Worst grinding mmorg ever! top 5!

[Sevin0oo0]

It's pretty obvious that MOST Skills become tedious grinds under the disguise of teaching you the craft - What it taught many is the definition of grind is and the need to script/macro. Later, in using learned skills, whether in Fishing, Mining, Lumberjacking, Quests and Collections, impossibly rated Hit Points, Risk vs Reward. Does it seem in every direction it's just the same? Flushing that starting core skill when 'tweaks' are applied, essentially deleting a char and building a new one in whatever current direction is being pushed today? Or is it simply the level of support, trying to get help in, or out, of game that drives you nuts.

* Customer Support - [Removed]

 

[Raptor85]

"grinding' the skills in itself is a weird choice because it's a side effect from some of the others on your list, prior to AOS in UO (and even somewhat through AOS) there was a LOT you could do worthwhile and actually still participate in the community while training, even with 50 skill you could team up with a few other people and do things like hunt trolls in despise. (back when the loot they dropped was significant). They became a tedious grind if only because everything worth doing WITHOUT grinding them was killed by the other categorys, high hp mobs and RNG based drops on all the new mobs and relegating the old ones to uselessness.

Worst grind, without a doubt though (not on your list however) would be resource gathering, mostly ingots and wood. It wasn't as bad before the resource randomization as you could cherrypick exactly what you needed to mine and be done in a shorter amount of time, but now if you have a need for, say, a decent amount of gold ingots, say 5k or so, it could easily take a normal person a few weeks to mine on their own...and everything these days seems to burn a ridiculous amount of resources even at 120 crafting skill with talismen. It's so bad now that everyone except rp miners have basicly given up and just supports their local scriptminer now. (doubly so now that one of the last holdouts of "decent" ways to mine manually, dungeon mining, was brutally murdered by the shame "upgrade")

 

[Theo_GL]

You lumped way too much stuff into #3

If I were a DEV - here are my top priority fixes in next publish.

1 - Community Collections - Either pay 12m gold for mace & shield, or turn in 88,000 battle axes, or pay a scripter 8m for one that gets it by turning in 88,000 battle axes.
** The Fix : All points cut in HALF (M&S now costs 400k points) and you have special blue hued battle axes or other stuff fall as loot on monsters in dungeons that give you 5k points or whatever. I'd rather hunt and find items to turn in than buy 88k battle axes from blacksmiths. Great that you can turn in a bag - but why can't that bag be your backpack? Sick of dragging battle axes to a backpack one by one.
*** The Super Simple fix : Change the gold/point ratio from 1:15 to 1:5. Then M&S cost 4m gold or 2m worth of battle axes. It would not be worth a scripters time to script and turn into a HUGE gold sink. As it is now - people pay 8m to scripters that pay 2m to turn in items. I'd rather see them sell for 4m gold via points and you'd have a 4m/gold sink instead of 2m/gold sink on each.

2 - Town Loyalty : Uh, who wants to spend 3 hours trying to get a deco banner? Plus the fact that it decays you have to do this all at once. I'd prefer getting town loyalty by going to the bank in that town, buying from NPC's in the town, getting items repaired at the town smiths, stabling animals there and some points for the occassional protestor or rioter. To the point that normal gameplay by focusing on that town would give you enough loyalty to get a banner. If you want to powergame it - no more than 1 hr.

3 - Virtues : Good idea, way to much effort on some of these and i hate the new decay rates. It has been how long since honesty items were added to the game? I have yet to see one during normal gameplay. Thats crazy.

4 - Queens Loyalty for Soulforge : Too many points to get it and its a crafting ability (use of soulforge) so crafting things should count. I should get points for turning in bods - not having to kill monsters. My crafter is not a monster killer.

5 - Navery : Why get rid of the autorespawn? OMG. Killing the spider is like waiting for the bus. Every 10 min. In between you sit there with a bunch of people you don't want to talk to anyways.

6 - Taming Skill : You should get taming gains by controlling tamed pets. All Kill, All Follow me should give possible gains. Taming/killing/taming/killing is the ultimate PITA grind. No wonder taming pinks go for the most money. Get a clue devs - don't make it so darn mind numbing. No one likes it or finds it even remotely fun.

7 - Heartwood quests : Interesting idea instead of bods - but completely mind numbing to trying to get recipe's (too many diff ones for smith takes forever to get them all) and runics (never know when you will get one). At least with bods you have an idea based on the bod if you can get one and it doesn't take filling the bod to find out if you got it or not. Now with trade ups - smith/tailor runics now 50x easier to get than fletching/carpentry. Fix fix fix.

8 - Gem mining : They are way way way way way too hard to get vs how many you need to craft magic jewelry and the like. Gems should drop 2x as often and magic jewelry should require 2 gems as ingredient instead of 10. When you make a magic ring you only have like 10-20% chance of getting special mod on it so you need effectively 50-100 of a gem to make ONE JEWELRY piece with the special mod (MR 2, SSI etc). To get 50-100 of the same gem requires hundreds of hours of mining. Something only scripters can do. This is the greatest system ever invented for scripters bar none.

