So, how do you deal with it when you become disillusioned? (ESSAY INBOUND)

(Not for faint of attention span)
Just quit? I ask this because I wanted to like this game (a lot, as you can see by my hours invested).

I got this game with the Humble Bundle for a little over 6 bucks. I never had any huge reason to invest time into it. But yet I pumped in quite a bit (somewhere around 200-240 hours, not counting the multiple times when I was afk but had the game open, I believe), I quickly rose up by both letting other people help me, and helping other people (within just a few days I had good myths). I was having fun... kinda. I did screw around quite a bit, but I got some good trans sets... I got a ball rolling and was like, "Yeah if I keep going I'll probably get enough stuff to be able to beat everything." That's when I stopped and asked myself about what that statement meant... but I delayed the conclusion until later.

Then, I had a frustrating KG survival session where I got eliminated at only wave 21 simply because my DPS died to web + goblin copter rockets, so I couldn't repair. Obviously I realized I needed better DPS gear (after cussing quite a bit for about 5 minutes), if I wanted to use my DPS instead of just repairing on a summoner. And then since my state of mind was proper at the time anyway, for once I stopped and reevaluated what I was doing in the game for the past few weeks. That evaluation came down to a three things: gear grinding, level grinding (to a lesser extent), and helping out some people while screwing around.

The first two have grinding in them, and that is quite annoying; the third one is the most fun I actually have. It doesn't matter how much I want to set up a good build for x level, I always have to factor in that I need y gear to do it anyway (whether this is playing with other people, or not). Constantly having to make that evaluation before trying anything is quite frustrating, because then everything I wish to do becomes a time invested vs rewards obtained analysis, as is the case with all of these types. Obviously this analysis comes down to "use someone else's build because coming up with your own will make this take even longer." Then it makes me wonder what the heck I'm actually doing in the game.

The reason I would ask this here and not on other places is that most people that play MMORPGs are well used to this type of thing and they treat as if it were their second job, whereas I believe the people that play this game (the people on these forums) might be a bit brighter, and would realize what an artificial extension of playtime the endgame is. Most people on other MMORPGs simply accept it and call everyone that wants to understand why it is what it is... some not very nice things. I'm already working a job so I can have fun at home. I usually quit games when I get tired of that grind (which usually comes quickly, if I don't notice good, steady progress that allows me to have more fun at regular intervals). Why am I working a second one so I can have fun in that world so much later later?


And I notice that not everyone quits. Many just keep going and going and going. I know many of you acknowledge that this game's "end game" is just one huge grind (someone practically says that in one of their FAQs, and encourages thorough enjoyment of the base game before NM), but how do you deal with it? Just ignore the fact that it is what it is, and just keep going? Or do you enjoy repetitively running levels over and over to get certain rewards?

[QUOTE]And I notice that not everyone quits. Many just keep going and going and going. I know many of you acknowledge that this game's "end game" is just one huge grind (someone practically says that in one of their FAQs, and encourages thorough enjoyment of the base game before NM), but how do you deal with it? Just ignore the fact that it is what it is, and just keep going? Or do you enjoy repetitively running levels over and over to get certain rewards?[/QUOTE]

When you get to a certain point you don't really need anything else in my opinion... Some people like to collect stuff usually on maps that they enjoy doing and repeat that over and over. I personally like to go around pubs meeting new people and helping. Or create some random games and play with lower levels/lower gear. Or join steam friends and goof around... The thing is, if there isn't anything in the game that still gives you fun, maybe it's time to take a break... If there's anything that you still want to do and enjoy doing, do it! :D (For some weird reason, I love running The Summit)

As someone who has dumped several hundred hours into various disgaea games, grind is not really something bad for me. Grind is Progression and when Progression hits a milestone, you get a feeling of accomplishment.
That is how I see it. That's also the reason I'm still trying to farm perfect skeletons. ( so.. many.. with speed stat... )

Sometimes I'll use other people's builds, but I like doing things a little differently as my characters/build/style are different than some. I find it is really enjoyable when you finally beat a map using your own way, rather than following a cookie cutter.

Now, some things can't change, but there is a lot of room for improvision.

Even before I "quit" the first time, I was using hybrid classes while almost NO ONE suggested that route. I was one of the first few players to beat MistyMire Queen Solo Nightmare near initial release time (although this was when only spiders were around, but they were quite a problem back then) when almost everyone else carried/used laundered gear/teamed up.

Call it what you will, it gave me a nice sense of accomplishment.

If you follow precisely what someone else does step-by-step, it seems really mechanical. If you are into that sort of thing, sure. I do find other player guides are great as an outline, and then you can improvise based on what your characters can do and their limits. Learning this is part of the game, alongside learning a maps' nuances.

But again, if you follow step by step and have the "same or better" stats than him, you will be tempted to use the AFK shops and that route seems a bit too mechanical. Farming for mana, to buy gear to use a cookie cutter plan to beat a mission to get more gear to do the same thing faster.

