Grab your monocles Armchair Developers - Game Design - The Nature of Grinding and WoW

[Big Thanks]

After reading this essay from a Game Design student in 2013 i would like you to answer this questions regarding World of Wacraft's design

QUESTIONS:

-What type of game design do you prefer? Character skill, player skill or a little bit of both by how much?
-How do you think the game design concept of "flow" is in World of Warcraft?
-After reading the essay, do you have anything to add to the conversation?

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Game Design Essay: The Nature of Grinding

Q: What is grinding?

A: I define grinding as repeating a single task until it gets boring.

Q: If it’s boring, why is grinding necessary?

A: There are two reasons. One, gaming as submission (1). Two, grinding lets games have a ramping power level. You get stronger when you grind.

Q: Why do games need a ramping power level?

A: It’s illustrated in a game design concept called “flow.” Players are constantly evolving when they’re playing games: they’re getting better as they learn new mechanics and master old ones. So if the game’s difficulty level doesn’t change, the player will quickly become too good and the game will be boring. The game’s difficulty needs to rise along with the player’s power level. Consequentially, if the game is too hard and the player hasn’t yet acquired the skills to properly react, it becomes frustrating to play. Flow is how games maintain a balance between “boring” and “frustrating” by scaling the difficulty with the player’s power level.

Q: So if flow is meant to prevent games from being boring, and grinding is meant to make flow happen, then why is grinding boring?

A: … Good question.

Well-designed video games find an answer to that last question. Mediocre video games never make it to the third question: they just assume that ramping power levels are a good thing. Bad video games never bother to question what grinding exactly is and just stuff it into their game.

Grinding happens because of a fundamental misunderstanding of what flow is. It’s when designers mistake “player skill level” for “character skill level,” as in the character that the player is controlling. That might seem like a small difference, but it’s not. Not at all.

Player Skill Versus Character Skill

“Player skill” refers to the growth that the human player holding the controls goes through while playing the game. Things like reaction speed, dexterity, hand-eye coordination, predicting enemy movements, estimating the flight arc of a thrown grenade, and bluffing are all player skill. Think of it as the skills that stay with the player even after leaving the game. On the other hand, “character skill” is all about the systematic numbers behind the player’s character. Leveling up, finding health upgrades, and equipping a stronger weapon are all cases of character skill.

Flow is all about player skill. Character skill is only relevant if it applies to player skill. Straight numbers have no place in flow, and that’s where the problem of grinding lies. It’s what happens when you try to artificially create flow using character skill rather than player skill.

Still, it’s not easy to differentiate between “player skill” and “character skill.” Don’t they play off each other? If you had a character who attacks once per second for two damage, and another character who attacks twice per second for one damage each, wouldn’t you play them differently? There’s a whole grey zone in between those two types of skills, but for the sake of clarifying the differentiation we can look at the polar opposites, the genre that epitomizes player skill versus the genre that epitomizes character skill. Those two genres, in my opinion, are fighting games and RPGs respectively

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Players of fighting games have to go through many, many steps before being able to experience the game as it was meant to be played. First, there’s learning the controls and combos. Then there are different characters, each with unique playstyles. After that, you start getting into the nitty-gritty details of block frames and dodge frames and how all the underlying mechanics work. And throughout this whole process, a player has to be honing his physical dexterity to play the game in the first place: it took me like an hour of practice until I could execute Ryu Hayabusa’s Izuna Drop attack in Dead or Alive 3. Finally, after all this learning, the player gets to the stage of “yomi,” the part where the game revolves around predicting and countering enemy movements (3).

Beginner players of a fighting game can’t possibly afford to spend concentration on yomi, because they need that concentration for controller dexterity and character-specific combos. Fighting games are notorious for their immensely high skill floor and how difficult it is to get into that world. Of course, the tradeoff is that player growth has immense potential, high enough for professional fighting game players to make a living. That whole journey from beginner to pro, from learning the controls to manipulating yomi is all player skill. But the characters themselves never changed one bit.

