Poll of the Day > RPG Grinding Poll of the Day

(+) Yeah! (+)

Im surprised a little over half of the people responding said they were still cool with grinding for hours playing RPG games.

I hate grinding that is just to grind, its one reason why I didnt get into many of the early 90s RPGs. By the late 90s it seems like companies got a lot better, there was a lot less grinding in games like Chrono Trigger vs Secret of Mana and even games like FF7 and FF8 required much less grinding then previous games in the series which required a ton.

Now it seems like side quests replaced grinding in most RPG and eventually games. Which is fine, even the worst side quests are better then hanging out in the woods on a world map, killing underpowered enemies, moving off screen then back on so they respawn, and do it again for hours. And lots of side quests in high quality games are masterpieces.

i like my rpgs like i like my cougar milfs

Most RPGs can be done minimum level now, I think only DQ1 has mandatory grinding and that's due to information creep, not poor design.

Lokarin posted...

Most RPGs can be done minimum level now, I think only DQ1 has mandatory grinding and that's due to information creep, not poor design.

FF6 was designed to keep you as low level as possible so you can use magicite to power level late game. And that was in 1994.

papercup posted...

FF6 was designed to keep you as low level as possible so you can use magicite to power level late game. And that was in 1994.

tbf: ff6 might genuinely be the easiest rpg of all time... even though it's awesome

Grinding is one of those things I tend to like because it is just letting your mind drift while you do something that requires next to no brain power. It is like the main reason I like gaming, to just let my mind wander and stew on things that have frustrated me throughout the day.

Honestly, in most JRPGs, I prefer grinding over story. It is one of the reasons Dragon Quest 1 remains one of my favorites. It is also how the developers of it envisioned the JRPG in the first place.

https://youtu.be/TiOTPwg1fsI?t=584

papercup posted...

FF6 was designed to keep you as low level as possible so you can use magicite to power level late game.

Well...it was DESIGNED just to be played through while leveling normally, but we completionist/optimizing people online realized you could overkill things at the end of game even more by holding off leveling. Why do we care? It's unclear.

Excessive grinding died off in the early 2000s with Dragon Quest 7 and such, although ridiculous drop rates survived a bit longer.

Long story short, though, I think vanilla DQ11 requires too little grinding: you can breeze right through that game with minimal effort. If it doesn't feel like your character has to struggle to succeed a bit it loses something. I vote for 'some grinding'.

wpot posted...

Well...it was DESIGNED just to be played through while leveling normally, but we completionist/optimizing people online realized you could overkill things at the end of game even more by holding off leveling. Why do we care? It's unclear.

Excessive grinding died off in the early 2000s with Dragon Quest 7 and such, although ridiculous drop rates survived a bit longer.

Long story short, though, I think vanilla DQ11 requires too little grinding: you can breeze right through that game with minimal effort. If it doesn't feel like your character has to struggle to succeed a bit it loses something. I vote for 'some grinding'.

Will agree, I didn't have to grind at all in 11... sadly, the 100% stat maxing requires obnoxious grinding of skill seeds

Lokarin posted...

sadly, the 100% stat maxing requires obnoxious grinding of skill seeds

I did a silly amount of that also, but I didn't HAVE to. :)

sflowers539 posted...

Im surprised a little over half of the people responding said they were still cool with grinding for hours playing RPG games.

I'm pretty sure everyone on this website is over 30 and nostalgic.

also i don't like grind, i'm just saying what some people call grind can be overtaken by just getting better at the game.

noted exceptions exist

Lokarin posted...

also i don't like grind, i'm just saying what some people call grind can be overtaken by just getting better at the game.

noted exceptions exist

Uh... depends on the game, but most games where you have to grind it's turn based jrpgs...

BlackScythe0 posted...

Uh... depends on the game, but most games where you have to grind it's turn based jrpgs...

I automatically assumed that jrpgs were the default position here.... do people grind at all in any other genre?

Lokarin posted...

I automatically assumed that jrpgs were the default position here.... do people grind at all in any other genre?

WoW innovated the mmo genre with quest based leveling (mostly quest based anyways) while most mmo's prior depended entirely on grinding to level, with the term transitioning to "farming" once max level was reached.

To some grinding can be a very zen experience I think a good example is grinding in games like Diablo 2 or MMO's it's very relaxing in general you can just zone out and grind for loot+exp.

Not everyone enjoys this activity but it's basically like claiming riding a bike is boring why do some people do that, or rowing in a kayak is boring why do they do that. I don't think grinding is a favorite activity of everyone but there are plenty that do like it and they all weren't raised in the golden age of grinding in JRPG's.

Really when you break down most JRPG's they typically do three things mostly, combat, story, and exploration some will prefer one or the other depending.

Whether grinding feels good or not depends on the game. Astlibra was fun because your power level scales really hard compared to the amount of time put in. Grinding in something like Dragon's Dogma doesn't really feel worth it because it's meant to be tangential.

Grinding is good for listening to podcasts.

I like grinding if it's feasible and worth your time. If i can spend a few hours and get far ahead, cool. if it takes days and days for one level with grinding, no, i'll just play the dang game.

i only grind hot chicks, none of that weeb shit for me

Depends on the game.

Something like Pokemon, grinding is horrible. On the other hand, I've always loved Runescape and pretty much the entire game is a grind.

Runescape has always been a love/hate situation for me because I don't really like the endless grinding but I always loved some of the extra minigames like Stealing Creation or Pest Control. So I'd grind enough to be sorta competitive but never committed to any 99's

sflowers539 posted...

Im surprised a little over half of the people responding said they were still cool with grinding for hours playing RPG games.

To quote my answer from the other PotD board:

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Back in the day, when I actually played JRPGs, I was usually fine with a bit of grinding. Whether it was because of the occasional need to level up to handle a harder area, or even over-leveling to make combat easier, I wouldn't mind having to spend an hour or two every now and then to just fight monsters.

But even then, excessive grinding was boring and discouraging, to the point where if a game was too grind-heavy, I'd probably just stop playing. Ideally, after the grind gets boring, I should be able to move on to the next bit of story to keep me interested. Light grinding every now and then along the way was preferable to extreme endless grinding in specific places or just constant soul-numbing grind 100% of the time.

The problem is, I've played way too many Western RPGs since then. And on top of finding them more engaging in pretty much every way that matters to me, the fact that most of them use level balancing to make grinding unnecessary (and in some cases unhelpful) has basically gotten me used to the idea of playing games that don't require grinding at all... which means my tolerance for it is a lot less than it used to be.

I've never cared about grinding in MMOs because I don't play them. They're pretty much anathema to everything I actually want out of games.

BlackScythe0 posted...

I automatically assumed that jrpgs were the default position here.... do people grind at all in any other genre?

Grinding for materials in games like Terraria or Minecraft. Although Terraria kind of has RPG elements, despite not having XP (gear/enemies which scale as you process through the game).

Item grinding in the Metroidvania games gets really zen sometimes, you get into the rhythm and pattern of the quickest way to kill an enemy and then reset the room

JigsawTD3 posted...

i only grind hot chicks, none of that weeb shit for me

Babes and rails bro

obligatory what poll?

I'm only ok with grinding if the combat is really fun which isn't the case with turn based rpgs and well a lot of rpgs.

Lots of good replies here, I guess today early 90s style grinding might be more tolerable as you can put on a podcast or something like that which would make it easier to handle but if we are old enough to have played those games in the 90s I think most of our patience for stuff like that is diminished too, so a double edged sword.