IS GRINDING A FLAW IN RPGS?

Grinding is actually a feature that is unique to any game with progression based on mundane tasks (XP, collecting money etc). It helps make a game easier for people who have a difficulty with the game in exchange for wasting a bit of extra time on it.

author=Shinan
Grinding is actually a feature that is unique to any game with progression based on mundane tasks (XP, collecting money etc). It helps make a game easier for people who have a difficulty with the game in exchange for wasting a bit of extra time on it.

Oh, i was refering to Compulsury grinding, but yeah, i think most RPGs should have optional grinding, to make things easier if you suck.

Squaresoft hit the sweet spot in the SNES era. Kill everything you meet as you scoop up treasure and proceed to the boss, and you'll be fine.
Generally, I like when grind factor is at or above this 'sweet spot'. It's when I'm uber and slaughtering goblins and rabites for piddly exp that I start to get annoyed. Especially when Run Away fails.

There was a time in my youth that I fought in the sewers of Dark Cloud 2 far beyond their usefulness (single digit exp per battle/friends urging you to move on), so wasting time, something grinding is closely associated with, was clearly never an issue for me. Though when it came to games like Everlong, once you go beyond a certain level, you will no longer encounter random battles. This sounds like a pretty sweet deal at first, but this thread made me consider that if you weren't all that wise with your GP spending, you could easily run yourself into the ground. Frankly, if it came down to putting in some extra time but always having gold readily accessible or being able to never have to worry about excessive grinding at the price of the world possibly coming crashing down around you if not properly managed, I'd have to lean on the side of the time-sink.

Then again, grinding in an RPG just seems natural, like a biscuit going stale in the depths of your dresser after you forgot about it for a few years. Even so, no matter how natural something is, that doesn't necessarily mean it is going to be enjoyable if it takes forever, and rewarding the player with 2-5% of the EXP they'll need to the next level after fighting monsters that pose a relative threat can very rarely be justified if the max level doesn't cut off around 20-30.

I sometimes like enemies to be on the world map, though. I kinda thought to put that on SOLDIER as well. Have worldmap/dungeon monsters/humanoids walking away to catch you.

And becomes a much more optional approach.

As long as I don't feel the utmost need to grind, grinding is okay with me. But I don't grind blindly, that's the thing.

My way of grinding though is fighting all monsters along the way and never running away from battles, unless it really becomes too much for me...

And when I've reached just outside the boss area, I don't go back to grind some more or whatever. I'll just go straight in. If I have to go back and grind some more based on my way of training, then the game will need serious tweaking...

So in short, grinding isn't a flaw, but compulsory and forced grinding is.

Grinding as a requirement is a terrible design flaws in games. If your combat system is fun, players will actively seek out battles on their own. If players are not actively seeking out battles on their own, requiring grinding is forcing them to do something they don't want to do - which directly contradicts the point of a game.

author=cho
my general take on grinding is that i should be able to go through the entire game fighting every battle i chance upon -- no more -- and be at or slightly below the level i should be when i hit the final boss fight (i prefer below, but that's because i tend to grind anyway). as long as that's fulfilled, i guess it all just depends how the game is set up.

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Some people use grinding, sidequests and powerups to get to a high enough power level to take on challenges because sometimes the difficulty you have calibrated things to will read differently to everyone who plays it. Megahard Mode might be Normal Mode to a skilled gamer. What you naturally find/kill without grinding should bring you up to the minimum power level required and anything else is extra. LockeZ is taking this to an extreme with his game, but not having ANY optional fights (I think!), whereas some games EXPECT you to waste time running around for hours endgame. LockeZ's design model should work perfectly fine for most players but if they find it too difficult and get stuck......

of course grinding defined as doing the same thing over and over is retarded, so you should never be forced to do it.