That's a little less exciting than, optimizing what you have, using classes you wouldn't normally use, running a map to hope to get better gear to alter the strat a little bit more. As you go through this whole process, you got yourself a ton of mana so you can upgrade different gear to try a different angle while learning little bits to optimize yet again since now you can try a different build with the extra mana you have.

At least that's how I play it.

This is my first RPG, MMORP, Tower Defense, whatever you want to call it game. Now, almost 2 years, and probably 4000 hours later. The game is finally starting to lose some of its luster. I now spend more time in auctions, and afk shops hunting the elusive ultimate set to gain a measly 500 or 600 more points in stats that I don't even need anyways than actually playing the game anymore. However, there are still times I feel like killing some monsters. I mix up builds, I have gone back to using who and what I like to use over what is the established character. I cut my teeth in this game on tablet. Mage was the power and a squire was junk. I switched to ps3 at launch. There mage towers didn't work to well. However, as a dps they were the absolute bomb. I made the switch to pc in July. Where I was assaulted with a whole new play style and lots of new toys at my disposal. Squires are the beasts of PC. Summoners and EV's are an absolute for end-game progression. No one uses mage towers because they claim they are junk. I could prolly count on one hand the number of people I know who utilize a dps monk. However, I have gone back to one. I will stand him up against any jester as a leveling character. I have rebuilt myself a mage tower character, who I happily build with anywhere I feel like.

As for the progression wall, I think is what you are eluding to more than anything. I haven't farmed for armor since October. I got tired of running maps and getting no returns. Back then it was extremely rare to get an Ult or Supreme. However, good trans could be hand. It just never came to me. I found it much easier to buy from other people and then resell. I could then take this created profit and improve me own gear. This may be something that you could look into.

I felt the same way as the OP for the most part.
I get the most enjoyment out of just playing the game.
The grinding aspect really kinda sucks.

What I did was make a bunch of new toons to play low level matches with.
I play mostly hard or medium starter matches until I get them to level 60.
Then I throw on the UGGG-wear.

You know.... UGGG.... that expression that comes to mind when you see these items laying on the floor at the end of a survival wave or in your item box after a high level NM campaign map.

You know.... UGGG.... UnGodly Godly Gear.... with outrageous stats and sometimes over 200 ups.

I throw a set of that RNG troll crap on them and play random insane matches.
I feel pretty powerful with 500-800ish stats at level 60 and when I get to 70 I throw some decent pets and the original holiday or challenge rewards on them to boost the stats anywhere from 700-1200. They could be stronger... but it's really already overkill.
When I threw a turtle on my level 70 DPS EV, he had over 1600 hero damage and 1100 health.... so I wound up just going back a normal pet although he does still have his prepatched transcendent Sicarius still equipped.

Once they reach level 72 or 73, I just save all their gear, delete and remake them.
It's a great way to play random matches and meet new friends.

When you get to a certain point you don't really need anything else in my opinion... Some people like to collect stuff usually on maps that they enjoy doing and repeat that over and over. I personally like to go around pubs meeting new people and helping. Or create some random games and play with lower levels/lower gear. Or join steam friends and goof around... The thing is, if there isn't anything in the game that still gives you fun, maybe it's time to take a break... If there's anything that you still want to do and enjoy doing, do it! :D (For some weird reason, I love running The Summit)

Well, I don't see how grinding can be fun here. In fact, the number of "AFK builds for with/without high stats" convinces me that most people do not find it fun. Meeting goals and whatnot feels good, but is that good feeling worth the massive time dump into what is basically meaningless? I'm essentially grinding stuff so that I can grind more stuff. That's pretty much what any crappy MMORPG's endgame is.

As someone who has dumped several hundred hours into various disgaea games, grind is not really something bad for me. Grind is Progression and when Progression hits a milestone, you get a feeling of accomplishment.
That is how I see it. That's also the reason I'm still trying to farm perfect skeletons. ( so.. many.. with speed stat... )

Actually the thing with gear grinding is that grinding does not necessarily equal progression. In a way that makes it worse than exp farming. I have actually leveled up the main character in both Disgaea 1 and 2 to max level and beaten all of the side bosses with him. The difference in D1/D2 is that there's generally different challenge to every item world map, and there's at least a few strategical aspects to think about, outside of stats. Plus, the side stories can be funny and seeing yourself do millions (or billions) of damage is just a sense of "Yeah, it was worth it." I will admit one thing though: the pirate map grind in D2 almost made me want to quit.

It was a similar type of game, but I actually had reasons for grinding a bit on there. I just seriously wanted to main character to kick *** all the way through to the end. Plus, the sense of progression was generally much more steady. It takes about 200 hours or less to get all the way through end game with pretty much any Disgaea (that I've played... have not touched the ones on the PS3 as I do not have one). Here it's different. 200 hours later, and I have just decent trans sets, and am nowhere near endgame. Granted, endgame will involve more of what I'm doing to do the same thing (that's a bit of a tricky statement).

Sometimes I'll use other people's builds, but I like doing things a little differently as my characters/build/style are different than some. I find it is really enjoyable when you finally beat a map using your own way, rather than following a cookie cutter.

...

