/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.5172574]

What's your opinion on grinding/farming in RPGs? Hate when you do it? Find it oddly comforting doing it? Do you have any other activity while doing it to make it more enjoyable?

[Anonymous No.5172607]

Grinding is one of my favorite things in games, it's cathartic.

[Anonymous No.5172608]

>>5172574
Dragon Quest is the only game that does it right. All other games get at least something wrong, and since the mechanic is so ridiculously fallible, it all goes to shit.
This type of grinding game must necessarily be:
1) Simple, because if combat is involved and strategic, repeating encounters doesn't work anymore. You seriously can't do both. For fuck's sake. If you want strategic encounters, you MUST make them unique. If you want DQ's combat, it must be as simple as betting on the roulette, which it basically is.
2) No Gloss of progress gainable via grinding. Some mild punishment for losing is alright for suspense (halving the gold was a great idea), but player must NEVER be forced to regrind. Period. Losing progress gained via grinding is never, ever fun, period. This is the opposite of action games. Game Overs don't fucking work.
3) Bosses must be hard ("hard" in the grinding sense). The player must NEVER be certain if they're going to be able to plod through a dungeon or beat a boss monster. Will you win or will you lose? You should never be too sure. This is extremely important because this is what makes grinding worthwhile: every small monster you kill actually contributes to your chance to beat the big monster in the end, which should be initially slight. Otherwise there's no point to any of this shit.
4) Overworld puzzles should be serious business. This is where actual gameplay happens. Puzzles should be good, exploraiton should be worthwhile.
5) There should be a tangible sense of progress. You should slowly go from nobody to a hero or something. If you start a hero, you should go upwards still. The entire mechanic is about progress, and flavour can not afford to ignore this. It is very important that you slowly go from wooden swords to demon-shattering hero-blades in the span of a game.
6) Keep your stupid fucking cutscenes SHORT.

[Anonymous No.5172617]

The "fun" of grinding is in maximizing your efficiency. Figuring out how to reduce downtime and resources spent, or learning how much of the process you can automate.

I don't care much for it in single player games though. It's more interesting in a MMO setting where figuring these things out gives you a competitive advantage.

[Anonymous No.5172625]

i'm not really sure, i have fun grinding in some while in others i find it a slog
i guess it varies from game to game

[Anonymous No.5172632]

>>5172574
Why would anybody who doesn't enjoy it or at least don't mind doing it play this sort of game anyway?

[Anonymous No.5172636]

>>5172608
(cont'd.)
This is roughly how a grinding game works:
- Context is established via a short cutscene or some such. Save a princess from an asshole monster.
- You enter a location and you have a 0% chance to beat the asshole monster.
- You plod throught he dungeon and arrive at the asshole mosnter. Due to the mosnters you've killed and the treasure youv'e discovered, you have 11% chance to beat the mosnter.
- You hope to win, attempt and fail.
- You're teleported back to the last safe location with a slight penalty. Your 11% chance to beat the boss mosnter absolutely REMAINS.
- You go throught he dungeon again,a nd your percentage keeps climbing. If you get to the boss, it happens faster and you will alos have 22% to win now. But if you explore the nooks, you will get hidden equipment and boost your chances further, say, to 35%.
- You try the boss and lose. (You could win if you're lucky, which would feel fucking great.) The boss mosnter makes fun of you. You keep the 35% chance to win.
- You get through the dungeon much faster, because you're increasing your chances to beat the asshole boss and save the waifu (or get a new ability, or help out the town) or whatever.
- You arrive at the boss and now you ahve a 41% chance to beat him. In fact, you can teleport back to town and spend the money instead of trying, failing and losing half of it. Or you can try to win right now. It's a gamble. Skill is not really involved.
- You lose. Run throught he dungeon. You have 52% to win now.
- Etc. etc.
- You fight and suddenly you win. Holy shit.
- A short cutscene: you are rewarded with something really cool and meaningful. A party member, a new gameplay option (like a flying carpet). At worst, a stronger sword.
- You play at overworld puzzles for a bit and then the cycle starts again.

This is how Dragon Quest actually fucking works. Because other JRPGs simply didn't get this AT ALL, the genre has switched to unlosable cutscene theatres. Who cares though.

[Anonymous No.5172679]

>>5172636
Dragon Quest also works because the max level is 30. When there's less levels, each level makes more of a difference. In your average RPG with a level 99 cap, you won't notice a difference between level 35 and 36. In DQ1, every single fucking level matters greatly.