 

[Frarc]

There is no grind, only if you make one of it. Nobody tells you to keep doing things over and over .
I do a little bit of something as long as i like and then i switch to other things. There is plenty different things to do.
If you find something a grind its your own fault.

 

[Vexxed]

Training up Magey back in the days of Naked Halberd swinging mages..... When 50,000 gold was enough for a super leet Vanq PvP weapon & there was no 100% LRC suits & buying reagents to cast took forever!

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

There is no grind, only if you make one of it. Nobody tells you to keep doing things over and over .
I do a little bit of something as long as i like and then i switch to other things. There is plenty different things to do.
If you find something a grind its your own fault.

BS. The game, as it is currently designed, does encourage us to grind. The player that repeats the same actions over and over is eventually rewarded, where as the casual player is rarely, if ever, rewarded. Grinds, such as resource gathering or loyalty increase, were specifically coded this way by the Dev Team. Telling us that the grinds are "our fault" is just BS apologist sophistry.

 

[Viper09]

Show me an mmo that honestly has no grind at all. Truly though the whole idea of grinding is subjective, just because you find it a grind doesn't mean the next person will.
But do add, the only thing that ever felt like a grind to me was training cartography. The only skill that I found was tedious to to raise, no one wants to buy maps...except npcs.

 

[Raptor85]

BS. The game, as it is currently designed, does encourage us to grind. The player that repeats the same actions over and over is eventually rewarded, where as the casual player is rarely, if ever, rewarded. Grinds, such as resource gathering or loyalty increase, were specifically coded this way by the Dev Team. Telling us that the grinds are "our fault" is just BS apologist sophistry.

This, saying grind isn't required in uo is like saying having money isn't required IRL....sure it's technically true but you won't be able to do much of anything that you might actually enjoy doing if you dont.

 

[Madrid]

I just started the Quest to gain the City Banners and I find it pretty annoying. Britain is effin' Brutal. Recalling around on both facets and running all over I can barely find an Angry protestor, garbage, or burning fire. You'd think in a city that large they may have upped the number of rioters....

And the very next day my loyalty dropped after I finished Moonglow. Pisses me off to say the least.

Sure I can choose not to participate but I can also state my opinion that 's a grind and way over the top with the decay. Not at all happy with the Awakening I.

I'd rather pay the 400k outright and then pay someone to go around and hand it out to the protestors. Certainly not my idea of enjoyable gaming experience. I don't want it to be easy but I certaintly don't want to see my time and effort regress with the decay of loyalty it just adds insult to injury.

 

[Uvtha]

Nonsense. The game was designed to be playeed in a certain way, and through certain means. Saying, "oh you don,t have to grind anything, you can just stand in a corner and kill mongbats with a club" is dismissive. So is saying its only a grind if you feel that it is.

Systems are put into the game, and they are designed to be played in a certain way. All games are a grind of some kind, since playing games is a waynto pass time, but some make you word much harder than others, and much harder than they had ought to, to the point that the average player is not having fun.

Fishing for example is a terrible grind, especially when compared to other in game systems. It was designed with a series of tasks and a logical progression of rewards for compteting those tasks. But the reward scheme is abysmal, and that fact is further exaserbater by the fact that the actual process of fishing is both repetitive and not exciting. Why was it designed this way? The devs wanted to make sure enough time was consumed (in days and weeks) by the system that it seemed like the content added was worth the purchase price. So rather than making a deep and interesting system, they cose to make one that must be repeated literallyhundreds if not thousands of times to achive the presented goals. Same with town loyalty.

That is the systematic development of a grind. Its and example of poor/lazy design or, and I think this is more likely, a dev team lacking resources.

TT

 

[Petra Fyde]

I just started the Quest to gain the City Banners and I find it pretty annoying. Britain is effin' Brutal. Recalling around on both facets and running all over I can barely find an Angry protestor, garbage, or burning fire. You'd think in a city that large they may have upped the number of rioters....

And the very next day my loyalty dropped after I finished Moonglow. Pisses me off to say the least.

Brit and Moonglow? On the same character? Loyalty drops drastically if you aid more than one town, you're shooting yourself in the foot if you're doing that. Use different chars?
I have one character at 'adored' for Magincia - she has a pet stall there. I re-stock the pet stall and arrest 5 rioters per day. I haven't bought a banner - I don't really want one.

 

[Viper09]

Grinding isn't the problem, it's about whether or not it's fun. If it's fun you don't consider it a grind. That's what really needs to be changed, a way to make it fun for more people, the grinds are always going to be there regardless of what mmo you're playing.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

Grinding isn't the problem, it's about whether or not it's fun. If it's fun you don't consider it a grind.

This.

I agree that grinds, in some form, will always be around - though the Devs should go out of their way to try to avoid them... When they do occur, they need to be disguised by a fun activity. Killing the same few mobs ad nauseum to get a widget isn't fun (think Night Terrors). Clicking frantically to put out fires or pick up trash IS NOT FUN. Leading a captive rioter to the guard, which in some cases are in ridiculous spots (thinking of Yew here), isn't very fun. Even righting a raider isn't very fun due to their obscene hit points and paragon-like speed (the lack of being repond is a tad annoying too. Raiders should have been modeled after the Bane Chosen).

A game must be fun to a majority of players.

