Atmas - Taking the fun out of gaming.

[Worm]

Perhaps. One could make an arguement that they are one in the same. If the system was implemented better, to allow for a perceived to be fairer, time spent = reward then perhaps we wouldn't be having this discussion.

I don't know if there is a hypothetical way to implement something that takes weeks or months that people won't just grind out in days and complain about how awful it is. You have to put a limit on things other wise people just do the equivalent of eating candy for every meal, and somehow it's the candy's fault for their stomach ache. I personally don't mind grindy stuff, I did the Insane in the Membrane achievement in World of Warcraft and I also would farm certain rep mounts and other rare drops. I hate to throw this out, because I think it's misused a lot, but I think the real issue is entitlement. People felt they were entitled to get these items as FAST AS POSSIBLE and because of that, because they sat there counting the hours they wasted, because they sat their irritated that what was already rightfully theirs was removed by some arbitrary RNG well because of all that some of them got fantastically mad. The problem naturally can't be their behavior because they are of course well adjusted and mature adults, so the problem HAS TO BE THE GRIND.

I'm not 100% for all grinds either, I felt the WoW Grand Marshall grind was far beyond what anyone should be expected to do as well as some other very low drop rate things. However I don't think there is a way to implement a grind right now-a-days. No matter how greatly it was implemented, even if it had it's own special fates that were super fun and amazing, eventually some guy is going to freak out because he did the fate 100 times and still hasn't gotten the item that they owe him. It's unfortunate that everything has to be either a raid drop or a certain number of days of token capping, but I honestly don't know what would make people happy beyond that.

EDIT: Heck these forum goers did the same thing with the Crystal Tower attunement. Rather than simply waiting for things to be fixed they just sat there 6 hours waiting for the Fate to pop and got mad. Being unable to blame themselves that anger got directed at the game. It's times like this I remind myself that forum goers are not necessarily representative of player base. This is just something that will happen time and time again.

[Deathscythe343]

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You're absolutely right. I don't think there is a good way to implement a grind that can takes weeks to months. I think, in the end, it has to be a compromise. A lot of the people I have talked to are alright with the book portion of the quest because they know exactly what they must do to complete it. The problem is to do, anywhere from 1 to 1,000,000, fates to get 1/12th of the necessary parts to complete the quest. In another thread someone suggested that the fate portion could have been done where players needed to do x number of fates in order to receive their atma. His suggestion allows players to still grind out the fates, and give the people who dislike the system a goal that they can see visually progressing toward the end.

In addition to the reasons you mentioned, I would also lay some of the blame on the gaming community. Within it there has always been this kind of need or peer pressure to get these things done as quickly as possible.