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Grinding isn't always a good thing. Sometimes it's fun to become ultra strong. Sometimes it sucks hard when the game sucks and all you want to do is get to the story.
Also, if you think grinding is gone, then you aren't playing very many RPGs.
I've played RPGs since Phantasy Star, and I've just gotten sick of grinding.
Games from eras past used it as a way to hide the technical limitations of the hardware, but riddle me this:
Would you rather fight the same monsters a thousand (or ten thousand) times in an area you've visited no less than a dozen times already? Or would you rather see developers make games with near infinite numbers of enemies and way more area to cover so that grinding...... didn't really feel like grinding?
Take Eternal Sonata for example. There are thirteen unique enemies in the game. With the horsepower these new machines have, that number should be 1,300. There should be ten times the area to cover so that not only is the sense of exploration preserved (which is why I started loving RPGs), but that the sense of newness doesn't go away so fast. Oblivion nailed the vastness of world to cover, but there still weren't anywhere near as many enemies as there should've been. But also, that game didn't require grinding. In fact, it discouraged it.
Grinding sucks (to me anyway) in its current form, but I think the challenge for developers is to somehow make grinding fun. And that's going to be a lot easier said than done.
I think that perhaps part of the problem is that 'gamers' as a group used to be pretty easy to peg down as kids and young men from about 10-20. They usually played a few hours a day after school and developers could more easily get a feel for what the 'average' gamer might be challenged by.
Today, developers have to try and make a game that's supposed to be accessible and challenging to a diverse group of gamers from about 7 through 50. Some of these people play an hourper week. Some of these people play 8 or 10 hours per day. They try to develop for students, professionals, slackers, parents, kids, men and women. In order to sell games and appeal to the broadest spectrum of buyers, they inevitably ship a more homogenized product that provides little challenge to the most skilled game players.
Or maybe not, I don't know...
Wait, you WANT to level grind?Shmiity
You know some people still actually consider the gameplay to be the main attraction of a game.
[QUOTE="Shmiity"]Wait, you WANT to level grind?DarkCatalyst
You know some people still actually consider the gameplay to be the main attraction of a game.
Sure, if you want to spend hours doing fighting tedious battles so that you can stand a chance against the boss. But there's more to gameplay than just leveling up.
[QUOTE="Shmiity"]Wait, you WANT to level grind?DarkCatalyst
You know some people still actually consider the gameplay to be the main attraction of a game.
Lack of an extreme ammount of grinding in rpg's =/= Quality gameplay
I've played RPGs since Phantasy Star, and I've just gotten sick of grinding.
Games from eras past used it as a way to hide the technical limitations of the hardware, but riddle me this:
Would you rather fight the same monsters a thousand (or ten thousand) times in an area you've visited no less than a dozen times already? Or would you rather see developers make games with near infinite numbers of enemies and way more area to cover so that grinding...... didn't really feel like grinding?
Take Eternal Sonata for example. There are thirteen unique enemies in the game. With the horsepower these new machines have, that number should be 1,300. Shame-usBlackley
The ammount of unique monsters in Eternal Sonata is too low, but 1300? You do understand that it takes alot more time to make these detailed models than it was to make them in previous generations. Several devs say that they need like 5 weeks to make high quality characters.
[QUOTE="DarkCatalyst"][QUOTE="Shmiity"]Wait, you WANT to level grind?LordAndrew
You know some people still actually consider the gameplay to be the main attraction of a game.
Sure, if you want to spend hours doing fighting tedious battles so that you can stand a chance against the boss. But there's more to gameplay than just leveling up.
Battles shouldn't be tedious at all. That's why I hate Suikoden and Dragon Quest and hail Grandia as the series that shall save us all.
The ammount of unique monsters in Eternal Sonata is too low, but 1300? You do understand that it takes alot more time to make these detailed models than it was to make them in previous generations. Several devs say that they need like 5 weeks to make high quality characters.
_Tobli_
As I said, it would be a challenge for developers to do this. But it isn't like it's impossible. Square RPGs usually have a few hundred enemies in them, and Square spends a ton of time and money making worthless (IMO) CG movies in their games. If they were to divert those resources into things that actually affected the game itself......
All I'm saying is that if developers are going to rely on grinding as a design conceit, they have to make it interesting. And fighting a Malboro 500 times isn't interesting. They need to figure out ways to better use their resources (money, manpower) to make their games stay compelling.
And since hardware limitations have become much less of a problem, more enemies and larger worlds should just be a given.
Grandia? Hm, never played it. :? Maybe it's enjoyable; I don't konw.