Well first of all you're kind of misunderstanding what the main point was. Putting that fact aside, yeah, you can make your own build and maybe have some initial fun with it (and frustration aplenty)... but when you're in for (hundreds of) hours worth of grinding whether you do or do not, what's the point? Yeah, maybe yours will be more optimal for what you have, but unless you make a new one through every single iteration of the stage, you're going to end up at the same process.

This is my first RPG, MMORP, Tower Defense, whatever you want to call it game. Now, almost 2 years, and probably 4000 hours later. The game is finally starting to lose some of its luster. I now spend more time in auctions, and afk shops hunting the elusive ultimate set to gain a measly 500 or 600 more points in stats that I don't even need anyways than actually playing the game anymore
...

Ugh, merching. I despise merching. I don't mind browsing a lot of stores hoping to find what I need, but just outright making buying and reselling my new grind is somewhat disgusting to me. I do not mean to offend you if you find that fun. I simply don't understand how people can have fun making money by having to trade with other people.



Let me just clarify something here: Since it seems to be hard to describe... I do not necessarily think grinding is always evil in and of itself. Steady progression for time input can be a break from what you need to do... I just dislike the fact that it's used as both the endgame means and goal (for extended periods of time), so you practically have to do it all the time. You grind so that you can grind higher level spots in turn, for more equipment. This is what most/almost all mmorpgs devolve into. It's like the developers were like, "well, I can't think of enough awesome stuff to put here, so let me just give you all this busywork so you'll keep playing my game."

I felt the same way as the OP for the most part.
I get the most enjoyment out of just playing the game.
The grinding aspect really kinda sucks.

...

Hahaha, it sounds like you really enjoy this game, then. That's actually kind of something close to what I was planning on doing after I got all of the gear I needed together. I was going to try to beat certain maps with custom builds, while limiting my stats. To me, that was a "After I am sure that I have enough of these daggum stats to do everything, let me have fun with the actual game." I just now reevaluated that and I was like, "what the hell am I doing?"

Every MMORPG game turns into some form of grind in endgame until the new content comes out. I'll be playing this game until I clear all the maps, which I haven't yet. I'm really good at economics in a game. I'm good at making money, trading, and making profit. I suck at actually playing. AFK shops here are extremely easy to make profit from. I started coming here onto the forums and the economy on forums is crazy inflated, but I'm trying to earn the mana to convert into MK2s to convert into Cubes so I can get some better gear to do harder maps. I'd grind my own gear if I wanted, but I make better profit selling what I find then finding something else from someone else.

Anyway, that was a rant. My point is, if it isn't a game with an ending, a grind always begins to happen where you just wait for the next piece of content or until you just start pushing the limits of a game.

[QUOTE](Not for faint of attention span)
Just quit? I ask this because I wanted to like this game[/QUOTE]You don't spend tons of hours on a game because you didn't like it. It's obvious you didn't just "want to like it." You actually LIKED it.

That being said, no game ever lasts forever. If you get bored then just move on. The game is what it is.

I don't know why people feel this remorse or shame after playing the game so long. If it provided hundreds of hours of gameplay for you, then it was clearly worth the investment. You should feel satisfied that you got some good times out of it, you've used them on, time to find something new to play. This isn't an MMO- I don't think anybody at Trendy expects or ever expected anyone to be playing for years and years and years.

If you're not having fun, just quit. And don't tell us about it either. Just walk away, satisfied that you got some enjoyment out of it and play something else. "I quit" threads are destructive to the remaining community.

Anyway, that was a rant. My point is, if it isn't a game with an ending, a grind always begins to happen where you just wait for the next piece of content or until you just start pushing the limits of a game.

I'm not really pushing the limits, here, and I don't think there's any game-changing content coming up.

You don't spend tons of hours on a game because you didn't like it. It's obvious you didn't just "want to like it." You actually LIKED it.

...
Yes, let's be nitpicky with whether my terms are in past tense or not and pretend that we can make an actual point out of it, like so:


[quote]
That being said, no game ever lasts forever. If you get bored then just move on. The game is what it is.

I don't know why people feel this remorse or shame after playing the game so long. If it provided hundreds of hours of gameplay for you, then it was clearly worth the investment. You should feel satisfied that you got some good times out of it, you've used them on, time to find something new to play. This isn't an MMO- I don't think anybody at Trendy expects or ever expected anyone to be playing for years and years and years.

If you're not having fun, just quit. And don't tell us about it either. Just walk away, satisfied that you got some enjoyment out of it and play something else. "I quit" threads are destructive to the remaining community.[/QUOTE]

I'm gonna ignore this, because I've seen this exact statement stated a million different ways on a million different forums, and I'm quite sick of writing up the counter to it. Most of it is just your opinion on what I should do anyway. Did you just read the first line and come up with that?

All games are like this. Games are very 'shallow' at a high level despite how much pseudo artificial depth one adds. You could easily argue, "what's the point" to ANYTHING you do in life and I'm quite serious about that statement. Life is a lot easier to deal with when you look at it that way.

