Is this game a grind? An attempt to answer...

[random_tangent]

I have a game on my phone. It's an 8 Ball Pool game. You rank up, gain 'coins' and 'cash'. Progression is by winning and unlocking leagues, better cues and so on. It's a pay to win game but you can progress (as I have) without spending money.

Point is, it's entirely meaningless whether I'm putting down 25 coins for a match or 5 million coins. I'm still playing a game of pool with people of a similar rank (league based). The actual playing of the game is fun, not the meaningless accumulation of so called wealth and fancy cues and chat packs.

Whilst Elite is a much more complex game, at its heart, the same can be said, and it very much depends on how you perceive the game. You can perceive the game as a grind if your primary aim is to get an Anaconda. If on the other hand you're more interested in the 'stuff you can do' rather than the 'stuff you can own' then your perception of the game as a grind is likely to be lessened.

M2C

Edit: Essentially what Callahan44 was getting at above!

The reason so many people focus on stuff you can own is because of a lack of interesting stuff you can do. To argue that "take stuff from A to B" is just about your perception, is to ignore the fact that it is very very simple gameplay, which is more or less identical irrespective of "stuff" is or where A and B are. You have seen everything there is to see in combat, for example, after about 3 or 4 hours. And that's probably generous.

 

[Evil]

I have a game on my phone. It's an 8 Ball Pool game. You rank up, gain 'coins' and 'cash'. Progression is by winning and unlocking leagues, better cues and so on. It's a pay to win game but you can progress (as I have) without spending money.

Point is, it's entirely meaningless whether I'm putting down 25 coins for a match or 5 million coins. I'm still playing a game of pool with people of a similar rank (league based). The actual playing of the game is fun, not the meaningless accumulation of so called wealth and fancy cues and chat packs.

Whilst Elite is a much more complex game, at its heart, the same can be said, and it very much depends on how you perceive the game. You can perceive the game as a grind if your primary aim is to get an Anaconda. If on the other hand you're more interested in the 'stuff you can do' rather than the 'stuff you can own' then your perception of the game as a grind is likely to be lessened.

M2C

Edit: Essentially what Callahan44 was getting at above!

Grind isn't something that's perceived, while the amount of grind percieved is relative to the tolerance/acceptance per individual, it's the requirement/number of repetitive tasks needed to complete an objective/goal vs tolerance that can produce a "Grind Factor" result. Then if you tested many different versions of grind systems on a number of test subjects then some conclusions could be drawn.

 

[Snakebite]

One of the nice things about Elite is that you don't have to grind, you can just fly around and experience the Galaxy.

BUt if you want to acheive anything then yeah you must grind. Powerplay may change that as it should give us various quests and challenges that do not require grinding to complete.

 

[JesusOnEez]

It'll be interesting to see whether individual grind perception is lessened by PP and other 1.3 features. Grind is something that's perceived. If someone enjoys exploring, then it's not a grind to explore. If someone enjoys trading, it's not a grind to trade.

 

[Renegade Roach]

This whole argument hinges on how one defines 'grind' or 'grindy'. If a player defines it as something subjective and determined purely by one's attitude towards an activity then any game can be grindy/non-grindy. If, on the other hand, the definition is more of a descriptive term based upon whether a game's mechanics can be seen as relying on, or pushing a player towards, the continuous repetition of a limited number of simplistic tasks then it's easier to categorise games.

Taking the second approach, it's hard to deny that Elite is a grindy game. There are a very limited number of mechanics with which to interact with the game world. Those mechanics are almost all simplistic and highly repetitive. You can break up what you do by changing the repetitive and simplistic tasks you undertake. You can absolutely enjoy doing those tasks. Neither of which would change the nature of the mechanics involved.

Player piracy (and pvp in general) is one area which avoids this pitfall, and is why it appeals to so many players. It leads to emergent gameplay, every encounter is different and unpredictable. Heavy pvp can be costly though if you blow up a fair bit, and so will push you back towards those repetitive tasks in order to fund your habit. Pirates can stay out of it entirely if they're good, but only as long as they're happy to trade non-grindy gameplay against attaining a larger credit balance.

 

[Petersen]

Elite is as "theme park" as it gets.

Open World doesn´t define it´s NOT a Theme Park.

World of Warcraft is "open world" too, you can go everywhere, doesn´t mean you survive.

In Elite the level is your ship and how many credits you have, so it´s just another theme park in a different disguise

If Elite is a theme park, where are the rides? Levels (or 'progression') != theme park. Theme park games have very specific attractions (rides). Open world and theme park are not mutually exclusive terms. As you point out, WoW is open world, it's also a model theme park game with very specific attractions in which the player participates, but the player doesn't really contribute anything meaningful. There's no room for creativity.

