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Editorial Joystiq on Grinding in RPGs

Crooked Bee

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Tags: Baldur's Gate; Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim; Grinding; Planescape: Torment; Wizardry VII: Crusaders Of The Dark Savant

Joystiq's Rowan Kaiser has written an article on the activity known as "grinding" and its relationship with the role-playing genre. Have a taste:

There are a few games where we can clearly say that "grinding" exists. Wizardry VII, as much as I love it, does play much better when you walk around in circles, searching for random encounters, in front of a regeneration fountain so that you are in very little danger. That's grinding. Fighting the same enemy over and over in an MMRPG until you get a rare drop? Definitely grinding. But those are rare and it's the application of "grinding" to other RPGs that concerns me.

Take The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, for example. Even the game's biggest fans won't claim that the main plot is what makes it special. No, what makes Skyrim special are the moments when you find something new and wonderful in a place where you didn't expect it. That mostly happens through exploration. If you find a cave, you can enter it, clearing out the enemies, maybe gaining some new skills and picking up some new items. Sometimes you'll find a note or a part of a quest that frames that cave with Skyrim's embedded narrative. Sometimes it's just a cave, and the excitement of exploring it can create emergent narratives – a new, stronger form of bandit can chase your character into a corner, forcing you into a new set of desperate, memorable strategies.

Describing one's actions in Skyrim sounds a lot like "grinding": you randomly fight enemies in non-essential caves, and in so doing, improve your character with experience, money, and items. How is that different from spinning in place in (increasingly rare) games with random encounters? That's where the traditional definition of grinding starts to fall apart. See, the joy of Skyrim is the exploration. One may not play for the main plot at all, so defining these actions as "not-grinding" sounds absurd. But in Wizardry VII, the joy isn't completing the main plot either. It's interacting with the skill and class system, which, of course, is accessed through the experience points gained primarily from combat. Actions which are traditionally described as "grinding" – inessential, repetitive tasks which build up the player character's abilities – are not inessential after all.

The problem of grinding becomes much less one of overall game design and more one of focus. What is the game about, and what interrupts that focus? For example, I personally dislike Infinity Engine combat in Baldur's Gate I/II and Planescape: Torment. For me, the combat gets in the way of the exploration of the world, its quests, and its characters that defines these games. In Baldur's Gate, I want to find what's on the next screen more than I want to try to defeat this powerful mage blocking me. In Torment, I want to learn more about the Nameless One's history, not slog through yet another bunch of thugs blocking my progression.​

Spotted at Gamebanshee because who the hell reads Joystiq anyway
 

EG

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Rowan Kaiser said:
. . . I want to find what's on the next screen more than I want to try to defeat this powerful mage blocking me. In Torment, I want to learn more about the Nameless One's history, not slog through yet another bunch of thugs blocking my progression.

Poor dear. Perhaps we should find him a novelization of the game.
 

Aeschylus

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I don't love grinding in RPGs, but there are very few games made outside of Japan where grinding is necessary.
I personally dislike Infinity Engine combat in Baldur's Gate I/II and Planescape: Torment.
Super edgy -- he belongs on the Codex. Oh wait...
 
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Repetition is inherent in games, and there's nothing wrong with it as long as it is... FUN.

Grinding emerges as a concept when you give player repetitive tasks with no fine control over how they are performed, thus ensuring guaranteed boredom. I.E. clicking on an enemy repeatedly until their health bar depletes.

Modern RPGs and especially traditional MMOs are more guilty of this than other genres, because they heavily abstract combat - something that was supposed to be involving, and dare I say, creative, fun.
 

EG

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It's a shame that fun has such a fluid definition.
 

Gragt

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Going through the early Wizardry for the first time, I can't help but feel that these games got the right idea about grinding. For the most part, exploring and mapping the maze is the bigger challenge of the game, and by the time I'm done with a celllar, I usually fought enough beasties to be of an acceptable level for the next cellar.

Anyway article isn't terribly interesting and indeed who reads Joystiq anyway?
 

hoverdog

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Rowan Kaiser said:
. . . I want to find what's on the next screen more than I want to try to defeat this powerful mage blocking me. In Torment, I want to learn more about the Nameless One's history, not slog through yet another bunch of thugs blocking my progression.

Poor dear. Perhaps we should find him a novelization of the game.

