The 'Grind'

[stokeriño]

Why is it at all enjoyable?

I'm not saying it is all of time - often it can drive you crazy, and that's understandable.

But why is it that sometimes, SOMETIMES, the prospect of sitting down to a gaming session and doing something like:

* fighting several dozen Digletts in identical fashion (vine whip -> death) to level up your Bellsprout

* entering the same map over and over again because the enemies have good EXP and, damn it, a Lv28 party just isn't as good as a Lv30 party

* levelling up a character enough so that you can drop them back to Lv1 where they will gain (le gasp!) two extra stat points per level! And let's do this several times over! (Disgaea is by far the most grindtastic of all grindtastic games because of this)

...seems appealing...somehow?

Is it just the numbers? That stat is higher than it was, hence a feeling of achievement? Or is there a limited sense of relaxation that can be found in repeating the same well-practiced task many times over? Would we accept an RPG that took all of the grind away and (without adding other extra content) zipped straight along the story? Is a 5 hour story padded out with 20 hours of grind really better than just a 5 hour story, even if you did pay £40 for it? Is any gaming better than no gaming?

It perplexes me.

Edit: A non-RPG example would be the need to spend ages ordering your workers to make every land square in Civilization perfect, with railways and farms and everything, even if they're in 'no man's land' between your cities and will benefit neither of them. I can't be the only person who does that. ¬_¬

Edited May 27, 2008 by Gul Stokeriño

[MDK]

I tend to do that in civ. Instead of having loads of workers scattered around I have about 8 grouped together and they build everything needed on a tile in about 2 turns. If you used the indian workers plus the civic that makes workers work twice as fast... well, blimey.

[Ruki]

Final Fantasy III forces you to grind.

I finish the first part no problem, but the second you go into the second town and into the cave, you'll get slaughtered! The enemies were hitting for about 28 damage when I only have 40-50HP. I spent a good while (getting up to level 10, from level 3), just going into the cave, casting Cure on the undead, restore my MP, and repeat. FF XII made you grind pretty hard too.

Although, for some reason, I didn't mind leveling up in FF 7-9.

[apsham]

Emulators and their turbo buttons have really brought this conversation to light for me. For instance, I am finding it a bitch sitting here and leveling... and leveling... and leveling slowly my Pokemon in Ruby. However, throw me on an emulated version of an earlier version and I can just hold down the turbo button to get through battles faster, etc. I can't decide which is better, blah.

[Cactus Drags]

Grinding's amazing. 5-0s, bluntslides, railslides, awesome. My only gripe is that you can't darkslide in Skate.

[stokeriño]

I knew that joke would come, soon enough. >_>

[Cactus Drags]

I was surprised it hadn't come sooner. >_>

Grinding's actually one of the things that puts me off RPGs. "Oh yay that's traipse through this field for 6 hours doing random battles." No thanks. My attention span doesn't help. I loved Final Fantasy 7, but I never got off the second disc.

[Gazz]

Grinding puts me off or kills any enthusiasm I have for MMORPG's, but farming or crafting is far worse on games that have it.

Combine 1 wood and 2 fabric, makes a pair of shoes. Repeat x6000 for 0.1 crafting skill.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Grinding puts me off or kills any enthusiasm I have for MMORPG's, but farming or crafting is far worse on games that have it.

Combine 1 wood and 2 fabric, makes a pair of shoes. Repeat x6000 for 0.1 crafting skill.

Crafting is a huge goldsink in most games too. For example, in World of Warcraft some of the crafting professions will cost the player thousands of gold just to max the skill out.

But as far as grinding in RPGs goes I don't care for it. I love RPGs, but a lot of the RPGs I play are like Xenosaga or Grandia/Grandia II/Grandia III where the only battles I do are the ones I'm forced to do, and then if I can avoid a battle I'll do that -- the only drawback is that sometimes it feels like you're being punished for avoiding battles, but it's nothing that can't be rectified by thirty minutes or an hour of diving head first into packs of enemies.

For example, in one of the boss battles in Grandia II I kept dying because he was a few levels higher than I was so I just walked out of the dungeon and walked back in, resetting the enemies and I did that for about thirty minutes, leveled a few times and was able to beat the boss easily afterward.

So.. yeah. I guess what I'm saying is grinding - mixed bag deal for me.

[Bigal]

Grandia is awesome. I kept getting killed in what I think was the final boss battle though

[Robsturgh]

Thats weird, Grandia I and II were some of the few RPGs that I didn't feel the need to grind at any part of it, and it remained pretty challenging throughout. Dragon Quest 8 however....

[MalaCloudy Black]

Thats weird, Grandia I and II were some of the few RPGs that I didn't feel the need to grind at any part of it, and it remained pretty challenging throughout. Dragon Quest 8 however....

Well the boss I was having trouble on was

Spoiler: Click here to view

The encounter with Melfice. He was a bit of a bitch to beat so before I tried again I just walked around killing all the enemies in one area, then I'd walk out of the area, back in, kill the respawns etc. and I found that it helped me a little bit when I was 2-3 levels higher than the first time I went into the Melfice battle.

[Ruki]

Dragon Quest 8 was PURE grinding. If you didn't grind, you didn't win. I barely beat the final boss.

[Hajjhowe]

Yeah, it's the exact reason I can't stand RPG games. I love stats, but doing the same fights over & over again is tiresome.

[Bigal]

Breath of Fire 3. Now that was an awesome game.

[Farmer Reil]

The thing about grinding is, it's become accepted. Like queuing. Nobody LIKES to queue, they just want the thing they get at the end of it, and they can chat or listen to music while they do it.

To use WoW as an example (although it's exactly the same in pretty much every RPG ever). To gain experience, you need to kill stuff or complete quests. To complete quests, you need to kill stuff to acquire things (or just to make them dead), or make items (which usually requires killing stuff to acquire components). The experience gained grants you access to more powerful spells, skills and/or armour and weapons. These enable you to kill bosses to get better shit.

So you need to grind to get better shit.

Which is pretty much how life works, right? Work = pay. Pay = better shit.

When you play an RPG, you're creating a character and taking him/her through life, improving him/her, making him/her better at stuff. Making friends (AI or human) and defeating bad guys. Which, essentially, is what you do in reality. Or, in the case of the defeating bad guys part, what you wish you could do. Swords and shit are cool, bigger swords are cooler. So you want the bigger swords.

You can't go around in real life waving a sword and shield around and bellowing warcries. That's why you need the game.

In short, the enjoyment isn't the grind, it's the sense of achievement when the grind is over and you have the items. The grind is merely there to remind you that getting shit requires effort. If it didn't, it wouldn't be rewarding, and thus wouldn't be fun.

Another comparison would be football. Grinding; running around and passing the ball to people, is all well and good, but it's scoring a goal that really counts, you get a small sense of achievement, all the running and passing was worth it. But in the grand scheme of things it's not enough. You need to win the match, which requires more grinding. And when you've won, you need to keep winning more matches to win the league. Lifting the league trophy is the ultimate achievement, like beating the final boss. And you have to keep grinding, or you won't get there. So you do it.

Whether grinding is fun or not depends on your taste. There's a reason people don't play RPGs, just like there's a reason people don't play football.

Edited June 3, 2008 by Farmer Reil

[Liam]

Yeah, I kinda gave up on Dragon Quest because of the sheer amount of grinding that was necessary.

[DMN in the House]

I actually enjoy a bit of mindless grinding from time to time. Its a good stress reliever.