[Anonymous No.5172895]

>>5172574
I used to watch TV while grinding in games, but grew bored of it. Now I try winning without any grinding and just drop a game if it feels necessary.

>>5172608
DQ grinding kills me. I made repeated attempts at 4 and it feels like the game was custom designed to infuriate me. Every time I thought I would get to do something other than select attack over and over it would switch to another character and right back to painfully boring grinding.

[Anonymous No.5172902]

>>5172679
Not retro but Disgaea's grinding just works.

[Anonymous No.5172907]

Well there's a reason popular JRPGs all have great OSTs. Outside of dungeon crawlers, people don't really play them for the gameplay.

I only played the first 4 DQ games, didn't mind it in either of them, though I played the SNES remakes of 1-3 which reduced grinding as far as I understand it.
The only time grinding ever really stood out to me is the beginning of the Mother 1. if you try to do the first quest, you just die and die. you have to grind to level 2 outside of your house to get the healing spell, then you can actually start playing.

[Anonymous No.5172939]

A little bit grinding might be fine, but Dragon Quest I level of grinding is beyond terrible, and screams of shitty game design. Anyone who enjoys that kind of game is beyond masochistic.

[Anonymous No.5172953]

>>5172939
>t. adhd brainlet

[Anonymous No.5172974]

>>5172608
>Dragon Quest is the only game that does it right.
I think Final Fantasy IV is an example of a game that does it reasonably well, except that it's tuned such that your "odds of winning" start out around 100% near the beginning of the game and decrease as you advance through the game.

>6) Keep your stupid fucking cutscenes SHORT.
Amen. In fact I'd generalize this to include all non-combat oriented gameplay (talking to NPCs, exploring towns, etc). But I would caveat saying that overall pacing makes a big difference. You can get away with a 10-15 minute cutscene if it's a climactic event midway through the game when the player is already invested and has had lots of time to play.

A perfect example of a game that does towns and cutscenes completely wrong (from a gameplay perspective) is Final Fantasy IX. You spend so much time puttering around various towns doing events, cutscenes, and minigames that you never really get a feel for your characters and their strengths and weaknesses. You buy the more powerful sword because you know you're supposed to, but you don't wind up using it for another 20 minutes anyway and when you do, it's for the new enemies on the new linear path to the next destination. You never get that dynamic of fighting your way through an overworld full of monsters and being excited at finding a new town with more powerful weapons for sale which will give you an immediate and noticeable advantage against the enemies you're fighting.

[Anonymous No.5172980]

>>5172974
The only time FFIV has grinding parts personally is at the moon. No matter what the moment you land on the moon you seem to need to gain like 4 levels just to keep yourself alive. DS remake is be even worse regarding that.

[Anonymous No.5173050]

>>5172974
I never have reflect when going in the sealed cave to deal with those annoying assault doors, so it's either grinding until Rosa learns it or buy a ton of phoenix downs

[Anonymous No.5173056]

>>5172574
It's unnaceptable. The first dragon quest takes about 15-20 mins to complete if you cut out the grinding. That's atrocious.
Luckily with other RPG's, 9 times out of ten grinding isn't actually necessary and you're either using shit strategy or don't have equipment set up correctly.
Grinding is not fun or acceptable, it's a waste of your time. If you enjoy it you must have something wrong with you.
>>5172907
>popular JRPGs all have great OSTs
Suikoden 1 and 2 have awful music and everyone loves them.

[Anonymous No.5173063]

>>5172980
The original's mechanics are easier to work with when you're low level. Stacking evasion and strength boosting gear (which usually come together) does a lot to keep a low-level team alive.
It doesn't work in the DS version since so much of the game's formulas revolve around level. You outright can't hit enemies if the level difference is too big.

[Anonymous No.5173087]

>>5173050
Yeah the doors are annoying but:
>buy a ton of phoenix downs
By that point you can easily afford as many as you need. So it's just tedious and over quickly. Also, you can do the LOSM and Sylph caves before doing Sealed Cave to get Leviathan and the Avenger sword. Those can help take them out quickly.

Finally, those doors give large amounts of XP.

