Software:Grinding (gaming)

In video gaming, grinding is performing repetitive tasks for gameplay advantage. Many video games use different tactics to implement, or reduce the amount of grinding in play. The general use of grinding is for "experience points", or to improve the characters level. However, the behavior is sometimes referred to as pushing the bar, farming or catassing.

Overview

Grinding is a controversial subject among players. Many do not enjoy it, and disparage it as a symptom of poor or uninspired game design. Others embrace it, claiming that all games feature grinding to some extent, or claim to enjoy the practice of regular grinding. Some games, especially free-to-play games, allow players to bypass grinding by paying additional fees.

In an example of grinding in MMORPG, it can be advantageous to repeatedly kill AI-controlled monsters, using basically the same strategy over and over again to advance one's character level and to unlock content. Grinding may be required by some games to unlock additional features such as level progression or additional items.

Synonyms for grinding include the figurative terms treadmilling (a comparison with exercise treadmills) and pushing the bar (it can be a reference to a weightlifter "pushing the bar" on a bench press, over and over to get muscle gains, or a reference to Skinner boxes in which animals, having learned that pushing a button will sometimes produce a treat, will devote time to pushing the bar over and over again , or also can be a graphical reference to push the character's experience bar to higher values). Related terms include farming (in which the repetition is undertaken in order to obtain items, relating the activity to tending a farm field), and catassing, which refers to extended or obsessive play sessions. Used as a noun, a grind (or treadmill) is a designed in-game aspect which requires the player to engage in grinding.

Grinding has led to some players programming scripts, bots, macros and other automation tools to perform the repetitive tasks. This is usually considered a form of hacking or an exploit by the game's developers, and will often times resort in a ban. Due to the controversial subject of grinding, this act is sometimes, but not always, frowned upon in the gaming community.

Reasons

Several answers have been suggested for the question of why players grind. A major motivating factor is the players' desire to pursue what appears to be the game's ultimate goal, which for many games is to reach the highest level. Sometimes players might actually enjoy repetitive tasks as a way of relaxing, especially if performing the task has a persistent, positive result.

One reason that is less influenced by player choice is a lack of game content or to be able to battle stronger enemies. If the player experiences all interesting content at the current level before reaching the next objective, the only alternative might be for the player to grind to the next level. "Interesting content" is key here since the player might have been given "new content" that is too similar to previous content to be considered interesting by the player.

Additionally, the players may grind for the enjoyment of being better at the game. Putting in the time to grind leads the player to gain experience and level up. Increases in level often come with additional statistical boosts and new abilities, which in turn allow the player to defeat stronger enemies. Time invested in grinding is usually related to strength or ability in the game. This relationship is encouraging to players, consistently rewarding their grinding effort.

Controversy

While grinding's potential to cause players to stop being entertained may be seen as contradictory to good game design, it has been justified in several different ways. The first explanation is that it helps ensure a level playing field. According to the Pareto principle, players with better aim, faster reactions, or more extensive tactical knowledge will quickly dominate the entire game, frustrating the now-powerless vast majority. By creating a direct correlation between in-game power and time spent grinding, every player has the potential to reach the top 20% (although the Pareto principle will still apply to the amount of time spent grinding).

The problem may not be that talent and skill are rewarded, but that the rewards are based on relative talent and skill. If only the top 20% of a game's players are rewarded, 80% must be receiving little reward, even if objectively they are highly talented. If there is no hope in the future of these players being rewarded, they will likely leave the game, causing the population to shrink, and thus reducing the number of people who can be in the top 20%. Grinding has the benefit that, although only 20% of the population may be rewarded at any given time, 100% of the population will have the potential to be rewarded in the future, and will have no reason to quit.

Though grinding is used to provide a "level playing field", this effect could be achieved with any time-consuming behavior that is accessible to all and provides game advancement; The behavior need not be tedious or repetitive, as the term grinding generally implies. For example, in a game where advancement is gained by killing monsters, the game could provide such a huge variety of monsters and environments that no two kills are ever the same. As long as all players remained equally capable of killing the monsters, the same leveling-off effect would be generated. Thus, the "level playing field" effect is considered by some to be a misleading attempt to hide the real reason for grinding: unwillingness or inability to budget sufficient content resources to produce a varied game.

To solve the grinding issue, E McNeill proposes that "the most effective path to victory should also be the most fun". For example, challenging tasks should give better rewards than easy tasks.

Another alternative to grinding is to remove designer-defined objectives, leaving players free to do whatever they want. This creates a new problem where many players might be confused about what they are supposed to do, or they might lack the motivation to do much of anything in the virtual world.

Players of subscription-based online games often criticize grinds as a heavy-handed attempt to gain profit. The most interesting and challenging gameplay is often only available to characters at the highest levels, who are those strong enough to participate in raids or player versus player combat. Grinding is seen as a reason to increase the amount of time it takes to reach these levels, forcing the player to pay more subscription fees along the way.

The IGDA Online Games Special Interest Group has noted that level treadmills are part of the addictive quality of MMORPGs that caters to those who play more than 25 hours a week. Another criticism of the entire leveling concept and level playing field approach is that it often allows the player to avoid difficult strategic or reflexive challenges that one might encounter when fighting powerful opponent challenges. By spending a large amount of time battling weaker or easily defeated characters (a practice known as bottomfeeding), players can gain levels so as to have little difficulty vanquishing the more difficult enemy.

• World of Warcraft features dungeons that can be played in segments, so that players can play the game in smaller chunks of time, allowing people who can't afford to dedicate several hours of continuous playing time to complete them. 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Borderlands 2 requires players to repetitively kill specific enemies multiple times in order 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.
• Warframe features grinding in one of its purest forms, but also in a quite developed fashion: Every Warframe's parts are acquired differently - 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 gamemodes 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.

See also

• Time sink
• Experience point
• Level (video gaming)
• Progress Quest
• Skinner Box