Don't Mind The Grind!

KING5TON

KING5TON
Isn't the point of E: D that you only grind if you want to.

If you want to do milk runs to earn credits you can.
If you want to mine the same safe asteroids over and over again you can.

or you can be a pirate and rob some booty
or you can be a bounty hunter and hunt some scum
or you can be an explorer and venture into the unknown
or you can take on missions and do whatever they tell you to do.
etc...

I personally won't be doing much in the way of trading or mining. Might do a little bit here and there but mainly I'll be doing the more exciting things :)
 

Riedquat

Riedquat
Considering you can play single player or with a small group , I have no problem with grinding, in fact I am looking forward to my first milk run.

Trading in the original Elite was what kept me addicted, trying to find those lucrative routes.
 

Philip Coutts

Volunteer Moderator
Philip Coutts
I loved the early part of Elite. The limited financial clout and poor equipment. Surviving a scrap with a pirate was a huge achievement and hugely rewarding. I'll dodge away at the start delivering parcels and a little bit of trading. Looking forward to updating weapons, shields, cargo space as my financial state allows!
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
KING5TON said:
I personally won't be doing much in the way of trading or mining. Might do a little bit here and there but mainly I'll be doing the more exciting things :)
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I still see other "exciting" things (try to do a high profit trade run trough pirate infested system) as grinding, because you will have to do a lot of this stuff before buying new upgrades for your ship - or upgrade to Cobra for example :D
 

Oss133

Oss133
To paraphrase Tinman, who did hit the nail on the head, one man's "grinding" is another man's "playing the game".
 

JohnStabler

JohnStabler
oss133 said:
To paraphrase Tinman, who did hit the nail on the head, one man's "grinding" is another man's "playing the game".
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And that is why I do not agree with Tin Man.

Grinding is performing any task repeatedly, usually for reward. That is the primary meaning behind it. Sometimes it is fun and sometimes it is not. But either way it is grinding.

I understand that many people associate the word with bad experiences or poor game design, but the subjective nature of gameplay makes the term grinding less useful if it is only used to simply mean bad gameplay.
 

Oss133

Oss133
JohnStabler said:
And that is why I do not agree with Tin Man.

Grinding is performing any task repeatedly, usually for reward. That is the primary meaning behind it. Sometimes it is fun and sometimes it is not. But either way it is grinding.

I understand that many people associate the word with bad experiences or poor game design, but the subjective nature of gameplay makes the term grinding less useful if it is only used to simply mean bad gameplay.
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But surely all games have you performing tasks repeatedly.
 

Tinman

Tinman
JohnStabler said:
And that is why I do not agree with Tin Man.

Grinding is performing any task repeatedly, usually for reward. That is the primary meaning behind it. Sometimes it is fun and sometimes it is not. But either way it is grinding.

I understand that many people associate the word with bad experiences or poor game design, but the subjective nature of gameplay makes the term grinding less useful if it is only used to simply mean bad gameplay.
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My comment obviously tounge in cheek, but for "most" people the term "grinding" is indeed associated with "boring repetitive gameplay". What is fun and what is boring is of course a totally subjective matter.

According to dictionaries the word usually (although not always) seems to have a "negative" meaning:

grind away
work or study hard:
he began to grind away in a job as a research assistant

grind someone down
wear someone down with continuous harsh treatment:
mundane everyday things which just grind people down

grind on
continue for a long time in a wearying or tedious way:
the rail talks grind on

grind something out
produce something dull or tedious slowly and laboriously:
the band was grinding out the inevitable summer songs
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All of this is of course just a play with words. ;)
 

PacalB

PacalB
I've always puzzled at developers with this whole *grind* thing. I mean, we all know that people complain, complain and complain when they end up seeing missions or actions repeated over and over again. Is it so hard then to design enough missions that you would rarely ever see the same one twice?

How many would it take? A thousand? Two thousand? More? There must be a point, right? Why not take an average for the average players total missions over say a year, raise the number a hundred or more above that and work from there? This way every time someone did a mission it would always be different.

I think something as simple as that would go a long way in reducing the feeling of *grind*. Hell, if the devs can't think of enough missions, open it up to the games fan base for mission design, have FD oversee them then add them to the game. Pretty soon you would have hundreds if not thousands of missions, no?

Of course, even with this done you are still going to get the kind of characters whom have the attention span of a fruit fly. These characters will always find a reason to whine no matter what is given to them. :)
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
JohnStabler said:
I understand that many people associate the word with bad experiences or poor game design, but the subjective nature of gameplay makes the term grinding less useful if it is only used to simply mean bad gameplay.
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Sometimes it can mean bad gameplay, or unbalanced one, as you are required to grind rather big amounts of stuff. However I think in general it is purely subjective, and based on nothing else than player's attitude towards "time sinks" - parts of the game which requires repeated actions. There are players who don't like any amount of grinding - small, funny, challenging or boring, long, and tedious. Those are mostly clients of MT shops.

It is worth to remember that grinding is critical core part of sandbox games. Yes, some activities are less interesting than others subjectively, but still - it doesn't change nature of the game.
 

KING5TON

KING5TON
PacalB said:
I've always puzzled at developers with this whole *grind* thing. I mean, we all know that people complain, complain and complain when they end up seeing missions or actions repeated over and over again. Is it so hard then to design enough missions that you would rarely ever see the same one twice?

How many would it take? A thousand? Two thousand? More? There must be a point, right? Why not take an average for the average players total missions over say a year, raise the number a hundred or more above that and work from there? This way every time someone did a mission it would always be different.

