Many times people are on each side of a discussion promoting what they feel is best for the game. Whether we agree or disagree I think most of us see components in the game that we would define as a “grind” or see in some way as a grind.
Some of us find that as fun while some of us find it as not fun. Based on some recent comments it appears that us explaining our subjective view of what in this game is “grindy” might help a lot in solving possible balance and system changes that might come to the game.
During my next Dev call I plan to bring up “the grind” because I think it was key to the opposing views we saw come down regarding the recent Farming changes. No matter what side of the discussion I sat on I do not like or want arguments across the player base. I want clear communication and the developers understanding fully how we experience the game they currently have and plan to bring out in the future.
So, I want to ensure that during that discussion the points of the whole community are shared so the developers can understand the context and view of all players. I want to do this because I think it is important so that in the end all feel heard especially in the area of “grind”.
Please respect what I am trying to do here for the community as a whole. This thread is not to argue each side of a persons view. It is to gather data for understanding the area in regards to the following question.
To do this it would be helpful for me if you could describe where you see the “grind”? Where is the grind from your perspective?
I’ll start with the most unpopular opinion. I don’t find this game “grindy” at all. I have played FFXI and XIV by Square Enix. This is one of SE’s least grindy investments IMO. I honestly tried to consider what I think is grindy about Boundless. I enjoy doing it all, but I am not on any set pace because, to me, that’s the point of open world MMO, I play at my pace so as not to burn out. If I had to define any aspect that felt overly repetitive, I would say hunting, but that reflects on my personality as I am not a fast twitch type.
I have to say that I fully agree with this statement.
I personally don’t feel like BL has much of a grind. Unlike other MMOs, there aren’t really any level “gates”. When you start BL, you kinda do whatever you’d like to & find ways to circumvent the things that you don’t.
I’m not saying BL needs to add grind or difficulty…just saying what I’ve experienced in numerous other MMOs.
I’d say a lot of silly phone games even have more of a grind than BL. You can’t plant a cherry tree until you reach level 15, you can’t access the fishing zone until you reach level 30…by completing requests & orders over and over.
The other big name MMOs mostly have a lot of levels that have to be reached before you can access certain content. It takes months/years to reach those levels. Even if you “grind” everyday. Meanwhile, there are a lot of smaller, entertaining things you can do/obtain/buy to keep things interesting.
In BL, a maxed player can literally toss a noob an “end-game” 3x3 AOE tool/weapon, machines, etc & that noob can pretty much use it. I can’t think of any other game I’ve played where that can happen.
So, one day I feel a certain activity is grindy, and another day it feels good and enjoyable.
One day making bricks makes me annoyed by all the steps required, the next day I think it’s easy.
Etc.
for me gind is the slow progression of something for the sole reason to pad playtime for instance leveling
i find boundless is the slowest game to level in unless you play certain aspect’s like hunting or crafting. my main was a builder and was around level 40 all he did for the most part was place blocks down my miner was mid 30’s and that was with craft table boosting i make a crafter and within 2 weeks he is level 30+ my hunter was 45 and all he did was hunt.
I agree that grind is a state of mind. There are moments in my 1k hours that I’ve had to learn some difficult lessons about efficiency for doing stuff, but there isn’t really a grind to the game. You just make up your mind to do something, and you do it
In my mind there is not really a lot of grind (repetitive tasks that are boring to do) that HAS to be done for all the neccesary things EVERY player needs. I had most content explored to my taste and aquired all machines after about 4 months without feeling bored by or forced to do certain tasks. Certainly Boundless requires different levels of grind for the not so neccesary things, the prestige things, the economy things. If you want to compete with the top players you pretty much have to grind every day for hours. getting materials/crafting products/maintaining your shop/ expanding your settlement. AND i think its absolutely fair that a player that puts in the manhours, gets to be a known name, even if many casual players complain that they have no real chance to compete as they have simply not the time for it. The competition is super grindy but also super optional, you can play the game very relaxed with few hours and get all you need without ithat.
Grind is doing mindless tasks over and over for no apparent reason. Usually these are tasks that could be easily automated and don’t really require any thought.
Go gather 1,000 Adrenal Glands for example.
There is no specific purpose for this task other than an NPC has requested it (this is just an example not something that actually exists in boundless).