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On the other hand, traditional RPGs have a low player skill ceiling (4). These games consist of turn-based combat and selecting actions from a menu. How much better can you get at selecting “Fire” under the “Magic” section? Difficulty in RPGs is measured numerically: levels, statistics, health, damage output, etc. When you’re facing off against a difficult boss in a traditional RPG, you defeat it by fighting other monsters until your in-game characters grow stronger. But you as a player aren’t actually growing at all: your talents aren’t rising, because there isn’t anywhere for them to rise. Maybe you’re getting a little faster at selecting options from menus, but that’s about it.

With this in mind, it’s no wonder that pure dedicated fighting games rarely have leveling systems, or even numerical displays. Health in fighting games is often represented by bars: it’s rare to see it represented by numbers as is so common among RPGs. Branching off that train of thought, professional RPG players will probably never be a thing with how low the skill ceiling is. RPGs don’t actually drive the player to greater skill levels: they drive the characters that the player controls to greater skill levels. There’s no player growth happening, but compare a hardcore Final Fantasy Tactics player’s team to a complete beginner’s.

Now that we’ve established fighting games as being primarily player skill and RPGs as being primarily character skill, we can look at each genre’s approach to grinding. It’s not a deep analysis: fighting games have little to no grinding, and RPGs have a ton of it. But there are more genres than those two, so we’ll need to take a look at a wider spectrum of games. I’ll be adding my opinion on which skill type each game focuses on, and how that ties into the gameplay. Keep this question in mind: how would you approach a difficult boss in each of these titles? Would you vary up your tactics and hone your player skills, or would you retreat and grind on monsters to increase your character skills?

(....)

But the important trend to notice is each game’s relationship to grinding. When a game focuses on character skill, it tends to lean towards grinding.

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What Does Each Kind Of Skill Do?

Emphasis on character skill causes grinding. When a game focuses on character skill, it becomes all about the end result. You fight battles so your character levels up and becomes stronger. It’s like a Skinner box: you’re going through a boring process so you can get a reward in the end. A video game should not be a boring process.

On the other hand, when a game focuses on player skill, the journey becomes the goal. You fight battles because it’s fun to fight battles, not because you want a reward at the end. Think about it this way: when you reach maximum character skill (the level cap) in a game, do you still continue to play it? Look at the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series. You gain experience by playing, but you have an option to reset all your experience and start again from scratch. Go to Maplestory and ask any high-leveled player if they’d like to reset all their experience and start again from scratch. There’s no way it would be okay in Maplestory: having your account hacked and losing all your items is considered traumatic enough. But everyone does it in CoD: MW. It’s because the action of playing CoD: MW and shooting people’s faces is intrinsically fun, and restarting lets you play the game more. But in Maplestory, you’re playing the game only for the reward, rather than because it’s fun (7). It’s not fun: if it weren’t for the leveling system, no one would play it. Games should be fun in and of themselves rather than relying on tricks to reel players in.

Grinding and flow are like two sides of a coin. It’s the battle between the psychological trap against the paragon of good game design, represented by character skill and player skill respectively. Still, as much as I dislike grinding, I don’t want to just bash on it: it’s better to try to see both sides of the issue. What’s the good side of grinding and character-based skill?

1) Character skill is consistent. Player skill is something that requires effort to develop, while character skill is always increasing as long as you’re playing the game.
2) Character skill gives you time to master player skills
3) Character skill is satisfying. Looking back at all the effort you spent making your character as powerful as possible is satisfying. It’s like that scene in Gran Torino when Clint Eastwood is cleaning his car, and when he’s done he sits on his porch, smokes a cigarette, and just looks at the finished product. That’s just not possible with player skill. Perfectionist player types gravitate towards RPGs or other character-skill based games for this reason

CLOSING THOUGHTS

The distinction between player skill and character skill is fuzzy and unclear, but when a game’s designers sit down and try to pin down exactly what they want their title’s skill distribution to be, it results in a good video game. But when that process of considering different skill types doesn’t happen, it results in design flaws like grinding. It’s necessary for us designers to understand the pros and cons of both player skill and character skill and apply that analysis to the games we create.

Link to the whole essay:
https://omegathorion.wordpress.com/2...e-of-grinding/

[Caerrona]

After reading this essay from a Game Design student in 2013 i would like you to answer this questions regarding World of Wacraft's design

QUESTIONS:

-What type of game design do you prefer? Character skill, player skill or a little bit of both by how much?
-How do you think the game design concept of "flow" is in World of Warcraft?
-After reading the essay, do you have anything to add to the conversation?

