Lets make a definition of "Grind" within Guild Wars!

Ok, the idea here is that as a "community" we should try and define what "grind" is and covers within GuildWars. There are numerious threads bouncing around that complain about factor x being grind and factor y being grind.

Then you get someone else saying factor x isnt grind, but factor y is. The someone else says factor y is grind, but factor x isnt.

We also have people who cant even agree on what exactly grind defines!

Some way that grind is any activity you have to repeat, and which you dont want to. Some say grind is an activity outside of the storyline which you are forced into doing. Some say that grind is when you are pressured into doing something you dont like.

The list goes on and it gets more and more and more vague or broad!

Can we try to define two things

1) What does grind actually cover in GWs (i.e what requires grind ingame)?
2) What do we all percieve as the meaning of grind, in relation to Guild Wars?

If anyone feels those questions are detailed enough, make a suggestion and I will change them, or add another one related to definitions. I accept my spelling and gramma isnt great.

Update

So far we have grind being defined as something which is...

1) Repetative.
2) Boring (i.e you dont enjoy doing it).
3) Compulsary (i.e needs to be done to progress ingame).
4) Achieves an end result.

Allegiance titles.

And that's it.

Not rep [since the book update] and not SS/LB [it takes less than a week].

Grind is the completing of a repetitive task, to a point where the only major consideration is reward/time and not difficulty.

Farming is grind (PvE missions are not).
Alliance titles are grind (though AB is not).
Most PvE titles are grind (cartography/guardian are not).

Sometimes this depends on the mindset - for example Hero title can be grind to one player who plays purely to raise rank, and not grind for another who plays to win halls. They both achieve the same thing, but their focus is different.

All imo.

Good luck on this.

Some people seem to think that anything that requires hard work is grind.

a grind is anything you do thats not fun that takes up a lot of time.

Fun being the keyword.

like....working everyday from 9-5.

When i was playing RO, somedays it felt like a grind, somedays it felt so thrilling and fun. It depended on my mood for leveling up.

This covers everything in GW. Leveling up, getting armor, collecting materials, money, missions, quests, titles, etc.

It's defined by completing a task/advancing not through an action that encompasses the entire task, but by achieving a very small, yet completely identical goal a large number of times.

Storyline titles (protector, guardian, vanquisher, cartographer) are not grind. Each portion of the title is unique.

Grind titles are chest and identification titles, faction, sunspear, LB, reputation tracks. These titles are advanced solely and exclusively through collection of points. While there are books and quest rewards, the primary path through those is by killing mobs over and over.

Reputation titles wouldn't be considered a grind, if you would max them out by completing the storyline.

Farming is grind.

Sweet tooth and drunkard are also grind, as well as all the pvp titles.

Another easy definition of a grind in PvE is: if a bot can do it more *efficiently * than a human, it's grind. Farming, faction, reputation, drunkard and sweet tooth titles all fall under this. So does identification of items - hence it's bots that are selling them in bulk.

Some people have incorrect perception of what hard work is. Working 16 hour shifts flipping burgers is not hard work. It's mindless work.

Hard work is getting yourself to be a respected member of community through valuable contributions. Hard work is winning world championships. Hard work is becoming one of richest people in GW. Hard work is putting up a high profile fan site. Hard work is being moderator of such site. Hard work is dealing with online gaming communities.

Accomplishing anything in game that is provided for by the game mechanic itself however is never hard work. It's a goal to be attained and passed.


I like to evaluate the impact of grind in a game by removing the grind.

Which aspect of GW wouldn't change if you remove a certain leveling/progression from the game? Let's say we remove leveling up. Is the PvE affected? PvP? What about reputation titles? How much value would GW:EN retain? What about grind in PvP? What if you entered the game with UAX. Is there still any value left?

Think of an in-game progression, then remove it. The true quality of game is what remains. Do that for WoW.

This is my definition to a tee. "Fun" has no place in the definition of grind. Grind is simply a neutral, repetitive task where one is spending time seeking a reward. Doesnt matter if you are enjoying doing it or not, as there is some grind that is fun and some that is not. It depends on the game mechanics associated with said grind. Most games have some manner of grind. Grind isnt in and of itself a negative term.

Grind is, when you do something ever and ever again, somethign that is totally boring, but the only way to archive something you want to have.

