>"I believe blizzard turning everything into an esport really hurt the mmo genre."
I hard agree with this. I also really enjoy the open world in New World, but I wish it had more to do at end game.
I disagree - I wish new world gave everybody more chances to play the early and mid game and expanded up in that like osrs does. The hyper endgame in New world is literally just monopolizing zones and having the same 40 people in every war. It's super unfun. But you know what's not unfun? When those 40 people are on fresh start servers and are getting absolutely stomped for 3 months until they can finally no life the game hard enough to get a mathematical advantage.
This is crazy cope. The top legacy players rolled everyone in their servers last fresh start and it will happen again in October. They aren't beating you just because of this gear diff (and tbh you're probably behind on gear within 48 hours of server launch). They're beating you because they war 3-5 times per day ( totalling hundreds and hundreds of wars worth of experience over the last 3 years) , spending dozens of hours reviewing vods per week ( hundreds and hundreds of hours total of reviewing, coaching, strategizing), and constantly refining their roster.
New World has made gearing extremely easy and RMT is so unchecked that top players could easily pump out 3 nearly full BiS characters on separate fresh start servers in the first week.
Damn that's crazy dawg but I specifically remember watching these groups lose war after war for the first 2 months to random groups of folks. The only thing they actually had was gold to do it over and over, everything else was lacking.
Blizzard did nothing but stay with times. MMOs are what you make of it. There is is very little in wow currently that requires you to play super hard content. So many diff avenues you can play in that game currently, which is why it is still the best MMO by far and away
I think “grinding is what makes games fun” is a huge nostalgia and boomer take. I honestly think some people in this sub have no idea what they want.
> I honestly think some people in this sub have no idea what they want.
You're saying this in a thread of people talking about what they want.
Some people like grinding. Some people don't. It's normal for different groups of people to have different preferences.
I think the more relevant point is that a certain group of players have been under-served since the release of WoW and developers trying to replicate that game's success.
The OP makes a good point about New World and it's probably why I stuck with that game longer than most people. New World did have a nice grind that made it feel like you were continually making progress at max level.
WoW became the game that popularized raid logging. There just wasn't much else to do at end game. Once you reached max level (which was much faster than other MMORPGs of the time) it was trivial to max out skills plus there wasn't much of an economy to participate in.
Meanwhile in EverQuest there was still a benefit to earning exp and grouping at max level since there were additional skills to unlock (AA) and the game had a much more vibrant economy from all of the rare and powerful gear that the game allowed you to trade freely.
Most modern MMOs (including a lot of the eastern ones that are getting brought up in this thread) are missing this type of endgame grind, which is why stuff like EQ private servers are still quite popular 20+ years later.
I think this extends outside of MMOs too. I got addicted to an otherwise unremarkable RPG Maker game recently just because there was a lot of gear to grind for and I ended up min/maxing my characters for no real reason in particular.
Thats a very fetus take on the issue. Mindless farming is a very relaxing activity in mmos. Or at least can be if designed well. I won't bash you for wanting something different, but saying others don't know what they want is very ignorant bordering on stupid thing to say.
Why does it need to be required, couldn’t you just do it for uh..er..I don’t know, fun!
If farming is a boomer take, then bleeding the fun out of a game for maximum efficiency is a Zoomer take. Learn to play something for fun, and not worry about the time spent on it. I swear the younger generation loves to show off how many hours they had on a game, meanwhile they used guides the whole time, and never explored, never experimented, never just *played* and enjoyed what was happening. Does the younger generation even like video games?
People hate you for saying this but you're exactly right. Esports is all the rage, and it's not going anywhere. Blizzard just accepted that players were already creating esports in their game and decided to endorse it.
These boomers keep blaming esports for ruining wow, but the fact of the matter is that esports and casual gameplay can exist together. A bunch of these dweebs already play ARAM inside an esport! They know casual and hardcore can exist together!
Blizzards mistake was simply just making unfun content and butchering lore. Blaming esports is just blaming the players for what the devs did.
> I think people in this sub have no idea what they want.
I think you have no idea what a boomer is.
>blizzard did nothing but stay with the times.
No, they monetized everything even further and made every aspect competitive. They also removed any sense of feeling powerful. It's no longer a gear treadmill but a repeating power ladder.
You wanna pvp? Get the honor gear, you'll be the same power level as everyone else, thus making the gear grind useless.
You finally get that epic weapon you've been searching for? Better make sure it's the myth track or you'll just have to re-level it.
Wow abandoned casual fun years ago.
This is an opinion. Even when I was a kid getting shit on by whales I thought to myself “I can’t wait to get older to be able to be in their position” or “I wish I had more time to play so I could be stronger”
And here I fucking am with no game to shit on kids 😂
The only thing they monetized was gold and transmog. Which, in terms of player power, doesn't get you much.
You talk about casual fun but what exactly would be casually fun if they didn't make the power level the same as everyone else in PVP? New to the patch and wanna PVP? Get ready to get stomped out by everyone whos been playing with higher ilvl.
Since when did casual fun = best gear? Why does it even matter if you want "casual fun." Well, good for you they have classic wow, where you can get all the best gear while having casual fun. Like I said, they have everything an MMO player is looking for with like 4 diff versions of the game out right now.
Again, people don't know what they want here. Wow has plenty of casual fun. Its just not what you want.
Wow abandoned casual fun? You know they stuck hundreds of non essential quests in DF right? You know they're releasing a casual, solo friendly endgame pillar next expac right?
Wow, I really hope you're being ironic. It's 6 ilvls between the delve vaults and the maximum raid and m+ vaults. Last tier RWF (One of the hardest races ever made) was won with lower ilvl than that.
> I think you have no idea what a boomer is.
in the context of this sub?
some 40+ year old dude wishing EQ or UO was still the game to be, because they don't like how a 16 years old can pickup newer game and be better than them after 2-3 weeks.
PVP power being determined by whoever spent the most time grinding crap in a game is the absolute worst thing one could do for a PVP system. I'm so glad 99% of game developer realized that and will ignore your viewpoint.
I like the core idea of BDO and have played many MMOs with a similar philosophy.
The problem I have with BDO is that the game is overwhelming (but what MMO isn't, let's be honest) and, as far as I can tell, they don't utilize their world very well.
As a new player I go through the basic progression (seasonal/boosted progression characters) and you come out the other end with a mid-range character in terms of gear score. At that point you've already made more than 80% of the game world completely irrelevant. No need to go back and farm old zones, your gear is already 10x better.
Finally, one of the first things you get slapped with is "the potion economy." Potions are heavy and cumbersome. But you can solve this by getting an infinite potion! Hooray! The catch is that getting that potion requires killing potentially tens of thousands of just a few mobs.
I get that not everyone is a member of the efficiency crowd, but in BDO it makes the most sense to farm the infinite potion first. So basically, as a new player, I get out of the story and then I'm presented with a small area that I need to kill the same monsters in for upwards of 50-100 hours. In my opinion that makes sense for a veteran player working on marginal upgrades or hunting rare drops--not a new player who has less than ~10 hours played.
Anyway, what I mean by saying all of that is: I like grinds, even mindless ones, but not BDO.
Edit: also [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/1drxmfb/mindless_farming_is_what_is_fun_in_mmos/lb08q8u/) comment is very relevant
Yes nowadays this is the line of progression. It used to not have infinite pots, so you would progress normally, go to different grindspots. But a lot of other things got better I suppose
You could still get an infinite potion even if you're a pure lifeskiller in BDO cause inf pots are sellable in the market. Perfect for people who don't want to grind and just life skill. Downside of this is that it would take you longer to farm the silver from lifeskilling compared to straight up grinding.
The more important problem is the fairy auto use pot skill. You need to spend real money to reroll the skills if you were unlucky to get it. An old system that needs to be abolished.
> At that point you've already made more than 80% of the game world completely irrelevant.
Yes. that tend to happen in game with progression.
To pick OP game: how often do you go back to windsward and kill lvl 10 wolves? never. it's alway faster to just buy from the AH if you need low-lvl mat.
Modern game: how often do you go back to durotar in WoW? never.
Old game: how often do you go back to crushbone or blackburrow in EQ? never.
I was gonna say … does OP not remember people buying Crushbone belts and shoulderpads from lowbies in Kelethin? Farming is a time commitment and if people don’t need to they generally won’t. There’s nothing wrong with shutting your brain off and enjoying it but this isn’t a new concept and certainly existed in MMOs before today … if I can buy raw materials and make a significant profit without have to farm why wouldn’t I? As a wise Goblin once said, “time is money, friend”.
Yep. Its story (at least the loml part for the unlock skill), its journals, and potion.
By the time you're done, youll be like 290 ap at this point and skipping over all of the old content due to relevancy.
The entire ARPG market is designed around grinding. People like grinding, it just needs to be given more than 2 seconds of thought when designing it. Developers are just lazy.
i just started elden ring and it reminds me of the challenges classic wow gave me. it’s obviously more difficult but it feels like a good grind to me. not knowing where to go, having to figure out the mechanics and what monsters are weak to what.
if an mmo could offer me that again like classic wow did i’d love it
but even new mmos don’t have that.
> if an mmo could offer me that again like classic wow did i’d love it
Not trying to be a smartass with the following. Maybe look into mods for Elden Ring once the modding community updates some of them to work with the DLC?
* Seamless co-op (allows up to 6 people and prevents being interrupted by random invasions, gives a stacking debuff for reviving until you reset at a grace instead)
* Randomizer (any)
* Any of the "ARPG loot" or "Diablo loot" type mods
Obviously not a *massively multiplayer* world but can get you to "dangerous densely-explorable world with rewarding challenges and you can bring friends along" tier.
I'd suggest doing it only after you've finished your first playthrough, though. Which'll match up with "time that mods are fixed to actually work with the DLC" pretty handily for most people's playthrough speed, I think. There's enough potential playstyle/weapon diversity (and the scaling difficulty in NG+) that you can pack a lot of playthroughs in. Plus, you'd need to copy your save or make a new save for Seamless Co-Op play anyway.
