The Case For Grinding in RPGs

[Cybylt]

It depends. I feel ATLUS is god damn brilliant at this. Look at Persona 4, unless you know how to exploit it (which every Man and his mother claims is obvious) the game throws absurd amounts of encounters at you between bosses. BUT, it doesn't throw checkpoints, nor does the checkpoints heal you. This is very important, because it means you are constantly struggling to manage your leveling, your SP because your god damn useless without any, your HP and your dating sim remaining days which are precious and painful to lose but losing one can restore every other problem...but you lose precious social link days by doing so.

It meant that no matter how many encounters I refused to avoid on my way through dungeons, I never felt like I was grinding because it felt more like I was desperately managing supplies instead. Especially since every player insists that apparently taking three days per dungeon like it took me (that fox was simply impossible to pay, and had a habit of regening HP alone like an asshole) is considered blasphemy.

I actually disliked the grinding in Persona 4. It felt like a massive, very long grinding fest that interrupted the narrative. I usually beat it in one in game day, but it took forever, and distracted me from the aspects of the game I enjoyed most. It's worse if you lose, since you lose progress. Even though Persona 4 was superior, I think Persona 4 was better at managing grinding, since it actively encouraged you to grind for small increments at a time. Either way, I love both games.

P4 has grinding? Once you understand fusion and weaknesses you shouldn't ever need to go out of your way to fight any more enemies than what you face on the way to the boss. It has the problem of being trial and error when it comes to encounters but it's definitely not a system that encourages grinding.

 

[ssjdkcrew]

If the gameplay isn't fun, the leveling isn't fun.

If the game does grinding well, instead of badly, the game will also be fun.

There were skills to level and things to gain. For example, you had to play Survival/Tournaments to earn reward points to buy new clothes from the shop. I played because the gameplay was the best. The extra stuff gained were merely cherries atop the sundae.

As I said; not trying to get anything. Sure, you *can* get something, but it's not what you've been "trying" to do.

What you can accomplish is beating the all waves on Gold difficulty with a good squad of players, not farming Geth over and over to earn money just to buy card packs so you can then play how you really want. ME3 MP should've at least had a store where you could buy what you wanted instead of it all being luck-based.

Well, I certainly agree that luck-based gameplay is problematic at best; even in a good game. However, again, beating enemies on a high difficulty level is an accomplishment of the *player,* not the *character.*

Doing nothing but fighting monsters over and over again (the laziest and regrettably most common form of grinding) is irritating and tedious. However, I don't mind grinding if it has diversity and / or challenge to it. The best kind of grinding is the type that doesn't actually feel like you're grinding.

Well, as I said, there's good grinding and bad grinding. Good grinding is involving and engaging; getting you deeper into the character and making you care about them and their capabilities. Bad grinding is just running around in circles, pushing the same button, over and over again.

I think Persona 3 and 4 are excellent examples of this. Each day after school, you can choose to do one of various activities: Working a job, building a Social Link, fishing, going to the arcade, karaoke bar, cafe, or whatever dungeon area you'll be fighting in (I might be forgetting some of the possible activities, but you get the idea). Out of all these possibilities, the dungeons are the only places where you can actually fight monsters. Even so, everything you do feeds back to improving your character's ability to fight in some way. You're grinding no matter what you do, but it never actually feels like it.

It does sound like fun.

Even in other SMT games where the range of activities is less diverse, I don't find grinding all that boring. This is for two reasons:

1.) The rewards feel worth it. The demons you can fuse are dictated by what level you're at, so each level up comes with a diverse range of interesting new demons you can now fuse, and I look forward to just seeing the designs.

2.) It's actually challenging. Even if I'm in an area where I feel relatively comfortable, there's still at least a chance that I'll be killed. The games are known for being quite difficult, and if you make a mistake, even against somewhat weaker enemies, it can snowball into a defeat.

Those are some good ingredients for grinding, from the sounds of things.

It's not about instant gratification. It's about removing the Skinner Box bullshit from the game.

And replacing it with what? What do you replace it with, whereby the game can simulate dedication and work, which pays off in the end? Because from the sounds of things, all you're replacing it with is... instant gratification.

I played The Last of Us a couple weeks back and I think my completion time was ~25 hours (over 20 for sure) because I took my time. I was enjoying the game the whole time. There was no finding a room with a certain enemy and killing them over and over again to get them to drop something. There's no way you have more time available as an adult than a kid unless you don't have a job.

This is an excuse. Anyone has enough time to play an RPG if they're not in a hurry to finish it. Even if it takes all year to finish, it's still possible to win an RPG with a ton of grinding, even if you've got a job and a social life. All you have to do is commit about two or three hours a week to getting into the game and adopting this character as a personality.

I also notice you referring to luck-based gaming, which is not a required aspect of grinding, and indeed, is only barely related to grinding, as such.

The main reason, from a game standpoint, that you don't start with everything in an RPG is because it would overload the player at the start.

That's not true at all. There are quite a few games that give you many abilities right at the start, and just run you through them with a long tutorial stage. The reason why you don't get everything from the start, is because that's what it means to be a hero.

