I'd call it 'grind' when the application of strategy is no longer required ie. performing tasks in the game simply require the application of time.

So to remove grind, you need to keep the players thinking about how to approach situations in your game. That is not an easy thing to do, especially in large multiplayer games where optimal strategies for taking on situations are quickly discovered and distributed.

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Original post by Argus2 I'd call it 'grind' when the application of strategy is no longer required ie. performing tasks in the game simply require the application of time. So to remove grind, you need to keep the players thinking about how to approach situations in your game. That is not an easy thing to do, especially in large multiplayer games where optimal strategies for taking on situations are quickly discovered and distributed.

I agree wholeheartedly. The thing is that the optimal strategies are discovered and distributed because the situations never change. Simply giving the orcs in a given instance crossbows instead of swords changes the situation somewhat, and that's easily done I'd imagine.

I was the AP above if that wasn't apparent.

Im glad you mentioned you are putting off commercial considerations, because here is the kicker. It comes down to money. How do you get 50000 to sit down and play a game for at bare minimum a few months? It is near impossiable to create the sheer amount of content for a MONTH of gameplay, let alone anything that warrents a subscription level. So for this we have the grind. It causes players to repeat and repeat the same level(s) over again in order to WASTE TIME. the more time it takes, the more subscription fees they make.

So you create a game with no grind. FANTASTIC, it may even be the most popular game in the word. Heres the kicker, no one will subscribe for more then 2 months, likely less, especialy if it is engrossing. Many MMORPG players will sit down for hours on end every day, and would complete a standard game like that (assuming 40-60 hours worth of content) in under a month.

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I agree wholeheartedly. The thing is that the optimal strategies are discovered and distributed because the situations never change.

Even in a changing world, human players are very adaptable - they'll work out near-optimal solutions to static game mechanics, and find AI flaws etc.

The monster AI in WoW for instance, is very simplistic - but at least the designers know it will be effective. A more complicated (interesting) AI may well be abused, and as soon as an AI exploitation is made known, you have hundreds of thousands of players using it to gain access to content that you've tried to make unique or rare.

I think PaulCesar is somewhat right. Grind works, and is relatively simple to implement. The alternative is an everchanging world without content requirements, which is effectively the holy grail of emergent behaviour which miraculously retains balance and strategy.

Grinding was not really a problem for me in WoW. My issues with that game were linear advancement, and the lack of strategy in character creation.

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Original post by Wombah I think it becomes grind when you know that you´re doing that 'dungeon' to get that specific 'sword of doom' reward. Going through molten core twenty times or so, until you get a full set of gear/drops is grind. Doing molten core the first time is not. I think there is some inherent flaws in the way such dungeons work. The most basic is that the dungeon is at all inhabited the second time around... :/

Iron Chef did a good job of clarifying what I was thinking. And I do agree that the "No grind!" folk are wanting to have their cake and eat it too. Realistically, you don't HAVE to do Molten Core twenty times. If you only want to do it once, you can. The only reason you feel like you have to do it is because you can keep getting rewarded by doing it multiple times. The only way, then, to stop it from seeming "required" is to completely remove the reward from Molten Core. Either, stop you from entering it entirely after the first time you do it, or make it impossible to get any XP/items/gold/whatever after your first time. And this would need to propagate throughtout WoW: you would need to set a hard cap on everything, not just level 60, but an absolute maximum on items, gold, faction points, etc., so that once you hit that, you can gain absolutely nothing no matter how hard you try, and will forever be equal to all other characters, with no chance of advancement. That's the only way to stop "grind". And, unless you have something interesting to replace it with, like a live GM team, which is unrealistic, or some fun bragging-rights-only gameplay, which is generally not very maintainable, then the players have effectively "beat" WoW when they hit level 60, and will stop playing.

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No, but the thing is that it is the repetitive action that's wrong in the first place. And if you put a reward that everyone wants/needs at the end, then that repetitive action becomes mandatory as well... That's where the grind starts.

And this is the double-edged sword I'm talking about. Either you phsyically disallow people from being able to repeat any actions (like you lock them out of a dungeon after they complete it once, or you stop monsters from ever respawning, or you lock them into a linear story path), or, you remove the reward from doing anything twice, which means that since it's impossible to have infinite content, that they will quickly reach the end of the game and have nothing to do but revisit old content that will not actually offer them anything new or different. As soon as you put any sort of standard RPG behavior, like "monsters give XP" or "monsters have gold", you create Grind: people will be able to repeatedly kill things for XP and gold. There is no way to really remove that without a completely new design, and there's not much garuantee that anyone would like that design. It's pretty much been proven that people love XP and gold.

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From a game point of view I'd probably rather have a thousand dedicated players that like the community, rp aspects and setting of my (still hypothetical) game than a hundred thousand bored grinders.