[Anonymous No.5173134]

>>5173087
>Also, you can do the LOSM and Sylph caves before doing Sealed Cave to get Leviathan and the Avenger sword. Those can help take them out quickly.
I don't have float by that time either, I usually get it half way through the sealed cave
fighting demon wall early is a rush though

[Anonymous No.5173138]

it's the reason why I have never and will never play an RPG

[Anonymous No.5173223]

Grinding and listening to a podcast/twitch is how I wind down after work. Problem is when the listening is so good that I end up grinding for hours instead of progressing in the game.

[Anonymous No.5173272]

Terrible mechanic that gets copy pasted for the wrong reasons + game time. It also goes together with random encounters. Dense ones.

[Anonymous No.5173290]

>>5172574
I consider grinding to be a failure of pacing on the part of the developer. If I get all the treasure and do all the sidequests, and still can't beat the boss to progress, the failure is on him.

[Anonymous No.5173298]

Friendly reminder that for most jrpgs (but not all) if you feel like you have no choice but to grind to advance, you probably suck at the game and need to improve your resource management and strategies. If you find grinding cathartic, that's on you, but I still hear way too many people say that X game is grindy as hell when they probably just mash Attack/Fight and heal sometimes.

Pic related, Earthbound has a generally excellent growth curve giving you just enough exp to be where you need to be to take on the foes (even before you factor in broken shit like Multi Bottle Rockets) but when it was rereleased on New 3DS and WiiU VC, there were a LOT of newbies that were complaining about the long grinds the game requires.

[Anonymous No.5173305]

>>5172607
fpbp

[Anonymous No.5173325]

>>5173305
What about Family Planning Benefit Program?

[Anonymous No.5173386]

>>5173298
I have a peculiar form of autism and hate to spend MP or consumables when I can't recover it automatically
I also hate to flee from fights and older DQ titles tend to throw an awful lot of enemies at you which makes it impossible for me to have an underleveled party

[Anonymous No.5173527]

>>5173386
>I have a peculiar form of autism and hate to spend MP or consumables when I can't recover it automatically
That's not 'autism', that's just being thrifty. You want to hold on to something valuable in the event that something really fucks up your day. I also typically end up saving stuff like full party restores until the final boss.

[Anonymous No.5173540]

>>5173386
>>5173527
I always end RPGs with the inventory full of shit
I think I never used a rare candy/elixirs in 15 years playing pokemon

[Anonymous No.5173564]

>>5173290
>If I get all the treasure and do all the sidequests, and still can't beat the boss to progress, the failure is on him.
Well, unless the boss is intended to be beatable at your level without additional grinding but you just are unable to pull it off on the first try.

[Anonymous No.5173568]

I don't notice grinding much because I long learned that what passes as "grindy" tends to be people being unable to pass challenges without first grinding out 5-6 levels. What I do instead is keep pushing the envelope in a given game until I hit a soft stop. Then I start pushing out all the consumables, using magic items, changing up strategies, and otherwise ensuring that I'm not overlooking something. If I hit a "hard stop" where I absolutely need to grind, I reconsider if I want to keep pushing on. This approach allowed me to really minimize grind and maximize enjoyment in games that are considered "painfully" grindy (Final Fantasy I, for one thing).

My favourite way to deal with repetitive encounters to get XP was in Might & Magic 3: Isles of Terra. Game was short and sweet, dealing with easy encounters was just a matter of holding down "A" (no animations, no waiting around, just queue attacks on everyone and beat it down), and it had a way to shoot enemies from range (with bows or spells) to soften up tougher enemies before proper engagement. On top of that, you could eradicate settlements of creatures in order to get a hefty XP boost and prevent their respawning once and for all. That, and M&M also lets you teleport all over the map, setting "Lloyd's beacons" that recall you to whatever point of importance you might want, and you can use this to, for example, be pretty much permanently linked to a well that gives everyone double mana points for a day or +30 temporary levels. With these in your arsenal, you can keep pushing the envelope even further, and hunt down Chaos Hydras for like millions of XP at a time. I had a ton of fun with that game.

[Anonymous No.5173579]

>>5173386
>>5173527
>>5173540
Incidentally, if you play through a game multiple times you can wind up with a better sense of when consumables are worth using. It can be a lot of fun to blow through bosses with items you know you won't actually need later.

