Keeping players busy and subscribed without grinds

Community General Discussion
21

If the game is enjoyable, players will remain subscribed. And time spent in game does not equate to greater enjoyment.

If there are less chore-like, work-like, unenjoyable grinds in game, then I would accomplish more enjoyable things in less game time played.
What would I do with all my new found free time? I would still play some kind of game. Maybe Overwatch, Call of Duty, or another Acti/Blizz game I don’t buy or spend money on today because I’ve got no time for that.

Blizzard could have gotten more money from players like me. Instead they focused on trying to keep me playing 1 game.

Eventually the grind is going to make people burn out and probably unsubscribe. And not only did Blizz lose the opportunity to rope me into other titles, they’ll lose their wow revenue too.

7 Likes
22

A true mass wvwvw, 24 hour never ending, queueable pvp siege zone with: keeps, castles, catapults, ballista, npc troops, destructible gates, and capture points.

It’s in gw2 and Eso and plenty of people play that game type alone. Why wow has never made a true foray into it is beyond me (Ashran and Wintergrasp are milktoast versions so dont bring them up if you haven’t played them in other games).

2 Likes
23

You see, the end game is a very…dangerous thing to the mmo games…

The "endgame’ is the location where players will find the last line of the quests and the company “blizzard” needs to be creative to what playes will do after that, because they want players to be online and have things to do.

Ok, we all know that…

But let me give one small example of how i think the endgame should be - ragnarok online.

They put three systems that in the endgame will keep players busy.

First - WoE.
War of empire is a GvGvG thing…it was amazing in the time that the game is very alive and keep players doing the same thing because is enjoyable…
There is some castles with one or two entries and some rooms, that leads to the empire run, the center of the castle with have a yellow stone thing that have a “life” and if a clan breake it, the other clans leaves automatically the castle and the clan who breake it keeps the castle , the banner change and 30 seconds later other clans can invade again.

Why was this so good ?

Because it’s a good pvp. It’s the same idea of “get the enemy flag” but with a stone with life instead. And, because the players need some preparation for this “wars”.

The second system was the card systems - all pve enemies of the game have a small, minimum chance to drop a card that give some atribute like, more crit, more dex, more agi, chance to do something…imagine all monsters in wow having a gem with a unique atribute…so, that’s it - and the players farm those enemies just to drop the cards and make builds…and just for two things : WoE and fight bosses…

The third system was the class specific needs - there is some classes that needs materials to fight. Like assaassins, they needs to make a thing called deadly poison to use it, that will give a one minute bonus to their demage and will boost some atacks. This changes the class and make them very…powerfull with some atacks.
They need to farm four or five itens to create one deadly poison…and the WoE is about one or two hours depending to the server…
There is some farm to priest with gems, creators with acid…so the game have this system to make players “busy” before the WoE.

And, if you can count on this - they have the refine system, every player want to go to the WoE with a +10 item with the best card equiped (every equipment have one slot for cards) and the dificult to make a +10 item is high.

So in the week players are busy getting items to woe or farming cards, farming more items to refine, fighting bosses to try to drop the boss card (very rare) - just to go to a WoE , try to keep a castle that have an economy - if the castle is invaded and they breake the empire (the stone that i said before) - the castle lose points of economy , so the castle will give less drops after the WoE …so the clan need to hold it with allied clans helping out.

In the end, they keep player busy because of the rotation systems in some classes that need to farm items - the refine system - the card system - just to go to a war more prepare to do a better job. And the WoE was really, reaaaaally fun to play…a castle with a clan banner ? that was awesome…there is a icon of the clan before the player name, this shows what clan the player are in, and if your clan gets a castle and keeps it, you feel good to walk around the cities with the icon of your clan in your name. It’s easy to find enemies and allied clans, this makes clans easily recognized and that makes some cool historys…

So players loved WoE back in the time…and the ragnaroks endgame was a blast.

There is a lot of things to do in the endgame of ragnarok, like some quests to make unique items (like excalibus) and that was hard. And you can refine the excalibur, and if it breake you need to make another…so it was hard…There is some special bosses , endless towers, the normal PVP that was really good…

Ofcourse, the game have some issues in balance, there is not perfect game…but, i think ragnarok have better endgame than wow.

what wow have to give to us in the end game ?

