Grinding in RPG's Pages PREV 1 2 3 | |
There are a lot of games where I can turn my mind off and just do it, and it actually becomes kind of relaxing. That'd be something like Valkyrie Profile or Ys, or even Arkham City where I just have fun hunting down thugs. Typically, I don't like grind in a game where I either lack a decent amount of control somehow or the grinding feels banal and necessary; so I loathe it in most MMOs (although Guild Wars 2 made it feel better than most). I usually can deal with it, though. | |
As its been said, grinding early on is OK. For example, in Skyrim at the start I was grinding my smithing skill for ages. While it was pretty boring, it was the way I improved my smithing was making thousands of iron daggers for hours on end rather than making a ebony armour set. | |
usually i hate grinding in RPG's... but in some rare cases some games have made it really fun and enjoyable. Falcom's Ys series is an example of this. On the hard modes the games are very intense and grinding on the enemies is challenging and rewarding and so i actually enjoy doing it. I get more currency, buy new weapons, armors and other stuff and upgrade equipment and so it really feels worth it. Also since it's a well designed action RPG the act of grinding itself is actually pretty fun. You aren't just mindlessly pressing the X button to select the Attack command over and over again to grind through battles, or clicking the mouse button to have your character auto-attack an enemy in an MMO. I think it works better in well designed action RPG's and some turn-based RPG's but in many cases it can really turn the game into a chore if the main combat system is boring. Grinding in itself isn't the problem. If the game has a good combat system, you should enjoy doing it right? If you find a game's grinding annoying, it's battle system isn't fun for you and that points out a bigger problem. It's not the grinding you hate but the combat itself. (although sometimes grinding can be a separate problem but that usually has to do with balancing) | |
It's okay as long as the enemies ramp up quickly enough. And since I have no place else to talk about it: I hate it when a game gives you items that help leveling but only let you get them way after you need it. I xenoblade chronicles the only way to get the best level up gems is to beat monsters that are over the games level cap (of 99) it'll only be useful if you ignored leveling a character for about the whole game and a new game plus. | |
This I start grinding on side quest BS then burn myself out of the game. The least grindy Japanese RPG in recent memory is Y's Origins, you can level grind if you want to make the game easier but it only takes a matter of minutes to grind up a level or two which is more than enough. | |
I'm okay with grinding if it's fun and the payout is good. Otherwise its a choir and something I'd rather avoid. Games like Final Fantasy wear me out sometimes because of the excessive grinding in order to acquire gear you need. Dark/ Demon souls on the other hand isn't too bad if you co-op or pvp. Both situations are fun with good payout. | |
It can get tedious at times, but over all, I don't think it's too bad. It actually feels somewhat satisfying when I'm grinding with the specific intent of beating a tough boss. If I'm having to grind just to squeeze through each new area of a game, however, then I get VERY annoyed. | |
In the Megaman Battle Network games I'd sometimes grind not so that I could get a certain chip or level up a style, but maybe to master a style or nail down a technique, or perhaps even to test out a new chip folder I had built. The key to making the gameplay there fun was that it was more than just pick move -> wait -> pick move -> wait. It was a very active bit of gameplay and I loved it for that. | |
Grinding is only really fun early in game cause when you get high enough you feel like such a Demi-God when you destroy that one frikin boss that gives you trouble. *Cough Persona 4 Cough* You know what RPG nailed this really well? Dark Souls. The game gives you the choice to grind up some souls to increase your soul level, its never forced because the farther you get doesn't depend on the number of souls you shove in your gullet, but your skill of the combat, enemies, environments, ect. is what will get you farther. Proof? Well there are plenty of slvl 1 playthroughs on youtube. No f***s to grinding are given. And special mention to Persona 3... for having the worst grinding... | |
