What even is "Grinding".

Noddie

N
For me "Grinding" is when you have to do something very repetitive in order to see the rest of the game you paid for. For example. In many games you get either the "If you find all 30 flags, I will give you the key to the castle" game or the "You need to defeat the grand wizard. To do that you need level 5 fire armour. To get that you need to catch 50 fireflies, 100 iron and the grand wizard's left sock". If you don't spend a couple of hours doing this ridiculous side-quest or "earning" this item via labour, you won't ever be able to see the next part of the story or compete in a multiplayer game as anything but canon-fodder. That's grinding.

In Elite, most things are not that repetitive because things interrupt you. "Things" being pirates and so on. And when you get bored you can chucker off and do some bounty hunting, exploration, missions, or whatever the heck else interests you. You could just spend hours "grinding" out mining, but if you don't want to you can not do that and go and do something more interesting instead and maybe come back another time. But the thing is (really) there isn't much you can't do in a Cobra 3 you can earn without a few minutes of starting the game these days.

I honestly can't be bothered to "grind" for an Anaconda (wait...let me rephrase that...). It'll happen sooner or later if I just keep playing so I'll keep doing what interests me and not pursuing some kind of high-score in a game that doesn't even keep one. Believe me, being a Jackass is a lot more fun than being a high-earning career professional with nothing else going on.

/\ I mean in Elite, obviously. But, then again...….
 

Noddie

N
Ian Skippy said:
Grinding is a repetitive and unchallenging activity that has to be repeatedly performed with little to no variation in order to gain something otherwise unobtainable.
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Sounds like a lot of lower-tier jobs. But the "Otherwise Unobtainable" thing isn't true. If you just keep playing at what interests you then materials, credits, permits and things will eventually happen. You can speed it up with grinding, but that isn't much fun. So I wouldn't do that if I were you.

playtime is playtime. If it's become work, you're doing it wrong.
 

Vasco Sapien

Vasco Sapien
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[Diplomacy] Carnegie

[Diplomacy] Carnegie
Noddie said:
Sounds like a lot of lower-tier jobs. But the "Otherwise Unobtainable" thing isn't true. If you just keep playing at what interests you then materials, credits, permits and things will eventually happen. You can speed it up with grinding, but that isn't much fun. So I wouldn't do that if I were you.

playtime is playtime. If it's become work, you're doing it wrong.
Click to expand...

I'm not one to complain about grind, but I can't unlock Selene Jean by doing what interests me - consequently her blueprints are 'otherwise unobtainable'. The Colonia engineer with the same blueprints also can't be unlocked by exploring either.
 

Nimitz68

Nimitz68
Not that I completely disagree with the prior posts, but one person's grind is another person's fun. Or at least non-grind activity. There are some things that people called super-grindy or 'wrong' that I found interesting. Some of those activities also 'forced' me to do things in the game I wouldn't have otherwise, which was usually pretty cool. Or maybe I found a different way to do something than I was aware of that was more/less dull.
 

Stealthie

Banned
Stealthie
Ian Skippy said:
Grinding is a repetitive and unchallenging activity....
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That's the key thing.

Almost every game in the world could be considered "repetitive" insofar as you have to do similar things over and over to progress through the game.
Does a racing game involve "grind" if you have to do multiple laps?
Does a shooter involve "grind" if you have to kill a heap of baddies?

It's the "unchallenging" aspect of an activity that defines it as "grind".
When the only thing standing between you and success is the willingness to do the same thing over and over (and over), that's grind.
 

Noddie

N
DrewCarnegie said:
I'm not one to complain about grind, but I can't unlock Selene Jean by doing what interests me - consequently her blueprints are 'otherwise unobtainable'. The Colonia engineer with the same blueprints also can't be unlocked by exploring either.
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That's probably true. But, then again, a lot of the engineers are lined up so that if you unlock them by doing the things their blueprints help you to unlock. So if you're into their activity then you'll want to unlock them and do so with your game style. If you're not into their activity then it will be painful to unlock them, but you probably won't want to.

Unless you're a completionist. In which case, you may have managed to make your "playtime" into "work". Personally, though, I don't work for things I don't want or aren't worth the effort. I mean, I could come home from my full time job and do a second job and earn another 10k a year (or whatever) and upgrade my modest car to a Porsche after a year or so. But I value my evenings and weekends above a Porsche. So I don't. Similarly I could farm bounties or whatever and get an a-rated Anaconda and then do endless unlocks to upgrade it. But that wouldn't be much fun, would it? so Instead I'm tarting around in a Viper or Cobra murdering things and doing stupid stuff.

You have to keep in mind. The sole point of playing this game is enjoyment. If you're not enjoying it, you're wasting your time. Unless what you're wasting it on is worth the tedium. Keep in mind that if you get your Corvette they don't deliver one outside your house (sadly). You can't print out the credits or spend them on Amazon. You put time in, you get fun out. Or not. But if you're not enjoying Elite, either do something else in Elite or outside of it.
 
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[Diplomacy] Carnegie

[Diplomacy] Carnegie
Noddie said:
That's probably true. But, then again, a lot of the engineers are lined up so that if you unlock them by doing the things their blueprints help you to unlock. So if you're into their activity then you'll want to unlock them and do so with your game style. If you're not into their activity then it will be painful to unlock them, but you probably won't want to.

Unless you're a completionist. In which case, you may have managed to make your "playtime" into "work". Personally, though, I don't work for things I don't want or aren't worth the effort. I mean, I could come home from my full time job and do a second job and earn another 10k a year (or whatever) and upgrade my modest car to a Porsche after a year or so. But I value my evenings and weekends above a Porsche. So I don't. Similarly I could farm bounties or whatever and get an a-rated Anaconda and then do endless unlocks to upgrade it. But that wouldn't be much fun, would it? so Instead I'm tarting around in a Viper or Cobra murdering things and doing stupid stuff.
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I'd like the free armor upgrade that Selene provides (reinforced lightweight armor applies a %age weight increase to a 0 weight item) but not enough to spend time mining (which I find incredibly tedious. If I did it, it would be grinding (for me), but I don't do it, so it's not a problem.
 

Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
Jenner
Clearing out the reported post queue?

Seriously though, in the post-Void Opal ED world where money is no object the only serious bit of grindy gameplay that is unavoidable is superpower rank levling to get rank locked ships. It's better than it once was, but still ridiculous.
 
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