Do you see Grinding as a bad thing?

[JRPGfan]

BradleyJ said:

JRPGfan said:

Somegames the grinde = the game experiance.

Like Diablo... its all about the loot, and the "grinde" is whats fun about the game.
Some games get this right, like FF11... I ended up loveing to grind to levelup.

Heavily disagree btw on the Skill = beaten alone, or Grinde = bad game design.

I think even bad players should be able to beat a game, if a game cant be beat by most people theres something wrong with the design.
Everyone can put in more hours to grinde abit and be more powerfull to advance in a game, and thats not a "bad game design".

I bring up Diablo with people a lot. It is a fun game series and I loved it, all three of them. But ultimately it’s an empty experience. You play the game to get better gear to get to a higher difficulty so you can play the game to get better gear to get to a higher difficulty so you can play the game to get better gear to get to a higher difficulty so you can...

It’s an endless, addictive cycle with no hope for a payoff. There’s never a point in the game where you can really feel like ‘alright, I accomplished something’ because there’s nothing there to really accomplish, and there’s always better gear. Diablo is a series that is much better in small doses.

As for your second point, I would like to clarify that I am not advocating for games that can only be beaten by those who are most skilled at them. If that were the case I wouldn’t be able to beat any games. I am only saying that games should never require a grind. If people want to put more time in to grind then by all means they should have that option, but if I get to a boss that can’t be beaten (in any reasonable manner) because my characters are just too low level, then I am not okay with that.

Think games like Zelda or God of War. Would the games be easier if you gathered more hearts/health? Absolutely. But you certainly do not need the extra health to beat those games.

Wow... okay... we ll have to agree to disagree there.

The reward is the knowledge you build a character (items) thats now capable of doing harder difficulties.
And the "fun" is the grinde, the loot and building up the character.

I think its healthy that occasionally you run into a boss / area, where things are too tough, and it forces you to go back to grind abit or do side quests.
If you run though a game and theres never any challenge, or reason to go look around, and you just breeze though it, it "feel"s like a empty challenge.

Obviously theres a right and wrong way to do this though.
The games that do it poorly, it can feel horrible to run into such a wall though, never the less I think its a nessary evil.