I think something as simple as that would go a long way in reducing the feeling of *grind*. Hell, if the devs can't think of enough missions, open it up to the games fan base for mission design, have FD oversee them then add them to the game. Pretty soon you would have hundreds if not thousands of missions, no?

Of course, even with this done you are still going to get the kind of characters whom have the attention span of a fruit fly. These characters will always find a reason to whine no matter what is given to them. :)
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Grinding is typically a MMO specific thing (although some other none MMO games can be guilty of it). It's a method of padding out a game. MMO's that have a subscription model (spits) have to string out what the players are able to do as long as possible so that they keep playing and paying for the game.

So you can grind a certain area killing stuff at a lower or similar level to your character to level them up before they move onto a new area with a higher level requirement or you can grind out materials in a certain area to sell or make stuff.

p.s. watch these if you haven't already
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2634-World-of-Warcraft-Cataclysm

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/208-Eve-Online

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/138-Age-of-Conan
 

Davidtq

D
Riedquat said:
Considering you can play single player or with a small group , I have no problem with grinding, in fact I am looking forward to my first milk run.

Trading in the original Elite was what kept me addicted, trying to find those lucrative routes.
Click to expand...

I always found the most reliable profits were to be found running a cargo bay full of vacuum to feudal or anarchic worlds (occaisionally adding some precious metals \ gems to the mix where prices suited). Being as I never used missiles profits were 100% of takings - fuel. The holy grail was a industrial \ agricultural anarchic pair within 1ly of each other. Legal Piracy \ hull mining \ bounty hunting with benefits call it what you will. It made credits and upped the combat rating.

It was also a fun way of grinding...
 

KING5TON

KING5TON
PacalB said:
LOL, what to say to those? Seems he nailed it with all of them, and now ... my life feels diminished! :eek:
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:) Yahtzee is the man.
There's tons of his videos going back years. A few aren't much cop but most make me chortle at least once.

My favourite is the STALKER Clear sky one as it has a quote I used from time to time when doing QA testing "More bugs than a crack <Insert term for lady of negotiable affection here> with the sniffles".

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/271-S-T-A-L-K-E-R-Clear-Sky


He's also where the "Glorious PC gaming master race" comes from
 
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Alpha Protocol

Alpha Protocol
breakpointUK said:
I know, I know...

but I have been thinking about what I consider to be my long haul gaming experiences...

Frontier: Elite II (Amiga)
Spent hours upon hours doing trade runs, package drops and combating pirates.

Final Fantasy 7 (PSX)
Spent hours upon hours levelling all the characters and working out methods to greatly increase AP, by staying in a certain location and spinning around to enter battle sequences with certain enemies, every character had full combined materia for each type.

Freelancer (PC)
... performing trade runs, killing wave after wave of nomads to pick up special weaponry to give to clan members via an alt account 2nd PC online at the same time, teaching new clan recruits how to perform better at dog fights and basically waste time performing sentry duty.

Oblivion (Xbox 360/PC/PS3)
... over a total of 1000hrs invested in this one, multi character setups, all skills at 100, all items, all houses, stupid amounts of septims, all gates closed... etc etc

WoW (PC)
... i grinded my mats like crazy, funny thing is that i was collecting ore without having the map locations marked, purely running/riding around reading the landscape. 15th best fury warrior (before MoPs) on my realm after only 1 year!

Tetris
For me the best game ever made, simple... perfect. If aliens landed tomorrow and asked me to (pray they don't), "describe humanity". I would answer "play Tetris".

To say I don't mind a grind is an understatement!

But, in recent threads much has been said about microtranactions...

... in WoW i could of bought an impressive mountable dragon for £24.99 (ish), but i spent hours upon hours (around 2 months) saving tol barad point for the wings of the west (could be north) dragon... yes it was a grind, but I had friends to talk to and raids to do.... but it was worth it, I had an impressive dragon that people knew I had got the hard way!

So question is am I alone in not minding the grind?
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WoW is the game I have probably spent the most time playing and is a grind fest of magnanimous proportions. I personally, am not looking forward to any grind even remotely akin to WoW.

No offense intended, as I can appreciate your preferred game style. I played WoW off and on for many years, and my wife still plays occasionally too.

The gear grind, dailies, reputation, all so you can stay on top of the latest content is too job-like.

I just want to log-in when I can and not feel pressured to run a gauntlet of required content.

That's what excites me most about Elite and SC. My wife and I are backing both and plan on enjoying the diversity each sandbox brings us without feeling compelled to do anything in particular.
 
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Maxeren

Maxeren
Alpha Protocol said:
WoW is probably the game I have spent the most time player and is undoubtedly a grind fest of magnanimous proportions. I personally am not looking forward to any sort of grind whatsoever even remotely akin to WoW.

No offense intended, and I can appreciate your preferred game style. I played WoW off and on for many years, my wife still plays occasionally too.

The gear grind, dailies, reputation. all so you can stay on top of the latest content is too job-like.

I just want to log-in when I can and not feel pressured to run a gauntlet of required content.

That's what excite me most about Elite and SC. My wife and I are backing both and plan on enjoying the diversity each sandbox brings us without feeling compelled to do anything in particular.
Click to expand...

Im just envious by the fact that your wife plays games with you :/
 

breakpointUK

breakpointUK
Alpha Protocol said:
I am very lucky :D. Let your wife fly your ship a few times, you never know... ;)
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If you look at our car you'll understand why I am not going to let her near my Cobra mk III

Maybe I should introduce to docking in the original Elite, might improve her parking skills
 
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