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Link to the whole essay:
https://omegathorion.wordpress.com/2...e-of-grinding/

Who cares? You are just as you say an "armchair developer" with 0 skills in making games. You'd rather them not make raids so they can make more pet battles, transmogs and LE EPIC JOURNEYZ BRO. whatever that means after seeing you say it 500000 times with different meanings everytime and never really giving a straight answer.

Grinding has always and will always be in wow. The end.

[Varitok]

Who cares? You are just as you say an "armchair developer" with 0 skills in making games. You'd rather them not make raids so they can make more pet battles, transmogs and LE EPIC JOURNEYZ BRO. whatever that means after seeing you say it 500000 times with different meanings everytime and never really giving a straight answer.

Grinding has always and will always be in wow. The end.

You can literally have that turned back on you by using the same logic in which you dismissed his statement. Deservedly so since you're being a bit of a dick to him without any real reason. He's trying to have an actual conversation.

[Big Thanks]

Who cares? You are just as you say an "armchair developer" with 0 skills in making games. You'd rather them not make raids so they can make more pet battles, transmogs and LE EPIC JOURNEYZ BRO. whatever that means after seeing you say it 500000 times with different meanings everytime and never really giving a straight answer.

Grinding has always and will always be in wow. The end.

The essay covers both sides

But you already seem to know me pretty well
This part is obviously my favorite one (because of the "journey" thing)

"On the other hand, when a game focuses on player skill, the journey becomes the goal. You fight battles because it’s fun to fight battles, not because you want a reward at the end. Think about it this way: when you reach maximum character skill (the level cap) in a game, do you still continue to play it? Look at the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series. You gain experience by playing, but you have an option to reset all your experience and start again from scratch. Go to Maplestory and ask any high-leveled player if they’d like to reset all their experience and start again from scratch. There’s no way it would be okay in Maplestory: having your account hacked and losing all your items is considered traumatic enough. But everyone does it in CoD: MW. It’s because the action of playing CoD: MW and shooting people’s faces is intrinsically fun, and restarting lets you play the game more. But in Maplestory, you’re playing the game only for the reward, rather than because it’s fun (7). It’s not fun: if it weren’t for the leveling system, no one would play it. Games should be fun in and of themselves rather than relying on tricks to reel players in."

Ofcourse i would like Blizzard to focus more on trying to find things players like to actually do...and have a safe journey

[ShmooDude]

Essay takes way too narrow a view on their definitions and doesn't really explore the whole issue...

Emphasis on character skill does not automatically lead to grinding. Do people that play tabletop RPGs complain about grinding? I think anyone who's played those would say that they're "all about the journey" in the same way that the essay describes player skill based games.

Frankly, I'd argue both have the potential for grinding. In the fighting game, when you reach an enemy you can't beat, you have to get better to beat them (aka practice). The same is true for the RPG, only it's the character in the game getting better rather than the player. The difference is while someone grinding in an RPG to get additional power to beat a boss is likely to do so, the player in the fighting game is less likely to do so (except in the case of those that really like those fighting games). Ghostcrawler had a post on this a while back in that, at least for WoW, when most players reach a point where their player skill needs to improve, they'll often just give up rather than do so. Whether that applies to games as a whole, I don't know

Also, while you can have an entirely player skill driven game, you can't have an entirely character skill driven game. The latter would simply be a predetermined outcome or a game of chance with the player having no control over the outcome.

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As far as me, I pretty much never play full player skill games anymore, especially ones driven by things like reaction times and other physical based skills. Even when I still young, my reaction time was not that great. My brother's reaction times were always significantly better but I was always better at making the right decision so even if I couldn't pull off amazing blocks or things, I was better at planning and strategy.

I prefer games where making a correct decision is more important than a timely one.

[Big Thanks]

Essay takes way too narrow a view on their definitions and doesn't really explore the whole issue...

Emphasis on character skill does not automatically lead to grinding. Do people that play tabletop RPGs complain about grinding? I think anyone who's played those would say that they're "all about the journey" in the same way that the essay describes player skill based games.

