because, let's face it, every gamer feels the need to traditionally grind every now and then :P).

I'm still pretty impressed at the lack of traditional grind in DDO, which also allows for more purpose and story (story that unfolds, rather than a big block of text from an NPC at the beginning and end).

The biggest problem with isn't its existence but the incapacity of devs in hiding the grind or spreading it in small chunks of interesting mechanics and quests.
I hate grind but i also hate games that hand out rewards too eagerly.

However, i currently many MMOs with weak consistence in the way they plan the leveling curve of the characters with the amount of content present in the game and the way to disguise the repetitive gameplay.

There's several ways to make the grind less boring and perceptible:

1st - The developers need to adapt the amount of content present in each level to the amount of XP that a person needs to level. It is something that i've noticed in a bunch of games is that as you level up and it becomes harder to gain a level there's a drop in the proportion of available quests that you give you nice chunks of XP. The longer you take to progress a level, the more content there should be for people to do in that level.
This is particularly clear essentially when the players are mid-level after passing through the initial areas where usually people can level up 10 levels in a row but low enough to not being able to participate in the end-game.

2nd - when creating the quest content the devs NEED to disguise the grind. Use the smallest number as possible of Kill X quests. Introduce escort quests that force you to pass through a big number of mobs to get to the escort target and make the escort part of the quest long. Introduce quests that require you to infiltrate in hostile NPC's areas to kill a big elite or to gather a special item but require to kill a bunch of mobs to reach it. Create epic questlines that sprawl several levels and that involve the players in it with voice acting, scrolled events and stuff like that.

3rd - For the love of God create incentives for people to group with each other when questing. It's been a while since i have seen an MMO that gives a XP incentive for grouping and that doesn't divide quest drops per the people on the group. If people are socializing they won't notice the grind so much.

4th - Make some challenging PvE encounters even in the leveling areas that give some nice reward and require cooperation from a small group of people.

5th - If there is PvP give XP and loot for participating in it much like WAR does.

6th - Try to break the monotony of grinding by introducing a big number of alternative activities in your game that people can do when they get bored. Do this by introducing a comprehensive and engaging crafting system, a bunch of mini-games, some leasure activities (like fishing for example), a vast array of events if not a certain form of PvP.
If people can only do that boring and grindy activity in the game then people will get bored fast of a game. If a game offers a wide variety of activities to their players people will take longer to get bored.

Sorcefire made me write my thoughts on this topic. Mainly, the Asians (South Koreans/Japanese) have the fastest internet conections. The average speed in Tokyo goes around 100Mb/s, which certainly isn't limiting to a MMO :) and a free wi-fi is basically everywhere.
Anyways.

Some of you were basically saying that any PvE is grind. What? And that grind is when you get to spend tens of hours PvEing in order to move a bit further in the game.
But tell me, what game allows you to get to end-game content without tens(hundreds) of hours of PvEing?

Grind is just necesary, it's a part of the game. It's just all about balance. When you find yourself grinding most of the time you play the game, you can say that the game is grindy, yes.

A good game has a balance in these things. The grind is "wrapped" in some content. A good storyline always helps, you have to see the constant progress. Solo grind is mindless, but a difficult PvEing in a group of players is just fun! Inventing new tactics, cooperating, that's what MMO PvEing is about. Not just mindless clicking on mobs. This social part is crucial in any MMO.

I have three words for you;

STORY DRIVEN CONTENT.

By this i don't mean kill X number of said beasties to gain said reward. Guild Wars did have it "partially" right in that there was no respawn and thus no grinding spawn point to get X item. They also had a reward system that ensured you got your loot and others did too. Quest based leveling where the rewards are earned during the quest and at the end are IMHO the best methods. Those quests however need to be imersive and interesting.

Although GW did instanced quests quite well they also failed dismally when you capped level at 20 and simply could not progress further. Eventually the quests became meaningless because your character didn't gain a reward that meant anything to you.

I suspect SWTOR will be a real eye opener for many gamers who have forgotten what it is like to play a game where the story means something to you. Full voice will make quest story arcs much more accessible and enjoyable as you wont have to read all the endless text (like in CoX) I dare say many a gamer will actually get into the story as a result.

blatant Grind is a symptom of lazy developers who cant be bothered to do it any better. The fact that many gamers accept this as a necessary evil is a crying shame.

I've done the Ragnarok Online grind at only slightly above pay-server rates (2x-5x are much more reasonable comparatively) 1-99 and then back 1-99 for the reborn classes, and I can say this in my perspective: grinding is only for the young. When I was younger and only had 2-3 college classes a day and I was waiting for social activities to start up at night, it was acceptable to sit in front of the computer for 12 hours a day and round up everything in Nifelheim only to aoe it down repeatedly.

As the mmo culture matures, I think grinding is becoming a necessary 'transparent' evil; if you see it in a game, the developers are doing it wrong.

The Virtue grinds in LoTRO made me want to cut off my thumbs so I could never play again. Combined with the endless rep grinds for various factions granting mediocre upgrades and legendary trait grinds and I grew from loving the game to feeling nauseated when logging in.

Granted WoW used to be no better (Vanilla Timbermaw ftl!) but have made great strides in making the grind less painful by arriving at the same destination through multiple routes. Questing, running instances, item turn-ins and straight up killing make the grind a touch more palatable.

EVE is grinding done right. The only real grinds are for standings (easily bypassible with corpmates), LP (reward stuff), and ISK. Of all grinds, the ISK grind is most involving and fun. There are multiple avenues to arrive at ISK, some scrupulous and some decadent.

My hope is that the new generation of MMOs will eschew the grind altogether and offer subscribers engaging content.

The term grind...it's largely a mystery. It gets used to describe anything we don't like in MMOs. I'm fed up with the term because it is too vague and subjective. What you may think is a grind, I might think to be enjoyable.

So this entire article can be summed up "Every game is going to have parts you might not like, but that's just the way it is."

Whats with this "WE" verbage? Seems to be an awful lot of french folks running around telling me how i have been playing, guess i just never realized.

Those crazy french aside I dont grind, ever. I have tried a large amount of MMOs over the years, to much grind and to few quests, they never got to my first cc payment. The moral here, do it right or no money for you.

May be the reason i havent touched an MMO other than to beta them in many years, none worth giving my money to.

Now i am still having a great time with Borderlands having finished dragonage, good stuff those. Is tech the reason MMO's just plain suck or is it the devs not planning properly, or is it the clueless player as many devs state that dont know what they want?

Man up, refuse the grind, put some devs out of work for the holiday season, they def deserve it.