I sunk 3 years and over 1000 hours into Warframe, then I took a vacation to Africa where I couldn’t play for two weeks. When I got back I was like “why am I even playing this game? Wonder if anybody wants to play something else” then proceeded to have a few years of great multiplayer games with my dudes.
I forget exactly where I heard it and the examples given, but the quote stuck with me. Given the chance, games will optimize the fun out of a game. It’s a big game design problem.
thats RS for you, the grindiest game out there. they made it grindier now, enough to cause people to have a mental breakdown and leave the game.
It’s Divinity Original Sins 2 for me. Some side quests are interesting but it is getting cumbersome and a chore for me because getting to some of those side quests are awkward, like I have to teleport my entire team across large crevasses one by one. I think I will just go straight to finishing the main quests and my companions’. I have a backlog of games I need to clear up myself!
Its almost like a game that requires or significantly involves regular monotonous grinding is … like, definitionally, a poorly designed game.
You can have a regular, repeated activity or loop.
But if that loop itself is boring, rote… the game has failed at actually being engaging, thus rewarding.
The loop itself should be what offers the potential for reward, and that reward should be experiential, not… systemitized sequential progression.
Me with Stardew Valley
I’ve got 2 1/2 big sheds full of kegs and i need more kegs dammit
This is how I am with pretty much any mmo games.
I’ll get through the normal level up/equipment upgrades and then to get any of the better items you have to grind for specific items that have like a fuckin 1 in 10,000 drop rate from a boss that takes a full raid party to beat and takes over an hour to finish. Oh and you need like 50 of said item and you can only run the dungeon on the 3rd Sunday of the month or some shit like that.
And this is pretty much the standard for mmo games
Lol yeah, I’m getting back into classic wow raiding right now, and I really don’t have the stomach for farming so I’m constantly broke and can’t afford all the 20 consumables you need to stay on top of shit, and that’s not even bringing in the whole world buff thing into it. It’s just ridiculous sometimes, but getting those sweet drops hits like crack, especially when you’re rolling against 8 other people lol.
I really wish an mmo game existed where you could just design your character at max level if you wanted to and just crush shit though. Like remove all the grinding and just have fun quests and dungeons, and you can raid more than once a week lol.
There’s a game called Fellowship that’s trying to be something like this. There’s still progression though.
This is why, with rare exception, I’ve stopped playing open world games.
I either quit before I finish or I stick it out and end up being sick of it by the time I’m done.
Open world is a tag i started avoiding as well.
I haven’t stopped playing them but I have stopped finishing them.
I play until I feel I get my “moneys worth” then I uninstall? Which is a lot easier if you wait for a deal…
Oh RuneScape. I’ll still come back and start the cycle over and over
Every MMO ever honestly. It’s one of the cheapest ways to create content - a mindless time sink.
Single-player games doing this are much more rare, but I bet there are some examples…
Some of the dark souls games have some pretty grindy stuff, like the Chalice Dungeons in Bloodborne that I never did. But that was optional (unless you wanted the achievement).
Yeah. Achievements often are grindy.
Me playing Pokemon: All of my Pokemon have to be kept at the same level.
Me 3 weeks later: I never want to look at this game again
Tried picking up a pokemon game after a few years of not touching one. I realize that it is often a kids first pokemon game so they must be taught how the game works from the ground up but it would be really nice if there was a “I’ve been playing Pokémon for 30 years I know what a fucking pokeball is” button.
When battlefield 6 came out, the hour or two I could afford went a long way: we were in the trenches together figuring it out and having fun.
Now some players are level 2000+, rarely team work and I‘m dying when I spawn. Now it takes more than it gives.
On the plus side, that was the last game stopping me migrating to bazzite
Now some players are level 2000+, rarely team work and I‘m dying when I spawn.
Every competitive multiplayer game in the world is ruined by sweat these days. You have to dedicate your entire life to the game just to not die immediately. Oh, you don’t have every map completely memorized, including all spawn and bonus locations? To a point where you could play it blindfolded in single player? Filthy casual.
this is precisely why i gave up on multiplayer PvP games for the most part. the era of casual PvP pubs is long gone and now, if you don’t have the “play for glory” mentality, you simply can’t enjoy such games anymore. and even then, having that mentality already doesn’t sound enjoyable to me.
on the flipside, i also find myself struggling with being interested in modern PvE/co-op games as well, especially since most of them adopt the 4-player format, pretty much necessitating having friends willing to play with you for a truly fun experience. the niche of big lobby PvE games is rarely tapped, unfortunately.
this is precisely why i gave up on multiplayer PvP games for the most part. the era of casual PvP pubs is long go
And the rampant cheating. Every single game that has more than a few players will have cheaters. Rootkit-as-a-service or not, there will still be cheaters.
Which of course is why we need kernel level anti cheat.
Because they stop all of those hacks!
…That are still rampant…
…despite the kernel level…
Wait a minute.
On the other hand, the point of ranking and matchmaking is to match you with players of similar skill. When working optimally, you’ll end up with the appropriate ranking, play with players of the same skill, and (in 1v1/1 team vs 1 team games) win 50% of the time.
