LateWhiteRabbit said,

I generally like the method of reducing the XP for enemies based on the level difference between them and the player. Eventually the player reaches a point where grinding on weaker enemies gives no XP at all. This pretty much forces the player to move on to a new area or advance the story. Also, rewarding the player for taking on higher level enemies and winning encourages them to try and advance in the game – giving them the same reward in less time than grinding on easy opponents.

For rare drops and the XP problem, I wouldn’t increase the odds of getting the item drop each time they kill the monster (this makes the item not ‘rare’, but ‘inevitable’). It rewards persistence, not luck. Which, if that’s what you’re going for is fine, but it definitely changes how it feels to get that item or how rare it feels.

Instead of giving a better chance at drops the more they face the monster, what about lowering the XP reward each time they kill the monster? Once they get the rare drop, the XP reward can reset. You could base the XP reduction on the odds of getting the item drop. If the monster has a 5% chance of dropping the rare item, then you know, on average, that the player should get one of those items every 20 battles with that monster. You could then set the XP reduction so that after 20 battles it reaches 0.

Whether or not I like grinding depends on the game – if the game and the combat mechanic are fun, and there are lots of rare drops to collect, powers to unlock, and secret monsters or bosses requiring an overpowered character or party I love it. If the story is better than the gameplay then grinding just becomes a chore in the way of finding out what happens next.

McTeddy said,

I’ll be honest, the older I get the more I HATE grinding.

I’ve been playing alot of Japanese games recently and they tend to rely on the “Higher Difficulties are for high level players” and I’m struggling to enjoy the game. I need to choose between playing an easy but balanced game… or an dull game where I need to hit enemies 30 times to kill them. So… don’t do that jay!

As for dealing with the grinding, I don’t think that the solution has anything to do with doling out the XP. I has to do with the combat system itself. By creating a system that allows a strategic player to fight much higher level foes… you can allow players to fight at their chosen difficulty (Level).

Either that… or remove grinding for levels as you know them. Rather than gaining attributes that make you invincible levels will just unlock skills. You will be equally weak… but you will have more strategic options.

Finally, you could always do something that balances a player regardless of grinding. For example: Guild Wars reduces your level to the expected value before starting a quest. You could do something similar where you force a player to prepare his skill slots and weapons based on a limitation for the “Stage”.

When you replay an early quest you may only choose 100 points worth of weapons and skills for your party. This would allow you to unlock better powers, but still limits the players power to something that could be challenging.

If you choose to just mod the XP rates… I tend to like the high XP gain until you match the monsters level… and then it slows to a crawl. That usually keeps me at the appropriate level for most RPGs.

Maklak said,

> For my vintage CRPG, I just did away with levels and XP entirely.

For me this is the best solution. Things like “For lower level enemies you get fewer XP” are just artificial constraints that damage immersion and annoy me. One of the best RPGs I’ve seen was “VTM: Bloodlines” and it didn’t have levels. You got experience points for quests and used those points to improve attributes and skills. Many combats were optional and how you bypassed the obstacles didn’t influence the quest reward.

Another good way to forego the level system is to have a skill-based system. Skills are improved with their use and from training with NPCs. Unfortunately this system encourages another kind of grinding, like people jumping around all the time in TES.

Overall some combat is fine, but too much of it just gets in my way. Well, all to often slaughtering thousands of beings is the main focus of the game, but I don’t play this kind of games much anymore.

Respawning enemies (or just more of them showing up in an already cleared area when you level up, like in New Vegas) and people having infinite ammo in combat, but dropping a bunch of random items when they are killed are also what I consider annoying, artificial constraints. If somebody has a sword, he should drop that sword when killed. If he dropped a halberd, but fought with a sword, there is something wrong here. If someone got killed before firing a shot, he should have all his ammo on him. If I just dodge bullets, at some point the enemy should run out of ammo. Similarly, when a bunch of player-controlled ruffians storms a place, there should be an alert, officers should pick up those fancy weapons from their chests and there should be some kind of organised resistance, not just guards wandering in circles and not caring what goes on in adjacent rooms.

Xenovore said,

I know there are players out there that view repetitive game content, i.e. “grinding”, as a good thing. (Hmm, there are probably some masochistic and/or obsessive/compulsive tendencies at play there…) However, in my experience, grinding is typically the result of flaws in a game’s design.

Flaws may include:
1) Insufficient content. Players are forced to repeat content to complete the game. (Or they are deliberately forced to play through the content at a slow pace, so as to not exhaust the content “too early”. See #3 and #6.)

2) Static/scripted content. Players are deliberately forced into grinding. (Often hand-in-hand with #1.)

3) Unbalanced difficulty levels. Players are forced into grinding just to progress (e.g. Xian’s post above).

4) Unbalanced difficulty levels. Players are encouraged to grind because it’s the easier/lazier way.

5) Excessive reliance on combat actions to progress. Non-combat progression paths can go far to mitigate grinding.

6) Progress (e.g. XP) is too limited. Otherwise balanced game-play becomes grindy.

Maklak said,

> This mainly annoys me because enemies running out of ammo sounds like an awesome concept to base a game on, and I can’t think of a single game that does it.

Actually, I’m quite sure enemies in Fallouts used up their Ammo, then switched to melee and only ever dropped the ammo they had left and their gun (also armour in Fallout 1). Arcanum seems to follow the same rules; enemies can run out of ammo and then they go into close combat. BTW, I’m talking about the true fallouts, not those FPS blasphemies. Curse you, “magical companion ammo”.
Of course Dwarf Fortress tracks ammo too, both in fortress and adventure mode. I’m also quite sure Morrowind did that too: NPCs had their inventories, used what they had to fight and when they died, you could loot all that was left, including clothes. There were a few exceptions, though.

It is arguable that enemies dropping their equipment on death, will let you grind money too easily, but most games avoid it by making common items worse and much cheaper than what you’ll normally have and money not matter all that much.

About realistic enemy loot, I think an awesome concept to base a game on would be to run the random loot tables upon visiting a new location for the first time (NPC inventory, chests, all of it), then determine who uses what (so for example that “sword of moderate awesomness” goes to the leader or one of his officers, not to some random footsoldier or a chest in the barracks and most “alchemical grenades” are distributed among grenadiers, then have the defenders behave with at least some degree of intelligence (like in one of those sneaking games).
With this, going head on against this place would result in almost certain player death and some more clever tactics would have to be used, such as hit and run, snipe from afar, hide behind a wall of companions seeking glory and death, some diversion to lure defenders away from you or maybe something even more ?fun? and !exploity!, such as attacking their supply lines to weaken them.

Back on topic of grinding, I usually do it for one of two reasons:
1) The game makes it somewhat fun and addictive.
2) I want to make future combats easier.

Rachel said,

Devil Survivor 2 had an interesting take on griding. It’s a tactical RPG, so every required battle is a story battle, but if you need to you can choose to grind. Unless you know what you’re doing, you probably will have to grind. But you get more NG+ points if you don’t grind at all–kind of a challenge mode (that said, the actual grinding I had to do to beat that game stunk).