Thread: What is the difference between character advancement and grinding?

What distinguishes the two in your opinion? This seems like a timely topic given the hullabaloo over the Star Light Crystals, and I'm curious where you think the line should be drawn. We can probably agree on the extreme ends of the spectrum: leveling your character and acquiring new skills for advancement, deeds for grinding. But that still leaves a lot of middle ground.

At what point does an activity cross over from advancement into grinding?

Originally Posted by ScionofAngmar

At what point does an activity cross over from advancement into grinding?

When the activity becomes boring = Grind.

I personally place the line at the number of mobs/instance runs needed to achieve the goal. Unless the mobs are very easy or the instance short, I place the number around ten for instances and fifty for mobs, with the grind being more severe with every increase in 10 after that, and less severe for every secondary character advancement that occurs concurrently (levels, IXP, gold, etc).

In the eye of the beholder?

Excuse me for a second as I hijack your thread.

I haven't been able to find any forum discussion regarding the mentioned Star Light Crystals; could anyone link me to one? I would like to really get some info before I start complaining and moaning about more grinding.

On topic: What Yula said. When it becomes overly repetitive and boring, it's grinding. -read: slayer deeds-.

Originally Posted by Yula_the_Mighty

When the activity becomes boring = Grind.

But wouldn't that criteria make the distinction entirely subjective? Or is that your point?

Originally Posted by Elemiire

I haven't been able to find any forum discussion regarding the mentioned Star Light Crystals; could anyone link me to one?

It's in the Bullroarer server forum, along with the beta patch notes and other beta-related threads.

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?457723-Star-lit-Crystal-Discussion

IMO, it depends on the individual.

Example: I've been trying to complete a bunch of deeds I let slip by the wayside. Currently working on the advanced orc slayer deed in Angmar. 300. I'm having fun, blowing through them like nothing and looting to my hearts content. Also, I run through Sarnur for a couple of hours every other days to farm rep items to post on the AH. I love doing both - believe it or not, it relaxes me.

My friend thinks I've lost what little sanity I had left.

It's all a matter of how the individual feels. I think when you get to that point of "Dang I have to do this AGAIN?!" is when it becomes a grind.

Originally Posted by StavroMuellerBeta

It's in the Bullroarer server forum, along with the beta patch notes and other beta-related threads.

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?457723-Star-lit-Crystal-Discussion

Much thanks!

For me:

Grinding = Deeds, Virtues, LI relics, LI SoGE, and instances like when everyone ran school and library for S3M's

My personal definitions:

Character Progression -> Things you have to do once to improve your character permanently (eg virtues, traits, instance deeds)

Grinds -> Things you have to do over and over and over again (eg LI relics/SoEs etc)

*Somethings are both character progression and grinds, however your virtues will never become useless/disappear as LIs and relics do.

Well it is subjective but I think LOTRO does lean on the grind side although less than it used to.
I don't know how f2pers do TP farming.

For me it's a grind when it side tracks you from your main objective and takes longer.
In this game it's levelling and working through the story and exploring the world.
Slayer deeds are the big one especially for certain slayer deeds like killing 300 trolls in an area with only one place to find them like Lone Lands.

I'm going to say that any time I'm required to do something simply for a reward that I would never touch for it's entertainment value, is a grind rather than character advancement.


For example, running Isenguard clusters and Roots of Fangorn for Medallions and Seals that I turn in for armor = something that's fun to do that has a nice reward as a bonus. This would be character development.

Killing 450 stupid crawlers in a part of the Trollshaws that I would never play in for entertainment value just to get a +2 vitality or an extra +30 moral from a virtue is a pointless grind.

Any activity that make me think I am playing Lineage II again.

Eye of the Beholder I reckon (and what a great game that was).

For me it's a grind when it's boring. And for me what makes it boring is when the goalposts are clearly laid out. Unfortunately that's the direction most of the end game grinds have taken, with most things being barter based. I find it feels more grindy when I'm doing my 32nd of 50 known instance runs to gather enough tokens to trade for my new helmet than it would if I was on my 32nd of ??? instance runs hoping for the new helmet to drop. If things have a chance, however small, of dropping on every single run then it keeps the excitement in it for me.

Being able to do the math at the start and knowing for 100% fact that I'm in for a grind of X period if I want to achieve this target makes me feel like I'm grinding, since I know for a fact I have no chance of getting anything out of the effort unless I'm willing to commit to going that far.

personally if i enjoy doing it its charachter advancement, if its Brain sueing for divorce then its a grind
I just thank the gods daily for the slayer deed accelerator...which ever developer thought that little beauty up they deserve a pay rise! Thank You!!!

