Do you love or hate Grinding in games?

It depends if the game was truly designed that way or if the game is free to play, but with purchases where people can get an unfair advantage if they put real money into it. If you are on a level playing field it is not so bad, as almost everyone, depending on their needs, will also grind. Generally crafters and the like, unless you are farming to save up gold for equipment or a drop and what not. But crafters tend to stay in that realm of needing to grind or so I have found anyway.

Although you could be a smart crafter and get your business of buying junk cheaper from players, then from venders or spending an awful lot of time having to grind for the same materials, while also paying the players more, than had they simply sold it to the vender. Provided the economy and territories are not all jacked up, it can be a good eco-system for trade without too much sweat and hard labor. The crafters get what they need to work and the adventures get more money than they would otherwise and maybe if a repeat customer, maybe even a nice discount on that crafter's/merchant's wares.

There was an MMOROG long ago that let you play as dragons, angels and demons, among many other races. While being a dragon you started out as a cub and then went on to adolescence and then a full grown adult. To get there though, you had to level and grow your horde (of money). Your amour was tied to how much gold or metal you had. But it was hard to collect. I either stuck with it for the idea of the dragon character, while also playing other races so I did not have to grind. But the smart dragon players knew how to work the system and used what they had to interact with other players and get what they needed much more quickly, so they grew and grew to mass proportions.
 
I don't know. Depends on the game. Some games I can be into grinding. Others not so much. RPG's I tend to not mind so much since it comes with the territory of leveling up and growing stronger.

But for something like Tony Hawk 1 and 2 where you have a grind to level 100 trophy attached and it involves slow dished out XP that requires you to grind at least 100 hours of Multiplayer then I say fuck that. I want no part of that.

Just depends on the game.
 
danielmann861 said:
I don't know. Depends on the game. Some games I can be into grinding. Others not so much. RPG's I tend to not mind so much since it comes with the territory of leveling up and growing stronger.

But for something like Tony Hawk 1 and 2 where you have a grind to level 100 trophy attached and it involves slow dished out XP that requires you to grind at least 100 hours of Multiplayer then I say fuck that. I want no part of that.

Just depends on the game.
Click to expand...

No pun intended? ;)

I agree with Dan; all depends on the game.

Let's take the Working Designs-translated games for the Sega CD:

- Lunar: The Silver Star
- Lunar: Eternal Blue
- Vay

LSS: A normal RPG where you need to grind between each town, but not excessively-so. It becomes a casual experience and is all part of the fun; this is a type of grind I like. Other examples would be Phantasy Star III, Lunar Walking School, Albert Odyssey: The Legend of Aldeann and Evolution: The World of Sacred Device.

LEB: The same as above, but now you have hidden/secret/special areas/side quests, where you can grind for extra stuff/levels, in order to deal with the really tough parts (in hindsight, I should've grinded a lot more for the final boss battles than I did, but oh well) and the epilogue. This is extra grinding, but it falls under the, "self-imposed challenge," or, "extra content," category; this is a type of grind I LOVE. Other examples would be Phantasy Star IV, Skies of Arcadia, Grandia II and Evolution II: Far Off Promise.

Vay: Also a normal and straight-forward RPG, but with few extras (none, actually) and you have to grind a minimum of an hour or so (or more), between each town, otherwise you will be soundly-trounced: you don't have lucky battles (in your favour) or critical hits; you will get killed and killed swiftly, unless you grind an absolute shit-ton more than you're comfortable with; this is the type of grind I LOATHE and gets on my nerves to death. Other examples would be Phantasy Star II. I must say, I really enjoyed Vay though (gave it an 8/10), as it is very-memorable, has a kick-ass soundtrack and an interesting plot.

If it is a non-RPG, as Dan mentioned above, I don't really care how long I have to play it, to beat it. Achievements though, are an entirely-different beast.
 
Personally, I feel that most traditional JRPGs, the ones that are turned based with grinding makes it a painfully boring experience. The mindless repetition is just ruining it. Especially when there is an unskippable cutscene after the battle (or also before the fight) together with the additional experience points showing up on the screen, over, and over, and over again.

One thing that I really miss from these type of games is a variation on those cutscenes. In fact I feel the same thing for fighting games like DOA6 and anything else that lacks variation. They managed to make the graphics and the animations very impressive. But after the fight your character has about 2 winning poses and says the same 2 lines, over and over again.
Variation could at the very least make the grinding a little bit less boring. But then, why grind at all? If virtual gambling is boring to some people then grinding should take the price because it's just repetition for hours and the only ´reward´ is a higher level. If there isn't anything else than repetition. What's the point? It's illusion of progress and a waste of your precious time.
Some people would argue that all games is a waste of time, and yes, some can be.
If these games rewarded the player with much higher experience points for playing with good tactics combined with much more variation in the cutscenes before/after the fight (that is skippable) I think that ´grinding´ would be more acceptable.

If it doesn't add something positive to the story/experience it just isn't worth your time.

Grinding in Trails of Mana (PS4) wasn't exactly "fun" but it felt like nothing compared to other games. The battles were so quick that it didn't matter that much but after a certain time of doing it over and over again it felt it got boring.
 
Depends of the game but in general, forced grinding should be avoided and is a clear bad design or predatory skinner box design.

