It's been a little while since I posted an update, I've been busy with several projects. Slowly I'm regaining my free-time. It feels good ;)
A couple people asked me to keep my posts a little shorter so readers can keep up with the topics easier, so I'm going to try to do that for now on.
So, let's move onto the topic, The Grind.
The Grind - The duration of time over an extensively long task going from point A to point B. Usually resulting in a long, drawn out repetition of the same task. This usually spans a large majority of the time spent in an MMORPG. The most frequent grind is the EXP grind usually starting at level 1 and spans out to max level.
Imagine if the grind completely overwhelmed over 90% of a MMO's gameplay, you would continue doing the same repetition over and over for almost your entire extent of gameplay. This is a problem because if it's almost all of your gameplay, then you're not really doing much else. MMOs offer so much more to their playerbase, and the concept of an MMORPG should provide the player with much more than that if they want to stay in business.
Now imagine the complete opposite, where there is almost no grind at all, the game would feel very dull without monsters in the world to slay, or currency to collect. This would pull out an incredibly large chunk of gameplay resulting in an unfinished game. However, without this grind, if the game was successful, there would be much more that the game would provide. These are game mechanics that can reduce the repetition of tasks. The problem however is, in the standard MMORPG genre, leveling up is a staple, without much grinding, that staple would either be missing, or you would level up at an insane rate.
So if we do nothing but grind, the game will be boring, but without any grind, the game will likely lack content, or not be exciting enough to keep the attention of their playerbase. Likewise, without it the bulk of the game will also be missing and the playerbase will not stay.
The grind in an MMO is the threads that tie the game's core events together. It is what allows players to experience various exciting events, however by spacing it out, the player has more to do and will play longer.
However, the grind also provides players with much, much more. The grind gives players the ability to freely learn their character. The ability to test what works and what doesn't work for them. MMORPGs give a very large freedom of customization, the grind is the training grounds for it all. Without this time to learn their character, then they won't know what to do in group situations, where you are expected to know your class.
Also important to note, the grind is what spaces out all those abilities and nifty class mechanics that run behind the scenes. If a player was to get all their skills at once, then they would be overwhelmed with choices and likely give up too soon.
I believe what many games fail to realize is the investment of Time vs Reward concept. Some MMOs will take the grind too far, and make it take days, sometimes even weeks to level up just once, the problem with this is the rewards are far and few between, this leaves the player feeling unrewarded, theirfor making them feel as if they didn't accomplish something. For casual players this is an even larger problem, due to the fact that their time is likely to be more limited, it takes even longer than before to level up, theirfor even less sense of feeling rewarded.
This is a problem that seems to thrive in eastern games. Because of this, eastern games have earned the title of "Korean grinders", specifically, even if some of them aren't actually coming from Korea itself. Perhaps this isn't so much of a problem over there, but I do believe it should be changed simply because this isn't a nationality issue, it's simply how the human brain functions.