But that's an interesting phenomenon. It might seem to an outside observer that WoW players are bored or don't like "the grind", but no one is forcing them to do it. In fact, they are paying for the privilege to grind, and there are hundreds of thousands of them. Sure, they complain a lot, but that's what gamers do. I don't think there's been a game released since the proliferation of internet message boards that doesn't include a large contingent of whining naysayers who inexplicably still spend 3/4 of their lives glued to whatever they're complaining about. If you asked a typical WoW player, I'm sure he would say "Of course I don't want to have to go through Molten Core again! I just want the Uber Armor 3000 set NOW NOW NOW!!!", but, if you actually just had a button in your game that said "Give me Uber Armor 3000 set NOW.", everyone would click it, and immediately start whining about how bored they are, and how their Uber Armor 3000 isn't special anymore because every nub on the block has it too.

I just thought of something else that always comes up when people discuss Grind. The main question should be "What are you grinding TO?", and secondarily, why is it important to reach that point? In WoW, you basically grind so that you can do the most points of damage of everyone on your server. Why is this important? There are relatively few reasons:

1) Bragging rights.
2) So that you can grind even faster.
3) So that you have a better chance of killing other players.

The only one that seems to be a "problem" is that you need it to kill other players. Detractors of grind seem to want a perfectly even PvP playing field, where their sucess is completely determined by player skill, and not at all by time spent in the co-op sections of the game. My only real suggestion is that MMORPGs are not made for these people. There are already plenty of PvP games that offer a level playing field: shooters, RTS, TBS, puzzle games, action games, racing games, sports games.... in fact, the MMORPG is the ONLY genre that I can think of that factors victories in the non-PvP section of the game into power in the PvP-section of the game. And MMORPGs are not solely based around people who want to do nothing but PvP on an even playing field; they are primarily geared to people who LIKE grind, and just don't know it yet. They want to find cool items that no one else has, get more gold than the next guy, gain lots of XP and race past their slow friends in levels, etc. If you take all that out of your game, you're not really making an MMORPG.

Someone who primarily wants to roleplay isn't going to care that their Orc Hunter does 10 points less damage then some other Orc Hunter that grinds Molten Core all day. He's Gruntnok the Savage, the angsty ex-soldier with a bad attitude, out creating plots and telling stories with his friends and spending half his time in a tavern emoting. Someone who loves min-maxing and powering up isn't going to spend that much time PvP-ing except to show off his awesome stats, and these people are the biggest players of MMORPGs; they want the grind, the amount they're willing to grind shows off their hardcore-ness to everyone else. They want to keep getting new, cool items and power ups as they play; they don't want a static playing field. Someone who cares about adventuring and exploring and story won't care about the grind. They'll go through Molten Core once to see what it's like; they'll explore everything in your game and do every quest, and then they'll create a new character to see what other interesting parts are in your game. If they're a "completist" they might feel like they should grind a little to get the ultimate armor, but they don't really care that much about stats or being the best PvP-er on the server.

So, the only people I can really see who have a case for hating grind are basically the people who don't want to play an MMORPG at all: those who just want to play a PvP skill-based game that allows character customization.

Hmm. So much I disagree with that I don't know where to start... :)

Right, here is the core of what bothers me with the last few posts;

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Original post by makeshiftwings So, the only people I can really see who have a case for hating grind are basically the people who don't want to play an MMORPG at all: those who just want to play a PvP skill-based game that allows character customization.

Where in the acronym MMORPG is said PvP skill-based game that allows character customization excluded? Why can't you make both at the same time? MMORPG for me means this:
* 100+ (possibly several thousands or more) players online simultaneously
* A persistant world
* A roleplaying game

If I interpret this strictly, WoW and the others are not MMORPG's, since they flunk the rpg part. But since RPG in computer games more or less only means your character changes during the game I'll give them a break even if it hurts my PnP rpg heart. But I can't see how a PvP, skillbased game with character customization is excluded...

Just because Blizzard has succeeded with their game dosn't mean theirs is the only way to make an MMORPG. But since WoW, EQ and EVE are so big it's the first thing people think of when they hear MMORPG. Or even just MMO.

I wasn't going to discuss the economical side of things, but the same thing goes there. WoW needs 50,000+ (500,000?) subscribers since they're supposed to feed hundreds of blizzard employees (I'm guessing). Doesn't mean that any game with less subscribers is a failure though. Doesn't mean any game with less subscribers is not an MMO either. That first M is fairly relative...
[edit]Just struck me that we've been talking about subscribers as a given, but that is not necessary for a MMO either. It's just the most used mode of payment currently.[/edit]

In essence what bothers me is that I feel like people in general often think MMORPG == WoW and since WoW includes grind MMORPG includes grind.

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Original post by makeshiftwings Realistically, you don't HAVE to do Molten Core twenty times. If you only want to do it once, you can. The only reason you feel like you have to do it is because you can keep getting rewarded by doing it multiple times. [...snip...]then the players have effectively "beat" WoW when they hit level 60, and will stop playing.

Well as I, and a couple of the devoted WoW players I know see it, WoW's only endgame is PvP. And in PvP in a game with the gamemechanics of WoW, you need to do Molten Core more than once. And if you don't count the continued PvPing the players have effectively 'beat' WoW at 60.