Here you go: http://www.wischik.com/lu/senses/pst-book.html

nooooo.jpg
 

Metro

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The issues of grinding and exploration will always be inseparable as exploration is one of the few ways to adequately deal with avoiding a rigidly non-linear RPG. Moreover, the definition of grinding ranges widely depending on your perspective. Is it simply going back and forth in the hopes of triggering a random encounter for xp gain (a la earlier jRPGs like Dragon Warrior or Phantasy Star or whatever)? Is exploration grinding? Is side questing grinding? Is side questing only grinding when it is mostly 'Fed Ex or Kill X monsters?'

Obviously there are other ways to deal with it like packing your game full of 'gateway' style choice and consequence moments such that, while ensuring your character/party sufficiently gains enough experience to beat the big bad/finish the game, there are meaningful deviations along the way in terms of factions, areas, quests, etc. Of course, you can have both but including an inordinate amount of side quests on top of a 'premeasured for xp' main quest leads to having an overpowered character/party and ruins the challenge (barring level caps). Then there's the lazy way of doing it: level scaling that nullifies any feel of progression.

When you're designing a combat focused ARPG then complaints of grinding ring a bit hollow. You pretty much know what you're getting into when you boot up the game. They all follow the same Diablo-esque formula. Beat encounter(s) to get stronger and find better item(s) so you can beat more encounters(s) to get stronger and find better item(s) so... blah blah blah... Essentially something like Dark Souls is no different in its formula it just has different (superior) fighting mechanics.
 

felipepepe

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Oh, look, another of those fantastic articles about people that loves games but hate actually playing them...

I read stuff like that like I would read hispters complaining that rock shows are too long; they just wanna go there, take a picture and post on facebook, anything over 3 songs is just boring and pure repetition, no one goes there for the music anyway...
 

Rivmusique

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a new, stronger form of bandit can chase your character into a corner, forcing you into a new set of desperate, memorable strategies.
Is this even true? I didn't play it, but I played Oblivion and the combat is similar, so the only way I can see this being true is if your original strategy is just to soak blows and hit hit hit and suddenly an enemy can kill you in less than 5 hits so now you need to use the block button. Or if a mage you now need to backpedal. Desperate, memorable strategy indeed.
 

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Do Film Critics who hate and barely watch,say, horror movies get paid to write articles about what horror movies should be like and how new horror movies are better because they streamlined the unintuitive and inaccessible scariness?
 

EG

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Oh, look, another of those fantastic articles about people that loves games but hate actually playing them...

I guess I was one of those when I was younger: The whole point of the game-play portion of the game was to get to the next cinematic/cool new character or level, rather than the process of decimating the enemies that stood in my way.

I just figure the author is the eight year old me.

--
Converting PDF to Kindle format as we speak . . . Deity preserve me.
 

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I've always defined grinding as repeated, insubstantial to (possibly emergent) narrative or gameplay, or game's structure and technically (though not necessarily actually) optional activity that's undertaken by player solely as a means to an end.

It can be either a conscious design anti-feature (like in Derpblo 2 & 3) or it can result from a loophole (like Beth's inability to sufficiently grind proof their use-based system despite it being trivial to do).
 

JarlFrank

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Grinding is doing repetitive actions that are neither fun nor exciting nor really dangerous in order to progress to the next area of the game that actually offers fun content.

It's when games force you into doing stupid shit repeatedly before you can get on with the good stuff. MMOs are especially guilty of this and it's the reason I quit every single one I ever tried after 2 weeks at most - grinding is not fun, it's tedium.
 

felipepepe

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Grinding is doing repetitive actions that are neither fun nor exciting nor really dangerous in order to progress to the next area of the game that actually offers fun content.
Dark & Demon Souls makes you redo areas and kill the same enemies countless times, but it doesn't feel like grinding because everytime you learn something, and the enemies can still kill you if you're careless... problem with MMOs and some RPG is that all the battles against the same enemy fight the same.
 

EG

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Grinding is doing repetitive actions that are neither fun nor exciting nor really dangerous in order to progress to the next area of the game that actually offers fun content.

It's when games force you into doing stupid shit repeatedly before you can get on with the good stuff. MMOs are especially guilty of this and it's the reason I quit every single one I ever tried after 2 weeks at most - grinding is not fun, it's tedium.

But would you describe Baldur's Gate or PlaneScape Torment as an MMO-like grinding session?
 

JarlFrank

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No, I wouldn't. I also never claimed that the author was right in everything he wrote, I just gave a definition of grinding and why it's shit.
 

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