[Anonymous No.5173583]

>>5173568
>I don't notice grinding much because I long learned that what passes as "grindy" tends to be people being unable to pass challenges without first grinding out 5-6 levels. What I do instead is keep pushing the envelope in a given game until I hit a soft stop. Then I start pushing out all the consumables, using magic items, changing up strategies, and otherwise ensuring that I'm not overlooking something. If I hit a "hard stop" where I absolutely need to grind, I reconsider if I want to keep pushing on.
Well articulated. This is pretty much the correct way to approach RPGs. I usually assume people complaining about grind are either new to the genre, or bad at it.

[Anonymous No.5173680]

>>5172608
>You seriously can't do both

Etrian Odyssey disagrees. The best games have no grinding though.

[Anonymous No.5173683]

>>5173056
>Luckily with other RPG's, 9 times out of ten grinding isn't actually necessary and you're either using shit strategy or don't have equipment set up correctly.
>Grinding is not fun or acceptable, it's a waste of your time. If you enjoy it you must have something wrong with you.

This guy gets it.

[Anonymous No.5173686]

>>5173290
There are very few games where that's actually the case though.

[Anonymous No.5173714]

>>5172636
>the genre has switched to unlosable cutscene theatres
Blame NEC. The CD-ROM^2 had tons of long-ass anime cutscenes in its games to show off the massive disc space and flex on SNES RPGs with their tiny sprites sprinting in place with fat walls of text.

[Anonymous No.5173716]

>>5172617
>The "fun" of grinding is in maximizing your efficiency.
Ideally the first priority is a combat engine that is actually fun to play. Grinding is the time to experiment with different spells, abilities, and weapon combinations to figure out the mechanics of the game.
> It's more interesting in a MMO setting where figuring these things out gives you a competitive advantage.
Well, except where an MMO can become an unbelievably mindless timesink once you've figured out an efficient way to grind. JRPG level progression tends to be orders of magnitude faster.

[Anonymous No.5173961]

>>5173583
Absolutely. Dragon Quest 1 absolutely requires grinding, though, most of the trouble spots just aren't beatable without certain resources, and you'll need to either grind for money for new equipment or exp for raw stats to get past them. But it's absolutely an outlier.

[Anonymous No.5174560]

>>5173527
It's not autistic but it is overly cautious. Being afraid to spend resources is a big part of people getting stuck in rpgs. The way I see it is that if you're not closed to drained of your MP by the time you reach an inn or whatever fills you up again, you could have had an easier time getting there by casting a stronger offensive spell or buff. And that goes double for if you game over while still having mp in the tank. Healing items get a bit murkier since the really good ones are often limited in number, but even then, they're there to be used and should absolutely be a part of your strategy, even if it's a backup plan.

Honestly, just being experienced with RPGs in general should give you a better idea on when to use consumables. Most SNES and beyond era RPGs didn't throw you off a cliff with a lack of consumables. Overcoming "What if I need it later" syndrome was the best thing that happened to me with rpgs. as >>5173540 says, the games are often quite beatable without the mega healing items or whatever. So if you're stuck at a tough boss and you could use an elixir to fill back up on MP or get out of a rough spot, you should really consider using it.

[Anonymous No.5174654]

>>5174560
This is what I like about old school blobbers. Wandering monsters are dangerous as fuck, hit points are a very precious resource, your spellcasters should be casting spells from their limited pool every single turn of every single battle to minimize the damage you take, and items are primarily extra spell charges. Death was potentially permanent and needed to be avoided at all costs. Shit mattered and your resources were there to be used.

[Anonymous No.5175039]

>>5174654
I agree completely. And it makes me want to go back and keep playing Elminage Gothic. This is also when status effect spells were often a vital part of the plan. In Dark Spire on the DS, the Sleep spell was the best early spell for mages, not the fireball. Because Sleep would usually knock out an entire grouping of enemies and make them easy pickings for the physical characters. When you have 4 or 8 or 12 monsters thrown at you in random fights, you really DO need to throw out a solid spell to thin the herd and not get mauled.

[Anonymous No.5175059]

>>5174654
>>5175039
Bros, since we're already veering into non-/vr/ territory, do you think Etrian Odyssey fares well on that front?

[Anonymous No.5175191]

>>5172574
Lots of people nowadays misconstrue the existence of random encounters as "grinding". Fighting the encounters you get during normal play is gameplay, not grinding.

[Anonymous No.5175280]

>>5175059
It's a pretty great series. If you can stand the moe look to things the gameplay in them is great.