"A real Hero is someone who didn't start out strong or powerful, but uses his courage and brains and skills to become the best he can be."
Wolfgang Abenteuer; Adventurer's Guild Master, "Quest For Glory"

Being able to "break" the game is a sign of poor design as RPGs are supposed to be balanced.

No, the point of an RPG is to be a simulator of a fictional world/adventure, so that one can play as another role, rather than themselves.

Since when do RPG fans want to just get involved in fighting when the mood strikes them? Because most RPGs you fight more than anything else so if you like RPGs, you must like fighting, which is one of the main problems of the genre. RPGs don't actually require battle.

Neither does grinding.

This does beg the question of why you would want to simulate training though.

Because it's more satisfying. Simulated training can pay off in ways that real training doesn't.

Maybe in the GTA San Andreas sense where it doesn't have a huge impact on the gameplay and anything that does can also be acquired through normal gameplay.

Are you saying you don't want your effort to pay off? Is that really what you're saying?

In a fantasy or sci-fi RPG I don't see the point. A certain amount of suspension of disbelief is already in play, so why arbitrarily introduce some realism that also makes the game more tedious?

It only becomes tedious if you don't actually care about the character you're playing as, and if that *is* the case, why play an RPG?

None of this justifies that work being tedious though. Long and challenging is better than arbitrary and repetitive, which is what most grind amounts to.

True, but that's not the kind of grinding I'm talking about. The examples I gave were Kingdom Hearts, Elder Scrolls, Quest For Glory and Shining Force, and in all of those cases, there's either nothing arbitrary about it, or it's often very challenging.

Why do you need a videogame to give you that? If you want the feeling of overcoming a great obstacle, tell yourself you won't get any food until you do 1000 pushups. Or that you can't go on a holiday until you've folded 300 paper planes. Or that you won't get to watch a football game until you've kicked 1000 goals.

I don't think you understand. That is, in fact, the way I live my life. It's not that I need a video game to provide this; to provide something that I lack. Rather, a video game needs to provide this *for its own sake.* Because without it, the game is just not as enjoyable.

Question for those who mentioned Phantasy Star II...
...Unfortunately on my playthrough I never did quite finish it... made it all the way to the last dungeon but proceeding to the first level always caused the game to crash. Oh and I did have to cheat once, in the Dezo spaceport for the life of me I couldn't find the 4th exit. It may not seem like it at first but a dungeon that's designed so you can wander in circles and has 4 different exits you need to find is particularly cruel.

Whenever I play a game without a map book, I always draw the maps myself. My problem with the grinding in PS2 was its limited usefulness. Grinding in PS2 only effects HP and MP, which only effect endurability during a long string of fights; not actual capability against strong enemies. Yet, the enemies do keep getting stronger, and the only way you can keep up is by finding better weapons and armor. It wasn't a very good method of grinding. Indeed, it almost discouraged grinding entirely.

For the record, I made it all the way to the final boss, but I've never been able to beat him.

Also I'm not really commenting on grinding here, but the earliest JRPG's started with a number of elements to them. Towns, world maps, random battles, branching caves/mountain paths/etc, dungeons, and so on. The way I always thought of it was that towns were a sanctuary that gave you a place to relax, world maps were something you can explore, and dungeons were challenges to overcome. While some of it you could label a waste of time and could be streamlined, if you go to far in that direction you end up with something like FFXIII - walking in a straight line fighting a carefully allotted number of random battles and sitting back for cut scenes at properly timed intervals. In my opinion that's just as bad as the early genre grinding.

If you're going to go that route, just make a movie or an episodic series.

No one is saying to walk in a straight line, which FFX already did but people loved that anyways.

I didn't. I thought the leveling mechanic was too clunky and annoying, and incidentally, there were non-linear puzzles and dungeons in FFX, so no. It wasn't quite as bad as FFXIII.

In those early JRPGs, you walk ANYWHERE (outside of town) and you have to fight every few steps.

In my experience, it was fairly random in most games. You might walk only six squares, or sixty before being attacked.

I remember in FFVI, you had to fight enemies in a burning house when you are trying to go in there and save people.

Seemed to make sense at the time.

The horrible mechanic of random battles made exploring so time consuming.

Gosh! Going on dangerous adventures is such a pain in the butt! Look, no matter how you implement enemy attacks, it's going to interrupt your exploration timetable. But removing them all doesn't make for an exciting adventure, does it?

Say you want to explore some corner; well, you have to kill enemies on the way there (that's fine), but you also have to fight enemies on the way back (when you just fucking cleared a path).

Better RPGs have a return/teleport/egress/Farore's Wind ability, which lets you return quickly after your exploration.

Unless, you actually got something awesome, it was just a waste of time exploring.

That's what grinding is for. Even if you don't get something awesome, you still got experience (and often money,) and so you didn't waste your time.

I played very few JRPGs because even as a kid, I knew all that shit was just basically Skinner Box techniques (even though I didn't know of the Skinner Box then) to prolong the game and nothing else.

That's just a line people use to insult grinding, without actually having to point out something wrong with it.

And the turn-based battles weren't even very strategic to begin with (as positioning didn't even matter),

Well, that wasn't the way it was in FF4. In that game, you often had to keep the spellcasters in back, to increase their survivability, and fighters in the front, to improve their attack power. In games like, as I said, Shining Force, position mattered even more, since a lot depended on the attack ranges of each character.

