I disagree. Offline RPGs can work well even if such tasks are required. Sometimes, it's nice to have a game in which you start out weak, gradually gain strength by killing enemies, and as you get stronger, can explore farther, fighting stronger enemies for greater rewards. The original Dragon Quest, for example, is like this.

I actually wish more games would take this approach.

This is the catch. You don't need to grind, but the content like items is placed into the grind and cut from the game. See this with ascended and legendary in gw2

Who said it doesn't work? ;) Except when grinding is the only way to make any progress at all is where I don't mind. The OP surely does and isn't likely to be a candidate for playing either ドラクエ, 魔界戦記ディスガイア or any other jRPG.

All i said is that in your typical RP there usually is no need to grind at all. It's up to you to decide whether you do it or don't. When you don't, you have to rely on other ways, which usually there are. That's the beauty of choice. If this is taken from you, that's bad design, an artificial roadblock to overcome, wasting hours and hours just to be able to beat that enemy standing between you and the next chapter, quest, progress.

What I'm saying is that mandatory "grinding" (again, I don't like the term) is a perfectly valid game design decision. A game requiring this to progress does not automatically make it a bad game.

Would it help to call it: Repetitive tasks? Because that's what it ultimately is. It can work and in certain cases, while in others it just shows lack of imagination. Putting in stretches you must kill red slime, green slime, blue slime and purple, just to get from level 1 to 15 - mind you, that's hardly ever the case with clever character builds, even in jRPG, that's where it ends being fun or necessary.

Again, we aren't to far off from each other, the only thing i disagree with is implementing repetitive tasks, when there is no need for it. In most cases i played that's a choice not a design-god-given necessity. The main thing here is that this isn't about jRPG but games like the one OP mentioned. I think we can agree that in most those cases there are alternatives to repeatedly killing, collecting stuff etc. That's Diablo, that's MMOG, not RPG.

What I'm saying is that it's a valid decision for an RPG to be built around performing repetitive tasks just to get numbers to go up. For an extreme case of this, see Disgaea's post game, where levels can go into the quadruple digits and stats into the millions (and I hear the numbers get even bigger later in the series).

Interestingly enough, I've also seen this sort of thing appearing in idle/incremental games, like Cookie Clicker (being the most famous one, but certainly not the only one; other good games of the genre include Candy Box 2 and Universal Paperclips). Sometimes, like in Cookie Clicker, the whole point of the game is to increase a number as fast as possible, and the mechanics are complex enough to make it interesting. (Also worth noting that you do get AFK growth in these sort of games; Candy Box 1 and 2, for example, give you one candy per second right from the start.)

Edit> Why the low rating? What's wrong with me stating that sometuimes I want games where I just wantder around in circles, killing enemies, and watch numbers increase?

Your reply to a comment about repetition, in a thread about grinding, was a repetition in itself, as if you were grinding for ... negative rep? ;)

At least in the case of getting your character more powerful (as opposed to hunting for better equipment), I've always used the term "leveling up", ever since I started playing RPGs (like with Dragon Warrior 1, which does a lot of this).

(Yes, I've used the term "leveling up" for games that don't use XP-based leveling, like the SaGa games (SaGa 1 and 2 have some of this, though for SaGa 1 it goes pretty quickly if you sell your female main character's starting weapon right away, and in SaGa 2 it's only necessary for 2 of the races.)

Thanks guys¡

Thanks guys!

:D Serendipity blessed me here, I think.
Well observed.

At the moment, the only "grinding" game I found nice is Thea, both The Awakening and Shattering. If you want to craft awesome stuff, you do need grinding with high leveled gatherers-fighters and craftmen. And as the RP is strictly narrative (especially the first one: if you want your group to unlock narrative possibilities during events, you need to create a group with special attributes to unlock those narration choices), it adds quite some depth to both games and a lot of replayability.

So yes, you can have pretty well designed games using the grinding system, I agree with dtgreene. But for an A-RPG, it's mostly useless and boring. It doesn't match the RP experience you can have with friends around a table, even with a Diablo-like. As for the game I made me avoid this kind of game mechanic is FFVII and its materia system. I was stuck with the main character being dull after fighting the planet weapon (if I recall, it was ages ago, but annoying enough to be remembered as a very bad experience). When you want to get him back you need to fight another planed weapon, and I was just not strong enough to defeat it forcing me to fight again and again to increase my materia level.
That's why I tend to avoid TbT J-RPG now and prefer the "Tales of Phantasia" way to go as it relies more on strategic dynamic fighting.
Overall, this kind of system really need to be well integrated to the RP needs (like in Thea, you need your followers to get better equipment to match some story needs, and therefore you need good craftmen that will rely either on fighters and their loot or on gatherers).

CRPGs don't need to match the RP experience to be good. A game like Dragon Quest 1 isn't the same experience as a table top game, but it can still be an enjoyable experience in its own way, particularly if you just want a "zen" like experience where you just mindlessly go around killing enemies and watching numbers increase.

Hacks and mods can help a lot. A mod in morrowind for example would make all bonuses to stats +5 if you got any increase at all, or increase the speed of skills earned by 10x or 20x.

In emulators hacks/cheats would increase XP earned by a fixed amount (closer to end-game content fights) or just a straight multiplier (say x64). Playing a 1st level character who jumps to 20th level after killing one rat certainly removes a lot of grind in that aspect.

Other games using RPGMV i have a script that boosts XP 10x and money 10x, and item drop 4x.

Personally i've switched a lot from 'normal' mode and grindy games to less grindy ones or mods since i don't seem to have the patience to spend 100 hours to get to level 50 anymore, especially in games that i already did this. Sometimes modding the character sheet can result in grindless experiences. I made a NWN character with high stats and went through the entire base campaign and secondary one in a matter of say 3-4 days, when i originally played the game it took like 3 months.

God invented Cheat Engine to circumvent some of the inane things asked of in otherwise great games.

Walk speed too slow? Double or quintuple the speed.

Cash farming taking days of your life? Change the number.

At the end of the day, you're playing around with a hobby. Don't kill yourself over nonsense, life is short.