Good and bad ways to reduce grinding
Jan. 3rd, 2012 12:03 amHere's that entry on game design I promised you all, to make up for my stupid rant earlier. This entry may be one of a series, if I ever get around to writing the rest. It'll be a fairly disorganized series.
The short version is that there are a number of game mechanics which have become almost ubiquitous in modern video games when they really shouldn't be. They are, it would seem, used almost without thinking. The ones I'm talking about are often bundled togther under the term "RPG elements".
Experience points, level-up systems -- these are not good ideas, in general! They do have some application, but they were overused even before they were used indiscriminately. And very often they come together to yield the terrible experience that is grinding.
(I could perhaps write a whole series "Why I do not play JRPGs". But let's stick to the point for now.)
Games including grinding is hardly a recent phenomenon, but these days it seems almost expected, as if it were a way to control pacing rather than a design flaw. Remember -- it is not sufficient to design for the ordinary player; games should be fun when you're playing them well. And it seems all too often that requires grinding.
Fundamentally, grinding occurs when there is something you can do and repeat for a long time (often indefinitely) to obtain upgrades, and it doesn't cap out quickly. The standard example is, you obtain experience points for killing enemies, and those enemies regenerate over time, and 100% upgrades requires an absurd number of experience points. I include cases where the upgrade is one-time but only occurs with small probability (the infamous "random drop")[0].
Perhaps the best solution is, don't include an upgrade system. Seriously, don't. But OK, you've included one (because this is not a bad idea on its own and often appropriate); how do you hand out the upgrades so that players aren't incentivized to grind?
Solution number 1: Give rewards only for completing specific tasks, which can't be completed more than once. I.e. the Metroid or Zelda solution. It can be specific upgrades for specific tasks (like in Metroid or Zelda), or it can be general "experience points" for specific tasks, or whatever. The point is, to get further upgrades requires doing something new. Perhaps the task can be completed more than once, but only the first time yields experience points -- say if enemies regenerate, but only when killed the first time do they drop permanent upgrades.
(Note, by the way, that Metroid and Zelda often do encourage grinding for health and ammunition; but those cap out quickly. This is not entirely satisfactory, in my opinion, but it's hardly a disaster.)
Before I discuss my next suggested solution let me point out a family of non-solutions which seems to somewhat commonly get employed. It is my opinion that all of these attempts at solutions make the problem worse rather than better. The family can be succinctly described as creating extra-game disincentives to grinding. (Examples include anything that make grinding take longer -- well, unless the game is timed, in which case that may not be a bad solution; see below.)
This family of attempted solutions entirely misses the idea of good game design. Yes it is likely to make the ordinary player less like to grind, but at the expense of making things even worse for those who want to actually play their best. Games should be fun when played well. This class of mechanics attempts to solve the fact that grinding is not fun, by making it less fun.
(Another example would be that there are areas that are grindable -- but you can't go backwards. Oops, now not only is the player forced to grind, he *has* to stay in one place in the meantime.)
OK. So let's say you want an upgrade system, and you want the fuel for it to come from something repeatable. You've got the basic ingredients of grinding; is there anything missing? Is there anything you can do to prevent the circuit from closing?
Yes, there is! Solution number 2: In-game disincentives to grinding are still a possibility. We said it was repeatable, but not that it was easily repeatable, or not without incurring other costs. You have to make grinding actually a bad strategy, or at least a very risky one. For instance, perhaps every encounter poses a serious risk of causing you to lose, or at least wearing down you and your resources by amounts that really will accumulate, and you must choose your battles carefully. Of course, most games these days allow infinite retries from the last savepoint, which is certainly not a bad thing by itself (it's often quite necessary) -- but it does turn many things into grinds of the "random drop" form that otherwise would not be. It turns the above "choose your battles carefully" disincentive into an extra-game disincentive, making things worse. Or worse -- if you can retry indefinitely, but can't write more than one save file -- it may allow you to trap yourself in a situation where the game has been made unwinnable and you have to start from the beginning. (A game forcing the player to start from the beginning is not inherently bad; however, if it was the sort of game where you can retry indefinitely from your last save point, it's probably long enough that forcing the player to start from the beginning really is bad.)
