How to truly eliminate "the grind"

So we all hate grinding right? How many times have we heard someone complain that they want grinding out of the game? So here's a few thoughts to chew on..

1: Make all things worth having in any way shape or form obtainable from unique, non-repeating quests. Including but not limited to, gold, loot and XP.

2: If #1 doesn't work, Eliminate all forms of progression, especially skills and levels along with eliminate gold and loot.

3: Eliminate the need to harvest.

4: Remove all mobs? Just to be on the safe side.

5: Change human nature so that no one is competitive over anything.

6: Don't play.

7: Blow up the universe.

Doesn't that sound like a blast?

Ok seriously folks. So long as there is any kind of progression, whether it's XP/skills/levels or wealth, someone is going to complain. Whether it be about "the grind" or the fairness of early backers having an advantage or just people having more time to play than others.

The "grind" isn't the real problem here. It's what the grind is missing.

So rather than complaining about the grind.. next time you're in the middle of it and catch yourself thinking how boring or tedious it is.. rather thinking "I wish I didn't have to do this".. think to yourself "what would make this more interesting?"

Because really, if you think about it.. if the "grind" were removed.. what would be left?

 

If you see people complain about grind it usually means your game is designed too shallow and there are no incentives to play it for the people aka lack of gameplay. The game needs more features as soon as the technical issues are solved.

 

If there were no incentives to play then there would be no one to complain. Also the assertion of shallow design implies a finished product. It does not account for potential design that has not yet been implemented.

and that just brings us back to the question.. what is actually missing? Simply reiterating that more is needed doesn't get us anywhere. What would make it more interesting for you?

 

I am sure they pretty much know by now what is missing and they haven't designed it yet. Better hurry You know well enough how many people left already and only lurk here to see if something changed.

 

That's the same routine even for finished games. People will always come and go for a variety of reasons. Not as telling as one might think.. less so for "early access" / alpha as it's entirely within the realm of expected behavior.

In either case, still doesn't answer the question.

 

Well what is missing is any sandbox content. Most stuff you can do in the game you can only do with a big wallet like POTs.. People and potential guilds starting the game want to achieve that by playing the game, not by spending money. Not saying enabling people to spend money to get it is bad, but having no way for players to obtain that stuff if bad design, as it keeps people away. Lots should also be obtained by ingame means, not by a lottery. We lack so many players... there is enough housing spots available especially through POTs.

Next up is that the impact of players in the world is zero. You cannot shape anything... except POTs and housing. Nothing to conquer, nothing to fight for. Nothing that makes people ally or creates any form of "realm" pride they called in DAoC. Those are all things SotA is misssing. There is no drivers for people to follow longterm goals as for example build your guild castle or whatever. All that is missing. Combined with the lack of impact the quests or your virtue actually have on the world around you and NPCs or players reacting towards you this feels just very very shallow. Of course some have made SotA a form of medieval second life. Operate a radio show etc... thats all good, but that doesn't make SotA a RPG game that gamers actually want to play. All this has been repeated all over reddit, Steam, Gaming sites and in this forum...
It should be a no brainer for Portalarium no realize why SotA is not attracting enough players.

 

I was thinking after point 1, Hmm how i going to tell Bowen i actually quite like grinding, point 2....is he serious...point 3...ahh ok get the post

However generally that's all there is at the moment....frosty sums up my feelings nearly perfectly...

I had hoped, and still do, that all facets of the game will have humongous depth, enough depth to keep a player specialised as time put into too many areas will diminish returns of being the best in a few, or one.

 

On this point I have to disagree. Lots are available with in-game gold and always have been.

Portalarium has previously stated they're not trying to attract a lot of players yet because the game isn't ready. They haven't spent a dime on any real marketing and won't do so until they're confident on a launch date.

Mostly agree on the rest but the subject is intended to be specifically about making grinding more interesting.

 

This is potentially a great thread. Bowen offers the idea, 'think to yourself "what would make this more interesting?" ', by which I think he means "what can the player bring to make it more interesting?" (correct me if I misunderstood, Bowen).

Vallo replies, " The game needs more features ", emphasizing "what the devs can bring to make it more interesting?" (correct me if I misunderstood, Vallo).

It seems to me that while these could easily made to be at odds, understanding both sides of this coin and their interaction could be very helpful to both game design and players approaches.

 

This looks like a well framed argument and not at all like bait in any way.

 

Well it would be interesting to hear player's ideas of what they could do. Originally I just intended to make a point about grinding in general.. then I was hmmm how to improve the grind in-game.. then I realized there are other posts for that and I don't want to be redundant or Berek might close the thread. heh

 

So I didn't misunderstand your final point, but had left out your main point which is that working to progress in this game is an important feature.
Let me know if I'm getting it.