1) Training
First, simulation for the sake of completeness sounds nice on paper, but if you stop and think a bit, you will soon realize a whole slew of OTHER things most games omit. For example, not many games simulate bathroom breaks, and with good reason: Because it isn't wanted or necessary in a game.

First, did you actually just compare going to the bathroom to the effort of honest work? That's simply not a valid comparison.

Secondly, yes, I have played games where your character uses the bathroom, and it subtracted nothing from the experience.

Third, just because many games omit one thing, doesn't mean they should also omit a completely different kind of thing, or they'd end up omitting everything.

Fourth, just because many games omit training doesn't mean that training should be omitted. Many games aren't RPGs, and many simply aren't very good, or make big mistakes in design. You can't decide these things with a popularity contest.

If you insist on pushing the art angle, then consider this: over-simulation is just as problematic, because if a game is too much like real life, then it loses focus on what's important.

Like what? What's important, if not the depiction of the world the game is trying to depict?

Second, the notion of "training".
At face value, training could describe two different things:
-i) Player capability
-ii) Character capability

If it's used for player capability, it's not a simulation. I'm only talking about training for the character, though the player can be involved in it.

Good games challenge the players' skill by changing the conditions of test, either directly (tougher jumping puzzles in a platformer), or indirectly (managing dwindling resources, like in an older RPG with random encounters).

Bad games only challenge the players' patience by forcing them to repeat an a test they have already completed an arbitrary number of times under the same conditions.

Right. There's good grinding and bad grinding.

2) Satisfaction of hard work
This also sounds plausible, but again, legitimate challenge (or even a good story) also provide satisfaction, and with much less waste in design.

No. A legitimate challenge is not a form of work, unless it's something that one has been trying (and failing) to accomplish for a good period of time, and there's no sense that one is approaching their goal until they hit it. When they do hit it, it's hit, and then it's over, like instant gratification.

A good story is essential to *any* RPG, but that, by itself, does not make a good game, since many things have good stories, other than games. If you mean, instead, that witnessing story developments is a good replacement for what I'm describing, then I will reply that that also is an instantaneous occurrence, which is had, then ended. It's all just mental or sense experiences that quickly pass away. That's not the same thing as the satisfaction that I was describing, which can only be gotten when effort pays off.

Skinner Psychology (especially when combined with a competitive element) explains the primary reason we allow ourselves to tolerate grind. As a tool-using species, it's instinctive behavior to appreciate and value payoff for effort beyond the immediate situation.

We're more than that. We can apprehend and appreciate the passage of time, and recognize what effect it has on us and on our emotional state, if we observe it impartially. Because of that, it's often not the immediate situation that matters.

However, as someone who has considered and recognized the value of time-efficiency and who can distinguish between necessary and unnecessary work, grind is much less of a benefit in design, and is more of an obstacle.

Why? It's that simple. Appealing to developers won't help, nor appealing to the populace. Those don't prove anything. It's just a popularity contest. Just provide a good reason why I'm wrong about this, and I'll listen and consider it seriously.

 

[Olrod]

Grinding is only good and fun when you don't NEED to do it.

Putting in time and effort to work towards being able to blast through the next few stages in a God-Mode-esque way is very satisfying.

Having to put time and effort in just to be able to survive the next Boss encounter is frustrating and bad game design.

 

[3asytarg3t]

The only thing more pointless than grinding in a game is a thread about it.

 

[Atmos Duality]

First, did you actually just compare going to the bathroom to the effort of honest work? That's simply not a valid comparison.

Out of context dismissal ahoy!

Secondly, yes, I have played games where your character uses the bathroom, and it subtracted nothing from the experience.

But did it add anything to the experience?
If you say "yes", I have nothing else to say except "well enjoy your digital bowel movements".

Third, just because many games omit one thing, doesn't mean they should also omit a completely different kind of thing, or they'd end up omitting everything.

Slippery Slope

Omission of one facet does not imply omission of all, otherwise there would be no game.

Fourth, just because many games omit training doesn't mean that training should be omitted. Many games aren't RPGs, and many simply aren't very good, or make big mistakes in design. You can't decide these things with a popularity contest.

It is a popularity contest, whether you like it or not.
You don't see many TV repair or sheep shagging simulators.

Gaming is a luxury in the free market.
Deal with it.

Like what? What's important, if not the depiction of the world the game is trying to depict?

Like the setting and mechanics.
Of course, there's a limit, as determined by what is or isn't a necessary level of detail for a given production.
Why? Because there's an added burden of cost associated with the added level of detail desired.

If it's used for player capability, it's not a simulation. I'm only talking about training for the character, though the player can be involved in it.

Why should the character care? They aren't real.
If you aren't "training" the player in use of mechanics or rules (or challenging them), then why bother?

Right. There's good grinding and bad grinding.

You had better distinguish then, because until you provide something that does so, there is no such thing as "good grind".
As "grind" specifically refers to "arbitrarily needless repetition".

Super Mario Bros never felt the need to mandate a minimum score to progress to the next level.
I never had to stop and grind points by stomping Koopa Troopas to continue.