(I was originally going to write a whole entry about saving, figuring that it was kind of a necessary prerequisite to discussing anything else; but I decided I didn't and I'd rather get to the point. Perhaps I will write that entry later.)
Be aware that this last version of the solution is a risky one. Since your character is getting stronger, the old highly risky battles will no longer be so. One solution would be level-scaling, but... well, I'll explain why I don't like level-scaling if people really want me to. Better idea: The more powerful your character, the harder enemies you need to defeat to get any upgrade points. (This is pretty common, actually, but without the whole "every battle is a serious risk" part...) Note that it's important that sufficiently easy enemies yield *no* upgrade points -- otherwise you're just making grinding take longer once again.
The problem with this is you have to balance it damn carefully. You have to make sure that at every configuration of upgrades, there is *no* enemy that is easy enough to be grindable but judged hard enough to award any points for its defeat. Is it really possible to ensure that?
A more reliable method would be, as mentioned above, to make it not fruitful even if it is easily repeatable, by placing additional costs. You can make even easy fights possibly not worth it. Perhaps the game is timed. Or perhaps the player is always under active attack, and can only spend so much time grinding before he loses due to having neglected other things. (If those other things are themselves a form of grind rather than actual fun game content -- for instance if it was "I have to run across the map and hit this button every so often" -- then this is bad, and an example of an extra-game disincentive rather than a real in-game disincentive.)
Now a lot of the mechanics that lead to grinding are ultimately derived from tabletop RPGs; how did those handle it? Well, they have a human GM who is not going to stand for it if the players attempt to grind. But that is not a reasonable solution in other cases. (Sometime perhaps I should also write, "Why I don't play tabletop RPGs".)
...I think that covers most of what I had to say. I probably missed some stuff, but, oh well.
-Harry
(Integer complexity update coming sometime soon, probably.)
[0]Actually, I don't think random drops are inherently so bad; I can definitely think of cases where they could be useful. But random drops that can be attempted indefinitely without penalty are every bit as bad as they're commonly made out to be.
The short version is that there are a number of game mechanics which have become almost ubiquitous in modern video games when they really shouldn't be. They are, it would seem, used almost without thinking. The ones I'm talking about are often bundled togther under the term "RPG elements".
Experience points, level-up systems -- these are not good ideas, in general! They do have some application, but they were overused even before they were used indiscriminately. And very often they come together to yield the terrible experience that is grinding.
(I could perhaps write a whole series "Why I do not play JRPGs". But let's stick to the point for now.)
Games including grinding is hardly a recent phenomenon, but these days it seems almost expected, as if it were a way to control pacing rather than a design flaw. Remember -- it is not sufficient to design for the ordinary player; games should be fun when you're playing them well. And it seems all too often that requires grinding.
Fundamentally, grinding occurs when there is something you can do and repeat for a long time (often indefinitely) to obtain upgrades, and it doesn't cap out quickly. The standard example is, you obtain experience points for killing enemies, and those enemies regenerate over time, and 100% upgrades requires an absurd number of experience points. I include cases where the upgrade is one-time but only occurs with small probability (the infamous "random drop")[0].
Perhaps the best solution is, don't include an upgrade system. Seriously, don't. But OK, you've included one (because this is not a bad idea on its own and often appropriate); how do you hand out the upgrades so that players aren't incentivized to grind?
Solution number 1: Give rewards only for completing specific tasks, which can't be completed more than once. I.e. the Metroid or Zelda solution. It can be specific upgrades for specific tasks (like in Metroid or Zelda), or it can be general "experience points" for specific tasks, or whatever. The point is, to get further upgrades requires doing something new. Perhaps the task can be completed more than once, but only the first time yields experience points -- say if enemies regenerate, but only when killed the first time do they drop permanent upgrades.
(Note, by the way, that Metroid and Zelda often do encourage grinding for health and ammunition; but those cap out quickly. This is not entirely satisfactory, in my opinion, but it's hardly a disaster.)