 

Amazing how it is brought up so many times but the point is completely missed.

The grind - sure it is a problem, but "The Grind" is what not what MOST players are complaining about and giving up over .

There are player who did more than just grind, they abused a weak system that allowed them to progress at a rate which a NORMAL grinder will now NEVER be able to achieve.

Nothing was done to fix the result - just the problem.

Now those players where also used as a measuring stick to determine how things are adjusted - further widening the gap, NOT fixing it.

I can go back over the years and pull 100 of threads that have talked about and warned about issues that CAUSED these problems and then find where the cause was delt with but the affect was left unchecked, and made worse.

and it is NOT getting better.

I am sorry that these forums are becoming the only place there is positive feedback, almost everywhere else one looks the future is not bright.


The "Grind" cannot be removed . . . . . but it can (or could have been) be fixed.

 

I'm trying option 7 ..i'm in e-mail contact with Stephen Hawking for a proper way to do it.

 

So Weins, if I understand you, while the issue how to make progressing in the game interesting, while important, is not as much a problem as some players' marked progression earlier in persistence. Let me know if I'm understanding your point.

 

People seem to have the misconception that the grind is a concept that just "exists" by nature of repeating actions. It's not.

I can walk or run outside... or I could be on a treadmill. You're technically doing the same thing but one is artificial and, while you can gain from it, nobody really wants to do it because it is devoid of fun.

The grind is the feeling of being on the treadmill.

So while you may joke and say "we should remove everything in the game", the problem is that there's no reason to kill monsters other than gaining XP and a few items. Even if I were to have a story reason to do it, I wouldn't be able to accomplish said goal until I was powerful enough to do it. So you're on the perpetual treadmill... occasionally finding an excuse to apply what you've gained.

The original Diablo, for example, has little to no grind despite it's repetitive gameplay loop of killing and looting. The reason for that is because by the time you reach the next dungeon floor, you're powerful enough to handle whatever monster you'll find next. That makes monsters in that game being perceived as obstacles as opposed to XP vending machines.

The distinction is being stronger is a side-effect of you playing the game; not a necessity.

 

I get bored too but realize that "the grind" probably is necessary. My suggestion is random drops across all tiers. For example a mob may drop a map to a treasure somewhere in Novia. These maps would not be the same, they would designate a spot to dig randomly over the lands. The treasures could be anything, gold, a wearable, an artifact, deco, and etc. The drop rate can be low for the maps, but by gosh looking for those maps in the loot would make grinding more fun and stimulate me to travel the lands, which is much lacking in my game at the moment. Programming wise, I think this would be easy. The map would simply be tagged with a coordinant. When player mines at that coord, the treasure dig up routine would start.

 

If it gave me maps of areas in the same tier, yeah, that would actually be a nice way for the game to encourage you to go elsewhere.

You know...

 

I think its vitally important to this community to see this as a major issue that needs to be fixed in some way and not just irrationally like this. SOTA right now is by far the grindiest game I have ever played and I know, I am lvl 99 and all I do is grind for hours. This Sunday was 7 hours worth just to get one skill from 98 to 100 in the blade trees. I also spend hours and hours doing nothing but standing there smelting Gold, Copper, Silver and Bronze or. I also grinded a lot of cooking (from 89 to 100). I also planted 140 potatoes, the 280 buckets of water for 30 minutes was INSANE. May of us only have a few hours a week to play this game and you really cant function with the vast amount of grinding.

There are easy solutions like ending many of the needless crafting grinding, making materials. You could remove the hours and hours of these things and really and truly not effect the game that much.

Example: It takes me hundreds of hours of grinding for gold to buy gold and silver ore, I dont then need to spend hours more Turing it into ingots do I?

Just look at Ultima... my toon had 100 in every crafting tree (circa 1999) and I could make everything and it only took a few months and seemed to work great. I have been trying to raise crafting hard for a year in SOTA (prod lvl 73 on main and 73 on alt) and I dont think I'll hit GM's at this rate for YEARS (in things like enchanting and mastercrafting which I have focused almost soly on for the past year+).

But yes, every game has grinding (and needs it) but right now SOTA's is FAR to much.

 

I think maybe it had little grind because it was so freaking fun, not because it was perfectly balanced.

It didn't always work out that the single player game was even beatable because the dungeon didn't refill. I had a few time when I had to restart because my character was underpowered by the time I hit a later level. (Imagine that in Shroud, oh the angst filled rage quits we would witness!)

In multi-player, we could (and did) grind the same levels, but they were procedurally generated so they were never the same. Additionally, the gameplay was so new, constantly action packed, and there was always something good to work towards up in town.

Remember the despair of not being able to buy something before it left the store forever? Ah, that was a tense design.