Grinding is a big problem in a lot of popular RPG's today. Senselessly slaying hundreds of innocent rabbits, and unfriendly orcs, just to gain a level or two. My question is, has anyone come up with an effective way to remove grinding from a game? One that doesn't reward people for killing thousands of enemies, but doesn't punish them either.
One thing I can imagine is making enemies very powerful, to encourage team work. If it takes a few minutes to take down an enemy, it should give some good EXP, which is divided among the team members, and doesn't give a large amount, but enough of an amount so you don't have to slaughter hundreds of enemies to gain one level.
ID:151940
 Aug 30 2008, 4:47 pm
|
|
|
Aug 30 2008, 5:09 pm
|
|
Jeff8500
 |
Procedurally generated quests that give out EXP in certain stats.
|
Care to elaborate? Do you mean proc's that generate random quests that give you EXP for killing monsters or obtaining items? Thus removing the need to kill enemies unless necessary?
| |
Yes. Let's say you talked to Joe the shoe salesman and asked him for a quest. Then it would generate a random, entertaining quest for you that offers more EXP than grinding would for you to complete.
EX: You talk to the shoe salesman. He says his shoe elves ran off with his newest pair. You go and kill some shoe elves. When the shoe elf drops the shoe, it's torn a little. You have to do a little stitching up before you return it. You give it to Joe. He gives you shoe making EXP and combat EXP. | |
To an extent this is a side effect of having a level system at all, but there's not much to be done about it since most RPGs depend on that to some degree.
Quests are, as Jeff said, the best antidote to a grind because they give players a variety of things to do vs. a simple repetitive hack-and-slash. If you can manage to build a good quest generator--it's a worthwhile project to take on--you'll find your players are interested in discovering new quests, constantly pursuing different goals, and generally making the game a lot livelier. You may also discover that they can give you creative quest component ideas that let you enrich the engine. Lummox JR | |
I think My Life as a Spy by Skysaw handles leveling rather well, it'd be a good system to go off of.
| |
Unfortunately, as Lummox said, grinding is the side effect of having a level system altogether.
This is often an indication of how much content has been put into a game. Games with long leveling periods and a lot of grinding tend to have very little content, but a long period of play. This can be a balance issue as well as a gameplay issue. Really, it's not about removing the grind, it's mostly about disguising the grind as something else entirely, as is especially illustrated by BYOND games. You simply cannot cram so much content in a BYOND game to remove the grind in a lengthy game. So really it becomes an issue of providing enough activities for a player to distract them from the grind, rather than trying to remove it altogether. | |
Note on what he's saying: No, it's not a disguise to ask the player to run around, kill rabbits, and bring him [the NPC] 50 skins.
| |
What might be nice is to have achievement-based gameplay, sort of along the lines of The Legend of Zelda. You gain experience only for completing the static quests in the game. You can slaughter peeps and rabbits all you want, but it doesn't do anything but give you paltry occasional drops of singular silver coins -- perhaps gold coins on rare occasions -- or health potions. When you complete a major quest, you gain 1 skill point, which you can apply to increase any of your skills by one level (equivalent of Zelda's heart containers after beating a boss).
That way, there's no sense in grinding at all: the gameplay becomes objective-driven instead of progress-driven. | |
I like, but what about those who claim to enjoy the grind?
I had an idea for a system that gave out only a certain limited amount of experience per monster type, no matter how many you kill. Once you've mastered slaughtering slimes, no amount of slime bashing will grant you any more experience. Some types have larger experience pools than others, but once the pool is dry, you'll have to move on to find new monster types to battle. It was going to be for a mainly single-player game, so not so sure how it would work out on a MORPG. | |
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Fable. That game did indeed have an intense grinding aspect to it, but (here's the magic) it did not feel like it was level grinding at all! Think about that!
| |
It's not so much the grind itself, as the notion of consistent progress and usually increased involvement in the community aspects of a game as a result.
| |
Jeff8500 wrote:
People like grinding? Pfft, no lifers.People like limited-choice-game-engines? Pffft, no way. | |
Never said it was. Rather, more hinting at the fact that you should give benefits to the grind, and tie in other things to make it less obvious.
While you may be killing 50 rabbits for the skins, you may also be developing other skills at the same time. It's still grinding, but adds options. Players don't seem to mind grinding away if they aren't leveling everything up by killing rabbits. A lot of people don't mind WoW's system because of trade skills. If they get bored of leveling, they can work on skills, if they get bored of skills, they can work on leveling. While it's still grinding, just TWO activities can really attract a lot more people. Imagine dozens of activities. As for "Grind". If you are going to tell me that WoW is grindy, go play some FFXI or Wurm Online. Honestly, you don't know what grinding is until you have been slaughtered by the enemies in the first ten feet of a zone and have to kill the enemies in the last zone by the thousands just to move to the next. (Or better yet, make thousands of stones just to get your masonry to 30 and make yourself a single stone house). | |
Ter13 wrote:
Never said it was. Nor did I say you did. I just wanted to inform people that some veils are thicker than others. | |
I'm wondering about breaking down the entire level/stat system and going for building up characters by completing quests. You get your abilities, magics, tech, sweet gear, from quests. Sort of like with Zelda: you get the Roc's feather and you can jump (except more impressive for our purposes). You don't kill anything outside of a quest, except when you happen to stumble into it because you thought it'd be a good idea to go trekking in the Forbidden Woods.
Quests should/must have branching; some kind of choice that gives a player different results. Interlocking quests would be also interesting. Also, interaction with other players might be cool within a quest, especially if a party system is included. One game that uses a ton of grind is Race War Kingdoms, and yet it is very popular (last time I checked). I don't understand why. (I saw it as 4chan with a leveling system.) | |
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Fable. That game did indeed have an intense grinding aspect to it, but (here's the magic) it did not feel like it was level grinding at all! Think about that! The first time I played the game was with a few other people(in our own separate games of course) racing to see who'd beat it first. And even with it being my first time through not having much of a clue how to play I kept up decently well. I didn't even bother with any armor, and didn't really know where to get good weapons so I stuck with mostly what I ran into. Heck I didn't even know how to level up my character for a good portion game since I was rushing through and it didn't even seem to matter since I didn't have troubles until the very end. So I wouldn't say there was really a grind since the game was so easy you didn't need to level up and I'm pretty sure the game just scaled to your strength or something unless the game is even easier when you do. As far as the troubles at the end was due to the fact I only bothered with a melee weapon which until the last boss worked out well. Once at the last boss he decides to just fly in the center of the room and the only thing I had to hit him with was my initial bow and no skill with it which did happen to be underpowered! And I could never really finish since I never saved and the last autosave was already past the point of no return. But long story short. Yeah the grinding certainly isn't noticeable when it isn't in the least bit required to progress. | |