The problem is that a direct correlation without adequate control of variables is inconclusive. “Correlation does not equal causation” is an exhortation to establish strong control of variables.
Your assertion is that a “grind” requires time input to the primary factor, exceeding all others. So separate that out, and your dataset will be clean. Leave it in, and you will be unable to separate tasks for which time spent developing skill is a factor.
This will also allow you to demonstrate differing degrees of grind, and potentially even analyze a specific game to figure out the exact proportion of its mechanics.
Cheese’s definition is the one you should use.
To get specific: with your definition, I have no way to separate success at WoW from success at Counterstrike. Both require time investment to succeed. One requires time to achieve skill, one requires time to get stuff. Therefore, they do not appear distinct and no conclusion about the degree to which either is skill-based can be made.
The cause doesn’t really matter. There are many different combinations of game mechanics and such that can result in a grind being produced. If you can show that time spent playing a game is always correlated with success (however you measure it in that particular game), then the game is a grind.
In a non-grind game, someone who picks it up for the first time has the possibility of beating the world champ.
For example, I would actually argue that Breath of the Wild has no grinding. How is that possible? I’m spending so much time farming rupees, arrows, etc. It’s possible because those things are not mandatory. I seen people who beat Lynel with pot lids and sticks. Likewise, you can be like me and go up against Lynel with mad equipment and still get your ass beat.
The cause does matter, but only on a level of higher rigor. We’ve pointedly taken direction from Garfield on these kinds of definitions: he cautioned specifically against trying to have rigorous definitions unless you’re doing ultra narrowly focused objective research into games.
[quote=“thewhaleshark, post:21, topic:312”]
o get specific: with your definition, I have no way to separate success at WoW from success at Counterstrike. Both require time investment to succeed. One requires time to achieve skill, one requires time to get stuff. Therefore, they do not appear distinct and no conclusion about the degree to which either is skill-based can be made.
[/quote]I bet I could define a study that used said definition. For a large enough sample set, you would look for percentage of players that “don’t get/perform better” by some metric across both games. CounterStrike, you’d find many more players who play the same number of hours but exhibit no demonstrable increase in performance.
The more “Grindy” a game is, the more time correlates with performance across the set of all players. I’d probably define Grindiness to be an attribute of a game, tied to a specific performance metric, between 0 and 1.
I’m not opposed to doing a deeper talk on this using more maths and research. But that would be effort. We’re sticking to the inclusive definitions for a reason: to skip to abstract points about game design and play.
The implication I’m getting here is that the idea that you can “grind for skill” is oxymoronic.
A game like Dark Souls by this definition has no grinding. In order to beat the game you have to beat 4 bosses in any order, followed by a fifth. All of this can be done at level 1 with no equipment. This can be and has been done by veterans of the game.
Conversely a game like pokemon basically cannot be done without grinding. Those numbers matter and in a turn based system there’s no way for any amount of skill to help you when the opponents hit faster and harder than you do.
What if a grinding mechanic is one that allows for increased success due to time spent by an agent other than the player? If I have a bot level me on WoW for a while, then I’ll come back and be more powerful and be more successful. If I have bot play Counterstrike on my account, when I start playing again my character won’t be stronger and I won’t be more skilled, so my success will be the same.
Whether a bot does the playing for you or not, the point is that your success is related to the expenditure of time and not any changes to the actual player.
This fails Scott’s definition. If you have a bot play zelda breath of the wild or dark souls then you come back. You’ll do better because you’ll have more health and better armor and weapons.
You won’t necessarily do better. Give a newbie the controller to Breath of the Wild with the best armor and loaded with the best weapons. Lynel will kill them no problem.
Maybe? They still might get fucked up if the bad guys have lightning. Against some regular bokoblins they probably won’t die unless they really really suck, but they could have a very sad time indeed depending on the circumstances.
Whether or not they have a good or bad time objectively is irrelevant, it’s how they’d do relative to how they’d have done had a bot not given them all dem items.
I argue scrub with amazing items > scrub with no items every time and all circumstances.
There’s a meaningful difference between that and a JRPG. In a game like Final Fantasy, you reach a point where you absolutely can not fail. Numbers are so high, decisions become irrelevant. Pushing almost any combination of random buttons will result in beating the final boss once you have enough levels. You also can not succeed at Final Fantasy without spending the time. Speed runners with tons of skill can not avoid grinding. Speed runners of Zelda can just go beat Ganon with a stick.
All you’ve really argued is that grinding is essential to win some games but not to win others. It’s not a good argument for why one contains grinding and the other doesn’t. There’s a large margin of skill levels in Zelda where you could win with late game armor but not with a stick. Also have you actually fought a Lynel with late game armor? You take maybe 4 hearts tops from the most powerful attacks, and it’s trivial to have dozens of healing items. As long as you’re competent enough to heal you can win by button mashing.
I hate to be the person to defend WoW, but there’s definitely skill involved in that game. Especially in PvP, knowing when to use a specific skill or spell, knowing how to counter someone else’s stuff, knowing how to deal with a Paladin versus a Rogue, how to work in a team, all this requires skill.
Maybe not in the main PvE game of WoW, although high level dungeons and Raids are probably exceptions to this, yeah sure, WoW is a grind and as long as you keep playing, you’ll get better gear and be able to kill more powerful things. But in Raids, and absolutely in PvP, someone who has sunk 100 hours into the game is going to do better than someone who’s only played the game for 10 hours, every single time, even if you given them the exact same character with the exact same gear.
But, you have to pay/grind to play to play those raids, since you have to GET to the level and GET the gear to be able to do it.
Now, BotW, you can’t grind in a traditional sense: you can’t just do the same shrine over and over again to level up your hearts. You have to keep solving different puzzles and doing different things to gain much of anything.
[quote=“Naoza, post:24, topic:312”]
The implication I’m getting here is that the idea that you can “grind for skill” is oxymoronic.
[/quote]Of course you can grind for skill. It’s just that most of the time, people call it “Practice.”