Frankly, I'd argue both have the potential for grinding. In the fighting game, when you reach an enemy you can't beat, you have to get better to beat them (aka practice). The same is true for the RPG, only it's the character in the game getting better rather than the player. The difference is while someone grinding in an RPG to get additional power to beat a boss is likely to do so, the player in the fighting game is less likely to do so (except in the case of those that really like those fighting games). Ghostcrawler had a post on this a while back in that, at least for WoW, when most players reach a point where their player skill needs to improve, they'll often just give up rather than do so. Whether that applies to games as a whole, I don't know

Also, while you can have an entirely player skill driven game, you can't have an entirely character skill driven game. The latter would simply be a predetermined outcome or a game of chance with the player having no control over the outcome.

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As far as me, I pretty much never play full player skill games anymore, especially ones driven by things like reaction times and other physical based skills. Even when I still young, my reaction time was not that great. My brother's reaction times were always significantly better but I was always better at making the right decision so even if I couldn't pull off amazing blocks or things, I was better at planning and strategy.

I prefer games where making a correct decision is more important than a timely one.

Thank you for posting I love talking game design as an armchair developer do

I think i disagree with one part of the essay.
He says "Grinding is boring"...and i think this may not be always the case...BUT it IS the case for most games. (WoW included in my opinion)

How can Grinding NOT be boring?
If you put a little bit of "player skill" in it ofcourse

The secret, in my opinion, to make an awesome game is to make the player in love with the "gameplay" (player skill) to the point of him completely forget he is "grinding".

Basically, the activity of grinding must include "player skill gameplay" that the person falls in love with.

Is not Grinding if you are having fun.
How do you have fun?
Player Skill gameplay AKA "player engagement"

imo

[Ratyrel]

I think the essay would look different if written specifically for MMOs, where the fun is conditioned by the social element. Both completing challenges and competing with others are sources of fun after all, which affect enjoyment of grinding. As a long-form, medium to low effort activity, grinding is also rewarding in different ways from individual challenges like a player skill driven match of say DotA. Finally, player skill in MMOs is also not entirely determined by mastery of the game mechanics, but also by social interaction, out of game resources like simulations and databases, and taking advantage/contributing to the community built around the game. I'd agree that a more nuanced and comprehensive view of what makes people grind is necessary to understand its prevalence as an element in mmo design.

[Triceron]

The essay covers both sides

Yeah but you kind of miss the point of why grinding exists.

It's all down to the fact that videogames are a business, and not merely a means of entertainment. If designed by a fan indy developer with unlimited resources (ie Armchair developer) then yes, this would be a different game with no grind with lots of challenge and plenty of rewarding gameplay. But it wouldn't be WoW. And it wouldn't be designed by Blizzard.

And we have plenty of games out on the market which are just that. Plenty of games that don't have grinding, that aren't WoW. That's sort of the goal we're talking about here.


You might as well detach the conversation from WoW completely and address it on its own basis. The fact that WoW is profit-driven and their guage for success is based on MAU's, grinding is a 'necessary evil'. Without factoring that and simply addressing the game as an Armchair developer, you might as well talk about a different game entirely.

When addressing grinding in a linear RPG, it's typically there to set a pace for the game so that you don't just blow it; it lets people soak the gameplay and get more familiar with the mechanics and spaces out the story beats. A secondary reason it's there is to keep the player invested in the game - the more they spend on their character, the higher the stakes when facing a substantial threat or the more rewarding when you're able to obtain that hard-to-get item.

But grind in MMO's is a lot different because they're designed to keep you playing the game. If you're playing the game, then you're not playing some other game. You're invested in the character, in the world, and you're more likely to continue paying per month because of what you've already invested. It's gambling psychology, in a way.

If you get rid of the grind then you're gonna get a different game. Think of games where you don't grind. How do they compare to WoW? In short; they don't.

[Big Thanks]

Yeah but you kind of miss the point of why grinding exists.

It's all down to the fact that videogames are a business, and not merely a means of entertainment. If designed by a fan indy developer with unlimited resources (ie Armchair developer) then yes, this would be a different game with no grind with lots of challenge and plenty of rewarding gameplay. But it wouldn't be WoW. And it wouldn't be designed by Blizzard.