Something is fun when the challenge meets the reward. The psychological term for this is Flow. Good Flow is what game designers strive to achieve. It's that feeling when you've totally lost track of time you were so absorbed doing something.

Grinding is not subjective, it's a repetitive activity with bad Flow. There's moderate challenge, and a very low reward.

It's worse than watching (*shudder) television (no challenge, moderate reward) which also has fairly poor Flow.

Instead of losing track of time, grinding seems to take forever, you feel you've been at it half an hour, but only ten minutes have passed. You feel you've killed hundreds of X, but checking your deed log only 60 are done.

The folks complaining in that thread are just complaining, not realizing nobody will need to grind for those crystals if the drop rate is maintained as it seems to be in beta. As they will be doing the runs anyway, so up with those dropping regardless. It would be a grind if they didn't get medallions and seals on the runs, and were only running it to get crystals. It would be a grind if the drop rate was like that of stat tomes.

I've almost never grinded things in this game, I've done deeds that happen while I'm questing, or crafting, or chasing rare elites, or combined activities so there is a reward and challenge greater, and I'm "killing" two birds with one stone.

That being said, folks will still have varying opinions of what they personally consider a grind.

PS: A different nuance, complainers in that thread forget that if crystals were in the game all along, they'd all have their legendaries full of them already, due to collecting them in all the runs they'd done up until now. It's certainly not a grind when what you did for fun, gets you the thing along the way. A month from now, anyone who regularly does runs, without changing their behavior, will have a set of crystals in their important legendaries.



"Sometimes survival comes down to not being hit. Actually, most times." -the chicken skill, Bob and Weave

Grinding begins for me, when you are doing an instance more than 6-10 times (depending on its length) or slayer deeds with more than 200 mobs.

Or more abstract: It starts when I have the feeling, that the expected gains are just not worth the efforts. Be it that drops from instances are only slightly better than the gear I have - or that the time I would use new gear is less than a few - maybe three - months. That's the point in the level cap cycle when I invest my time in more permanent gains like virtues.

That also means, that I would keep the found crystals very likely for level 85 weapons now.

Originally Posted by Widoch

I'm going to say that any time I'm required to do something simply for a reward that I would never touch for it's entertainment value, is a grind rather than character advancement. ...

I think this is the most workable definition so far.

As is said, if something is a grind is mostly in the eye of the beholder. There are people that get no entertainment value out of running instance X even only twice to finish deeds/quest. There are other people that kill 2000 mobs during Lootbox weekend and love every minute of it.

For me, finishing old virtues (not only slayer deeds) are the worst grind offenders. Most other things I do have at least a second or more purposes.

Originally Posted by RJFerret

Something is fun when the challenge meets the reward. The psychological term for this is Flow. Good Flow is what game designers strive to achieve. It's that feeling when you've totally lost track of time you were so absorbed doing something.

Grinding is not subjective, it's a repetitive activity with bad Flow. There's moderate challenge, and a very low reward.

It's worse than watching (*shudder) television (no challenge, moderate reward) which also has fairly poor Flow.

Instead of losing track of time, grinding seems to take forever, you feel you've been at it half an hour, but only ten minutes have passed. You feel you've killed hundreds of X, but checking your deed log only 60 are done.

...

I've almost never grinded things in this game, I've done deeds that happen while I'm questing, or crafting, or chasing rare elites, or combined activities so there is a reward and challenge greater, and I'm "killing" two birds with one stone.

That being said, folks will still have varying opinions of what they personally consider a grind.

FLOW ... very interesting! I must admit that this game lets me lose track of time a lot, I get absorbed most times when logging in

As completionist I do each and every slayer deed, even if the virtue that gets upped completing the deed is one I would never use / do not need. Those slayer deeds all give only little reward (+1 on a virtue doesn't give much regarding stats) but when done ALL slayer deeds for one virtue, that's a nice reward. It's a looong way to 14 ...

... but not all slayer deeds feel like a grind. I recently did Worms Slayer in Angmar, a few times around the pool and you got 150 + 300 in little time. The worms spawn fast enough to let you just run a round after the other, no pausing and no waiting. It's almost meditative, you're done quick.