That's why to me, the important part is the journey, not the destination and "copying" strategies is a great way to lose most of the journey. Of course you'll "end up in the same spot" but the journey of growing your characters either through XP or gear or whatever other artificial construct. Imagine starting every video game at the highest level and you'll see what I mean. The process of growing is what makes most RPGs appealing.

Now if you are saying you dislike the "journey" of "grinding", then try not to make it so 'grindy'. I mean, the end goal is pretty hollow, so why rush to that purpose? Why not dance around it to make it less appealing?

It was a lot of fun for me to kill the Sky City boss on hardcore. I thought it would be too difficult/frustrating after barely beating it on normal nightmare, then a few days later (after doing other things like survival and such) I re-evaluted my strategy and was able to do it. It was quite a thrill to finally win! Enjoyable! Much better than asking someone to "help me beat the boss". The point wasn't to beat the boss to be able to do crystalline dimension on nightmare hardcore (that was a secondary objective). The actual act and process of beating the boss and finding ways while growing to defeat him was the "rewarding" part of it.

Personally, I find a sense of accomplishment when I "grind" certain levels to get items to help me progress on a harder level that I am having trouble with. Gives me more of a margin of error.

After all is said and done, I do enjoy blowing up stuff though and watching mobs just die to my stuff. A sick sense of accomplishment to destroy digital monsters in different games. :)

It is also nice to be able to talk to others about your accolades and different strategies. A strange sense of being able to relate to others makes it sort of exciting too.

Now, if you find the entire big goal pointless, then yes, you should just quit. If you aren't having fun and find it like a job or chore but not getting "paid", then seriously just stop. At that point both the journey and destination is no good for you. Time to pick another path.

Nice read, OP. I would say that some people enjoy grinding, while others enjoy the community aspect -- helping out other players, finding new defenders, trading gear, speed runs, making guides, building new levels, creating new map builds to share with others. I find the community aspect to be more rewarding than the grinding, but that's because I'm not the kind of player who loves to grind. There's a reason I haven't touched a JRPG in years. If the grind isn't for you, find some other aspect of the game to enjoy. Maybe you'll come up with a new activity with the game that none of us could have dreamed of.

All games are like this. Games are very 'shallow' at a high level despite how much pseudo artificial depth one adds. You could easily argue, "what's the point" to ANYTHING you do in life and I'm quite serious about that statement. Life is a lot easier to deal with when you look at it that way.

That's why to me, the important part is the journey, not the destination and "copying" strategies is a great way to lose most of the journey. Of course you'll "end up in the same spot" but the journey of growing your characters either through XP or gear or whatever other artificial construct. Imagine starting every video game at the highest level and you'll see what I mean. The process of growing is what makes most RPGs appealing.

Now if you are saying you dislike the "journey" of "grinding", then try not to make it so 'grindy'. I mean, the end goal is pretty hollow, so why rush to that purpose? Why not dance around it to make it less appealing?

It was a lot of fun for me to kill the Sky City boss on hardcore. I thought it would be too difficult/frustrating after barely beating it on normal nightmare, then a few days later (after doing other things like survival and such) I re-evaluted my strategy and was able to do it. It was quite a thrill to finally win! Enjoyable! Much better than asking someone to "help me beat the boss". The point wasn't to beat the boss to be able to do crystalline dimension on nightmare hardcore (that was a secondary objective). The actual act and process of beating the boss and finding ways while growing to defeat him was the "rewarding" part of it.

Personally, I find a sense of accomplishment when I "grind" certain levels to get items to help me progress on a harder level that I am having trouble with. Gives me more of a margin of error.

After all is said and done, I do enjoy blowing up stuff though and watching mobs just die to my stuff. A sick sense of accomplishment to destroy digital monsters in different games. :)

It is also nice to be able to talk to others about your accolades and different strategies. A strange sense of being able to relate to others makes it sort of exciting too.

Now, if you find the entire big goal pointless, then yes, you should just quit. If you aren't having fun and find it like a job or chore but not getting "paid", then seriously just stop. At that point both the journey and destination is no good for you. Time to pick another path.

I felt the need to quote this whole post because, well, it is almost verbatim what I would have said myself. It's terrifying, really, how closely this mimics my sentiments. The enjoyment of this game, just like anything in life, is about the journey. Like you said, when you break it down, anything we enjoy in life can be deemed "meaningless." Whether that means reading books, watching TV, playing games, working on cars, playing basketball with friends, or whatever. But at the same time, these "meaningless" things give life much of its truest meaning. They bring us joy, and to me: life is about pursuit of joy for yourself and sharing it with others. Not everything meaningful has to have an agreed-upon or tangible end goal and result. Life is not so neat and tidy.

Any non-competitive game that boasts hundreds of hours of play-time is going to rely on metagame and grinding out numbers. There are no two ways about this. It comes down to how well the developer institutes this, how well they balance reward versus time spent, and how much the player in question enjoys such things. I've spent quite a few hours playing DunDef, on two different platforms, and I've enjoyed just about every moment of it. The game has never failed to provide new challenges or fun things to do, both solo and with friends. When (or if) it does fail in this, I will move on to one of the other countless amazing games I've been neglecting so I could play DunDef. I don't regret one moment I've spent with this amazing game.

