Grind: the constant state of repetitive action in order to gain experience to level. Usually consists of killing weak mobs for low experience for a long period of time. Tends to take hours or days in some cases.
This horrifying feature is usually seen in F2P(free to play) games which are running ramped lately. Most people sit behind their keyboard highly annoyed when they are trying to gain that extra experience to either get another quest, or equip a new item when they are just so close to doing so. Maybe a level or two away, but the mobs they are fighting or the filler quests they are doing only give them very little experience over all forcing them to repeat the same process over and over again.
Time and time again this can be the reason for a person to quit a game: The grind was to heavy, and too noticeable. The problem that is seen mostly in industries when they produce games is balancing the grind. For one you can not have the grind be far too noticeable or you will not get as many members in your game that you may like. At the same time you can not have there be little to no grind or there will be virtually nothing keeping the person playing unless there is an outrageous new feature to the game. In other words if someone can reach level 100 in one day, or even the cap level(the highest level you can be in said game) within the first day they play they will have no real reason to keep playing because after a few days or a week it will become extremely boring.
When it comes to F2P games the reason behind the grind, and the only good reason most industries place it there is to keep people coming back. They make it just hard enough for you to level that you don鈥檛 get so frustrated you just quit, but at the same time you don鈥檛 think the game is too easy and figure it to not be worth your time. The grind is to keep people coming back for more short and simple, and it may be annoying but without it we would not really have a reason to play the games. If of course you play to gain levels which in most games that is the general point, on top of finding out the story and creating a new and interesting virtual life.
Once again the problem is the balance of said grind. There are games where it is just insane how heavy the work load becomes due to the grind of it all. However they try to hook you in by other means. Such as Maple story a game with very cute graphics that attempt to distract you from how large the grind is due to the low percent of exp one gains from killing mobs. The quests are the only thing that really help on that game. It is still all too noticeable. With that much said there are ways to help avoid noticeable grind that companies, and the industries should take a huge look into.
Example 1: Story line
No matter how sooty the graphics of the game are if you have a great story line you can keep people coming back for more every time. Most people playing games do not really read most of the quests to follow the story because they are dazzled by the graphics, but these two can be swapped out. In addition if your story line is good enough people will be anxious to get to the next part and rush through the grind probably not even realizing that is what they are doing only because the story is so exciting, breath taking and mesmerizing. This is done in Final Fantasy X as well as the next example
Example 2: Game play
If the game play of a game is too basic, like point and click for every single thing I.E. even for skills then the grind becomes so noticeable only because simple clicking wont distract the player from anything at all. Think of a console game for this that institutes levels, think of a good Rpg. For example Final Fantasy X the grind was hardly seen because you were so concentrated on what skill to use in the fight, what items you needed to do this and that, and where the story was going. The game play within using those skills, collecting items, and exploring various maps to find secrets distracted from the grind so much so that it was unnoticeable.
Example 3: Revolutionary ideas.
This is pretty basic and simple to understand yet extremely difficult to accomplish. Revolutionary ideas are tactics, abilities, or new features put into an MMO that has never been seen before. This will make it near impossible to notice what is going on with the grind. The best example of this that I have seen so far is Mabinogi, and Lunia. Both games have different styles of play, for Lunia it鈥檚 the whole comic based story line, and arcade battle system. For Mabinogi it鈥檚 the story line, graphics, diverse gameplay, fighting system, part-time job system, and a whole orchestra of things.
Mabinogi:
Lunia:
In conclusion the grind is placed there to keep people coming back to games, but can be over done or under done depending on the game. Sure there are other features that can keep you coming back, but lets face it we all need a little grind in our gaming life.
