Hearts are NOT quests, are NOT grindy

[Alaris]

it kinda has, GW has barely any grind, WoW is the mother of all grind.
even when i play forsaken world the grind is mild in comparison.

GW has a lot of grind, but it's mainly optional (my favorite kind).

WoW is grindy, yes, but keep in mind that apparently it is much less than many of its predecessors or its korean concurrence.

[Fluffball]

This thread is retarded. Grind has a negative connotation, i.e. "the work week" is the most common thing to be described as grind. If you want to describe something negatively, use the word grind. If something is fun, you can whine that it's technically grind, but you're being a jackass. Technically women have an "odor", but human beings usually describe it as a "scent" or "fragrance".

Glad I could end this once and for all.

[Alaris]

No, you smell.

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edit: on a more serious note, I agree Fluffball, that to solve the problem we need to split the definitional from the emotional, and realize that having "content which repeats itself" is not in itself a good or bad thing.

We can then look at repeating content and good and bad ways it was implemented, and see general ways that make said repeating content a good thing or a bad thing.

Hard mode: excellent
Achievements: usually good
Replay with different professions: good
Hearts: much better than the option below
Repeat 10x before doing something else: generally seen as bad or terrible

[shawn]

GW has barely any grind, WoW is the mother of all grind.

i lol'ed so hard

[harniq]

It's not that simple. Choosing between Grind A and Grind B does not make the grind go away. Don't get me wrong, I love choice in heart quests, but the reason I don't feel the grind isn't because the grind isn't there, it's because I can choose how to grind and because combat is actually a lot of fun.

Grind means you're forced into 1 thing. For example killing the same mob a million times. Crafting is also often very grindy because you're required to craft useless stuff 20 times to advance, then craft something equally useless. Having choices eliminates grind because you're not required to do one thing.

Let me make an easy to understand comparison. I don't like running. I don't like swimming. I like biking a bit. Training for a marathon is incredibly boring, almost grindlike, yet I absolutely love training for triathlons. Want to know why? I can go home after work and do what I feel like. If I want to run, I run. If I want to bike, I bike. When the weather's good, I go swimming. It all works to the same goal, yet the boring grind of running every day for hours is completely eliminated.

You can skip hearts, but then you'd need to do more dynamic events or WvW or something to compensate. The grind is still there, somewhere, the difference in GW2 is that you have a lot more ways to fill it.

You can do all hearts and still not feel like grinding. See the triathlon comparison for that to understand.

Agreed, and you should not accept it either. You should ask (and pay for) games that do not carry on these bad design choices (like GW2).

absolutely.

Urk. Even if they have more money (not 100%) they are also less likely to spend a large portion of it (per capita) that those who have more time to play. A good game will try to cater to the different groups by, for example, offering replay and completionist value to those who play more hours, while giving a pretty good bare-bones game for the casuals.

Make no mistake. I'm pretty hardcore during the 1 hour I play. Hardcore gamer =/= time spent gaming, but rather the intensity of the play, how fast you want to learn, what you want to achieve in the time you have. A blitz chessmatch is very hardcore yet it only takes about 5 minutes to play. Completionists are usually pretty casual because most titles and achievements can be done without much effort yet take huge amount of time.

Also, to me 5 euros for some gems is not much money. Again, this might hurt people because it's the truth, but I really have plenty of money to spend on stupid stuff which allows me to do so. I didn't blink an eye when buying gw2 CE, and I won't blink an eye when I paypal 20 euros of gems every month or so. Back when I was a student playing "hardcore", I had to save up money for WoW and Aion every month. It is the people with money who can spend money.

Disagree. They failed because only one game can have a sub, and they offered too little to compete with WoW. If grind was the problem, WoW would have failed by now. But people stick to WoW in part because they invested too much in their character to leave it behind. Grind makes you spend time in a game, but also makes you more likely to stick with it past its prime.

Hardcore people flocked to those games, but with hardcore alone, a small market segment nowadays, games are not sustainable. Patching stopped, servers dried up becaus non-grinders quit en masse and the hardcore people stopped playing after completing the game and there was no one more to compete with. But the downfall always starts by alienating the time limited people.

