I normally hate grind, but now that i'm playing Windward i kind of understand on a more conscious level where it's useful and appreciated. Sometimes you want something cool, sometimes you want to have fun, but when the grinding it's active (like in monster hunter where you have to pay attention when grinding), it seems to be more about something to keep you occupied and lower your IQ when talking to people around you. RPGs basically use levels for content locking (which gets old, fast, because you want options, ASAP, but by the time you have them, you kinda don't appreciate them anymore) and as a player made difficulty setting (final fantasy, dragon quest, elder scrolls, etc). You want to be able to fine tune the difficulty at times, but this is boring. How do you manage it? I don't think you can realistically, but i'm slowly noticing that the trick to grinding in many games is to multi-task with something IRL. Leveling up your pokemon is a good time to be talking to a friend about how much their life sucks, trading to get enough money to buy a high level ship in a game is a perfect time to watch the news, etc.

Ultimately, i think this is just one of those unspoken things. I hated grinding at the end of FF3 on my DS, 'cause it's all i could be doing at that time. However, here i am listening to the news while stuffing my face and tapping my screen to change the course of my ship as i'm slowly completing quests for money and experience in Windward. Just fine tune the difficulty in trance.

But then some grinding doesn't lead to this. Take monster hunter, for example. Ever try to get a Ruby? No, you have to pay attention to the game so you don't get rekt. That said, the game is centered around your ability to recognize the pattern of the thing you're fighting, and even if the creatures are the same and have the same patterns when you fight them over and over again, the human elements mixed with the terrain and a few random variables make each and every hunt unique, even if they're largely the same. The 20th bubbles fight can get pretty annoying, just 'cause you can't manage to break the claws, but these seem to be pretty uncommon scenarios.

But, then you have things like The Elder Scrolls where the grinding can come naturally, but if you want something specific it can easily become a chore. Oh look, i see tents, i must be near another boring bandit camp where i'll fight the same enemies over and over again. Let's be honest, after you've played one of these games to the end, you find the grind incredibly boring, since the way the game works you actually do have to pay constant attention, but you've done it so many times that it just gets old, quick. We aren't playing the game for the constant bandit fights: we're playing it for the kickass loot, the feeling of being a walking god, and the obscure quests and storyline. Oh no, an Oblivion portal, I wonder what's going to be on the other side of that? Randomly generated, you say? Yet, somehow, they all feel the same... Can't you just let me buy that mana stealing sigil stone?

It's even stupider when the quest giver lost something, you accept the quest and the item is marked on the map. I don't really blame the devs for this though, I blame certain gamers who have a hard time growing up. You know, the ones likely to say "Wahhh!!! This game is stupid because I haven't found XYZ item yet, you made it too hard. I hate you devs, I hate the game and I'm never going to buy any games from you again. Now excuse me while I post the same rant on other forums and sulk the rest of the day"

To be fair, it's really annoying when you're playing a game with a massive map and you don't get a clue where to look. It's easier for the devs to use the arrow rather than giving you places to look. It's even worse if a quest was given directions, but later the devs moved the item without changing the instructions to match. Remember morrowind?

How about a game where the directions are correct in the original untranslated version, but were mistranslated in the translation that you happen to be playing?

How about a game where there's a maze, and the directions are randomized every fresh save so you have to find directions in game?

That reminds me of Hexen 2 where there was one puzzle where every failed attempt would reset the solution but every second reset was a guaranteed fail......

And sometimes looking online doesn't help either: "it comes down in the shape of a claw on the map." Yeah, the river? The mountain? The grass? The snow? Oh, it's between these two rivers, in an island with a few different rivers, and none of them are actually named on the map. Good job. Oh, and to the west of one sign post, and the east of another, and before you know it, you've come across about 8 sign posts and you don't know which one they're talking about. And, to make matters better, it turns out you were supposed to ignore the first one, 'cause it was supposed to be the first one you saw when you left the limits of that town. Well, just so this one knows, Kohlrak is Khajiit, and not from around here. Kohlrak does not know the local limits of each town. I thought that particular quest was one that was particularly immersive and well written.

I also remember going out of Seyda Neen and getting lost immediately, thinking i was going in the right direction, going into the first cave i saw, and getting completely manhandled by the bandits i saw. Weird thing is, i haven't found that cave in any playthrough other than my first, and i'm kinda weirded out by that. I think i was told the way to balmora was lined with mushrooms or something, and i confused some trees for mushrooms or something. I haven't gotten around to playing that game, yet, but that makes sense. Oh, we could go on that for a while with other games, including morrowind. The better ones add plenty of immersion to a game that wouldn't otherwise have it: it makes it feel alive, like the quest is authentic. I can understand some people needing nudging, especially when some games have obscure solutions when a more obvious one is available (to look like a local in gothic 2, would not the first thing someone do is go around looking for guards and trying to kill one? I don't know, you tell me). But this is becoming busy work.

Especially with a large map. "It's west of the city that just happens to be the center of the island." (Actually, it's north, and to the west is a desert, and you have no way of knowing if you've gone too far, especially because there was no indication of that.) Then again, that's just like real life directions you get from real people, sometimes. However, unlike reallife, all NPCs give you the same exact flawed directions.

I once played a game called Pandemic, over on Steam. One of the things you do is click on bubbles that show up, to collect resources. Immediately, I asked myself why these aren't just collected automatically, why do you have to manually click on this stuff? And then it hit me, it's a mobile port. Because mobile games are so worthless and backwards that they uninvented automatic resource gathering just so the player will be more glued to their screen. **** that.

Well, it's a thing with mobile games that there's not much to do, in general. And, to add to it, there's formulas (they actually psychologically engineer games to make you addicted, even if that comes at the cost of fun). It's alot easier to tap something than click something, so maybe they feel obligated in the original games.

That said, there are some nifty games that started as mobile, that don't have issues like that. The Quest by Redshift, for example. Then you have games like Windward (which started out on the PC), where it starts out like that (occasionally crates pop out of the water, and you can either run over them or you have to tap them), then you can find an item in the game for automatic item acquisition. Honestly, i think it's so you feel like you have more control over the things you get from it, as if you've earned the loot box you just paid for.

Since you're complaining, have a meme, i'm sure you'll understand: Cap'n I see why those crates move so fast.....

Basically grinding in every game, mostly in JRPGs. I don't particularly mind it as long as it is balanced enough so playing the game doesn't feel like a second job.

I remember reading that grinding is a lot more common in Japanese games because they think that a player that "works" hard should be rewarded. While in Western countries it is more frowned upon.

Actually, if yuou exclude post game content, and you exclude some of the earlier games (for example, we'll exclude Final Fantasy 1-2 and Dragon Quest 1-2 (maybe 3)), it is relatively rare to find a JRPG where you actually have to stop and fight enemies in order to get stronger. (This is assuming that you fight most of the battles you run across instead of just running from everything.)

I hear tell of this, and this may be true, it's only to a point: some games might not need grinding, but it requires some careful planning and building to prevent that need.

Maybe some game does this already but I haven't seen it:

For a game that uses quest markers, it would be interesting - for the general location quests, not "Go to the Pink Dragon Inn" - if you first get just a pie slice on your map, showing general direction. Then as you head on your way and talk to people and pick up more tidbits of info, the slice narrows to give a much more specific direction. And then maybe eventually, talking to a local will finally turn that pie slice into a quest marker, since he or she might presumably know where that nearby cave is found.