[Anonymous No.5175339]

>>5173680
Etrian Odyssey is fun but grinding on enemies that can wreck your shit into a game over is not fun.
Grinding should be optional for scrubs that don't have mAd sKiLlz.

[Anonymous No.5175712]

>>5175339
The only time you ever have to grind in the games is if you do a skill reset or something similar. You will level up enough by just exploring.

[Anonymous No.5175756]

It really depends on how the grinding is done. Just walking in a circle around the town is boring but games like Dragon Quest where you have a teleportation and exit spell I can at least feel like I can pick at the game return to town heal up to do it again.
>>5175339
That's kind of how I do it with Etrian Odyssey as well. Where I just go into the dungeon until I feel I need to go back and heal than repeat. As long as I feel like I'm getting something done than just gaining levels I'm ok with it.

[Anonymous No.5175838]

>>5175756
That's how EO works and it does it very well. You delve down and explore till you hit a wall or run out of resources then head back to town. Then the next trip you're able to make it a little farther etc etc. You never need to stop and grind because there's always room to push forward.

[Anonymous No.5175885]

>>5173298
>just mash Attack/Fight and heal sometimes.
There is nothing else to do

[Anonymous No.5175924]

>>5172974
FFIX's entire gameplay loop for me was getting gear and mastering it's skill, then moving to new gear. The puzzle is when you got into good gear that gave unique skills to different party members so it was about maximizing time spent on each character.

The town/story segments were good and did build character, maybe not inter-party character building much, but still character building on its own. It did break up the combat loops I enjoyed though because only shops fed into that gameplay loop and the ATE things were another step in between me entering the new town and then entering the new shop for new gear.

But you could ignore all that stuff and still have fun with the gameplay loop and enjoy the game. Same way you could ignore most of the gameplay loops and just faceroll combat to see the story loops and experience every ATE if you want.

FFIX just rewards you really well if you do both, go deep on the gear combat training loop AND go deep on all the ATE and NPC conversations. It rewards you so well that people love the game and feel that is the only way to play. Plenty probably played it and had great fun without getting obsessed into it. FFIX is "unique" this way among the FF games, but all DQ games mastered this immersive interaction.

Ask a DQ autist to go super in depth into the risk/reward gambling ethos that run through every element of the games. You'll get a solid appreciation of masterfully designed systems. Making combat perfectly sized and simple is an integral part.

[Anonymous No.5175927]

I absolutely loathe it. It feels like an artificial barrier to prevent you from proceeding.

[Anonymous No.5176457]

>>5175039
It's weird how the super early RPGs nailed spell balance, while the later ones fucked it up so bad. In Wizardry 1, you regularly fight 10+ enemies at a time, and the sleep spell is going to have a roughly 50% hit rate all throughout the game (it grows by level, but enemy resistance grows as you get further in as well), which means a single level 1 charge will make half the enemies you're fighting unable to attack for a round or two, something that'll always be a very useful effect.

[Anonymous No.5176486]

I can't remember the last time I had to actively stop to grind instead of simply readjusting tactics. Even then, RPGs with cruel encounter rates tends to give you enough exp as is.

Unless we're counting MegaTen games and actively searching for new demons to recruit for fusion fodder as grinding. Or dungeon crawling where the whole challenge is to drive your party deeper in each session after resting up and restocking. If these count as grinding, then I suppose that's grinding done right, but what I think what turns people off the most is repeating simple tasks to see a bar slightly increase higher.

[Anonymous No.5176659]

>>5175924
It feels like we played completely different games.

1. FF9 starts with a literal hour of cutscene events, with some tutorial-style fake boss fights.
2. The Evil Forest area probably won't give you any random encounters before the back-to-back cutscene-filled boss fights with the Prison Cage.
3. Then 15-20 minutes of more puttering around the wreck (and another bizarro boss fight against Baku) before you can go back through the Evil Forest again (maybe 1 random encounter this time) to face the boss.
4. Then the escape event with Blank that has 2 encounters, then the tent cutscene and moogle tutorial.
5. And then, after maybe 2 hours of playing, you're finally on the overworld, which consists of a very small stretch of land in a valley (maybe 3 random encounters) that ends with the first "real" dungeon level (the ice cavern).
6. After 15 minutes in the dungeon you have a short cutscene event then face the boss, which Zidane has to face solo.
7. Then another cutscene where Garnet takes the name Dagger.
8. A short stretch of overworld (1-2 random encounters) before the first real town
9. Entering Dali initiates another 5-minute cutscene that ends in the inn.
10. Zidane wakes up and everyone is gone.
11. Then it's another 20-30 minutes screwing around Dali solving a mystery before you have any more combat.

