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Preventing grind: Why? And how?
- LockeZ
- 03/23/2011 05:13 PM
- 3974 views
Grinding. For the sake of this article, I'm using the term to mean "repetition for the sake of some reward", not "stuff you don't like to do."
You could easily call this kind of repetition the definition of an RPG, as the most basic forms of rewards - experience points, money, and random drops - are the heart of the genre. You could easily say that if you remove the ability to accumulate strength via repetition from an RPG, it's not an RPG any more; it's just an adventure game with menu-based combat.
And you can say that if you want. I don't care what terminology you use. The fact remains that the primary feature I enjoy about RPGs (and what I consider the defining feature of the genre) is tactical, menu-based combat that forces me to think about my actions and gives me time to do so. And the primary feature I despise about RPGs is repetition.
There are two reasons I am on a crusade against repetition in Iniquity and Vindication. The first one is that it's simply not challenging, and thus not satisfying, and thus not fun. When you've already proven to the game that you can overcome a specific challenge, it should not force you to overcome the exact same challenge again. What's the point? You literally have a 0% chance of losing. You can, and almost always should, do exactly the same thing as you did last time. It's not just a matter of being too easy - there's literally no challenge to overcome at all. This type of repetition barely even qualifies as gameplay.
Granted, if the player has limited resources, then a few identical battles are more justifiable. In such a case, each individual battle is not the challenge - the challenge is being able to conserve your resources to last through the string of battles. I don't mind this type of challenge and will most likely include a few of them in Iniquity and Vindication. But I don't think it should make up 95% of a game. And many RPGs don't really have limited resources anyway - you can freely head back to town and restock, and save points probably heal you to full HP/MP. So the repeated battles are utterly pointless.
The second reason I dislike repetition is the reward scheme for it. Being extremely bored for several hours and then essentially skipping the next several challenges should not be presented as an acceptable alternative to playing the game the way it's meant to be played. Who ever decided that this was good game design? What's the point of including challenges, and then giving the player all sorts of encouragement and incentive to not tackle them? Shouldn't you be encouraging the player to have more fun, not less? Are you working on the assumption that your challenges aren't fun? If so, why are you making games?
You would think the only reason anyone would willingly grind up their power would be if they can't overcome your challenge, but that's not the case - many people (called completionists) simply like to experience everything a game has to offer. Other people are drawn in to the grind by story-driven side-quests, or by game mechanics like synthesis shops and monster hunts. And in the process of simply trying to play the game that's presented to them, they actually become so strong that they are prevented from being able to experience the game's challenges. They can still experience the battles, sure. But the challenges are taken away from them. You can tell me, "Oh, you can just not equip that new armor; you can just not use the new skill you learned; then it's the same challenge as before." But the human brain doesn't work like that. The game is less satisfying. You're not beating the game, you're beating your own game you made up because the real game isn't fun enough.
Grinding has its uses, for sure; it's not without benefits. It gives people goals to strive for, it makes every victory feel valuable. I can't argue with anyone who feels like these benefits outweigh the problems. But I want to see a game without grinding; with no repetition, but with RPG style battles. And so that's the game I'm making. Vindication had a somewhat unusual approach to preventing grinding, at least on hard mode, which was that it was impossible to obtain gold from random battles, and there were no sources of unlimited free healing. This made it feel almost like a kind of survival horror game at times. (On normal difficulty, obtaining gold was still difficult, but not impossible.) But I want to take it a step further this time. I'm not removing normal battles from Iniquity and Vindication, but each one will be different - at least diferent enough that you have to think a little bit about what to change in your strategy. None of them will be repeatable. And every third or fourth battle will be a boss. If you're like me, which hopefully some of you are, this will keep every single battle in the game interesting.
You could easily call this kind of repetition the definition of an RPG, as the most basic forms of rewards - experience points, money, and random drops - are the heart of the genre. You could easily say that if you remove the ability to accumulate strength via repetition from an RPG, it's not an RPG any more; it's just an adventure game with menu-based combat.
