Is Grinding bad game design?

[Candescence]

Grinding is bullshit, and an inherent problem in EXP-based systems. EXP is a nice abstraction that has served RPGs decently enough since it was invented in tabletop games, but it is also incredibly arbitrary, and has bled over into other genres in ways that pervert its original purpose. There are RPGs that have handled the leveling curve better than others (Chrono Trigger's curve is damn near perfect), but when the grinding starts, it's just a time-waster. Same with stuff like items drops.

 

I'm gonna echo Diogenes and say that I'd rather have progression-based levelling where applicable or the use of new equipment or upgrades.

[Salamander]

If you don't enjoy it, it's bad game design.

 

I'd say there are two kinds of grinding, roughly: There's continual grinding, where every step gets you a tiny bit closer to what you're looking for (levelling up, basically), and random grinding, where each step has no overall worth unless a specific arbitrary condition is fulfilled (random drops).  Continual grinding is a boring waste of time out of which you are at least theoretically getting something out of each transaction, but in random grinding then each transaction may as well not have happened unless you get that random drop.  Both are terrible and exist only to pad out a game, but if I'm honest... I have no idea how to replace them.

 

The idea about giving you a level-up at significant points in the story would be fine but for one thing: Battle-based levelling up gives a player freedom.  It's a rubbish form of freedom where you will always be too weak or too strong, never just right, but at least you decide how strong you want to be.  Take that away, and you may as well take levelling away entirely - which I wouldn't be opposed to, if I'm honest.  Give the player new abilities instead and provide new enemies based on those abilities, like a Metroidvania.  Have enemy and player damage be based not on visible numbers but on non-numerical health bars to disguise the fact that endgame demons are doing the same damage as first cave rats.  Or just use a system a bit like in Final Fantasy II, have your stats increase with every single battle and make you really feel like you're always gaining something, rather than gaining nothing in-between certain significant milestones.

 

I'm less sure what to do about random drops.  Maybe have there be things you can do to make a drop less random - something like targeting different parts of a monster, like in Monster Hunter, or fulfilling certain conditions, like the conditional drops in Etrian Odyssey.  Personally I'd just have enemies spill mountains of crafting materials upon death, none of them rare or random, and have a crafting system instead where you basically "buy" rare items with specific amounts of material - and you can also break down that item into its component parts to recover them when you want to upgrade to something else.  Or have each crafting material upgrade your weapon (or whatever) by some infinitesimal amount, so you can choose whether to go back to the forge every few enemies to upgrade your weapon a little bit or just do a dungeon and get a big upgrade from the haul you're dragging back.

 

Essentially, the player should feel as if they're always making progress, always getting somewhere.  But even then you have to balance it so you're not making players do the same thing tens, hundreds, even thousands of times.

[Semi-colon e]

Castlevania does level grinding perfectly (you never need to) but does the WORST for random drops, at least until Order of Ecclesia. Most of them are optional, but in the Sorrow games there are a couple that are required, and while not overly rare, still annoying to get.

 

On the other hand, I can't imagine a Pokemon game without grinding, but it's so tedious that for old games I just turbo it on an emulator these days. Thankfully, newer games are making it quicker and easier, so while it's still not great, it's at least less awful an experience. The thing with Pokemon though is that it's easy to grind mid-game when you don't need it much, but grinding early on is practically impossible, especially in the Unova games where Audino don't appear for easy exp until after the first gym. The first gym is WHY you need to grind, gah.

[Tornado]

I'm going to mention that I don't feel grinding is inherently bad game design, but rather the context it is presented as. A game with an enjoyable, fluid battle system and logical EXP distribution makes it so grinding can actually be an enjoyable experience. I'd also say random encounters and game linearity also play a huge role in how bad grinding is.

 

 

Take something like the Disgaea titles, where grinding can be done with efficiency with skill and can be used to customize a character (or even item) to your unique liking; and because of the post-story content the game is actually set up to encourage creative battling. Take something like Chrono Trigger or Lunar 2, where the experience curve is tailored rather well when combined with the non-random encounters you face so you never really have to do much extra work to be able to advance through the game; so any grinding on the player's part is purely optional, either to make certain sections a bit easier or to have a chance for better equipment. Take something like TWEWY, where the EXP and leveling system are almost superfluous if you're good enough at them (especially compared to the item leveling, clothing and food system), so actual "grinding" in the classic sense is quick and painless and merely serves to make the post-game better. Something like the (later) IGA Castlevania games, where the level system has tangible improvements but it's a fast paced action game so it's not like you're completely fucked if you don't run around killing Medusa heads (nor does it take any appreciable amount of time to do so if you want). Something like Borderlands 2, whose loot system and online co-op can make actually leveling up simply an means to an end rather than necessarily a required thing (outside one of the DLC expansion packs). Or those DBZ GBA games, where experience scaling was relatively static but you could get items that sped it up and the game itself was really fast paced.