 

[Mervyn]

6 - Taming Skill : You should get taming gains by controlling tamed pets. All Kill, All Follow me should give possible gains. Taming/killing/taming/killing is the ultimate PITA grind. No wonder taming pinks go for the most money. Get a clue devs - don't make it so darn mind numbing. No one likes it or finds it even remotely fun.

Speak for yourself, I know loads of tamers, if people didn't like taming, they wouldn't do it.

 

[Woodsman]

A game must be fun to a majority of players.

Exactly. I'd go further and say this: When you have a game like UO where development resources are as limited as they are, you need to stay away from adding to things that are considered to be a grind, because you end up putting a lot of precious development resources into something that very few legitimate players are going to participate in.

All it does is piss off players and adds content that will be very underutilized.

Rather than put dev resources into content that requires monotonous grinding, I'd rather they put them into resources that adds content for the majority of players or that brings more people into the game.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

Speak for yourself, I know loads of tamers, if people didn't like taming, they wouldn't do it.

Theo can speak for me too. Tamer was one of my first, GM'd 'back when', back when it was a Lot harder than today. I remember the months of evening in Del taming bulls and lava lizards. The one constant was "OMG, will this never end?" Having endured that, it's the one and only time I'm ever going to do it. Today, tho worthless, I still retain my WW, and I love puppies. There's many things I like, and still do, about taming, those end training days aren't one of them.

 

[Uvtha]

rright' who like the actual process of taming pets more than the process of hunting with them. No one I have ever met. In fact taming a million bulls or ridgeback or what ever then releasing them only to se them slaughtered by monsters always bummed me out big time.

Taming should be about working in unionson with your trusted pets, not conning herds of poor cyber steer into thier doom.

p.s. forgive my typos, on my tab and thus site is super laggy when typing and im too lqzy to go back and edit

 

[T-Hunt]

Grind was added to UO for when the DEV,s have nothing new to keep players interested in playing.
This seems to be the case lately ..
If it wasent for EM events and some of the new deco questing grind..how many people would still be playing at all?
Im lucky i have alot to do...and if borred i take a brake...simple as that..

 

[temu]

I macro my skills while attended. NP. Grinding in ultima is doing champ spawns and chaining peerless. Holy crap the drop rate on decent items is SO LOW!

 

[Gilmour]

There's a reason they worth what they are

Personally i've stopped almost completly fighting for rare drop, i fight for sport with friends rather than loot that may or may not drop, and if something DO drop, well "YEY" but, chaining like shimmering for a slim chance of a crysteline ring or similar, can only demotivate you when it don't drop.

 

[SunWolf]

Instead of talking about a grind fest, why not come up with someideas that you might think will be fun in the game. Now not talking about revamping things that are already currently in the game which are problay looked at anyway. It is an online game you pay for, and all the grinding things takes time but it adds alot more things you might want to get in the game and work for alittle at a time. If there is no grind or everything is cheaper and easier to get, time to stand at bank time, oh boy.

Now the monsters that you have to kill over and over to get the 12 or so books or scrolls for the Ter Mur first part of the quest was problay the oddest thing I have seen really, due to how many hit points they have and just how hard they was to kill. I did see guilds in there working at a guild to try to get the scrolls for each member, but there just was to many scrolls to really get to make that fesable. But then again, it is still in the game (for what works) and you can get a scroll a day with somehelp.

I like the idea about town rep by buying stuff from npcs or just doing transctions in the town and overtime your rep builds up. Always thought it would be cool to have like a ecomony in the towns. Like this town made this much today and profits are great, so it opens alittle fair with games and sales booths, like one sells new flower seeds or another that sells new music tracks for the music box.

The town loyality with the rioter's I had fun with and so did many others that I know. We enjoyed being in our town and having something to do. Meet other people in the town aswell which was nice. It isn't the grinding that is the problem, it is people wish to try to powergame or get all the items they like to have as fast as they can then they get bored and end up leaving the game after they are done showing off.


""3 - Virtues : Good idea, way to much effort on some of these and i hate the new decay rates. It has been how long since honesty items were added to the game? I have yet to see one during normal gameplay. Thats crazy. "" They spawn around shore lines, like Magincia area around the moongate or on islands.

""5 - Navery : Why get rid of the autorespawn? OMG. Killing the spider is like waiting for the bus. Every 10 min. In between you sit there with a bunch of people you don't want to talk to anyways."" It is a boss that doesn't have any key or acuire anything to get to.... Hell the entire game's respawn should be slowed and random spawn timer 40seconds - 2 minutes like it used to be. Killing something just to have it respawn is kind of silly unless it is a quest npc or champspawn.


"7 - Heartwood quests " All the old quests in the game needs to be redisgned and brought up to the SA quest log jounrel way. It is problay confusing for new players or returning having two ways to look for what quests they have. Heartwood should have more like bods though, ranges of rewards depending what the quest is you do.