And you can say that if you want. I don't care what terminology you use. The fact remains that the primary feature I enjoy about RPGs (and what I consider the defining feature of the genre) is tactical, menu-based combat that forces me to think about my actions and gives me time to do so. And the primary feature I despise about RPGs is repetition.
There are two reasons I am on a crusade against repetition in Iniquity and Vindication. The first one is that it's simply not challenging, and thus not satisfying, and thus not fun. When you've already proven to the game that you can overcome a specific challenge, it should not force you to overcome the exact same challenge again. What's the point? You literally have a 0% chance of losing. You can, and almost always should, do exactly the same thing as you did last time. It's not just a matter of being too easy - there's literally no challenge to overcome at all. This type of repetition barely even qualifies as gameplay.
Granted, if the player has limited resources, then a few identical battles are more justifiable. In such a case, each individual battle is not the challenge - the challenge is being able to conserve your resources to last through the string of battles. I don't mind this type of challenge and will most likely include a few of them in Iniquity and Vindication. But I don't think it should make up 95% of a game. And many RPGs don't really have limited resources anyway - you can freely head back to town and restock, and save points probably heal you to full HP/MP. So the repeated battles are utterly pointless.
The second reason I dislike repetition is the reward scheme for it. Being extremely bored for several hours and then essentially skipping the next several challenges should not be presented as an acceptable alternative to playing the game the way it's meant to be played. Who ever decided that this was good game design? What's the point of including challenges, and then giving the player all sorts of encouragement and incentive to not tackle them? Shouldn't you be encouraging the player to have more fun, not less? Are you working on the assumption that your challenges aren't fun? If so, why are you making games?
You would think the only reason anyone would willingly grind up their power would be if they can't overcome your challenge, but that's not the case - many people (called completionists) simply like to experience everything a game has to offer. Other people are drawn in to the grind by story-driven side-quests, or by game mechanics like synthesis shops and monster hunts. And in the process of simply trying to play the game that's presented to them, they actually become so strong that they are prevented from being able to experience the game's challenges. They can still experience the battles, sure. But the challenges are taken away from them. You can tell me, "Oh, you can just not equip that new armor; you can just not use the new skill you learned; then it's the same challenge as before." But the human brain doesn't work like that. The game is less satisfying. You're not beating the game, you're beating your own game you made up because the real game isn't fun enough.
Grinding has its uses, for sure; it's not without benefits. It gives people goals to strive for, it makes every victory feel valuable. I can't argue with anyone who feels like these benefits outweigh the problems. But I want to see a game without grinding; with no repetition, but with RPG style battles. And so that's the game I'm making. Vindication had a somewhat unusual approach to preventing grinding, at least on hard mode, which was that it was impossible to obtain gold from random battles, and there were no sources of unlimited free healing. This made it feel almost like a kind of survival horror game at times. (On normal difficulty, obtaining gold was still difficult, but not impossible.) But I want to take it a step further this time. I'm not removing normal battles from Iniquity and Vindication, but each one will be different - at least diferent enough that you have to think a little bit about what to change in your strategy. None of them will be repeatable. And every third or fourth battle will be a boss. If you're like me, which hopefully some of you are, this will keep every single battle in the game interesting.
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Sounds like a great plan to follow, making every battle interesting and different.
I for one, applaud you for doing this. Just shows you aren't lazy! :D
Because it sounds like a lot of work in many aspects.
But hey, uniqueness comes at a price!
I for one, applaud you for doing this. Just shows you aren't lazy! :D
Because it sounds like a lot of work in many aspects.
But hey, uniqueness comes at a price!
Hmm. I like this from a philosophical standpoint, but I'm not so sure that it will interact well with the skill sparking system you mentioned in a previous post. As the systems currently interact, fights will have two objectives:
1) Win the fight with a minimum of consumed resources.