Okay, 3 fucking hours into the game and there is still no "gameplay loop." It's cutscene after cutscene spiked with the occasional fight. There's been maybe 15 encounters and half of those were tutorial fake bosses and the other half were in the Ice Cavern.

The gameplay loop from standard JRPGs looked like this:

1. Equip/provision in home base (Town A)
2. Explore overworld, find dungeon
3. Do dungeon.
4. Return to town A and explore newly unlocked overworld area to find town B
5. Set home base = Town B and Goto 1.

[Anonymous No.5176679]

>>5176659
(cont.)
>The gameplay loop from standard JRPGs looked like this
A key difference here is that "explore overworld" and "do dungeon" will all involve significant amounts of combat encounters (usually random, but can be fixed). In fact, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, as a baby JRPG, is a great game to see the bare bones of the formula. Instead of an open overworld with random encounters you have fixed locations that are either towns, dungeons, or "battlefields." A "battlefield" is a stack of 10 encounters, you just move to that spot and "start battle" to initiate combat. When you clear them all you win an item. If you get low on resources you can just go back to your home base to rest and get potions/etc. And if you want, you can skip the battlefields altogether. Also, dungeons have Chrono Trigger style fixed encounters rather than random battles.

The difference is that, despite the linearity and general restrictiveness compared to, say, a typical WRPG from that era, the player is still at least a little bit in control of his destiny. It feels like an adventure to leave home base and go into dangerous areas. But to get that feeling, home base has to actually function as a home base and not just be a place to have cutscenes that 'break up the combat'. It has to be a place where you feel safe and that you can return to if things get dicey. And the world outside that safe space has to feel open and filled with possibility, not just a narrow corridor of forest before your next half-hour of cutscenes.

Final Fantasy IX gets there eventually. But it takes a really long time, in spite of the large size of the world relative to its predecessors.

[Anonymous No.5176875]

>>5172636

So simplitic repetative gameplay with minamal story? Why even waste your time?

[Anonymous No.5176889]

>>5172574
I love grinding especially in Dragon Warrior. It’s meditative. I also like to farm for health and ammo in NES Batman while enjoying the cool music.

[Anonymous No.5177064]

>>5172574
Sometimes I like to play really basic games that require tons of grinding and little story, like Megami Tensei or Dragon Quest I, so I can listen podcast while I play.

[Anonymous No.5177937]

>>5173583
I assume people who say RPGs don't require grinding are just generalizing based on a handful of games they've played because they refuse to acknowledge any imperfections and bad design in RPGs.

[Anonymous No.5177956]

>>5177937
what games are you thinking about that require grinding?

[Anonymous No.5177964]

>>5173961
You have to grind in Dragon Quest games because there's not much else to do. Your characters only gain spells through leveling and most items are pretty much useless once you've got spells. Given the limited inventory space and limited selection of consumables, the optimal strategy defaults to using only physical attacks on enemies while using spells only to heal when exploring new areas. If the enemies are too tough, offensive spells are used but that would mean more trips back to town. Many JRPGs are like this.

[Anonymous No.5177969]

>>5177964
It's like JRPGs, dare I say, haven't aged well?

[Anonymous No.5177974]

>>5177964
>Many JRPGs are like this.
What other JRPGs are like this?

[Anonymous No.5177981]

>>5177956
Here are some:

Dragon Quest (played the first two)
Silva Saga I + II
Lagrange Point
Shadow Brain
Heracles no Eikou
Mystic Ark
Ancient Magic - Bazoo! Mahou Sekai

[Anonymous No.5177983]

>>5177974
Just Breed.

[Anonymous No.5178276]

>>5177981
Not him but that's hardly many and most are super obscure. I am a little jealous you've played mystic arc though, I've only fawned over the artbook.

[Anonymous No.5178292]

>>5177937
No, I meant exactly what I said. Outside of some very archaic examples like DQ1, grinding is practically non-existent if you know what you're doing.