 

[Petra Fyde]

My feeling is, players have to take some responsibility for turning things into a grind.
You don't have to work the community collections that way - I'm pretty sure the devs thought people would just hand stuff in gradually, as and when, and take several months to get the rewards in a casual way.
You don't have to train taming by boringly trailing around after various types of bears etc. Tame something that chases you, not only is it less boring, but by the time you reach high level you'll be really expert at lead taming.
You don't have to train melee by boringly bashing a golem. Bash something that's the right level, and maybe collect leathers?
you don't have to work the same skill every single moment that you're online. Work it till you're bored then go do something else. I rarely do the same activity for more than an hour.
You don't have to work city loyalty on every character and for every city. That was your choice.

Find a way to make it fun, instead of finding a way to make it boring.
I've just finished getting the statues - and I found a way to make it fun. I provo'd the golem onto them, filling in with EVs when I was waiting for a golem to spawn. Did you know that the golem's special attack has the damage bouncing back and forth in such a way that 3 golems can kill not only a normal robber, but a paragon robber just the same. When the damage really bounces well they insta-kill each other, Bam! all fall down.

 

[Raptor85]

My feeling is, players have to take some responsibility for turning things into a grind.
You don't have to work the community collections that way - I'm pretty sure the devs thought people would just hand stuff in gradually, as and when, and take several months to get the rewards in a casual way.
You don't have to train taming by boringly trailing around after various types of bears etc. Tame something that chases you, not only is it less boring, but by the time you reach high level you'll be really expert at lead taming.
You don't have to train melee by boringly bashing a golem. Bash something that's the right level, and maybe collect leathers?
you don't have to work the same skill every single moment that you're online. Work it till you're bored then go do something else. I rarely do the same activity for more than an hour.
You don't have to work city loyalty on every character and for every city. That was your choice.

Find a way to make it fun, instead of finding a way to make it boring.
I've just finished getting the statues - and I found a way to make it fun. I provo'd the golem onto them, filling in with EVs when I was waiting for a golem to spawn. Did you know that the golem's special attack has the damage bouncing back and forth in such a way that 3 golems can kill not only a normal robber, but a paragon robber just the same. When the damage really bounces well they insta-kill each other, Bam! all fall down.

and 12 years later you MIGHT almost be high enough in skill that you'll actually be able to venture into areas where there's other people.....

 

[Petra Fyde]

Gross exaggeration does little to promote credibility.

 

[Meatbread]

My feeling is, players have to take some responsibility for turning things into a grind.

I couldn't disagree more. UO players are no different than any other group of people, and the developers are supposed to be designing this stuff for human beings. When someone looks at a quest in development and goes "Okay you'll need 7500 loyalty for this, and each relevant kill will be worth... hmm... 3 points!" he's making a grind and he knows it.

 

[Petra Fyde]

I didn't say there was no grind, I said it players make it worse than it need be, and it's not 3 points per kill, it's 50.
Doing the robbers I also filled music boxes with gears, handed in power crystals for clean up points and gained provo from roughly 112 to 117 skill. I found a way to make it fun.

 

[Umfufu]

I didn't say there was no grind, I said it players make it worse than it need be, and it's not 3 points per kill, it's 50.
Doing the robbers I also filled music boxes with gears, handed in power crystals for clean up points and gained provo from roughly 112 to 117 skill. I found a way to make it fun.

This and all above Petra said ...

Ofcourse we all want the devs to put more interesting stuff ingame. But besides this fact I do believe "the grind" is what YOU make of it.

Not all stuff is super fun, some stuff is challenging, hard, and sometimes something you rather not do.
But you know what, I am happy and proud and have a feeling if satisfaction if I reach a goal I set myself.
If all was handed to me in easy mode, I don't think I would still be playing this game.

Every game has a "grind", hell even much stuff in RL is a grind.
Tell me a factory worker has no grind, one working at some fastfood thing, doing the dishes every day, and what about waxing peoles hair off all day ...
In the end, it is your state of mind how you deal with it or not. You CAN make it fun, you CAN make it unbearable.

And please all ... do realize ... due to our many different likings and playstyles (which is a beautiful thing), no matter what the devs do ... there will be always someone complaining.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

Petra Fyde said: players have to take some responsibility for turning things into a grind.
SunWolf said:why not come up with some ideas that you might think will be fun in the game.
Meatbread said: the developers are supposed to be designing this stuff


That's just it, There's nothing wrong with Collections, or its items, as can be further seen in the current 'Trash Can Points'. The idea works in both Concept and reality. I don't remember specifics, but thinking the numbers were changed from the original amounts to ironically, discourage scripting. The change was pushed by the community, and as can clearly be seen, the community is united both in passion and voice. and I give all the participants a pat on the back for putting away personal differences and positively voicing themselves, in a push for a better UO, a more Fun UO. It's not what I think the direction for Ultima travels, just as the community works for changes, whether a tweak or expansion, it's a community decision, that's their responsibility.
I don't remember a decision made requiring over a Quarter Million books needed for Mace & Shield, 266,000 books? really?
Is it broken?, No - working as intended.
Can it be changed? Absolutely! Whether it's Heartwood or Collections, Pick something, Start a thread, Stay on topic. This is how it works. This is my idea, This Poll is starting down that road of Pick Something. The majority are saying Questing, Bods, Collection - which as simple as it seems, covers quite a variety of topics. And it may take a little Dev intervention, even if it's just a nod for the right direction, It'd really go a long way to boost morale. A Dev's responsibility is helping make even a grind fun, ours is to Not stand idly by and watch our friends leave and the game die.

