HOW TO ADD FUN TO GRINDING?

Rave, you missed the point. And no, grinding doesn't make anything wrong, haha that's so retarded.

Anyways, as for a way to add an extra depth to grinding?
Battles should be somewhat intetesting, as well as having sellables. Give a big variety of creatures annnd that's all I got for now.
I'll come back with something better.

Isn't that what things like sidequests are good for?

One way I'd suggest is having a somewhat expanded world: if you just follow the basic plot, it's smallish and linear; but if you meander and explore, it could offer little rewards. That way, grinding can be as simple as going back through an area and seeing what other things it has to offer.

Generally, the big problem for grinding that I have is that it's so darn repetitive. If there's a supplementary goal, then it becomes a lot more tolerable.

There are two definitions of grinding that people use, but they mean very different things:
1) Doing the same task multiple times for rewards
2) Gaining power before moving forward in the game

Which of these are you referring to, before we get too far? They're connected ideas, of course, but many of the ways of making one of the two more fun will often involve disconnecting it from the other.

I think the Earthbound route makes them a bit more fun. That is, if you are a sufficient level higher than the average level of the enemy group, they 'die' and you get the experience and loot without actually having to battle. Of course, these were on-map enemies, so that helped code it.

Another way is to make enemies degrade over time - if you get stronger, they should get weaker so that you can clean them up faster.

Making strategies also helps. Say one enemy is the natural predator of another and they both appear in battle, the predator could attack the tanky other monster and help dwindle it's health faster if you don't hit the predator. Then, as long as you didn't aggro id, it leaves the battle, since it ate it's full and is no longer hungry/willing to battle.

There's a lot of things you can do. Change up your battle system in some way, shape or form.

Personally, I think the best way is to give more experience out-right so the player doesn't need to grind just to continue with your story. Or at least give them an incentive to battle without making it too hard. For example, if a potion costs 200 G and you get 12 G per battle you deserve to be shot. Why? Because going through about 18 battles just to buy one potion is pathetic. However, if you give enemies a high chance to drop potions and sellables, which can also be used to make potions with alchemy, it becomes more interesting fighting monsters because you know you will get something back for the time you invest in them that will help you fight more of them.
If you use two potions per battle and receive one potion and two items for creation the majority of the time, you will eventually come out ahead of your 2 potion expenditure. Add in a rare drop that allows you to make a super potion eventually, and you've given the player a reason to want to keep grinding aside from the experience. (Note that when I say rare, I do not mean SUPER ULTRA RARE. Those are annoying as hell unless they're completely optional and not necessary to progress. Progression drops should never be super rare. They can be normal, but with a need of more than one, though.)

Reducing monster max hp and chance to drop good equipment will solve the problem. Other than that you could use Final Fantasy XII Chain system, bigger the reward, bigger the fun.

Wikipedia says grinding is "a term used to describe the process of engaging in repetitive tasks during video games". Usually it means a character repeatedly killing AI-controlled monsters using the same strategy over and over to advance their character level and access new content.

author=Sailerius
You don't add fun to grinding. You remove grinding in order to add fun. The two are mutually exclusive.

Ah fooey, you're one type of player. Other players find grinding fun. Like me, sometimes. Sometimes you want to do the same thing over and over again because it feels nice to have a pattern. It becomes more tolerable when the repetitive action requires skill to get right, and if you do it a little bit wrong, then you get a little punishment. Which means that the more you do it, the better you get at it. That's when I believe grinding is most fun.

It's like lifting weights. You're lifting the same weights over and over again, and it feels like a "grind". But you know that the more weights you lift, the more you get stronger. So even if you don't like lifting weights at the time, you'll endure the short-term pain for the long-term gain. Sometimes players derive pleasure from knowing the fact that most people will not endure the same short-term pain of grinding for long-term gain, and will take satisfaction in that.

To put things short, I don't think grinding should be a source of short-term "fun" but rather a sense of achievement and satisfaction at the end of it. So I believe that the real question you should ask, is not how do I make grinding fun, but how do I make grinding rewarding.

In that case I, as the developer, would make sure that:

• The player knows what grinding will achieve before they start grinding

• The player has at least some visual/instinctive idea that while they are grinding they are getting better

• That the grinding will be filled with cycles of hard boring work, and a sense of reward after

In that sense, grinding will become rewarding, and the fun will be in the satisfaction that you have earned after grinding, not whilst it is happening.

Making grinding something unconscious, a nice solution (and a form of hiding the grind, to boot)

For example the more recent the Final Fantasy title (i stopped at 12) the more engagi ng the skilltree-ish features become, such as the license board, sphere grid or even FF5`s jobs. They make grinding more fun because at the same time you`re repetitively killing enemies and doing the same tasks, you are unrepetitively developing your characters and experimenting with the new skills you just got.
The skill system in star ocean for example also gives depth to grind. You level up, get skill points, spend in Kitchen Knife and suddenly you`re marveled with the new things you`re able to cook (wich is also grinding by itself)

Making grinding engaging and dynamic, having it connect with the rest of the game`s mechanics can wreck with the repetitiveness. Please note that none of the examples I cited are prime examples, they could, and should, be much better! Do better than them.~

author=McBick
but what I am looking for is to add an event to grinding that would make it more enjoyable and not a problem.

Diablo. Loot.

I used to loathe grinding in some of the earlier RPG’s when I was a kid, especially if the battles were mostly turned based and had you constantly tap the X or the A button to select the same attack option over and over again. That is, until I discovered the magical prowess of real time combat where grinding isn’t so much of a royal pain anymore thanks to faster encounters and usually offering up some sort of a bonus reward if you managed to achieve certain battle requirements, like defeating a certain number of enemies without taking a direct hit. That was always cool.

I suppose the best thing you could do to make grinding not so much of a chore is either tone down the amount of necessary encounters the best you can by adjusting the amount of EXP and currency each monster gives out to you or you can give out special bonuses for achieving certain feats in combat, like defeating a certain number of enemies within a certain time limit.

There are plenty of creative ways to make grinding a lot more enjoyable. Not to say that everybody around here hates grinding for long periods of hours in an RPG, as a lot of people do like that sort of thing, but I’m not necessarily one of those types of people, at least, not anymore. I’m at an age where my grinding pants have officially been put out to pasture. But I don’t really mind grinding so much if there’s somewhat a purpose behind all that battling, like extra endings or additional content, or such.

Star Ocean: Till The End Of Time did a good job in this by having a bonus gauge rise up the more times you fight in a row and not take a critical hit, and it would offer up such things like double currency or triple experience points. Super Mario RPG: The Legend Of The Seven Stars also made grinding a bit more fun by providing bonus flowers that would sometimes let you play a gambling mini-game for double the coins or experience points – and then there was that star you could collect in some of the stages to level up really fast…

I think you just need to play your own game and feel for it yourself if it’s truly satisfying or not to just sit there and battle the same enemies over and over again for more than an hour each stage of progression. Like I said, some people don’t mind grinding so much but other people do. Try to find a nice happy balance between to two.

author=Liberty
I think the Earthbound route makes them a bit more fun. That is, if you are a sufficient level higher than the average level of the enemy group, they 'die' and you get the experience and loot without actually having to battle. Of course, these were on-map enemies, so that helped code it.

Oh yeah – I nearly forgot about Earthbound, as they handled over-excessive grinding just perfectly with the instant win screen. Although it isn’t that much of anything, at least you don’t have to fight the same weak enemies all the time after clearing a “your sanctuary” spot, saving you time AND frustration.