Some people whine a lot about the idea of losing 50% of the games you play, but if you actually enjoy the game and ignore the rank you have, it’s a great deal.
Well, either modern matchmaking algorithms are absolute dogshit at doing this, or there just aren’t enough low-skill players out there to be matched with. Because if you’re just a casual player, you won’t be losing 50% of games, you’ll be losing 100% of games. Even at the lowest of the lowest tiers, you’ll still be losing quickly and often if you don’t put sweat into it.
I suspect it’s because games are driving away casual players like this that they don’t have enough for matchmaking. Every player at the casual tier either quickly gives up in frustration and leaves, or stays and becomes a sweatlord themselves, continually leaving the casual tier mostly empty, which forces casual players to be matched up with higher-tier players just to find a match at all.
And that’s not even getting into ‘smurfing’ and cheating/hacking.
Well, either modern matchmaking algorithms are absolute dogshit at doing this, or there just aren’t enough low-skill players out there to be matched with. Because if you’re just a casual player, you won’t be losing 50% of games, you’ll be losing 100% of games. Even at the lowest of the lowest tiers, you’ll still be losing quickly and often if you don’t put sweat into it.
It’s mathematically not possible to maintain a 50% win rate across any group of players unless everyone has exactly the same skill level. The proof is complicated but the idea works like this:
- assume not everyone has the same skill level
- ignoring duplicates, there exists a player with the highest skill level in the group
- the highest skill level player always gets matched with players of lower skill level, winning >50% of their games as a result
- the players who play vs the highest skill player end up with less than 50% win rate, so the system gives them more matches against lower skill players to bring it up to 50%
- these lower players then have too many losses, so match them more against even lower players
- repeat the above process like dominos falling (mathematical induction) until you reach the lowest skill level player
- the lowest skill level player has no one lower to match against, so they cannot reach a 50% win rate, thus there is at least one player with below 50% win rate
So there you have it. In practice, matchmaking systems need to compromise on the skill they match people with if they can’t find enough players of the appropriate skill level. This results in a wider range of skill levels ending up in the same game when not many players are online. This can result in even more players ending up above or below 50% win rate, depending on where they stand skill wise.
I’ve seen some level 3000+ players as far back as months ago, but I think they glitched/exploited that level.
The highest legit levels I have seen are about 500 - 650 or so, 500 is when their icon turns gold.
It’s a real slog at times, but I will sometimes just do the weekly challenges and stop. Timed challenges really make the game feel like a chore.
The game feels really unbalanced as well, so many rounds it’s one team completely stomping the other and it’s not even close. Often 900 tickets to 0.
My friends and I had an evening like that as well, 3 times our team won by holding all the objectives and the game ended early. That’s no fun.
Side note, games like BF6 that cannot run in Linux are also what keep me from migrating to a Linux distro. I’d be off Windows in a second if all games ran on it no issues.
Side note, games like BF6 that cannot run in Linux are also what keep me from migrating to a Linux distro. I’d be off Windows in a second if all games ran on it no issues.
For those curious about it: People are working on it (of course Valve has vested interest in this). Unfortunately Corposcum such as Ubisoft, EA or Krafton aren’t interested unless they get complete system control for their overreaching anticheats, and hell freezes over before Linux provides kernel modules for this stuff. Even if every gaming distro would bring DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module System), that in turn basically breaks Secure Boot (Secure Boot is a Microsoft system - not Linux’ fault). Also the support by Linux devs and distro maintainers would literally be a negative number. Kernel-level anticheat is correctly considered malware.
I think Valve was experimenting with Microkernels and Virtualization or sth… but that’s a long way to go. And those other big corpos will only ever give a fuck once their Investors start seeing Linux as a truly exploitable market.
The game feels really unbalanced as well, so many rounds it’s one team completely stomping the other and it’s not even close. Often 900 tickets to 0.
It’s a miracle how a multi-billion dollar company can consistently fumble matchmaking this badly.
Im feeling this trying to find a crow sourced on BL4. Why the fuck would you ever make a drop rate so low that players need to invest hours if not days grinding for it? Worse, a DEDICATED drop that only comes from one source, locking you into the exact same fight over and over again?
Some of the most fun is discovering the new setting and art models and special effects for the first time.
Seeing the majestic six-legged Porco-Taur charging at you through the sun-drenched savannah of King Arthur’s Burg in the Realm of WizardTopia is fun the first time it happens. And then you figure out the monster’s pattern of attack, get to know the burrow by the lake where it spawns, and can knock one of these creatures down with a few button clicks. So it’s not fun anymore.
Pick up a new game with a new style of monster and a new attack pattern that employes different abilities, and now it’s fresh and exciting again.
The new attack pattern? You guessed it.
Yet another delayed attack. Hold… Hold… Hollllld… Flinch …Swing stupid fast
Ooooo new game +
Depending on the game, this is why I install balance breaking mods or just use cheats. I play games to get away from grindy bullshit, I don’t need that in my games.
I’m with you there for games that take 100s of hours.
If it’s sub 20 hrs I’ll install QoL or time saving mods only.
