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The Problem of Grinding

HarmonicHewell

New Magician
Minecraft IGN: HarmonicHewell
Griffin
#1
I've been playing this server on and off for a year now. Mostly off, but recently I've came back into it over the last few weeks. I've gone from level 2 to level 52 over the course of a month or so, and for the most part, it's been rather enjoyable. For the most part.

Grinding is something that is inevitable on this server. It's basically an unofficial Harry Potter minecraft MMORPG. Grinding is, and probably should be the way to level up, as from staff perspective it would drive incentives for people to spend more time on the server and potentially purchase more things. From a business standpoint I get it. But I must say, only being level 52. The grind doesn't feel fun.

There is a cap to xp on this server that I'm not sure how or why it works, but as you know you get the most amount of XP from killing mobs 3 levels above you. And as you level up more, that value goes down. As the beginning there are frequent mob changes as you level up, but as you get ot the intermediate tier things slow down horrendously. The gaps between quests grow longer. Year six probably takes as much time to complete as years one to four. It's really quite irritating.

At level 52, the level 55 mob (mermaid) is on the island of Ireland, which you only access with a quest at level 56 (I'm assuming, I haven't done it). By the time you're level 56, you'll be too high level to grind ANY of the mobs in ireland and would just go for vampires instead.

I've heard it's even worse once you graduate, with like 4 whole levels of no quests. This seems to be a thing that the community has generally just accepted. A "keep the chin up and carry on" mentality, like we're doing homework or something. (Oh yeah, and we also have to do homework to get any sort of good XP, literal homework).

Now, I know all the other ways to level up outside of quests and mob grinding. I know every trick. None of it gives you enough to do it quickly. For classes you have to wait. For daily activities you have to convince other people to play with you. It's really quite the chore.

Now, what do I propose to fix this? I think that the arbitrary bottlenecks should be removed, and that there should be a mob of each level made somewhere on the map. Now 100 different mobs is definitely a challenge seeing as there's only 56 (by my count) at the moment. Perhaps even 10 new mobs between level 50 and 80 to begin with. In and around the locations where they should be.

I also propose there to be more quests. I'm sure that this isn't something one can just do, and that the incredibly hardworking staff on the server are working on more quests for events and things. But there being less quests in year 6 and year 7, when quests are needed the most seems silly to me.

If the grind could be varied in other sort of ways, that I'm sure the very clever staff could come up with it would also be appreciated.

Whenever possible, I would recommend from a game design point of view, horizontal progression as well as vertical progression. So instead of just making things worth more xp, allow a more varied manner in which to get xp. Like a wider attribute of stats that act like an MMORPG. Like fishing or something, and you can fish to get more xp, and can buy upgraded wands like you can get brooms. It could also be a more fun way to get money. There's lots of different ways it can be done.

I thank you very much for reading this, I wish you a great day or night. Thanks for your consideration.
 

IzMatt

New Magician
Minecraft IGN: IzMatt
Honeybadger Auralock Dark Follower Phoenix SPEW
#2
As I understand why grinding is necessary, I completely agree.
Coming online do get voting, daily rewards, and classes out of the way are the new way of life for anyone above level 50 really. You get a quest every other to every two levels and the experience you gain from it doesn't help tremendously.

Classes are a great way to get experience, but it's a slow way. I'd rather attend more classes than to kill 7 quintillion mobs to get the same amount of experience, but that's really a personal preference.
...I would recommend from a game design point of view, horizontal progression as well as vertical progression. So instead of just making things worth more xp, allow a more varied manner in which to get xp. Like a wider attribute of stats that act like an MMORPG. Like fishing or something, and you can fish to get more xp...
I think that is a great idea! I'm somewhat new to the server so I'm not exactly sure if you used to get experience from cooking and brewing potions used to be a thing [(plus it takes forever to get the materials to even get started (i.e. get ingredients to brew a potion)]. I've done the daily miscellaneous tasks (find 5, 25, and 50 hidden chests) a couple times, and it's SUPER boring. Adding some new ways to get experience is an idea that I personally think is worth pursuing.
 

Pankakes

Animorphus
Minecraft IGN: Pankakes_81
Griffin
#3
Welcome to 2021 where games have so prevalent MTX, dark patterns and grind to keep you playing, that game makers don't even know of any other way to make a player engaged with the game and accept it as normal.

Classes are a great way to get experience, but it's a slow way. I'd rather attend more classes than to kill 7 quintillion mobs to get the same amount of experience, but that's really a personal preference.
I'd rather have a main storyline that in some way could even be branched, along with side quests you'd find while exploring an interesting world instead of "Align yourself with X Y coordinates, hold W. Once you arrive, kill B, C amount of times and bring me D so you can reach level E".

If I wanted to grind XP and mobs in MC I'd go to Wynncraft instead. If I want to enjoy a (good-)story driven HP Multiplayer Minecraft server I'm getting more and more out of luck.

And please, don't say "well, you can make a server yourself" or "you can go somewhere else then", because If I wanted that I wouldn't be here, on a PW suggestions forum, repeatedly posting and making stuff.
 