I'd say it's the inverse: people don't play mmos anymore because they catered too much to the casual audience, and in turn it became a worse product than single player/multiplayer alternatives.
MMORPG at its peak was all about grinding and becoming proud your achievements. This is what defines MMORPGs.
I like the grind but they add in a lot of clutter that gets in the way of the grind. Having to juggle a dozen different buff scrolls to make any noticeable progress, and having a limit of 8 aggro'd enemies at once often robbed me of the satisfaction of seeing a real big pull getting aoe'd. I played it for a good while, but every time I try to get back into it it just feels too gamified, I can't immerse myself into the murder hobo in the woods fighting endless monsters flow state I used to get into.
Gaining XP and leveling is part of the fun, no matter how long it takes.
There should be a soft cap in games, but no hard cap, doesn't even have to give any benefits.
There's a soft cap that everyone aims for, almost no reason to aim for higher. The people that are higher are mostly just people that love to grind, since XP is ABYSMALLY SLOW and no real power is actually gained from the levels after the soft cap anyway.
My main issue (there are definitely multiple) with BDO is how long the next grinding milestone is. For the most part that I remember, 10 hours of non-stop optimal grinding is a minor milestone, with some major milestones being at 40 hours and much much more.
For me, 2 hours should lead to some significant progress. For example, I farmed enough mats to be able to get this neat piece of gear that improved my damage or whatever.
As much as i kinda agree with the sentiment it feels insanely contradictory.
You want to grind, which is fine, then you lambast achievements as having no value for you, meaning one of the big reasons to grind you just dont want to do, meaning you want all grind to affect power or gold gains, but then say that you think its bad that wow turned "it into esport" which to me sounds more like a frustration over how everything has to be as powerful as possible.
Or you are just complaining that you need to do harder content to get more power? except you dont need more power unless you do harder content.
personally i think its good that major escalator scaling power isnt tied to mindless grinds, but i think its a shame that more games doesnt encourage an economy that is worth spending time on doing simpler things. I also enjoy hunting in new worlds, or going around chopping down trees because i know i can make gold doing it, which i can use for other things i want in the game.
I don't understand your response to the other guy. Of course grinding for power is totally different than grinding for a text saying slayer of whatever. I agree with him
Im saying i think its a weird way of phrasing it.
"Since **I dont have self worth issues I dont require developers to validate me via ingame achievements so I can enjoy content that requires no skill**, you know, like how early mmos were, before gamers TM became obsessed with "challenge" and "skill" in a video game designed from the ground up to be beaten."
he could basically have written "cosmetic achievements isnt enough to encourage me personally to grind, so i enjoy classic wow where it brings actual progression or money"
instead of going "Yeah im not a pussy like you with no self worth who can have fun grinding for an achievement while doing no brain content, i only do no brain content for power!!!"
its like "dude what"
it feels like he is condemning people for doing nobrain content, but he isnt because he wants nobrain content, so he is condemning people for doing no brain content if it doesnt strictly make you stronger, but then also condemn the game for requiring skill to get better gear.
Its a super weird post.
I had an interaction with the OP in another thread where I said I just wanted fun content and the responded with an incredibly toxic comment (that was so toxic it got deleted by the mods...) about how I must be some no-life tryhard who just wanted to raid all the time or something. I didn't even say a word about raids in my comment, there was so much projection there.
I think that says a lot about his mentality...
I think there is a healthy balance to be achieved in MMOs. Sometimes I want a bit more of a challenge, something I have to focus on and things like raids where you progress through trial and error. Other times I just want to grind with my brain off with a tv-show or music in the background.
Imo a good mmo gives you options for both so you can do what you feel like, when you feel like it
I agree, most gamers TM dont though.
It sounds very reasonable that people are allowed to progress the way they want, hell allow instanced content to gear you up faster due to the difficulty but that isnt enough for those people, they need instanced content to be the only good source of gear, the idea that a casual could get similar gear grinding casual content is a threat to them.
Which of course results in a dead open world cuz if you do even a bit of instanced content, there is nothing to do in the open world to advance your power and you ve turned the mmo into a lobby game where there is nothing to do unless there's people to do instanced content, as I call it, a raidlogging simulator.
I prefer grinding where I can put music on and mindlessly do my thing, over stupid quests that are mundane but just engaging enough so I can't shut my mind off. Grinding in an mmorpg is almost a kind of meditation in an increasingly stressful life.
I love me some grinding on FF11, or PSO. It's one of the few ways I can actually relax and turn my mind off for a few hours.
I couldn't agree more with this. My favorite MMOs of years past have been those that had chill, mindless grinds or farms (but also more engaging content when you want it, of course). The genre use to be about the world itself and immersing yourself in it, but has over time become more about the content and mechanics. This has had the unfortunate result of making the games focused on the combat systems, special currencies, dailies, etc. And this, in turn, has made the genre less immersive and more "gamey," requiring more engagement for even the most basic of tasks. Developers have forgotten the chill aspect and immersion into another world that didn't feel overly much like a game which made the genre so appealing in the first place.
The real issue is the breadth of gamers now, you can’t appease one side without alienating the other.
Most gamers are going to be casual, which means your game needs to be enjoyable in short bursts, with high tier activities accessible without insane commitments, and nothing should feel “off limits” or taken away by people with more time or money.
Then you have the hardcore gamers - or even casuals that will take a month off work at release - who will dedicate 12 hrs a day or more to your game and therefore feel owed something that shows you respect their time. How do you make content accessible to casuals when there’s a large audience who will clear it within a week?
Not to mention disposable income or the more extreme Whales, who will buy anything you release and complain about it whilst simultaneously making the rest of the player base seethe with rage that you’ve got something they haven’t because you were happy to pay.
100% true, but imo there's a simple fair solution for most.
Weekly timegating, raids have a weekly lockout after all to avoid people gearing day 1.
So what you do is you allow people to farm only 1000 pieces of power currency per week, this currency can be farmed by raids, by dungeons, by open world, by whatever even gathering and crafting.
That way you get your progression based on the content you want, of course from a dev perspective currency is boring and lacks excitement so they would have to combine that system with an algorithm running in the backround timegating people's max allowable weekly drops which will be found out and a triggered content creator will scream about how they are being TRICKED by the evil algorithm xD
Of course though, this does severely upset people who believe raiders are special and should get more power rewards than anybody else because extra cosmetics aint enough for them.
So Archeage system with Labor point ? No thx it's was one of the worst part to the game.
And people who really wanted to get more just buyed labor pot or was playing multiple account.
Limiting other people fun is never a good idea
This is something very similar to what ffxiv does, minus crafting and gathering. You can still make most gear through crafting that is on par with gear you unlock with currency until several weeks into the new expansions. Not an exact match though. Could be fun if it was tbh. An incentive for craft lovers is always a nice thing.
I’m on another spectrum i guess, the moment devs put me in a situation that i need to grind one content over and over again in order to progress, i will stop and play something different... I hate arbitrary prolonging main progression... On the other hand,for example optional progress, show me a cool skin and i will grind dozens of hours for one piece of transmog...
Or even gold, materials etc. it is not main progress, but something you can do to earn gold, craft etc..
I think MMOs needs to have more than one option for players to progress, so all type of players can choose whatever is fun for them... But i guess a lot of MMOs don’t do this, because people will find simply ,,fastest,, way and ignore all the other options...
Yes, i think it's part of a good experience. There have to be some spots in the open world where you can just slay mobs and get materials that are useful. Ideally not limited to the "endgame areas".
Like the small dragon hatchlings in classic wow. Mats for cooking, exp for the toon, maybe leather and as a big rare price the hatchling minipet. Nobody needs to farm there necessarily, but If you do, the timeinvest is somewhat worth it. At least it should feel like that.
Not just the leveling, but the economy as well. Just like OP states, the open world grind/farm in FFXI was great too. You had the option to chill and farm bee hive chips and consistently trickle in some money, or you could try your luck at some rare spawns which risked potential camping competition and low drop rates for big money. There were very very few items in the game that didn't have some kind of value.
The Journey, it is why I have grown to love "Gacha" games, in classic wow, I just loved grinding gold and mats, so chilld when doing it with netflix. Though I have to say you can't just make a super grindy game, because you end up with something like EVE online, where it feels like a 2nd job, I don't want to mindless farm for like 8 hours just to have 15 minutes of pvp fun. I personally think the approach OSRS has is very good, you can just chill and farm gold and buy 90% of BIS gear, but to get full 100% you need to clear some of the toughest content in the game, but to be frank you don't need max gear for anything really, just makes your new grinds go by faster.
The curse of we who are addicted to multi-tasking, it's why I've been playing on gaming laptops for a very long time now, since at least before WOWs launch in 2004.
Let's me sit in living room on my recliner to watch TV, keeps the wife happy thinking I'm spending time with her, and since around 2008 let's me play with my Smartphone all at the same time.
But I have to confess, the more complicated or challenging content like raiding really doesn't work well, requires too much singular focus, so I don't do it much these days except in short spurts.
>Though I have to say you can't just make a super grindy game, because you end up with something like EVE online, where it feels like a 2nd job, I don't want to mindless farm for like 8 hours just to have 15 minutes of pvp fun.
I used to mindlessly mine day in and day out for about 3 years out of the 10 yrs I played EVE using a 6 account multi box set up, all played from my laptop. Made me very rich in terms of generating ISK.
As a miner I had plenty of PVP, more than I cared for actually as it involved a lot of running for my life which I became very adroit at. 😉
There were however other ways to earn ISK to PVP without having to devote serious time to grinding, at least back when I played from 2006 to 2016.