World quests ? grind reputation for what ? pvp ? grind essences for the neck - a neck that haven’t any animation we can’t see this neck item on our neck…it’s very different from the legendary weapons…

That’s bad. That’s really bad blizzard…you are losing for a old 2d-3d game …

For a long time, a lot, a LOT of posts are asking for a better job on the endgame…put a GvG thing in it, make a garrison to the clans, make some invasion system from other clans…make rewards to hold it , make systems inside it, make dungeon and raid systems, archievs…make specifc dungeons only for the garrison, then the player in the clan can farm, or level up…make , idk, 100 spots for garrisons around azeroth, every one with a speciall dungeon - and the clans can change the garrison location if they want, losing the progression, just to go to another dungeon that they find better to have or just to have another location for the clan “house”…
And show the clan icon on the names…that will make clans more important, and in the end game with garrisons for clans and wars inside it, the players will have a new meta to do in weekends - and you will stop the focus only in the raids (pvE based).

If you make a garrison for the clans, a war in some hour of the day in the weekend, if you put some archievs to change the garrison looks or unlock features, if you put 100 spots for locations to the garrison on all azeroth, if you put a speciall dungeon inside those garrisons and make it unique, with items for quests or some ideas inside this dungeons, special monsters that will appear if the garrison have an amount of points (that garrison lose if they got invaded and the invaders steal it) , if you do it right…then that is one more COOL thing to do in the end game.

So you can do it, do a better item system with refinement to +10 - the item can breake in higher refiniments (above +4 for example) and that’s make sense to the same items that drops in the dungeons that we already have…this put some “sense” in why players do the same dungeon over and over…it’s just because they want the same item to refine it. AND you can stop the random atributes on it.

In the end, you put grind in another location that are cool and will not give to the player the sensation of “i’m doing the same thing and getting random items that i will not use and why m’i doing that…i’m going to play pubg or fortinite…”

24

Not all grinds are bad. It depends on if the grind makes me feel like I am progressing with something, or if it feels like I am banging my head against a wall pointlessly.

Here’s what I might implement.

  1. I would make Professions matter, by making each one have a couple BiS items for specific classes. For example, Leatherworking might be the source of the BiS Helm and Gloves for a Druid. While BiS chest and legs come from mythic X raid boss. In addition, making those profession items will require collecting X, Y and Z materials from Mythics dungeons, PvP, Heroic Raids, Pet Battles, Mission Tables, etc, so there are multiple paths to farming.

  2. I would add server-wide projects. Collect X item, then go to a summoning circle or giant egg or something, and deliver those resources kind of like helping to build the mage tower. When it reaches 100%, roughly once a week maybe, the summoning portal/egg/statue/etc becomes a thing you can click to summon a world raid boss for 24 hours. You can form a 10-20 man scaled raid group to take this on and it has a chance to drop mounts/gear/profession recipes/pets/etc.

  3. I’d have a Mage Tower like thing in each expansion that offers different rewards. Transmog items, pets, mounts, for each class/spec. It only last the expansion, and like the Mage Tower requires a server wide resource to build it and is up roughly once a week for 48 hours or so.

  4. I would focus a lot more energy into making really interesting quest chains and stories. WoW could learn from a lot of other MMOs who do this significantly better. Trying to make it take a bit longer to progress through each zone and experience the story by adding more content, including more group quests. Suramar is an example of when Blizz has done it well, but still not perfect. Someday I want a zone that doesn’t have a single “go here and kill X things” quest, but instead has only story driven progressive quests.

  5. I would add things like Kirin Tor, Cenarian Circle, Earthen Ring quest hubs that would have expansion long quest chains that send you all over Azeroth following a story. This could even be time gated or another server-wide project that once we hit a certain level of resources or something our server unlocks the next chapter of their quests. Anything that gets us out and visiting the rest of the world and not just stick in a single expansion zone is kind of nice to me.

  6. Bring back the Argent Tournament in a new form with new rewards and new games. Maybe make it a seasonal thing, or something like the Darkmoon Faire.

