Is the Grind Ever Worth It?

Grinding is an intriguing concept for me. For those who do not know, grinding is the idea of the player continuously repeating the same action for some in game benefit. This usually either consists of grinding levels in an RPG or MMO, or grinding for loot from an enemy that has a very small chance of dropping it. Basically, anything that gives some gameplay or cosmetic benefit for the player.

For instance, above is an image of a player fighting a goblin in the MMORPG, Runescape. I remember spending multiple hours slaughtering hundreds of these little green guys. You would run to an area where these guys spawn, spending upwards of an hour killing any that appear. Once your inventory was full on loot from them, you would return to the city to sell it. This cycle would go on for dozens of hours, all while both my money and levels would slowly increase. I would keep doing this until I was both high enough level and had enough money to buy and equip the best weapons and armor that a free-to-play account would allow.

Grinding is commonly seen as bad game design by many, claiming it is lazily drawing out the playtime necessary to complete a game. If the next major story-related boss is too hard to beat unless you grind for 2 hours, then are you just making the game longer for the sake of being longer? If there is a .1% chance that this rare enemy will drop some super rare loot that makes your avatar look awesome, isn't that just making it hard to obtain for the sake of being hard? Why not make getting the item a reward for an interesting and difficult side quest? I honestly cannot say I disagree with arguments such as this. The weird thing is, there is a significant part of me that thoroughly enjoys grinding.

There is a certain therapeutic element to grinding for me. One of my favorite ways to relax is to turn on some music, listen to a podcast, and grind away at an RPG I am playing. There is something inherently soothing in slowly watching numbers go up and characters growing stronger. Spending four hours hacking away at the same enemies waiting for that rare drop makes it all the more exciting for me when it eventually does show up. There is something to the tedium that puts me in a sort of zen-like state. This is not a feeling exclusive to me either. There are hoards of people who play MMORPGs for the grind. They just enjoy hanging out with their friends while slaying monsters for hours at a time. This may not prove anything to the notion of grinding being a good approach in terms of game design, though. If adding elements such as watching videos outside of the game or talking to friends is what makes the game fun, then that probably should not be used as a merit of the game itself. This is why many games have made solutions to reduce the grind for those who do not want to do so. For instance, the MMO World of Warcraft introduced a resting system that gives more experience to players based off of how much time they spent out of the game. This gives players who do not have time to play an easier opportunity to strengthen their units, while hardcore players can still grind if they desire.

However, the attempt to reduce/eliminate grind is where I believe certain companies have hurt their core experience. I am going to be using the Pokemon series as my example. Pokemon in their earlier entries had a decent amount of grinding in the game. There were many times where the story-related pokemon trainers in the game had Pokemon that were way higher leveled than enemies you have fought previously. This would lead you to need to grind levels on your team until you were strong enough to win. Of course, the best trainers were able to pull through with low levels. However, the vast majority of players would have to take time to grind. This changed with the release of Pokemon Sword and Shield in November, 2019. In the newest entries of the franchise, they introduced the key item, Experience Share, as a forced mechanic. Experience Share makes all of your Pokemon gain experience from battle and catching pokemon. In the older entries, your pokemon only gained levels if they participated in battle, and there was no experience earned from catching the little critters. This change makes it significantly easier to keep your entire team around the same level since they all gain experience all of the time.

However, this poses a problem. If you are doing anything outside of the main story, your team will automatically level up and get stronger. The game seems to be balanced so those who go straight through the game will have a decent challenge from the story. Therefore, players like myself who do like to go outside the story to catch a bunch of pokemon become much higher leveled than the enemies you fight. This makes the game have little to no challenge, as your team has many levels over the competition. In previous games, you may have to grind for an hour or so to fight against a difficult enemy. You get to see the fruits of your training as you finally overcome the last pokemon on your opponent's team. With Sword and Shield, there is no interest curve balance for me. You are now able to just completely steamroll through almost all of the enemies the first time you fight. You are just constantly winning and winning against the "powerful" opponents. Not only is it easy, it happens too often. If you have intense and heavy action constantly in a game, it can be fatiguing to players. This is exactly what happened to me. I never had that powerful feeling of overcoming a difficult opponent. I theorize that this is because I was constantly fighting these "strong" opponents, and they were not even remotely strong compared to my team.

With that being said, I do understand why Pokemon and other games want to try to reduce/eliminate grind in their games. Doing so will bring in new players who cannot stand grinding, and allow them to get through the game without needing to clock time repetitively gaining levels and loot. However, there is a certain attraction and charm to grinding to a subset of players like myself. There is a reason that many players of World of Warcraft yearn to return to the initial version of the game to get to grind enemies with their friends. That is essentially why Blizzard created World of Warcraft Classic to allow old players to go back. In the end, I find this to be a great way to "fix" the issue of grinding. Allow a way for players to skip it entirely if they desire to, while also allowing those who enjoy the process to play the way they like to play. Pokemon has also done this in previous games by making the Experience Share able to be turned on and off. In this scenario, people can have the best of both ways. In the end, I do not think you can completely dismiss grinding as bad design entirely. It can serve as a break in the action that allows players to feel a sense of ease and relief between high-intensity story points, or be a therapeutic relaxation tool for those wanting to just play the game without much thought. However, it can also be used unnecessary padding to make the game longer. It is all in the execution of grinding that changes its perception. If abused, it can be seen as tedious and wasteful. If done well (and in moderation), it can be used to make the high points of the game feel even greater.