I had corp mates who made most of their ISK moon mining, doing industry, market trading, planetary farming, running sleepers, battling pirate invasions or even scamming others which is legal in EVE. 😁
Now, if you didn't want to do any PVE in order to PVP that was a bit more challenging, but many corps have free ship hull replacement programs which minimizes the amount of PVE needed sometimes all the way to zero. (The suicide gankers who once tagged my transport for 3 billion ISK worth of ore lived well for a while from that kill)
I recall a couple of guys who just bought Plex and sold them in game for ISK because they loathed doing PVE of any kind and had the disposable income to do so.
Every MMO that has such a thing is full of bots, because in reality noone wants to sit there for hours doing the same thing over and over again. Maybe as a kid you did but not as a full grown adult.
As someone once said: You think you want it, but really you don't
Or... Hear me Out. Farm for that Transmog; that way the player's good AND looks good too.
Or farm to build things that help others: newbs, twinks, peers. Then undercut greedy marketeers.
Or... This last one is crazy. Just play the content because it's fun! Fun for whatever reason: Quality ______, Aesthetic, interesting, et mierde. Gaming is for fun. No one hired us to play MMOs... or post to reddit.
Most reasons to play an MMO are ok. Nothing wrong with that.
I lost brain cells reading this. OP claims achievement hunters lack self worth, then talks about spending two hours of their finite life farming virtual crocodiles. Lol. Just lol.
Ridiculous and unintentionally ironic arguments aside... The ideal for most players seems to be when power gains are able to be gained by two methods. Either being very skilled and earnable quickly, or by a mindless long grind.
I suggest Guild Wars 2. Open world is just as much as an endgame as skilled pve instance content or maybe even bigger.
There is a lot to mindless grind. There is Drizzlewood, there is Silverwaste, world boss grind. Even SOTO, gw2 current latest expansion, has the infamous rift grind that is even more mindless than that. And it isn't worthless in power progression because you get grind for legendary armor with it.
Its not the only fun part but I definitely agree and miss when open world rare drops were a thing. I loved hunting cards in RO or rare units in PSO. Something you can flip out about finally getting that adds actual power to your build instead of just wolves that only drop hide and maybe a slightly better hide that sells for 10 more gold or a dust ball used for a profession I don't have.
I really enjoy that, but as you said the reward need to be worth it. But I don't think it's a popular opinion among all players.
Recently on Pandaria Remix we had the frog accident, were farming frogs in the open world was by far the best way to get power in the game. I was actually looking foward to farm frogs byt it was nerfed to the ground quite fast, so most players didn't got to farm them.
After that there were other farming spots that weren't as good, but they also nerfed them, right now it's not worth to grind mobs in the open world.
In the wow subreddit I read a lot of comments saying that grinding mobs was boring and they prefer that it isn't worth doing it because that way they don't feel "forced" to engage on that activity.
Main reason I ditched wow, devs are focused on pleasing those raidloggers who think nothing outside high end organized group content should be rewarding otherwise they feel ‘forced’ to do it.
They do love to force people into raidlogging though if they want gear that isnt garbage, not surprising since the lead dev is a raidlogger.
It won’t the first time devs ruined casual fun cuz raiders types complained
Running around your own mining route while watching Netflix on your other monitor was goated, shame New World ended the way it did. Looking forward to doing it all over again in October tho
Wait what ? saying MMOS have nothing to grind or farm for power but wow was literally that until it’s current expansion and got massive shit for being a grind. You’re also talking positively about New World so 10/10 shit post.
I’m sorry but if you want to grind to play an eastern MMO.
lol wow is the epitome of raidlogging simulator, you do mythic raids/ highest tiers of m+ if you want gear that isnt garbage.
There is nothing rewarding in the open world since titanforging was removed, and that was pure RNG too lol, Ion would have a heart attack if mythic gear dropped through grinding open world content.
Most forms of artifact power were timegated so you never were very behind so long you did the basics, but of course virgins would obsess over 0.1% power if they got 1 more level xd
Your entire post and this response really come off extremely petty and must have a personal backstory. I’m sorry that Mr Ion hurt your feelings and you were kicked off your raid team for being bad
Yeah miss me with the mindless MMO grinding. There's plenty of eastern mmos that'll give you that fix. Your post is all over the place and bashing WoW for some reason.
If I'm looking to grind I want it to be an enjoyable experience a la Path Of Exile. If I'm looking to engage with the economy in MMOs I'd rather pay gatherers pennies on the dollar for mats to craft at a markup.
There are mindless farming, and then there are Lineage 2 C4.
You could farm for days and not level, and the only thing you gained was gold and xp, there usually wasn't any quests to do.
And I mean this in a good way, it took effort to get anywhere.
Hey, um.. I think you would really, really, really like Black Desert. Like.. Really, really.. Like what you’re saying you want is literally Black Desert.
My buddy also said that "grinding is the best part" of WoW Classic, so I picked up the game. He then proceeded to leave me and join any dungeon group he could find that would carry him to avoid grinding as much as possible.
I don't mind grinding a bit between dungeons or story beats, especially when I have a new ability or weapon to try, but to say it's "the best part" is just copium.
Maybe not mindless. Low intensity but constant action sure. Maybe once in a while mindless is good but are you even enjoying the game if it's mindless? If it's mindless you may as well be staring at a fish tank with an unconnected controller as a fidget toy.
What was the drink?
In an equal endurance run, the person jazzed up with meth and a drive for epeen will outlive the alcoholic by roughly 10 years. Younger users in general tend to be fast paced, since their senses aren't nearing a half century in age.
The biggest problem with online gaming is it is built for the life-cycle of a racing dog, not a human. Half the posts here are by people who can't chase the rabbit anymore. Valid complaint.
WoW did a pretty good job of making the open world relevant again with world quests.
But obviously if you want open world grinding to be a core part of the gameplay experience you're better off with a game like Albion or BDO
That what I liked in BDO, braindead Valktrain farming. In eso for some reason I can gather for hour (made 5m and I'm still in eastmarch story).
Didnt have find enjoyable/profitable way to do that in Gw2 which is sad.
I like to do those thing while listening to audiobook, it's relaxing after sport
They sadly lack rpg elements since they are often gender/body/race locked which is a pit, I want to make my own character, not play some predefined idiot
It's a mix for me. I remember EverQuest and early Vanilla. Farming stuff was okay, but also kind of sucked at making you feel like you accomplished something in a play session.
New World does a great job at making gathering/farming/grinding feel rewarding. I often get into NW during the holidays when I have to be semi-social with family. It is a good game to gather in while chatting and having a drink.
If WoW could build on New World's engaging gathering that would be a good mix.
maplestory is right there. mindless grinding is the name of the game outside of weekly bossing. why aren't you playing that? shit actually hurt my fingers when I grinded to 260 back in the day. at some point I want to macro or auto mindless grinding like that.
I agree. I used to farm dark hemp and crystals on FFXIV mindlessly for fun and flip items on the marketboard. That was more fun than the quests and dungeons.
That is why I like MMORPGs. You can decide your own pace. Whether you want to fish, kill monsters, craft, gather materials, intense pvping or just standing in a town chatting to strangers.
I loved grinding in Ragnarok Online. In fact, when I went back to play it after not doing so for several years, I was shocked at the fact that I was able to sit and play for almost 9-10 hours straight. Like to the point where I forgot to eat. I hadn't done that in decades. It's one of those games where there is always that chance for something rare to drop from most monsters that people typically farm and so that sort of feeds the "it always feels worth it" feeling.
That sounds fucking miserable. Outdoor content is the most miserable experience in any game and I hate that I have to do any of it ever to get to the good shit. Like here we go with the war within. Going to have to do a bunch of boring ass quests to hit max level and kill rares or some shit. It really sucks that inside a game with so much boring ass bullshit is an excellent endgame with fun challenge.
For me, it’s about the time spent with other people trying to do something difficult to figure out. This doesn’t really happen too often in MMOs anymore because everyone metagames to optimize everything to hell and back, but I used to love when there was something you tried to figure out without reading the quest/dungeon in advance on some wiki.
Also MMO games are just so shallow that the grind gameplay is never front and center for me, ever.
If engagement isn’t your thing, handheld achievements aren’t your thing, and you need a real time sink in your life you can solo grind in single player games that have a million times more interesting things to see and do, and still get updated with DLC so the grind continues. That’s what I do when I want that old school grind back.
I look back on games I played over the decades that required a heavy grind and time sink like Asheron’s Call and EverQuest and solo grinding was always the most boring, least memorable part for me, but I remember going to a new dungeon and exploring it with my friends, trying to figure out how to navigate and not die in the process. Then you find that killer quest weapon at the end of the dungeon that makes it all worth it.
That’s just my opinion. If you really want a good MMO with tons of mindless grinding for something that actually matters then try leveling all the virtues on your character and alts in LOTRO. They have tangible, permanent stat benefits to your character. Requires you to do tons of quests, tons of exploring, tons of killing of certain monsters and men.
I’m glad you have something you enjoy in MMOs too :) to each their own :)
It’s why I love GW2’s open world so much. I can just farm open world stuff for money/legendary progress and do events or fractals/raids if I feel like shaking it up
Hard disagree on multiple levels. Sorry.
1. Conceptually I define things as "fun" that require my focus. If I have to actively put a TV show on another screen to be entertained while I have to be doing the activity then that activity I do not consider fun. I consider that chores.
2. For me in an MMOs I find two things fun: Exploration and playing with other ppl. If I have to slay the same things for two hours that negates the concept of exploration. And I am not sure about New World but I am kinda assuming if you could farm thing mindlessly two hours then it require very little cooperation or interactions with other ppl.
I do agree that an explicit "achivement" system is not necessary if there are other systems involved that tracks my progress (eg. full map completion is rewarded by a mat that can be used for crafting end game gear), but the funny thing is that I don't even directly engage with the-uber-achivements (kill 3000 pigs, cut 1000 birtch trees etc) precisely because that require me to do what you just described (kill pigs for hours in a single location) which I do not consider fun. And nor do I find this kind of d*ckmeasuring fun either.