Because the primary challenge of that game wasn't the score, it was winning. The score itself in fact was highly irrelevant.

No. A legitimate challenge is not a form of work, unless it's something that one has been trying (and failing) to accomplish for a good period of time, and there's no sense that one is approaching their goal until they hit it. When they do hit it, it's hit, and then it's over, like instant gratification.

Except there is work, or effort involved in everything we do.
In a game, or any creative medium, it's the TYPE of work that dictates the quality of gameplay.

A good story is essential to *any* RPG, but that, by itself, does not make a good game, since many things have good stories, other than games. If you mean, instead, that witnessing story developments is a good replacement for what I'm describing, then I will reply that that also is an instantaneous occurrence, which is had, then ended. It's all just mental or sense experiences that quickly pass away. That's not the same thing as the satisfaction that I was describing, which can only be gotten when effort pays off.

Non-sequitur

Story has absolutely NOTHING to do with grind, as grind is a purely-mechanics centric element.
(even when it's obfuscated by story, as is common in many RPGs)

We're more than that. We can apprehend and appreciate the passage of time, and recognize what effect it has on us and on our emotional state, if we observe it impartially. Because of that, it's often not the immediate situation that matters.

That's true, but true "personal" progress must come from recognizing our changing capabilities as we grow older (better and worse) and experience life. If games aim to emulate that even at its most basic level, mindless repetition and arbitrary time wasting is NOT acceptable.

Why? It's that simple. Appealing to developers won't help, nor appealing to the populace. Those don't prove anything. It's just a popularity contest. Just provide a good reason why I'm wrong about this, and I'll listen and consider it seriously.

Why? How about the fact I am aware that I have a finite amount of time to live and thus have a greater appreciation and value for it?

I'm not going to mince words on this: I am experienced enough to recognize when I'm bored or that my time is being deliberately wasted because of poor design (grind).

I don't want "instant gratification", because without challenge or build up there's no purpose.
But if there's something I want even less than than instant gratification, it's mindless repetition.

It's not easy to make games that accomplish that, but those games do exist, and you better believe I cherish them, because they are becoming rarer every year.

 

[ssjdkcrew]

Just to be clear if it is the least bit engaging I don't consider it to even be grinding.

When I say "grinding," what I mean is, "any time, in a game, when one performs the same kind of action more than once, in order to acquire some bonus or enhancement to their character." That's all. This encompasses pretty much all forms of leveling, whether they're engaging or not. I'm using the word in this way, because this is how I hear others use it. Anytime a gamer has the freedom to stop the incessant plot points for an hour or two, and just relax and gain strength with some fighting/in-game working, I've heard this denounced as "grind," and so it's this kind of "grind," that I defend. That target is staying where it is, thank you.

Give people a small reward for each time something is completed and they will be so compelled to do it all reason will be set aside just to get that next reward, and then the next, and then the next,...
It is certainly a very interesting observation of our brain, but it is none the less a principle that traps people in an infinite loop of pointless tedium... no part of that is a good thing.

What you just described is essentially how all video games work, even as far down the ladder as Tetris and pong. You're doing this over and over because of the reward you notice. You're moving blocks over and over, because when they disappear, you get more points, and don't have to worry as much about space.

In any case, RPGs are just about the only setting in which tedium (in the worst case scenario,) is guaranteed to not be pointless, since you always get a skill/level/gold/equipment/feature increase through it, and therefore it feels more like an accomplishment than the normal tedium, which we all face in our lives and jobs.

This stuff isn't really as black and white as people think

For example, in ME2, I considered doing that crummy space resource collection mini game as grinding cause it's pretty banal. (Since you do need it to get the perfect ending)

While I couldn't say the exact same thing as redoing those special high level maps in PoE because I enjoying doing them. (Risk and reward, you need to pay attention to your surrounding, etcetc) Same thing probably apply to WoW along with most MMO with an end game content. (Or anything with WoW like quest design anyway, since the quest system is streamline enough the leveling up is basically given to you right in the face)

It also depends on the speed of that "grinding".

DS for example, you can get most of your character build up and running under 20 minutes if you know what you are doing.

And no level of grinding/magic can save you in DS if you don't know what you are doing.

Yes. There are a lot of factors, which can determine whether a specific game's grinding will be good or bad.

 

[Blaster395]

I find grinding to be entertaining in itself only if the difficulty level is suitably challenging for it to force me to concentrate on what I am doing. Lots of games just make the grind boring by making it too easy. Games that do grinding well give you options to make it more difficult for a correspondingly increased reward (though they also give you the option to make it easier, because I can understand some people enjoy easier content because it's relaxing to play).

The worst thing grinding can do is mix it with travelling time, as most MMOs still do. What is the gameplay in forcing players to press the forwards button for 10 minutes in between collecting 9 bear asses? That's not to say longer travel times as a game mechanic is always bad, but it is bad when used as padding for what is already padding.

 

[Timpossible]

As long as the fighting is fun I'm okay with grinding. Like in Dark Souls...Grinding can be fun, because very fight is fun. So as long at is not some random encounter fights with eternal animations going on I'm fine.

 

[ssjdkcrew]

I'm of mixed feelings. Grinding used to mean exclusively fighting battles in RPGs or other games with levelling systems to become powerful enough to survive the next dungeon or boss. Now it's used as a catchall for any less-entertaining task not related to the story.