 

 

 

 

Now compare that to something like the Pokemon games (especially Gen III), whose random battles, hidden character values, random encounters so over the top that you can buy items to stop them and inherently long-winded and broken bridge filled story mode make constant grinding a must. Compare that to something like Gran Turismo 5, which required you to rerun races dozens of times to unlock the next race because the level system scaled far higher than the experience actually distributed. Compare that to something like one of the shittier MMORPGs, where the grinding essentially is the game because if it wasn't there there really wouldn't be any game to speak of.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In fact, I'd also say that deliberate anti-grinding is just as much of a heinous offense on game design as grinding itself; forcing the player to play the game to the developer's wishes rather than the player's preferences. I'm not really talking just plain old level scaling (though I'm certainly not really a fan of that either), but the more obnoxious attempts to keep a player from punching away at the game.

For example, let's take the (many) remakes of the original Lunar game. None of them have random encounters, and are somewhat non-linear (in the sense that you can usually go to a few places at any given time rather than just the one that will advance the story) just like the remake of the second game; and the battle system is mostly identical. But if you deviate from the level curve that the game expects you to be on, the game punishes you heavily for it. Go one level beyond what the game wants you to be at for a boss fight because you went exploring and fought more enemies than was expected, and the boss goes up 10 levels and becomes dramatically more difficult (due to new attacks and higher stats) even though the regular enemies stay the same.

Or the Gen V Pokemon games, where much ado is made about competitive play against players, but actually getting a Pokemon to the level required is obscenely more of a chore than it already was in prior games unless you do specific tricks because experience scales down according to negative level mismatch instead of simply scaling up for positive level mismatch before leveling of after that.

Or (something I've really only seen in actiony games) as the numbers of a certain enemy you kill go up, the amount of experience you gain from killing it go down.

Or something like Sonic Chronicles (but it's not the only one I've experienced where this happens) where after you get to a certain level the game basically stops bothering to let you fairly level up even though some of even the regular enemy encounters are still very difficult.

 

 

Personally, games that have obnoxious grinding I just don't play at all. But most of the games I've found that have obnoxious anti-grinding are otherwise games that I enjoy playing but the developers don't want me to enjoy.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Thought this was about grind rails, guess I should have checked the subforum.

 

I would initially say that grinding is bad because it's artificial time wasting, but really it's bad because it's artificial time wasting that isn't fun. I play the shit out of Minecraft because even though it's a timesink with no real purpose, it's a timesink with no real purpose that is enjoyable as hell. So, if you made grinding fun, I wouldn't have a problem. And I can see why it's done, too. Yes, there's the padding idea, but think how many RPGs you've played where everything is nonstop moving really fast, grinding could be used to provide a bit of time for you to slow down and get some other stuff done, but that should only apply if said stuff is enjoyable or at least provides some form of satisfaction for the player. If you add world-building, character development, or god forbid something interesting to explain it, I don't have a problem.

[Daisy-Fan]

Grinding is good unless if the content is good.

[iDEATH]

Grinding should be optional and not a necessity to progress in a game, that's how I feel.

 

You can grind to become more powerful, but you should be powerful enough to get by without having to set too much time aside for the sake of passing a certain part of the game.

[shdowhunt60]

As a general rule, I consider it bad design when grinding is used to simply pad out the game's length. Destiny is probably one of the worst examples of this. Usually having grinding is just laziness though.

 

One of the things about the RPG that Obsidian just released called Pillars of Eternity, is that they purposefully omitted earning experience from combat. You only get XP from actually going and doing quests, and quite honestly I like that approach.

[Agie]

Really depends on the game, though more than once, it's caused me to stop with an adventure before it's over.

 

Could you at least give me a few new sights with all this grinding?

[Patticus]

I can't stand grinding. I will invariably get bored and play something else pretty quickly if I have to do it a lot, as in Pokemon or SWG. It's a big reason why I don't play many RPGs and avoid MMOs entirely, as it is incredibly time consuming, and I think that there must be better ways to make the player feel like they're in a training montage than spending hours doing one particular thing to level up. I tend to forget what plot there was during grind sessions, and it eats into my actual non-grind play time, so I try to avoid it.

 

If there is to be an RPG-esque level system, I would rather it be handled more like Mass Effect 1 than SWG.