Example: you want to level your Character to lvl 100 ...therefore you go hunt monsters for weeks ... there is the grind...you have to do it for so long time, doing ever and ever the same stuff, killing same monsters, because they are the lonely ones mostly, which are quite easy to kill, but give decent good exp... and why takes this ages ?

cause of 2 factors:
1. Enemies just give in overall to less Exp.
2. the exp needed to reach a next level raises far too quick to havily, so that you end up, killing strong monsters and getting only like +0,2% more towards your next level, not enough quests, which give good exp and so on...

that are the 2 reasons, why leveling in bad mmorpgs takes ages and why the player has then the feeling of having endless grind and gettign quick bored

now Anet comes in, cutted only only to max lvl 20, and gives players tooo much exp with short lines for reachin the next level ... game ended up, that players could be max level withing 1 day ..thats also shit ....

now the solution comes with GW2...

hopefully Anet gives us a good max level of 100, and quests, and monster exp, are very well balanced, so that leveling a character to lvl 100 takes not only 1 day... a player should need like say 30 days to reach max level, thats ok ... and i really don't think too much for casual gamers .... naturally 30 days of active gaming and training your character, playing the game, making quests, missiuons ect.

RO shows us, how bad experience balancing looks ...there you need to reach level 100 like 3+ months or so, when you play on a normal rated server and there you have really the feeling of playing a typical asiagrinder, once you receive for killed stuff only very small %, and when you want have bigger %, u have to kill then enemies, that are then alot strogner then you and mostly aren't killable, as long you have not parts of the best gears with best cards in and high refined ect.
RO has certain very good concepts, that are better then GW, like the Class System about Evolution, instead of a dumb 2 class system, that poops out only "wannabes", but RO isnt by far perfect, neither RO2.

lots of our titles wouldnt be such big grind, when they would be finally account based..

imo it would be best, when all titles would be than, because then you have to concentrate only once in archiving them and when you have them, then you can concentrate playing something different, like HA, or GvG's and AB's...
but with this change would start only lots of people whining for nothing, because of being to selfish to see in, that such a change would improve the general gameplay, making the game more fun again and no grind fest, where u have to do most titles for every chara, like HoM is also only a big grind point, as long it doesn't get changed into an account based feature, what woukld make much more sense ...

making the stuff Accoutn based would also motivate players more, to play with more characters, then only with 1 main character, which should try to archive all titles


titles like Drunken are pure grind...you need only to farm endless for gold, until you have enough gold for all the alcohol you need to max the title..
same with sweet tooth...

race titltes are also grind, because you don't get them maxed through normal playing...you have to go in either x times into dungeons, to to make x times kill runs to gain the points ...
or you try to complete books, sure this way is no grind, but it takes lots of time to complete such books, with a stagnating community, that doesn't really pug active for dungeons...try findign ingame pugs for dungeons, for nearly all ones you can search you dumb and sill,y until you#ve found a complete group for a dungeon ... and why ? because GW:En is still to imbaanced and the dungeons are absolutely not interesting enough for people, cause of crap loot, which is in no way "high end" as like promoted

people prefer more farming for dumb destroyer cores ect. for their special gloves ect. then making dungeons ... i say this should be changed and the farming focus for all that stuff should be brought to the dungeons, so that destroyer cores ect. should drop only out of dungeon chests ..
then people would do dungeons again ...because their farming focus would change then onto the dungeons, which are in the end the main feature of GW:En not these stupid special gloves ect.

However, i think Anet made enough fails over time, that destroyed totally the general gamefeeling, players had, as GW was released ... grind titles, grind armor parts and imba pve are only some big parts of it........

What is the use of this? Do you want to forbid grinding?
Oh c'mon, its live and let live. Why would someone care if players like to perform repetitive actions for a title or gold? Just let it be man...

I think grind is when you are forced to do something over and over again to get something you HAVE TO HAVE to be competitive in the game.

There is grind in GW, but you don't have to do any of it - its all optional.

There are only two things I consider grind.

1). Having to have 10,000 faction to continue in Factions, and;
2). Istan

Not imho. Like I said, and Avarre before me, its simply a repetitive action towards a goal. Whether its boring or not is in part the player and in part the game design of said activity.

Most console RPGs and RPGs in general have had a lot of grind. I've played quite a lot of them as probably most of us have. For a good number of them, leveling up or earning funds to move on was actually quite fun. For some, not so much. In both cases though, it was "grind". Cant really attach "fun" or "boring" to a definition of grind. I've really enjoyed grind in some games and very much disliked it in others. Pretty much all games employ some of it. The important thing is how its used.

