I seem to have found quite the audience with my foray into what I call MMO Myths. It also seems that I’ve struck gold in the sense that these are topics I am knowledgeable on and can easily write about. I don’t want to over do the series but I have come up with several topics I could write about. I’ll do my best to ensure they’re of fairly high quality and not just minor things we commonly hold as true. With the disclaimer out of the way lets get right to it.
Myth III – Quest hub MMOs aren’t “grindy”
Right now the newbies to the genre will probably respond to this blog entry with things like “this is how MMORPGs are made” or with a slew of “casual gamer” defensive posturing because someone mentioned EverQuest. -Keen
This particular myth is one of my favorites simply because of how absurd the ascertain is. If you bring up the idea of killing mobs for experience to our current generation of MMO players they almost froth at the mouth about how you’re out dated and that that style of MMO design is long since dead. Any time that our generation uses the word EverQuest players shout “grind” and “forced grouping” with a flare of passion and ignorance. The truth of the matter is that both of those things are a myth and neither are related to a specific mechanic. I’ve covered the forced grouping myth already so I will not waste time by repeating it.
The idea that questing focused games aren’t a grind is absurd. To explain why I will essentially disprove that slaying monsters is grinding and to do so I would like to take that issue and break it into a few smaller parts. The biggest piece being that players are essentially doing the same thing now that they always have. I also want to focus on how a game can influence the perception of a design decision. Finally I want to mirror some sentiments about the negative effects that this all has on MMOs in general.
I used the words myth, ignorance and absurd to essentially provoke a strong reaction. My goal was to challenge the reader to really think about the opposite position to mine and as to if it is really as strong as many let on. I am, after all, a writer for what has now become “the underdog” side of MMO players. How can I call “the quest hub” system absurd and a grind though? The answer is pretty simple: if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and acts like a duck, chances are it is a duck.
Quests in MMOs are nothing more than packaging what players call “the grind” into manageable bites. I honestly do laugh when someone says they prefer quests to the “EverQuest system” because I see no difference. In EQ1 I would go and kill ten rats for experience. In WoW I go kill ten rats and then return to an NPC for experience and a treat for being a good boy. What they don’t share is that in quest based games mobs tend to give less experience per kill. Those ten rats in WoW might give a mere 25 experience a piece. The quest reward is a big instant gratification 1000 experience though! In EQ each rat would probably give you 125 experience a piece (if you don’t want to do the math it comes out even). In actuality you lose time by stopping the slaughter to go back and turn in the quest. That is why following a certain pattern for quests is so important. Doing one at a time is inefficient. These are things that “the quest hub lobby” doesn’t want you to know however.
The truth ladies and gentlemen is that killing monsters for experience does not equate to grinding. No matter how much someone might want to disagree with me or prove this article wrong you cannot make that statement true. The word grind simply comes from an MMO that is “hard” or “slow” to level. Since EverQuest was both hard and slow to level and also primarily gave experience via monster kills people have rolled it all together. You simply cannot do that. I assure you that I can design an MMO that only gives experience from the slaughter of monsters and I can make it level faster than WoW. It is this distinction we have to remember. Quests do not mean easier. They just give the perception because we get to go out with a purpose, achieve it, and come back for a big payoff. Either way, the reward is the same. One design is just easier for this generation of MMO players to swallow. That doesn’t mean it is better however.
Keen goes into great detail about how this attitude has made both players and developers lazy. Green Armadillo has equally solid insight on the issue. Due to the very nature of the quest hubs we get extremely linear games with painfully dull worlds. Everything that appears in our MMO is in place to fill the need of a quest. Not only are we discouraged to explore we are penalized. After all, if you don’t get the exact right quests that all go to a similar area and then come right back you aren’t leveling efficiently. EverQuest was not this way.
In EverQuest the world really was yours to behold and explore. As long as the mobs were of the right level you knew you would get experience. You could crawl through a dungeon, roam a forest or plant your butt in place for hours and kill to your hearts content. Norrath contained many natural wonders and rare treasures that you would just happen upon by chance. You weren’t locked into a narrow road of where you can and can’t go because quests weren’t available. If the con was right you could be anywhere you pleased and there were always numerous places to go.