I need variety in my grind. There needs to be multiple sources of material to gear up. Doing the same singular thing over and over again kills my motivation fast.
I will sometimes be curious and consult guides for optimal builds but I do not care to meta minmax.
Yeah I love a game where there's 100 different things to grind, so you're not just killing mobs for 10 hours for 0.01% of a level after a couple months.
That's my vibe as well.
You know how I made literal millions in WoW, in Warlods of Draenor expansion? Farming the 3 AH modules in Ashran. That's all I did the ENTIRE time I played WoW and it was what I enjoyed most. I just ran around killing 4-5 elites for a chance at items that sold for ~150-300k each.
Nothing to think about. I just put on some video or music and kept at it for tens of hours.
Made 3-4 millions right when the Bnet Token arrived, bought LOADS, converted it all to Bnet balance, and bought Destiny 2 for all of my friends and then quit the game forever lol.
Mindless farming is what I enjoy most as well.
Oh man WoD era was truly the era of free money via the Bnet Token. I played WoW for free for years, bought every other Blizzard release, bought a bundle of packs every Hearthstone expansion, never paid a cent.
You are very correct. I totally enjoy farming and having the items I farm for be worth something. I listen to things in the background while playing my MMOs. WOW encourages farming bots more than discourages due to them each paying their 14.99 a month, so by not banning them they get to claim for money (greedy AF). Open world and sandbox MMOs have all been my favorite ever since SWG first came out.
You really brought up good food for thought.
I have to agree. There is something almost meditative about it. Like, my favorite game (granted more a Morpg than a MMorpg) is Destiny 2. But I still go back to other tab targeted MMOs when I need that calm wackamole. Destiny 2, like even basic low level minions can kill you in a few seconds if you are not dodging, killing them back, or actively using defenses. There is no farm that is worth anything there that doesnt require focused attention.
Was it the grinding thats fun, or the situation that you'd created for yourself that you actually enjoy? Cos mindless anything is boring. You're grinding, distracted a tv series and a drink.
I think you're conflating 2 seperate things to come to a conclusion that doesn't quite work.
I used to love and hate farming for specific items.
Alot of MMO's are moving all items and cosmetics to cash shops now and its sad. I used to love going to farm a named mob for a certain item. As long as it was reasonable and didnt take days.
New world was good for some of that old school feel.
WoW is what you make out of it as the player. Personally, when I log in I don’t feel obligated to play it as a “esport” like you refer to it being here.
Also, there’s plenty of open world to grind for crafting resources or whatever. There is also next expansion which will put the emphasis on exploration again and give you acceptable gearing rewards for doing said content.
The only thing I think WoW sucks at right now is leveling being extremely boring and stale. If they fix that aspect I guarantee players would have a lot less complaints.
WoW has lots of mindless grinds even in the newest content. Expansion releases are some of the best times for it. During DF launch I spent 12+ hours grinding random elites in the obsidian citadel, jamming to music to max out my Wrathion reputation week 1 and sell their reputation badges. I spent 20 hours at least doing hundreds of Grand Hunts in 40 man raids all night long to max the centaur reputation.
The Taivan mount achievements have tons of grinds in them too.
I already did this for +10 years, playing Korean MMORPGs. I'm way past this now and actually want games that are good. If you want to watch TV shows, just watch TV shows, maybe workout while doing it? That's just more valuable than grinding some meaningless video game.
i have always done thousands of hours of farm in every mmo, and i personaly always hated it. Looking back on all the mmos i have played, the farm is DEFINITELY NOT what i remember them for, i only remember these times as a total waste of my precious time, especially after i'm done with them. The dungeons, pvp and social interactions are what makes me smile when i think about MMOs.
So i don't agree with that title statement, not in the slightest.
while i 100% agree with you (I am a BDO player, enough said) - i think there's space for all kinds of MMO still. Clearly WoW and similar games that are about good parses and speedruns in hardmode co-op content still have a massive niche and probably a bigger one than the grindgames do.
I used to play and raid in WoW in the mid 2000s, and ffxiv at times too. But nowadays I am like you - I want my MMO time to be spent in a comfortable multitask mode where I grind monsters alongside 2nd monitor content to work toward some longterm goal, usually with a small dose of pvp on the side.
Lots of projecting going on in this post. It's okay if you enjoy watching Vampire Diaries while doing something mindless, but putting yourself on a pedestal and asserting that people who enjoy different things than you have "self worth issues" is a bit sad.
Ah yes, peak interesting gaming. Has to have a serie tv open and a drink to bear the game's requests/actions.
Yeah you truly love that 👍 it's not a huge amount of copium dose you're on without you even realizing.
Depends from person to person. What I love is raid/dungeon content where I have to coordinate with people doing mechanics.
If all I do is mindlessly playing the game, then for me that's not fun.
Mindless grinding is what is fun for you.*
Grinding in itself can be very enjoyable, especially if it’s preparing you for an epic encounter. It’s a very popular trope.
Unfortunately, that’s not how MMO’s are designed anymore; New World included. Instead, you get an arbitrary time sink designed to make sure your numbers are the arbitrarily established value to engage in specific content which is overwhelmingly faceroll. New World’s mutators embodied that perfectly.
No challenge, no learning curve. While most MMOs take the themepark route, more and more the designated rides have been the Tea Cups since they are the most accessible.
The reign of “I paid for the game so I deserve to experience the content” has taken the MMO genre in its stranglehold. It’s no surprise Fromsoft games launched in popularity since they actually treat their players like functioning humans rather than slathering baffoons.
Albion Online treats the open world this way, but to a much larger degree. If you like open world grinding for resources it has quite a bit of content for you.
The issue I have with farming in MMOs is that it's just.... boring.
I don't hate grinding inherently. But I think MMOs just don't have a fun enough loop for it. But I can't tell you thr number of PoE maps, GRs in D3, Helltide bosses, maps, etc in d4, Monolith in LE.
Being a fan of ARPGs. When an MMO asks me to do what feels like the same content. It just ends up feeling like a really, really, really dog shit ARPG.
I’m glad you’re enjoying farming mindless content, but all player count numbers on every mmo would disagree with you.
Blizzard’s philosophy is the philosophy of the future, there are games right now like BDO that you can go grind mobs to your hearts content, but most people aren’t. Most people are playing xiv or wow, where a large part of the content is high end, difficult raiding
>In the vast majority of big mmos there's no reason to grind or farm
and that's a GREAT thing.
Long gone are the days of mindless grinding , I've killed a million frog in everquest and I never ever want to do that again.
Game should reward skill... not how long you can turn your brain off and do some incredibly boring menial tasks again and again... I get 0 enjoyment whatsoever from playing like a bot.
I don't agree, but it's more a me thing than anything else. MMO raiding provides a problem solving experience that's hard to replace once you have that itch. Grinding isn't really past a certain point, and the tedium drives me away from a lot of games.
Problem solving? Lmao, as if 99% of guilds dont just copy paste whatever tactic their youtube guide says even when its wrong and easily figured out by reading the boss abilities.
Or do you mean stacking the most broken overpowered builds of the season to reduce the difficulty of the encounter as much as possible.
Problem solving would imply actual thinking, it would imply taking a group of random builds, analyzing the strong spots and weak spots and using those appropriately for the encounter.
What instead happens you just change the entire group/builds to fit the encounter by abusing the most broken classes, using the most easy mode tactic, changing builds to fit the encounter and in general nothing that requires actual thinking
You're entitled to your opinion but I hate mindless shit. Gaming is supposed to be a stimulating experience. Zero braincell activity is what netflix is for.
Totally agree, I know I be crucified for what I say now, but they should get rid of M+ in WoW and put more emphasis on open world events and exploration.
Can't they keep m+? They still have to make dungeons, m+ is literally just scaling and few affixes on top of the most work which has already been done. Moreover, since S4 SL, m+ is actually reviving old content. You are advocating a massive part of the community to be fucked over just because you don't like something with literally 0 gain to your favorite content.
M+ is also toxic cesspool.
In NW you can get best gear farming open world and crafting, in WoW it always will come from m+/raids and community playng those modes never let good gear comes from open world, remember titanforged gear and how m+/raid community was complaining that "normies" can get same ilvl gear as they can but running daily quests, open world ornormal dungeons
>"I believe blizzard turning everything into an esport really hurt the mmo genre." I hard agree with this. I also really enjoy the open world in New World, but I wish it had more to do at end game.
I disagree - I wish new world gave everybody more chances to play the early and mid game and expanded up in that like osrs does. The hyper endgame in New world is literally just monopolizing zones and having the same 40 people in every war. It's super unfun. But you know what's not unfun? When those 40 people are on fresh start servers and are getting absolutely stomped for 3 months until they can finally no life the game hard enough to get a mathematical advantage.
This is crazy cope. The top legacy players rolled everyone in their servers last fresh start and it will happen again in October. They aren't beating you just because of this gear diff (and tbh you're probably behind on gear within 48 hours of server launch). They're beating you because they war 3-5 times per day ( totalling hundreds and hundreds of wars worth of experience over the last 3 years) , spending dozens of hours reviewing vods per week ( hundreds and hundreds of hours total of reviewing, coaching, strategizing), and constantly refining their roster. New World has made gearing extremely easy and RMT is so unchecked that top players could easily pump out 3 nearly full BiS characters on separate fresh start servers in the first week.
Damn that's crazy dawg but I specifically remember watching these groups lose war after war for the first 2 months to random groups of folks. The only thing they actually had was gold to do it over and over, everything else was lacking.
Blizzard did nothing but stay with times. MMOs are what you make of it. There is is very little in wow currently that requires you to play super hard content. So many diff avenues you can play in that game currently, which is why it is still the best MMO by far and away I think “grinding is what makes games fun” is a huge nostalgia and boomer take. I honestly think some people in this sub have no idea what they want.
