Grind

[blargney the second]

Both respondents and fellow players are now at 34.1% never or used to, and 65.9% sometimes or often.

*cough* confirmation bias *cough*

That being said, I do agree with you that 25-30% of respondents subjectively deciding they're in an ambiguous "often grind" category could be an indication that something unusual is going on. Of those ofteners, some fraction of them will be "not my cup of tea" false positives: ie the combats that they decide are grindy could be wildly exciting to other people.

The rest of those "often" respondents should be the ones that have an actual problem going on in their game. It would be interesting to conduct some informal research to see what commonalities those groups experience. I wonder what questions we could ask them that would help us isolate the specific details that can cause grind?

Generally speaking, I suppose it would be useful to determine grind descriptions and frequency, party and encounter composition, player habits, house rules, DM and player preparedness/organization, and typical monster and party tactics.

 

[KarinsDad]

*cough* confirmation bias *cough*

In the post you quoted, I was just pointing out the current percentages and you extrapolated that to mean that I am confirming something. Hmmmm.


Unlike your assumptions about my bias, I actually voted Sometimes for me and Sometimes for my fellow players.

Out of the 9 players in our group since 4E came out, I have had two players quit to go play Pathfinder instead (one of those players was in our group for 7 years and the other for 4 years, the former played 4E for over a year and the latter for almost a year before giving up on it) and one player who wants to play almost any different game system, we just don't have a DM willing to run a different game system on the day he can make it. Coincidently, that's approximately the same 3 in 10 percentage of the respondents who stated that they often experience Grind in the game. The other six players are for the most part having a good time with 4E.

Granted, grind was not the only 4E issue for these three players. But, it is definitely a contributing factor.

That being said, I do agree with you that 25-30% of respondents subjectively deciding they're in an ambiguous "often grind" category could be an indication that something unusual is going on. Of those ofteners, some fraction of them will be "not my cup of tea" false positives: ie the combats that they decide are grindy could be wildly exciting to other people.

Of those 23% nevers, some fraction of them will be "this is my cup of tea and is great no matter how dragging" false positives: ie the combats that they decide are not grindy could be excrutiatingly grindy to other people.


Is this false positive theory of yours confirmation bias for an opinion that you have already formed? Does it work in all directions, or are only the people who responded "often" wishy washy and unsure of their answers?

The rest of those "often" respondents should be the ones that have an actual problem going on in their game. It would be interesting to conduct some informal research to see what commonalities those groups experience. I wonder what questions we could ask them that would help us isolate the specific details that can cause grind?

Generally speaking, I suppose it would be useful to determine grind descriptions and frequency, party and encounter composition, player habits, house rules, DM and player preparedness/organization, and typical monster and party tactics.

I agree. More information is always better. Why don't you create a poll?

It does seem likely, though, that we can conclude that with the current 30% of respondents stating "grind happens often for me", that approximately 3 in 10 players here see some grind issues and they see them frequently enough to respond as they did.

In fact, the 37% Sometimes group is probably a spectrum that ranges from "once in a blue moon" to "once every few sessions", so we cannot just flippantly conclude that all of them are in the "once in a blue moon" category either.

Bottom line: 4E grind exists to some substantial level, regardless of some people's opinions to the contrary.

 

[Sagiro]

It does seem likely, though, that we can conclude that with the current 30% of respondents stating "grind happens often for me", that approximately 3 in 10 players here see some grind issues and they see them frequently enough to respond as they did.

A note about "confirmation bias" and self-responding polls like this.

People are much more likely to respond to a self-reporting poll when they have strong, and especially strongly negative, feelings about the subject of the poll. In other words, given a poll with a subject of "Grind," people who don't think it's an issue are much more likely to ignore the poll altogether, where people who experience and dislike grind are much more likely to open the poll and vote.

So while it's (obviously) accurate to say that 30% of poll respondents report significant grind, the percentage of ENWorld 4E forum users as a whole who find it problematic is likely to be significantly less.

-Sagiro

 

[renau1g]

I apologize if I offended you.

My intent was to point out that 4E tactics basically require visual cues. Audio cues seem agonizingly slow and interrupt the DM. The players need to know what is going on and so does the DM.

Claiming that the game can be played with statuses not being visually available to the players and without slowing the game down seems suspect.

If the player needs to know status information, s/he would need to ask the DM over and over again: "Is this one bloodied? Is that one bloodied? Is that the one we stunned, or is this the one we stunned?". And unlike your claim to the contrary, bloodied is an extremely important status to know for focus fire.

One option I've toyed with was buying a large dry-erase whiteboard and easel to track initiatives & status effects. I would put the player who also DM's in charge of it as he helps me out when I'm "behind the screen". That way the flow can be there, it's spelled out and the players don't have to ask me "what's the brown token mean again?"

 

[blargney the second]

In the post you quoted, I was just pointing out the current percentages and you extrapolated that to mean that I am confirming something. Hmmmm.

There was no particular apparent reason to lump the "sometimes" with the "often" in your interpretation. To be fair, it appeared to be assimilation bias rather than confirmation bias.

Of those 23% nevers, some fraction of them will be "this is my cup of tea and is great no matter how dragging" false positives: ie the combats that they decide are not grindy could be excrutiatingly grindy to other people.

Is this false positive theory of yours confirmation bias for an opinion that you have already formed? Does it work in all directions, or are only the people who responded "often" wishy washy and unsure of their answers?

Nah, it's simpler than that: if it ain't a problem, it ain't a problem.

