Give an example of when the grind was just too much...

[ZedClampet]

In Nightingale, to make the best armor--hat, coat, shirt, gloves, pants and boots--you need about 1200 meat from this one boss. He drops 3 meat every time you fight him, so you have to fight him about 400 times. (all numbers are rough guesses--each piece requires a different amount, and Guido has been the one doing the crafting)

Here's the kicker--he's a wandering boss and can be anywhere in that realm, so you have to go all over the place to find him. If we could just go to the same place and fight him over and over, we'd have been done a long time ago.

We've killed him about 300 times, but none today. I told Guido we were just going to have to take a break from it because I couldn't stand doing it even once more.

So when has the grind been too much for you?

 

[Pifanjr]

I typically don't have a lot of patience for grinding. I don't mind grinding if it's a one-time thing for a reward I really want, but there are a lot of games that make you grind just to unlock a new area to grind in.

At least, that's how it feels to me. I suppose what one considers grinding someone else might just consider a fun gameplay loop.

However, in free-to-play games, especially mobile ones, the game purposefully makes the grind more painful to pressure players to buy microtransactions. There's a lot of mobile games I've given up on once I've reached the point where the game grinds to a halt.

 

[ZedClampet]

I should have mentioned above that the numbers were for 2 sets of armor, not just one.

 

[Brian Boru]

you have to fight him about 400 times

Hang on…
You're the guy who spends half an hour on a game, while I spend half a year. But you'll consider doing that 400 times, whereas I'd quit in disgust before 4—eg my reaction to FC5 Capture shenanigans.

Does not compute…

what one considers grinding someone else might just consider a fun gameplay loop

I'm fairly sure it depends on the gameplay loop. If it's within the game's normal gameplay, then it can be quite enjoyable—eg ref all sports.

I wouldn't do what Zed describes, but I spent years in heavy training for various sports—much of that isn't even playing the sport, but other prep. So yeah, down to motivation for RoI and ongoing enjoyability of the loop.

 

[ZedClampet]

Hang on…
You're the guy who spends half an hour on a game, while I spend half a year.

No idea what you are talking about. Here are some games I've played this year (not all hours are from this year):

Total War Warhammer III - 676 hours
Nightingale - 108 hours
Supermarket Simulator - 92 hours
V Rising - 757 hours
Kingdoms Reborn - 118 hours
Big Ambitions - 611 hours
Hydroneer - 72 hours
Planet Crafter - 123 hours
Garden Life - 78 hours
Farming Simulator 22 - 644 hours
Medieval Dynasty - 138 hours
Super Mega Baseball 4 - 154 hours
Palworld - 120 hours
Weed Shop 3 - 129 hours
Car Mechanic Simulator - 292 hours

And those are just from the games that I've been playing this year. I could give you some truly crazy numbers if we go back farther.

If I spend 30 minutes in a game, it means I didn't like it. Why would I spend more time in a game I didn't like?

 

[Colif]

Approx 2008: After playing wow for about 3 years or so and spending over a year of ingame time at lvl 60 on my main, just wasting time and earning money, I gave up when after the 1st expansion came out, and I was going to spend two weeks of real time to get my cooking up from lvl 5 or so to max... I woke up from the state I had been in those last 3 years and instead of playing wow for two weeks straight just to get a skill up for raiding... I played something else. (and never played wow again)

That is the story of a grind I decided wasn't worth it. I mean, I had done quests in the game where the drop rate was stupidly low and that didn't stop me. Maybe if skill I was grinding was more interesting... I had done a few others before then. It was the grind that broke the camels back.

Could be I had also given up getting one drop. I had only seen it fall once and a class that didn't need it rolled and beat me... not amused. Boss it fell off never dropped it when I was there again. It led to conflict and one person not playing game (not me) and me realising pixels aren't worth fighting over.

you need about 1200 meat from this one boss. He drops 3 meat every time you fight him, so you have to fight him about 400 times

Note: Grinding large amounts of mobs for exp/items is how Arpg work. So I accept that but having to grind one boss over and over for 3 items is a step too far


Grinding in games doesn't bother me normally. I mean, I play Diablo games... or used to. They are built on grinding. Some of its bosses are famous for being farmed. I never really bothered. Arpg are mostly grinding games as its how you get drops/exp but if the game is fun, you don't notice...

note: grinding above isn't just doing one boss over and over... though some of my time in Wow was spent beating bosses I had beaten a few times, but that is what raiding was back then, there were only so many places to go. Just cause I had all the drops from them I wanted, didn't mean others did.

I never saw one boss 400 times... that drop rate of 3 off a boss you need 1200 from is totally unfair. Grinding shouldn't be forced. There should be another way to get a majority of that item.

 

[Brian Boru]

No idea what you are talking about

Just being a smartass, it happens occasionally

Why would I spend more time in a game I didn't like?

That's the bit which doesn't compute—it sounds as if you don't like the grind you describe, but will go back to it after a break.

 

[Rolfil]

Any MMORPG. You get to a point where your spending way more time getting stuff that is 1% better than you have already. You get to the point where you think wtf am I doing wasting my time on this?

 

[Colif]

That us because MMO don't have an end. I would be amazed to find out if anyone from 2006 is still playing wow today. You just play those until you are tired of it.