That's true, a lot of MMO games pretty much end at a certain level, either becasue levelling becomes obscenely difficult or because the world is all out of challenges. PvP becomes the goal, and that, as has been observed before, is a distinct departure from the grind that players have been paying for for the last x months.

So, I think we need some more data on this. What portion of WoW players stay after hitting level 60, when the grind is no longer the addicting treadmill that it's been for so long? How many make new characters, how many turn to PvP, and how many continue to grind the Molten Core, levelling once a month or less, because they know nothing else?

If players are willing to turn away from the grind when it "finishes", then I'd say it would certainly be worthwhile to make a game with a less prominent grind and more "extra-grind" activities. EVE springs to mind. Year-old veterans and month-old newbs can work together side-by-side in EVE, and neither feels like they're getting gypped out of loot or fun.

If starting a new character is valid, then why not expore a game with expendable characters, like the zombie MMO idea linked in the OP? Diablo players have been building stables of unique characters for co-op and PvP play for what, close to a decade now? Why not throw in a faster training curve and perma-death and let them role-play like PnP RPGers do--rolling up a new character every few adventures, and fondly remembering the ones they lost in past campaigns.

If players are willing to grind and grind and grind and grind and grind, then just give them the chance to do that. Let them activate "Unbuffers", that will cripple their high-level character and multiply the XP they get, so they can go through the newb parts again as a newb, but have the XP accumulate on their character, so they can deactivate the crippling effects and spring back to full-power, better than before. That'll keep them all from grinding in the same place, at least.

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Original post by Wombah Where in the acronym MMORPG is said PvP skill-based game that allows character customization excluded?

It is excluded becuase if you allow characters to advance through PvE play (ie, grinding), then that by nature unbalances the field because PvP-only folk will get mad that they "have" to play through the PvE part to get all the same loot as the non-pvp folk. This is shown even in Guild Wars, one of the most grindless MMORPGs I've played; it even lets you start at the level cap with some pre-selected items and spells if you want to just PvP. But still, people complain that they have to grind to get all the same things that someone else who grinds got.

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If I interpret this strictly, WoW and the others are not MMORPG's, since they flunk the rpg part.

If "true RP" is the main thing you're going for, then a level PvP deathmatch playing field shouldn't be important. As I said, a "true" holier-than-thou roleplayer would revel in having worse stats than the next guy, because it would prove how true he is to his character and how little he cares for pithy game mechanics. Plenty of "true" roleplayers RP fine on IRC or WoW. Almost all p&p games I've played have "grind" built in; that is essentially what XP, gold, and items are.

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In essence what bothers me is that I feel like people in general often think MMORPG == WoW and since WoW includes grind MMORPG includes grind.

No, it's more all MMORPGs have grind, not just WoW.

All this aside, I think it's possible to create an RPG-esque game with no grind, but it wouldn't be what most people consider an RPG. Something like a MUSH or virtual world where there's not much combat and everybody has the power to do whatever they want, and interaction is done by consensual story telling. Or something like an FPS where you can customize your look and choose from a predefined list of weapons that everybody starts with. But I don't see how you could have levels, xp, and gp earnable in a cooperative PvE environment without it being termed "grind" by players.

Good points.

What about a system of specialized trade-offs? Fallout had characteristics like "One-Hander" and "Finesse" that buff certain situations and penalize others. If you choose "One-Hander", then you get a bonus to your skill with one-handed weapons, but suffer a penalty for two-handed weapons. "Finesse" reduces your average damage, but lets you get more frequent and more devastating critical hits.

That sort of thing might really spice up an MMOG, except that you'd never get the balance right, and the players would figure out which combination was "best" and post in on GameFaqs within a month.

But what if you go balls-out with specializations? Have a "dungeon" require a set of skills that you couldn't possibly have with fewer than six characters, and force players to form groups to accomplish that sort of goal. Forget killing monsters. Sure, there are a few radioactive mutants in the facility, but one or two guys with assault rifles can beat them back. Trouble is, if you build your character to fight ghouls, you'll never get the skills to hack those blast doors, so you can stand there and shoot monsters all day, but you won't get to the armory to score the lewt. So you need a hacker and a few medics just in case, and a demolitons man to really get into the heart of the base, and once you get there you'll learn that you really need an engineer to get the generators back online so the hacker can finish his work, so you'll fight your way out and recruit one, then head back in.

You can still have a sort of grind, of course. Have your "hacker" skill levelling with each use of the skill, or maybe passively in the background, like EVE's skills do, but with limitations. You only get a few skill slots, perhaps, so you can have a character that can fight, and hack, and repair all at level one and do low-level dungeons solo, or you build a super-hacker and crack any encryption, but you'll need a lot of backup to get there and survive while you do it.

I'd say two or three weeks is a reasonable amount of time to get a character viable. In EVE, when my corp decides that we need a few more production experts, we get a couple volunteers, give them the skill books, and set them training. Then, in six or seven days, they're ready to start work.