The two opposed terms are "Theme Park" and "Sandbox" (but even these two are not clear-cut with no overlap). A sandbox game is generally where the designer gives you tools and a setting (a shovel & pail and a sandbox) and says "Go have fun", usually manifesting in exercises of creativity (like building things), but not always.

 

[EUS]

Re: Skyrim. Love that game played it many times through with different characters. To say there's no grind in Skyrim is to say you never crafted dragon armour.

 

[random_tangent]

It'll be interesting to see whether individual grind perception is lessened by PP and other 1.3 features. Grind is something that's perceived. If someone enjoys exploring, then it's not a grind to explore. If someone enjoys trading, it's not a grind to trade.

I suppose it depends on whether grind is a more loaded term than just "repetitive gameplay". That's all I really see it as - it's not so much a value judgement as a statement of fact. I suppose use of the term "grind" does imply doing that activity UNTIL it becomes boring though, to some extent. I think that's the problem. Ultimately, everyone will become bored of trading and exploration, because the gameplay associated with trading and exploration is pretty simple and repetitive. I have heard quite a few people compare trading in elite unfavourably to euro truck simulator Even an ostensibly boring, repetitive activity can be enjoyable for long periods with the right gameplay mechanics. The problem is, I don't believe Elite has those mechanics yet. Exploring is a good example. I've enjoyed my most recent trip. Have been out and about for a week or so. But the reason I've enjoyed it has nothing to do with gameplay. Scanning stuff is incredibly tedious, and once you've seen examples of most of what the procedural mechanics come up with, the novelty of "zomg this looks amazing!" wears off.

 

[Obsidian Ant]

I have updated the graphic in the original post to better illustrate "emergent gameplay", which I personally view as being on the opposite side of the scale to "grinding gameplay".

- - - Updated - - -

Re: Skyrim. Love that game played it many times through with different characters. To say there's no grind in Skyrim is to say you never crafted dragon armour.

No one said there is no grind in Skyrim.

However, constructing dragon armor is not the primary goal of the game.

 

[drew]

It'll be interesting to see whether individual grind perception is lessened by PP and other 1.3 features. Grind is something that's perceived. If someone enjoys exploring, then it's not a grind to explore. If someone enjoys trading, it's not a grind to trade.

A good point, however it can be a grind to get to the point where you can then enjoy the game.

E.g. In my case, my ambitions are quite modest. I wanted a Cobra in a multirole config that could do a bit of everything. With only a few hours a month to play, it's taken me months to get to a point where I can now do what I enjoy doing. Most things up to this point have been "Can't jump that far - need a better FSD - need cash" "Weapons are puny - need bigger guns - need cash" "Exploration scanner too weedy - need advanced scanner - need cash".

With limited time available I couldn't do missions and hope random number generators spawned the baddies in the right place for me. (Occasionally they did within my personal time constraints, but not often). Combat simply too dangerous in a flimsy starter ship. Trading in 'Rares' was my salvation. Boring, but reliable.

I don't need much cash, perhaps 10-15 million, and I'm just about there now, but I've had to (for me) play tediously for months so I can cobble together what I need to 'actually' play how I want to.

Now I can bounty hunt a bit, explore a bit, trade a bit and generally wander around the universe doing whatever takes my fancy - that's what I wanted to do from the off. The game prevented me from doing that early on, until I'd done a bit of grinding.

I'm not resentful particularly and the grind will soon stop once I've got my A-Class throughout Cobra, but it was still a grind.

Cheers,

Drew.

 

[callahan44]

Elite is no where near a "Theme Park".
I've played some MMO xpacs, where you are basically queuing up, with other players to kill mobs as they spawn, and then moving on to the next zone. You *never* go back to those zones. Totally linear, on a treadmill gameplay.

I thought Skyrim quests were dire. Cast a couple of apprentice spells and you'd be made Archmage, etc. It felt very "Theme Park".... I don't want to be a bloody Bard, but I have quest for it. lol

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I'm not sure exactly what players who say "it's only a grind if you make it a grind" are doing with their time, other than PvP. The content of the game, such as it is right now, is very grindy, imo. The "professions" centre around repeating the same tasks over and over again. Missions, as of 1.2, are bland, cookie-cutter affairs, which usually just involve exactly the same repetitive gameplay as other career activities - apart from assassinations, but the USS mechanic was pretty crappy in itself.