But then again, I'm working on Moria Dragonets ... recommended place to do this is a spot where only 8 dragonets are, they don't respawn that fast. Here I feel the grind, there's not really a noticable progression. I did it about an hour yesterday, felt like 10 hours and was utterly boring.

And then I'm working on getting Medallions of Northmen for bartering an outfit. Getting 420 meds from STH (12 meds) / NCF (10 meds) in challenge mode, I need to run them 20 times. The grind gets just a lil bit sweeter with the relics/iXP you can loot there. To not feel the grind too much, I run the instances solo. It's not as boring and feels less repetive. When entered STH/NCF the first time I struggled, when trying it solo first time I failed BAD. After a few runs I got familiar with the instances and boss fights. Nowadays I run t2cm. Even if grinding them for the meds I consider it character advancement, because my char got better while grinding.

I therefor agree with 'Grind is in the eye of the beholder'

Originally Posted by Vandervahn

For me, finishing old virtues (not only slayer deeds) are the worst grind offenders. Most other things I do have at least a second or more purposes.

Since one point of a virtue has the same value regardless were you gain it, I tend to finish virtues in the lowest area possible. Or I combine deeds in instances with deeds in the surrounding landscape - or farming of ressources, reputation items etc. Normally I try to reduce the effort as much as possible.

Also I try to kill always a few more mobs as needed for a certain quest. This reduces the mobs left I actually have to kill for a slayer deed afterwards.

Of course you will sometimes be able to "combine techniques" to lessen not the pure grind, but at least be more efficient. I´ve recently gotten to soloing Attack at dawn at lvl 30 in raid size tier2, to do North Downs slayer deeds. Or run Annuminas or something solo at low levels to do both instance and landscape deeds.

But there´s always stuff where such a combination is hardly possible; North Downs shades or Barrow spiders for example. Both drop barely anything useful. Good thing is, at least the ND shade slayer and other North Downs deeds shall hopefully be completable-as-you-go in the new Fornost.

Yes - sometimes you can do the deeds only the hard way. But it is good you mentioned skirmishes. I forgot about those - they also help a lot.

I ran Fornost also for goblins, trolls and orcs (although that one is easy with quests already). Made more fun than Dol Dinen or other areas. When the minimum level of the instance is reduced to 30 this could be even quicker. OK - maybe they change the composition of the mobs a bit. I don't know. Haven't played Fornost on Bullroarer.

It's pretty much how you go about it:

- Advancements you get while doing your day-to-day 'fun stuff' you would do anyway are rewards.
- Advancements you have to go out of your way for, doing content you'd rather not do if it wasn't for the rewards, often repeatably, are a grind. And grinds itself aren't bad, they become real grinds when you've got to do them in order to do the content you want to do.

Which is why deeds are generally considered a grind: there's not a lot of people that enjoy just mindlessly smashing 450 Orcs for nothing and for a lot of virtues there's no way around it to raise them. Levelling on the other hand is something you get while doing quests etc that most people would do anyway.

One is fun, the other is not.

It's an interesting question with, as demonstrated by the varying views in this thread, a different answer for every person. Hence my longstanding view that "grind is all in the mind". If you think an activity is a grind then it is. If you don't, it's not.

My personal line is between permanent and temporary benefits. Anything which confers a permanent attribute is character advancement, anything temporary is a grind.

In the first category are deeds, virtues, reputation, crafting tiers, levels, skills and titles. In the latter category is gear, including LIs.

There are some grey areas in that distinction though. Where a deed advances doing repeatables, instances, skirmishes or regular quests it's not any sort of grind to me, but any deed which can be advanced only by killing a lot of a mob in a small place not as part of any other activity at all is harsh - Forochel Dourhands, Trollshaws Crawlers, Great River Shades for example. And actually leveling an LI takes very little effort, although the legacy tier grind makes me cry.

My #1 personal grind dislike is running instances past the point where they are fun just hoping a particular item drops from a chest. I would love for ALL instance gear to be barterable, with no exceptions. It would still be a grind to acquire the currency, but it would be a measurable one with clear progress.

Yeah, well, that's just like...your opinion, man.

(sorry, couldn't resist the opportunity for a Big Lewbowski quote).