And we have plenty of games out on the market which are just that. Plenty of games that don't have grinding, that aren't WoW. That's sort of the goal we're talking about here.


You might as well detach the conversation from WoW completely and address it on its own basis. The fact that WoW is profit-driven and their guage for success is based on MAU's, grinding is a 'necessary evil'. Without factoring that and simply addressing the game as an Armchair developer, you might as well talk about a different game entirely.

When addressing grinding in a linear RPG, it's typically there to set a pace for the game so that you don't just blow it; it lets people soak the gameplay and get more familiar with the mechanics and spaces out the story beats. A secondary reason it's there is to keep the player invested in the game - the more they spend on their character, the higher the stakes when facing a substantial threat or the more rewarding when you're able to obtain that hard-to-get item.

But grind in MMO's is a lot different because they're designed to keep you playing the game. If you're playing the game, then you're not playing some other game. You're invested in the character, in the world, and you're more likely to continue paying per month because of what you've already invested. It's gambling psychology, in a way.

If you get rid of the grind then you're gonna get a different game. Think of games where you don't grind. How do they compare to WoW? In short; they don't.

Do you think this is the main reason for the game's...lack of improvement over the years?
I DONT think is the main reason

IMO
Blizzard is struggling to find the new "player skill gameplay" for everyone to enjoy in the MMORPG genre.

Problem: No MMORPG on the market has found this mythical gameplay yet...everyone is waiting for this million dollar idea to happear on planet Earth

Blizzard tried several times:

Timeless Isle
Challenge Mode Dungeons
Mythic+
World Quests
Islands VS NPC AI
Warfronts
Horrific Visions
Torghast

In my opinion ALL of ^^this^^ are experiments of trying to find the mythical content player may or may not enjoy for years to come

The only well established and core "player skill" content we have ingame:
-Arena
-Battlegrounds
-Dungeons
-Raids

[Triceron]

Do you think this is the main reason for the game's...lack of improvement over the years?
I DONT think is the main reason

IMO
Blizzard is struggling to find the new "character skill gameplay" for everyone to enjoy in the MMORPG genre.

Well, it depends on your definition of 'character skill gameplay'.

To me, a game like Monster Hunter epitomizes a team-oriented skill-based game. There is definitely a grind, but it's not a means to an end, as the crux of the game is centered on the hunting of giant monsters and all content is doable naked given that you are skillful enough and understand the fights well enough to do it. It's basically Dark Souls with co-op.

WoW isn't really built for that. It's ultimately an Everquest type of RPG, and that limits it greatly in terms of meaningfully incorporating character skill. It kind of ends up boiling down to how well you and your team manage positioning, stats (buffs/debuffs) and how quickly you can react to events. The formula is set and everything is just a variation of another like mechanic. There isn't really anything groundbreaking about any of the content added in the past 10 years; it's just iterating on the same formulas that have generally worked for maintaining a grind.


While PVP in WoW is fun, I don't really know how much skill is really involved. It's remained fairly static, no? I mean it's the same act-react-wait for your opponent to mess up type of gameplay. I remember top level Arena games lasting forever because two teams just couldn't capitalize on any openings, and I don't know what really amounts as skill when both sides are just executing the same series of strategies and just waiting for an opening. While I'm absolutely generalizing here, my point is there aren't enough variables in Arena that allow you to capitalize on winning through alternative objectives, making it simple death-match rules; while Battlegrounds are so variable that it's impossible to make a decent Esport out of.

[ShmooDude]

Thank you for posting I love talking game design as an armchair developer do

I think i disagree with one part of the essay.
He says "Grinding is boring"...and i think this may not be always the case...BUT it IS the case for most games. (WoW included in my opinion)

How can Grinding NOT be boring?
If you put a little bit of "player skill" in it ofcourse

The secret, in my opinion, to make an awesome game is to make the player in love with the "gameplay" (player skill) to the point of him completely forget he is "grinding".

Basically, the activity of grinding must include "player skill gameplay" that the person falls in love with.

Is not Grinding if you are having fun.
How do you have fun?
Player Skill gameplay AKA "player engagement"

imo

Eh, I think that's still oversimplifying things. Chess is a player skill based game, but really only chess aficionados would call it "engaging."