For Guild Wars, actions to complete a number of titles are very repetitive. The goal at the end is some text beneath our feet, for the most part, and sometimes an added duration or damage quotient to a skill for those select PvE titles. Imho, the mechanics associated with titles in GW are really just geared towards spending a lot of time in the game, for little or no real reward, hence the negative association of grind and titles to some. It still does not define "grind" as a whole as negative. Its more just the GW title mechanics of the level and item/skill power caps, since there really isnt anything else to which to attach time spent on titles reward-wise.

The gameplay titles in GW were fun to me. Some others not so much. I go back and forth on how I feel about GW titles, but it really depends on the player.

Grind is completing a repetitive and tedious task, to a point where you just loose interest in the game.

My hated grind is trying to get a green from a boss. It starts of as challenging and fun, but as soon as I've done it x number of times, it becomes very boring with no end in sight.

It stops being fun when I start to question 'How many more times?', and it's definitively grind when it does drop and rather than an ecstatic 'Yay, it dropped!', it's a bitter 'ABOUT F**KING TIME!'.

It'll be nice if there was a way to make it challenging, without it becoming a time consuming bore.

I think freekedoutfish's point was that with all these "grind" complaints, there is no standard definition of "grind."

It's very hard to have substantial discussions on topics when everyone has a different interpretation of what a word even means!

From wikipedia:

"Grinding is a pejorative term used in computer gaming to describe the process of engaging in repetitive and/or non-entertaining gameplay in order to gain access to other features within the game.[1] The most common usage is in the context of MMORPGs and JRPGs, most often Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, in which it is often necessary for a character to repeatedly kill AI-controlled monsters, using basically the same strategy over and over again, in order to advance their character level to be able to access newer content. Grinding can also appear in other games in which features can be unlocked."

I don't think "grind" is a neutral term as some here suggest. It has a negative association.

Otherwise, all games employ a certain amount of repetitive gameplay, therefore all games are grind? No, it's only when said gameplay becomes non-entertaining that it becomes true grind, and that state is a subjective one.

LOL, proving my point.

Grind is what stands between you and fun content and what takes more than X amount of time.

Since everyones definition of what is fun is different and X can range from 1 hour to months, its not even academic discussion.

Exactly.

Thats why my definition is just Grind = Timeconsuming + Not Fun

What could be fun content for someone (like mindlessly farming...which is very relaxing btw) would be a grind to someone else.

Some people might consider running around their GH while the character is drunk and on sugar for hours at a time with no real purpose to be fun.
Some people consider ALL of PvE a grind (PvPers who Balthazar faction was made for, im looking at you).

Well, I can agree, having farmed an immense amount. When I farm for an item, I consider it grinding. When I farm just because I don't feel like doing anything, or to just relax when I get home, I don't. No goal, no target, no care, no grind. More of a glide, you might say.

In the same way there are people who play HA/GvG as a grind for points, and those who just play to play. Grind is forced into a game when it becomes necessary to complete repetitive tasks for a compulsory goal. Guild Wars did not have this in Prophecies - all the grind was optional for people who either enjoyed it or wanted something to pass time.

A PvP'er, as Lyra mentioned, may see all of PvE as a grind because to them, it's just a question of how many monsters and missions they have to go through until they get the skills they need. I know this feeling from prepping PvE characters for PvE.

It's incredibly subjective, and the only way to prevent a player from being subjected to it is not make any of it required to complete the game. Prophecies had that right.

its just a state of mind really
i have maxed out 25 of my titles on my derv
also played over 2 years on all chars and never come across grind
on the other hand i tryed ab for a while and got mind numbed by waiting 20mins just to enter battle each time i try it

This is the perfect deffinition of grind imho.

The word 'fun' does not belong in this disscusion for the reason above, its a subjective discription that differs from person to person. ie, farming is grind, not fun if you are only doing it to achive a single goal and will never do it again(FOW armor), but some find it fun and have a goal of building wealth continually.


Grind exists in every game, but is perception is only noticable when it is taken to extremes. ie. repeating a task 3 times is grind but not as noticable as repeating that same task 50 times.

But all games are "grind" then. Building bases in RTS = grind?

Shooting opponents in FPS = grind?

Killing monsters in Guild Wars = grind?

