Ok, Let's talk about grinding gameplay in Starbound

Following Starbound here made me decide to revisit Terraria (which I hadn't since about last January).
As I was messing around I decided to finally get that lovely Hallowed Armor. Then I realized why I had quit playing Terraria last January...The endgame is not exciting. All you do is grind mobs until you have enough of a particular drop to craft a particular boss summoning device, so that you can grind that boss until you have enough of its particular drop so that you can make one end-game item.

I hate grinding in games.
In contrast, I love mining and farming.

Mining and farming in Terraria involves exploring for an ore that you know is there or planting an herb and waiting for it to grow. One is fun and novel each time, involving exploring different areas and fighting through a variety of monsters. The other is passive and can take place in the background. Both are great.
Grinding however involves killing the same monster(s) in an attempt to accumulate a drop in sufficient quantity to craft something. This gets old and boring especially if the monster is rare, drops a low % of the time, or is only located in a limited area. My worst experience grinding in Terraria involved me running back and forth in a desert killing antlions trying to collect their rare drop for 2.5 hours. I quit Terraria just after succeeding.

I would love to hear your thoughts. Some of you may love grinding. Or perhaps the devs/staff could chime in with their vision for resource collection.

 

Grinding is unavoidable.

 

The best way to avoid the problem of grinding is to make it so that every item has multiple ways of obtaining it.

Grinding IS avoidable. Not once have I had to grind in the Paper Mario games, nor in Breath of Death VII. However, most RPG makers think what you think, which is why I tend to avoid most RPGs. You don't have to have grinding in an RPG. When developers start getting that into their heads will I pay more attention to RPGs.

 

Grinding in this sort of game is unavoidable

 

Not really. If you have the item only require a low amount of materials, it isn't grinding. Perhaps most mats could come from the environment, with some coming from boss creatures. It could be set up so that you only had to kill the boss creature once or twice to get enough of a resource to make your item.

 

I sure hope not. b/c I find it makes a game frustrating to require grinding.

I like the idea of having to find the materials in world, not necessarily having to kill X number of mobs. I like how in Minecraft there are very few cases of grinding being necessary. You only really have to grind for potions and Eyes of Ender. (which is why I don't do potions, and have never made it to the End without a fun modpack [tekkit!!])

I thought it was very silly in Terraria that we were grinding multiple bosses to amass their drops. If they are a boss, why are there multiples? None of the bosses in Terraria are truly bosses, they are just another much more difficult mob for us to grind. This cheapened them a lot.

 

I've played RPG's before that don't have any elements of grinding,
You're just looking in the wrong areas.

As for my opinion on this,
I don't mind grinding at all.
If It is in the game, I wont think much of it.

 

A thread about grinding (or rather the lack of it)...I'm suddenly reminded of GuildWars2Guru forums!

That completely depends on how you define grinding.
Different people consider different things grinding.

If you define it as anything repetitive (mining 20 stone blocks in a row) then yeah, no real way to avoid it.
On the other hand if you define grinding as doing the same thing over and over again for really long periods of time it's definitely avoidable.
For example instead of digging stone blocks one by one for an hour you get really good terraforming devices later in the game.
I also doubt that you get "kill 1000 poptops while staying on the same planet" quests...

It also depends on what you consider your goal.
Getting the absolutely best items in Starbound is probably nearly impossible due to randomness, so if you consider that your goal you could see Starbound as a crazy grind fest.
The way I see it it'll probably be completely optional, just like getting random items in Borderlands or whatever.

On the other hand if you quit after finishing the main quest I doubt you'll see much grinding at all.

 

Well, it's not called hardmode for nothing.

OT: I'm sure there'll be some type of grinding. Whether it's grinding mobs or grinding materials, etc. Most of this game is gonna be exploring anyway.

 

IMO grinding is ok. Its when it is constantly required that it becomes a problem.

Can we pleasepleasePLEASE not start that discussion here too?

 

Wait, what discussion,
Lead me to the thread where this happened before please.
Much appreciated.

 

The whole hardmode crap happened on the Terraria forums, not here. It shouldn't be too hard to find though.

 

Ahh, Ok, thanks.

 

As long as the game doesn't require the player to do those ridiculously boring grind quests (kill x enemies, collect x items from said enemies, etc) alllll the time, I don't think there will be any grind problem in this game. There seems like there are enough things that are going to be in this game that even if one were to get bored of what they were doing, they could go explore other planets or find and capture creatures or something like that.

 

Grinding isn't necessarily a bad thing, if it is to obtain a non-quest specific item. Understandably, some quests may require a modest amount of grinding (is it your luck, or are hand-sized slime bats just not dropping rocket launchers 10 times their size?).

However, I got turned off of Maple story when quest after quest demanded I slaughter 200, 400, then 1000 mountain pigs. It gave the game a sense of no direction or purpose, after a time. The fear of grinding in Star bound isn't too profound to me, when potential grinding situations may arise, since I can moderate the task with exploration, mining, building
..whatever my space faring heart desires =^•_•^=

 

Not if you make a separate base on the other side of an area where the mob that drops an item you need is. So when you go to access that important thing, you can also kill the mob.

 

if you would need to grind alot of monsters just nuke the whole planet. problem solved on monster grinding.

 

Grinding in Terraria: Certain items are the best items in their Tier level: Only one way to obtain it. Grinding is unavoidable.

Starbound: Not one definitive best weapon, since things are procedurally generated. There's not going to be a end-all, beat-all weapon that everyone's going to have to get using only one method.

Sure, certain monsters might drop certain "Brands/types" of weapons, but it surely isn't going to force you to grind it. Obviously people are going to grind and farm for THE best weapon/armor possible (Oh, that Platemail doesn't have the Poisonproof prefix? I'll just have to grind another.) But there probably won't be only one way to obtain certain items, since playing the game normally can net you better gear. Terraria had a very clear item progression, but Starbound will feature a lot more sideways progression, and non-linear tiers.

So basically, you could play the game normally and not have to excessively grind anything. I'm sure there'll be "Collect X" quests...but they wouldn't make it a ludicrous amount or a ridiculous drop rate. If so...well, I'll skip that quest and go explore my planets.

TL;DR: Procedural generation means luck of the draw for most items. Who cares if you don't have that Shotgun sword, when you can do a different quest to get a shotgun that shoots swords. Nobody's forcing you to have that one item. Simply put, there's hardly a "Best" when it comes to procedural generation, so nothing's forcing the player to grind too much when there's so many ways to obtain items, I hope.

Basically, the people obsessed with having THE best are going to end up grinding, but that hardly seems like a game-design flaw. Not that I mind a bit of grinding. I'm quite desensitized to it, to be honest. Grinding is grinding, sure. But if Grinding is enjoyable, then awesome. If I'm getting better gear/items by hunting a rare item drop, I don't care.

 

Love the Breath of Death VII reference. Loved that game. (I bought it day 1 when it was an XBLIG. Also helped peer review their next game to get it released.)

Now so I can be on topic. I agree with the original post, I don't like grinding and that's why I don't like most MMO's and also Terraria's end game. Grinding is avoidable and it's just a game design decision. So game designers like having the grind as it makes it feel more "rewarding." My theory is that if your game is fun it should be rewarding to just play it! Just play it can of course be expanded into: I get random drops and I'm more likely to get something awesome as I play the game without having to focus on doing a particular task. (I don't have to grind for one certain rare ore for 20 hours of just mining this one area. )

 

Grinding is based on skill
The more skilled you are the less you grind
but in some games noobs do alot while experts do none
but in this game noobs will probably do alot alot!
while experts just do alot.