Is grinding bad/outdated design?

[loa]

If the progression system is not in the way of speedrunning it, it's a better game.

 

[BarryMcCociner]

This question boils down to a lot of "it depends."

See, a lot of Elite: Dangerous players are recently criticizing the new "grinding" Engineers mechanics. But as anyone who plays Elite can tell you, the whole game is a grind.

So what's the problem with the Engineers? First, the RNG aspect of the grind is set up in a way that players don't get to roll the dice enough, making the random aspect feel a little unfair but that's beside the grinding point.

The main reason this is a shitty grind is you don't get to see the incremental progress you make during your grind. In my experience, most people don't care about grinding as long as they can see the progress they make. It doesn't matter if it takes them six minutes or six hours to progress 2%, as long as the game communicates to them that they've made 2% progress to their goal.

So in order for players to enjoy a grind, they need to be able to see the progress they make in some way, otherwise it can take something that's equal to knocking out drywall with a sledgehammer, and it makes you feel like you're trying to whittle down a mountain with a hammer and chisel.

 

[Dalisclock]

I'm gonna throw out that if forced grinding is responsible for a significant portion of the game time, it's being done wrong. If a game boasts 100 hours of content, but only 20 hours are actual content and the rest is grinding so you can survive to get to the next bit of content, it's basically a 20 hour game which is lying to you by putting in 80 hours of time wasting so it can pad it's own numbers and claim "Oh, look! Just $60 for 100 hours of stuff to do! Isn't that a great deal?"

I'd prefer the 20 hour game with no grinding needed, to be honest(assuming the content is worth playing through of course).

 

[Achelexus]

Its only grinding if it isn't fun. A slight variation of the idea that games - fun = work.

Pretty much this, if the battle system isn't overly boring and repetitive, grinding can be quite fun.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

So long as it's not mandatory for progression, it's fine. It's when grinding is the only means to a the end of quest, like if you have to gather 20 bear taints to progress but said taints only have a 10% drop rate or something, that it becomes a serious problem.

Lmao, yeah stuff like that was my only real gripe about the Witcher series.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I'm gonna throw out that if forced grinding is responsible for a significant portion of the game time, it's being done wrong. If a game boasts 100 hours of content, but only 20 hours are actual content and the rest is grinding so you can survive to get to the next bit of content, it's basically a 20 hour game which is lying to you by putting in 80 hours of time wasting so it can pad it's own numbers and claim "Oh, look! Just $60 for 100 hours of stuff to do! Isn't that a great deal?"

I'd prefer the 20 hour game with no grinding needed, to be honest(assuming the content is worth playing through of course).

Amen to the vast majority of that, with the only exception being games like Souls and MGV. To me that type of grinding is tolerable considering the breadth of gameplay and the rewards that follow.

 

[Maphysto]

Yes. By definition, grinding is an artificial lengthening of gameplay by forcing the player to do busywork before their character(s) are powerful enough to continue with actual progression. It's boring, unfun, and needs to be purged from the philosophy of videogame design.