Ultimately this is a question about people's perception of an experience. If they don't perceive a problem, then it simply doesn't matter. (FWIW, the false positives I'm talking about are the people I've seen posting here that complain about the HUGE GRIND of a 30-40 minute fight.)


I'm actually thinking of constructing an off-ENW multi-question survey, similar to those customer feedback surveys WotC pops out every once in a while. If I were to start up another thread, would anybody be interested in helping me figure out a good batch of questions?

 

[KarinsDad]

One option I've toyed with was buying a large dry-erase whiteboard and easel to track initiatives & status effects. I would put the player who also DM's in charge of it as he helps me out when I'm "behind the screen". That way the flow can be there, it's spelled out and the players don't have to ask me "what's the brown token mean again?"

Here is what we did today. We had a 13+ round mega-encounter where a Major (Epic level) Primordial was going to escape (and cause major future campaign havoc) if the (Paragon level) PCs did not prevent it from escaping from its prison (the Primoridial was going to escape at the end of round 15, so the PCs succeeded with about 1.5 rounds to spare).

Before the game, I put duct tape on approximately half of our colored plastic status tokens to indicate an effect that ends with a saving throw and did not change the tokens for the rest.

I also changed the meaning of some of our colors to:

1) Buff effect
2) Debuff effect
3) Anti movement condition (i.e. Slowed, Immobilized, Restrained)
4) Anti action condition (i.e. Dazed, Stunned, Petrified, Dominated)
5) Miscellaneous condition (i.e. Blinded, Deafened, Weakened)
6) Bloodied
7) Fighter Mark
8) Swordmage Mark
9) Avenger Oath of Enmity
10) Ranger Hunter's Quarry

It worked fairly well in this 4 hour encounter. As DM, I could just glance at a PC or an NPC and I knew the basics and often the specifics of what statuses were on the creature. Previously, effects 1 through 5 were more haphazard in our system (e.g. having two colors, one for dazed and one for stunned caused more confusion because of too many colors that people had a harder time remembering) and the tokens did not have the save ends indicators.

The groupings of similar conditions 3, 4, and 5 along with the duct tape helped remind me and the players which specific effects were in play, even though we had Slowed, Immobilized, Dazed, Stunned, Dominated, and Blinded show up in this encounter at various times.

And yes, this did average 18 minutes per round, but we did have several zones, a wall, buffs, debuffs and conditions all over the place and 16 total creatures (7 NPC enemies, 2 NPC allies, 1 summoned, and 6 PCs) at various points in the fight. All in all, I was fairly pleased with how just a little more organization than we had previously used on the tokens helped control such a massive encounter. It was also fun for the players when the one Huge NPC enemy died and we took 8 tokens off of it. It's amazing how much can be going on simultanously.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I was one of those who did not vote, and for the reason that I don't see it as a real problem, and have discussed this many times.

I know soem groups find it a problem, and I do on occasion, but there are lots of good ideas out there to cut down grind, and will probably be using some of them in the futrue to make fights run faster. Not due to grind, but faster combats leaves more time for other things.

 

[Argyle King]

One thing I found to be odd over this past weekend while trying to teach people a different system was that combat with a system the players barely knew previous to the session seemed to have less grind than 4E.

Even though they know 4E far better, it seems as though there are larger parts of 4E encounters where the actions of the enemy don't seem to matter; as such, this leads to a waning interest on the part of the players in some cases. To clarify what I mean - in many battles, it seems to be pretty obvious the monsters are on the losing end of things even though they have a ton of HP left. Lack of threat combined with a lot of HP leads to grind. I also feel the power system structure is sometimes part of the problem; once you've burned your powers, you don't have many options, and combat seems repetitive as you stand there and hack away at the monster.

Contrasting that with the other system I was teaching was interesting. Even though the first few rounds went slowly due to being unsure of how some of the combat actions worked, it seemed to pick up very quickly, and all parts of the fight seemed meaningful. Rarely was there a time when a combat seemed like a complete wash one way or the other, and, when that did occur, it didn't drag out. I also feel as though part of this is due to the fact that the other system I was using isn't locked into the power structure that 4E has; all options were available at all times instead of the players getting toward the end of the combat and needing to resort to at-wills.

 

[Jhaelen]

I also feel as though part of this is due to the fact that the other system I was using isn't locked into the power structure that 4E has; all options were available at all times instead of the players getting toward the end of the combat and needing to resort to at-wills.

First I have to say, I've not yet experienced the grind in 4e.

I don't know just how many options the other system provides (what system is it, btw?!) but I'd like to point out that in 4e there are several combat options available to everyone at all times: charge, bull rush, grapple, etc.

That's at least as many or more options than are available in e.g. Runequest or Earthdawn (to mention two systems I've played for years).

There's also the (oft forgotten) 'do something cool!' option, when you're out of dailys and encounter powers. A bit of creativity and/or utilizing available terrain features allows you to use non-standard maneuvers that can be more effective than repeated use of an at-will.

DMG Page 42 is your friend!

I think the kind of terrain and the kind of enemies present will the biggest influence on the probability of a grind experience occuring.

Personally, I feel, about the only improvement for 4e combat that was a bit lacking until PHB3 came around has been the lack of skill powers. It would be great if you could pick up more of them, though (i.e. without replacing class utilities)!

 

[renau1g]

Skill power feat lets you grab more of them. For some builds that aren't feat-intensive, this is a great feat to grab. There's a lot of excellent skill powers out there.

Skill Power

Heroic Tier
Prerequisite: 2nd level
Benefit: You gain a skill power of your level or lower from a skill in which you are trained.