2) Skill X should be used Y times so that you can progress towards learning Skill Z.
The problem is, if battles aren't repeatable, then objective 2 has to take priority against non-boss enemies; if you don't learn new skills, you're eventually going to hit a brick wall against harder enemies, and you don't have the luxury of going back to easier areas to grind out skill uses. (If you don't hit that brick wall without skills, then your game has no tactical element and point 1 is moot regardless.) So you end up having to balance the game around the expectation that the player is going to be grinding out skills, which I think is going to ultimately result in less satisfying battles.
I'd honestly just suggest a point-based skill tree. That allows you a great deal of control over what the player has access to while still allowing for customization and averting grinding. If you dislike grinding battles, why are you including grinding skills?
YMMV, of course.
1) Win the fight with a minimum of consumed resources.
2) Skill X should be used Y times so that you can progress towards learning Skill Z.
The problem is, if battles aren't repeatable, then objective 2 has to take priority against non-boss enemies; if you don't learn new skills, you're eventually going to hit a brick wall against harder enemies, and you don't have the luxury of going back to easier areas to grind out skill uses. (If you don't hit that brick wall without skills, then your game has no tactical element and point 1 is moot regardless.) So you end up having to balance the game around the expectation that the player is going to be grinding out skills, which I think is going to ultimately result in less satisfying battles.
I'd honestly just suggest a point-based skill tree. That allows you a great deal of control over what the player has access to while still allowing for customization and averting grinding. If you dislike grinding battles, why are you including grinding skills?
YMMV, of course.
I'd say that the argument that the same challenge can always be overcome the same way breaks down if you're playing a game with a significant level of unpredictability (grinding same-level enemies was not at all repetitive in Baten Kaitos Origins), but as far as most games and RPGMaker are concerned I'd say you're on the right track (reused encounters were the last thing Resonance of Fate needed). I'm going for the same idea in my game.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=Einander
As the systems currently interact, fights will have two objectives:
1) Win the fight with a minimum of consumed resources.
2) Skill X should be used Y times so that you can progress towards learning Skill Z.
Your points are very accurate and logical. But this assumption you make is wrong. And I think that's what makes the two systems work okay together. Specifically, point 1 is not an objective. Because each battle is its own unique challenge, the player's HP and MP are fully restored after every battle. There is therefore no need to conserve resources - rather, the player's goal should be on using their skills as well as possible to create effective strategies.
There is still a dichotomy of using skills for lightbulbing vs. using them for effectiveness, I admit; but my goal is that that issue hopefully won't enter the game until you've maxed out one of the four skill trees. Until that point, the lightbulb system will continue to give the player new strategies of the same types they prefer.
I definitely appreciate the well thought out criticisms - getting feedback and looking for problems with my ideas is the primary reason I have this blog.
Who ever decided that this was good game design? What's the point of including challenges, and then giving the player all sorts of encouragement and incentive to not tackle them? Shouldn't you be encouraging the player to have more fun, not less? Are you working on the assumption that your challenges aren't fun? If so, why are you making games?
Simplifying my massive post: Ridiculous. Sidequests and optional power-ups don't involve challenges in themselves? Sidequests are inherently grinding? If your sidequests and such are wiping out your other challenges, then it's a balance issue with how much power you're rewarding for optionals.
Also, Sidequest does not equal Grinding unless all of your sidequests are the same activity over and over. I understand your design choice, but it sounds like you think it's wrong for a player to tackle X Challenge at ANYTHING but precisely-calibrated X Difficulty. Difficulty varies from player to player, which is why options like spending a little extra time to retrieve a better, not massively-overpowered sword can be a nice, optional inclusion that doesn't completely wreck your X Challenge. If getting that sword requires mowing down 5 EXP levels worth of enemies, that's a problem with your sidequest design - you're encouraging a grind.