Thinking more about it, the distinction for me is largely between solo and group content. The big exception is levelling up or playing through a new area like Great River, which can be enjoyable solo (I actually find myself avoiding grouping for landscape quests as it just slows me down and messes with my flow). For end-game "grind" type stuff, I enjoy doing anything that involves grouping. LG dailies are fun, but the solo gold token repeatables are a bit boring. I know some people who play a lot (even raid a lot) who've barely run any 3 and 6 man content; I've run tons and tons of RoF and Foundry. I guess I'm "grinding" for medallions, seals and spider eggs and whatnot, but I really enjoy those instances and don't get bored playing them over and over as there's always new ways to challenge yourself (especially as a DPS class running Combat Analysis).

Killing 450 mobs that are conveniently not remotely clustered together and that die before I can do one rotation? Not remotely fun. But, you can usually find ways to ease the tedium.

Originally Posted by RJFerret

Something is fun when the challenge meets the reward. The psychological term for this is Flow. Good Flow is what game designers strive to achieve. It's that feeling when you've totally lost track of time you were so absorbed doing something.

Grinding is not subjective, it's a repetitive activity with bad Flow. There's moderate challenge, and a very low reward.

It's worse than watching (*shudder) television (no challenge, moderate reward) which also has fairly poor Flow.

Instead of losing track of time, grinding seems to take forever, you feel you've been at it half an hour, but only ten minutes have passed. You feel you've killed hundreds of X, but checking your deed log only 60 are done.
...

Most interesting and agree 100%. It's all about the flow or lack there of.

As a software engineer I am quite used to flow - you get to work and if the task is interesting you look up and 10 hours have past. If it's not an interesting project you look up and go "oh ## it's only 10 minutes later and I have 8 more hours of this".

Casinos use flow to keep gamblers at the tables longer - no clocks around for people to notice it's 4am and they've been "having fun" for XX hours.

Companies use flow the same way. Reduce the number of clocks, put cubes away from windows so that you cannot notice the passage of time.

Anything that stops you from noticing "time". That's why it's very subjective.

However on to what's grind or not:

Games all make artifical grind. If there wasn't any then we would all be in mordor by now and done with the game. Unlike books where flow has a defined end-point (end of the story), here the game company must keep the connection going as long as they can or they will be out of business.

Example: Slayer Deeds and Slayer Deed Accelerators

WB/T sets the amounts of items to collect: 300, 400, 1,000 or 1,000,000 < they set that.
Now in the case of micro transaction, WB/T realizes that people will PAY to NOT do that. So, if they set the bar at just the right point, people will reach in their pockets and PAY to NOT do that.

So, the amounts needed is not set for flow but to get you to pay them to not do it.

eg if all you needed to collect was 25 widgets you'd just do it. Even if it was hard to "win" it's an easy number to work with mentally. When they set it 250 widgets then that becomes a bigger hurdle. Some will just stick it out but now they can gather some $$ from those who will pay them to not do it. When they set the bar at 500 or 1000 now it's totally about them getting you to pay them to NOT play. Pyschologically they know that's a very hard number to work with for most folks (including me) and we will pay to NOT do boring stuff.

So Grind is set and used by WB/T (and all game companies) and they are very knowledgeable about how to manipulate the players to maximize their profits.

That is the ONLY reason it exists.

Originally Posted by ScionofAngmar

But wouldn't that criteria make the distinction entirely subjective?

Correct. I have friends that do activities that they are having fun doing. For example, lets do 5 - 10 - 15 - 20 Sword Halls in a row one evening. I left after 3. Could not do it any more.

Originally Posted by ScionofAngmar

Or is that your point?

Exactly!

A lot of us work for a living. A lot of jobs are grind jobs. You work as a cashier in Wal-Mart. Your job is to grind the phat loot people bring you in shopping carts. You work at Starbucks as a Barista. Your job is to grind the coffee maker.

Humans are trained to do repetitive operations. We do not find these operations to be a grind in many cases. I must have eaten over 500,000 meals. I do not consider meals a grind. It would be a grind if lunch was the 100,000th ham egg and cheese on a plain toasted Bagel from Dunkin' Donuts in a row.

It could be argued that a grind is when repetition is being used as a substitute for content or good design. LIs come to mind, as did the In Their Absence chain, once through for plot was OK, but to get the actual rewards was another matter!

Originally Posted by Mithithil

It could be argued that a grind is when repetition is being used as a substitute for content or good design.

IMHO - You will always find grind in an online game. We customers consume content much faster than the designers can produce it. You are not willing to pay enough dollars for the content. When you have folks playing 8 hours a day, there is nothing Turbine can do for us. Turbine releases a major update - People raise the "Been There - Done That" flag 3 days later. Start waving a "I am bored" banner. Turbine going - it is going to be a long 80 days before the next content delivery.

