Grinding (video games)

Players' desire to reach the highest possible level often motivates grinding.[1] Alternatively, players might enjoy performing repetitive tasks as a way of relaxing, especially if the task has a persistent positive result.[5]

A need to grind may result from lack of game content or the inability to battle stronger enemies.[2] If the player experiences all of a level's interesting content before reaching the next objective, but is not powerful enough to proceed, grinding may be the only available gameplay option.[1] "Interesting" content is distinct from merely new content which is too similar to previous content to be considered interesting by the player. [note 1][6]

Players may also grind simply to become better at the game, gaining experience and leveling up. Level increases often come with additional statistical boosts and new abilities which allow the player to defeat stronger enemies, which in turn rewards and encourages grinding.[2]

• RuneScape often requires the player to do repetitive tasks to level-up skills. An example would be the "Slayer" skill, which requires players to defeat a certain number of a specific type of creature. The monsters are randomly chosen based on the player's combat level. Players gain experience while fighting the monsters, which increases both their Slayer level and their combat skills. Because the effort is repetitive and time-consuming, it is considered "grinding". A newer skill called "Dungeoneering" was introduced that does not require grinding, due to randomly generated scenarios to play through. Yet advancing in Dungeoneering requires players to "grind" dungeons and complete them over and over.
• Borderlands 2 requires players to repetitively kill specific enemies multiple times to acquire Legendary items. Legendary drops are not guaranteed to be dropped the first time, so the enemy who drops the desired item will likely have to be killed over and over.
• Black Desert Online contains the literal definition of grinding in the most simplistic sense, as the methods of making money are through any of the several "lifeskills" such as cooking, or combat through killing monsters. Combat is generally considered to be better, however players often complain about its repetitiveness. The grind of combat is done by creating what is called a "rotation", or a circuit in an area populated by monsters, and run through that circuit while killing the monsters on the player-decided path repetitively, generally from as little as an hour to as long as 4 or 6. Progression is quite quick at lower gear and experience levels, with an increase in several minutes to only a few hours for each. However for the strong and highest-levelled players, they could spend over one hundred hours grinding before they have enough money for a single upgrade.
• Roblox, Halloween 2013: The Witching Hour featured a large city map known as 'Bloxburg' in which players navigated through in order to complete on a number of 'quests' they were tasked with. These quests were given to players by Roblox staff NPCs within the game through dialogue boxes. The quests required users to dedicate numerous hours to the game, knocking from door to door to 'trick or treat' and fight Halloween monsters. Chests were sometimes acquired through the battles that ensued, as well as cosmetic items and quest loot. The player had to complete these almost identical NPC battles hundreds of times to progress through the quest system and gain virtual items on the Roblox website. The main gameplay dynamic was fighting the NPCs within the houses, with a side mechanic of walking (or riding on a motorbike) between houses and quest characters.

• The Lord of the Rings Online features a "title system" in which players are rewarded special titles, and often new abilities, for killing massive quantities of particular types of enemies. This can make grinding lucrative, as the player benefits from the added experience points and can receive a title they can show off to other players. For example, killing large numbers of Wargs grants the player the "Warg-Slayer" title. Killing even more Wargs results in more advanced titles, such as "Warg Foe" and so on. This system also existed in City of Heroes/City of Villains, where these titles were named "badges".
• Final Fantasy XII features a "Chain" effect, which occurs when a player kills the same monster over and over; doing so increases the number on the Chain and increases the quality of the items dropped by the killed enemy. With a maximum of 999 chained kills, the Chain can only be broken by killing a different monster or leaving the area.
• Warframe features grinding in one of its purest forms, but also a quite developed fashion: Every Warframe's parts are acquired differently - The most drop from boss fights within the game, others can be easily purchased from a Clan's Dojo, while certain Warframe parts have a percentage chance of dropping from certain game modes once the player spends enough time in them. Warframe supports "endless" and "non-endless" missions - With "non-endless" having a set objective, such as capturing a VIP target for interrogation, and "Endless" being infinitely replayable, such as defending an important piece of equipment or intercepting and decrypting enemy communications. Endless missions use a Rotation system, with three different "Drop Tables", one for each. The rule of thumb for Endless missions is AABC, meaning that on rounds 1 and 2, the item that is granted to the player will be selected from Drop Table A, for round 3 it will be chosen from Drop Table B, and round 4, Drop Table C. The cycle repeats per four rounds until the player leaves the mission. "Non-endless" missions may function in two ways: First, missions such as capturing an enemy will have a single drop table and semi-randomly draw an item from it each time, with a certain chance for each item. Missions with more objectives, such as infiltrating three "Data Vaults" will have multiple drop tables, one for each objective. Completing more objectives in "non-endless" missions will allow the player to have a chance at the rarest items included in the last drop table.

