How much grind is too much?

[Saltyk]

People always talk about how much you have to grind in some games. Primarily RPGs and MMOs. So, at what point do you get fed up with grinding? How much is too much or just the right amount?

I've played plenty of games that force the player to grind. I could spend plenty of time grinding levels in Final Fantasy 7, 8, or 9, but then I got quickly bored in FFXII and FFXIII just got annoying. I guess this is because I generally enjoyed the combat in the earlier ones a bit, but found that 12 was basically auto-pilot (I'd watch TV while playing to keep myself entertained) and 13 I just eventually got annoyed with the games combat , which also seemed pretty automatic, and didn't want to have to keep grinding to get strong enough to fight my foes.

In the first 3 Suikoden games I found the grind to be manageable largely due to earned experience scaling to the strength of the enemy, the character, and the size of your party. You could take a low level character to a current area with just the hero, fight one battle and they'd suddenly jump from lvl 10 to level 29 or whatever level they should be. They could even out level your main character this way. And money was generally manageable since you just had to keep your current group up to date. Even when Suikoden 3 made war stats be a characters actual stats, you could keep character equipment up to date since you could gather gear and money from chests and play the lottery to earn money. But I got frustrated with Suikoden 4 and the seeming insistence that I level up and gear everyone, while limiting my party to 4 members instead of 6 and doing away with the front and back rows.

Mass Effect 2 didn't have so much grind in terms of leveling, but gathering resources was just boring. I would call that a grind. And a pretty bad one at that.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that as long as I can keep myself entertained with the combat, and the game isn't making things ridiculous, I don't mind some grind.

 

[skywolfblue]

World of Warcraft (Vanilla): Too much.
World of Warcraft The Burning Crusade / Wrath of the Lich King: Just right.

I don't mind a tiny bit, so long as it's in moderation. I'm not really sure why some people seem to insist on manually grinding instead of questing and then complain about it later.

Skill grinding in Oblivion is another example of BAD grinding. Stupid, stupid system...

 

[vxicepickxv]

Final Fantasy XI is too much grind, especially considering that there's pretty much no questing, and it takes forever to level. Unless you're playing a healing class, it pretty much takes forever to part up too, and it's worse when you only have one class.

 

[silver wolf009]

I stop liking grind when I realize there's no bigger challenge to overcome that I would need to grind to get ready for. I stop grinding when it becomes grinding for grindings sake.

 

[sms_117b]

It's too much if it's more than an hour, when I was living at home there were 3 of us all wanting to play a console (yes 1 between 3, sometimes 4 if my sister did and 5 if my mum got hold of something new) I got so fed up on some Final Fantasies (and Star Ocean) playing for an hour just to level up enough to play story next time around, especially if the boss is more than 15 levels higher than the surrounding fodder, that's just stupid!

 

[Smooth Operator]

As soon as I notice I'm grinding it's too much, all games have it but with the right set of twists and turns it will never poke you in the eye to say you are just grinding the time away.

And god damn that ME2 recourse thing, I still hope the guy who made it get's stabbed in the throat.

 

[SixWingedAsura]

A little bit of grinding is all I want. I don't want to spend hours and hours and hours on a game doing the same task simply so I can advance just a little bit further in the storyline/world/ect.

Anything more than that and I start to get bored real fast.

 

[mirror's edgy]

I think that some RPGs, like the First seven FF games or Kingdom Hearts, can be seen through to the end without much grinding. I mean that if you fight everything you encounter on the way to a boss fight, you should be set. Sometimes a half hour or so can make the difference if a boss fight is really shredding you, but the majority of the game can be completed without the story grinding to a halt (ba dum, tish) every few hours.

I will qualify that by saying there are certain optional challenges that downright demand grinding. Want to beat those dragons and find the best Magicite/ Materia/ Persona cards/ Weapons, or any other really cool swag? It's pretty much implicitly understood that you should be around twenty levels higher than you need to beat the game if you want to stand a chance.

I prefer RPGs that offer multiple solutions to their obstacles that require careful thought and preparation, not bashing the same four monsters until I lose the feeling in my legs. That is why I didn't beat the WEAPONS in FF VII, but I did make it through The Glow in Fallout.

 

[Bravo Company]

Cabal.... too much grind, after lvl 100 it was grind to get into the next area just so you could grind some more. Not short grinds. Grinding for 3 hours to see your exp bar move 3% at level 148....max level is something like 170 now I think.