 

[Theo_GL]

Petra Fyde said: players have to take some responsibility for turning things into a grind.
SunWolf said:why not come up with some ideas that you might think will be fun in the game.
Meatbread said: the developers are supposed to be designing this stuff


That's just it, There's nothing wrong with Collections, or its items, as can be further seen in the current 'Trash Can Points'. The idea works in both Concept and reality. I don't remember specifics, but thinking the numbers were changed from the original amounts to ironically, discourage scripting. The change was pushed by the community, and as can clearly be seen, the community is united both in passion and voice. and I give all the participants a pat on the back for putting away personal differences and positively voicing themselves, in a push for a better UO, a more Fun UO. It's not what I think the direction for Ultima travels, just as the community works for changes, whether a tweak or expansion, it's a community decision, that's their responsibility.
I don't remember a decision made requiring over a Quarter Million books needed for Mace & Shield, 266,000 books? really?
Is it broken?, No - working as intended.
Can it be changed? Absolutely! Whether it's Heartwood or Collections, Pick something, Start a thread, Stay on topic. This is how it works. This is my idea, This Poll is starting down that road of Pick Something. The majority are saying Questing, Bods, Collection - which as simple as it seems, covers quite a variety of topics. And it may take a little Dev intervention, even if it's just a nod for the right direction, It'd really go a long way to boost morale. A Dev's responsibility is helping make even a grind fun, ours is to Not stand idly by and watch our friends leave and the game die.

Thats one of my biggest issues is the lack of dev interaction or listening to players at all. We report bugs in beta - serious bugs - they are never fixed or fixed 5 publishes later. Why even have Origin and Test Center if you are going to ignore feedback?
If not bugs then feedback on poorly designed systems. At least we got diminishing gains and some of the other crackpot ideas killed before implementation - but too many make it through and then they just walk away and leave it.

Go sit by the library once - take note that the ONLY people turning stuff in is scripters for mace and shield. All the rest of those 15+ NPC's and items are not worth doing for turn ins. They need new items, new ways of turning things in and more realistic system. It could have been so much more - something there you turn in non-buyable non-craftable items for points during your adventuring to get rewards. Or with the right point values for gold - a HUGE HUGE gold sink.

I would like to see Devs actually respond to these forums with a real discussion on some of these current issues. Go take a look at how much time people are actually doing community collections (very little) and make some tweaks to make it more useful/rewarding/realistic - and people will spend their time doing it. Then VOILA no need to even develop tons of new content because we are happy doing existing content.

Someone else mentioned turning on old content again - why not bring back ToT. The problem with ToT was they got rid of the dyes and that was 80% of the reason for doing it in the first place because dyes got used up. All the rest of the items - once you had enough swords of prosperity - no need to farm any more. It was the dyes driving that event. You would think some simple metrics stored around 'what item is being claimed the most' would help them better tweak/develop that content to reuse.

It all reminds me of Best Buy. They are getting hammered right now and as a result are closing stores, losing leadership and unsure of how to fix their business. All you need to do is go read the comments on any message board. The consumers are TELLING them what is wrong with their business yet they seem unable to address it or even acknowledge they have a problem.

#1 rule in business - the best ideas come from your customers. Now, not every idea is a good one and every idea is the right decision - but if you can filter the nonsense and look at the themes your customers will tell you what to do to best further your product.

I have posted ideas in this thread and others. Some ideas that I championed eventually came to pass :

Instanced corpses - I was a huge supporter of this as Doom was a scripters paradise before this with scripts pulling every 3/1 item before you could open the corpse. It made all large mob fighting worthwhile as before it was nothing but a grieffest.
Crafting Bug Fixes - I had a huge email thread with Leuro and Jeremy to get about 20 crafting bugs finally fixed including bod distribution where no tailor footwear larges would ever spawn. Tons of the SA introduced items would also not work - anyone remember 6% SSI Ranger bows?
Bod Books - Thank GOD these were finally added to the game. It took a couple years of bantering about how difficult it was to track these things. Of course since they introduced them they have been unable to LISTED to the small tweaks we need on them - namely 'sort alphabetic' and 'price all'. Give me those 2 and every smith/tailor would be overjoyed. Literally 15 min of coding to add it.


The problem now is it seems there is zero listening by the dev team. They hole up - develop and push out changes no one is requesting with serious flaws, then go back underground and never fix the flaws but roll out the next crazy idea. Meanwhile the frustration here mounts as these poorly designed/thought out systems become current reality.

Diablo III ships May 15th.

 

[Theo_GL]

Every game has a "grind", hell even much stuff in RL is a grind.
Tell me a factory worker has no grind, one working at some fastfood thing, doing the dishes every day, and what about waxing peoles hair off all day ...
In the end, it is your state of mind how you deal with it or not. You CAN make it fun, you CAN make it unbearable.

You are completely missing the point. All the things you describe are JOBS. JOBS! Things people need to get paid to do. No one washes dishes all day for FUN!!!!

Since when is UO a job??? If they paid me to play - then yes, I'll turn in 88,000 shields for money. Show me where anyone has hobbies that are a 'grind'.