A much more appropriate approach would be to make the task more difficult and require thought and planning, but maybe only require one or two adrenal glands for the same reward which is difficult and challenging and may take multiple attempts to figure out the correct approach, but is not a mindless task that requires killing a thousand defenseless bunnies (or roadrunner in this case).
That is a prime example of a pointless grind.
In boundless there are only a few areas I can think of right off hand that are particularly grindy feeling.
Creating Coils for your machines.
Harvesting Emeralds and Amethyst
Repairing Machines (with coils)
Coils just require a mass amount of resources and are really required to enjoy the crafting aspect of the game. However, the payoff makes the grind worth doing. Certainly this mechanic could be improved but as far as grinds go this isn’t particularly horrible since the payoff makes it worthwhile.
Emeralds are just so painful to farm that I simply don’t bother anymore. I can go down and spend hours farming for emeralds only to end up with 30-40 in the end due to the insane amounts of lava to try and work around and no really good farming spots. Its actually easier to farm on planets with significantly lower emerald drop rates just because they have less lava making them a horrible gem to farm and one that many people simply don’t bother with anymore due to the horrible grind to get them. I’m all for making things challenging and difficult, but if we’re going to do that then the crafting recipes need to also reflect that. If you want to leave emeralds the way they are I would recommend adjusting the crafting recipes to significantly reduce the amount of emeralds/amethyst required in order to properly represent the difficulty in obtaining them over other gems. Alternately you could make the payoff better making them at least worth the pain to gather by improving the quality of the items made using emeralds (this creates a different balance issue though so probably not the best approach).
Repairing each individual coil really bothers me and really limits many of the build options since you MUST have access to every single coil in order to repair it. I would recommend linking all of the coils to the primary machine they are tied to similar to what you do with the spark generators. Repair the primary machine and it repairs all linked coils (increasing the overall hitpoints of the machine similar to what is done with spark generators is perfectly acceptable).
AoE spanners pretty please.
As for gems I agree there is no point in having such disparity between them in terms of their accessibility while keeping all gem crafting recipes the same.
At this time Exo worlds are a royal „grind“ for me, T7 worlds, or any Exo world that contains something that I want, are quite rare, so in a strange way, waiting for a T7 is a „Grind“.
Then when it spawns, ready or not, in most cases i am not ready mentally, It is off to the races to try mine out as much as I can get before other players ruin the underground „landscape“. This feels like a grind because I have to do something that, at the time I do not feel like doing if I want to get any amount of success from it. I typically do not like to mine for more then 2 hours per sitting, on a T7 I feel pressured to go pass that mark to get the most out of it.
Burn out tends to follow shortly afterwords.
I understand they want this ore to be rare, but I feel there may be better ways of doing so.
And I feel it would help reduce the burnout feeling a little bit and maybe the feeling of it being a grind a tad bit, if the ore we are „fighting“ over was actually used to make more exciting things and not just the same old tools we already have and some coils that most people can not even make at this time due to the fact one world type won’t spawn or is being purposefully withheld.
I find that the grind is no problem when you can see upgrades and improvement coming like finally being able to craft decent forged items or filling out a new skill page. Everything tends to feel grindy once you’ve reached the developmental ceiling. The only thing that really curbs that feeling for me is the prospect of new items or new possibilities. This is the main reason why I would press for updates that add more possibilities, like movement systems, rather than new block types or props. Static objects are great, don’t get me wrong, but the novelty wears off quick. So it kind of becomes grindy just to get all the right items to make the new things. I’d rather have a bunch of things that can work together, even if those things were hard to make.
My son and I were just talking about the “Grind” in games and we had such different opinions…
He says grindy games are viewed badly in the gaming world, along with P2W games and loot boxes. I agree with both of those points (Neverwinter vet), I disagree with the grind issue. Here’s why…
I love the grind. I love that my in game success is based on my effort and hard work. Yes, I have an awesome base… I spent time designing, building, and gathering to make it. I have a few great shops, and I work hard to make them what they are. It’s a grind… and yes, a casual player would likely not achieve the same degree of success, but why should that stop me?
Games like Fortnite ( no offense to FN lovers) are instant gratification… personally, I get super bored with games like that. I prefer having a list of things to do… when I see people complain about not enough content in Boundless, I giggle because I have so much to do, my husband could go out of town for a week and I would barely crack the surface.