  7. Add player housing. I know its a topic people argue over, but with housing comes a lot of new but not bad grinds. All professions could get new recipes and skills for making furniture and decorations, which results in more farming of materials and recipes that can be found in tons of different content.

The key to a Good Grind is making it something a player wants to do, but doesn’t feel they HAVE to do. If Mythic Raiding is the thing I want to do, then let me invest my time into that grind as much as I want. Don’t time gate me, or make me do other stuff I don’t want to do, or lock it behind different grinds like reputation. If I rush through the content and then have nothing to do, that’s my problem. I can find other stuff to do, or I can juggle 2-3 MMOs as I see fit.

6 Likes
25

And even if there were other ways to achieve the metrics, repeatable grinds are by far the easiest way. WoW has entered the era of reskinnable systems that they can rename and slap some new art assets onto, rather than the golden age of making compelling content.

3 Likes
26

I’d be on board for pretty much all of that, sounds like a pretty compelling game even if you’re the type who never sets foot into M+ or raids.

27

I disagree wholeheartedly. World quests make it less repetitive because of the variation that come come up randomly 2-3 times throughout the day cycling every 8 hours or so.

A combination of daily quests and world quests is the best choice ala Nazjatar.

4 Likes
28

MOP did this magnificently. After, they got rid of the endless reputation grinds, there was a ton of stuff to keep you busy: Challenge Mode dungeons, scenarios, exploration, archaeology (hey, pristine artifacts were fun to chase after), Isle of Thunder, Timeless Isle, etc. It wasn’t all about power, but just getting fun cosmetic rewards.

6 Likes
29

And then WoD arrived with fill bar world content. :frowning:

5 Likes
30

The highest difficulty you have cleared is LFR. You don’t need to put in ANY work to clear LFR on alts. Is this a joke or is there something I’m missing?

31

I usually Heroic raid and aim for AotC, I tried Mythic raiding very early on as well but dropped due to Guild drama.

I got disillusioned with BFA and skipped every raid tier so far only coming back for this one to complete the Vulpera unlock requirements and even then I’ve spent all of my time on stockpiling gold and farming Taeshalach and have no had no desire to raid the Eternal Palace since I knew 8,3 was around the bend.

32

Are you saying you were overwhelmed at the amount you needed to progress your character the first time through content?

33

Raiders don’t need grind to keep busy and continuously subscribed, and they’re the ones that grinds impact the most.

Too much grind just leads to burnout and raiders unsubscribing.

1 Like
34

Unmotivated players don’t want to do content that doesn’t move them, dude.

1 Like
35

No. BFA sucks and I hate it. Vulpera is the only reason I came back.

I do plan on achieving AotC on my new Vulpera alt and earning the mount that comes with it.

36

I wanted to get some apexis crystals the other day, breezed through the old quests, having a blast. No grind at all.
Today I did them cause I felt like I should or the mount will take longer…such a grind!!

Either way it kept me busy and thinking…if they did more than like four variations of the WQ or gave them all a daily intertwined storyline, something that changes based on choices, role, ilvl. Something more dynamic as opposed to revolving static quests. My humble opinion and thoughts.

37

Thinking about it, the grinds have always been in wow. I started in wrath and no rep was really mandatory until mop.

I think the issue is blizz is forcing grinds with things like pathfinder and essences so people feel forced to burn themselves out on boring content rather than doing things when they want.

I dont think this example is quite the same but it still works. When I play dark souls, I completely ignore resistances. I do so because I don’t really like min maxing that kind of stat. But I can still beat the game while ignoring a pretty impactful part of combat. I can change how I fight as needed to make up for my choice of ignoring resistances. Basically, a game with complexity can be fun but not nearly as fun if everything is required.

1 Like
38

Yes more meaningless cosmetics for non gamers to chase after will fix the game for sure

1 Like
39

That’s a fair opinion to have. Nazjatar isn’t the best example to use, though. It’s honestly one of my least favorite zones in the entire game. Mechagon is slightly better.

40

How do people feel about Quel’danas dailies? I never got burnt out on those like I did the other TBC and WotLK dailies.