Anti-Fun

[machomuu]

I've been playing a lot of FFXIV lately. Fun game, I'm enjoying it far more than I did during the month that I tried it a few years ago.

In this game, there's a long series of quests you can undergo to obtain a weapon called a Relic. Well, there are two of these, and it'll take several weeks and a lot of grinding to achieve. Potentially even months. Well, in regards to the second of these, Square decided to cut down on the requirements by quite a bit, causing outrage among those who'd been in the process of obtaining their relic and had already spent days or weeks going through tasks that were now made far less tedious.

The reason I bring this up is because it's an unfortunate scenario to me. The content in question is no doubt less than fun for the players involved, or at the very least it will garner an "ugh" just about every time. And this is to be expected, anti-fun mechanics are basically the cornerstone of MMOs. Oftentimes they use tedium as a segue to the fun- which makes a particular amount of sense in the case of subscription based MMOs where they need to keep the player playing to keep the player paying, it's how they stay up (albeit not always justly). But that a fanbase would scream in frustration because of all the time they wasted basically being reduced to nothing...it's an odd scenario. I'm exaggerating their reaction a bit, but what gets me is that the time was just that. Wasted. The journey wasn't all that interesting, it was the destination, and assuming they haven't even gotten there yet, well, the frustration then seems even more justified. The journey wasn't intended to be short, nor was it intended to be long. The sole motivation for it was the prize at the end. This, friends, is what we call anti-fun design.

So, what do you think about this? Do you think, even being a Subscription based MMO, such a long grind is justified? Or perhaps you have some Anti-fun design and mechanics in mind from other games? Tell us about them, it's always educational to see how designers go about these things.

 

[Arc]

This is an interesting topic. To be honest, I'm not exactly fond of the idea of grinding for months for a single weapon/set of armours either, it's certainly not conducive to good game design. But, what other options are there? RNG? I'm sure the majority people aren't keen on the idea of gambling, so why lock BiS items to the equivalent to that? Making the grind interesting in terms of variety of mechanics in dungeons and such? Sure, it might garner some fun for a bit, but after doing it every day, week, and maybe months: you'll run into the same problems as usual, it's just now a job that was cool for the first week only instead of a job that was boring on day one.

Of course, I don't believe handing everything to you on a silver platter is much better. Yes, you may be playing a subscription based MMO, but the player needs to be worked towards something. It's a tricky and delicate situation. To be honest, I was trying to think of other MMOs that subvert this idea of carrot on a stick, and the best example I could come up with was Guild Wars 2. Even then, fractal dungeons fulfill the same role; it's just that Guild Wars 2 is littered with other content to do, but that probably falls within scope in what I brought up before in the last line of my first paragraph.

For some conflicting thoughts, and one that explicitly parallels in what you said, macho. I'm also playing an MMO. Not subscription based, mind you, but still one with an intense grind. It's Dungeon Fighter Online, I've recently just finished an armour set called Gracia Heirloom. Took three and a half months, usually takes five months, but the developers have been extremely generous to offer events that reward the materials to supplement the costs. Anyways, I got my beautiful armour set and I was just in awe in how I was melting everything I touched and was enveloped in a bubble that negated damage for a short period of time. So, while, I didn't exactly enjoy the journey - and well, that journey was filled with numerous of shortcuts - the destination was extremely gratifying in some regards. Perhaps, does that make the anti-fun design justifiable in the end, as long as the result was worth it? (and as I type this, I actually need to grind for an accessory set to go from SSJ -> SSJ2 in strength, that's another three - five months of fun

spoiler: I probably won't do it either, CSII comes out next week anyways :DDDDD)

Ideally, my solution to this problem is probably seen adverse by some folks, and understandably so. Typically, all of these long grinds are also gated by a daily/weekly limit. (As a side note, I'm sure there's exceptions to this rule, I'm just not familiar with those exceptions. Would be interested to know some of them for future references though.) Just remove that limit. If someone wants to go ham in getting an item in a week rather than a month, more power to them, right? It lets you set your own pace as well. The main worries in these long grinds, is that missing a day or even week, is extremely detrimental to progress. But, if there's no limit you can make up for that loss time on another occasion. The monotony is still there and the journey is probably a pain in the ass as well, but at least you have more control over it, I guess?

 

[JJ Styles]

Oh wait.. Anti-fun. I wanted to mention League of Legends as being an epitomy of anti-fun but i had to read the thread carefully..

Well depending on how people would see it, games where you let the enemy's levels and stats scale as your character grow is sort of "anti-fun" as it kinda punishes the players who love grinding. Final Fantasy 8 is a classic example of this concept in action.

