Funcom's Secret World is Anti-Grind
- Thread starter Tom Goldman
- Start date
An anti-grind element for MMORPGs already exists. It's called roleplaying. Perhaps one of these days a dev team will learn that and make a proper game. Maybe this game is it.
my only question:
does it work on a monthly fee or standard pay the money for the cd and have it for life?
cuz if its a monthly fee kind of mmo then i dont care if its the 2nd coming of jesus i ant getting it....
does it work on a monthly fee or standard pay the money for the cd and have it for life?
cuz if its a monthly fee kind of mmo then i dont care if its the 2nd coming of jesus i ant getting it....
Well, most MMORPGs
But seriously, there's gotta be some challenge as well as reward. Between the two there is gameplay, or the gameplay loop to be specific. Basically you have "grind" in every game - you generally do (at most) a few things over and over to achieve one or more objectives the game offers you.
The trick is to design it so that it isn't perceived as grind.
Works actually fine in WoW for example until the level cap has been reached (personal opinion, based on vanilla WoW).
Bottom line: "We won't have any grind" can't be anything else than marketing bs.
Well, other games have ditched the "RP" in MMOGs and put tons of grind in it. Maybe the other way around might work, too.Jim Moreno said:
But seriously, there's gotta be some challenge as well as reward. Between the two there is gameplay, or the gameplay loop to be specific. Basically you have "grind" in every game - you generally do (at most) a few things over and over to achieve one or more objectives the game offers you.
The trick is to design it so that it isn't perceived as grind.
Works actually fine in WoW for example until the level cap has been reached (personal opinion, based on vanilla WoW).
Bottom line: "We won't have any grind" can't be anything else than marketing bs.
Exactly where I stand atm. It SOUNDS good, but like so many things that sounds good, it can always turn out bad. To be more acurate, probably 91% of things that sound good are bad.qbanknight said:
Anyway, I will keep tabs on it and wait with anticipation, but I wil not get my spirits up to high, because I want to be able to still recognise them after they have crashed and burned...
Also:
I agree, down to the gorgeous metaphorephoenix352 said:
Funcom is very similar to developers like NC soft/Cryptic/etc... at least when it comes to MMORPGs. They come up with some interesting ideas, but ultimatly wind up churning out second and third rate games. Games with potential that is oftentimes never realized. Anarchy Online for example took a good while to get going, Age Of Conan was a mess of unfulfilled promises where most of what was said to hype it wound up being recanted in the months before release. No formation fighting, less and less classes, no epic scale PVP events, etc...
The "no grinding bit" sounds interesting until you consider that it's not nessicarly even a good idea. Grinding exists like it currently does because to be honest it works. Casual MMORPGs have been attempted before, but typically fail due to a general lack of long term goals and accomplishments, as well as chasing away the hardcore crowd. A lot of those browser and free to play MMORPGS were specifically developed to try and draw in a casual crowd.
Not to mention the fact that grinding is needed to prevent people from going through content too fast, and/or encouraging people to replay what is there. They can only produce so many zones and so much content. If they want people to keep playing they have to keep people occupied with what is there until they can produce more content.
The biggest problem I think isn't so much grinds, as shunned zones. On paper expanding a game is simple: create higher level content and dungeons that pick up where you left off. The problem is though that most of the long term players head off to those zones and hubs when they come out. This means brandy new players just coming into the game begin with storylines and quest chains and such that will never have any resolution because in making the new zones potentially approachable, all need to grind through the older endgame zones disappears. I think a lot of newer WoW players for example wind up getting miffed because if they follow the storylines (which were well written) they tend to lead to places like "Molten Core" that nobody bothers to visit anymore. With the storyline and such that kept the initial players interested (people can discuss lore for hours while raiding) pretty much rendered irrevelent it does become a massive chore to basically race through the lower levels as fast as possible to get to the point where your doing things that are currently relevent.
I will also say that endgame "raid" content is nessicary because it keeps people that are seriously involved in the game doing something until the next expansion comes out. It's nessicary because players will ALWAYS finish the content long, long, before the next expansion.
Attempts to replace raiding and "boss grinding" with things like PVP have generally failed because while appeaing to some people, in general it tends to become an annoying grind in of itself, and frequently highlights game imbalances and exploits in a way that aren't as big a deal in PVE content. Not to mention the fact that with PVE you do accomplish things as you master fights, and see the loot you want drop. PVP by ut's nature must remain pointless, cities cannot be permanantly taken over, characters permanantly killed, or anything else to avoid alienating the losers (who will always outnumber the winners) and causing them to
leave the game.
I wish Funcom luck, but to be honest I think they are just parroting the hype from other games. Especially seeing as they have not explained even remotely HOW they think they can implement something like this. A sure sign of disaster because they skirted around some of the cooler claims with say Age Of Conan and then it turned out that they reason why they did was because nothing of the sort was ever put into the game (and if your pessimistic, you might even suspect it was an outright lie and they never had any intention of doing some of what they promised).