Have some parts of my experience been grindy? Sure. But I always stop myself when I feel the grind is not worthy in terms of the return it gives. I've done very little armor grinding in this game, ever; and when I have it's been on maps I knew would give a decent return (like King's Game Survival.) My stats aren't as high as most other long-time players, because of this. I've just barely broke past 3K, finally, with many of my builders' stats. You know what? I don't care. If those stats give me the ability to clear actual stages, which they do, then I'm fine with that. At the same time, do I look down upon people who want to get their stats to 5K, 6K, and beyond by grinding lots of survivals? Absolutely not. They are enjoying their time spent, and their time spent grinding survivals isn't any more or less meaningful than whatever you choose to do in your own free time.

[QUOTE]I'm gonna ignore this, because I've seen this exact statement stated a million different ways on a million different forums, and I'm quite sick of writing up the counter to it. Most of it is just your opinion on what I should do anyway. Did you just read the first line and come up with that? [/QUOTE]Excuse me for offering an opinion when you actually asked for opinions with your original post.

I'm really curious what this "counter" is- I don't see how you can counter it. Most games are played and beat and then totally conquered, and then you find another game to play, unless it's an MMORPG we're talking about. Again, I ask: Why even take the time to feel "disillusioned" ? Just find another game to play if you're unhappy with this one. If your real reason for making the post is because you're complaining about defects in the game and you want them to be fixed, you're wasting your time. They are not going to radically redesign game systems at this point. They are making a brand new game instead. And as I said before, it's best to just quit if you are thinking about quitting. You don't hear from most people who quit a game- if they don't like it, they just move on. That's not to say that a quitting player can't offer useful feedback, of course, but usually "I quit" threads are just drama threads.

[QUOTE]Have some parts of my experience been grindy? Sure. But I always stop myself when I feel the grind is not worthy in terms of the return it gives.[/QUOTE]Well, that's exactly what you should do- I guess you can answer your own questions better than I can. If you don't enjoy the grind, then don't do it. In fact I'd say that the moment anything feels like a "grind" is basically the moment at which it stops feeling like it's "fun."

If you are wanting to find more fun in the game, I suggest you move from ranked to open, and induldge in the many custom maps created by the community or create some yourself- many of them aren't typical TD maps and have unique objectives. This shakes things up a lot and can really free you from the grind.

Well, that's exactly what you should do- I guess you can answer your own questions better than I can. If you don't enjoy the grind, then don't do it. In fact I'd say that the moment anything feels like a "grind" is basically the moment at which it stops feeling like it's "fun."

Wait, I think you're confusing two different posts. The first part you replied to was the belligerent stuff that the original poster said about wanting to quit the game. The second thing you quoted was from my own post, which in no way echoes the sentiments or anger of the original poster. The contrary; I was demonstrating the positive parts of the experience and why many of us have stuck with it. ^_^;; He didn't answer his own question, haha.

Once you reach 3k stat, you don't need to grind anymore. You can beat everything in the game with that. I think you'll notice that there's a lot of people on the forums that will play in bursts, like when a new map comes out, and then not much at all for long periods of time. People do like to be rewarded once in a while, but the rng is so bad so if you try too hard, you'll get disillusioned.

As for it being easier to read a build guide, well, almost all games have step-by-step walkthroughs, and you just have to decide to what extent you want to use them. I usually do look at build guides, but I immediately change them. I only use them for ideas, and I try to experiment for a better build. If I come up with something very different, I'll post it. What I found was that the posted builds are usually not the best builds, and since they're often posted by people with very high stats, they often have higher stat requirements. For example, I highly suspect Sky City NMHC survival can be beaten with 2k stats, and I did it easily with 3k. But if you have 4k stats, there's no reason not to just throw down the unupgraded auras (which is also a genius idea btw).

So I would say don't fall into the trap of thinking you need great stats or grinding stats instead of improving skill.

This multi-quote is kind of ***-backwards, but oh well. >_>

Have some parts of my experience been grindy? Sure. But I always stop myself when I feel the grind is not worthy in terms of the return it gives. I've done very little armor grinding in this game, ever; and when I have it's been on maps I knew would give a decent return (like King's Game Survival.) My stats aren't as high as most other long-time players, because of this. I've just barely broke past 3K, finally, with many of my builders' stats. You know what? I don't care. If those stats give me the ability to clear actual stages, which they do, then I'm fine with that. At the same time, do I look down upon people who want to get their stats to 5K, 6K, and beyond by grinding lots of survivals? Absolutely not. They are enjoying their time spent, and their time spent grinding survivals isn't any more or less meaningful than whatever you choose to do in your own free time.