Grinding is also not strictly necessary in a character skill heavy game. It tends to be in MMORPGs just due to the nature of the genre, but take any number of single player RPGs that aren't procedurally generated (ie to artificially inflate game time) then a well designed RPG won't have any grinding in it.

The issue it comes down to I think is replayability. How do you make doing the same thing over and over fun? The answer to this is not automatically "make it harder." I'd argue that generally, variety is more important. That's why many people feel World Quests are an improvement over Daily Quests which were an improvement over just killing things for reputation. Each iteration improved the variety of the activity, but it didn't necessarily make it harder or require more player skill.

If you have ever ramping player skill requirements, eventually players are going to hit a ceiling. Different players are going to have different ceilings (either by what they're willing to tolerate in terms of practice needed for improvement or just literal physical/mental limitations to which no amount of practice will improve). The reason this works well for PvP style games is you can play against other players at your skill level so where that ceiling is doesn't necessarily matter as long as you're playing against someone of a similar skill level. When it becomes a PvE style game though, it becomes a pass/fail.

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Also within the context of this discussion, character skill improvements are often used in lieu of (or in conjunction with) player skill improvements. It allows more players to be able to complete the task. This is very prevalent in WoW's Raid designs. They're setup such that the better skilled players are going to be able to complete the encounters with less gear. In the past when I'd look at the damage values, often times the damage of certain abilities would be just above what my health was at before I stepped into that raid. This means if I didn't use a damage reduction, immunity or avoid it, it'd one shot you. However as I got more gear from that raid, I'd gain enough health to no longer be one shot by that ability. The mechanic moved from a "everyone do this right or die" to a "most people need to do this right so as not to overwhelm the healers." Making the difficulty of that specific mechanic much less binary.

Here's an oversimplified example. A boss requires a skill score of 15 to beat. 10 points are determined by the number of shots landed and the other 10 by the character's level. That means that someone who can land 10/10 shots only needs a character level of 5 to beat the boss. Someone who's not quite as good (say 7/10) can either improve their skill or their character's skill to beat the boss. This allows someone who on their best day would never make 10/10 shots to complete the encounter. That in my opinion, is good game design. It's just a matter of making sure that the activity of leveling up the character is also fun and not a potentially boring, repetitive task (aka grinding).

[Big Thanks]

Well, it depends on your definition of 'character skill gameplay'.

Sorry, i meant Blizzard is trying to find the new PLAYER skill gameplay...not character skill (we already have plenty of that)

I may be completely wrong and they are fine with the game they have now.
Is a shame (for me)

Your Monster Hunter example really resonates with me
In the end...the problem is "me" and i should find another game t play (as many posters make sure to point it out)

- - - Updated - - -

The issue it comes down to I think is replayability. How do you make doing the same thing over and over fun? The answer to this is not automatically "make it harder." I'd argue that generally, variety is more important.

For my personal tastes and opinion:

How can replayability not be boring?
1) By the activity being fun (for me is having fun action gameplay and social interaction)
2) New exciting rewards

But careful

"New exciting rewards" are only exciting if you have "fun content" to do
SO my point 2) cant live without point 1)
They need eachother

[Schizoide]

Raiding in WoW requires vanishingly little player skill except for leading a progression raid on a new unspoiled boss. Other than that you learn the fight, do the stuff the video told you to do, and collect your loot. The bulk of the challenge comes from herding 20 cats to raid every week and not having to train new players all the time.

Mythic+ comes in differently; at higher levels it gets extremely punishing and requires substantial player skill. PvP is the same way at higher levels of play.

Those things exist in WoW as aspirational goals but the VAST majority of players never encounter any situation where player skill really matters. They don't have any interest in mythic raids or high mythic+ levels or competitive PvP. They build their characters' power through time investment. If you play WoW long enough, repeating content many, many times, you get those shinies. That is deliberate because WoW is monetized via subscriptions.

Monetization informs game design at the deepest, most profound level. Activision wants players to keep subscribing, so they time-gate content, ask players to complete content over and over, grind reputations way past the soft cap for cosmetics and bragging rights, have tons of weekly quests, and so on. Character power gain is extremely fast to start, then slows to a near-halt when you reach a soft cap.