Honestly if I was Funcom, I'd work with their Anarchy Online liscence, and develop an EVE/Earth and Beyond like space RPG engine. Then blend the two together, into a great independant science fiction property with both ground based and space based gameplay. Much like what Star Trek tried to do. Honestly I think Anarchy Online has been due for a direct sequel for a while now, for all it's great ideals it's just horribly dated.
The "no grinding bit" sounds interesting until you consider that it's not nessicarly even a good idea. Grinding exists like it currently does because to be honest it works. Casual MMORPGs have been attempted before, but typically fail due to a general lack of long term goals and accomplishments, as well as chasing away the hardcore crowd. A lot of those browser and free to play MMORPGS were specifically developed to try and draw in a casual crowd.
Not to mention the fact that grinding is needed to prevent people from going through content too fast, and/or encouraging people to replay what is there. They can only produce so many zones and so much content. If they want people to keep playing they have to keep people occupied with what is there until they can produce more content.
The biggest problem I think isn't so much grinds, as shunned zones. On paper expanding a game is simple: create higher level content and dungeons that pick up where you left off. The problem is though that most of the long term players head off to those zones and hubs when they come out. This means brandy new players just coming into the game begin with storylines and quest chains and such that will never have any resolution because in making the new zones potentially approachable, all need to grind through the older endgame zones disappears. I think a lot of newer WoW players for example wind up getting miffed because if they follow the storylines (which were well written) they tend to lead to places like "Molten Core" that nobody bothers to visit anymore. With the storyline and such that kept the initial players interested (people can discuss lore for hours while raiding) pretty much rendered irrevelent it does become a massive chore to basically race through the lower levels as fast as possible to get to the point where your doing things that are currently relevent.
I will also say that endgame "raid" content is nessicary because it keeps people that are seriously involved in the game doing something until the next expansion comes out. It's nessicary because players will ALWAYS finish the content long, long, before the next expansion.
Attempts to replace raiding and "boss grinding" with things like PVP have generally failed because while appeaing to some people, in general it tends to become an annoying grind in of itself, and frequently highlights game imbalances and exploits in a way that aren't as big a deal in PVE content. Not to mention the fact that with PVE you do accomplish things as you master fights, and see the loot you want drop. PVP by ut's nature must remain pointless, cities cannot be permanantly taken over, characters permanantly killed, or anything else to avoid alienating the losers (who will always outnumber the winners) and causing them to
leave the game.
I wish Funcom luck, but to be honest I think they are just parroting the hype from other games. Especially seeing as they have not explained even remotely HOW they think they can implement something like this. A sure sign of disaster because they skirted around some of the cooler claims with say Age Of Conan and then it turned out that they reason why they did was because nothing of the sort was ever put into the game (and if your pessimistic, you might even suspect it was an outright lie and they never had any intention of doing some of what they promised).
Honestly if I was Funcom, I'd work with their Anarchy Online liscence, and develop an EVE/Earth and Beyond like space RPG engine. Then blend the two together, into a great independant science fiction property with both ground based and space based gameplay. Much like what Star Trek tried to do. Honestly I think Anarchy Online has been due for a direct sequel for a while now, for all it's great ideals it's just horribly dated.
As a former Matrix Online fanatic/player, I can't help but get very excited about this game. The focus on setting, storyline and player interaction is a huge thing to me after experiencing it in MxO and no MMO I've tried since has done it anywhere near as well, if they've bothered to focus on it at all. Even my current MMO, LOTRO, has the setting and storyline but leaves the player interaction out in favour of the typical explore/quest/grind found in most MMOs.
If, and it's a big if, Funcom can pull TSW off to anywhere near a level that matches the Dev's obvious excitement about it then this could be huge.. to me personally at least.
If, and it's a big if, Funcom can pull TSW off to anywhere near a level that matches the Dev's obvious excitement about it then this could be huge.. to me personally at least.
Destroy the grind? Yeah, right. RPG's since the dawn of the video game have been focused on grinding. Hell, even the original Zelda had griding for rupees!
You destroy grinding and you destroy the RPG aspect of the MMO-RPG. We can all just play the Kings Quests and Team Fortresses at that point.
You destroy grinding and you destroy the RPG aspect of the MMO-RPG. We can all just play the Kings Quests and Team Fortresses at that point.
The trick is making it not feel like grinding.MurderousToaster said:
I got to 80 in WoW without ever once going "FFS another 90 wolves!" Which was a testament to them hiding the grind from me.
Tabula Rasa was pretty good for a bit. Really it was just let down by a bizarre setting, a lack of content in the midlevels (there's no grind! Now kill 2000 bad guys because we forgot to make enough missions!) and, of course (and most terminally) Richard Gariott is actually more dangerously insane than Peter Moleneux...Yokai said:
But yeah, you just described Tabula Rasa.