Thats the whole point of this thread - UO is a GAME not a JOB. Take the damn grinds out of it and add INTERESTING THINGS TO DO that have variabilty. Make me go adventure and consume new content.

Take reading - people like to read and spend hours reading. Why? Because it is continued new content. No one reads the same damn book over and over again all month. How is that fun? Its not.

Same as turning in 88,000 battle axes. At 80 a time (approx what my backpack can hold in weight) is 1,100 trips to the Blacksmith and back. How in the world is that fun? At all? Its not. Give me new content to consume and along the way I get points to spend on mace and shield and other items and I'm happy to do it! Its fun!

I don't want to click the same thing over and over again 1,100 times to get a reward. Its stupid. Anyone that does is stupid.

We could all quit UO and get a dishwashing job and make money instead and it would be the same boring grind.

That is the point of this thread. UO is a GAME and not a JOB. Why do we have so many systems that remind us of working a JOB???

 

[Raptor85]

the entire concept of turning in any large number of books for a reward is flawed, a more sane way to implement it would have the turnin base points on the items being turned in themselves....for instance looted books from the lich room in covetous could be worth more (though they'd need a way to flag them as origionals and not duplicates). "Working as intended" as it may be.....it's scripted to death! on every shard! and VERY few people actually do it by hand or turn stuff in as anything other than an afterthought. And it's been like this from ML beta....day 1 of launch there were tons of them already being sold.

There's a difference between difficult and tedious as well, though they're often confused in video games. Just because something takes 6 hours to do does not make it "difficult"...it just means it takes 6 hours to do. You can very well create difficutly without tedium or grind, it just takes effort, balancing, and actual care from EA's side. Grind mechanics are a cop out, it's a cheap filler that's designed entirely to burn player time and used as a way to keep you doing one thing more so they can get away with implementing less. Making a "grind" fun is a weird way of thinking because a grind by definition won't be fun....I don't care how many flashy lights you add if it's still "repeat x 500,000 times" it's still a boring grind.

Be a little clever with it, make things less random, make actual thought and effort count more to reward than it being a pure factor of luck + time spent. A few examples of simple changes

1. Re-introduce areas for players with lower skill levels, they've all either been revamped to the point where they're unsurvivable or the amount of gold and items dropped off the mobs would have been some nice starter gold....if it was still 1999 and you could actually still buy a good fairly high end suit of armor for 10k
2. revamp all loot drops...the random wall of text and everything dropping dozens of essentially useless items with a dozen mods is silly.....it's worse in uo now than in any other rpg i've ever played. Reduce the number of items that drop...and make the item types and properties on the items relevant to what you're killing! (*gasp*). A good example would be like the old juka bows where you could kill the juka lords and take their bow, which would when modified be a slayer bow...just changed to the current loot system. (If i kill a super awesome ratman archer i dont want to see a dozen swords, a ring, some elven armor, and a crappy normal wooden bow when i loot him....he should have a small amount of gold being that they're intelligent + reponds, a magical bow with properties based on their fame level, and whatever else would make sense for them to carry such as a quiver, or a few scrappy pieces of leather armor.)
3. drop rates are way too low off of boss type monsters, even the concept of killing the exact same boss 100 times to ATTEMPT to get the good reward is silly...make them either drop it or not.....it's not like a whole lot of the artys are even significant anymore compared to the items you can get in the new loot system.
4. the turnins like the library rewards was an idea flawed from the core, nobody cares about "helping" the library by turning things in, it's entirely to get the rewards that are available from it...also i don't remember there ever being an attempt at explaining why some guy upstairs in the library wants me to give him 300,000 bucklers. I'm all for effort going into the reward but that's not really "effort" that's just sheer crafting/mining time. If he wants shields by god make a reason to go get shields....make a significant bonus weighted per mod for shields with mods....a higher bonus for artifact shields....or hell have some "specific" shields to go get to add to their collection in a quest like fashon. I'd take any of those over the "use a chip clip to hold down the button activating my uoassist crafting macro while i do other things" method of doing it now.

And those are just quick examples. not perfect, but my point being that there is little reason aside from "spend as little money as possible on development to keep players in game" to implement grind mechanics...it's a generic time-wasting filler that's entire purpose is to artifically extend the time the player spends on any one thing. Theres plenty of RPG's out there with little to no grind...hell, UO was one of them until almost AOS, but at some point in it's development it made the unfortunate transition from being a Role Playing Game to being a Roll Playing Game.

 

[Frarc]

This thread is turning into a grind, its so boring. I rather go fishing.

 

[Picus at the office]

The problem now is it seems there is zero listening by the dev team. They hole up - develop and push out changes no one is requesting with serious flaws, then go back underground and never fix the flaws but roll out the next crazy idea. Meanwhile the frustration here mounts as these poorly designed/thought out systems become current reality.

Diablo III ships May 15th.

This is all that is needed to be said. I've been harping about factions for a couple of weeks and the best reply is "move on". I'd rather not because I'm not going to play another game like UO but it's a depressing ship to be sailing on.

 

[Meatbread]

I didn't say there was no grind, I said it players make it worse than it need be, and it's not 3 points per kill, it's 50. Doing the robbers I also filled music boxes with gears, handed in power crystals for clean up points and gained provo from roughly 112 to 117 skill. I found a way to make it fun.