It's not the repetitive task that is grind, it's also whether you "enjoy" it or not... (and I honestly think sometimes people expect too much from what is a game)

Going back to wiki's: "Grinding is a pejorative term used in computer gaming to describe the process of engaging in repetitive and/or non-entertaining gameplay in order to gain access to other features within the game."

I think that's an important part: in the examples listed above, "grind" is most frustrating when it's the only way to access other parts of the game. Games that have multiple solutions to problems help avoid this. (ie, Starting with completed bases in a campaign RTS, or being able to avoid enemies in a shooter)

Anything I find boring or irritating. You can't really pin it down, though. Just try and judge from the individual complaints what a poster is upset about and don't get obsessed with defining things. That only leads to futile arguments about whether someone has a right to be annoyed, based on a false notion of what they're talking about.

That said, for me, grind in GW is anything title connected.

I think the irritation I tend to feel stems from having to go through a great deal of graft, outside of my current goal. Especially when that graft seems to have no logical connection to the goal. I never had any issue with not being able to afford prestige armour, for instance. But being refused service? Give me a break.

It's not just about having to collect points, either - it works the other way too. Believe it or not, for all my title griping, I've actually been pursuing one lately. Nothing hardcore, just collecting points for Sunspear, whilst pursuing primary quests on a new Ranger. I managed to hit Castellan, on the journey to the Bone Palace. Guess what's irritating me now? No more points until hardmode! I wouldn't even know that, without wiki - I'd still be clicking on priests, only to be given some vague nonsense about where my legend will be written. What's the point in the interruption? It seems like whether I choose to pursue titles or not, they still all end up making me feel like I've hit another pointless roadblock, because a designer had a far too stringent idea on what order goals should be achieved.

It's as if Grind is the name of some hungry boa lurking in the background, looking for any sign that my journey is feeling rewarding, at which point it slithers in to crush the fun out of me...

So I guess the things that make me "feel" grind are lack of freedom, too much structure, pointless roadblocks, etc.

I'd still say "grind" is simply the repetitive act with a given goal in mind, so therefore, most games have some form of it. Strictly speaking, Tetris doesnt have grind and neither does a FPS, if you are simply playing for fun. Killing monsters in GW just for the sake of it isnt grind either, but is when you attach a goal to it.

If you enjoy it, the game is designed well. If you do not, there is potentially some shortcoming in the game design or you simply tire of it. In both cases, some form of grind is there. If the reward isnt great enough or the means through which one pursues said goal isnt dynamic enough, it can become a negative experience.

Grind is completely and entirely subjective.

I have never once experienced grind in Guild Wars, and I've played ~3000 hours.

Grind is a sort of psychological disconnect in some gamers (generally victims of the "stuff is more important than gameplay" MMO mentality) that appears to only turn up in online games. It's the notion that a given portion of a game that is not fun for them must be played anyway, and often repeatedly, and that someone is forcing them to do so. There are two kinds of game where you see this: games where players don't enjoy something central to the game but play it anyway, and those where players don't enjoy something optional to the game but can't bear not to have the "rewards" of playing that component. GW's "grind" is almost entirely of the latter variety. With the restructured rep rewards in GWEN (and the books) the last bastion, to my thinking, of legitimate complaint is the kurzick/luxon titles. My solution, though, is simply to ignore them.

It's a game. If something in it's not fun, don't do it. If something central to the game's not fun (which has never been the case for me in GW), play another game. Simple.

Yes, designers can create feelings of grind by placing what feels like arbitrary roadblocks in a game to make the game last longer.

This is especially jarring when such roadblocks weren't in place earlier...

My example of senseless Factions "grind": Having to go through inane missions and quests in Keinang City to get to the Luxon and Kurzick areas. The constant backtracking, and just when you think you are done.... you have to go back!

I guess that's not really grind, just bad design, but what made it worst was that in Prophecy you could run almost anywhere in the game. Why did Anet change it? Beats me.

/Agree

You are the thread winner.

Some players wanted it so noobs couldnt get to higher areas.

I haave to admit to being one of those who wanted it. I hate seeing lvl10s running around high end content because you know they want to join you just so they can get to the end at a low level.

While I accept it should be a choice, it impacts high end players who want teams and get low level players asking to join who just cant be of any use.

We do need some restrictions ingame.

For the most part you are correct, but it has never been limited to online games. The difference is that most consol games do not generate such a massive online forum as GWG.

Think back to Final Fantasy 7, ever grind up a master summon materia? or master comand?