Now, if the grind was even harder than it is, I would find it too much. for example… I make brews and the mega on a fully powered mixer takes just under 2 hrs. Today I made a ton of potions. If I only had one set (casual player), that two hours multiplied by 10 would be a bit frustrating. But for me, I had them done in a fraction of time spread out over multiple machines. That being said, if the crafting time was lessened, I’d be leap years ahead of a casual player…
It’s a fine balance and I think the devs are doing a great job at managing it.
I consider grind things " I HAVE to do" that I dont enjoy and arent really mentally challenging or fulfilling, Like Fuel beacons,fuel portals,farm n stock shop stands, farm xp for cubits to buy plots, Load and wait long times for crafts.
heres my game time typically. I log on I check shop stands and collect money, check my stock to make sure I got enough to refill stands if not I gotta go farm something after I check all my crafters collect their nightly xp put them back to work crafting pop a teaching pie see them later.Sort all the stuff I crafted and put them in the warehouse. Make sure I got no low beacons,make sure I got no low fueled portals, If I do I travel everywhere they may be to fill them, I check my city for inactive players to see where their beacons are, If theyre out I plot and loot them sort and put the loot away.After all thats good I farm whatever I need for my shops or my next build. All this takes about 3 to sometimes 6 hours. I pray for days that no one buys from my shops so I have free time to relax and just do the fun things like build or explore new exos or just look at builds randomly. I know though if my shops arent always up to par then folks will assume im not around and I will lose business. So yeah it gets monotonous and grindy at times. Sometimes I just up my prices at my shops just to take a build break.lol
If youre gonna talk to the Devs A big question I have is why they seem to take some game mechanics folks get used to and like and replace them with something unbalanced admittedly forcing players to play another way? I have been gaming since MMOs were around and the sure way to kill a games is remove game mechanics people like and build around for ones they find take longer and have a difficult learning curve.It never ceases to amaze me that because you have a new mechanic it doesnt mean you have to remove the old one immediately. Let folks ease into the new mechanic then when theyve adjusted to the learning curve then maybe remove it. People tend to panic when you talk REMOVAL of anything in a game mechanic. Like I really didnt mind they took the xp hit on stones but I did think it was ridiculous stones couldnt have been switched to instant like wood to timber. To me it just doesnt make sense I mean since xp was cut in half why not have shorter craft time?
For me the grind tends to change based on perception.
At the start I enjoyed doing everything because it was all fresh and exciting.
Now grinding for me personally is literally any activity that isn’t building or designing (which for me are the best aspects of the game)
I’m thankful though that I’ve progressed to the point where I don’t really need to grind anymore. While i’m slightly annoyed that a certain activities (farming earthyams and starberrys) will become more difficult, on the other end of the scale I don’t really care given I’l still be able to buy them just as much.
Maybe gem prices might even rise if the cost of mining rises (if persisting pies cost more)
It depends how you define the word grind I guess, I would say certain aspects can be grindy in boundless but would not say that it’s a bad thing. I too love having a seemingly endless list of things to do and tasks I set myself in order to get there. And if I’m feeling lazy (often!) I will go shopping and buy what I need, rewarding others for their ‘grind’
I think everyone enjoys that feeling of progression in a game. But when the progression is tied to some menial task which has no relation to skill or ability, and is only subject to the amount of time spent in game, then it has no real inherent value. This is why people generally hate grinding, it doesn’t provide any sort of feeling of accomplishment, congratulations, you have spent hours killing defenseless bunnies, don’t you feel powerful now! No, people want a challenge, something that is difficult to overcome, but rewarding once done.
Boosting an NPC’s health and damage IS NOT a new experience. This does not make for a worthy boss fight, this does not provide meaning or challenge. This is the laziest way to develop games and it shows because people don’t play games for long where all of the challenge is provided by simply increasing HP and Attack.
Lets consider Halo (the original) when it first released. What made that game exciting to so many players?
New mechanics, this was one of the first games that introduced self regenerating shields. It got rid of the standard “grindy” healing mechanics that existed in pretty much all other similar games. Instead you are constantly fighting, being able to get out of the fight long enough to regenerate your shield was part of the challenge, and it rewarded you with the ability to continue fighting almost nonstop as long as you could manage to not get hit long enough for your shield to regenerate.