Regardless, the word "grind" does not sound like fun. Sounds excruciatingly painful.
Wait... when did grinding = difficult?
the only difficult thing about grinding was keeping your sanity while fighting the same 5 creatures over and over again. in fact grinding was used to lessen the difficulty in a game.
you had a hard time with a creature? you fight lesser creatures for 120 minutes then come back and kick the hard creatures' ass.
Thankfully grinding is pretty much dead.
Grandia? Hm, never played it. :? Maybe it's enjoyable; I don't konw.
Regardless, the word "grind" does not sound like fun. Sounds excruciatingly painful.
LordAndrew
Grandia was one of the best rpg's on the playstation. Unfortunetly SE must have made alot of the talented people who made Grandia do something else because all other games in the series have been pretty standard. Great combat, but everything else is mediocre.
I still have fond memories of collecting junk(legendary hero gear :oops: ) in the beginning of the original. I hope they release it on PSN :)
BTW: Why are everyone complaining about the difficuly of games?
Wait... when did grinding = difficult?
the only difficult thing about grinding was keeping your sanity while fighting the same 5 creatures over and over again. in fact grinding was used to lessen the difficulty in a game.
you had a hard time with a creature? you fight lesser creatures for 120 minutes then come back and kick the hard creatures' ass.
Thankfully grinding is pretty much dead.
smerlus
Yep, beat me to it. Grinding doesn't make the game more difficult. It just makes the game take more time. Grinding doesn't equate to having good gameplay, and in fact is often used as a crutch to make poor design not seem as bad since you can just power your way through the game.
[QUOTE="LordAndrew"][QUOTE="DarkCatalyst"][QUOTE="Shmiity"]Wait, you WANT to level grind?DarkCatalyst
You know some people still actually consider the gameplay to be the main attraction of a game.
Sure, if you want to spend hours doing fighting tedious battles so that you can stand a chance against the boss. But there's more to gameplay than just leveling up.
Battles shouldn't be tedious at all. That's why I hate Suikoden and Dragon Quest and hail Grandia as the series that shall save us all.
Actually Grandia had a nice way of giving the possibility to power up as long as you like withoung getting boring and doesn´t force you to do it.You got the option.It wasn´t completely impossible to beat without,buta lot easier if you powered up and that´s the way it should be.
Grinding isn´t bad at all...not totally.The times of Phantasy Star 2 are absolutely over,but a bit more then just running through a RPG without any extra-stuff that you could really use is awful as well.For example,I just powerded up a little bit in FFX and the final boss was a goner in under 5 Minutes...that´s not what I expected.
As far as modern RPGs not being challenging, I think you're right.
As far as them not having grinding, I think you're wrong. I think it's more the case that they have figured out how to make it so that while you may be grinding, you aren't deliberately staying in the same area and avoiding going to the next one to do it. I think the toughness of the monsters is more gradual unlike some older RPGs where you could go right from trivially easy guys to ones that kill your people in two hits just a short distance away.
Take Final Fantasy XII for example. Do you think it would be feasible to take on the bosses in that game if you ran away from all of the normal enemies? Clearly not. And that game is pretty damn long as it is.
Really, though, if you want grinding, MMORPGs are all about that.
Yep, beat me to it. Grinding doesn't make the game more difficult. It just makes the game take more time. Grinding doesn't equate to having good gameplay, and in fact is often used as a crutch to make poor design not seem as bad since you can just power your way through the game. AtomicTangerine
More time? Seriously? The last JRPG i finished was FFXII(second playtrough) , and i clocked more than 190 hours even though saved lots of time by knowing what wasn't worth doing or getting.
I agree with most the posts in that grinding doesn't really make the game harder. For me though, I find the whole idea of making your character stronger and better so that you can beat a big boss a lot of fun. I don't want to just go to the boss and be able to kill him from just killing the enemies I had to kill on the way. I find that when you have to grind to beat certain parts of an RPG itgive you a feeling of acomplishment and satisfaction because you had to work for it.
BTW, this is my first topic and I was wondering how well it was done.
I agree with most the posts in that grinding doesn't really make the game harder. For me though, I find the whole idea of making your character stronger and better so that you can beat a big boss a lot of fun. I don't want to just go to the boss and be able to kill him from just killing the enemies I had to kill on the way. I find that when you have to grind to beat certain parts of an RPG itgive you a feeling of acomplishment and satisfaction because you had to work for it.
BTW, this is my first topic and I was wondering how well it was done.
