/svidya/ - Strict /v/

World of Warcraft.

>>9803
Could expand that to be every damn MMO though

Probably monster hunter.

I don't care though, because grinding = more gameplay in monster hunter, it's fun as fuck. And the reward after is 10 times better knowing your sweat and blood worked to get that.

>>9814
He asked what game I've played that is the most grind heavy.

>>9823
Yeah, grinding can be fun if there is fun gameplay associated with it. In monster hunter, you can usually fail those quests you want to grind and it's an action packed experience all the way through. Grinding in a jrpg isn't usually fun because the enemies you are fighting can't defeat you and you are just killing them by the thousands for that one rare drop or the next level up.

>>9817
There's no denying that each subsequent entry has greatly improved and optimized the grind.

>>9817
How long does it usually take to finish the main story in the first game? I'm about 50 hours in and I've defeated Maderas but it feels like I could have got to this point in a shorter period of time. Then again it's probably because I waste time in the Item Worlds.

Disregarding MMOs and F2P games…

Warship Gunner was pretty damn grindy.

Dragon Quest IX.

Ragnaok Online by far.
Not only do you have to reach level 25 to get to learn your class, which takes forever, but the whole gameplay is nothing but grinding.

It's not fun either. Slay fucking grashoppers for days because everything else kills you. Wait minutes for your mana to regenerate. Get jack shit for your time spent!

The community made that game what it is. The actual game itself was terrible shit.
The OG Korean deathgrind. Koreans must have the patience of angels or be automatons, I swear.

It's my honest opinion that typical grinding is nothing more than hollow skinner-box progression and 100% concentrated cancer. I'm strongly against game design philosophies which place the progression of a character's strength and/or abilities over the progression of the player's strength and abilities. I'm honestly not really even down with locking out abilities so that players can get used to other ones, at least not for more than the brief introductory section of the game where one learns the ropes.

I think that this sort of "artificial" progression serves more as a means to keep players going for a reward which they didn't really earn- if one is playing a good game, then they should be motivated to play it without filling progress bars. I'm not immune to this myself, either- I thought I loved Awesomenauts for the game but a lot of the drive to play left me once I hit max level. After 350 hours I've decided it's actually not a great game. This means that this sort of "artificial" reward system doesn't even have to dole out character upgrades- it's cancerous just by existing. Contrast that with Melee, a game that is good in its own right and that I've played for thousands of hours (and counting) without any sort of progression system at all.

Quite frankly, I don't see any difference between grinding in MMOs and playing idle games like Cookie Clicker besides the sheer complexity of the task. One may be more mechanically taxing but both are close to equally braindead, and both keep the player hooked with artificial progression instead of a deep set of systems with dynamic and engaging interactions.

That isn't to say that all games with character progression are bad- Symphony of the Night, Dark Souls, Monster Hunter, Devil May Cry, etc. are all masterpieces but I genuinely think that they'd all be better had the character progression been reworked entirely- that is, removed. I think SotN would be an undeniably better game if areas were locked off not by new items but by player skill- if a player can handle the final area from the start, then by all means let them, but a new player is likely going to need to go the intended route in order to grasp the strategies and dynamics that you need to utilize to tackle the later levels. That's just one example, and I know saying that the poster child for Metroidvanias shouldn't have areas which open because of character upgrades is god damn heresy but I don't care because I do think it could be done.

tl;dr: character progression is for the simple-minded and games would be better if they were built around player progression, because building a game around player progression demands that there be depth for the player to progressively master!

>>10711
>Contrast that with Melee, a game without any sort of progression system at all.
Except for dozens of characters and stages…

>>10714
>insinuating I didn't finish unlocking that shit in 2001
>insinuating that Mang0 is spending hours every day playing Captain Falcon because he wants to unlock something or level up
I'll concede that it is a progression system, but c'mon. If you like Melee, you unlocked everything a decade ago. Unlocking characters in a game with insurmountable depth is different from getting a dose of reward pathway juice because you hit A enough times to skip through a hundred battles with little mooks in a game with practically no depth (in this case I'm talking about most traditional JRPGs but the phenomena is present in pretty much every genre.)

I actually think Melee would be a better game if everything was unlocked from the start anyways. You'd have to be some variety of goofball in order to think that people are even slightly motivated by the extremely light progression elements, especially given that it's still ridiculously popular after 14 fuckin' years.

>>10711
>Contrast that with Melee
Yeah, you know, that game with unlockable stages, numbered events you do in order that lead to certain unlockables like trophies or stages, collectable trophies some of which are hard to get, high scores, and unlockable characters (Which can be unlocked in multiple ways.)
You couldn't pick a worse example dude.