Hence the - one week locks - one token per run - it takes 12 runs. That works out to be 84 days. The customer finishes one day after the next content delivery.

For me, it's all about having fun. And, in small doses, I can handle just about anything including doing the larger slayer deeds until I feel the tedium start to set in. Then it is time to put it off until another day. I'm in no hurry to get anything done as long as everything I am doing fits into the fun, not laborious, tedious, work category.

My definition is "Oh, you need 50 hides? Lemme go grind them really quick." or "I only have 15 TP left until I can buy a character slot! Time to grind some TP!"

Basically, my grind = "Oh, I/you need this, so I'll go hack through #### until I/you have what I/you need."

Originally Posted by ScionofAngmar

But wouldn't that criteria make the distinction entirely subjective? Or is that your point?

I would say that's exactly his point.
Case in point:

Originally Posted by ScionofAngmar

We can probably agree on the extreme ends of the spectrum: leveling your character and acquiring new skills for advancement, deeds for grinding. But that still leaves a lot of middle ground.

No we can't 'all' agree, as for me, levelling is the biggest most boring grind of them all.

subjective..

to each their own and their respective view

I, for example, take extreme pleasure in killing orcs.. to whit, one might observe it as grinding <shrugs> just leveling imho.

Of course, when others start to pay my bills, taxes..et al.. then I'll care about their definiton(s)

Originally Posted by radspakr

Well it is subjective but I think LOTRO does lean on the grind side although less than it used to.
I don't know how f2pers do TP farming.

For me it's a grind when it side tracks you from your main objective and takes longer.
In this game it's levelling and working through the story and exploring the world.
Slayer deeds are the big one especially for certain slayer deeds like killing 300 trolls in an area with only one place to find them like Lone Lands.

I find that to be one of the easiest deeds. Just fire up the epic quest and let legolas help you kill trolls with the inspiration buff on - very easy. If all the 300 (450) slayer deeds had that option it would be nice.

I don't really find much in the game an actual 'grind'. I will call tasks 'grinds' for lack of a better word, but they don't necessarily bother me. I enjoy just about everything this game has to offer. The slayer deeds are a good way to earn reputation and copper/silver/gold. You also get to explore many places from doing them. I never bother hurrying to maximize a new LI either because I know in time it will be capped out anyways. I'll admit that before being given the option to remove relics from LI's it was kind of annoying to have to replace them every once in a while... but for the most part that is fixed. I don't mind spending a few extra bucks to be able to take them out of my current LI and put them into a new one.

So as many others have already said, it is in the eye of the beholder. I am amongst the crowd (however small it is, hehe) that actually enjoys all the slayer, exploration, etc., deeds and what not. I like the excitement of my LI's getting to the next level so I can assign points into my legacies. I like having to earn Medallions or Marks to gain a new piece of armor as it gives me a reason to visit numerous instances.

Originally Posted by Mysterion

I find that to be one of the easiest deeds. Just fire up the epic quest and let legolas help you kill trolls with the inspiration buff on - very easy. If all the 300 (450) slayer deeds had that option it would be nice.

Ugh, I wish that was around when I brought my two characters through the Trollshaws. I remember grouping to finish those deeds. Easy stuff now though with Inspiration.

This game is pretty grindy. I have a hard time getting motivated to grind zeal out on another toon. While I don't approve of grinding I can get behind this jam:

Shire + Kanye -> I approve

http://soundcloud.com/willpjohnson/t...ky-shire-theme

Mmm...

Awesome question, and rather hard one to quantify, since we all ahve different levels of tolerance.

In general I look at the activity required, say in this case to level. If they ask me to kill a number of monsters, but they themselves are in the middle of an infestation of other creatures and you find youself mostly killing the infestation instead of the monser you need, I would consider that quest to be a grind.

A quest is a grind, if it is making you travel back and forth large distances, for example the hobbit postman quest, are high in travel and thus it becomes a grind.

A quest asking you to kill more than a dozen of anything, becomes a grind.

A quest to retrieve glowie items, in general is a grind, worse if there are more than 4 items, and they are spread out over alarge area i the zone or zones.

A grind is to do parts of a quest thread that sends you across zones.

A quest can be become a grind, if you can only do it at particular times say day or night.

Those are only rules of thumb that in my opinion steals away from the game to make it more tedius...

Sue