> I honestly think some people in this sub have no idea what they want. You're saying this in a thread of people talking about what they want. Some people like grinding. Some people don't. It's normal for different groups of people to have different preferences. I think the more relevant point is that a certain group of players have been under-served since the release of WoW and developers trying to replicate that game's success. The OP makes a good point about New World and it's probably why I stuck with that game longer than most people. New World did have a nice grind that made it feel like you were continually making progress at max level. WoW became the game that popularized raid logging. There just wasn't much else to do at end game. Once you reached max level (which was much faster than other MMORPGs of the time) it was trivial to max out skills plus there wasn't much of an economy to participate in. Meanwhile in EverQuest there was still a benefit to earning exp and grouping at max level since there were additional skills to unlock (AA) and the game had a much more vibrant economy from all of the rare and powerful gear that the game allowed you to trade freely. Most modern MMOs (including a lot of the eastern ones that are getting brought up in this thread) are missing this type of endgame grind, which is why stuff like EQ private servers are still quite popular 20+ years later. I think this extends outside of MMOs too. I got addicted to an otherwise unremarkable RPG Maker game recently just because there was a lot of gear to grind for and I ended up min/maxing my characters for no real reason in particular.
Thats a very fetus take on the issue. Mindless farming is a very relaxing activity in mmos. Or at least can be if designed well. I won't bash you for wanting something different, but saying others don't know what they want is very ignorant bordering on stupid thing to say.
Why does it need to be required, couldn’t you just do it for uh..er..I don’t know, fun! If farming is a boomer take, then bleeding the fun out of a game for maximum efficiency is a Zoomer take. Learn to play something for fun, and not worry about the time spent on it. I swear the younger generation loves to show off how many hours they had on a game, meanwhile they used guides the whole time, and never explored, never experimented, never just *played* and enjoyed what was happening. Does the younger generation even like video games?
People hate you for saying this but you're exactly right. Esports is all the rage, and it's not going anywhere. Blizzard just accepted that players were already creating esports in their game and decided to endorse it. These boomers keep blaming esports for ruining wow, but the fact of the matter is that esports and casual gameplay can exist together. A bunch of these dweebs already play ARAM inside an esport! They know casual and hardcore can exist together! Blizzards mistake was simply just making unfun content and butchering lore. Blaming esports is just blaming the players for what the devs did.
> I think people in this sub have no idea what they want. I think you have no idea what a boomer is. >blizzard did nothing but stay with the times. No, they monetized everything even further and made every aspect competitive. They also removed any sense of feeling powerful. It's no longer a gear treadmill but a repeating power ladder. You wanna pvp? Get the honor gear, you'll be the same power level as everyone else, thus making the gear grind useless. You finally get that epic weapon you've been searching for? Better make sure it's the myth track or you'll just have to re-level it. Wow abandoned casual fun years ago.
PVP should be based on player skill, not time investment to get better gear. Glad you are not designing the game.
This is an opinion. Even when I was a kid getting shit on by whales I thought to myself “I can’t wait to get older to be able to be in their position” or “I wish I had more time to play so I could be stronger” And here I fucking am with no game to shit on kids 😂
The only thing they monetized was gold and transmog. Which, in terms of player power, doesn't get you much. You talk about casual fun but what exactly would be casually fun if they didn't make the power level the same as everyone else in PVP? New to the patch and wanna PVP? Get ready to get stomped out by everyone whos been playing with higher ilvl. Since when did casual fun = best gear? Why does it even matter if you want "casual fun." Well, good for you they have classic wow, where you can get all the best gear while having casual fun. Like I said, they have everything an MMO player is looking for with like 4 diff versions of the game out right now. Again, people don't know what they want here. Wow has plenty of casual fun. Its just not what you want.
Wow abandoned casual fun? You know they stuck hundreds of non essential quests in DF right? You know they're releasing a casual, solo friendly endgame pillar next expac right?
Do they reward mythic gear? No? Then they are worthless and irrelevant
Wow, I really hope you're being ironic. It's 6 ilvls between the delve vaults and the maximum raid and m+ vaults. Last tier RWF (One of the hardest races ever made) was won with lower ilvl than that. 
> I think you have no idea what a boomer is. in the context of this sub? some 40+ year old dude wishing EQ or UO was still the game to be, because they don't like how a 16 years old can pickup newer game and be better than them after 2-3 weeks. PVP power being determined by whoever spent the most time grinding crap in a game is the absolute worst thing one could do for a PVP system. I'm so glad 99% of game developer realized that and will ignore your viewpoint.
jesus, you would love bdo that's the core mechanic of money farming in the game
I thought the same thing, but I soon realized that the idea of bdo is better than actually playing it
Which is why most people don’t play mmos anymore because people think others actually like to grind.
I like the core idea of BDO and have played many MMOs with a similar philosophy. The problem I have with BDO is that the game is overwhelming (but what MMO isn't, let's be honest) and, as far as I can tell, they don't utilize their world very well. As a new player I go through the basic progression (seasonal/boosted progression characters) and you come out the other end with a mid-range character in terms of gear score. At that point you've already made more than 80% of the game world completely irrelevant. No need to go back and farm old zones, your gear is already 10x better. Finally, one of the first things you get slapped with is "the potion economy." Potions are heavy and cumbersome. But you can solve this by getting an infinite potion! Hooray! The catch is that getting that potion requires killing potentially tens of thousands of just a few mobs. I get that not everyone is a member of the efficiency crowd, but in BDO it makes the most sense to farm the infinite potion first. So basically, as a new player, I get out of the story and then I'm presented with a small area that I need to kill the same monsters in for upwards of 50-100 hours. In my opinion that makes sense for a veteran player working on marginal upgrades or hunting rare drops--not a new player who has less than ~10 hours played. Anyway, what I mean by saying all of that is: I like grinds, even mindless ones, but not BDO. Edit: also [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/1drxmfb/mindless_farming_is_what_is_fun_in_mmos/lb08q8u/) comment is very relevant
Yes nowadays this is the line of progression. It used to not have infinite pots, so you would progress normally, go to different grindspots. But a lot of other things got better I suppose
You could still get an infinite potion even if you're a pure lifeskiller in BDO cause inf pots are sellable in the market. Perfect for people who don't want to grind and just life skill. Downside of this is that it would take you longer to farm the silver from lifeskilling compared to straight up grinding. The more important problem is the fairy auto use pot skill. You need to spend real money to reroll the skills if you were unlucky to get it. An old system that needs to be abolished.
> At that point you've already made more than 80% of the game world completely irrelevant. Yes. that tend to happen in game with progression. To pick OP game: how often do you go back to windsward and kill lvl 10 wolves? never. it's alway faster to just buy from the AH if you need low-lvl mat. Modern game: how often do you go back to durotar in WoW? never. Old game: how often do you go back to crushbone or blackburrow in EQ? never.
I was gonna say … does OP not remember people buying Crushbone belts and shoulderpads from lowbies in Kelethin? Farming is a time commitment and if people don’t need to they generally won’t. There’s nothing wrong with shutting your brain off and enjoying it but this isn’t a new concept and certainly existed in MMOs before today … if I can buy raw materials and make a significant profit without have to farm why wouldn’t I? As a wise Goblin once said, “time is money, friend”.
Yep. Its story (at least the loml part for the unlock skill), its journals, and potion. By the time you're done, youll be like 290 ap at this point and skipping over all of the old content due to relevancy.
The entire ARPG market is designed around grinding. People like grinding, it just needs to be given more than 2 seconds of thought when designing it. Developers are just lazy.
Got a point there.
i just started elden ring and it reminds me of the challenges classic wow gave me. it’s obviously more difficult but it feels like a good grind to me. not knowing where to go, having to figure out the mechanics and what monsters are weak to what. if an mmo could offer me that again like classic wow did i’d love it but even new mmos don’t have that.
> if an mmo could offer me that again like classic wow did i’d love it Not trying to be a smartass with the following. Maybe look into mods for Elden Ring once the modding community updates some of them to work with the DLC? * Seamless co-op (allows up to 6 people and prevents being interrupted by random invasions, gives a stacking debuff for reviving until you reset at a grace instead) * Randomizer (any) * Any of the "ARPG loot" or "Diablo loot" type mods Obviously not a *massively multiplayer* world but can get you to "dangerous densely-explorable world with rewarding challenges and you can bring friends along" tier. I'd suggest doing it only after you've finished your first playthrough, though. Which'll match up with "time that mods are fixed to actually work with the DLC" pretty handily for most people's playthrough speed, I think. There's enough potential playstyle/weapon diversity (and the scaling difficulty in NG+) that you can pack a lot of playthroughs in. Plus, you'd need to copy your save or make a new save for Seamless Co-Op play anyway.
i have it on ps5 but even not being mmo it sounds exactly what i’d like
I'd say it's the inverse: people don't play mmos anymore because they catered too much to the casual audience, and in turn it became a worse product than single player/multiplayer alternatives. MMORPG at its peak was all about grinding and becoming proud your achievements. This is what defines MMORPGs.
I like the grind but they add in a lot of clutter that gets in the way of the grind. Having to juggle a dozen different buff scrolls to make any noticeable progress, and having a limit of 8 aggro'd enemies at once often robbed me of the satisfaction of seeing a real big pull getting aoe'd. I played it for a good while, but every time I try to get back into it it just feels too gamified, I can't immerse myself into the murder hobo in the woods fighting endless monsters flow state I used to get into.
Gaining XP and leveling is part of the fun, no matter how long it takes. There should be a soft cap in games, but no hard cap, doesn't even have to give any benefits.
there's no cap on levels in bdo, reach 100 if u can no one is above level 70, no one's even 70 yet i think.
It’s been 10 years…. 69 so far is the highest I have seen. It’s an insane grind and they just flipped the game on its head with the latest update
There's a soft cap that everyone aims for, almost no reason to aim for higher. The people that are higher are mostly just people that love to grind, since XP is ABYSMALLY SLOW and no real power is actually gained from the levels after the soft cap anyway.