This a sentiment/philosophy that is also buried in many other peoples' posts, and it is one that took me a bit to finally understand. It's all about being honestly satisfied with your own goals and how much you wish to get out of the experience in any game, weighed against the dissatisfactions with it. This evaluation needs to be done often for optimal playing experience. I should have done it long ago, and I would not have had so much trouble at least stopping with the grind, and having more fun with my playing experience. I feel that I perhaps lost focus of what was important, and simply kept grinding for the sake of continuing playing something I used to enjoy, not grinding because I actually felt like I was progressing towards enjoyable goals. I suppose that can be applied to most games. I just wonder if there are people out there who don't sit down and ask themselves the "is this worth it" question more often, and put everything into perspective. I feel that if they perhaps did, many MMORPGs would not be as popular as they are today.

At the same time I still feel that having such a massive grind at endgame is a sign of bad (or perhaps at least lazy) game design and artificial time extension. I just understand that this is the way one has to deal with it on a personal level because of the detached character of most game developers. It pains me, too. I'm not saying that older games were necessarily not like this, but it feels like adding artificial depth and better graphics in order to just bring in the money is becoming far more popular than simply designing a game that is good... and then ends.

I think that kind of answers my original questions (albeit a bit indirectly), so this thread may be closed.

(I edited this post to move this reply to the top, so no the rest of these replies are not afterthoughts).

Excuse me for offering an opinion when you actually asked for opinions with your original post.

You didn't offer an opinion that even pertained to a question I was asking. It was a rather useless opinion, that was just inviting me to turn this into...

[quote].
... usually "I quit" threads are just drama threads.[/quote]

Except that you realize the person that is slowly turning this into a "drama thread" is you, right? I never implied any drama in my original post. I simply asked some questions of the audience (which you didn't answer any of, save perhaps the first one, if I am to be generous). I did not flame anyone in this thread, I did not even get annoyed with any of the posts here... well save yours, but it was rather dubious.

As for "countering"... even if I called it "countering", "countering" such points usually just begets more "countering." That is called an argument. That wasn't really the point of this.

I also don't expect them to change the game. Who does? What kind of developers actually care that much these days (or enough to actually try VERY HARD, especially when they have a stable product?). I mean for god's sake I played Maplestory. Yes, I know you had to stop shuddering for a few minutes there.

[quote]
If you are wanting to find more fun in the game, I suggest you move from ranked to open, and induldge in the many custom maps created by the community or create some yourself- many of them aren't typical TD maps and have unique objectives. This shakes things up a lot and can really free you from the grind.[/QUOTE]

Thank you for actually having a meaningful opinion. That is a good point.

Nice read, OP. I would say that some people enjoy grinding, while others enjoy the community aspect -- helping out other players, finding new defenders, trading gear, speed runs, making guides, building new levels, creating new map builds to share with others. I find the community aspect to be more rewarding than the grinding, but that's because I'm not the kind of player who loves to grind. There's a reason I haven't touched a JRPG in years. If the grind isn't for you, find some other aspect of the game to enjoy. Maybe you'll come up with a new activity with the game that none of us could have dreamed of.

Oh, I kind of doubt there is any kind of activity to make up... Granted I could do it, but it would be rather silly.

Once you reach 3k stat, you don't need to grind anymore. What I found was that the posted builds are usually not the best builds, and since they're often posted by people with very high stats, they often have higher stat requirements. For example, I highly suspect Sky City NMHC survival can be beaten with 2k stats, and I did it easily with 3k. But if you have 4k stats, there's no reason not to just throw down the unupgraded auras (which is also a genius idea btw).

So I would say don't fall into the trap of thinking you need great stats or grinding stats instead of improving skill.

... I don't think I could beat "anything" in the game with that, to be honest... considering I do have stats equal to (mostly higher than) that. But yes, though I am tired of the grind, perhaps I should just sit down every once in a while and try to create some unique setups for this game.

All games are like this. Games are very 'shallow' at a high level despite how much pseudo artificial depth one adds. You could easily argue, "what's the point" to ANYTHING you do in life and I'm quite serious about that statement. Life is a lot easier to deal with when you look at it that way.

Now, if you find the entire big goal pointless, then yes, you should just quit. If you aren't having fun and find it like a job or chore but not getting "paid", then seriously just stop. At that point both the journey and destination is no good for you. Time to pick another path.

I wouldn't say that everything in life is like that, at all... except besides other video games that are similar. I don't see how many activities in life are not shallow at a "high level" at all. Shallow is a bad word. If you mean grindy, then perhaps so... but you'll often be pushing yourself to the limit nonetheless.

Also, I never said I found the goal necessarily meaningless. I find the journey meaningless, because it is made of grinding. That was the entire point of this.

Wait, I think you're confusing two different posts. The first part you replied to was the belligerent stuff that the original poster said about wanting to quit the game. The second thing you quoted was from my own post, which in no way echoes the sentiments or anger of the original poster. The contrary; I was demonstrating the positive parts of the experience and why many of us have stuck with it. ^_^;; He didn't answer his own question, haha.

Please tell me how I am "belligerent", and where I said, word for word, that I simply wanted to quit. I believe the tone of this thread is inquisitive, not "belligerent".

Let's try to keep the personal attacks out of the discussion, guys. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

My apologies, I thought it was a little more tame than a general personal attack...