If you're not equating sidequests and optional powerups to grinding then I'm not sure what the point of your post is. If grinding is possible via random encounters and whatnot, but there's no real incentive to do that, there's no reason to discourage it.
author=LockeZ
Your points are very accurate and logical. But this assumption you make is wrong. And I think that's what makes the two systems work okay together. Specifically, point 1 is not an objective. Because each battle is its own unique challenge, the player's HP and MP are fully restored after every battle. There is therefore no need to conserve resources - rather, the player's goal should be on using their skills as well as possible to create effective strategies.
So you're not planning on having items then?
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Items are in development. Undecided as of yet. I may forego them entirely. Or I may make it so you can only hold 3 or 4 of each type of item, and items drop all the time from enemies. Or I may make each type of item only usable once per battle. Or something else, if I can think of any other good options.
I'm definitely not going the Final Fantasy route, where you hoard hundreds of items for some potential future date when they might be needed (and then later when you do need the items, you still don't use them, because maybe even later you will need them even more).
I'm definitely not going the Final Fantasy route, where you hoard hundreds of items for some potential future date when they might be needed (and then later when you do need the items, you still don't use them, because maybe even later you will need them even more).
I see. I guess it's not items that are a problem, but consumable items and the ability to hoard them.
All the tactical craptical in the world doesn't save you from an opponent who is just plain better than you. To not put time and effort into beating a superior enemy, to be "tactical" (which, let's face it, is really just a fancy way of saying "cast spells they're weak against and heal") and beat them, feels a cheap victory.
RPG aren't action games. If you can't sit your ass down and invest some time and effort into them, you have no business playing them. When it comes down to it, all you're doing is chosing things from a menu, scrolling through a lot of text, and sitting back as the computer plays the Game Master. There's a certain amount of patience and imagination required for that. Things that modern gamers obviously lack.
You are obviously a modern gamer. You never clearly played any of those thousands of games you just bashed if with this ignorant, self-righteous crap; Games I grew up with. You wanto to talk about a challenge? Beat a game where anything you touch kills you, you have limited lives, limited continues, and if you lost all that, too fucking bad! Back to the beginning, Skippy! You are denied!
My generation played those games, again and again, until we beat them! AND THEN, SIR, WE BECAME MEN! WE BECAME THE PRINCES OF THE UNIVERSE!
...Okay, maybe I hammed that up a little too much...
-Tabris
RPG aren't action games. If you can't sit your ass down and invest some time and effort into them, you have no business playing them. When it comes down to it, all you're doing is chosing things from a menu, scrolling through a lot of text, and sitting back as the computer plays the Game Master. There's a certain amount of patience and imagination required for that. Things that modern gamers obviously lack.
You are obviously a modern gamer. You never clearly played any of those thousands of games you just bashed if with this ignorant, self-righteous crap; Games I grew up with. You wanto to talk about a challenge? Beat a game where anything you touch kills you, you have limited lives, limited continues, and if you lost all that, too fucking bad! Back to the beginning, Skippy! You are denied!
My generation played those games, again and again, until we beat them! AND THEN, SIR, WE BECAME MEN! WE BECAME THE PRINCES OF THE UNIVERSE!
...Okay, maybe I hammed that up a little too much...
-Tabris
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
You're free to dislike this blog post and this game. However, I'm not a modern gamer.
When the game comes out, I think you'll see that tactics involve a lot more than just using spells the enemy is weak to and healing. But you'll have to decide for yourself. In the meantime, maybe play Visions and Voices on extreme difficulty?
When the game comes out, I think you'll see that tactics involve a lot more than just using spells the enemy is weak to and healing. But you'll have to decide for yourself. In the meantime, maybe play Visions and Voices on extreme difficulty?
author=Tabris_Macbeththis made my morning
You are obviously a modern gamer. You never clearly played any of those thousands of games you just bashed if with this ignorant, self-righteous crap
even as someone who usually ends up grinding at some point in any RPG i play, i think preventing grind sounds like a great thing
(my project -- which may or may not ever become a game -- is all about preventing grind)
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