• Guild Wars attempts to reduce grinding by using a very low maximum level (20). Equipment with maximum statistics becomes easy to obtain at a maximum level. Players can still improve themselves by acquiring new and different skills so they can create more varied combinations of skills, or they can gather points for titles that improve certain skills usable only in PvE. The game was designed to be difficult even for players who have reached the maximum level and obtained the best equipment, but without creating huge gaps between the hardcore and casual players so that both could enjoy the same challenges. Play past the level cap usually provides rewards in the form of tokens and specific in-game currencies that contribute to rarer and often visually superior cosmetic items for player avatars compared to the most easily acquired sets. The focus in these late-game areas is therefore usually aimed at effective teamwork and how the players approach a problem as opposed to the degree of statistics acquired by playtime.

• Eve Online features a system that does not require continuous play to increase character skill. Characters are plugged into their ship's computer and are trained at a rate based on their attributes. Attributes can be enhanced to decrease training time; however, training occurs continuously, in real-time, whether the player is logged in or not. Some of the advanced skills can take as long as a month or more to reach the next level. Players generally have to grind for ISK (money), minerals, and NPC faction standing. However, the in-game alliance CODE. protests grinding, by attacking or 'ganking' anyone suspected of 'illegal' grinding.[11]
• Minecraft allows structures called mob grinders that automate the process of killing monsters, usually by gathering them with flowing water and killing them with a large fall at the end of the water flow. When built, such a grinder removes the need to fight or work for the mob drops as they become generated passively.
• Black Desert Online contains the literal definition of grinding in the most simplistic sense, as the methods of making money are through any of the several "lifeskills" such as cooking, or combat through killing monsters. A cooking session consists of cooking the same dish several hundred or even thousand times for several hours, over and over. This may be performed completely AFK at a lower efficiency, and is popular among players who can attend to their character only periodically, or it may be performed more actively, with as little as 8 minutes before the cooking stove, or utensil as it is called ingame, is depleted depending on the utensil, gear, and various consumable buffs used.
• Grand Theft Auto Online features passive businesses that produce various types of cargo automatically that can be later sold for profit. The player is only required to resupply the businesses and do a sell mission once the production is finished. An exception is the "Nightclub" business that can produce goods without the need to resupply. While the game has a mechanic that kick out of the game players who stay AFK for more than 15 minutes, some usually bypass this by accessing security cameras located in various ownable properties, which stop the AFK timer.

• World of Warcraft features dungeons that can be played in segments, so that players can play the game in smaller chunks of time, allowing ones who can't afford to dedicate several hours of continuous playing time to complete them.[12] The game also includes a "resting system" which increases the rate of experience gain for casual players, based on the amount of time spent out of the game. Similar systems exist in other games, including Lord of the Rings Online and City of Heroes.

• MapleStory features a party quest, called the Dojo PQ, that can be done with several players or solo. It is available to all players level 25 or above. It is a boss rush, in which the player or players revisit many bosses, one by one, all in a row. Beating every boss gets the player Dojo points, which, when accumulated in large numbers, can be used to get equipment for the player's character which boosts stats. Players can also get a title for 24 hours when they beat a certain boss 100 times.[13]