I wouldn't say that everything in life is like that, at all... except besides other video games that are similar. I don't see how many activities in life are not shallow at a "high level" at all. Shallow is a bad word. If you mean grindy, then perhaps so... but you'll often be pushing yourself to the limit nonetheless.

Anything you do in life, you ascribe value to. However, not everyone will place value in what you do equally. There is nothing one does in life that everyone will value the same way. Nothing. Money, love, sex, family, power, fame, altruism, religion, you name it. All relative value and ultimately at a high level -- pointless.

So when you stop and say "what the heck am I doing here" when playing DD, you can say the same about life right now. The answer is most likely "because society told you to do so". You have to break out of the box of the norm sometimes.

The value is at a personal level and perhaps loosely what your colleagues feel about it. That's why the 'forums' and playing with others helps because then you have people you can relate to that have similar "values" to you. It makes what you are doing "feel" more worthwhile. Of course, you might feel differently one day and that's when you have to stop and reflect like you are doing right now.

Anyway, I still believe a part of the problem was you were following / copying other builds and doing your "I need xyz stats" to do that build mindset. I suggested other ways to go about the game, and that's how the game was originally intended, but you apparently find that "frustrating".

Consider two approaches. You can "power xp level" your characters to level 100 via tavern map to use ultimate++ items you bought from a store that you bought using mana that you got by "mana farming" the same level over and over again. Then you run the same map over and over again to hope to get better ultimate++ items or more mana to buy the ultimate++ items to finish your vaunted "sets". This is one way to play.

Or, you can try a myriad of different maps using different strategies. You approach one with different characters with slightly different strategies and see how far you get and why it keeps failing and adjusting. As you do this, you procure more mana to upgrade items.

After doing this quite a few times, you actually find your own ultimate armors (not ultimate++) but no sets quite yet. You find your strategies are slowly making a break through and you feel you can run other areas that might give you an edge in DPS. With proper timing/micro your builds might work by proper positioning of your hero so each run is different based on where/how you position yourself.

By now you realize you are much higher level. Almost level 100 and all you were doing was playing the game. To even it out, you decide to choose a different main so they can get to level 100 too and you alternate on different maps. You've also found that now that you were able to upgrade your armors more, you can go back to some of the "hard levels" you had trouble with to re-test it. Ah, bingo. Now you can finally proceed higher than before with new items. This lets you utilize other characters that you didn't really consider before. Maybe they have certain advantages that you didn't think about. Let's re-test some of the other maps to see if this is true.

In the end given enough time, you will both hit the "ultimate++" full set, all 100 levels sort of 'achievement'. You could easily argue, the first approach is more "efficient". You hit the same end goal in both cases, but one was ... more fun. More rewarding process. At least that's how I look at it. You might see it differently and if you don't find the second approach appealing at all, then as we've all said, feel free to take a break from the game. We all get disillusioned with our favorite games from time to time and sometimes come back. (I left during the Age of Spiders).

Also, I never said I found the goal necessarily meaningless. I find the journey meaningless, because it is made of grinding. That was the entire point of this.

And I told you to make it 'ungrindy' by doing things differently, but you feel that ultimately it leads to the same place. I've already said at a high level it will always lead to the same place and if you look at things that way, there isn't really much point to anything in life. You are going to die in the end anyway, right? (ignoring afterlife) :)

Once you reach 3k stat, you don't need to grind anymore. You can beat everything in the game with that.

... I don't think I could beat "anything" in the game with that, to be honest... considering I do have stats equal to (mostly higher than) that. But yes, though I am tired of the grind, perhaps I should just sit down every once in a while and try to create some unique setups for this game.

I seriously mean anything. I had 3.5K stats when I got the Ultimate Defender achievement, and lot of people did it with less. It's only very recently that they uncapped the re-spec points, raised the max level to 100, and starting having supreme accessories. There used to be a serious progression issue starting at 1.5k, and it's really gotten a lot better.

Speaking of which, have you completed all the achievements?

I seriously mean anything. I had 3.5K stats when I got the Ultimate Defender achievement, and lot of people did it with less. It's only very recently that they uncapped the re-spec points, raised the max level to 100, and starting having supreme accessories. There used to be a serious progression issue starting at 1.5k, and it's really gotten a lot better.

Speaking of which, have you completed all the achievements?

Nope, still need to do those achievements. Anyway by 3.5k do you mean literally every single stat, or just important ones, depending on character class. If it's the latter, then yeah I'm not quite at 3.5 with every character (but pretty close). I'll probably just take a long break and try getting back into it sometime.

Anything you do in life, you ascribe value to. However, not everyone will place value in what you do equally. There is nothing one does in life that everyone will value the same way. Nothing. Money, love, sex, family, power, fame, altruism, religion, you name it. All relative value and ultimately at a high level -- pointless.
So when you stop and say "what the heck am I doing here" when playing DD, you can say the same about life right now. The answer is most likely "because society told you to do so". You have to break out of the box of the norm sometimes.

