IS GRINDING A FLAW IN RPGS?

author=arcan
Hey bro I'm just trying to get the story straight and I've never heard of a game that restricts grinding.

woah up brother, i wasn't talking at you on that one! (:
my bad there

author=tardis
oh stop semanticsing bro

or can you not recognize royal 'you' and were you under the impression i was attacking you personally aghaghagh gams

No actually I wasn't taking that personally, but since you don't seem to care about my opinion

author=Felix20
Warning: this post contains opinions, please use discretion when viewing this post!In other words, I might be completely wrong about everything so dont take my word for it :P

I'll just stop arguing about it now.

Lot of good opinions on this. I am firmly in support of the following:

A) Fight the minimum number of battles in the game (including not running away from random battles if applicable), no grinding, and bosses should be challenging but doable for a good player that uses his head. Fight all battles leading up treasures and other secrets (not necessarily full-on side quests), no or minimal grinding (perhaps just to get money or resources for upgrades), and the game should be doable for a normal player. In all cases, make grinding possible but obviously not required.

B) The player should be allowed to play the game in any way they see fit. The auto-battle destruction is funny as hell, but it's probably true that auto-battle shouldn't be included in the game in the first place. So what if they are bypassing your intricately-designed battle balance or puzzles? They are finding their own way to enjoy the game, that is all that matters.

C) If people like to play so much that they grind, reward them for it. Maybe provide resources for optional content like mini-games or equipment or stat upgrade systems. Adding optional difficult content would also be cool (SUPER BOSSES).

author=tardis

author=cho
i don't think it's anyone's place to criticize how people play a single-player game.

yeah this. even as the developer, you have no business forcing everyone who plays your game to enjoy/experience it 'a specific way' because any other way they might enjoy/experience it is 'wrong.'

As developers it is our job to guide people to play the game in the way that's the most fun. In fact that's basically our only job. If you don't have a better idea of what's fun than the average player, you probably shouldn't be designing gameplay. Most people simply play the game that's presented to them - they don't consider the different ways to play the game and try to decide which one is more fun, they just pick the one that the game seems to be guiding them towards. If the game rewards them for grinding, they will grind, and then they will not have fun. Your job is to keep them from not having fun.

no

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OK, longer response. Grinding's not a flaw, per se, it's just something that happens... I think I tend to dislike games where I feel I'm required to go grinding for levels without feeling a sense of advancement (unlike Persona 3/4, where I usually gain enough levels just moving through the floors of a dungeon even though they're pretty identical to each other and bland) and where I can't just assign the computer to handle gameplay for me (unlike Tactics Ogre or FFT, where I can spend minimal time on the game setting up AI for the fight and then let it run for awhile). I have a hard time maintaining interest in 'hardcore' RPGs (I'd include Etrian Odyssey games, the main SMT series, or even DQ games) because for me an increased 'difficulty' only translates into dumping more free time grinding for levels so that the difficulty is actually manageable. Why *not* play an easier RPG if it just means leveling up faster and saving me time to do other crap?? Makes sense to me.

Hey, let me change my original answer: yes. Grinding, like I described it above, is a flaw in RPGs (assuming whatever I dislike about RPGs has to be a flaw with RPGs). But there's plenty of sucky RPGs that deliberately *avoid* grinding: I hate-hate-hate Final Fantasy 13's stupid graphics-tunnels, and I hate how I find the game difficult yet the game seems to take deliberate steps to prevent me from grinding, only because, on a very deep and personal level, the game truly despises me. Aaaaaand sometimes, if a battle system is a lot of fun, I'll take time to do grinding when I don't have to, like when I stayed put in Final Fantasy 12 in the desert areas for hours killing the little desert-people, grinding to unlock cool new powers on the license board and to make tons of extra dough.

facesforce
Grinding is not a flaw, it is the esscence of our souls.

no wait YES this is the right answer. that's my final answer.

author=Mr. Y
I hate-hate-hate Final Fantasy 13's stupid graphics-tunnels, and I hate how I find the game difficult yet the game seems to take deliberate steps to prevent me from grinding

Funny, this is exactly the thing that makes FF13 one of my favorite RPGs of all time. The total removal of grinding means that the game actually has the ability to be difficult. Difficult! A commerical RPG that I actually got multiple game overs in! Unbelievable! I play a LOT of RPGs, and I can count the ones that I've gotten a game over in during the past ten years on one hand. And FF13 is one of only two (along with Dragon Age) where it was due to actual legit difficulty, not bullshit gimmicks like area instant death spells or monsters that are 40 levels higher than everything else surrounding them. FF13 used lack of grind in exactly the right way - to create real, unavoidable difficulty, so you actually have to play the game and get good at it to win, instead of being able to spend time in place of skill.