OGoriginalgamer
You made a fine first topic -- better than half of the stuff that gets posted here, anyway.
But yeah, when I was reading your post about the boss fight, it made me wonder why boss fights in games that don't have levelling at all are so fulfilling (Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden) and my first thought was that the boss fight itself was simply implemented better, more balanced if you will.
I started to think how awful it would make games like Gaiden or DMC if when you got to a boss, he annihalated you on the first hit and you had to go back and fight a thousand reapers and marionettes to even stand a chance against him. What action games have done so well regarding boss fights in the past is that they've relied on applied knowledge of the combat system rather than just the health/damage ratio. I know action games and RPGs are very different animals, but boss fights are boss fights when it all comes down to it -- you're squaring off against an enemy that most likely overpowers you, and you have to use skill and cunning to defeat him. I think that's sort of where RPGs are going wrong -- a boss fight should be epic no matter what the level. Levelling up until you can just waltz in and waste a boss kind of goes against everything a boss fight should be.
I'm sort of veering off track with this, but my point is that a boss fight doesn't need grinding to be compelling. Not if it's well-designed at least.
[QUOTE="AtomicTangerine"]Yep, beat me to it. Grinding doesn't make the game more difficult. It just makes the game take more time. Grinding doesn't equate to having good gameplay, and in fact is often used as a crutch to make poor design not seem as bad since you can just power your way through the game. _Tobli_
More time? Seriously? The last JRPG i finished was FFXII(second playtrough) , and i clocked more than 190 hours even though saved lots of time by knowing what wasn't worth doing or getting.
soooousing a game with a crap load of sidequests as a rebuttle for games that took forever because of grinding is accomplishing what?
fact is, in FFXII... that 190 hours isn't just for you trying to get through the main quest.... it's for whatever other errands you were trying to run, which brings me to a thought....
sidequests >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> grinding.
[QUOTE="LordAndrew"][QUOTE="DarkCatalyst"][QUOTE="Shmiity"]Wait, you WANT to level grind?DarkCatalyst
You know some people still actually consider the gameplay to be the main attraction of a game.
Sure, if you want to spend hours doing fighting tedious battles so that you can stand a chance against the boss. But there's more to gameplay than just leveling up.
Battles shouldn't be tedious at all. That's why I hate Suikoden and Dragon Quest and hail Grandia as the series that shall save us all.
Might want to differentiate between tedious grinding and gameplay.
You approach grinding as if it is a good thing. Grinding is normally taken in a negative light. I.E. the not fun part of MMORPGs and JRPGs to most people. The "You gotta repeat the same action against Black Goblin Party x10" factor needs to be taken out, otherwise RPGs are just a button mashing fest where you get pissed off if the black mage can't wipe out a whole enemy party in one spell because one enemy happened to take 667 damage instead of 670.
People want to be spoon-fed a story rather than be given a game to play anymore. It's depressing.DarkCatalyst
Grinding isn't 'playing', it's more like a chore.
Do you really want to spend the next ten hours fighting the same enemies over and over again just to get to the next town/cutscene/boss/whatever? No!
Grind has never been fun, and I'm glad to hear that it's dying in JRPGs.
[QUOTE="DarkCatalyst"]People want to be spoon-fed a story rather than be given a game to play anymore. It's depressing.Planeforger
Grinding isn't 'playing', it's more like a chore.
Do you really want to spend the next ten hours fighting the same enemies over and over again just to get to the next town/cutscene/boss/whatever? No!
Grind has never been fun, and I'm glad to hear that it's dying in JRPGs.
Truth, I am very happy it is dying out. Don't get me wrong I don't necessarily hate games that involve grinding (FF1 I love for example) but I would much rather focus on story/gameplay etc. This sums up my thoughts quite nicely actually...
I must have missed something. At what point did everyone start calling them JRPGs instead of just RPGs?SpaceMoose
Well, there's a clear difference between western RPGs and Japanese RPGs, so people tend to call them WRPGs (or just RPGs) and JRPGs.
Well, there's a clear difference between western RPGs and Japanese RPGs, so people tend to call them WRPGs (or just RPGs) and JRPGs.
Planeforger
So western RPG's don't have and did not ever have grinding? Hm, I'm not so sure about that...
I dont mind grinding for like an hour or so to beat a particular boss or enemy but grinding for like 3hrs+ turns me off i just cant be bothered and it soaks up too much time.
Although I can see where you're coming from, I think a major factor is the rose-tinted hue of nostalgia...
No one is stopping you repeatedly killing the same monsters in new RPGs, do whatever floats your boat.
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