The Daily Grind: What struck you as unnecessarily annoying?

"Hell" Levels in Old School Original EQ. SoE swore up and down for years that there was nothing they could do, that it had to do with the code or some other lame excuse. Then, magically years later I heard they finally did away with the "hell" levels.

More recently I would say the time and effort required to prepare for raids in WoW. Granted now a days most players will have a surplus of gold and can just buy the mats for things....and Bliz cut back on the # of potions food etc that can be used in a raid... But, the first few years of WoW required a good bit of farming for mats etc every week so one could be prepared for raids.

1) Grind old content and collect "tokens" or "points"
2) Trade the tokens to a piece of gear (usually with very bad exchange rate)
3) Once your gear passes certain amount of "points" you're ready for new content
4) Grind "reputation"-points so you can unlock the said content
5) Read guides and watch videos so you know exactly how the new content works and looks
6) Purchase "consumables" needed to get through the new content with easiest possible effort
6) Do the new content. Remember to dance around the right pixels.

Goto 1. Repeat endlessly.

And here's the thing that really annoys me - imagine you have bunch of friends who have been grind the above loop for a while - now try joining them as a new player.

Welcome to the Massively Single Player Online Games.
That really bakes my noodle.

Had a 65 Necro in EQ in like 98 ... The EQ comment is SO valid. Had 3x lvl 70 toons in WoW in '08 the rep grind was blizzard stroking their Epeen. Blizz dev said "Lets see how long we can make them run the same content and keep getting that sub. fee."

Also

The original crafting system in DAoC was a real drag/time sink.

"Tell me what annoys you in a game, I'll tell you who you are."

For me the players themselves annoys me the most.

What annoys me the most is any studio who lies to their customer base and ignores their community. Or releases a game that is not finished. When devs become lazy and ignore the actual work that needs to be done for the customers, the fans, the subscribers, you can expect that to get really annoying!

The type of quest design that sends me back and forth 3 or 4 times to the exact same spot. Much prefer to be sent there, then have the next 3 quests given to me on the spot instead of having to run back and forth to the town or npc who gave it to me.

Original EQ.... (No Instances)

Waiting in "Line" in Lower Guk.... for a spot in any group...

"LFG! Ass/Sup! PST!"

then you;d go afk for a drink and come back and everyone at the zone in was dead due to a train! LOL

Ahhhh.... those were the days....

I have to admit that it is other *players* that annoy me far more than any game design/feature has. Not much a game developer can do about that, unfortunately.

I agree with those who say other players annoy them more than any game features. Things like silly names, tells along the line of "lol wanna grp m8 lol", spammed blind group or duel invites, those sorts of things are irritating to say the least.

About the only game feature that frustrates me is the multiple stage quest that is a doddle solo for the first x stages only for the final stage to be impossible without a full group watched over by a couple of level-capped characters.

Hm...

WoW: Rep grinding.

Fantasy Earth Zero: The dodging system that encourages spammy bunny hopping style gameplay.

Runescape: Your attack/defense/strength/con stats are completely independent and only go up when you fight using a certain style. The stats were not balanced very well either so like a guy with 20att 20def 20str 20con would lose to a guy with 30 att 1def 30str 19con even though they would be the same level. (they probably changed this in the many years since I've played)

Guild Wars: Hm... the fact that your /rank emote is the only thing people care about when making PvP groups.

Trinitarianism: the requirement of tank and healer to run just about any teamed content in many games tends to lead to hours of enforced idleness. It also eats away at game communities: the tanks and healers know nobody's going anywhere without them, and in turn they sacrifice most of their character's ability to play solo content. If your regular tank or healer defects or quits the game, your circle of players is dead in the water. This ramps up the drama.

The only mechanical annoyance that made me quit a game in frustration was Champions Online's "block" feature. That game required you to periodically drop what you were doing and do a special blocking move when an icon appeared over a NPC's head indicating that they were using a dangerous attack. The problem is, I like melee characters. Even if blocking wasn't an annoying distraction in its own right, the problem was that I was in melee and would miss icons from NPCs that weren't in my field of vision.

The Dailyes in WoW. More accurately the rep gaps between Honored - Revered, Revered - Exalted. If you don't use tabard for the specific faction you're grinding(or it doesn't have one, the Netherwing for example) you have to do the exact same quests, that normally involve a lot of farming a lot of traveling and a lot of more farming, every day 'till you get exalted, instead of making a quest line for every gap with a higher complexity for each one and be done with it. The necessity of doing a lot of dailyes at lvl 80 almost made me quit the game out of boredom and tiredness of doing the same stuff all over just to get some fancy mount or an item or two. In total every daily quest is something unnecessarily annoying and if not replaced at least not to have to be done a lot of times.

I would like MMO developers to consider this...

Lately, I have switched back to playing FPS games more than MMOs. Mostly Left 4 Dead 2 followed now by Bad Company 2.

Why is it that I play the same maps in L4D2 over and over - without any bound loot too! - and yet have so much fun doing it? While your MMO achievements have gotten so boring and dull they are called a "grind".

I think there is something profound there. Perhaps, just perhaps, us players only call things a "grind" when it isn't that fun, but just necessary to play the game? I would like to see an MMO with less "content" but have it WAY more fun.

Games that allow obnoxious parasitical 3rd party add-ons that players use to grief others while sucking the enjoyment right out of the game. I'm looking at you WoW.

Games that treats subscription based models as F2P's with micro-transactions. I'm looking at you Cryptic.

Games where you can't *jump. I'm looking at you Guild Wars.

Games that have no **mailboxes. I'm looking at you CoX.

Games with no or very limited respec options. These include games that force you to pay RM to respec. There's too many offenders here to list. :(

*Note: This will be fixed in GW2.

**Note: This will be sorta fixed in Issue 17.

Much as I'd like to join in on the EQ bashing (and after eight years of playing EQ, I feel I've as much right as anybody), I kinda feel like it's a bit unfair to compare it to much more mature designs that had the benefit of observing EQ's mistakes.

That said; worst class balance EVAR.

In WoW, it's not the rep grind that annoys me, it's doing it AGAIN for each alt. It's merely annoying once. For those of us who enjoy alting, it's badly out of control.

I'd say your comment about the bank robbery in CoV was pretty apt. I happened to do (or rather, fail to do) one of those over the free weekend. We had nearly a full group, and got absolutely obliterated by massive spawns of Longbow troops. Then we all respawned in (seperate) jail cells. Once we escaped, the longbow troops were waiting for us, and KO'd us all again. Respawned in the jail cells, got wiped out by the npcs. Rinse and repeat for nearly 10 minutes until we'd beaten them all. At that point we had about 5 minutes left on the mission. We traveled to the bank, entered the front door, and arrived smack dab in a huge spawn of Longbow troops who wiped some people out before they'd even finished loading the screen. The mayhem missions are supposed to be a reward for doing 5 newspaper missions, not a grueling spankfest by aggro-happy uber-mobs.

My biggest annoyance in any game though would have to be WoW rep grinds and daily quests. Daily quests that include a rep grind are the absolute worst. Rep grinds are annoying becuase they're simply a tool to keep you playing. There's nothing "fun" about rep grinds. They're not a beneficial addition to the game. They serve no purpose but to give you a goal that will take a long time to reach so you keep paying that monthly sub. Daily quests are a sorry excuse for "content". Adding a couple of daily quests that can be repeated ad nauseum for the next 6 months is not "content". It's just a bonus reward for grinding mobs, crafting materials, or whatever the quest is after.