"Oh my! I love killing loads of mobs!"
"YES WE LEVELED UP!"
"Why did the mobs grow stronger!?"

 

[Midi]

I haven't played that many MMOs that I invested such a grind into, but there is one thing that comes to mind. The Jolly Holliday quest in Destiny, which rewards The Chaperone, a shotgun that rewards precision due to it firing slugs instead of pellets.

First, you need to get renown with The Last Word, an already extremely rare hand cannon. Which, at the time of the quest's release, got a pretty big Stability nerf. You earn points for killing with it, getting more with streaks, headshot kills, kill assists, and winning matches with it equipped. But what makes this extremely hard to the average player is that you LOSE points for dying. So it's completely possible that you enter a match with 25% renown, and leave with 10% or even less depending on how badly you do. Thankfully, it doesn't get as hard as this step once you're past it.

Next, you have to pretty much get a bribe ready for some people (which costs 15K Glimmer,) then get shotgun renown (this time, you don't lose points for death,) then complete a hard version of the Shield Brothers strike in which a shotgun must be used to deal the killing blow to both of the bosses of said strike, and finally wait until the next weekly reset to get the quest's reward, which I feel was worth the effort. But still, the grinding in that one was just not fun at all.

 

[Dustmop]

I've been playing a lot of FFXIV lately. Fun game, I'm enjoying it far more than I did during the month that I tried it a few years ago.

In this game, there's a long series of quests you can undergo to obtain a weapon called a Relic. Well, there are two of these, and it'll take several weeks and a lot of grinding to achieve. Potentially even months. Well, in regards to the second of these, Square decided to cut down on the requirements by quite a bit, causing outrage among those who'd been in the process of obtaining their relic and had already spent days or weeks going through tasks that were now made far less tedious.

I don't get why so many people were mad about it. That and removing the weekly cap on Midan Gears, for the 230->240 Lore weapons. I had just gotten my 5th Gear - originally, you needed 7 for the weapon so it was a 7-week grind - when they removed the weekly cap on them and cut it down from 7 Gears to 4. They had to get everyone caught up and on par for 3.4, and inevitably 4.0. I mean, it's not like this was the first time something like this has happened. lol

Ideally, my solution to this problem is probably seen adverse by some folks, and understandably so. Typically, all of these long grinds are also gated by a daily/weekly limit. (As a side note, I'm sure there's exceptions to this rule, I'm just not familiar with those exceptions. Would be interested to know some of them for future references though.) Just remove that limit. If someone wants to go ham in getting an item in a week rather than a month, more power to them, right?

/raises hand
The Relic weapon Macho's referring to, the Anima, actually doesn't have any weekly caps on it. What caps it does have are completely optional methods to obtain the pieces for it.
You can, very well, go ham on it and grind the ever-living poo out of it to your liking. You can also mix/match and use those daily/weekly things on top of dungeon grinding.

The first step is semi-gated by RNG, but they've increased the drop rate quite a bit. And even before they had, I got twice as many Crystals as I needed - so I could easily jump into the Anima with a second class - in a day.
Second step is just dungeon farming - clear out 10 specific dungeons in order with the weapon equipped. nbd. You can actually do about half of them unsynced; go into a level 50 dungeon as a level 60, maybe with a friend, and clear it in 10 mins.
Third step was half-grindy, half-crafting (or, y'know, being loaded). This was the nerfed step he was referring to. Half of the items you needed you could dungeon spam for. No RNG, just time-consuming. The other half you had to know or be a pro-omni-crafter.. or be a millionaire. Those crafted items you can now purchase from an NPC just from dungeon spamming, too! You also need half of what you did before, and they all cost a hell of a lot less! "Happy Nerf Day"
The fourth and fifth steps have optional once-weekly or daily repeatable quests.. or you can dungeon spam.

tl;dr you can just dungeon/raid spam forever.
Pretty sure the first relic was the same, but everyone tells me that one was "soul-crushing" and this one is less-so.

Although, this weapon isn't your BiS, this is your second/third best, depending on the class -- every class' best weapon is acquired from a raid, and that does have a weekly limit/RNG.
You'll either get lucky and your weapon will drop in the chest at the end, or you can clear it once a week, for 8 weeks, to just outright buy it.
(And pssst, you don't need the Anima to get into those raids, there's several other options just below it in terms of stats, and they're all faaaar easier to acquire. So it's a significantly easier grind for a better weapon, imo. Especially if you have a decent static, the Anima is no more than bragging rights. So much work, for bragging rights.)

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