I think there are some people who are just satisfied by being in the universe itself. They don't require interesting things to do - the interesting thing is just being in a space ship and flying about. For most people, I can't help but feel that will wear off. There are other people for whom emergent, player-driven content is the attraction. I.e. One player group has blockaded a station and another player group are trying to break through. In other words: Eve. There are still others for whom PvP is the main draw.

However, there is a group of gamers that are not particularly well catered for in Elite (not that I'm arguing it's a basket of roses for all the above either). I worry they represent the majority, too. These gamers want content to play through. It doesn't matter how it's created or generated, but they want interesting things to do, they want to be given missions, involving characters and stories. They want the universe to feel like it's alive. They want persistent NPCs, battles around stations, planetary bombardments, resource sites with proper mining operations, combat zones that can be won or lost, mission arcs with different branches and outcomes, characters to develop alongside and to interact with. A lot of stuff feels highly simplistic and place-holder at the moment.

So, it's fine to say ED isn't a grind if you don't want it to be, but if your main pleasure in gaming is to complete interesting content within a rich and diverse universe, there isn't a lot to do instead of grind right now. I genuinely hope that will change. I would love a decent quest system with things like voice acted dialog, conversation options etc. I worry that powerplay implies FD see the game going in a different direction. To start putting meta-gaming layers on top of existing gameplay mechanics, when those mechanics are so simplistic and un-fulfilling - particularly in some areas (i'm looking at you, exploration) - seems somewhat premature. The only explanation I can think of is that they don't share the assessment that these areas are lacking.

I have been playing since beta and haven't found it to be grindy as all. I think it depends how much you play and what your motivations are. Even though I have been playing for a long time, i've just now got the money together to get myself a clipper. Thats because I have been doing things that I find fun, not necessarily profitble. I was flying around in my Eagle for months.

 

[Snakebite]

What about bounty hunting ?

Repeatedly killing other ships over and over and over in a RES order to simply increase you combat rank IS a grind.

But hunting down that wanted player over many hundreds of light years, going from system to system picking up clues and following the trail. Then finally catching your quarry and going into stealth mode, following him from a distance (trying to fly casual) before interdicting him out of sight of the authorities... Now that is not a grind, the end result is the same (one more dead bad guy) but it is not so repetitive as it involves time and thought and planning.. and cunning..... with a bit of detective work, some patience, and at the end a quick trigger finger...

That is what Bounty hunting should be like.

And that is the difference between a grind mechanic and a non grind mechanic..... Which is more fun ?

 

[Ekar]

I'm not sure I've played a modern game which was as overtly 'grindy' as ED currently is. Some parts of the game you're just meant to grind, like the CG's, and more recently, the PP update. Before these additions, I wouldn't have thought of ED as that grindy, because there was no set way to play it, and of course you could still make that argument (you don't have to do CG's, you don't have to pledge to a Power), but it's hard to defend the game with the argument that it's not set up to reward grind.

Before CG's and PP, you could do Rare's trading if you wanted to make credits. I also struggled with this, mostly because of the repetition of assets in the game (all station interiors look the same). You would buy, jump, dock at the same looking station, repeatedly, and go around in circles until you couldn't handle it anymore. Since Rare's paid well, the game also rewarded that style of grind. If you weren't trading rares or getting heavily involved in trading, it would take a long, long time to work your way up to an Asp (which was my goal).

I have my explorer fitted Asp docked and ready for exploration now, but I'm not terribly excited about heading out into the unknown these days. I anticipate more grind there as well, until the universe or the exploration mechanic gets fleshed out a bit more. Perhaps I'll save the experience for planetary landings(?), aliens, or something else.

 

[Jex =TE=]

The game depends on what you are doing. If you are trying to buildup money, then that is pure grinding. However, exploring the galaxy is not grinding, neither is going to a nav point and blowing up pirates (unless it's solely for making money). I had a blast in my Eagle taking on the AI (admittedly, it was limited fun and got old quick) but whilst I was making cash, I wasn't doing it for that.

 

[B33 ENN]

[...] This is the Elite that I imagined...it is the Elite which was discussed in the design documents and during the early development. This is an Elite which can be placed to the far right of my graph. However this is not the Elite we actually have.

I agree with your take. For me, the visual feast of Elite has delivered. However, the mechanisms of the game feel dated; a reskin of a old technology. I don't yet see the innovation talked about in interviews like this:

http://www.pcgamer.com/david-braben-on-the-ambitious-future-of-elite-dangerous/

My hope is that it's a financial pressure that has re-ordered Frontier's priorities to get the game out, and before Star Citizen, and then later start to replace the simplistic mechanics with more sophisticated techniques.

