Originally Posted by
thurgond
Normal MMORPG definitions:
Grind: Kill 20 rats for 100 experience each. Total 2,000 experience.
Content: Talk to guy with glowing thingie over his head. Run to field of rats and kill 10 rats for 100 experience each. Run back to guy and get 1,000 experience. Total 2,000 experience.
In today's theme park games, I find the content less fun than grinding because the running back and forth is less engaging than killing the marginally challenging rats. Back in the day when the way to level was to sit in one spot and pull rats until the players were half dead of boredom, hunger or both, that too was a boring grind.
In Xsyon, I find no need to grind any one skill for long. My usual routine is to run a forage, scavenge, gathering route. Back at camp I see what can be made from the stuff I've found and put the rest into bins. Seldom do I repeat the same recipe more than 4-5 times in one route. This may be interrupted if a tribe member or neighbor needs a basket/tool/armor/weapon I can make. There are also occasional interruptions from four and two legged critters that need to be hunted and killed. If I get thirsty, I jog down to the stream where I might do a little fishing or make 20 or so bricks for the wall.
To be sure, getting a craft skill to a high level, scavenging to the point where I can find good stuff regularly, finishing a long masonry wall or any other tough goal will take a lot of repetitions, but in Xsyon I'm finding there is less grinding the same set of actions over and over than in the competition.
In Xsyon like the real world, you need to set your own goals or let your tribe set them for you. As others have said, if you need the guys with the glowing thingies to set your goals, this may not be the game for you.
Ravelli