>>10711
>tl;dr: character progression is for the simple-minded and games would be better if they were built around player progression, because building a game around player progression demands that there be depth for the player to progressively master!
Hating grind is one thing and hating character progression is quite another.

Grind is not inherently bad but in the hands of the Japanese it can become something truly horrible and completely mindless.

>Melee
>good
haha, I kid, but seriously you can't compare a competitive game to a single player one on this, it's a very different ballgame.

>>10718
I very much feel that it's a great example.

I've already admitted that unlocking stages and characters is cancerous, but unlocking trophies and other collectibles is actually extremely cool, because it's 100% optional. There's nothing wrong with charming collectibles that have absolutely no impact on the game- it isn't like getting coins in Adventure mode is going to make your forward air stronger. The same goes for Events- in fact, Events, while often gimmicky, are frequently used to put players into unique situations that really just show off how dynamic the game can be. Events aren't character progression, they're not player progression, they aren't skinner-box shit- they're a way for the developer to communicate an abstract in-game idea or scenario, just like designing levels for a 2D platformer.

High scores are player progression, not character progression.

I'll reiterate that people are playing Melee for the player progression. The number of people playing for trophies is miniscule, and the reason for that is because character progression is destined to lead to boredom once you finish it, which everyone can eventually do since there's often little depth to it. The real meat of the game is the combat, which has such deep systems and robust dynamics that not one person has yet to reach the player progression cap, even after 14 years.

>>10721
>Hating grind is one thing and hating character progression is quite another.
Grind is inexcusable, and I think character progression is something which is almost never executed well.

>Grind is not inherently bad but in the hands of the Japanese it can become something truly horrible and completely mindless.
Yeah, or Blizzard. Blizzard are the western kings of skinner-box progression.

>>melee
>>good
muh dynamic two-sided combo system! muh relentless pace and treacherously high skill cap! muh innovative and intuitive control scheme! ooga booga wher da dash-wavedashes at?

>seriously you can't compare a competitive game to a single player one on this, it's a very different ballgame.
I don't think grinding has a place in multiplayer or single player, but character progression can work impeccably well (see: SotN), I just think that it's never ideal design.

>>10726
> I just think that it's never ideal design.
Maybe not never. Having mulled it over, I think I was too hard on character progression in single player games. It's really just the skinner-box stuff you see in games like Disgaea and League of Legends that gets to me.

I think it boils down to the fact that I'm salty I can't enemy step when I start a new game in DMC3.

I got to Master Bleh in Earthbound and lost to him more times than I can count. I gained a shitload of money and exp before I finally beat him, but then I found out that you can distract him with the jar of fly honey. Made the rest of the game super easy though.

Final Fantasy XII - though I'm not sure how that compares to others since I don't usually play games that involve grind. It annoyed me mostly because my black mage was pretty much useless to grind with and there seemed little reason to have one when my white mage doubles for green.

I think it depends on the areas. Some places I had to loop around several times killing things and some areas going through once did enough - or maybe it's because I stopped with the black mage.

>>10726
>I've already admitted that unlocking stages and characters is cancerous
How so?

>>10711
You're wrong about Monster Hunter.
You'd take away a large part of the gathering and crafting aspect.
Skill is already the defining factor in your progression and you getting rewarded with items you can then craft into tools to help you better hunt is the entire point of MH.

>Hunt monsters
>Gather, buy and sell stuff
>Gain the right to hunt tougher monsters by hunting weaker ones
>Craft stuff to better hunt monsters
>Hunt bigger monsters

Weapons and armour are the trophies of your hunts and give them value through actual gameplay.

If you just want to hunt a monster without all the other stuff, there's the arena.
Arena gets boring after a while.

>>11454
That's you're fault for playing a shitty pay to not grind/win game with a terrible damage and physics model in the first place.

Ignoring MMOs, Wii U smash 4 for customs, or early pokemon games

Excusing runescape, the most grindy game I've played was probably swords and sandals 2. Just a web browser game, seemed like it'd be pretty quick. Going on what my friend told me, it has 18 tournaments. I haven't completed it yet, so I'm not sure. The kicker is that in between every boss you have to level up about three times between each tournament, and the way to do that is to do duels. Takes about twice as many duels for each level as the previous level. I haven't beat it yet. When you lose a tournament, you have to start over. One time my friend died on the twelveth tournament.

Mother on the Famicom

I can't really remember HAVING to grind in any rpg more than a level or two maybe.