The Case For Grinding in RPGs

[Rozalia1]

Those that state JRPGs as being the top example of grinding...I'm unsure if they have actually played any...or if they have than they need to get a bit better.

I've played a great many JRPGs in my time, and in the large majority all that is needed is to do every enemy encounter as you go through the dungeons. Just need to know how to play. When I was young I had trouble with the likes of Lolithia, Boomerang, Gaia Core, Melfice, Seymour Natus + Flux...in my most recent playthrough of those games however they posed little threat.

That isn't to say there aren't ones that won't be problematic if you don't kill a couple of guys extra here or there...but I wouldn't say they are the majority.

 

[ssjdkcrew]

CAR theory seriously. From Glued to Games.

It helps us satisfy the needs in our lives.

Grinding is basically part of competence: The feeling of mastering. The sense that you're growing, learning, and progressing.

The growing and progressing part is what's part of grinding. Since you grind for exp (grow) and grind to get loot to tackle the harder aspects of the game (progression).

Right. Insofar as you empathise with the character in the game, you share in the experience of his/her victories/accomplishments in this way.

the meaning behind Bruce Lee's quote is that by practising one type of kick you are able to understand pretty much everything related to that one kick, all the pro's and cons and just what you are capable of

you don't get anything from sitting on a chair moving a mouse and typing all day

Right. I agree with all of this. I just don't see that this is in any way a reply/refutation to what I said in the OP.

so how exactly do you train anything other than micromanagement and move the mouse around (plus clicking)

your character gets better, not you

Here, you pose a question, and then immediately answer it. In my original quote, I said...

1. Simulated training.

Imitating this factor of skill or character improvement in a natural way (rather than, for example, buying new skills at the local shop, a-la Spider-man 2,) is going to involve repetition, to simulate the repetition that would be involved in *actually* training that skill.

In short, I draw a distinction between *simulated* training, and *actual* training. Your evaluation of the meaning of Bruce Lee's quote, and your analysis of the actual benefits of grinding for long periods succeed in proving that grinding in a video game is not *actual* training. However, they don't prove that it's not *simulated* training, which is all it really needs to be.

Any story that involves a complex issue such as time travel can be difficult to follow. Ultimecia knew that you (Squall, etc) were going to kill her, so her plan to compress time is a means to becoming a God. Which would give her the power needed to defeat you. Her defeat causes time to loop, because she is still going to be born in the future and the cycle starts itself all over again.

I was able to follow that part of the story just fine. My issues are to do with the behavior of the "heroes" in response to her. They hire an assassin who's never killed anyone to perform this enormously-important political assassination, several characters have motivations that make little sense, and the fact that they really have no plan for winning during their fight with her really made the whole thing feel off to me. Also, I wish they'd just come out and said that the gunblade was magic. It's the only way to explain how it works.

Random battles are a major hindrance to exploration. If I want to go over and check out a corner of the map, I have to go there fighting enemies (fine), check to see if there is something worth anything there (which is probably not), then I have to come back to my starting location fighting enemies along a path I just fucking cleared (not fine).

This is easily resolved by giving the characters a spell of "return" or something like that. I've seen this done effectively in many games, so it's not really the random encounters that are the problem, but the way some games force you to backtrack. I certainly agree that forced backtracking can be frustrating, and detract from the game.

Also, random battles are totally immersion breaking in the fact that the world is supposed to be teeming with creatures and yet it is barren with nothing.

This totally depends on how random battles are done. In some games, you can see the bad guys from a distance before they attack you (Tales of Symphonia, Legend of Zelda 2, Morrowind, etc...) yet the type and number of enemies encountered can be largely random still.

Just because a game doesn't have random battles does not mean you can't have random encounters where say an enemy pops out from under a bridge and stuff like that.

Oh, I see. You're using the term "random battles" to mean something different than I am.

Several RPGs don't have random battles and aren't any less fun. A game like XCOM has enemies at random positions on the map, but the battles aren't random. And, I can predict that almost every battle in your standard JRPG will play out just like 99.9% of other battles regardless if the game has random battles.

I'm thinking of something more along the lines of a game like Shining Force, where every battle is in a set place, and there are never any random factors in them. Sure, games like that can also be fun, but I just don't see that random battles are a real problem, in and of themselves.

OP what you're running into is the fact that much of the western core market isn't interested in repeating actions for higher numbers as a central mechanic. This idea features more prominently in the mobile and eastern markets

I guess I'm a little confused. Are you saying I should buy a mobile gaming device, or are you saying I should learn to read japanese?

Additionally you seem to be under the impression that it's an "RPG" thing. It isn't RPGs are named after, and built upon, the classic Pen and Paper games. These games had another living breathing human being who could tailor the experience to the strengths (or weaknesses) of the party. At no point in a typical DnD module would there be a section that said *and then the party fought goblins for an hour so they could level up and the fighter could get a totally boss new ability*. Grinding is generally "added" to lengthen a game, or to lock content away for the sake of providing bonus content to reward more dedicated players.