So once more I must say that the quest hub games are just as much of a grind as games that have you kill mobs for your experience. It is absurd to believe otherwise. Games as a whole make a grind, not MMO design decisions. When I hear the word quest I think of the major things we do in our fantasy worlds. Things like seeking the shards of a great holy sword to reforge it, defeat the dark lord that has kidnapped our princess, or do the world a favor and destroy every gnome and those that would harbor them. Go repeatedly kill ten anything, deliver this note to NPC_237123_Bravo and pick flowers from the rolling hills of Norway sounds like the busy work of the fantasy world. Who wants to do that when you could be deep in a dungeon slaughtering orcs, goblins, evil wizards and gnomes? I know I don’t. I prefer my MMO world to exist on its own merits, not to fill out the requirements of the errand dispatchers. Then again, I just might be one of those cranky old school MMO players though.
All characters are © 2007 - 2012
Earning XP to achieve levels and grow in power is a building block of the Diku-style MMOG. Games that choose to follow this model need to implement ways of allowing players to earn XP. Whether they choose to bundle it in tiny breadcrumbs that guide players through the game or leave things wide open, some will find it grindy and some will not.
When it comes right down to it, “the grind” is just a matter of perception. Most of us who have played these games a while know when we’re being asked to grind; to me, it’s about how much you keep me entertained along the way.
@Moorgard
You do make a very valid point about keeping us entertained. I do recognize that to a lot of people completing quests, even repetitive ones, might be preferable to just slaying mobs.
I feel like that detracts from the world myself. I truly miss roaming Norrath for the sake of exploring. How fun was it to fight your way through a zone seeing all the sights? These days I just run back and forth and it is frequently frustrating.
LotRO has been bad about this lately in Moria. My duo partner Dresden and I went to and from the same area about five times in a row and it really soured our experience. We’d have rather just stayed there and fought for a while or been sent elsewhere. Rubber banding isn’t our idea of fun.
“The grind” will probably never go away as it is inextricably part of character progression in all MMORPGs, even ordinary RPGs. I suppose we don’t notice the grind in an ordinary RPG because the developers can simply worry about developing a specific story with a game mechanic, and are able to spend extra time on making the story and character progression more fluid. With MMOs, developers seem to be juggling different goals, and fluid game progression as well as world immersion seems to get dropped in the shuffle.
What would probably a very simple solution to the fixed linear quest hub system and to the lack of motivation for world immersion / exploration would be the elimination of this fixed hub system. Instead of having the quests or tasks originate from fixed npc’s that stand in town until the end of time, developers could simply imitate WAR’s Tome of Knowledge system and have these quests originate from the player. Really, the whole purpose of the adventurer is to explore, see odd things in odd places, and then decide to meddle with it. See a cave inhabited by necromancers, you could get a quest to wipe them out and loot them. WAR’s public quest system was a step in this direction, which took the quest hub system out of towns and placed it in the world.
Now if developers could figure out how to keep the character progression system from destroying their own content and from dividing the player base, they would have something interesting.
@Khronos
Instead of having the quests or tasks originate from fixed npc’s that stand in town until the end of time, developers could simply imitate WAR’s Tome of Knowledge system and have these quests originate from the player.
I absolutely love this idea. LotRO also does this through deeds. It would be so much nicer to find an area, kill a mob and have your book say, “Oh, Ferrel, Billy in Tiny town wants you to kill 25 of these and James of the Border Guard needs 10 of their feet.” That would eliminate the quest hub as a starting point but keep them as an end or continuation point.
Using quests as the driving force is what made the Nessingwary quests in WoW so annoying. “Kill 10 of these.” “Done? Great! Kill 10 of these that are in the exact same area and that you already killed 10 of but I hadn’t assigned it to you yet.” “Done? Fantastic! Now kill 10 of these other things that you’ve killed about 30 of now but I hadn’t assigned it to you yet so it didn’t count, and they are in the same place you’ve been for the past few hours.” …
Laundry lists of body parts are boring. Quests in tabletop gaming are more about the journey than checking off a list. They are more about coming up with different ways to accomplish a goal than doing the exact same thing seventeen times in a row. (The Quest for Glory games were great for that; a “quest” could be done very differently by a Paladin as opposed to a Thief.)
If Mankrik wanted me to go get the Tchotsky of Doom from Mount Rushless, but there were different ways to do so (again, why is it always combat?), I’d be much more interested in his quest.
I’ve long felt that quests are trivialized in modern RPG’s – MMO’s and otherwise.
I think it’s absurd, why is your adventurer some petty errand boy, doing menial tasks for ever Tom, Dick, and Harry? Experience should be awarded from things your character would be learning from – combat, obviously, and other more significant actions.
Oh look, I went to the hill over there and picked you 10 flowers. Ka-ching! It’s just silly.
