When grinding is fun

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Just wondering what games which make you sweat for your success against bosses (or challenges, etc) make grinding enjoyable for you?

I have four examples personally:

Pokemon: I've been addicted to battling since my Gameboy Color games. I can grind away all night training my Pokemon. Others don't share the experience like me

Freelancer: My favorite game ever. Going on missions for factions or just flying around to grind the superior weapons off of pirates has never lost its allure on me.

Minecraft: If I get a good song playing along with me, I can grid mine for days. Must find Diamonds!

World of Tanks: Getting money and experience from constantly destroying enemy tanks? DO WANT!

I can't think of anymore at the moment but please share

[sub]If nobody enjoyed grinding, games wouldn't have it right? [/sub]

 

[Vampire cat]

I don't really, cause "grinding" for me is playing "for" something trough things that I usually have no interest in. For example, I enjoy World of Tanks, but I hate playing tanks that I do not specifically have an interest in playing. That's why I use free XP to skip any vehcile I don't want to play. I have 1 Russian tank and that's the KV-2... <3 KV-2!

 

[Xprimentyl]

I've always liked (for some odd reason,) the grind on disc three of Final Fantasy VIII; perhaps because there are so many ways to grind: level to 100, maintain a low level but get rare items to make the best weapons, play cards (again to mod for rare items,) get all the GFs, etc. The game really opens up at that point and I always look forward to it! I think it's the main reason I still play FFVIII almost once a year.

Also...

Gathering the green orbs in The Crackdown was fun.

Halo Reach's daily challenges keep the campaign fresh if only with the promise of anothe rank.

Prototype's Evolution Points gathering process made that grind epic and an amazing payoff.

 

[Zhukov]

Umm...

...

None!

For me to enjoy gameplay it needs to be (a) given meaning by an overarching narrative or (b) be entertaining and/or challenging in its own right. Preferably both.

But when a game makes me grind, that is to say, makes me perform repetitive tasks for a non-story-related objective or reward, I throw it out and go look for a non-shitty game.

If the grinding is optional then, eh, fair enough I suppose. I'm not going to get too upset about something that I can ignore.

 

[brunothepig]

If the combat is good, or the results are readily obvious. It's why I hated Oblivion, the damn level-scaling. but yeah, Pokemon is a good example. Prototype is another. I can maybe deal with less than good combat, I never get tired of wandering the wilds of Solstheim in Morrowind. But if grinding doesn't seem to have some effect, I'm out.

 

[Floppertje]

grinding is NEVER fun! not ever. by definition. what grinding is, varies from person to person, so if someone says they're grinding and you're doing the same thing and having fun, you're not grinding. you're just killing monsters or blowing up spaceships because you want to get the awesome loot.

 

[GigaHz]

Grinding is never fun.

It's a timesink or content roadblock designed to convince gamers to do redundant garbage over and over again for the illusion of progress. Games are much more enjoyable when grinding is removed.

For example, if I told you to kill a group of respawning monsters for 1 or 2 hours, but told you that you would get nothing out of it, would you do it? No. Because that would become incredibly boring. But, if I attached some kind of progress meter that would slowly tick up with every monster killed, suddenly the boring activity becomes more interesting.

I haven't played a game with Grinding for years for this reason. I don't need a second job.

 

[xmbts]

Games usually put it in to pad out playtime, however I can say I do occasionally like beating the tar out of the wildlife just to see how well I do.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

FPS multiplayers like COD and Battlefield are now heavy in their grinding elements, as you gain experience for every action, and your experience meter goes up, unlocking new weapons and abilities after an arbitrary number of points have been achieved, but they hide it very well, and are still fun to play. It only becomes apparent when you start doing actions and making choices, not because it's more tactical or better fun, but because doing that thing will give you more points. Like my friend who only played capture the flag games on MW, because they gave him the most points per game.

 

[Sixcess]

City of Heroes has some zones called Hazard Zones - no missions or story arcs, just lots and lots of spawns of bad guys in numbers intended for groups of players. I did level 39 to 40 in a couple of hours one afternoon doing nothing but roaming through the Sewer Network solo taking on mobs 10 at a time. Good fun.

However it helps that they were actually fun to fight. A later series of missions that put me up against the Devouring Earth felt like it lasted forever because they were so damn dull. It's good to find the sweet spot where enemies are challenging enough to keep things interesting but not so much so that one mistake will be the end of you.

The fact that I do like some challenge means I tend to avoid the real grinding - CoH's user made content creator left the door open for some ridiculous farming maps where people would hit level cap in 2 hours. That I never saw the point in.

 

[superdevildude85]

I can spend hours training my pokemon.
My most recent Pearl save I've been playing for 7 hours... I have 1 badge and about 10 in my pokedex. That game could last me a year.

 

[somonels]

Never, that's why it's called grinding - an unenjoyable, repetitive action, which asians love.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Grinding by definition is never fun. That's what makes it grinding. All gaming by its very nature is repetitive actions. If you're enjoying the actions, you're just gaming and having a good time. If the actions are a chore, and you're only performing them to achieve some fashion of reward down the road, then you are "grinding".

The second grinding is fun it ceases to be grinding.

 

[Simple Bluff]

If we're not too hung up on the pedantic semantics of what "grinding" is then I'd say any game that gives you experiance for causing havoc. Like the InFamous games, for example. I could easily spend a fair bit of time just flipping over cars onto hapless smucks.

 

[The Abhorrent]

Repeating the same activities constantly will almost inevitably get boring, but it's almost a necessary evil of sorts when it comes to game design. As such, the job of a game designer is to create the illusion that the game isn't actually grindy; the moment the player becomes aware of this, things start going downhill fast.

Grinding is fun only when you don't really consider it grinding.

There are a few ways around this, the most common of which is offering the player a reward for their troubles. MMORPGs (and even a few single player RPGs) are very fond of this technique, and it can be so effective that the player can acknowledge the grind but still continue to do it for their shiny reward. Good writing and storytelling can be considered a variant of this, though it generally far more preferrable because it engages the player rather than compels them.

Better methods (in my opinion) derived from gameplay are offering some variety and just making the game plain fun to play. Variety decreases some of the repetition, decreasing that grinding sensation; being fun to play means the player is likely to ignore the fact they're repeating the same activities. Both of these approaches are far more viable in more action-oriented games. Traditional RPGs (those using mechanics derived from D&D) aren't exactly the best for either, so many actions are near identical in execution (though not necessarily effect) that they can't help but feel grindy; this is why the "genre" has been heavily reliant on choice and good storytelling.


So yes, grinding is not really fun; it's almost boring by definition. However, you can accomplish a grindy objective while you're having fun doing something you don't consider grindy.

 

[FalloutJack]

I did this in alot of RPG games just because I tend to gain a high level of amusement from it at times.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

Never, that's why it's called grinding - an unenjoyable, repetitive action, which asians love.

self contradiction.
by your logic, when you're a REDACTED fucking REDACTED eyes REDACTED cheese sauce. y'know, one of them jap-er-nee-ses.
im not racist.
OT: its fun if the way you can do it is fun. i have no examples.

 

[jopomeister]

Not if it's incredibly repetitive.
I like it when I can play a game and not have to stop too much to level up all my stuff. It's why I tend to lose interest in RPGs.
[For example, I got to about level 50 in most things in Runescape, and then it just got too long to level up anything...]

 

[Elijah Ball]

mega man x. gotta blow up them owls.

 

[Ambient]

I somehow managed make grinding in Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne fun.