^ Beat me to it. Not a whole lot to say about this, really. You just can't define grind, just like beauty.

This is incorrect. Maxing a book or both books won't get you anywhere remotely near maxing the 4 EOTN titles that the book applies to. You'd have to repeat those books numerous times at great time and grind expense to max those titles. Rep requires massive grind with books or without books.

Grind in GW is basically anything other than the storyline. Any task you have to repeat for tens/hundreds/thousands of hours just to max a title or make progress. Pretty much anything in the game other than the storyline and the Protector titles is 100% mindless repetition, and therefore nothing but grind.

Some people exclude grind titles like Legendary Skill Hunter even though you are just killing the same exact mobs in the exact same zones multiple times to cap each skill one at a time. But let's call a spade a spade. That is definitely grind, as is the vast majority of GW gameplay and other grind-based titles that somehow are not always perceived as grind even though they should be because they are. Including PVP which also requires nothing but grind to get emotes/titles or anything good.

Cartography is also a grind, just a hardcore pixel-hunting grind.

Saying GW has no grind has always been an illusion. Without grind there is almost nothing to do in GW beyond the storyline.

Well some of us find the game more challenging being in high end areas at a lower level, I ran myself to the desert at something like lvl 5, died loads of times but who cares, it's a challenge and I found it quite constructive regarding tactics and builds, did the 1st 15pt attribute quest at 8 and only died once getting past the hydras (got a screenie somewhere) and Ascended at 11, so don't say low level chars arent any use, especially when for all you know, it's a "high end" player pushing the buttons looking for something a bit more challenging than taking an extra 5-15 seconds to kill something in Hard Mode

I hate to bring this off topic, but here's the bottom line:

You can still run in Prophecy.

You can't run in Factions.

If anything, it makes more sense to allow running in Factions b/c of high-level characters already and the ease of new characters to level to 20.

But, Anet didn't allow running in Factions NOT b/c of some beef with runners (or else, the running paths in Prophecies would have been shut down years ago).

Nope, the only reason there are arbitrary gates in Factions is to make a short game APPEAR longer. And the more I think about it, the more that sounds like Grind: Extending repetitive parts of a game by excluding access to later parts.

Note, we're not talking about anything cosmetic like armor or weapons. We're talking about access to the coolest parts of Factions, the very parts Factions was named after! That would make sense if I was paying a monthly fee to waste time in Keineng City. But, I'm not, so why waste my time? Why the Grind?

- It greatly depends how it's presented. Explicitly stating "Go out there and kill 3,000 blobs and reach level 10 before proceeding" is the worst kind. I remember when I played some Final Fantasies on Super Nintendo as a kid. Leveling up was subtle and it always felt good when I received a message that now my characters were a notch better. I've also seen games that have no point besides to grind and this shows that the developers have completely misunderstood the element of grind. One such game is presented on Something Awful. Early Prophecies was the good kind of "grind". Do some extra quests to gain level and you will have easier time on next missions. Faction allegiance titles are just mindless. Get one million and receive some +2 seconds to your Elemental Lord spell which is worse than Glyph of Elemental Power. Time spend definitely does not equal rising power level, unlike some idiots here seem to imply.



- Agreed 100%.

something you have to work towards continuely! simple as...something you work constantly for until you achieve max lvl!

I'll agree with that, and might just be the reason why most other MMO's have much higher Levels for people to reach, as although it might be grindy, you do feel like your getting somewhere rather than grinding some soppy title which lets face it is just for bragging rights seeing as the difference between min and max tier of a track relating to skills is virtually sod all.

Again, I don't think it can be that broad.

I don't think anyone considers getting to level 20 in Guild Wars as Grind. It's hard NOT to get to level 20. (unless you're doing it in pre-searing, but that's by choice, not force). And there are many ways to get to level 20: killing monsters, variety of quests/missions, even capping elites. So, no, not grind, unless we make the definition of grind so broad it has no meaning.

Getting to 20's not Grindy in anyway whatsoever and if anyone thinks it is, then you're playing the wrong game.

Grind is any repetitive task that you don't like doing. I enjoy everything I've done in Guild Wars, and don't consider any of my 2k hours as grind. However, if someone made me do the boring-ass cartographer titles, I'd consider it grind.

I never play JRPG's (just not a fan of the style), but I take your point. With most SP games I play I never set foot on a forum, so I wouldn't know.