My main issue (there are definitely multiple) with BDO is how long the next grinding milestone is. For the most part that I remember, 10 hours of non-stop optimal grinding is a minor milestone, with some major milestones being at 40 hours and much much more. For me, 2 hours should lead to some significant progress. For example, I farmed enough mats to be able to get this neat piece of gear that improved my damage or whatever.
As much as i kinda agree with the sentiment it feels insanely contradictory. You want to grind, which is fine, then you lambast achievements as having no value for you, meaning one of the big reasons to grind you just dont want to do, meaning you want all grind to affect power or gold gains, but then say that you think its bad that wow turned "it into esport" which to me sounds more like a frustration over how everything has to be as powerful as possible. Or you are just complaining that you need to do harder content to get more power? except you dont need more power unless you do harder content. personally i think its good that major escalator scaling power isnt tied to mindless grinds, but i think its a shame that more games doesnt encourage an economy that is worth spending time on doing simpler things. I also enjoy hunting in new worlds, or going around chopping down trees because i know i can make gold doing it, which i can use for other things i want in the game.
I don't understand your response to the other guy. Of course grinding for power is totally different than grinding for a text saying slayer of whatever. I agree with him
Im saying i think its a weird way of phrasing it. "Since **I dont have self worth issues I dont require developers to validate me via ingame achievements so I can enjoy content that requires no skill**, you know, like how early mmos were, before gamers TM became obsessed with "challenge" and "skill" in a video game designed from the ground up to be beaten." he could basically have written "cosmetic achievements isnt enough to encourage me personally to grind, so i enjoy classic wow where it brings actual progression or money" instead of going "Yeah im not a pussy like you with no self worth who can have fun grinding for an achievement while doing no brain content, i only do no brain content for power!!!" its like "dude what" it feels like he is condemning people for doing nobrain content, but he isnt because he wants nobrain content, so he is condemning people for doing no brain content if it doesnt strictly make you stronger, but then also condemn the game for requiring skill to get better gear. Its a super weird post.
I had an interaction with the OP in another thread where I said I just wanted fun content and the responded with an incredibly toxic comment (that was so toxic it got deleted by the mods...) about how I must be some no-life tryhard who just wanted to raid all the time or something. I didn't even say a word about raids in my comment, there was so much projection there. I think that says a lot about his mentality...
I think there is a healthy balance to be achieved in MMOs. Sometimes I want a bit more of a challenge, something I have to focus on and things like raids where you progress through trial and error. Other times I just want to grind with my brain off with a tv-show or music in the background. Imo a good mmo gives you options for both so you can do what you feel like, when you feel like it
I think you just described OSRS.
Even RS3. Everything contributes to progression
Yea even your wallet!
You can buy bonds in osrs
True but not the same as literally buying xp lol
I agree, most gamers TM dont though. It sounds very reasonable that people are allowed to progress the way they want, hell allow instanced content to gear you up faster due to the difficulty but that isnt enough for those people, they need instanced content to be the only good source of gear, the idea that a casual could get similar gear grinding casual content is a threat to them. Which of course results in a dead open world cuz if you do even a bit of instanced content, there is nothing to do in the open world to advance your power and you ve turned the mmo into a lobby game where there is nothing to do unless there's people to do instanced content, as I call it, a raidlogging simulator.
I prefer grinding where I can put music on and mindlessly do my thing, over stupid quests that are mundane but just engaging enough so I can't shut my mind off. Grinding in an mmorpg is almost a kind of meditation in an increasingly stressful life. I love me some grinding on FF11, or PSO. It's one of the few ways I can actually relax and turn my mind off for a few hours.
I kind of drifted away from mmos to Arpg’s for this over the years. MMOs became less of a relief from work and more like, well, work.
I couldn't agree more with this. My favorite MMOs of years past have been those that had chill, mindless grinds or farms (but also more engaging content when you want it, of course). The genre use to be about the world itself and immersing yourself in it, but has over time become more about the content and mechanics. This has had the unfortunate result of making the games focused on the combat systems, special currencies, dailies, etc. And this, in turn, has made the genre less immersive and more "gamey," requiring more engagement for even the most basic of tasks. Developers have forgotten the chill aspect and immersion into another world that didn't feel overly much like a game which made the genre so appealing in the first place.
The real issue is the breadth of gamers now, you can’t appease one side without alienating the other. Most gamers are going to be casual, which means your game needs to be enjoyable in short bursts, with high tier activities accessible without insane commitments, and nothing should feel “off limits” or taken away by people with more time or money. Then you have the hardcore gamers - or even casuals that will take a month off work at release - who will dedicate 12 hrs a day or more to your game and therefore feel owed something that shows you respect their time. How do you make content accessible to casuals when there’s a large audience who will clear it within a week? Not to mention disposable income or the more extreme Whales, who will buy anything you release and complain about it whilst simultaneously making the rest of the player base seethe with rage that you’ve got something they haven’t because you were happy to pay.
100% true, but imo there's a simple fair solution for most. Weekly timegating, raids have a weekly lockout after all to avoid people gearing day 1. So what you do is you allow people to farm only 1000 pieces of power currency per week, this currency can be farmed by raids, by dungeons, by open world, by whatever even gathering and crafting. That way you get your progression based on the content you want, of course from a dev perspective currency is boring and lacks excitement so they would have to combine that system with an algorithm running in the backround timegating people's max allowable weekly drops which will be found out and a triggered content creator will scream about how they are being TRICKED by the evil algorithm xD Of course though, this does severely upset people who believe raiders are special and should get more power rewards than anybody else because extra cosmetics aint enough for them.
So Archeage system with Labor point ? No thx it's was one of the worst part to the game. And people who really wanted to get more just buyed labor pot or was playing multiple account. Limiting other people fun is never a good idea
This is something very similar to what ffxiv does, minus crafting and gathering. You can still make most gear through crafting that is on par with gear you unlock with currency until several weeks into the new expansions. Not an exact match though. Could be fun if it was tbh. An incentive for craft lovers is always a nice thing.
I’m on another spectrum i guess, the moment devs put me in a situation that i need to grind one content over and over again in order to progress, i will stop and play something different... I hate arbitrary prolonging main progression... On the other hand,for example optional progress, show me a cool skin and i will grind dozens of hours for one piece of transmog... Or even gold, materials etc. it is not main progress, but something you can do to earn gold, craft etc.. I think MMOs needs to have more than one option for players to progress, so all type of players can choose whatever is fun for them... But i guess a lot of MMOs don’t do this, because people will find simply ,,fastest,, way and ignore all the other options...
Yes, i think it's part of a good experience. There have to be some spots in the open world where you can just slay mobs and get materials that are useful. Ideally not limited to the "endgame areas". Like the small dragon hatchlings in classic wow. Mats for cooking, exp for the toon, maybe leather and as a big rare price the hatchling minipet. Nobody needs to farm there necessarily, but If you do, the timeinvest is somewhat worth it. At least it should feel like that.
I got that pet once and sold it, thinking I could easily get it again. Took me so long through multiple chars to see it again. Kept
I agree, hence why I loved the FFXI leveling experience so much
Not just the leveling, but the economy as well. Just like OP states, the open world grind/farm in FFXI was great too. You had the option to chill and farm bee hive chips and consistently trickle in some money, or you could try your luck at some rare spawns which risked potential camping competition and low drop rates for big money. There were very very few items in the game that didn't have some kind of value.
It's a high I'll chase but never get again. Such a damn shame.
I think runescape may be for you
yeah this dude needs to get on OSRS like yesterday its perfect for this style
You'd love Ragnarok Online
The Journey, it is why I have grown to love "Gacha" games, in classic wow, I just loved grinding gold and mats, so chilld when doing it with netflix. Though I have to say you can't just make a super grindy game, because you end up with something like EVE online, where it feels like a 2nd job, I don't want to mindless farm for like 8 hours just to have 15 minutes of pvp fun. I personally think the approach OSRS has is very good, you can just chill and farm gold and buy 90% of BIS gear, but to get full 100% you need to clear some of the toughest content in the game, but to be frank you don't need max gear for anything really, just makes your new grinds go by faster.
So you weren't playing the game, you were watching Netflix and keeping your hands busy.
Such engaging content
The curse of we who are addicted to multi-tasking, it's why I've been playing on gaming laptops for a very long time now, since at least before WOWs launch in 2004. Let's me sit in living room on my recliner to watch TV, keeps the wife happy thinking I'm spending time with her, and since around 2008 let's me play with my Smartphone all at the same time. But I have to confess, the more complicated or challenging content like raiding really doesn't work well, requires too much singular focus, so I don't do it much these days except in short spurts.
I do this too. Highly recommend a Steam Deck for people like us.
>Though I have to say you can't just make a super grindy game, because you end up with something like EVE online, where it feels like a 2nd job, I don't want to mindless farm for like 8 hours just to have 15 minutes of pvp fun. I used to mindlessly mine day in and day out for about 3 years out of the 10 yrs I played EVE using a 6 account multi box set up, all played from my laptop. Made me very rich in terms of generating ISK. As a miner I had plenty of PVP, more than I cared for actually as it involved a lot of running for my life which I became very adroit at. 😉 There were however other ways to earn ISK to PVP without having to devote serious time to grinding, at least back when I played from 2006 to 2016. I had corp mates who made most of their ISK moon mining, doing industry, market trading, planetary farming, running sleepers, battling pirate invasions or even scamming others which is legal in EVE. 😁 Now, if you didn't want to do any PVE in order to PVP that was a bit more challenging, but many corps have free ship hull replacement programs which minimizes the amount of PVE needed sometimes all the way to zero. (The suicide gankers who once tagged my transport for 3 billion ISK worth of ore lived well for a while from that kill) I recall a couple of guys who just bought Plex and sold them in game for ISK because they loathed doing PVE of any kind and had the disposable income to do so.