I don't mind grinding provided the game is fun to play and there is some variety in the battles. One thing I hate is when you have to level up characters that you haven't been using and they are massively under levelled compared to the main party. On my second play through of FFVIII I knew I would have to level up my derp-squad for a section that splits your characters for a while. It wasn't very fun, mostly because I didn't WANT to play with those characters (I'm looking at you Irvine). | |
It depends. I only quantify grinding as repetition towards some necessary level of in-game improvement (I can gladly fight over and over for hours in Tales of Graces but I don't call that grinding because I don't care how strong I am). If that improvement is learning a new move or getting a new persona or something where the goal or reward or whatever is quantifiable and clear, I'm not loving it per se, but at least I have a goal and get some small satisfaction from reaching it. If the goal is that I need to gain levels to be strong enough against an enemy, then I hate it. There's no clear idea that your grinding will come of anything and you may be crushed against the same enemy regardless of your time spent grinding. This is why I hate the end of every Pokemon game- the Elite Four is always miles ahead of the last gym leader, and you suddenly need quite a few levels on your team if your type matchups aren't wildly favorable. A caveat to all of this- grinding random drops are the worst. A quantifiable goal is destroyed if random drops are added, because I suddenly don't know how much grinding is enough because the RNG could spit in my face | |
Haha I know what you're saying but are there any RPG's that actually do this outside of the earliest games from the 8-bit and early 16-bit days? You could call it bad game design but there was plenty of bad game design back in those days. Today playing a game like the original Dragon Warrior I would say it's more of an initiation right and part of it's charm. I wouldn't want to spend an hour fighting slimes before I could really get anywhere in a modern game, but for the older games it's part of the nostalgia. Now back to the actual topic thinking about it a bit more I'd say the only kind I'm really against is the ones that add a gambling element to it, because that's just sinister. More of an MMORPG thing where you have to repeatedly go through an instance or dungeon for the chance that it might drop that rare piece of equipment or item you need. At least with the classic JRPG if you have to grind something out you know exactly how long and how much you have to work for. The other way people certainly find to be fun as well but it's drawing on the same source that fuels gambling addiction. | |
I don't mind grinding as long as it's not longer than, say, an hour or two across the entire game. And this only when a game lasts longer than 15 hours. When you need to grind in shorter games, or need to grind more than 2 or so hours in games that last longer than 15 hours it's just lazy padding. And I hate devs putting lazy padding into their games. Plus it really does become a bit of a chore by then as well. | |
No. No I do not. Having to grind will completely kill a game for me, because more often than not it's just blatant padding and completely kills the game's momentum. There are too many RPGs nowadays that are too much preparation, not enough progression. I suppose I don't mind that much if you only have to grind a little bit, but it's always much nicer when the game is designed around what the player's level will be at that point, instead of the player having to spend hours catching up with the game before they can carry on. | |
The nice thing about FFVIII is that it is built like Oblivion - enemies level wih you. So if your party is under-levelled, so too will be the enemy. That's why keeping a low level and junctioning the appropriate spells is important, as opposed to mindlessly levelling. FFIX on the other hand was the clear guilty party for your above scenario.