I can enjoy some grinding in RPGs when the benefits are readily apparent. Where you can gain new abilities or equipment with just a little bit of time investment, or if there are newly explorable areas or side quests that not only make you stronger, but develop NPCs.

You're right. This is key. When a character is made stronger through effort, the player should notice it, due to more than just a changing number in a subscreen somewhere. Like, being able to defeat an enemy in three hits instead of five, or execute a new kind of slash during a combo (a-la Kingdom Hearts.)

However, mandatory grinding is always something to avoid. All of my favourite RPGs require zero grinding if you are a good enough tactician. You can grind if you want to make the upcoming battles less stressful, but it's never required of you. In other words, it's a more time-consuming way of turning on easy mode. You call it training and satisfaction of payoff for work, but it's not really the player who is practising, but the character(s) they are controlling. Unless the player is actually practising with game mechanics they're not yet completely familiar with, but in most RPGs that's not really something you need to worry about since their controls and mechanics are usually fairly straightforward. Also, games should never feel like work. To me, my games are the payoff for a hard day's work, and they themselves should not be work-like.

Well, I certainly agree that it's the character who's doing the training, not the player, because that's what an RPG is. The character, not the player, succeeds or fails by their own merits.

I don't think games that require grinding are unredeemable, but I admit to preferring those where you have a choice in the matter, such as Kingdom Hearts and Quest For Glory.

OT: In my opinion, grinding as defined as "hours of time spent doing repetitive actions, in order to be of appropriate strength to take on the next boss the game put in front of you" is a sign of poor design.

I don't define it in this way. Based on the context in which I've heard the word used, the typical definition seems to be...
"Performing the same type of action multiple times, in order to gain some reward."

To keep the player engaged in the story of the game you made, you need to have the advancement match the pace of the game.

Here I agree. Therefore, to implement grinding effectively into a story-based game, it helps to have several points in the game where the pace slows down, allowing the player to take a breath and grind in peace.

Final Fantasy 10 did this a lot, in fact most of the FF games I played did.

Many do, yes. I can't say for certain if FF4 or FF6 did it, but since those are my favorite Final Fantasy titles to date, I suspect it probably didn't happen that way in those games. Also, I know for certain that it didn't happen that way in Chrono Trigger.

But I mean, you have some big fight with a bad boss, and he does some epicly evil shit to the world!! We have to stop him right away!! Oh wait, nah let's go run around the Thunder Plains for 15+ leveling up first, I'm sure he'll put his plans on hold until we're done.

I see it as being more similar to an enemy in something like a shonen anime. Yes, they're going to cause harm if allowed to do so, but if you tried to fight them as you are, you'd never be able to win. Therefore, your character must go through some kind of special training in order to get to the point where he can fight on their level. I agree, however, that stressing the sense of urgency in the storyline while discouraging it in the gameplay is a bad move.

But yeah, if you can't design the game where your characters are strong enough to fight the next threat without hours and hours of grind, you did something wrong.

Now, -that,- I don't agree with. This kind of situation pops up all the time, both in stories and in real life, where characters are unprepared for an evil force, and we've got to have the freedom to depict it.

In stories, movies or books, there is usually a small amount of Training Montage that the heroes go through, but it's usually a very short section of the story, not the majority of the game. And if I have to clock in more Grind Hours than Story Hours in your game, simply to finish your game, then there is something wrong there.

See, I have nothing against games having an involving story, but ultimately, in the end, the story of most games is not something which is significantly effected by the specific actions and choices of the player character. Because of this, while I think it's good for games to have stories, and good ones, I don't think it has as much to do with the game's core RPG-ness as any action (including grinding,) in which the player character participates. It's also less involving (in a literal sense) to the player. When I play an RPG, I'm not in a hurry to rush from one story point to the next, nor do I care to spend half the game reading/listening to character dialogue over which I have no control. I'd rather just relax and play the game.

Thing is, at the time I didn't really mind at all, I actually were looking forward to go heckler hunting or farm mortigs for hours on end, but why?
The answer is rather simple, it was the people.
Whenever we grinded back then, we basically just talked about stuff while killing things over and over again. The game was more like a chatroom than anything else, just something to do while we talked about what the best sandwich was or whatever.
The grinding was boring yes, but because it was boring you started to talk with strangers and actually ineract with them.
Same with WoW, as it wasn't until we raided the same place for the 10th time on auto pilot with alts that the really funny moments happened.

These days the grind is all but gone, and I notice the effect it has. You just go in, get what you wanted and thats it, now what?

Just think about it for a moment. If you are working on something, and fully concentrated at what you are doing, you can't talk to the people around you about the latest episode of Game of Thrones right? But when you have done it 10 000 times and don't have to think at all, that's when you can actually get to know the people around you.

I'm sorry, but there are much less expensive ways to chat with real people, and the one thing I would never talk about while playing an RPG, is anything outside the game world. When I play an RPG, I'm the character; not the player, and anyone who doesn't at least try to RP with me is just a distraction. I obviously think grinding does have a place in single-player games, but there are reasons why I don't play MMOs, and grinding isn't one of them.