[Anonymous No.5178342]

>>5176679
>Final Fantasy IX gets there eventually.
It doesn't really. By the time you can actually explore the world map (as opposed to a small area of it with no more than two visitable locations) you've been everywere already on your guided cutscene-corridor tour. It's all cutscenes and zero adventure until there's nowhere left to go.

[Anonymous No.5178384]

>>5172574
Personally, I think grinding should be punishment for your stupidity. Kind of like "you can defeat a boss by grinding five more levels, but a villager tells you of a sword that is super effective against type of monster in this plot relevant cave"

[Anonymous No.5178409]

>>5172574
>What's your opinion on grinding/farming in RPGs?
Dude,it's a fact of life.
Mostly it's a reason to not advance the story because you don't want it to end.
I'm look at you Ultima V!

[Anonymous No.5178415]

>>5172574
If the battles are fun then it's not grinding. Just make the battles fun

[Anonymous No.5178420]

>>5172574
Hate it.
I never farm for levels or gold in jrpgs, had to in final Fantasy origins and never liked it. From the snes era onwards games just don't require it and you end up cheating yourself out of an enganging experience by overleveling. There are of course exceptions but for the most part the genre has moved past all of that padding and manages lvl progresion better.
I recently played the DQ series for the first time, up to the sixth entry. The gb remakes, I hear the grinding was cut down in those but I still had to do some in 1&2 to upgrade my gear , not enough to bother me.
3 however pissed me off when I got to baramos, after beating half the game with no grinding at all suddenly this fucker can do laps around me one hitting my characters and even wiping out my party in one turn if he felt like doing two AOE atacks.

After several tries I convinced myself there was no way but to grind, I would have droped the game and the series then and there if the first half of the game wasn't so much fun to explore. So I decided to grind for 30 minutes and try again. Not even 10 minutes later I learn better healing spells with both my hero and healer, I had no party heal prior to this and now I could deal with shit.
I wasn't lacking stats but tools just 2 levels away. Think what you will of that. The rest of the game and the series went smooth after that, only played the first 6 tho.....

[Anonymous No.5178447]

>>5172574
Spent so many hours grinding in a FF game(the ps one that had 4 discs) only to learn that the enemies also leveled up.
Literally sat in a basement playing vidya for days just to make life worse.

[Anonymous No.5178472]

>>5178447
When you could have played cards for an hour and enabled god mode. That game is just good ideas done like shit, grinding has nothing to do with it.

[Anonymous No.5178523]

>>5178472
>When you could have played cards for an hour and enabled god mode
Dang.I avoided that card stuff to the point of burning more calories NOT playing it.

I guess I was wrong.

[Anonymous No.5178528]

>>5172636
Which DQ games do this the best?

[Anonymous No.5178617]

>>5178528

DQ5 on the DS is almost perfectly balanced. The first dungeon can be a little bit tough but tbqh I would believe that it's a narrative decision. Party members join you and learn skills that are relevant to their character and are what you need at that point in the story. More linear than some DQs but the story is very compelling.

[Anonymous No.5178645]

>>5178472
FF8 has good ideas but horrible executed. There's no good way of getting spells outside of either drawing over and over Which is just dull or doing the card game which may or may not be something you are into. But even if you are into the card game you have no idea what the cards break into so the whole thing becomes either you having a guide out all the time or just reset finding out what cards does what.I feel you honestly could make a good system based on FF8 weird junction/card battle system but how they did it was not at all the way.

[Anonymous No.5178897]

>>5178617
The only issue is when you can't get the enemy you want on your team. But it's not too much of an issue. Since once you have a full family team you can play it like any other DQ game.

[Anonymous No.5178975]

>>5178415
good point but technically grinding is just deliberate repetition of encounters for the sake of resource gain. Unfortunately many people seem to play RPGs despite hating the combat system which leads to even more JRPGs with shit combat systems but still. Grinding is still grinding even if it is fun.

[Anonymous No.5180567]

The only JRPG I've played in around 20 years is Sweet Home, but I remember taking one evening grinding in that game and afterwards being able to kill everything but exceptional enemies in one or two rounds. They would scare you occasionally in new areas with strong enemies, I remember at one point after entering battle with a mirror it almost killed one of my party members

I'm not an expert on the topic but I would recommend looking at how they did things

[Anonymous No.5180605]

>>5172607
this
It's therapeutic. It lets you displace your issues for the day and channel them into killing jelly blobs and mutant worms
Also it introduces a danger element as well as reward(s)