Age of Conan I managed to have a character with best I could get. Gets boring... no reason to play if you have the best. That and at time my PC was crap and my GPU couldn't actually show some of the areas in the game. I would go into fights and not see some things.

You get to the point where you think wtf am I doing wasting my time on this?

That was my "I can spend two weeks grinding up cooking or I could enjoy my 2 week holiday doing something else" moment.

 

[mjs warlord]

Before my Warframe account got hacked and i lost everything somebody showed me a brilliant way to farm/grind resources. I cant remember exactly how it worked but if you stood in a certain place it was possible to hoover up resources dropped by the enemies before you started you and your squad would decide how long to stay their because if you moved the the faming/grind stopped working It was a fun way to get items but soon got very boring as some players wanted to do it for an hour at a time.

In Satisfactory to finish phase 4 you have to collect 4 items for the space elevator 3 items of 1,000 units each and the 4th which was nuclear pasta required 4,000. It took so long to get the 4,000 nuclear pasta that some players said they used to leave their game running during the night. After a lot of complaints about how long it took the 4 items were given different amounts and now you only have to get 1,000 nuclear pasta.

 

[ZedClampet]

Just being a smartass, it happens occasionally



That's the bit which doesn't compute—it sounds as if you don't like the grind you describe, but will go back to it after a break.

Well, I didn't do a good job of providing context. The game is over. It ended before the grind. The grind is sort of a temporary end game while the game is in early access. The game is about 3/5 complete. The grind is supposed to give you something to do while you wait for updates.

 

[Johnway]

Path of exile is the first thing that springs to mind. The problem is not only just the amount, but also the amount of luck to get it work. Much of the content is late,late end game. i suppose it makes it a "challenge" but christ, its tedious and soul destroying.

 

[Pifanjr]

I just watched a video of a streamer who played Pokémon Platinum without taking any damage. If his Pokémon did take damage, he had to restart from the last gym.

It took him 50+ resets to even beat the very first battle. Then hours of grinding against specific low level Pokémon with a rare spawn chance to be able beat the second battle. Then even more hours of grinding to beat the first gym. Then when he finally unlocked the daycare, he spent even more hours going back and forth on his bike to get his Pokémon up to level 100 (if you put a Pokémon in the daycare they get 1 XP for every step you do).

He also lost significant amounts of his progress a couple of times due to stupid mistakes and had to restart the grind.

The entire thing took 40 hours, whereas I'm pretty sure he could normally beat the game in 2.

 

[Brian Boru]

Civilization games

I almost never finish them because the grind from ½ or ⅔ way thru to the end is just not interesting. Once you know the game, you know by then how it will end, and finishing would just be going thru the motions.

Add in 2 things:
♣ I like to play wide empires, say ~15+ cities. Downside is in that midgame phase there's a lot of micro required to keep the early cities moving along and get the newer ones up and running;
♦ A late war is an intensely tedious grind. Again, with experience you know how it's going to go, so the logistics of moving dozens of units across oceans and continents is just grind grind grind.

Starting a new game is fun; finishing an existing one isn't.

 

[red_5ive]

In Destiny 2, I had an OP set of Hunter armor where I could spawn almost infinite tethers and invisibility. I could solo just about anything that didn't require a fire-team. It was a Masterworked set that took me me months to max out. Then Bungie decided to implement sunsetting. Then after all the backlash, they decided to unsunset the sunsetting. Except they only unsunsetted weapons, and not armor. I was devastated. While dismatling the armor gave back pretty much all the materials you needed to masterwork another set, the damage was pretty much already done. I spent a few weeks trying to get decent rolls on armor, but my interest waned quickly. That was I think Spring of 2021. I haven't been able to get back into it since, but my gaming life has been all the better.

 

[Zloth]

Is it grinding when you're having fun?? I would call grinding doing something repetitive that you don't enjoy but do anyway in order to open up something that is fun.

I'll do some grinding every now and again, but I'm not very grind tolerant. (Though I tend to like games more than others, too, so I'm less likely to see something as a grind.)

Let's see...

• Middle Earth: Shadows of War let you take a whole bunch of extra fortresses to get a better ending. I wasn't about to do that.
• Various "ultimate weapons" in the Final Fantasy series required some heavy grinding and, by getting them all, you'll likely make the final boss fight boring - so doing something dull to make something dull - no thanks.
• Any number of achievements. I'll grind for a while to get an achievement, but not a very long while.

 

[Colif]

I just watched a video of a streamer who played Pokémon Platinum without taking any damage. If his Pokémon did take damage, he had to restart from the last gym.

self inflicted challenges and Wanting to beat World Record times put grinding into perspective... think I posted one video on here recently where it had taken 40k attempts before he beat it.

The amount of times people will try to pull off a trick in Trackmania is insane. People have tried for years at a time.

Some of the achievements attained by people in speedrunning boggle mind. And make our grinding nothing in comparison.

 

[Johnway]

Another bunch of games that is slow are JRPG dungeon crawlers. Etrian odyssey, personaQ i'm looking at you. Those games your progress is measured in steps as you have to constantly grind to become strong enough to even explore. Cue lack of checkpoints/teleports and you will be doing a lot of back travel. Throw in random encounters, harrowing map design and FOEs and the whole thing takes a long time to progress.