I was talking about the old Bane Chosen quest where meer were worth 3 points each. I'm not even sure what current event you're talking about. I know they patched in some random thing starting in some tavern, but nobody on Atlantic has said one word about it in-game.

Anyway, community collections in particular were nothing but a scripter reward system. Script turning in a million bucklers or some other insanity no legit player would ever ever ever ever ever do, get sweet items to sell.

 

[Petra Fyde]

You may believe that if you wish. I'm afraid that makes me less than sane because I have gotten several things from the library. I just took several weeks to do each one.
The quest I spoke of is act II of the current arc. The tavern begins arc III. Both quests have been covered by Frarc for Stratics, you'll find his reports under 'quests and events'

 

[Mervyn]

rright' who like the actual process of taming pets more than the process of hunting with them. No one I have ever met. In fact taming a million bulls or ridgeback or what ever then releasing them only to se them slaughtered by monsters always bummed me out big time.

Taming should be about working in unionson with your trusted pets, not conning herds of poor cyber steer into thier doom.

p.s. forgive my typos, on my tab and thus site is super laggy when typing and im too lqzy to go back and edit

people pay to play this game, no one is stupid enough to tame pets if they didn't enjoy it

 

[Woodsman]

Instead of talking about a grind fest, why not come up with someideas that you might think will be fun in the game.

Getting more players in the game is the best way to make the game more fun, but that's not the emphasis of the dev team.

So taking existing systems and players...I'll leave the skill building aside for the moment, since it used to be much harder to build skills. It's still incredibly repetitive, and UO used to be skill-based instead of item-based, but that's for another thread.

Actually, back up for a second. The fact that at a certain point, the devs added in the ability to basically buy skills, namely through Scroll of Alacrity/Scroll of Transcendence indicates that even they knew that skill building was repetitive and boring.

Getting back to items, there are too many things that are a grind. A lot of regular players will not engage in them because their time is better spent. What do they do? They purchase those items. Who do they purchase them from? Some guy in his parent's basement who is grinding away on one account for 18 hours a day? Nope, some scripter who has multiple machines running.

When they added the Brittanian Ship to the cash shop, that should have set off alarms. Some saw it as a cash grab, I saw it as them acknowledging that getting it was difficult. While it couldn't exactly be scripted since it was account bound, the items for the donations could be scripted and then sold to those wanting the ship.

This is a high level discussion and I don't want to turn it into a nitpicking thread, so just consider the Britannian Ship an example. There are too many things added to the game, that only a small number of legitimate players are willing to participate in, with the rest buying it from people who are most likely scripting.

Development resources are precious. If you want to talk about making things fun, you have to ask yourself whether a large number of people will see a new system/new item and want to participate in obtaining it or using it, or are they going to take one look, and then head to Luna to go buy whatever it is from the scripters, or just ignore it?

If you have a large number of players who want to participate in it, you've succeeded. If only a small number of players want to participate in it, and the rest are just going to buy it from a scripter or ignore it, those developments resources have been wasted, which sets the game back.

 

[Theo_GL]

Here is another annoying 'grind' - monsters with insane HP's.

To make the game harder you don't just drop monsters with 50,000 HP. Thats just stupid.

I'm killing Vitavi (Reknowned) in cavern of discarded RIGHT NOW. How? By just letting my sampire whack on him while I get work emails done and some posting on stratics. Its completely stupid that they added so many HP's to them and they are still easy they just take like 15 min to kill. How is that fun? Its not. I'm just letting my sampire kill it because I can get work done at the same time.

If you want to make monsters harder to kill with reflect or special abilities - fine but insane HP's (Reknowneds) and crazy attacks (one hit kill from Greater Dragon firebreath) is not the way to make the game 'harder' its just annoying.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

LOL, I hear ya Theo, I've actually fallen asleep (i really did) doing one, guess i could have gotten a ban - i didn't even open the corpse at that point. I think the fix will be what they did in Shame, simply cause you to lose target so you have to keep Clicking for the $Gold, or it kills you, so you die in-game or IRL, either way the grinds a Killer.
I actually prefer the low end SA spawns - possibility of dieing, easy to kill (mostly 1-hit), plenty to pick from w/o feeling overwhelmed - mindless stuff that's actually a little Fun. Hack and Slash FTW

 

[Uvtha]

people pay to play this game, no one is stupid enough to tame pets if they didn't enjoy it

Except for everyone. I tamed pets because I had to gain skill so I could hunt with better pets. That was the ONLY reason I tamed things. The same has been said by everyone else posting on the topic.

 

[Viper09]

people pay to play this game, no one is stupid enough to tame pets if they didn't enjoy it

So using that rational, you're suggesting that no one has done anything in this game that they didn't enjoy? I think everyone who has ever trained cartography might disagree with that sentiment. It's hard to find the fun in making useless maps over and over, unless you enjoy making a little fort out of hundreds of maps. I tried doing that but they never lasted long enough.

 

[Theo_GL]

So using that rational, you're suggesting that no one has done anything in this game that they didn't enjoy? I think everyone who has ever trained cartography might disagree with that sentiment. It's hard to find the fun in making useless maps over and over, unless you enjoy making a little fort out of hundreds of maps. I tried doing that but they never lasted long enough.