Before I discuss my next suggested solution let me point out a family of non-solutions which seems to somewhat commonly get employed. It is my opinion that all of these attempts at solutions make the problem worse rather than better. The family can be succinctly described as creating extra-game disincentives to grinding. (Examples include anything that make grinding take longer -- well, unless the game is timed, in which case that may not be a bad solution; see below.)
This family of attempted solutions entirely misses the idea of good game design. Yes it is likely to make the ordinary player less like to grind, but at the expense of making things even worse for those who want to actually play their best. Games should be fun when played well. This class of mechanics attempts to solve the fact that grinding is not fun, by making it less fun.
(Another example would be that there are areas that are grindable -- but you can't go backwards. Oops, now not only is the player forced to grind, he *has* to stay in one place in the meantime.)
OK. So let's say you want an upgrade system, and you want the fuel for it to come from something repeatable. You've got the basic ingredients of grinding; is there anything missing? Is there anything you can do to prevent the circuit from closing?
Yes, there is! Solution number 2: In-game disincentives to grinding are still a possibility. We said it was repeatable, but not that it was easily repeatable, or not without incurring other costs. You have to make grinding actually a bad strategy, or at least a very risky one. For instance, perhaps every encounter poses a serious risk of causing you to lose, or at least wearing down you and your resources by amounts that really will accumulate, and you must choose your battles carefully. Of course, most games these days allow infinite retries from the last savepoint, which is certainly not a bad thing by itself (it's often quite necessary) -- but it does turn many things into grinds of the "random drop" form that otherwise would not be. It turns the above "choose your battles carefully" disincentive into an extra-game disincentive, making things worse. Or worse -- if you can retry indefinitely, but can't write more than one save file -- it may allow you to trap yourself in a situation where the game has been made unwinnable and you have to start from the beginning. (A game forcing the player to start from the beginning is not inherently bad; however, if it was the sort of game where you can retry indefinitely from your last save point, it's probably long enough that forcing the player to start from the beginning really is bad.)
(I was originally going to write a whole entry about saving, figuring that it was kind of a necessary prerequisite to discussing anything else; but I decided I didn't and I'd rather get to the point. Perhaps I will write that entry later.)
Be aware that this last version of the solution is a risky one. Since your character is getting stronger, the old highly risky battles will no longer be so. One solution would be level-scaling, but... well, I'll explain why I don't like level-scaling if people really want me to. Better idea: The more powerful your character, the harder enemies you need to defeat to get any upgrade points. (This is pretty common, actually, but without the whole "every battle is a serious risk" part...) Note that it's important that sufficiently easy enemies yield *no* upgrade points -- otherwise you're just making grinding take longer once again.
The problem with this is you have to balance it damn carefully. You have to make sure that at every configuration of upgrades, there is *no* enemy that is easy enough to be grindable but judged hard enough to award any points for its defeat. Is it really possible to ensure that?
A more reliable method would be, as mentioned above, to make it not fruitful even if it is easily repeatable, by placing additional costs. You can make even easy fights possibly not worth it. Perhaps the game is timed. Or perhaps the player is always under active attack, and can only spend so much time grinding before he loses due to having neglected other things. (If those other things are themselves a form of grind rather than actual fun game content -- for instance if it was "I have to run across the map and hit this button every so often" -- then this is bad, and an example of an extra-game disincentive rather than a real in-game disincentive.)
Now a lot of the mechanics that lead to grinding are ultimately derived from tabletop RPGs; how did those handle it? Well, they have a human GM who is not going to stand for it if the players attempt to grind. But that is not a reasonable solution in other cases. (Sometime perhaps I should also write, "Why I don't play tabletop RPGs".)
...I think that covers most of what I had to say. I probably missed some stuff, but, oh well.
-Harry
(Integer complexity update coming sometime soon, probably.)
[0]Actually, I don't think random drops are inherently so bad; I can definitely think of cases where they could be useful. But random drops that can be attempted indefinitely without penalty are every bit as bad as they're commonly made out to be.