Actual AI (artificial intelligence). Increasing the difficulty levels in Halo didn’t just add more HP and Attack to mobs. It resulted in newer more challenging mobs. It changed NPC behaviors. One of the things I remember most about halo was the little grunts and how they reacted when you landed a sticky grenade on them. On Easy difficulty they would panic and run back to their own teammates and end up wiping out the entire group. As you increased the difficulty the AI would get smarter, on legendary instead of running into their own group and doing damage to the other nearby NPC’s, the grunt would now charge you instead hoping to also kill you with the same grenade. On top of that the other AI units would dive out of the way when you tossed grenades. This is the type of behavior that makes game interesting and fun to play is when the AI is intelligent enough to actually do intelligent things that makes them more challenging and difficult to beat. The hard part is finding that correct balance, as no one likes it when the NPC’s clearly cheat either. If an NPC ALWAYS knows where you are for example, even when on the other side of a wall, and never ever misses a shot, that’s not very realistic and isn’t very fun. The NPC’s should be intelligent and smart, but they shouldn’t cheat.
Make the characters “do” things. A common example of this is when an NPC isn’t being used and is simply standing still many developers will actually program in little quirks that they will do and rotate through. Its stupid and simple, but always enjoyable. This can be simple things like in shooters where the NPC’s start fiddling with their guns and flipping them around while waiting. This can be audio snippets where the NPC’s start talking back or complaining, etc… This can be something simple like in Warcraft III where clicking multiple times on the NPC’s caused some sort of action like the sheep exploding or the characters spouting off little sayings that were funny and entertaining. The wizard for example saying “you ever been struck by lighting where the sun don’t shine”, surprising, entertaining, funny, and completely enjoyable. Perhaps not the right saying for Boundless, but you get the point. Even the little grunts would respond with “Zug Zug” when you clicked on them enough, or some would get fed up and tell you to stop touching them, etc…
All of these little things help break up the grind, make the games more fun and enjoyable, just to see what happens next. It saddens me that the gaming industry has gotten away from doing such fun and enjoyable things. This used to be one of the many things that set Blizzard games apart from many of the others were all of these little completely pointless but funny and enjoyable things in the game. They give the game depth and character beyond just what is seen in the actual gameplay. Developers did things because they enjoyed them and they were fun and funny. It wasn’t just about loot boxes and trying to suck every single dollar out of the players bank account, it was about actually making a fun and enjoyable game that people wanted to spend time playing. And because people wanted to spend time playing it, they also wanted to spend money playing.
Anyways, sorry about getting side tracked, I could spend all day talking about the changes in the gaming industry and why many of the games today just aren’t anywhere near as enjoyable as many of the older games despite the significantly better technology available in today’s games. Looping back to my original point… Grinding with no real purpose and no reward doesn’t make for fun gameplay. It doesn’t make us want to come back to the game day after day to log in and do some repetitive task every day just so we can level up enough to do more repetitive tasks, with no real payoff and no real reward. People should be playing the game because they actually enjoy the act of playing the game. Not because they have to treat it like a second job just to progress in the game. Make playing the game about the Journey, not about the destination. If you can figure out how to do that, your company will be set forever. Technology is nice, graphics are nice, but the actual gameplay is king. If a game is fun, engaging, exciting, then you will want to play it, and if it is all of those things you won’t have to try and trick your players into spending money on the game, they will line up and beg you to take their money for non-gameplay related goods (custumes, pets, storage, etc…). They will do this because it will add to their enjoyment in playing your game, not because you tricked them into spending money on them using addiction based principles like loot boxes (yes I’m talking to you EA). And miraculously they will not only do this willingly, but they will thank you for the opportunity to support you in making a game that they truly enjoy playing and they will be happy to have helped contribute to such a great game.
Agreed…i consider repairing machines the one true grind in this game …such a pain in the behind!
Gathering cool coloured blocks from exo worlds can seem a little grindy, with the time limit and all but honestly nothing in boundless seems truly like a grind, to me.
Wow and BDO, amongst others, were and are, respectively, true grinds…having to complete boring multiple tasks again and again to reach an end goal. Never again
The grind just to make marble. Yes I consider the amount of time it takes to process everything a grind. It’s highly annoying waiting for everything. Only major thing I dislike is the crazy crafting times on some things. It’s why majority of the marble I’ve used was bought and why I never got into cooking.
But seriously 20 steps(probably slight exaggeration) and thousands of mats(essence) just to make what 250 blocks if you mass craft everything. Plus the hours it takes to collect and craft it all.
…such a pain in the behind!