This is really just a distinction in terms of the way you describe it. GM's don't *describe* questing that way, but they may have you get attacked by kobolds on multiple occasions, giving you more experience when you defeat them.

In any case, the fact that no human being is GMing your game is pretty much a necessary part of all single-player games, so the issue isn't that, but rather, how do you simulate the other functions of an RPG without a supervising GM?

Your comment on work depends on what we're talking about work-wise. Your body is moving and expending energy to have you breathe, but you don't become a super-breather as you get older. RPG mechanics are abstract, and were necessarily so to get so many ideas across with limited tech. This is why things like "hit points" exist. It's actually kinda funny seeing people get the crap kicked out of them for half an hour in a JRPG when HP was meant to be, conceptually, both a matter of injury and of overall stamina.

Three things feed into this, I feel.

First, the time scale of battles in JRPGs is heavily stylized; particularly when battles are turn-based, and the same is true of battles in PNP RPGs. However, this need not be the case, and in games like the Elder Scrolls, it's often not.

Secondly, part of this is to indicate difference in strength. A man, for example, could punch a bull until he's blue in the face, and as long as he doesn't get gored, he might keep it up for hours, without making any headway. The same is true of one character trying to fight another, with vastly-greater endurance or durability.

Finally, many RPGs feature healing spells and/or potions, which further increase the amount of time that one can get pounded for during a fight.

I certainly agree that there are many things in RPGs that can be un-stylized, to the benefit of the player, but grinding isn't a stylization, but rather, the reverse.

As far as the utilization of player skill over character skill goes, I think both are totally valid if handled well.

Do you mean "both player and character simultaneously" or do you mean "player" and "character" *each* work in an RPG? One of those I agree with, the other not.

Ultimately short of neutering the depth of gameplay, player skill will always factor in. Knowing the optimal ability/gear combos and how to get them quickly in a game like Saga Frontier allows me to beat the game faster than somebody who just decided to grind right on through. Additionally, the more you make character skill abstract, the greater risk you have of not allowing the player into the experience, or even outright removing them. Personally, I can't get into games like Diablo, Borderlands, Torchlight etc. because their "RPG mechanics" essentially boil down to "increase a number on a random interval" and this interval directly affects how long it will take me to get through content. I'd rather just load up Quake and level up my personal ability to strafejump

I can get into Diablo II, because leveling involves strategy in that game. Less so, though still somewhat, in torchlight, and as I've said before, not all grinding is created equal. Grinding in Oblivion/Morrowind, QFG or Shining Force, I find more engaging, because the character/skill which is ground, is the one which receives the benefits, so player choices have consequences, even though it's ultimately the character who experiences the improvement through repetition.

 

[ssjdkcrew]

You can grind in Shining Force!?

Sure. As I said, grinding is just doing the same thing multiple times, to earn some reward, and in Shining Force, this can be done by using the spell "Egress" near the end of a battle. You'll return to the last church, with all the XP you gained from the fight. Then, go back and play the fight again, and all the enemies will have respawned. You can use this technique to grind up quite a bit of XP, though in Shining Force, the XP gained does decrease after a while, forcing you to move on to stronger enemies.

Grinding = boring.

Well, I don't agree.

Those that state JRPGs as being the top example of grinding...I'm unsure if they have actually played any...or if they have than they need to get a bit better.

I've played a great many JRPGs in my time, and in the large majority all that is needed is to do every enemy encounter as you go through the dungeons. Just need to know how to play. When I was young I had trouble with the likes of Lolithia, Boomerang, Gaia Core, Melfice, Seymour Natus + Flux...in my most recent playthrough of those games however they posed little threat.

That isn't to say there aren't ones that won't be problematic if you don't kill a couple of guys extra here or there...but I wouldn't say they are the majority.

The point is that those games offer one the *chance* to grind, which I like.

 

[-Dragmire-]

You can grind in Shining Force!?

Sure. As I said, grinding is just doing the same thing multiple times, to earn some reward, and in Shining Force, this can be done by using the spell "Egress" near the end of a battle. You'll return to the last church, with all the XP you gained from the fight. Then, go back and play the fight again, and all the enemies will have respawned. You can use this technique to grind up quite a bit of XP, though in Shining Force, the XP gained does decrease after a while, forcing you to move on to stronger enemies.

Ah right, forgot about that. Been a while since I played Shining Force for the Game Gear (towns were just menus in that one).

Odd though, I should have totally remembered that. I remember never using Egress for grinding initially because I didn't think of it. I used to play by focusing on a few characters to get all the experience because the game felt easier with a few powerhouses than a lower but even spread of levels. Going back to play the game a few years later, I saw the usefulness of Egress. Such a lightbulb moment. Granted that was about 15 years ago and I've come to associate grinding in strategy rpgs to games like Disgaea where, to grind, you get to choose a stage to play for the specific purpose of grinding.