Do you actually enjoy "grinding?"

Welcome to real life.

Entirely depends on the game, yo.

If you're enjoying grinding, then you're not really grinding...

Nope.

100% this. Grinding is only grinding if it becomes a chore to do. Such as dailies in WoW or grinding rep.

I thought this thread was going to be about something else.

depends on the game. Always enjoyed it in some of the older final fantasy games - found it fun to break some of the systems by unlocking stuff early :)

Depends on the game. On Final Fantasy games, the soundtrack itself made grinding enjoyable though the battle theme started getting bit dull on longer sessions.

depends on the song

Well, it depends. If I enjoy the mechanics in place and the area I'm exploring, then yeah a bit of grinding can an enjoyable, mindless activity.

Too much grinding can ruin any game, though.

Depends on the game. Grinding seems better when the player feels like they've "mastered" the systems and mechanics. It seems like players resent grinding when it becomes the only way to get past an obstacle to get to mastery.

I don't know, it was pretty good in Skate 3.

ZAM! KA-POW!

Nah, grinding is pretty terrible, especially in RPG's that don't level up the guys you're not using alongside the guys you are. Going back to early dungeons to level a character up because you need him / her is such a terrible experience. Such a buzz-kill.

I've always thought forcing you to grind was bad design, to be honest: at least in terms of main story stuff. If I can't progress the story in a natural way by just the normal amount of random encounters you get by just walking to a place, you messed up.

I play a lot of MMOs, so I feel like I would be lying if I voted no. I spent an unnecessarily long amount of time grinding in Ni No Kuni just trying to get familiars up into really high levels and see what their best spells were like. It definitely depends on the game though, as I know I wasn't able to withstand it for long in Blue Dragon. A lot of it probably depends on how quickly you can get in and out of the fight; for example, in a JPRG if there's too much intro/ending celebration I probably can't be bothered.

I always felt that if you simply played through each random battle as the story progressed, well then that should be good enough. If that makes sense.

Although, not all games agree with that idea.

Do you consider The Sims grinding? If so, then I really don't mind it. But it's really a matter of the game, because I'm not really into WoW or hardcore JRPG grinding.

Same here, I answered right away without reading the subject. Haha

It's a necessary evil, like Bane.

Sometimes. It's kind of just something mindless to do when I want to be distracted for a bit. I don't do it too often though because in most rpgs I see over leveling yourself as a way of cheating.

I do not enjoy it, but if I'm grinding I usually listen to a podcast while it happens to distract me from how bored I am.

Yeah, I like it a lot. Especially in FFXII. Gambits made grinding so painless.

Depends on the game. RPGs that use it excessively to pad out the length are annoying, but if it's optional or only required every now and than it can be a nice activity to do especially if I decide to play the game late at night.

Nope. Never enjoyed at all.

It really depends on the game. I've been replaying Disgaea 4 lately, and once I hit a good grinding spot I spent several hours just grinding my characters, even though it was completely unnecessary just to proceed to the next level, because that game gives you so many rewards for grinding and you feel so much more awesome afterward.

Once you start feeling like the game is making you grind just to proceed rather than because you feel like it then it feels like a bother. Basically, if grinding is preventing you from doing what you really want to do then it's bad grinding.

I'm a big fan in the Ratchet games.

Sometimes I do it just for fun, like in Legend of Dragoon.

Not so much these days. I used to back in college when I was playing World of Warcraft. If I found out a game I wanted nowadays had a lot of grinding I'd probably skip it.

I prefer twerking and whylin,' but that's just me.

I've been known to stay in an area to kill the same enemies a few extra times just for fun. However I spit on that activity as an integral part of moving forward with a game.

That is probably the only reason I enjoy Jrpgs. When you refuse to grind, you find a lot of other hilarious ways to get stronger or exploit the system, which is infinitely more fun then running in a circle for a while so I can twoshot something. Which is also why I still haven't finished Dragon Quest 8. That game is just too polished for me, there arent any good bugs or balance issues to exploit and the game is balls fucking hard without grinding.

Pretty much this. Put on a movie or a podcast and power up an mmo and you can have a pretty relaxing time that makes progress towards whatever your trying to do.

I love it in games like Disgaea or Tales of Xillia, because it feels like I'm always improving something, and often in substantial ways. Give me plenty of numbers to increase, lots of loot, and relatively quick battles, and I'm a happy camper. I don't much care for it in games like Dark Souls because the bonuses feel so inconsequential - which I realize is mostly due to my shitty skill at games, but.... hey, opinions, right?

I'm going through Ni No Kuni now, and the leveling that you need to do to me seems annoying in certain areas. But i'm not very good at that game so that may be why.

It's actually very very easy to overlevel in that game. There's an enemy you can fight that will give you a ridiculous amount of exp.

It's not really grinding unless you know, you find it to be a grind. IE, you dislike it. Otherwise you're just playing the game...

I don't ever find it fun but if it pays off then I'm damn proud of myself

I'd say it's more "woo-hoo"ing.

If the gameplay is enjoyable I don't mind it.

I don't mind grinding at all so long as the core gameplay is fun and grinding isn't the majority of the game. One could call the entire endgame of WoW grinding by some definitions, but I don't mind it at all since there's so much stuff you can do.

I don't mind it. As long as you don't actively avoid combat, you can usually do a minimum of grinding in most rpgs. Some are better than others, but I can't remember having to actively grind since Persona 3 (Tartarus had some major difficulty spikes.) Even then, I loved that game (though Persona 4 was better... there was grinding, but the dungeons weren't all the same.)

If the game is fun then grinding is fine.

I don't mind grinding as long as it doesn't.. feel like a grind I guess?

I can't really tell if you're being sarcastic but I finally finished FFXII yesterday after starting/stopping/restarting several times over the years. I kept finding myself grinding without realizing it because I was having fun tweaking gambits.

I hate grinding in WoW and eventually quit playing because of it.

Simpler games, jrpgs, ffxi or things similar to that I'm okay with it because I can be doing something else as well.

But generally the modern mmo quest grinding is painfully dull (always has been really).

Edit: As far as jrpg's go I don't actually recall grinding in any except persona 3, entirely by mistake of my own by accidentally getting to the final boss with a level 50ish party and discovering he was more difficult than anything else.

Only if the lady's willing.

Grinding for gold in GW2 isn't really that bad since there's a lot you can do. Mostly depends on the game.

Insert sex joke here

When I was younger, sure.

Some games like SMT Nocturne or SMT IV I kind of want to to go grind a favorite demon up but simply cant be bothered these days and in SMT and Etrian Odyssey grinding is totally unnecessary due to the amount of combat you encounter naturally progressing through the game. But it still can be satisfying, if only I didn't have a backlog.

I answered yes, but it does depend on the game. Some games are just more fun to grind than others.

Depends on the game.

I'll play Monster Hunter for hours or days grinding out one rare drop to upgrade a weapon without even a thought. But I can't stand grinding out gear in games like Torchlight.

I might be a little more susceptible to grinding in an MMO if I have something to listen too... like a podcast! Otherwise: no. I get bored and sloppy.

Yeah. I did a lot when I was younger. Got max levels and the best gear in a lot of rpgs and whatnot. If a game is fun and I want to keep playing it then I'll just grind sometimes. I haven't as much lately, but there haven't been as many rpgs that I would want to grind in lately either. Persona 4 Golden was the last one where I grinded for fun.

I'm using an exploit in payday 2 to make my character level up and unlock stuff faster, though I have to grind I don't mind cus it works all the time...