... What? Sorry, this makes no sense, because not everything in life at a high level is grinding vs taking another approach, nor is it even the same type of goal. This is a blanket statement which doesn't make any sense. If anything, the problem with this statement in real life is that every goal has a different structure of advancement depending on the individual. You are hard limited not by stats but your innate talent for that task, and thus to progress to a point you at some point will have to surpass an utter plateau. The difficulty and method for going over it will not be set depending on activity. It will be set depending on personal characteristics.

Games have an explicit structure and advancement scheme. Life does not. If it did, we would have already made an utter virtual reality simulation of life.

Just stick to the game advice, man. You're no good at the philosophical bits. Sorry. >_>

[quote]The value is at a personal level and perhaps loosely what your colleagues feel about it. That's why the 'forums' and playing with others helps because then you have people you can relate to that have similar "values" to you. It makes what you are doing "feel" more worthwhile. Of course, you might feel differently one day and that's when you have to stop and reflect like you are doing right now.[/quote]
....
[quote]Anyway, I still believe a part of the problem was you were following / copying other builds and doing your "I need xyz stats" to do that build mindset. [/quote]
Which I agreed with, in my last post.
[quote]I suggested other ways to go about the game, and that's how the game was originally intended, but you apparently find that "frustrating".[/quote]
... the last time I used the word "frustrating" was in my first post. It was targeted at the general philosophy behind grinding leading towards an evaluation where using a premade build was a better decision.
[quote]Consider two approaches. You can "power xp level" your characters to level 100 via tavern map to use ultimate++ items you bought from a store that you bought using mana that you got by "mana farming" the same level over and over again. Then you run the same map over and over again to hope to get better ultimate++ items or more mana to buy the ultimate++ items to finish your vaunted "sets". This is one way to play.[/quote]
To be honest, I don't know who would run the same map until they really got enough mana to even buy one u++ item. But sure.
[quote]Or, you can try a myriad of different maps using different strategies. You approach one with different characters with slightly different strategies and see how far you get and why it keeps failing and adjusting. As you do this, you procure more mana to upgrade items.
After doing this quite a few times, you actually find your own ultimate armors (not ultimate++) but no sets quite yet. You find your strategies are slowly making a break through and you feel you can run other areas that might give you an edge in DPS. With proper timing/micro your builds might work by proper positioning of your hero so each run is different based on where/how you position yourself.
[/quote]
Now, this process CAN be "frustrating", namely because it can take you a lot of tries to get something right, and will take a lot of time either way. You're basically gambling on your intelligence with your time, to go forward in the game. This is why using premade builds is the best decision, when you're at a point where you need to do grinding, at a time spent vs rewards fork.

Now, the thing is this: if you just run random maps pseudorandomly and then you're like "but hey, I wanna do X on Y" difficulty, you're still going to get to a point where you have to repeat the entire cycle at a few times to get to the next point in stats before you can even consider approaching a certain map that you wish to beat. You'll just be keeping it a bit more interesting by doing a rotation, but at the same time at any point in time there will be an optimal location for you to be at, time-wise, so there will always be that feeling in the back of your head saying "by the way, the rewards could be better." You'll be trying harder, having slightly more fun (decreases exponentially with amount of times a map has been done), for less return.
[quote]By now you realize you are much higher level.
[/quote]
Maybe.
[quote] Almost level 100 and all you were doing was playing the game. To even it out, you decide to choose a different main so they can get to level 100 too and you alternate on different maps. You've also found that now that you were able to upgrade your armors more, you can go back to some of the "hard levels" you had trouble with to re-test it.[/quote]
Maybe.
[quote] Ah, bingo.
[/quote]
Maybe.
[quote] Now you can finally proceed higher than before with new items.
[/quote]
Maybe.
[quote] This lets you utilize other characters that you didn't really consider before.[/quote]
Maybe.
[quote] Maybe they have certain advantages that you didn't think about. Let's re-test some of the other maps to see if this is true.[/quote]
... Yeah, you decided to solo a lot of NMHC maps with just one or two builders

[quote]In the end given enough time, you will both hit the "ultimate++" full set, all 100 levels sort of 'achievement'.
[/quote]
I wonder which one took much less time.
[quote]
You could easily argue, the first approach is more "efficient". You hit the same end goal in both cases, but one was ... more fun. More rewarding process. At least that's how I look at it.
[/quote]
That's common sense.
[quote]We all get disillusioned with our favorite games from time to time and sometimes come back. (I left during the Age of Spiders).[/quote]
No, we don't all get disillusioned with our favorite games. We simply tire of them. There's a significant difference between being tired of a game and being disillusioned with what you are doing in it.
[quote]And I told you to make it 'ungrindy' by doing things differently, but you feel that ultimately it leads to the same place. I've already said at a high level it will always lead to the same place and if you look at things that way, there isn't really much point to anything in life. You are going to die in the end anyway, right? (ignoring afterlife) :)[/QUOTE]
Please lay off the philosophical bits. Again. Please.


To be honest, let's just drop this argument, because I've already come to my desired conclusion in my last post. This side discussion is going to lead to a philosophical debate. We need to put it out like a forest fire.

Easiest answer I can give you is to keep setting new goals for yourself to reach. There is almost always something new to accomplish.