Dark Souls is a good example in the sense that you can go through the game at base stats. Leveling is used more to accomodate play style than OP'ing your toon. i.e. in many other RPG you do not stand a chance against even level 10 monsters with a new character. Yet, you can pretty much walk around all of NG with an upgraded character, kill everything by looking at it, and never even get scratched. Dark Souls isn't like that. You will never need to "grind" a level to get past a section you are having trouble with.

But you can if you want to, right? As I said, I think that's pretty important.

Are we talking about grinding for XP or simply any form of grinding in games (doing the same stuff over and over to get a reward)?

"Performing the same type of action multiple times, in order to gain some reward."

IMO if a game makes you do tedious and repetitive grinding for at least 12 hours to make the game more fun and varied is doing something wrong. It robs you of both time and enjoyment.

Well, that can't be, because *I enjoy* grinding when it's implemented well.

 

[ssjdkcrew]

I think Yahtzee covered that as well. I recall he was bashing a game because you had to go find a way to amuse yourself...while playing a game...

Yahtzee and I don't agree on much, but we agree on this much; "if I ever need to lose money, I can just throw it off a bridge."

That's one of my biggest pet peeves as well in JRPG's, though I wouldn't necessarily call it grinding but rather poor immersion breaking story pacing. In FFVI when you get to the World and hit the mainland with Celes, Kefka has for all intents and purpose already won and is just happily sitting up in his tower as the god clown king of the world occasionally raining terror down among the people. The calamity has settled and it makes sense that you have time to explore to find your allies and gain strength before confronting Kefka. But this great setup was more by accident than design, as every other FF game since Square has gotten it totally wrong. In FFVII there's this big evil meteor hanging in the sky en route to destroy the world... should Squall really be spending months-in game breeding and racing chocobos? And the reward when you get a block chocobo is the ultimate materia that simply makes that game a joke from that point on.

It was Cloud, actually, but yes; I agree. This isn't really a grinding issue, but it -is- an issue.

On the PC or WPRG end, though for the most part they've gotten much better getting around it, I've always found the similar problem is the incessant need for wizards/sorcerers to rest and regain their spells. We've just torn through the enemy camp and now there's a big evil villain just past this final door, but Mordock's out of spells so better stop and setup camp for 8 hours to get back to full strength.

It's why in games from Balders Gate to Neverwinter Nights to Morrowind I could never play a wizard!

See, I -want- to play a wizard in all of those games from time to time, and in some of them, fortunately, it makes some sense. For example, the imminent threat level in Morrowind is hardly ever pressing, which is a common thread in TES games, from what I've seen. So that way, it doesn't come across as a plot hole that your character must (MUST, remember,) stop and rest in order to get their MP back. Indeed, a pure wizard wouldn't be -able- to continue on with the quest, if they have no MP left. They would have to find a good place to hide, and wait for their MP to come back, so that makes sense to me, in the context of the story. I get it.

What I don't get, is missions where you're told "you've got to get these guys quickly, or they'll escape, or destroy us, or something." Then you have no choice but to rest and it -feels like- a plot hole that the bad guys don't do -evil thing X- while you're resting. That would be the issue I've noticed.

Despite how it seems on the internet these days JRPG's were never really a popular genre until they got a boost from FFVII. In the 8-16 most never even got translated, including juggernaut series like FF and Dragon Quest. If you didn't like FFVI, which had already started streamlining a lot of the grinding elements from early RPG's, then these just weren't your games.

This is my point exactly. It seems like those who -did- like RPGs back in the days before FF7 are being hung out to dry, largely because a lot of people who don't like playing RPGs are now playing RPGs and complaining about not liking them. I'd love for more people to be able to like the same games I like, but not by warping a whole genre of gaming into something unrecognizable from what it was before.

The thing with the Skinner Box though is that it's not inherently bad by itself. Especially in the earlier 8 or 16 bit days when games were typically short, expensive, and you were probably a kid and had a limited selection.

I have a ton of Genesis games, and most didn't last me more than one afternoon. There was a reason for that; namely, this was before memory cards were created, so games had to store save data on the cartridge itself, and lots of developers didn't want to do that. Because of that, only a handful of games were long enough to need saves (Sonic 3K, Super Mario World, the Legend of Zelda games, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Light Crusader, Landstalker, Sword of Vermillion and a few other RPGs, generally.) Indeed, this is one reason why I got into the Elder Scrolls to begin with; I knew I'd get over a month's worth of gameplay out of them, even without doing every last sidequest.

Also in some cases the challenge isn't necessarily in the specific random battle itself, but rather the sequence of them as you need to navigate from point A to point B. A game like Phantasy Star 2 which I mentioned, and Dragon Quests were all like this as well, it's more a battle of attrition and a game of strategic resource management.

Yes, I did notice that about PS2. You could spend time leveling, and indeed, if you didn't, you were in trouble, but leveling didn't have so much of an impact, that you could get by without carefully planning what you were going to carry into dungeons.