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Ashh

Librarian
Staff
Minecraft IGN: AzureAsh
Auralock Dark Follower Staff Phoenix Serpent Vampire Werewolf Discord Moderator SPEW Game Designer Lead
#4
Heya @HyperCourage, thank you very much for making this thread! We really appreciate your opinion on the matter of grinding, and it helps us a lot to determine how the playerbase is feeling about the experience of grinding to level up. I've spoken to the Lead Unspeakable, Noah, and I'm going to address your points and make sure that your voice is heard on this topic.

Firstly, we completely agree that grinding is too hard for players right now, and we're looking to work on ways to make this process easier and more fun for players. Just recently, the Systems Team reworked XP rewards to try and minimise grinding. These changes won't fix everything, but we hope it will make a difference in how easy it is to get XP and level up. Keeping this in mind, we will be continuing to work on the issue. Looking at the Unspeakable side of XP, we're currently working on a few projects that will be able to address the issues you've brought up.

The gaps between quests grow longer. Year six probably takes as much time to complete as years one to four. It's really quite irritating.
We're always looking to add more quests, and Noah will be making a note of this for the future when looking at what levels to put new quests in to make sure we create new content for these levels.

At level 52, the level 55 mob (mermaid) is on the island of Ireland, which you only access with a quest at level 56 (I'm assuming, I haven't done it). By the time you're level 56, you'll be too high level to grind ANY of the mobs in ireland and would just go for vampires instead.
This is an interesting issue, thank you for bringing this to our attention! Noah will be seeing if we'll be able to add a few new mobs to the mainland to fix this issue.

I've heard it's even worse once you graduate, with like 4 whole levels of no quests.
We're aware that content is lacking for Graduates level 71-75, and this is definitely something we would like to work on. Once our current projects are finished, we will look to adding quests to Antrum & Rushstone, as those are the level 71-75 towns.

The current project we're working on is called Reputation. This is going to allow repeatable, daily content that, although will not be as immersive as full story quests, will provide a different kind of content that will give you the ability to have another means of more easily getting XP, as well as some other cool rewards. We'll be able to provide you all with more information about this as the release of this gets closer. Additionally, we are, of course always looking to add more quests. We currently have 7 quests in development that range from year 3 to graduate level, and this will help fill out the map. We're excited to be able to announce the release of these soon.

I'd rather have a main storyline that in some way could even be branched
Having a larger storyline is something we're actually looking at doing. A 'main' storyline is much much further out and not something we're persuing at this time, but it's something we've thought about for the future. However, in the meantime, we do want to add quest-chain storylines, similar to Relics of the Past, where multiple quests tell one specific story over multiple years and multiple locations.

Overall, we're really glad to have received this feedback and we will definitely be taking these points into consideration and making changes where we can to help the issue of grinding, as well as looking to see how we can adjust game aspects for the future. Thank you so much once again, as well as to anyone who contributed!
 

HarmonicHewell

New Magician
Minecraft IGN: HarmonicHewell
Griffin
#5
Heya @HyperCourage, thank you very much for making this thread! We really appreciate your opinion on the matter of grinding, and it helps us a lot to determine how the playerbase is feeling about the experience of grinding to level up. I've spoken to the Lead Unspeakable, Noah, and I'm going to address your points and make sure that your voice is heard on this topic.

Firstly, we completely agree that grinding is too hard for players right now, and we're looking to work on ways to make this process easier and more fun for players. Just recently, the Systems Team reworked XP rewards to try and minimise grinding. These changes won't fix everything, but we hope it will make a difference in how easy it is to get XP and level up. Keeping this in mind, we will be continuing to work on the issue. Looking at the Unspeakable side of XP, we're currently working on a few projects that will be able to address the issues you've brought up.


We're always looking to add more quests, and Noah will be making a note of this for the future when looking at what levels to put new quests in to make sure we create new content for these levels.


This is an interesting issue, thank you for bringing this to our attention! Noah will be seeing if we'll be able to add a few new mobs to the mainland to fix this issue.


We're aware that content is lacking for Graduates level 71-75, and this is definitely something we would like to work on. Once our current projects are finished, we will look to adding quests to Antrum & Rushstone, as those are the level 71-75 towns.

The current project we're working on is called Reputation. This is going to allow repeatable, daily content that, although will not be as immersive as full story quests, will provide a different kind of content that will give you the ability to have another means of more easily getting XP, as well as some other cool rewards. We'll be able to provide you all with more information about this as the release of this gets closer. Additionally, we are, of course always looking to add more quests. We currently have 7 quests in development that range from year 3 to graduate level, and this will help fill out the map. We're excited to be able to announce the release of these soon.


Having a larger storyline is something we're actually looking at doing. A 'main' storyline is much much further out and not something we're persuing at this time, but it's something we've thought about for the future. However, in the meantime, we do want to add quest-chain storylines, similar to Relics of the Past, where multiple quests tell one specific story over multiple years and multiple locations.

Overall, we're really glad to have received this feedback and we will definitely be taking these points into consideration and making changes where we can to help the issue of grinding, as well as looking to see how we can adjust game aspects for the future. Thank you so much once again, as well as to anyone who contributed!
Hey thanks so much for responding! I'm looking forward to the changes the crew will make in future!