Level Grinding

[Knighterius 502]

Hello,

 

So I was making my game and I noticed that my players might have to level grind a few levels before defeating a boss battle ahead. 

 

What I was wondering was, do people think it's bad that a game makes you level grind? Do you think that your level should be just fine if you do everything possible in the dungeon? 
 

I honestly enjoy level grinding, especially when lets say my level is 11 and to defeat the boss I need to be at around 15 I'd gladly go and battle some more and hone my skills.

 

What do others think? Would you rather not level grind? Would you rather base it all on strategy? I feel my game is going to border on both but I'd like to know my friend's opinions

 

Over and Out,

Knighty

[+ Novem 344]

Grinding can be enjoyable only if the content to grind on is varied enough. If it's the same few monsters over and over and over again then it will inevitably get boring.

 

Overall I think most of us have played RPG's long enough to get a bit sick of grinding so I would rely on it as little as possible. Instead, fill that time with interesting content. Entertaining side-quests, secrets, puzzles... that kind of stuff. Instead of purely monster killing for experience you should try to give the player a variety of options to get the necessary XP from interesting activities other than fighting.

 

In my opinion keeping the player engaged at all times is a key part of game design. If they get bored then they will stop playing, so make sure the player doesn't spend too long on any repetitive task. Just because you want the player to work for something doesn't mean you have to bore them to do it. Something can be challenging to accomplish without being dull, that is the kind of work you should focus on when building a game instead of anything that even resembles repetitive task work. At that point it feels like a chore and not a challenge.

Edited September 23, 2015 by Novem

[Point08 219]

Grinding can be enjoyable only if the content to grind on is varied enough. If it's the same few monsters over and over and over again then it will inevitably get boring.

 

Overall I think most of us have played RPG's long enough to get a bit sick of grinding so I would rely on it as little as possible. Instead, fill that time with interesting content. Entertaining side-quests, secrets, puzzles... that kind of stuff. Instead of purely monster killing for experience you should try to give the player a variety of options to get the necessary XP from interesting activities other than fighting.

 

In my opinion keeping the player engaged at all times is a key part of game design. If they get bored then they will stop playing, so make sure the player doesn't spend too long on any repetitive task. Just because you want the player to work for something doesn't mean you have to bore them to do it. Something can be challenging to accomplish without being being dull, that is the kind of work you should focus on when building a game instead of anything that even resembles repetitive task work. At that point it feels like a chore and not a challenge.

 

This. Particularly the last two sentences. Grinding is the very reason I quit playing two of my favorite MMORPGs. Grinding is not difficult, it is simply a time sink. In an MMO there are a couple reasons this is used, and while personally I feel there are betters ways to correct the problems grinding addresses, that is a different discussion for a different thread. In an MMO, some of the boredom involved in grinding can be offset by the fact that you're playing with your friends, but in a single player RPG, you don't have that added entertainment. I play games to be entertained, to have fun, so as soon as I stop enjoying it, I stop playing. That is not to say a game can't be challenging, I like a challenge! However, grinding is not a challenge, there is nothing hard about it, and the only it tests is patience.

 

There is another potential problem to grinding, and that is, players grind a bit too much and completely trivialize that boss fight you worked so hard to make interesting. That super cool mechanic that happens in round four, oh, they never even saw it because the boss died in round three. If that only happens once, it sucks, but it's not that big of a deal. However, now that player is going to the next area at a higher starting level than you planned, so when they get to the next boss, they likely did a bit of grinding again, and now that one is trivialized too, and so on and so on. This, again, can lead to boredom.