I do enjoy the game as it is currently, since I kind of make my own fun and story, but I do get irritated often from arbitrary constraints that just waste my gaming time twiddling my thumbs while I wait to get back to the fun.

 

[callahan44]

The game depends on what you are doing. If you are trying to buildup money, then that is pure grinding. However, exploring the galaxy is not grinding, neither is going to a nav point and blowing up pirates (unless it's solely for making money). I had a blast in my Eagle taking on the AI (admittedly, it was limited fun and got old quick) but whilst I was making cash, I wasn't doing it for that.

I'm the same. I hopped into a CZ the other day just for a bit of pew pew. Then I read someone moaning that a mission to kill 8 ships in a CZ only paid 500k. Anything I earnt was just a bonus to my fun.

 

[kreuzbichler]

If Elite is a theme park, where are the rides? Levels (or 'progression') != theme park. Theme park games have very specific attractions (rides). Open world and theme park are not mutually exclusive terms. As you point out, WoW is open world, it's also a model theme park game with very specific attractions in which the player participates, but the player doesn't really contribute anything meaningful. There's no room for creativity.

The two opposed terms are "Theme Park" and "Sandbox" (but even these two are not clear-cut with no overlap). A sandbox game is generally where the designer gives you tools and a setting (a shovel & pail and a sandbox) and says "Go have fun", usually manifesting in exercises of creativity (like building things), but not always.

Where are the rides? The rides are exactly the same
In Wow you pick up a quest to kill a certain number of dwarfs and get credits
In Elite you pick up a quest to kill a certain number of pirates and get credits
-> theme park ride

In Wow you pick up a quest to deliver 10 duck eggs to a NPC
In Elite you pick up a quest to deliver 10 food canisters to a NPC
-> theme park ride

In WoW you grind for better gear
In Elite you grind for better gear

and somehow you think these games are in different genres? lol
Elite is 100% theme park like Wow, pure and simple

In Wow you can do different things, no one forces you what to do next. Queue up for PvP, go crafting, go exploring, take missions whereever you want. How is that not "open world"?
That graph is nonsense.

It´s sickening how misused the term open world is. In fact everything that is not a damn linear 2D side scroller is basically open world nowawdays, that doesn´t make it a sandbox though. Levels have nothing to do with it whatsoever.

 

[random_tangent]

I have been playing since beta and haven't found it to be grindy as all. I think it depends how much you play and what your motivations are. Even though I have been playing for a long time, i've just now got the money together to get myself a clipper. Thats because I have been doing things that I find fun, not necessarily profitble. I was flying around in my Eagle for months.

I agree, you CAN avoid grinding. However, I'd argue that the way the game itself measures progress and rewards players encourages grind-like play. I would also argue that shallow gameplay mechanics and a lack of content mean that, for a lot of players (again, I'm not in anyway trying to speak for everyone or make absolute statements of fact), there isn't much to do but grind to hit your next cred/ship/rank/faction rank milestone.

I'm genuinely curious though. What have you been doing in your eagle for months? As a combat oriented ship, I loved flying it. I hit up a few RES, I tried a few combat zones, I let myself get interdicted from time to time. That more or less exhausts non-PvP combat gameplay. Once I got to that point, I started to look for other things to do. Natural next step was to aim for a better ship. This resulted in RES grind.

- - - Updated - - -

The game depends on what you are doing. If you are trying to buildup money, then that is pure grinding. However, exploring the galaxy is not grinding, neither is going to a nav point and blowing up pirates (unless it's solely for making money). I had a blast in my Eagle taking on the AI (admittedly, it was limited fun and got old quick) but whilst I was making cash, I wasn't doing it for that.

It depends what you mean by "grind," but exploration, once you get used to the "wow" factor, is extremely repetitive, and involves long periods of doing very little but flying from one point to the next, usually in a straight line. I'm not saying that is objectively "boring" - to each his own - but the only thing that prevents it from being classified as a grind is that you're not doing it for a specific reward or to reach a specific mile-stone (unless you are, but that's another story). It does share many of the common, negative stereotypes associated with grind gameplay.

 

[Obsidian Ant]

This is the updated section of the graphic which shows what I feel is "non grind" style gameplay...

Again, this is just my personal take. Currently I don't believe Elite offers mechanics that support this type of gameplay.

Although the galaxy itself is open and unrestricted, allowing the player to effectively go where they want, when they want...the galaxy itself does not react and therefore allow emergent gameplay as illustrated above. The only thing that it currently reacts to are progress bars filling up - and these merely have the potential to trigger state changes. As an individual player though, the game does not support me creating any form of emergent game play through the mechanics that are currently in place.