I firmly believe MMO’s would be well off entirely eliminating menial “quests” and making the few that remain epic – worthy of the name “Quest”. Things that you’re character could be proud he accomplished, much larger in scope.
Definitely NOT just a long chain of simply menial tasks either (Get me some of these, some of those, some of that, and I’ll then you can finish this “epic” (read: long and tedious) quest!
I honestly despair at what RPG’s have fallen to. I grew up on tabletop P&P games; and today’s MMO’s (and, honestly, single player RPG’s as well) are a pale, pale shadow when they should be a glorious evolution.
It is all about keeping the player entertained, which is easy to say but hard to figure out. You can’t win with xp grinding though quests. If the quests are too long and complicated, it’s not worth my time doing. If the quests are easy then their boring, but players are going to go for the easy ones because of the time vs reward factor.
The industry shifted from gaining xp through grouping in dungeons to solo questing. The change was nice at first but after the 1000 quests the freshness has worn off. I can’t imagine how the next game designers are going to make quest hubs entertaining again, what can you really do with them?
Moorgard said:
“Whether they choose to bundle it in tiny breadcrumbs that guide players through the game or leave things wide open, some will find it grindy and some will not.”
So why don’t game developers support both styles of play? It seems like it wouldn’t be very hard to do. I would have enjoyed more quests to do in EQ. In EQ, questing was usually not worth it from an exp. perspective. Also, there weren’t any tools to keep track of them in-game and it was really difficult to discover them on your own – you typically had to read about them on a website to know what was there and if the reward was decent. At higher levels I tried some of the epic like quests, which were really cool, but that was about it.
WoW and games like it are terrible for just exploring and looking for things you can kill. Zone progression is conveniently laid out for the player along with a slew of quests in each zone that can add much exp. on top of what players get for mob kills. One of my favorite things to do in EQ was to run around and discover new places to hunt. I tried running around zones in WoW in the same way, but found it to be a completely worthless and boring experience. You could never find a new place to hunt because zones typically progress out from cities. So you are encouraged not to explore, just follow the path in front of you and perform the quests in front of you and that’s how you are supposed to play. No discovery, no mystery, no real choices.
What I would love to see is a game where questing and just hunting without quests are viable forms of gaining exp. Also, I’d like to obtain nice items from both styles. I’d like to see more quests that take players to different parts of the world and more quests that weren’t just the “do something and return to me” type.
I’d like to see more longer, multi-part quests, where each part could be done separately from the other parts. I want to be able to play the way that I want to and not feel pushed into one particular style.
Speaking from recent experience with LotR I’d have to say that I feel the whole forced quest thing is more of a grind than EQ ever was. It certainly bores me a lot quicker than EQ ever did. It does provide a certain social element though, as quite a few of the quest lines end in group quests and these, for the most part, actually require at least a small group to complete.
Forced socializing is always a winner in MMOs. Well, at least to a certain degree anyways.
Problem is, of course, that as combat becomes faster paced and the downtime becomes virtually nonexistent – grouping isn’t really grouping anymore. There is no time to chat, we’re all just a bunch of tards mashing our buttons in unison.
How socializing relates to boring, never ending questlines? Socializing makes any mundane task, like leveling, appear to progress faster through enjoyment. At least for me.
A “grind” is anything that feels needlessly repetitive. In EQ, this was epitomized by sitting in one place pulling the same monster over and over again. This wasn’t the only way to advance, but it was efficient and many people did it. After a while, people grew bored with it.
Then WoW came along and broke all that monster slaying into happy little chunks. The real beauty of the system was that you could get some directions, go do a bunch of quests, then turn them in all at once for a big rush of rewards. It was different and it gave players some direction. Now, after doing that for several years, players are getting bored again and questioning if the old system was really all that bad.
So, there’s an assumption that EQ-style mob killing is the same as grinding. It’s not. This is a reason why we should be careful to define our terms. As I said at the beginning of this comment, grinding is doing the same thing with seemingly needless repetition. This can be killing, questing, or anything else, especially in the long run.
(Since there is no preview button on comments, I have no idea if my links are going to work. Please pardon me if they endu p being ugly.)
I wrote a post last month that reached a similar conclusion. Then, later, I derived the reason for this problem out of core shortcomings with character advancement as it is presented in MMOs.
You can break down the grind-nature of quests into 4 parts:
* The story and character progression symbiosis present in tabletop RPGs is destroyed by modern MMO design.
* Quest content does nothing to the game world.
* Quests are the same for all characters who can get them.
* The action vocabulary of MMOs is extremely limited (most of the time it involves only the word “fight”).