If you look at a game (primarily) monetized via paid DLC like Elder Scrolls Online, it is very different. Content is never time-gated, you buy a zone like Western Skyrim and you've got it all, day one. There are no real rep grinds of note. Most gear can be purchased from their version of the auction house or crafted yourself, entry-level raids are very easy, and only the highest-end "perfected" gear requires hard-mode raids. Cosmetics are mostly purchased for real money. There are no weekly quests, and daily quests are pretty rare and can largely be ignored. Some mechanics like mount leveling deliberately take an extremely long time in-game to incentivize players to pay real money for them. Character progression through alternate advancement (champion points) starts super fast until a soft cap around 300 (the same point when they stop providing primary resources), then is relatively steady until the hard cap at 810.

These games are played very differently. You play WoW like it's your job when you're really into it, logging in every day to complete your various daily and weekly quests, raiding with your guild weekly, and so on. ESO, on the other hand, most people play through the content added in each DLC pack then just... stop playing until the next one comes out. And that's perfectly fine with Zenimax.

[Wheeler]

Raiding in WoW requires vanishingly little player skill except for leading a progression raid on a new unspoiled boss. Other than that you learn the fight, do the stuff the video told you to do, and collect your loot.

The last few bosses in mythic difficulty are certainly significantly harder than you're making it seem like here. Granted - I think WoW would be a better game if it were THIS easy (I think the things that made WoW an "RPG" are lost in giga-difficult raid content and the demands it makes of its playerbase), but it's simply untrue of the current game. Raiding is getting more and more difficult as time goes by. Each expansion is proving more difficult than the one preceding it.

[Schizoide]

There are complex multi-phase encounters, but once you learn them and know what to do the actual execution of that plan is not particularly difficult. The challenge is in practicing enough such that none of 20 people messes up-- but repetition is grinding, not skill.

Now figuring out the right plan in the first place, that requires tons of skill. But that's just initial progression, and once someone puts up a video most guilds just do that. Over and over until they beat it.

[Shinrael]

I want to highlight the most important (imo) point from this essay, which seems to be something a vast majority of WoW players do not seem to even consider:

The journey is meant to be fun. If the journey is not fun, something is inherently wrong with your game.
If the entire reason you play this game is to reach the end game and kill the final boss.... then you have already doomed yourself to a boring grind, because before you reach the final boss you have many "levels" (be it character levels, ilvls, neck levels, etc) that you have to achieve by literally repeating the same action over and over again on a daily basis. This is a TORTURE that you are doing to yourself.

Now I know players who would come and tell me "I love doing Island Expeditions, BGs, M+, Raids NON-STOP and they never get boring". To you people, I can only say - I am happy for you. You have found a thing you enjoy. Stick to it. There is nothing wrong with that. But how many people really think that way? According to the forums and trade chat - not many. People are always whining how repetitive and boring all of this is.

But let me ask a question to the people who played before Cataclysm and especially Vanilla (oh please for the love of god spare me the Vanilla is BAD or Vanilla is BEST comments. THIS IS NOT ABOUT THAT. I am merely analyzing my own feelings about it as objectively as possible and trying to find a solution). When I started back in Vanilla, I did not KNOW what end game is. I just knew that there is still world full of places for me to explore. There was a vague story in each zone, which was somewhat compelling to the young me, you had mobs that are too high level for you to beat so you knew you had to progress further in power. You could do that by doing quests, dungeons, etc.
I wanted to explore Stranglethorn Vale where that nasty Crocolisk had one-shot me when I was exploring aimlessly as a level 5 human priest, swimming down the river all the way from Stormwind. And I did. I want to reach a place, to see something, and power was a barrier standing right in front of me. So I overcame that barrier and went to the place I wanted to go.

Now how is this different from modern WoW and the "end game" type of gameplay. You log in on your character on expansion launch. What do you want to do? Well of course, you want to get more powerful! And so you need to level your artifact, do dungeons and raids for gear, etc. And you get all that power. And you beat the final boss. And what? What did you FEEL from it? "Accomplishment"? Is that why you play GAMES? For "accomplishment"? Doesn't life provide enough challenges for you, that you so desperately seek to prove yourself in a virtual world? Have we fallen so low as to only see games as a means to compensate for real life? And whenever someone suggests on the forums to "make leveling fun" the Black Knights of Nope immedietely rise and tell them "Leveling is boring" or "Leveling is not meant to be fun" or "Who cares about leveling it only takes a few hours anyway" or "there is a boost" or "end game is where the fun is" and I am like....

IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY! Imagine this. A person tells you "do you want some sweet chocolate?" and you tell them "no, chocolate is not meant to be sweet or tasty". Stupid, I know? Just because you lack the imagination and creativity to come up with a FUN CONCEPT for leveling, doesn't mean other people do. The reason leveling in WoW is not fun is because of people like you. Because you put so much emphasis on "end game" that you have forgotten why you even started playing games in the first place. (Yes, I am aware I do not speak for everyone. But I would be very VERY eager to do an experiment with you and get to the root of it via a mini-interview in private chat).

Subscriptions are the other part of the problem. Blizzard is forcing themselves to keep players active EVERY month instead of EVERY TIME there is new content. Which means they need content that lasts longer than the amount of time it takes to create. Which is ridiculous. It is impossible. You can't pump out fun and engaging content every single second. Now I am well aware that each game has its flaws and that WoW is still a very succesful game, but that does not mean it cannot learn from other games and studios. Take ESO for example. I do not play ESO and am NOT an ESO fan. Because I am a WoW fan. I love the world of Warcraft. Not the systems of Warcraft though. I do not know how bad ESO's end game is. But I do know that its FANS are very happy paying a bigger sum of money on a yearly basis for a new load of story content (DLC). How much they pay is irrelevant, prices can be adjusted. The point is that, if WoW went with a "pay for access to new content with every new patch" instead of "pay every month", this would promote releasing better polished content and more importantly, LESS GRINDY content, because they are no longer thirsty for every second of your subscription time. They just need to make content that gets you to buy it. It doesn't matter how long it takes you to consume it. If you want to complete it in one day, go for it. If you want to take your sweet time - go at it for 6 months till the next one.

I will stop here, because my post is long and disorganized enough as it is...though I would be happy to discuss (in a civil and respectful manner) any of the points I have mentioned (be it in private or here).

[Krakan]

I didn't read the text wall but I suppose skill? I always see gear or any bastardization of power gain beyond gear as tools. You push as hard and as far as you can then when you hit a wall you farm up gear at that level to overcome it.

If your forced to go way below that level of difficulty the system is broken. What was interesting and challenging becomes mundane and boring.

[MoanaLisa]

Blizzard plays both sides as best they can.

I think they lean a bit toward character skill, maybe more than a bit. Character power and progression is all about what you wear. That's character based.

On the flip side they attempt to provide something for player skill. Mythic and some other things are there for those who want it.

At best though, probably 70-80% of everyone that still plays is playing casually and that's why character skill is so important in the game. The fact is you can do very well in the game without a lot of player skill. It takes longer but is still there.

I don't think that for most people this is an argument they worry about. Most players log on to have some fun and to kill some time. They like to think that their character has progressed a little for all of that. Skill isn't even really a factor. Whether your character power/progression is a little or a lot is weighted toward skill. But progression in itself can be had by just playing the game.

I'm not even going to get into the "fun" argument as I have forever relaxed in the game by going somewhere and grinding mobs. Fun is subjective. I don't mind mythic raiders thinking that their game is fun. It is for them. It's not fun at all for me personally. Same with PVP: fun for some, something to avoid for others. That's great and one reason why theme park MMO's exist. If you don't like one thing, try something else. That's all too subjective to even argue about.

[Big Thanks]

@Shinrael

Your post was as interesting as the essay itself what a fine read
You covered so many interesting topics...

hashtag "the journey must be fun" should be a thing

[Seranthor]

After reading this essay from a Game Design student in 2013 i would like you to answer this questions regarding World of Wacraft's design

QUESTIONS:

-What type of game design do you prefer? Character skill, player skill or a little bit of both by how much?
-How do you think the game design concept of "flow" is in World of Warcraft?
-After reading the essay, do you have anything to add to the conversation?

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Link to the whole essay:
https://omegathorion.wordpress.com/2...e-of-grinding/

Would you take legal advice from an armchair lawyer? Would you take medical advice from an armchair doctor?
My question is why are we where we are and not actively employed developing games of our own?