 

In my opinion (and others will vary, as there are people who enjoy grinding, strange masochistic people that they are ) when a player reaches a boss, it should be difficult to beat, probably requiring not just skills but maybe some consumable item use as well, but it should be beatable at his/her/their current level. To me, this means if you have main story stuff, and side story(quest) stuff, if they do only the main story, they should be able to beat the boss, but with significant difficulty, to the point it might take a couple tries. If they do main story plus some of the side quest stuff, that should be where your "default" difficulty for the boss is, he's a challenge and interesting, but but not punishing. If they do all of the main and side story stuff, the boss shouldn't be a cakewalk, but should be beatable by most players on a single try, even if they make one or two mistakes. This allows players who want a challenge to get one, and players who prefer to go in and feel like they're super powerful to have that option, but still keeps the boss relevant. 

 

The above method can also create problems though, because you may have a completionist style player who wants to do all quests, but really likes a challenge. One thing you can do is allow them to go back after beating the boss to do side story stuff, but sometimes from a story perspective, that doesn't make sense. This is especially difficult in a really linear game.

 

A method I've been toying with to deal with this issue, is having two boss modes: normal, and easy. Normal, is exactly that, it is the boss fight the way I originally intended it to be, with all the mechanics and challenges in place. Easy, on the other hand, will either lower the boss' health, or remove or weaken a specific mechanic, or something else along those lines. This method allows players to do, or not do, all the story/quests they want. If the player did the minimal amount of quests and feel like they just can't beat this boss, they can fight him in a slightly easier mode so they can still progress through the story and don't get gated, and frustrated, or forced to go back and do side quests that they had no interest in.

 

I'm also throwing around some options like, the first time the player fights the boss, only normal mode is available, but if they lose, then they can retry on easy mode. Unless you altered saved games though, this could be frustrating since if they still lost on easy, they would have to re-fight the boss on normal before being able to attempt easy mode again if they quit and reloaded. Another option I've thought about is, if the player beats the boss on easy, they have the option to then re-fight the boss (immediately, or at a later time) on normal, so they don't end up feeling like they never really kicked in the face of that one boss when they eventually beat the game. After beating him on easy mode, they would have a better understanding of the fight, and beating him on normal would likely be less difficult for them.

 

While the easy/normal option above creates more work, it's primarily in the play-testing phase, as when you design and test the fight, that's normal. Then all you do is make a couple tweaks to tone it down a little, and that's your easy mode. This way, you're not creating anything new, you're mostly just tweaking numbers. By the time you finish play-testing your normal version, you'll probably already have a pretty good idea of what you need to tweak, and by how much, to create an easy version.

[Rikifive 3,411]

edit lol wrong thread

I did the same once. xD (and it's still visible, coz I didn't deleted that post xD)

 

--------------------------------

Well... I can't say much, because I totally love grinding, so my point of view may be different.

 

There were lots of games, where you could finish the game, while having, let's say 50 LV, but not for me - I loved to grind before the final boss (even few days [~ 30hrs of gameplay]) just to max out everything. The same enemies and pressing 'action' action' 'action' wasn't problem for me. (=

 

If game is good then I love to 'expand' the gameplay. =P

 

Hmm... And that's all I can tell I think.

[+ CVincent 234]

It's good to see you around again Point, I've missed seeing your posts here since I agree with a lot of your ideas.

 

I tend to lose interest in games that use grinding as if it were a feature. Generally MMOs have this which really bores me to no end (or at least until I give up and stop subscribing). A lot of these games have different classes you can play which means you'll need to keep grinding by doing old stuff if you want to try everything there is to offer.

 

Personally I find that most Final Fantasy games to be enjoyable to grind since the combat is at least somewhat interesting or is visually appealing. It's a little overkill sometimes though, but that's just bound to happen when you make it an integral part of a game.

 

Novem made a really solid post that relates to how I generally feel about the subject so I don't think I need to reiterate much.

 

I'm trying to avoid using levels in my game even though it's action focused such as needing to upgrade equipment rather than player stats. Assassin's Creed Black Flag had an interesting idea where you could upgrade different parts of your ship at a cost of certain resources. I'd like to do a similar thing, except make it all relative to the progression of the story to avoid making a player repeat a task without properly rewarding them.

