Grinding

[Varil]

I consider it "grinding" if you're doing a repetitive task in lieu of actually advancing the game in some way. Doing a sidequest because it's fun and offers an interesting task(A special dungeon, an interesting side-story, something) is fine. Doing a sidequest because you need like 1000 more experience to level and if you have to kill 40 monsters you may as well have a quest to do it is not fine.

I haven't played GW2(on my todo), but a lot of free-to-play games tend to have a lot of grind to them, even if it's quested grind. Kill 30 of a given enemy, collect 15 of their special drop, then kill an associated "boss" monster before moving to the next "tier" of enemy was a pattern I saw in one game. I haven't experienced this in many single-player games, really. At least not on purpose. Dragon's Dogma was a little grindy, though it only rarely felt so because the combat was the main purpose of the game. Skyrim generally didn't feel like grinding because there was usually SOME kind of story behind a given dungeon, even if the story was just an excuse to go through yet another horde of Draughr. I could see where it could be seen as grindy, though.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I agree with the sentiments in the vid. Grinding for me is killing enemies over and over to gain levels without any context.

When you add context in the form of storyline, environment and hell even progessing your own character that's when it becomes non grindy.

 

[Twilight_guy]

No. Grind has a meaning, if if people misuse it. People misuse the term RPG all the damn time, but its still a useful phrase even when people start thinking any game that includes the words 'level #' is an RPG. You may have to establish its meaning when using the word to describe a situation but I'm not going to ban it because people are misusing it, I'm going to state its real meaning and use it in its right context to try and combat misuse.

 

[J Tyran]

I've never understood how GW got such fanatical fans.

I tried GW, got bored in like 10 minutes. It's great if you've ever wanted to know what it's like to be boring faceless soldier #405 who never does anything of any importance.

Guildwars like EVE online appeals to the players that dislike MMOs where every one is the hero that is going to save the world. Chosen one hero stories are fine in single player games but in MMOs where there are two thousand other chosen ones saving the world it feels lame.

You can almost imagine two heroes in the bar having a conversation "yeah I destroyed Oggleton the Tonn last night, stopped him from destroying the universe" "heh you did? I destroyed him on Monday. Bills killing him tonight though" "oh thats cool it saves me bothering, I might go and kill Magnus Maximus Deitus instead, he was going to destroy the universe too.............."

 

[Dimitriov]

I agree that the word can be misused. However, it can certainly be applied to other areas than simply killing monsters. For example: playing a number of different songs on a game like Guitar Hero to unlock new songs is obviously not grinding, but if you had to complete one song exactly 20 times to unlock something that would be grinding.

Or let's say that in Skyrim I want to level my conjuration skill. If I go out to find quests and monsters to fight so that I can use conjuration spells and level it I am not grinding, but if I stand on top of the College of Winterhold summoning Frost Atronachs and then immediately banishing them over and over again... well, that does sound like grinding.

To be fair I personally tend to enjoy grinding, I find it soothing and meditative sometimes. Whether it was farming for Felcloth in WoW by spending 3 straight hours killing the same group of Satyrs over and over again, or the aforementioned conjuration leveling
but then, I do have some OCD tendencies.

But mostly I just wanted to thank you for using the word "stentorian."

(slams his dictionary down with stentorian fury)

It gave me a great sense of pleasure to read it, as it is a lovely word and one that is used far too infrequently.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

I always thought that 'grinding' was only applicable to RPGs and thats about it. You farm items and you grind levels but essentially they are just the same thing with a slightly different context.

Some people misuse 'grinding' instead of 'boring' and those people are 'morons'. The same level of intelligence as those people who misuse the word 'epic' or 'fail' or say things out loud like 'O-M-G!' or 'LOL!'...feed them all to the christians and be done with it

 

[Rasor]

I would only use the term grinding in a few cases
- Repetition of an action to lengthen game.
Eg. kill 100 of X to proceed

- Completion of an action\task for items
Eg. Doing or killing something has a small chance of rewarding you with the items you want. Or needing a lot of one item with only 1-2 ways to get it.

- Having the only way to level up to be defeating the same few foes over and over.
This also means that there are no side quests available (applies for XP or any other score point system.)

Doing some side quests to level up is not grinding, that's game content.
Repeating one side quest to level up is grinding.

 

[evilneko]

It's really, really simple actually, and the guy in the video actually touched on it, but then went off in another direction. He came so very close to actually saying it, too:

If it's not fun, it's a grind. It's really that simple.

 

[Signa]

I got no problems with grinds if the process is engaging enough, and the rewards are a good enough payoff.

Case in point: Castlevania Aria/Dawn of Sorrow. I had no problem grinding for new souls, even after I beat the game. Every enemy had a chance to offer something new to the game, as long as I got lucky enough. It also was a bit of a puzzle to figure out what the fastest way was to kill an enemy fast and then repeat without killing yourself with recklessness. Sometimes you were lucky enough to find an enemy outside of a save room, so you could just use your best 1-hit kill spell, and then repeat as many times you needed to, because your health and mana were full just 1 room away.

 

[PrinceOfShapeir]

Grinding isn't bad when the combat is actually fun. For example, in Star Trek Online I had no problem grinding because the space combat is a blast.