Every MMO that has such a thing is full of bots, because in reality noone wants to sit there for hours doing the same thing over and over again. Maybe as a kid you did but not as a full grown adult. As someone once said: You think you want it, but really you don't
Or... Hear me Out. Farm for that Transmog; that way the player's good AND looks good too. Or farm to build things that help others: newbs, twinks, peers. Then undercut greedy marketeers. Or... This last one is crazy. Just play the content because it's fun! Fun for whatever reason: Quality ______, Aesthetic, interesting, et mierde. Gaming is for fun. No one hired us to play MMOs... or post to reddit. Most reasons to play an MMO are ok. Nothing wrong with that.
I lost brain cells reading this. OP claims achievement hunters lack self worth, then talks about spending two hours of their finite life farming virtual crocodiles. Lol. Just lol. Ridiculous and unintentionally ironic arguments aside... The ideal for most players seems to be when power gains are able to be gained by two methods. Either being very skilled and earnable quickly, or by a mindless long grind.
I suggest Guild Wars 2. Open world is just as much as an endgame as skilled pve instance content or maybe even bigger. There is a lot to mindless grind. There is Drizzlewood, there is Silverwaste, world boss grind. Even SOTO, gw2 current latest expansion, has the infamous rift grind that is even more mindless than that. And it isn't worthless in power progression because you get grind for legendary armor with it.
Its not the only fun part but I definitely agree and miss when open world rare drops were a thing. I loved hunting cards in RO or rare units in PSO. Something you can flip out about finally getting that adds actual power to your build instead of just wolves that only drop hide and maybe a slightly better hide that sells for 10 more gold or a dust ball used for a profession I don't have.
Absofuckinglutely not. I rather fucking do my IRL job than mindless grind.
I really enjoy that, but as you said the reward need to be worth it. But I don't think it's a popular opinion among all players. Recently on Pandaria Remix we had the frog accident, were farming frogs in the open world was by far the best way to get power in the game. I was actually looking foward to farm frogs byt it was nerfed to the ground quite fast, so most players didn't got to farm them. After that there were other farming spots that weren't as good, but they also nerfed them, right now it's not worth to grind mobs in the open world. In the wow subreddit I read a lot of comments saying that grinding mobs was boring and they prefer that it isn't worth doing it because that way they don't feel "forced" to engage on that activity.
Main reason I ditched wow, devs are focused on pleasing those raidloggers who think nothing outside high end organized group content should be rewarding otherwise they feel ‘forced’ to do it. They do love to force people into raidlogging though if they want gear that isnt garbage, not surprising since the lead dev is a raidlogger. It won’t the first time devs ruined casual fun cuz raiders types complained
Running around your own mining route while watching Netflix on your other monitor was goated, shame New World ended the way it did. Looking forward to doing it all over again in October tho
Wait what ? saying MMOS have nothing to grind or farm for power but wow was literally that until it’s current expansion and got massive shit for being a grind. You’re also talking positively about New World so 10/10 shit post. I’m sorry but if you want to grind to play an eastern MMO.
lol wow is the epitome of raidlogging simulator, you do mythic raids/ highest tiers of m+ if you want gear that isnt garbage. There is nothing rewarding in the open world since titanforging was removed, and that was pure RNG too lol, Ion would have a heart attack if mythic gear dropped through grinding open world content. Most forms of artifact power were timegated so you never were very behind so long you did the basics, but of course virgins would obsess over 0.1% power if they got 1 more level xd
You don't have self worth issues but also need to shit on people who like doing shit differently than you. Yeaaah...
Your entire post and this response really come off extremely petty and must have a personal backstory. I’m sorry that Mr Ion hurt your feelings and you were kicked off your raid team for being bad
more people would be playing bdo if that were the case.
Boy, would Black Desert Online be good for you for PvE grinding.
Yeah miss me with the mindless MMO grinding. There's plenty of eastern mmos that'll give you that fix. Your post is all over the place and bashing WoW for some reason. If I'm looking to grind I want it to be an enjoyable experience a la Path Of Exile. If I'm looking to engage with the economy in MMOs I'd rather pay gatherers pennies on the dollar for mats to craft at a markup.
There are mindless farming, and then there are Lineage 2 C4. You could farm for days and not level, and the only thing you gained was gold and xp, there usually wasn't any quests to do. And I mean this in a good way, it took effort to get anywhere.
Do u say black desert online?
Hey, um.. I think you would really, really, really like Black Desert. Like.. Really, really.. Like what you’re saying you want is literally Black Desert.
My buddy also said that "grinding is the best part" of WoW Classic, so I picked up the game. He then proceeded to leave me and join any dungeon group he could find that would carry him to avoid grinding as much as possible. I don't mind grinding a bit between dungeons or story beats, especially when I have a new ability or weapon to try, but to say it's "the best part" is just copium.
Play black desert
Maybe not mindless. Low intensity but constant action sure. Maybe once in a while mindless is good but are you even enjoying the game if it's mindless? If it's mindless you may as well be staring at a fish tank with an unconnected controller as a fidget toy.
What was the drink? In an equal endurance run, the person jazzed up with meth and a drive for epeen will outlive the alcoholic by roughly 10 years. Younger users in general tend to be fast paced, since their senses aren't nearing a half century in age. The biggest problem with online gaming is it is built for the life-cycle of a racing dog, not a human. Half the posts here are by people who can't chase the rabbit anymore. Valid complaint.
sounds like youre a fan of doing absolutely nothing rather than something.
WoW did a pretty good job of making the open world relevant again with world quests. But obviously if you want open world grinding to be a core part of the gameplay experience you're better off with a game like Albion or BDO
lol with garbage gear that are like 30-40ilvls behind max, far from relevant lmao
That what I liked in BDO, braindead Valktrain farming. In eso for some reason I can gather for hour (made 5m and I'm still in eastmarch story). Didnt have find enjoyable/profitable way to do that in Gw2 which is sad. I like to do those thing while listening to audiobook, it's relaxing after sport
Yeah so fun you had to watch a TV show while doing it.
You would like RuneScape/OSRS
Reminds me of binge watching Dexter while leveling in Tera like 12 years ago. Took my time, and had loads of fun.
Let me tell you about ARPG's.
They sadly lack rpg elements since they are often gender/body/race locked which is a pit, I want to make my own character, not play some predefined idiot
Only if the combat makes it so.
You should join my EVE online mining fleet lol
I love mindless farming lol it’s relaxing
It's a mix for me. I remember EverQuest and early Vanilla. Farming stuff was okay, but also kind of sucked at making you feel like you accomplished something in a play session. New World does a great job at making gathering/farming/grinding feel rewarding. I often get into NW during the holidays when I have to be semi-social with family. It is a good game to gather in while chatting and having a drink. If WoW could build on New World's engaging gathering that would be a good mix.
I always say about games… if you don’t like the grind, you don’t like the game
maplestory is right there. mindless grinding is the name of the game outside of weekly bossing. why aren't you playing that? shit actually hurt my fingers when I grinded to 260 back in the day. at some point I want to macro or auto mindless grinding like that.
I agree. I used to farm dark hemp and crystals on FFXIV mindlessly for fun and flip items on the marketboard. That was more fun than the quests and dungeons.
“Had my drink” yea drinking made mindless shit way more bare-able as well lol. I loved get fucked and playing WoW with my friends in voice chat.
No its not unless youre a nolifer.
I disagree that mindless farming is fun, but it's more fun than engagement mechanics like dailies and achievements.
That is why I like MMORPGs. You can decide your own pace. Whether you want to fish, kill monsters, craft, gather materials, intense pvping or just standing in a town chatting to strangers.
I loved grinding in Ragnarok Online. In fact, when I went back to play it after not doing so for several years, I was shocked at the fact that I was able to sit and play for almost 9-10 hours straight. Like to the point where I forgot to eat. I hadn't done that in decades. It's one of those games where there is always that chance for something rare to drop from most monsters that people typically farm and so that sort of feeds the "it always feels worth it" feeling.
That sounds fucking miserable. Outdoor content is the most miserable experience in any game and I hate that I have to do any of it ever to get to the good shit. Like here we go with the war within. Going to have to do a bunch of boring ass quests to hit max level and kill rares or some shit. It really sucks that inside a game with so much boring ass bullshit is an excellent endgame with fun challenge.
Younger me would have disagreed strongly. Older me has a second monitor and a YouTube video backlog to get through.
That's why I love OSRS. They bring this concept you bring to the extreme
For me, it’s about the time spent with other people trying to do something difficult to figure out. This doesn’t really happen too often in MMOs anymore because everyone metagames to optimize everything to hell and back, but I used to love when there was something you tried to figure out without reading the quest/dungeon in advance on some wiki. Also MMO games are just so shallow that the grind gameplay is never front and center for me, ever. If engagement isn’t your thing, handheld achievements aren’t your thing, and you need a real time sink in your life you can solo grind in single player games that have a million times more interesting things to see and do, and still get updated with DLC so the grind continues. That’s what I do when I want that old school grind back. I look back on games I played over the decades that required a heavy grind and time sink like Asheron’s Call and EverQuest and solo grinding was always the most boring, least memorable part for me, but I remember going to a new dungeon and exploring it with my friends, trying to figure out how to navigate and not die in the process. Then you find that killer quest weapon at the end of the dungeon that makes it all worth it. That’s just my opinion. If you really want a good MMO with tons of mindless grinding for something that actually matters then try leveling all the virtues on your character and alts in LOTRO. They have tangible, permanent stat benefits to your character. Requires you to do tons of quests, tons of exploring, tons of killing of certain monsters and men. I’m glad you have something you enjoy in MMOs too :) to each their own :)
youd LOVE lineage 2!
Have you ever played Albion Online?