It's a philosophical difference rather than an objective difference really. Some people dislike the hand-holding and non-difficulty of games today with frequent checkpoints (Prince of Persia no-fail mode), no loss losing (Vita Chambers in Bioshock) and auto-adjusting difficulty levels (level-scaling). It's all about how you approach games. Some guys want a challenge other wants an experience. At the extremes these two are on completely different sides and are unlikely to ever find common ground. Basically you can't make a game that caters to both.

Personally I tend to prefer not dying. But it also depends on the games. There are games where I would be completely taken out of the game if I didn't fail. (but preferably not RPGs since to me those are all about the the experience and I almost think that challenge shouldn't even enter into it!)

I do admit I strongly dislike being sent back a long way when I die - I can understand having to repeat the challenge I failed, but having to repeat the ten challenges before it is bullshit. That's part of why dying is so acceptable in FF13 - it's functionally identical to running away.

I don't necessary like my games uber hard. I don't mind if they're easy, sometimes. But if there's no chance at all of me losing, then there is, in the most literal sense, no game. In action, adventure, etc games I never have this problem. I'm sure part of the problem is that I've just gotten too good at RPGs. See also: add difficulty levels, yo.

This has kind of tangented off into a difficulty discussion, but I think that's okay, because difficulty and grinding are two extremely closely interrelated topics. You can't touch one without it affecting the other.

author=Crystalgate
I could argue that if a game is well made, it rewards you for progressing. ... if you want more power, progressing is usually faster than grinding. The further you progress trough the game, the more exp enemies will give you.

Yeah, this is absolutely true, and it's the ideal situation. The problem is that so often it doesn't happen, because the designer includes sidequests, or bounty hunts, or item synthesis, or collectible power-ups. This is what I mean by "guiding the player". These kinds of systems say to the player, "Hey, here's a part of the game. You should do it, unless you don't care that you're skipping part of the game." And people don't want to skip part of the game, they want to experience whatever the game has to offer, so they do all this optional crap. And then they're way too powerful.

FF13 handles Game Overs very well. You die? You can try again with access to the menu in the meantime for bosses or you just get kicked out of the fight for regulars. I know I abused that to avoid fights I didn't want to do (Retry is the same as Game Over and you can do it at any time, getting kicked back out onto the map and then you can try to avoid whatever enemy attacked you). I hate losing progress and FF13 didn't have any of it and more games need to be like it.

It's kinda like Ultima where dying isn't a Game Over, you just get ressurected (with the rest of the party dead iirc) with an EXP loss. You never lose anything else when you die and it's handy when you're in the middle of the Underworld in Ultima 5 after finally getting a Shadowlord Shard with everybody but the Avatar dead and you're nowhere close to the escape dungeon. You do lose progress if you're still trying to get somewhere but at no point do you ever have to go back to your last save.

Thank god. Ultima 5 can be brutal.

author=Crystalgate
I could argue that if a game is well made, it rewards you for progressing. You get more story and you get to fight new enemies instead of the same old ones. Also, if you want more power, progressing is usually faster than grinding. The further you progress trough the game, the more exp enemies will give you. Sure, you lose time by going trough the cutscenes and towns, but when enemies give you 600 exp instead of 60, you will quickly win back the time you lost by going trough non battle events.

While this is true and that definitely can be the case, if the 600 exp enemies are tough, people might just stick with the 60 exp ones since that would be a safer way to go until they are strong enough to take on the 600 exp ones. Or if the battles with the 600 exp enemies takes far longer than the 60 exp ones. Maybe the 600 exp enemies love doing annoying statuses and the 60 exp ones are really simple to kill, so players might prefer to just fight a bunch of the 60 exp ones rather than deal with the 600 exp ones.

I generally like players to be strong enough, even with some difficulty, to generally get through the main game with natural levels. Just basically fighting every enemy you come across without going out of your way to seek more. Of course some challenges elsewhere for the players who are completionists. I personally like to know what level the developer expects me to be on, not just having me guess and hope I'm at the right level. That way if I wanted I can purposefully go above or below it if I either want it easier or harder. "Level 6 Imp, oh no I'm only Level 3! I should catch up!" type of deals.

Games like Final Fantasy 5 and others have more incentive to fight than just "Catch up to the enemies level". There you can learn new skills, get more abilities to transfer over, and even master a class. It is not the only way to do it, but something like that actually gives players a reason to want to seek out fights rather than just "Fight more until you're Level 16, then you can beat the boss. Until then, you can't".

Another thing is if you have touch encounter system for example, that if you have way too many enemies on the screen, players are more likely to just avoid them. The less enemies around on the field, the more the players will want to go ahead and fight them. Put 2 enemy groups in a small map for example and players will generally fight them both. Put 100 enemy groups in a large map, and then players will usually be more like "ugh" and just run right through it and only fight when they get cornered and can't avoid it.