Quest Grinding, You Are in Denial
I want to revisit a favorite issue of mine. New Grind, Just like the Old Grind: Quest Heavy Advancement.
When people read that article, they often get the wrong idea. I don’t hate quests (or missions). I don’t think a 100% mob grinding game is the way to go. What I hate is when a game simply replaces mob grinding with quest grinding and actually thinks it did something noteworthy or worthwhile.
Replacing one mindless grind with another ultimately solves and accomplishes nothing. You will simply piss off and alienate a different set of people. You will still alienate everyone – just at different rates and to different degrees.
Champions Online, a game I generally like, is a full on quest grinder. Mob xp is almost worthless. This simple design mistake creates a cascade of problems that many of you are probably already predicting: what happens if you run out of missions? And yes, right now, that CAN happen in CO.
The key, in my view, is to provide multiple, alternate paths to character advancement and development. When someone wants to grind mobs, they can. When someone wants to do quests, they can. When someone wants to defend or assault bases (Tabula Rasa had a brilliant implementation of this), they can. When someone wants to PvP, they can. The holy grail is to create these different ways to advance and develop a character and make them available to people at all times (or nearly all times). The sooner we realize that as developers, the better.
As always, I look forward to your thoughts on the matter.
Perfect balance is impossible. Approximate balance is all you really need to attain.
If quest and mob grinding give about the same xp/hour, then you are fine. The same goes for different classes. Further, its ok if some classes are better at solo grinding xp, as long as the ones who are not good at it have strengths in other important areas.