I've been reading the various threads regarding grinding in VO (as well as other games) and wanted to add my thoughts.

Many people talk about "getting rid of the grind" or changing the perception of grinding...

I wonder why? It seems to me to be simply catering to the "I want it NOW, Daddy!" attitude.

I'm not saying everything works fine as it is, but a reward is meaningless if there is no effort required to attain it. My partner has been playing Skyrim for ages, simply to get 100% achievments. These achievments grant nothing at all in terms of gameplay, but because of the effort involved to achieve them, have value and meaning anyway. If you take away the effort required, the reward becomes meaningless. Therefore, the grind itself has value. However, the grind does need to match the reward.

For instance, I lost a hell of a lot of UIT standing a while ago when I foolishly boomed YT in a monitored sector, and resented the grind to recover it. I think this is because I felt I'd properly earned that standing, and was tricked out of it. No ill-feeling toward YT (I knew the system, and should have been more on the ball), but I do wonder why one silly act, and suddenly UIT hated me, despite all the "good work" I'd done for them in the past, as well as the fact that YT had been the aggressor, but I copped the standing hit. This is one instance where the grind shouldn't be there. To be honest, the whole pvp/faction standing hit thing is terribly unbalanced, given death is pretty harmless anyway. Why does UIT care THAT much if a PoS or Admired player was teleported back to their home station sans ship and cargo?

Anyway, my point here is that the grind itself is important, and shouldn't be done away with. If it can be hidden, great, but so long as it fits the reward, it has value in and of itself.

Faille.

There is little effort involved in shooting thousands of bots, because after a few dozen kills it begins to feel monotonous, tedious, boring, etc. Grinding describes a tedious supplement for a challenging activity that requires effort and is rewarded. This also applies to faction standing and trading, for the most part. Same thing, over and over and over again; it is neither fun nor interesting. If botting and trading were more dynamic in the very early stage of the game (pre-combat 3), the "grind" feeling would go away.

Fairy Nuff, I may have been defining "grinding" more broadly than most. I was just adding my thoughts on what I saw as the "I want it now, Daddy" attitude that seems to be emerging, rather than the specifics of the effort required for any given reward. Like I said, there are certainly some aspects that could use improvement, but thats always going to be the case.

When most people ask for less grind, what they actually want (but haven't put into words because they probably don't understand what they actually want) is more interesting content, instead of a reduction of what little content exists.

Unfortunately, it's generally accepted that most people who make game suggestions (for any game) don't understand what they need changed for them enjoy the game, which is why "design-by-player-suggestion" nearly always turns out badly if the suggestions aren't in line with the developers' own original visions, or aren't carefully distilled, improved, and iterated upon by the developers.

"Reduce the grind!" is a terrible design suggestion; "make levelling and bot interaction more interesting" is a bit better.

The only real way to reduce the grind without destroying its value to the players the do need it is to add a short cut for experioanced players. In the case of bots one needs a "killer" bot that gives massive xp and sets the needed flags when it dies from single combat as well as providing a hefty starting bankroll ie only the bot and the player in the sector during the entire encounter or disallowiing the big reward if two or more player shoot the bot.
A mission like the trident defense one would also be a good example of such a shortcut - completion of the mission would act as proof of a players skill and checking for cheating isnt that hard. The devs could also implement a test sector uotside the normal play area where only the player taking the mission could enter...

Just a thought.

I agree with the OP. For me, VO feels like it has just about the right amount of grinding without tying overpowered benefits to achievements, or relegating content to a level that has to be reached before the game can be enjoyed.

I disagree with adding shortcuts, because this tends to devalue/overshadow content that is already in place. This is one of the things I've been very careful about when designing new missions, particularly at the introductory level (e.g. Intermediate Combat Practice will increase experience at the same rate as Beginner Combat Practice at maximum bonus, or Advanced Combat Practice killing TyCorps, but not at the same schedule). Any potential excesses should be measured by trade-offs.

Even in dev-implemented missions that give comparatively massive credit bonuses (the courier missions), after the first mission the experience bonuses are slim.

Doing something repetitively doesn't have to be boring, especially when a "red herring" is thrown in every once in a while. A bungie exec once said Halo's gameplay could basically be condensed into "30 seconds of fun".[1] Sometimes the journey is the reward.

None of this is obscure knowledge - people have known it for a long time. The best way I can sum it up would be to say doing the same thing over and over might garner some funny looks now and then, but then doing that thing once when it really counts changes everything. I'm not sure how well this applies to a video game, but you get the idea.

Another way of looking at it would be creating conditions conducive to generating a state of flow.

My position is that Licenses should be abolished, not necessarily grind. I know that the OP doesn't necessarily specifically relate to my other post on the thread which shouldn't be interpreted as anti-grind or anti-achievement. But I think that licenses are the wrong type of grind, I think associated faction grind should be expanded and diversified - bulk procs are too easy.

TRS said:
the OP doesn't necessarily specifically relate to my other post on the thread

This wasn't intended to reference any other threads. Come to think of it, this isn't actually a suggestion either, just some random musings, and I should have posted it in General... my bad.

Faille.