[Beren Iluthiel]

I'm sorry, I'm a simple man and I'm not good in english.
This is an interesting philosophical discussion, but I lost the point at around the fourth post
I play a game X because I like the ambientation, I like its music, its combat dynamics etc etc
More in general, and I'm ashame of my being so naiv, because I like it and I want to spent some time on it.
There is no holy book that could teach me what's funny and what it's not, it's my decision and most of all it's a personal taste about how I feel playing a game / doing everything I do in my life.
If I want to look at my feet all the day, I would be called strange (at least) but my grinding activity doesn't hurt nobody. As soon as I force someone to do the same, I would probably be told "No thanks"
Isn't the same for a mmorpg? We have plenty of informations on which we can decide to buy something nowadays. If these information would turn out to be false, we would lost some money but no one can force us to keep playing something we don't like.
It could happen we actually enjoy a game we wouldn't care less, just because it feels different for us.

Everything can be (or seems to be) one way and exactly the opposite one at the same time. (I'll win a nobel price for this discover)
I could be hero for someone and be a villain for another one, tell me who is right.
All of this just to say:

This game mechanic == grind feeling -> bad for me, I'll search something else
This game mechanic == no grind feeling -> best game in the universe

Discussion solved, 2 posts, thread closed, everyone on the beach grinding sex.

[Alaris]

Grind means you're forced into 1 thing. (...)

First, I really love hearts. I've explained that a lot.

Second, I understand your point, and I disagree with it. I disagree with the definitions, but not the emotion. On an emotional level, you focus on why grind is acceptable in some games and not others. But since you get the definitions wrong, you can't really understand it either.

Grind is repetition for progress. A good example is in GW2, you need to grind your weapon skills. Ask an elementalist or warrior, they'll tell you it's grindy. Not a lot, thankfully. You are not forced to do the same task, in fact, you can kill anything you want, as long as you get your kills. Yet it feels grindy especially when you start over for your 5th weapon set.

edit: by your definition above, all linear fps's are grindy because you never have choice. And yet they are not perceived as grindy at all.

This game mechanic == no grind feeling -> best game in the universe

You understood it very well.

[bearsfwd]

Grind means you're forced into 1 thing.

These hearts ARE grind. They may be optional, but if you plan on leveling up fast, you have to do them. Killing enemies all day isn't going to get you anywhere quickly. During the first BWE, I found monster XP to be rather underwhelming. So, unless that changes, hearts will be a primary source of XP. Dynamic events are too, but because the rewards are based upon how much you contribute, they aren't asure thing. Not to mention the rewards you get for completing the hearts (the money in the mail you get), and the rewards for 100% completion of an area.

The problem I see you running into is thinking that because you enjoy it, it's not grind. You tell us the definition of grind, yet you then forget the definition when it's something you enjoy. Just because the renown hearts have multiple ways to complete them, there is still an element of grind to them. You still have to do those things repetitively to complete them.

I said it before and I think only one person commented on it. You HAVE to accept grind in these types of games. Unless you want to play an MMO that doesn't have levels, stuff to kill, items to find, or quests/hearts/whatever you want to call them to complete, they will always be there. Are you going to sit there and tell me that having a leveling system is a bad design choice? Or that finding items is a bad design choice? All of these things are a form of grind. And all are pretty essential to an MMORPG, which is what we are talking about.

You want an MMO with no grind? Go play Playstation Home.

[Alaris]

Hearts are really static dynamic chains.

And I didn't say "dynamic events" because I meant "dynamic chains", they often have a few things happening in sequence before repeating. I remember one where it was calm then we got attacked by worms or something then we got attacked by harpies I think then it was calm again.

So basically, the same stuff you expect out of dynamic chains, except that the next step in the chain is at the same location as the previous step.

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@bearsfwd: the only game that has no grind that I can think of is Shadow of the Colossus. Each monster you meet you fight exactly once. All other games have a lot of grind in some way hidden within. FPS games re-use the same monsters, but they are good at keeping the location fresh and changing.

[Lady Rhonwyn]

@bearsfwd: the only game that has no grind that I can think of is Shadow of the Colossus. Each monster you meet you fight exactly once. All other games have a lot of grind in some way hidden within. FPS games re-use the same monsters, but they are good at keeping the location fresh and changing.

Wouldn't that become boring then? At one point, the world will be empty. You can do that in a (good) FPS as you'll follow a story and can't turn back.