Grind has both a bad side and a flip side to it. It gives you a sense of achievement when you managed to research and acquire thorugh pain. When people see it, its also a sign of your achievement. This is opposed to a game of wallet warriors where MWO threatens to be.
I always find myself feeling that MWO feels somewhat empty. I went straightaway and bought my dream mechs. Now that I have gotten it, now what? I feel empty. Other than eliting and mastering the mech, I feel I have no purpose. This is one of the reasons I wonked out of MWO last year and played WoT, then moved on to War Thunder. There I feel I need to do something, I am researching a new Yak, also reaching a new Griffon Spitfire and a Ki-84 Hayate, as well as Panther II tank and an M48 Patton.
It is only because of Community Warfare I am back in MWO. Because it gives my fights a purpose, win or lose. There is something I want to achieve, help conquer and defend planets and attain a rank of distinction with my chosen faction.
Grind makes people pay for microtransactions and other little things that sustain the game. If you don't have enough grind, you don't have a proper microtransaction economy, that forces the game to rely on macrotransactions instead, like creating new content and putting them in early access paywalls, like all these Packs and Waves you see in MWO right now. Every patch WoT and War Thunder unleashes new vehicles, tanks plus planes for the latter, and I don't have to pay $120 for some kind of early access. Its all free, I just have to gind for them as a goal. The length of the grind depends on the tier of the vehicle, low tiers, quick grind, high tiers, low grind.
The other purpose of grind in WoT is that it forces players to require a certain level of experience before they move on to the next tier. The highest tiers in WoT are people with several thousands of battles, over 10,000, or even 20,000. They have little need for an ELO here because it assumes when you reach that tier, you got those thousands of battles under your belt to prove your salt. The whole tier system, which MWO lacks, is intended to separate newbies from highly experienced players. Play the early era tanks for the noobs, and the powerful late era tanks for the experienced. During my time in WoT, the number of stomps I experience is far less than in MWO where in MWO stomps seems to be the norm rather than the exception.
The top levels though, of WoT, are so competitive, its just a toxic experience. There are statwhores endless studying their stats (WoT gives a lot of data, and even brings them to a mobile app). There are also plenty of esports pros. The number of insults being thrown at when you don't perform (uninstall the game please noob). There is this third party mod called XVM that marks players win rates above their heads (Why WoT even allows this is beyond me) and calculates game winning percentages. And while XVM is not accurate all the time, you got players quitting a team before a match because they think thanks to XVM its going to lose.
So somewhere along, I just decided to say **** this. Its too bad, some of their new maps like Stalingrad and Kharkov were awesome.
I will check out World of Warships when it comes out in open beta though.
Edited by Anjian, 21 February 2015 - 10:31 PM.
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