But back to the Skinner box, in my opinion the problem starts when developers start using it in a cold & cynical manner. In WoW Blizzard wants to hook you indefinitely so you keep coming back and paying your monthly subscription, so the game has no end and is carefully crafted to maximize the carrot on a stick effect to keep people grinding away. In a game like Farmville, you're dealing with something that's not really a game and an audience that aren't really gamers so the time/reward element is cynically crafted to subtly hook them and keep them playing. Same with all the newer FTP mobile games, which may take an actual game play element like Bejeweled and wrap a skinner box around it to encourage players to part with their money.

This is another reason why I don't play subscription games. Aside from the monetary cost, it leaves one open to abuses like this, which give the developers another reason to reduce the total substance of the experience (plus, the bad guys in WOW must feel like they're in Groundhog Day. Nothing ever changes about the game world.)

In my mind, grinding is basically the same as a game that's really difficult like Dark Souls: you spend a lot doing the same thing over and over again and eventually you get rewarded.

Yup. That's what I mean by "grinding," though I don't think it's the same thing as "game difficulty."

Rewards are just more satisfying when you had to do something to get them. The only difference is that people who have good reflexes (or whatever the game requires) can get those rewards faster while grinding takes more patience, or sometimes strategy, to get a thing done. So long as the thing you have to do is fun, then who cares if it's the same thing over and over. Though I would also be in the camp of people without time to spare so I probably won't be playing a game FF8 over again any time soon

Heh. Me either, although for me, FF8's problem was mainly the storyline and characters. Still, this is another reason why I loved Kingdom Hearts so much. You could overpower enemies by grinding up to a level superior to theirs, or if you were agile enough, you could defeat them at a lower level, because the game allowed you free range of motion. This is a style of RPG that I would really like to see more of; more freedom in both the training and movement of your character.

No, grinding is stupid, pointless and it either breaks you away from the game or breaks the game itself, and neither is good. The best RPGs are the ones that integrate leveling with the natural progression of the game itself, making it nigh impossible to be underleveled or overleveled at any point

No, the best RPGs are not the ones with lots of hand-holding, to keep you from going off the railroad set for you by the developers. I certainly disagree.

 

[RICHIERICAN]

I'm playing skyrim again and I discover a few caves and ruins that never found with my first few play thoughs!

 

[default]

I don't see any reason for it to exist at all from a design perspective. One could argue that requiring grinding is actually a massive failure on the part of the designers, as from naturally progressing through the game the player has not been given enough resources to complete the next challenges, requiring them to go out of their way and perform monotonous and repetitive tasks in order to be able to continue. It's stupid, frankly. It doesn't need to be a thing and it shouldn't.

Grinding doesn't even make sense to me for rare random drops. Why are rare drops from, say, dungeon bosses a thing? Why are you forcing your player to replay the same thing over and over again? Why not make the attainment of this item require a feat of skill rather than attention span?

All grinding is doing is tricking a player into thinking they are achieving something as they make the numbers go high enough so that they can use the pretty sword. It's just bleh. It's a tired and archaic design principle.

 

[small]

In general, I hate grinding. As one of those gamers who somehow became an adult, I have much less time than I did back in my yesteryears. Final Fantasy (and JRPG's in general) used to be some of my favored games. Now so many of them go unplayed by yours truly because they take 80+ hours to play with half of that being grinding.

The only time grinding is fine with me is a time when...well...anything would be fine with me; when it's fun.

For example, I just finished Saint's Row IV (you should go play it if you haven't; I'll wait here....you done? Good). I found myself running all over the place doing all the mini-missions because they were fun and hilarious. What I was doing WAS grinding (doing a bunch of little actions that don't advance the story in order to become stronger) but they were FUN to do. That's the big variable that so many "grinding" games forget; if I'm not having fun (or getting some kind of emotion besides "fuck me I'm so freaking bored"), then you have failed at your game.

That however is where the definition of "Fun" messes with grinding. What I find fun is going to be different from you what you find fun is going to be different than what my Dad finds fun is going to be different from what a ten year old girl is going to find fun...

saints row 4 does grinding right.. lets take a tank out and blow crap up or lets go play in traffic.

 

[TheSapphireKnight]

I'm of the mind that you should not have to 'grind' to play through the core of the game. As long as you don't ignore every enemy on the path towards completing the main game, you should be about ready to fight the final boss when it comes down to it.

I don't mind grinding for side-bosses that are supposed to be tough as long as it is not a consistent need to grind in order to progress.

The issue I have with grinding lately is that it seems to be the only way many developers seem to know how to keep players invested. This is not just an issue with RPGs anymore, CoD and more recently Destiny seem to be all about keeping players on a treadmill rather than taking them on a hike to visit somewhere completely new. Both methods keep things 'healthy', but the treadmill requires a lot less effort on the part of the developers and publishers.

Player growth should not always be about levels and loot.

 

[Little Gray]

I don't see any reason for it to exist at all from a design perspective. One could argue that requiring grinding is actually a massive failure on the part of the designers, as from naturally progressing through the game the player has not been given enough resources to complete the next challenges, requiring them to go out of their way and perform monotonous and repetitive tasks in order to be able to continue. It's stupid, frankly. It doesn't need to be a thing and it shouldn't.

Grinding doesn't even make sense to me for rare random drops. Why are rare drops from, say, dungeon bosses a thing? Why are you forcing your player to replay the same thing over and over again? Why not make the attainment of this item require a feat of skill rather than attention span?