Examples of bad grinding, personal opinion:
  • Persona 5 royale: The goddam seals in mementos to unlock a secondary fight is a chore, dull and boring.
  • Old school jrpg like Breath of Fire 2 and the like:to progress in new area it usually involved grinding for money for the new gear or extra levels
  • Braverly default: The time loop was abused too much and repeating the same 4 times was disrespectful.
  • Mmorpgs: Played some as teen but I did not last even a month, such a chores...
Examples of good grinding, personal opinion:
  • Monster hunter: The game. Is a grindfest to upgrade the armors and weapons from the monster parts but mastering the harder monsters is enjoyable. Also the grinding can be minimized if your skils are good enough to not have to build each tier of armro/weapon. The fights are fun.
  • Disgaea: The grindfest personified as a game, the selling point is that you can get to lvl 9999 and reset the level back to 1 to get bonus stats and get uber powerful. It is a game that sells the grinding aspect upfront and you know what you pay for.
  • Vestaria saga: I grinded a lot and it, it was 100% optinal and it paid off in the last combats.
I also hate achievement grinding like play 100hours they are fake grinding for no real ingame content.
 
But this does not look enjoyable for Monster Hunter fans... :oops:



Neither does this...


I have beat Final Fantasy 7 a few times, when normally I do not beat RPGs at all. Not because they are too hard, but I get to a certain point and get bored. Not even really the game's fault either. I leave for a few months, come back and replay from the start to catch all the story again and get half way and get bored again and quit for a few months and then...

However when ever I played FF7 I grind in it, just to be the baddest dude in that area. I also find it helps tremendously during the boss battles. However I saw a guy in the military play it, how I assume it was meant to be played. He basically went from one area to the other with little to no grinding and just used all the spells and items at his disposal. For some reason I rarely use tents in the field and would rather run all the back to the last town then waste one in my opinion. But that can be a boring way to play. I am going to do what he did next time I play it and see how well that goes. And I still need to beat the super hard side bosses as well.
 
3 games where grinding is done right/fun I'd recc are:

1.) FFX: Grinding to customize and build gears/stats/skills to face challenges was fun and worth the time/effort. There is no hard-cap and lots of reset options so you can always re-allocate any builds/efforts without having to start all over when a new challenge arises that req a diff strategy.

2.) Poke'mon. Grind to make deep strategic builds sugar-coated with simplistic/minimal statistic setups. Even mirror matches can go 0-100 in one turn.

3.) Suikoden(series). I appreciate the scaled grinding so any cast of character can easily be used. On top of that, it puts a smile on my face when I see extra lore/world-building tidbits unlocked for capping certain upgrades for every cast.

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I hate cash-grab grinding made to encourage microX and time sink grinds like NIS games where it takes 100's of hours to grind a min-maxed cast to face optional bosses that are mostly stats tanks(my numbers are bigger so I win scenarios). I also hate achievement grind that are pointless as well, like the already mention 100hr clocked ins on a 30-50 hrs game. Or the branless kill/farm 1000 "X" to unlock just becuase.
 
It really depends for me but I think I tend to have more patience than most people, and I think a part of that might have come from playing Pokemon early on or even Final Fantasy a bit later. I’d get so far and realize only my starter was way over leveled and everything else was just used for HMs so I had a ton of trouble with the Elite Four. And for FF sake I wanted everyone to have everything so I’d waste many hours making out jobs and such. With more recent stuff, even in Dark Souls where many would just move on, I’d go up and down the undead burg where the dragon kills the enemies on the bridge at 500 a pop until I got close to level 75 maybe? Saints Row 4 even, most of my initial time with it was grabbing every last cluster before actually doing most of the missions.

There are other things where I feel like it’s not so bad as people say but they just don’t realize a part of it relies on skill. Replaying No More Heroes, if you do well enough on most mini games, you should only need to do most of them once. There was only one sword upgrade I really had to grind for, the most expensive one, and at about $150k per 3 minutes in the Gamble fight it took less than an hour to get it.

It’s hard to say whether I’d find much to be too annoying but I think if I just didn’t enjoy the base game then I probably wouldn’t bother to begin with. For example I hear there’s a lot of grinding in one of the recent Assassin’s Creed games, but after trying the first few it just not a series for me altogether.
 
Isn't grinding by definition bad? The dictionary definition: "dreary, monotonous, or difficult labor, study, or routine" is something people would rather avoid but have to trudge through to get to their real goals. It's seen as necessary rather than enjoyable.

I think it's subjective where we draw the line as to what is grinding for one person or another, or where their threshold for it lies but grinding itself implies that you are halting your main progress to stop and perform a repetitive action to proceed. Levelling up as part of the main gameplay loop isn't grinding but having to stop in an RPG (for example) to fight repetitive boring battles for a few hours is bad because it breaks the flow of the game and forces you to basically take on a chore you don't want to do to proceed. It's often rightly seen as an easy way of padding the game.

I do think we should consider the intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards in a game when approaching grinding though. If grinding is a part of the core gameplay experience for all or most players that's bad, if a player is taking on a repetitive action i.e. farming for loot to get the ultimate armour or beat the secret boss or something optional like that their motivating factors are different and it's likely not to have as strong a negative effect when taken on willingly. Still, it isn't enjoyable but different people's thresholds for how much repeatable action becomes monotonous is subjective and different for everyone
 
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