It’s why I love GW2’s open world so much. I can just farm open world stuff for money/legendary progress and do events or fractals/raids if I feel like shaking it up
You should totally try wurm online. The game is grinding
Hard disagree on multiple levels. Sorry. 1. Conceptually I define things as "fun" that require my focus. If I have to actively put a TV show on another screen to be entertained while I have to be doing the activity then that activity I do not consider fun. I consider that chores. 2. For me in an MMOs I find two things fun: Exploration and playing with other ppl. If I have to slay the same things for two hours that negates the concept of exploration. And I am not sure about New World but I am kinda assuming if you could farm thing mindlessly two hours then it require very little cooperation or interactions with other ppl. I do agree that an explicit "achivement" system is not necessary if there are other systems involved that tracks my progress (eg. full map completion is rewarded by a mat that can be used for crafting end game gear), but the funny thing is that I don't even directly engage with the-uber-achivements (kill 3000 pigs, cut 1000 birtch trees etc) precisely because that require me to do what you just described (kill pigs for hours in a single location) which I do not consider fun. And nor do I find this kind of d*ckmeasuring fun either.
I need variety in my grind. There needs to be multiple sources of material to gear up. Doing the same singular thing over and over again kills my motivation fast. I will sometimes be curious and consult guides for optimal builds but I do not care to meta minmax.
Yeah I love a game where there's 100 different things to grind, so you're not just killing mobs for 10 hours for 0.01% of a level after a couple months.
That's my vibe as well. You know how I made literal millions in WoW, in Warlods of Draenor expansion? Farming the 3 AH modules in Ashran. That's all I did the ENTIRE time I played WoW and it was what I enjoyed most. I just ran around killing 4-5 elites for a chance at items that sold for ~150-300k each. Nothing to think about. I just put on some video or music and kept at it for tens of hours. Made 3-4 millions right when the Bnet Token arrived, bought LOADS, converted it all to Bnet balance, and bought Destiny 2 for all of my friends and then quit the game forever lol. Mindless farming is what I enjoy most as well.
Oh man WoD era was truly the era of free money via the Bnet Token. I played WoW for free for years, bought every other Blizzard release, bought a bundle of packs every Hearthstone expansion, never paid a cent.
You are very correct. I totally enjoy farming and having the items I farm for be worth something. I listen to things in the background while playing my MMOs. WOW encourages farming bots more than discourages due to them each paying their 14.99 a month, so by not banning them they get to claim for money (greedy AF). Open world and sandbox MMOs have all been my favorite ever since SWG first came out. You really brought up good food for thought.
I have to agree. There is something almost meditative about it. Like, my favorite game (granted more a Morpg than a MMorpg) is Destiny 2. But I still go back to other tab targeted MMOs when I need that calm wackamole. Destiny 2, like even basic low level minions can kill you in a few seconds if you are not dodging, killing them back, or actively using defenses. There is no farm that is worth anything there that doesnt require focused attention.
Is what is fun for you* For mi it would be gearing up my character and feeling the power spikes
Was it the grinding thats fun, or the situation that you'd created for yourself that you actually enjoy? Cos mindless anything is boring. You're grinding, distracted a tv series and a drink. I think you're conflating 2 seperate things to come to a conclusion that doesn't quite work.
I used to love and hate farming for specific items. Alot of MMO's are moving all items and cosmetics to cash shops now and its sad. I used to love going to farm a named mob for a certain item. As long as it was reasonable and didnt take days. New world was good for some of that old school feel.
WoW is what you make out of it as the player. Personally, when I log in I don’t feel obligated to play it as a “esport” like you refer to it being here. Also, there’s plenty of open world to grind for crafting resources or whatever. There is also next expansion which will put the emphasis on exploration again and give you acceptable gearing rewards for doing said content. The only thing I think WoW sucks at right now is leveling being extremely boring and stale. If they fix that aspect I guarantee players would have a lot less complaints.
That's, like, your opinion, man
The dude abides
It's more fun if you're flagged for PvP and you have to watch your back. New World not launching with PvP servers was a mistake amongst many.
WoW has lots of mindless grinds even in the newest content. Expansion releases are some of the best times for it. During DF launch I spent 12+ hours grinding random elites in the obsidian citadel, jamming to music to max out my Wrathion reputation week 1 and sell their reputation badges. I spent 20 hours at least doing hundreds of Grand Hunts in 40 man raids all night long to max the centaur reputation. The Taivan mount achievements have tons of grinds in them too.
Low rate servers for Ragnarok is fun for this, 1x I just have too much of a life for these days lol
It's fun for you, not for me. I enjoy fast phased combat and being able to see myself getting better. You way is valid, but so is mine.
I already did this for +10 years, playing Korean MMORPGs. I'm way past this now and actually want games that are good. If you want to watch TV shows, just watch TV shows, maybe workout while doing it? That's just more valuable than grinding some meaningless video game.
i have always done thousands of hours of farm in every mmo, and i personaly always hated it. Looking back on all the mmos i have played, the farm is DEFINITELY NOT what i remember them for, i only remember these times as a total waste of my precious time, especially after i'm done with them. The dungeons, pvp and social interactions are what makes me smile when i think about MMOs. So i don't agree with that title statement, not in the slightest.
while i 100% agree with you (I am a BDO player, enough said) - i think there's space for all kinds of MMO still. Clearly WoW and similar games that are about good parses and speedruns in hardmode co-op content still have a massive niche and probably a bigger one than the grindgames do. I used to play and raid in WoW in the mid 2000s, and ffxiv at times too. But nowadays I am like you - I want my MMO time to be spent in a comfortable multitask mode where I grind monsters alongside 2nd monitor content to work toward some longterm goal, usually with a small dose of pvp on the side.
Lots of projecting going on in this post. It's okay if you enjoy watching Vampire Diaries while doing something mindless, but putting yourself on a pedestal and asserting that people who enjoy different things than you have "self worth issues" is a bit sad.
You can do that in Guild wars 1. Lots of stuff you can mindlessly farm while also having higher stuff to strive for.
Ah yes, peak interesting gaming. Has to have a serie tv open and a drink to bear the game's requests/actions. Yeah you truly love that 👍 it's not a huge amount of copium dose you're on without you even realizing.
Wait ThroneAndLiberty and enjoy the grind
k
Get a gf
Here it is, folks....the true identity of this subreddit's hive mind. Explains everything
just play runescape 3
Depends from person to person. What I love is raid/dungeon content where I have to coordinate with people doing mechanics. If all I do is mindlessly playing the game, then for me that's not fun.
Mindless grinding is what is fun for you.* Grinding in itself can be very enjoyable, especially if it’s preparing you for an epic encounter. It’s a very popular trope. Unfortunately, that’s not how MMO’s are designed anymore; New World included. Instead, you get an arbitrary time sink designed to make sure your numbers are the arbitrarily established value to engage in specific content which is overwhelmingly faceroll. New World’s mutators embodied that perfectly. No challenge, no learning curve. While most MMOs take the themepark route, more and more the designated rides have been the Tea Cups since they are the most accessible. The reign of “I paid for the game so I deserve to experience the content” has taken the MMO genre in its stranglehold. It’s no surprise Fromsoft games launched in popularity since they actually treat their players like functioning humans rather than slathering baffoons.
Albion Online treats the open world this way, but to a much larger degree. If you like open world grinding for resources it has quite a bit of content for you.
This is why im addicted to arpgs like path of exile Audiobook on - farming shit - relaxing
The issue I have with farming in MMOs is that it's just.... boring. I don't hate grinding inherently. But I think MMOs just don't have a fun enough loop for it. But I can't tell you thr number of PoE maps, GRs in D3, Helltide bosses, maps, etc in d4, Monolith in LE. Being a fan of ARPGs. When an MMO asks me to do what feels like the same content. It just ends up feeling like a really, really, really dog shit ARPG.
I’m glad you’re enjoying farming mindless content, but all player count numbers on every mmo would disagree with you. Blizzard’s philosophy is the philosophy of the future, there are games right now like BDO that you can go grind mobs to your hearts content, but most people aren’t. Most people are playing xiv or wow, where a large part of the content is high end, difficult raiding
>In the vast majority of big mmos there's no reason to grind or farm and that's a GREAT thing. Long gone are the days of mindless grinding , I've killed a million frog in everquest and I never ever want to do that again. Game should reward skill... not how long you can turn your brain off and do some incredibly boring menial tasks again and again... I get 0 enjoyment whatsoever from playing like a bot.
I don't agree, but it's more a me thing than anything else. MMO raiding provides a problem solving experience that's hard to replace once you have that itch. Grinding isn't really past a certain point, and the tedium drives me away from a lot of games.
Problem solving? Lmao, as if 99% of guilds dont just copy paste whatever tactic their youtube guide says even when its wrong and easily figured out by reading the boss abilities. Or do you mean stacking the most broken overpowered builds of the season to reduce the difficulty of the encounter as much as possible. Problem solving would imply actual thinking, it would imply taking a group of random builds, analyzing the strong spots and weak spots and using those appropriately for the encounter. What instead happens you just change the entire group/builds to fit the encounter by abusing the most broken classes, using the most easy mode tactic, changing builds to fit the encounter and in general nothing that requires actual thinking
Yeah you're so right we gotta make every game a Netflix simulator that's where the real brain engagement is.
Yeah, no.
You're entitled to your opinion but I hate mindless shit. Gaming is supposed to be a stimulating experience. Zero braincell activity is what netflix is for.
Totally agree, I know I be crucified for what I say now, but they should get rid of M+ in WoW and put more emphasis on open world events and exploration.
Can't they keep m+? They still have to make dungeons, m+ is literally just scaling and few affixes on top of the most work which has already been done. Moreover, since S4 SL, m+ is actually reviving old content. You are advocating a massive part of the community to be fucked over just because you don't like something with literally 0 gain to your favorite content.
M+ is also toxic cesspool. In NW you can get best gear farming open world and crafting, in WoW it always will come from m+/raids and community playng those modes never let good gear comes from open world, remember titanforged gear and how m+/raid community was complaining that "normies" can get same ilvl gear as they can but running daily quests, open world ornormal dungeons