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Lightbringer

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Hey folks. A mechanic that exists in almost every game is grinding/farming, the act of repeating the same action to accumulate something, be it experience, currency, or an item drop. For the most part it seems that grinding does not serve a purpose beyond artificially elongating the game. I suppose the topic for this thread is, what are some games that you think do grinding/farming very well and very poorly?

Just going off the top of my head, I think Cave Story does its farming well. You get experience for your weapons by killing monsters, and lose a bit when you take a hit. The act of farming becomes a punishment for the player's mistakes, since you need to kill more monsters to make up for taking hits, but in the case of harder parts of the game near the end, it becomes a reward of sorts since experience capsules are placed in tricky-to-reach areas which give large amounts of experience for reaching them.

I can't think of any games that I would say does farming poorly, at least not in the sense that I could classify them to be worse than other games. I really don't like games that feature items/equipment/whatever that drop at absurdly low rates without some means of increasing the drop rates. Granted, I've yet to encounter a game where getting low drop items is required, but they're often very beneficial.

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When it comes to low drop rate items, the first thing i think about is monster hunter. Its annoying when you just need one more piece to complete that armor, but you never get it. With each fight taking a realative long time its annoying when its a 1% chance of getting that item lol.

Worthy Trash

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If you want a game that has grinding that is beneficial, think of Minecraft.


To actually complete the game, you need to defeat the Wither. And to do that, you need to kill three Wither Skeletons for their skulls, which has quite a low drop rate.

Terraria also has some items that require massive grinding that are nearly essential for end-game bosses.

Invisible Hunter

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I like grinding where its like...very interactive. I like to cut down threes, carry those trees to my house with something and then make it into stuff. I like going out looking for boar tusks and the way i get them is breaking the stupid tusks off the stupid boar. I totally hate it when i just kill something and then i randomly get materials. You killed 10 boars and somehow only got 2 tusks because i guess you just left the rotting corpses on the floor and didn't bring your tools to take the other 18 tusks. Monster hunter was like the worst for me. I am clearly cutting the thing with my hands, but i guess im too stupid to be able to identify a talon from a lung to be able to choose what i cut out of a kill. I would like to see some of those games have atleast like a minigame or maybe a mastery skill so i can choose what i want to carve out of a beast and give me a % chance to get that item specifically.

Like i would like to get the tusks from the boar, i have a carving master of 2 and identification mastery of 5 because i killed this thing and carved it up succesfully many times. I want to choose to get the tusks from it i should get a chance to locate the correct cutting pattern to get it and a percent to not mess it up and end up with a broken tusk. Boom, done. The player now has a drive to kill and learn about what they are fighting so they can identify key parts of it. Then the player also has a drive to be better at carving and could even turn into a profession to where people want to find players that are good at cutting up beasts so they can get the best loot.

Kawaii Shoujo

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If you want a game for grinding you can't go wrong with Earthbound, due to the fact that there like most games have rare equipment and weapons which are scarcely dropped by certain enemies( e.x. Sword of Kings), and certain enemies that drop a ton of experience( e.x. Foppy/Fobby).

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Yeah Monster Hunter does grinding and farming not so fun when you do it for a long period of times. 30+ quest completions with tranq bomb finisher is crazy for a heavenly rathalos scale from a hr 9 silver rathalos...in Freedom Unite.

Dedicated Loiterer

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You know, a month ago I would have told you Terraria wasn't even super bad with grinding since you can kill pretty much everything quickly or set up things to farm for you.
But that was a month ago.
So I've been working on an Anhk Shield which requires a lot of rare drops from a lot of monsters. It was going pretty well, between increasing monster spawn rates and setting things up to farm for me I got pretty much everything I needed easily. Except for a megaphone, a 1% drop from pixies. Now, pixies can drop two other items so I knew I might have to work for it. They drop fast clocks at 1% and blessed apples at .5% So I grind for a while, I get an apple. Cool, I didn't have that mount before. Then I get another. Then I start getting fast clocks. And then the straw that began to break the donkey's back, a blessed key. Keys drop at a ridiculously rare .04% I was happy to get they key, I went to grab the rainbow gun, and then I went back to farming. Over several days I accumulated clocks and apples with no megaphones at all. Ridiculous, right? How could I have over a dozen of something with the same drop rate as what I need without finding a megaphone?
And then another key drops.

Lonely Smoker

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The only game I've ever had to grind in was Final Fantasy VII because Sephiroth is kind of a troll boss.

As for farming, I went to the island in Animal Crossing New Leaf multiple times in the evening to farm those really rare and expensive beetles.

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No, I hate when a game wastes my time with filler interactions in order to postpone some desirable goal. Equipment that requires farming rare drops is the kind of thing that I will pass up on, and if it is necessary for completing the game, then I will deem such a game poorly balanced.

It's one thing to have slow or challenging progression, it's another thing entirely to replace progression with a statistical void.

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skyryo
Yeah Monster Hunter does grinding and farming not so fun when you do it for a long period of times. 30+ quest completions with tranq bomb finisher is crazy for a heavenly rathalos scale from a hr 9 silver rathalos...in Freedom Unite.


Can you do a 0 Item, No Armor run of a Silver Rath?...If you can't, Run it again and DODGE THIS TIME! emotion_donotwant

Invisible Hunter

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Play Fiesta Online then talk to me about bad grinding and farming. emotion_awesome

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SLOWbro of misfortune
skyryo
Yeah Monster Hunter does grinding and farming not so fun when you do it for a long period of times. 30+ quest completions with tranq bomb finisher is crazy for a heavenly rathalos scale from a hr 9 silver rathalos...in Freedom Unite.


Can you do a 0 Item, No Armor run of a Silver Rath?...If you can't, Run it again and DODGE THIS TIME! emotion_donotwant


I'm grinding for an item not completing a quest for a challenge. Why would I grind and set myself up for frustration by making it even more of a challenge?

Questionable Creature

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I'd have to think specifically for a game I could think of that did farming badly. I love RPGs but I'm crazy lazy with overly grinding and farming. For one that I think did it well, I'd say Fantasy Life. Fantasy Life is just so open with so much to do, takes a long time to get bored, if you get tired of grinding for something just take a break and do something else in the game. You don't have to grind for that one thing forever if you don't want to.
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