There was grind in Valkyria Chronicles??? When? I must have completely missed it when I was advancing normally through the stages... | |
I don't necessarily like "grinding" but I'm a sucker for loot, especially if it's randomized. I'll go through a dungeon multiple times hoping to get sweet sword or whatever, and by the time I get it, I'll have "grinded." | |
I hate grinding if it's necessary to proceed, but I like it when I can use it to ignore all battle tactics and bulldoze he boss/enemies with brute strength. | |
Trying to think of all the games where I don't mind grinding... Diablo 2. That's basically it? I don't do JRPGs these days, but I did give Persona 3 a try based on everyone raving about it. It was actually a lot of fun, but the grinding and lack of auto-save in combination killed the game for me. Grinding is one thing, but then losing all of the progress I'd made thanks to grinding? Yeah... no. Too bad, though. | |
Generally, it annoys me because I'm a tad impatient and don't like to have to trawl through monotony to open up a new gameplay mechanic I'm curious to play with. I wish more RPG's would include cheat functions to basically spec up your character as you want so you can go straight into the world and play with all the features, make up your own story/ role etc. It would definately increase replay value for me, because the beginning stages where you have to grind it out just to be able to block and run or something else basic after you've already gone through the content before is kind of annoying for me. I want to get on and try out something new! I kind of understand the Dev's point of view that offering cheats can lead you to miss out on some of the niuances and challenges of the game, but ultimately it's up to the player what they want out of the game, and I'm sure most have the willpower to not use cheats so they can experience these things in their own time anyway. The option to respec with no penalty should be mandatory, I reckon, since it's a pain to go down a character development road you thought was working, only to find out that you'd be having more fun if you'd stuck with a different branch earlier | |
Grinding is one of the reasons I was reluctant to get into rpgs at first. If the sole reason I'm doing something is to level up my character then I'm grinding. I'm not exploring, not progressing the story, not being challenged..it's dead boring and I don't do it. A well made rpg (or one I'll engoy) doesn't need to do it. Mass effect Sure, there are areas you can't manage to get through without being a certain level, but the games are structured so that there is enough to PLAY through and reach a suitable enough level without the need for mindless repetition. In the baove games I never did anything just to level up. I'd never go out just to kill x amount of y to get enough xp. | |
Grinding occupies an interesting space in both narrative and mechanics. It obviously represents training to achieve a higher level of mastery and the capacity to overcome forthcoming obstacles, but usually, we don't like to do it. Usually because of the mechanics involved; in many RPGs, the level of power represented by a character's stats is more important than the skill a player has at manipulating the game's systems. So once you're sure of your ability to defeat a certain kind of enemy, fighting them again becomes almost completely pointless and a waste of game time. I had a bit of a different experience in Demon's Souls, though. That game is hard. Really hard. Dark Souls is sometimes a little limp in comparison. Empowering your character can't do all the work for you, but it sure as hell helps, so I set about having a few grinding sessions and somehow enjoyed them. I think this is because I felt as though I wasn't blocked off from the game, but was choosing to actively prepare for upcoming challenges ahead of time. It made sense inside the experience of the game to take some time out to gather souls and empower myself. World 4 in particular is great for this, since it gives out really high soul rewards and you can get started on it fairly early. So I think we can derive some advice from this: make the player want to grind, rather than having to make them grind. As much as I usually hate grinding, I was a willing and happy participant in Demon's Souls, so I would presume that others who also hate grinding might also like it if it was contextualised differently and more engaging from a gameplay perspective. What I think this comes down to might be considered, by some, to be a violation of the appeal of RPGs. But I would say that putting a higher emphasis on player manipulation of the game systems and less emphasis on stat gains and gear would be a great way to keep combat engagements interesting, even after a player's character or party has "exceeded" them. Not only would it make gaining more experience more entertaining, it would allow players to test out different combat strategies. A game on either extreme of difficulty, I think, lacks depth. By the same principle, a game's depth increases the closer it comes to an equilibrium between challenge and a player's mastery of the system. If we assume that depth improves a player's engagement with a game, then providing a versatile game system that stays within the "deep zone" of challenge (whatever that happens to be) may be key to ensuring that even repeats of combat scenarios maintain interest. Of course, in that kind of system, levels and stats are already much less important than strategy, partially obviating the need for grinding. But perhaps those few stat points might just make the difference. | |
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It depends on when the grinding is needed. If you can't progress through the beginning area because you need to hang out near a town because you need to heal after two fights, you suck at game design and deserve a kick in the left ventricle. If the difficulty increases by a steady amount so that half-way through the game you need to grind out a level or two to beat a boss, I'm okay with that.
But yeah, having a grind wall right off the bat is the only grind-related thing I'm against. I have no problem grinding for hours on end at higher levels.
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