The endgame grind, perceived or reality?

Now looking at the situation of the endgame.

It is begining to look like it's slipping into the age old method of the gear grinding mechanic that is familiar to just above every other MMO out there besides Eve online (which has a 'skills waiting' mechanic instead).

First the Alpha slot, simple enough to unlock, a single story arc, unlike Eva or Venture, I'm not going to rail on the storyline, while I personally think the whole 'Well gone mad' storyline is a bit trite and could have been handled better, I'm frankly just as apt at being able to ignore it because of those reason.

Then the grind sets in, first you need components from various taskforces, now looking at this from a fresh faced person, just joining the game, it's not really a grind...until you get to the later ones, most of the Uncommon, Rare and Very Rare slots will require you to repeat the same taskforce atleast 3-4 times between those slots (the Musculture slot required the LGTF, Mother Ship Raid and STF/LRSF around 4 times each iirc).

However you're earning shards doing other things as well and you add spice to the weekly mixup by doing the WST.

Then you hit the two new trials. Whereas before you had the ITF, the LGTF, the STF/LRSF, Khan/Barracuda plus whatever was the WST, you're now down to just 2.

Not only are you going to have to run these two roughly six times each to unlock all four slots you've then got to run them over and over and over and over in order to unlock anything higher than the common thanks to the new 'lucky based reward' system. You could get lucky and in the runs it takes you to open all four slots, get all 4 very rares you need...or you could be like most of us and have dismal luck with such things and require pure Thread grinding to get there.

It looks like grind, the worst kind of grind but am I just percieving it that way.

Lets look at another MMOs endgame, the infamous big gorilla of the MMO world, when it started, yeah there was a set path and only 2 raids (single boss big Dragon raid and multiboss hugely massive instance raid which took serveral days even to complete it with a decent guild) but then things got added.

Nowadays you have the level capped 5 mans, heroic versions of previous instances, some of which are drastically different from their original versions and then into raiding. There are quite a few raid instances which gives people things to try our differently each week.

Currently not only do they have the big 25 man raids but they also offer the usually more challenging 10 man versions to cater to guilds both big and small.

The advantage that CoH current endgame has over the WoW endgame is speed. What it lacks in variety it makes up for in being slippery cheetah fast.

The 2 raids can be done within 20-30 minutes each, 45 minutes each tops. Compared to the 3 nights a week, 4 hours a night that WoW requires of the medium-core raiding guilds (hardcore professional guilds like Paragon are six nights a week deals).

So while we're not going to be bashing our heads against a brick wall learning the right dance for too long as you would do in WoW, which is a major bonus along with their speediness, we suffer a lack of variety and while both rely fairly heavily on grind, will the lack of it actually hamper CoH's endgame compared to that of other MMOs?

Time will tell at the moment but perhaps peoples thoughts on this wouldn't go amiss?

There are a lot more Trials coming

I think the Incarnate raid system has been designed with having more raids in mind. We know that there are two more in the works at the moment and I suspect having the four will be just about right - since successful runs will be in short supply to begin with (as noone will have the Incarnate abilities they do on Beta/Test).

Once we can run one of four different (approx 1 hr) raids I reckon we'll be set for the Common -> Rare run of the first four new Incarnate slots. I reckon we could probably do with another big raid for the Rare -> Very Rare stretch, however.

There are going to be way more than 4

When given the illusion of choice, the reality can be dismissed. Honestly, end game can't be radically different, or else it no longer is end game. Furthermore, once end game has been pushed down the slope, you can't stop at that point. End game must be perpetually afloat, which results in other areas being neglected.

It's too grindy for my taste.

I left another game I cared a great deal about when it added a similar grind. I think in large part it's that I'm doing the same content over and over for a bit of pixellated currency that doesn't actually do anything. There's no inherent value to a thread or a shard. If you gather enough of them, you can build a whatsit, and with enough whatsits you can build a whosit.

If I cared about the story, or found the content inherently fun, I wouldn't mind. However, I find the Tyrant invasion story very bland, and don't like repeating content on the same character.

So when my subscription runs out in mid May, I'll move on.

Grind is a subjective term really, i have played grindy games, this is not grind by the standards that i have come to associate with the term. compared to even getting really good ios, the endgame as currently done is not what i have come to understand as grind.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

There's really only one thing to say on the nature of "grind:" When you have to repeat content for lack of any possible alternatives, you are grinding. When you end up feeling that doing anything BUT repeating a small subsection of content, you are grinding.

The Incarnate system, from everything I've seen so far, looks to be a saving throw at adding end game without actually adding end GAME. Positron was very specific about this - Incarnates don't constitute a few Trials or a few TFs that players can play through and be "done." It constitutes a system. What he neglected to mention was that this was a system of rewards, not necessarily a system of content, and the actual content the system would come with would indeed be a handful of TFs and Trials that people would play through and be done with them, having to then grind them over and over again for the rewards.

I have nothing against rewards driving player choice in content. I do have something against rewards goading players into a repetitive grind, however.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I'm not going to decide whether Incarnate Trials are a grind just yet. Sure, "run two Trials about 50 times each" sounds like a grind, but you could also describe levelling to 50 as "run about 2000 instanced maps of 5 different kinds", which also sounds like a grind. Ask me about a month after I20 launches if I'm completely tired of the Incarnate system yet, then I'll be able to give you a fair assessment of whether it feels grindy to me or not.

Question:

If running the same content over and over before we had an end game was acceptable, why is it such a bad thing now?

Until now, the only thing we could do with our level 50 characters was run the same content repeatedly. No one seemed to have much of a problem with that, even though it was repetitive and, dare I say, grindy.

People ran a select few task forces over and over for the rewards involved and it was okay. But now that there is new content to run over and over, people are suddenly complaining about how grindy it is?

I'm sorry, but I don't see what is so different about it. We were doing the same thing over and over before, and nothing has really changed, but NOW you're complaining about it.

It doesn't make any sense to me at all.

The Whole game has always been a grind. Especially for the badgers, and some hero missions. Defeat X number of Group X. Zone 50 times to complete an Arc. Do I have to mention Shard TFs. Goto this area and defeat 50x, do mission... This is normal things in game and it is a grind.

You want merits for recipes or other rewards, you grind TFs. You want Purples, you grind by killing lvl 47+ mobs, you want Alignment Merits you grind to get and do tips. You want accolades, you grind...

So what is different about the the new Trials, really nothing just somehting else to grind.