Guild Wars 2

It’s more a feeling while playing than anything that can be defined to me. And I get no such felling here as I did in many MMOs before.

The definition of “grind” to me is repeating a task/action/activity over and over again in large, sometimes excessively large, amounts.

This does not mean that “grind” is a negative term.

Sometimes I enjoy putting on some music and grinding mobs for drops. Just get into a zone and go into autopilot. Sometimes I enjoy grinding dungeons or pvp for various rewards. Farming is also something I consider a grind, especially since I like to farm all materials I need for professions. But these are thing I enjoy doing, and enjoy about mmos.

So, yes. I said it. Sometimes I enjoy a grind. But if I no longer enjoyed a grind (such as a certain popular mmo’s daily system), I would stop playing.

Zolihan.8674:

The definition of “grind” to me is repeating a task/action/activity over and over again in large, sometimes excessively large, amounts.

This does not mean that “grind” is a negative term.

This is pretty much “the” definition (for the term used in gaming). It’s what the term was invented for. You can also google this btw, and find this on dictionnaries / wikipedia.

So I don’t really get why there is a thread debating the definition? If you have a different definition, you pretty much made it up yourself, and then why should everyone else care?

thisolderhead.5127:

Fortuna.7259:

Grind: Game play done not for its intrinsic value but rather as a means to some end.

In other words, if I play just to get something then I’m grinding.

So the road matters not, but for the destination at the end?

If you are not interested in the road, but only in the destination, then yes, travelling is a grind.
In MMO’s grind-based mechanics would be creating long roads that are not interesting in itself, and that are travelled only because of what’s on their end.

When fun becomes work

There. For me, fun is being a virtual actor in a persistent virtual world, where I have a reasonable number of activities to socialize, test myself, and evade from irl (like in a conscious dream, a book or a movie). Anything that opposes these premises generates a sense of frustration.

So, if any activity (in GW2: fighting, gathering, exploring) doesn’t make any sense for my avatar, I will most certainly start questionning why am I doing that (in stead of doing another activity or disconnecting from the game).

So, to answer the OP, we should answer these questions :

• When gathering in a persistent, coherent virtual world starts becoming grinding, and what mechanic favours this impression?
• When fighting starts becoming grinding?
• When exploring starts becoming grinding?

That said, I am well aware that whereas GW2 has tried to be nearer to a real MMORPG (not that weird sort of game we’ve got since computer games were in infancy), the usual technical limitations are prevalent. However, I think that the sense of grind (in the negative sense) can be mostly avoided by a clever and scripted design of the open world. Work still in progress ?