I actuall did have one of my best times in UO training carto. It was when the maps made in Malas were 'Indecipherable'. People saw them (they were grey) and thought they were rare. I crafted them to gain skill and started stacking them at Luna moongate. People would take them all. Then I stacked them and started spamming that I was selling them (even though they were on the ground). That attracted more attention. I laughed like mad as people grabbed them and then taunted me for getting them for free. Jokes on you man - they are craftable. Ha ha.

But in general - yes, most skill gain is an awful experience. It should be like make every diff weapon 20 times and get to GM smith instead of same weapon over and over for hours.

 

[Viper09]

I actuall did have one of my best times in UO training carto. It was when the maps made in Malas were 'Indecipherable'. People saw them (they were grey) and thought they were rare. I crafted them to gain skill and started stacking them at Luna moongate. People would take them all. Then I stacked them and started spamming that I was selling them (even though they were on the ground). That attracted more attention. I laughed like mad as people grabbed them and then taunted me for getting them for free. Jokes on you man - they are craftable. Ha ha.

But in general - yes, most skill gain is an awful experience. It should be like make every diff weapon 20 times and get to GM smith instead of same weapon over and over for hours.

So YOU were the one! I thought those things were unique at first too, lol.

 

[Mervyn]

Except for everyone. I tamed pets because I had to gain skill so I could hunt with better pets. That was the ONLY reason I tamed things. The same has been said by everyone else posting on the topic.

Why do you want to hunt with better pets?
Because you like playing the game, you like it, you just don't realise it.

 

[LordDrago]

I think Mervyn is getting confused between taming pets and hunting with your pets. Of course Tamers like to go out and hunt with their pets. But I do not know one person who liked grinding taming gains. Its not like most skills. Using your taming skill to control your pet does not give you gains. Only the initial act of taming does. And more times than not, it doesn;t even get you a gain.

I am trying to think of a comparison in teh game and am failing at the moment.
About all I can come up with were if gaining in swordsmanship could only be gained once per each creature you fought...so if you swung 20 times to kill a dragon, you would only ever be able to gain 0.1 skill...and then the skill gain check only happened after you killed it....and then only if the creature you were fighting was not too weak or too strong.

Anyone who thinks that reaching 120 taming skill is not a grind, has either never tried it or is a fool.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

Tho voted for, I've seen little mention of the RNG, presentable in various ways.
The true cause for lumberjack and mining decline?
Global Lowering of HCI ? How boring to Whiff several times in a row with a Halberd, How Dead too. Missing is realism in action, 5-8x in a row is not
Global Lowering of skill success chance pushing the title of GM into the obsolete pile, having 120 become the new GM only to find the success rate not very comforting
Colored ingot or Gold enhancing, spell casting, item creation, taming, music, Every skill?

 

[Lady Storm]

If you think UO is a pancake you should have done EQ in its infancy... or SWG. Wow is even boring mid range lvling up.
But you are correct...
The answer is all of the above but you didnt give that option soooo.. I took the Mob and # of said critters for the average joe who has no one to team up with.. or few to do so.
On the subject: EM Events comes to mind in this as well.
Mesanna and her team of crack EM's should just line all up all players who show up and have them list off the skills and armor values and time playing this char ans just divi up the Event items to the top # of items to give out and have the rest go back to do what was on the menu for that day's play session...
They are just gunna get them anyway.

 

[lineman]

Nothing is a grind after playing everquest for years

 

[Raptor85]

If you think UO is a pancake you should have done EQ in its infancy... or SWG. Wow is even boring mid range lvling up.

I thought WoW was a boring game period, but one thing they REALLY have over UO though is there's at least something to do no matter what your skill level is at....when you start WoW there's plenty of places you can go and hunt that are worth doing and other players there to actually play with. When you start UO you're presented with basicly a choice to more quickly afk train on a golem (which EVERYONE will recommend to you if you ask how to train). Or spend weeks to months killing monsters that you may as well not even loot because the second you get "high enough" in skill to play with other people you'll get more in a single kill than all of that combined.

I absolutely HATE blizzard both in their game designs and as a company in general but even I have to give them that they understand that to maintain a playerbase you have to have things for new players to do as well....not just things for maxed out characters to do, as a matter of fact everyone else seems to get that but EA who's tactics seems to be always based around "wring as much cash out of existing players as possible and to hell with the game surviving in the long term". Some forget too that many of EA's MMO's weren't the grindfests they got known for and canceled from players quitting from when they launched...EA generally added the ultra-grind afterwards. They love to do that, release a game then a few years in basicly tear out everything people enjoyed in the game and turn it into another generic grindfest until it invariably dies.

 

[Uvtha]

Why do you want to hunt with better pets?
Because you like playing the game, you like it, you just don't realise it.

We are talking about the act of taming. Not the game. This post is about the grinds in the game, skill gain is one of those grinds. The act of taming is not fun, and people are proposing that rather than force people to grind grind grind away the hours taming animal after animal for no reason other than to gain skill, that people should gain skill while actually using their pets, which generally is a fun thing to do.