 

It kind of falls back on how you balance a game or want it to play out. There are extremely difficult games that don't even have skill levels, it's all about how you play the game. This would be nice to see in more action focused RPG games, I don't really see levels being a hundred percent necessary if there are ways to work around them. This said you may need variables or base stats of some kind that influence the way a player progresses through a game, grinding shouldn't need to be forced though.

[+ Novem 344]

In my opinion, an experience that progresses at a controlled pace is often stronger than one where you let the player dictate it. Grinding is one way in which the player can do this and it often allows them to trivialize much of the game to pure numbers. That doesn't make for a very fun game, in fact it robs what substance you probably included in all of those fights. Nifty mechanics  There's no need for actual strategy in a situation where you can just farm monsters for an hour to make the entire game ahead easy to truck through. This is as Point said.

 

There are other reasons that developers use grinding however. Padding game time is a major one, but we aren't developing AAA games here. That's not something an indie developer should be worried about unless their game is so ridiculously short and low on content it isn't worth it's asking price anyways. That leads to another reason, attempting to hide poor game design. Grinding is often the resort of a weak developer who couldn't come up with any more interesting things for the player to engage in.

 

Moving on, there are basically two ways (don't feel limited, use your imagination) you can develop in a situation that looks to contain grinding.

 

The first one is to create side-quests and activities for the player to engage in to earn the experience they need. A lot of the time developers force their players into this content. It's okay to make sure the player needs to do one every now and then if you want the game to be a little longer overall (as long as you are not boring the player I don't necessarily consider this padding), but if you made fun side-content your players will go to it anyways. You don't need to force them into it. The potential problem here is that your experience curve is less controlled if you don't make sure the player performs every task, so you have to be careful to make sure they can only earn enough experience to make the boss a little bit easier to handle, but not so much they can just roll it over.

 

The second way is to just create a tighter experience. By that, I mean you don't include many side-activities and certainly no random encounters (FYI, I hate these in games anyways). By creating a controlled experience you are guaranteeing the quality of that experience by the player. Because you have more control, you can design things like fights and bosses around the exact spot of power a player is going to be at a certain point (because you have control of the environment, you can arrange that to your liking). This can be a high quality format and creates a more focused experience overall, just be wary of the trade-off of player freedom.

 

In the end choose the design method that more accommodates your vision of the game, writing of the story, and method of map design.

Edited September 23, 2015 by Novem

[Knighterius 502]

These are all wonderfully strong points. I've noticed they seem to accommodate open world, however, where mine is a dungeon crawler and side quests aren't as "prominent", if you will, in the game.

 

It's not that I haven't added more than one function to my game. If players would rather upgrade their items I've added a feature of upgrading, if they want to unlock skills through harnessing the souls of mini bosses throughout the levels as their "rewards" (because in my game monsters don't drop money, that's weird ) But I've been thinking it over and essentially it shouldn't be level grinding, I just want to make sure the player is strong enough for the next area, I mean sure, people can decide not grind a few levels, but I really feel that if you've ran past all my battle encounters or at least a couple of them then you should do a bit of grinding. However, I think I might just make a few more places for my players to explore and maybe even try and slip a side quest for good experience in there. It's all just trial and error I think.

[+ Novem 344]

Yep, this is why games have QA teams, to make sure the devs know exactly where a game needs work.

[Kayzee 4,032]

Few games that featured lots of grinding were ones that I really enjoyed, but there is kinda a catch to that. I mean, when I think off grinding, I think of walking in a circle doing the same thing over and over. But that doesn't necessarily have to be how you get stronger. There is a difference between rushing to the boss and being under leveled, and doing everything there is to do up to that point and still needing more XP. If you rush to the boss and skip a lot of areas where you can gain power needed to beat them, then the player can always backtrack and do the things they missed and don't needs to do the same thing over and over. If you are basically forcing players to grind to make the game longer, then that means your game doesn't have enough content. I love leveling up in RPGs, and I like it when they are hard enough that you can't just breeze though, but there is a difference between that and forcing the player to do busywork just because.