All grinding is doing is tricking a player into thinking they are achieving something as they make the numbers go high enough so that they can use the pretty sword. It's just bleh. It's a tired and archaic design principle.

It makes perfect sense from a design perspective. It is used to artificially extend the length of a game so they can either brag about how long it is or to to disguise how little content is actually in the game.

 

[Gamerpalooza]

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).

 

[Riotguards]

just gonna respond to your one comment

1. Simulated training.

Bruce Lee once said that he feared not the man who'd practiced 10,000 kicks once, but rather, the man who'd practiced one kick 10,000 times. Well, the same is true when training oneself in anything. Any skill, in order to be mastered, must be practiced over and over, and if one does so, one distinctly improves in it. 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. That's what everybody means by "grind."

Video games, remember, are a form of art, and if art is going to imitate life, we've got to let it have the freedom to not be immediately and instantly entertaining for every single second of the game, but that said...

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

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

your character gets better, not you

 

[ssjdkcrew]

What's worse about JRPGs is that they almost always have shit combat systems, and they make you constantly fight. The whole point of turn-based combat is to be strategic, that's why it's turn-based. But most JRPGs are just your team on one side vs the enemies are the other side thus positioning doesn't factor into the battle. Any good turn-based game from chess to DnD, positioning plays a key role in battle. If you remove positioning, most of the strategy is removed as well.

This is one reason why I loved the first two "Shining Force" games so much. It gives the player something to do while grinding, but not in such a way that the player feels like an intruder in the mind of the main character.

Most JRPGs allow you to grind for resources so it's not really a resource management game when you have unlimited resources at hand.

If you're suggesting implementing a more realistic system of economics into modern RPGs, you're on the nose with that one.

Random battles only even were a thing due to hardware limitations yet continued on for far too long when the hardware was more than capable.

I don't see that there's any problem with largely-random encounters. D&D allows for this, so modern RPGs can do the same. After all, if you can predict each battle before it happens, it removes a lot of the fun.

My typical playthrough of FF8 is about 90-100 hours, half of which is grinding spells and weapon upgrades. In Skyrim, one of my characters was level 71 before I started the main quest lines (smithing, enchanting and alchemy can go a very long way apparently), most of the combat was centered around odd jobs from innkeepers and clearing mines for ore. FYI, at level 71, hitting the Greybeards (when you are sent to meet them for the first time) with Fus causes them to go berserk and kill you.

My problems with FF8 were numerous, but my biggest ones were the story not making sense, the characters being utterly strange and unsympathetic, and yes, the fact that the grinding often felt unrewarding. I think, for me, this is because the whole system of "drawing magic" actually seems to be there to discourage you from grinding in the more traditional way, and if I want to be discouraged from grinding, I can play an action game, like Psychonauts.

Fair enough, you're obviously looking at it from a different point of view than I am.

Yeah. With other kinds of games, the character may just be an "avatar" or "toon" to represent the player, but in RPGs, while the player is still the decision-maker, it should be the *character* who does the accomplishing.

That was just the first example that came to mind. I remember grinding on the original Phantasy Star as being the same kind of thing.

It basically was. Shining Force, on the other hand, was very different, which is why I refer to it in such a positive light.

Grinding is why I only play MMOs for 1 week every 2-4 months. 7 years ago, I could grind all day, but every year I have less patience towards repetition.

I have more patience with repetition than I ever did. I just wouldn't play a game that required regular payments; and certainly not one that I was only going to play for 1 week every 2-4 months.

I remember when going from mashing 1 button over & over again to using a set of unlockable, upgradable moves in timely order was a huge step forward, but I'm getting bored of that too.

Depends how different the moves make the game feel. If there's some sense that your character is progressing, that's about all I need on that score.

I wish RPGs would spice it up by taking a Pokemon approach....Making it so that we have to use completely different sets of techniques for different kinds of enemies instead of bashing the same order of keys for each one. (There probably are some, but none that I'm presently aware of).

Heck, yeah!

Forced grinding is laborious, optional grinding is fine.

If someone were forcing me to grind, I might not enjoy it either. However, we agree that optional grinding is indeed fine.

That way the people that really love the game and it's mechanics and want to be masters of the game can do so.

And the people that want to pick it up, play through it and finish in a reasonable amount of time can do so.

Everybody wins!

Personally I don't mind a little grinding and sometimes what some may consider grinding I may find fun, but it all depends.

Right. It will depend on whether the grinding is done well or badly, and like any gameplay mechanic, either one is always a possibility.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

My problems with FF8 were numerous, but my biggest ones were the story not making sense, the characters being utterly strange and unsympathetic, and yes, the fact that the grinding often felt unrewarding. I think, for me, this is because the whole system of "drawing magic" actually seems to be there to discourage you from grinding in the more traditional way, and if I want to be discouraged from grinding, I can play an action game, like Psychonauts.

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.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I don't see that there's any problem with largely-random encounters. D&D allows for this, so modern RPGs can do the same. After all, if you can predict each battle before it happens, it removes a lot of the fun.

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). 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. The Calm Lands of FFX is open and supposed be loaded with monsters yet my backyard is more interesting. 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. 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.