 

[Subwayeatn]

maplestory, it was okay until lvl 10 or so. Where they just stop giving you quests. You don't have any idea on what to do next except grind.

 

[baddude1337]

I hate ANY Grind, I feel it just fucks with the flow of a game. Crackdown 1 and 2 were so boring when trying to max out your skills.

 

[Vivi22]

If you're grinding, then to me the implication is that you're doing something mundane or boring to get some reward that you want. As far as I'm concerned, any grinding is too much because the player should never be tasked with doing something that's mundane or boring. It's also why I hate fetch quests frankly. It's one thing when these are optional side quests or what have you, but when they become required, progress grinds to a halt until the player has overcome some arbitrary number of battles or obtained some arbitrarily rare item. To me it's a sign of poor game balancing.

Now if the task they have to do to get the reward is enjoyable then it isn't really grinding anymore (unless they have to do it so much that it becomes boring over time anyway).

For example, I had no problem with gaining experience or item drops that I wanted when I played through FFXII because even though it could seem like a game that's grind heavy on the face of it, I enjoyed the battle system so much that I would go out of my way to explore and fight monsters. I can't say the same about many other games, RPG's in particular which involved what people traditionally view as grinding.

 

[Dragunai]

Cabal.... too much grind, after lvl 100 it was grind to get into the next area just so you could grind some more. Not short grinds. Grinding for 3 hours to see your exp bar move 3% at level 148....max level is something like 170 now I think.

See thats the problem with a MASSIVE number of F2P mmorpgs.
I've played a veritable shit ton of them and they typically go "Right, quests are done go grind a fuckload of monsters for hours and hours to get half a bar."

Why?

I don't play mmorpgs to constantly kill monsters for hours at a time. I play them to run dungeons, raid bosses, pvp in arenas and battlegrounds or in the case of DDO to complete well told stories.

I wish mmorpgs forgot about making us grind from lvl1-?? and just went.

You know what, Go ahead choose your class, race, etc.
Right now you get to play through a series of short campaigns, each with their own story with them tying in together gradually telling one over arching story.

And before anyone says it can't be done I cite reference to Guildwars and DDO.
Both games didn;t ask you to do a single grind quest (cept one in DDO where you gotta defend a keep from 100 kobolds or something but it didn't feel grindy.)

Both of those games gave you experience for completing missions which could be repeated at choice but never told you to do the same thing 100 times.

If GW had a better class structure and more intense PvE I'd most likely spend a LOT more time playing it.

EDIT:

In fairness I have clocked up over 200 hours on GW since it came out. Not impressive I know compared to some players BUT thats still 197 more than I give most other MMORPGS.

Hence why I am sitting with excitement and worry about GW2.

 

[BlackLurker]

You've stoped grinding when you've gone from a kid with a stick to a God or Goddess.

Seriously though, I don't like Grinding all that much. It's kinda hard to maintain that for that long...

 

[TheSolemnHypnotic]

Dude I will grind for days and days. IDC. I always like to be around %10 over-leveled or more because I hate bosses and unskippable cutscenes and general losing. In FFXIII I fought the same rust gelatin type monster over 60 times running back and forth because...well just because. It was a rather uneventful 3 1/2 hours, but worth it. I don't mind grinding at all.

 

[ajofflight]

Lost Odyssey: Too much grinding.

Many games (for me, anyways) has the "scraping point"; that is, the point where I need to grind to be able to continue. So I think grinding is necessary in some games, but all? Well... nahh.

 

[Saelune]

As much as you find encumbering. Perhaps some people actually enjoy it.

 

[Richardplex]

Grinding is fine unless I've stopped in the main questline so I can dick about killing the same things over and over again just so I can level up so I can actually advance. It's a cheap way of extending game time. Side quests that are harder though and you're meant to do other quests first though, I'm cool with those, because your doing other quests first as opposed to massacring purely for levelling.

 

[BrailleOperatic]

As a general rule of thumb for RPGs, if I walk some place and fight off all my random encounters and whatnot, then I should appropriately leveled for whatever lies at the destination. I shouldn't have to backtrack and farm for levels at any point. I don't mind fighting off the bad guys between A and B, but there's no reason for me to trek aimlessly through Route AB a thousand times before I'm strong enough to be allowed to go to point C.

 

[Billabong Pobblecock]

i don't like it when you are forced to grind. i think you should be able to play through with out having to take a break and kill a million pigs or something. with WoW i can just keep going to the next quest. i choose to grind to make the quests easier