ED is hands down the grindiest game I've personally played. NMS has the potential to be worse, but I didn't enjoy the game play loop enough to find out for sure.
Game Discussions Game with most tedious grind....
- Thread starter Dorray
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To the OP's question:
The biggest grind I've ever experienced is World of Warcraft.
You want a particular mount? Go farm that old raid instance (and you can only do it once per week) for months or years while praying to the RNG gods you'll hit that 0.2% drop rate.
The equivalent would be if you want a Cutter, instead of coming up with the 200M credits and grinding rep with the Empire, you'd have to run one mission per week and hope you got the ship as a reward.
You want to participate in that raid? Go run dungeons endlessly to get your average item level up so you can finally meet the minimum requirements only to be told by other players you don't have good enough gear.
There are parts of the game you literally cannot play until you achieve a certain reputation level with whatever faction controls that content. I'm not talking "Waaah! I want a Cutter!". It's more like "Oh... you want to do exploration? You must be allied with The Explorer's League to unlock the FSD. However, you must first show them you own a fuel scoop, and to get a fuel scoop, you must be allied with The Intergalactic Brotherhood of Fuel Scoop Workers. Of course, to unlock access to TIBFSW, you must first be allied with Grinder's Guild and you can only build rep with them by turning in Lithium Hydroxide, but you can only turn in 10 per day. What? You haven't unlocked mining yet? Oh. Okay. Well, to unlock mining lasers...."
The entire game is a grind. It's the only game I've ever played where I had to log in every day to do my 25 (because that is the cap) daily quests in order for me to gain enough honor/valor/reputation/mats/etc just so I could participate in whatever new content came out with the latest expansion or get geared up enough to be able to enter the queue for whatever instance I wanted to play.
It's like having a part-time job, but you pay them.
The only thing that comes even remotely close in ED is Engineering. And, honestly, it's not that bad. Other than elements, the rest can be picked up just doing normal game play. It took me about two weeks to get my DBX from stock to almost 100% engineered at G5 plus experimental effects. All I have left to do is go from G1 on my fuel transfer limpet to G5 and from G4 on my DSS to G5. I'm on my way back to the bubble to get that done.
Then, I will have to grind rep for the Sol permit. But, that takes hours - not weeks.
The biggest grind I've ever experienced is World of Warcraft.
You want a particular mount? Go farm that old raid instance (and you can only do it once per week) for months or years while praying to the RNG gods you'll hit that 0.2% drop rate.
The equivalent would be if you want a Cutter, instead of coming up with the 200M credits and grinding rep with the Empire, you'd have to run one mission per week and hope you got the ship as a reward.
You want to participate in that raid? Go run dungeons endlessly to get your average item level up so you can finally meet the minimum requirements only to be told by other players you don't have good enough gear.
There are parts of the game you literally cannot play until you achieve a certain reputation level with whatever faction controls that content. I'm not talking "Waaah! I want a Cutter!". It's more like "Oh... you want to do exploration? You must be allied with The Explorer's League to unlock the FSD. However, you must first show them you own a fuel scoop, and to get a fuel scoop, you must be allied with The Intergalactic Brotherhood of Fuel Scoop Workers. Of course, to unlock access to TIBFSW, you must first be allied with Grinder's Guild and you can only build rep with them by turning in Lithium Hydroxide, but you can only turn in 10 per day. What? You haven't unlocked mining yet? Oh. Okay. Well, to unlock mining lasers...."
The entire game is a grind. It's the only game I've ever played where I had to log in every day to do my 25 (because that is the cap) daily quests in order for me to gain enough honor/valor/reputation/mats/etc just so I could participate in whatever new content came out with the latest expansion or get geared up enough to be able to enter the queue for whatever instance I wanted to play.
It's like having a part-time job, but you pay them.
The only thing that comes even remotely close in ED is Engineering. And, honestly, it's not that bad. Other than elements, the rest can be picked up just doing normal game play. It took me about two weeks to get my DBX from stock to almost 100% engineered at G5 plus experimental effects. All I have left to do is go from G1 on my fuel transfer limpet to G5 and from G4 on my DSS to G5. I'm on my way back to the bubble to get that done.
Then, I will have to grind rep for the Sol permit. But, that takes hours - not weeks.
I think I'd separate basic safety precautions (such as bicycle helmets and seat belts) from participation trophies and grades based on self esteem. All it takes is seeing one kid laying in a ditch because he was ejected through the windshield due to lack of proper restraint to break you from that naive comparison. Otherwise, I totally agree with the sentiment; nowadays life is so easy that as a culture we've become y cats who don't have to scrabble for our survival, so how else were we going to raise our kids when the biggest concerns of society are self esteem and angst over the proper use of pronouns and if men should be able to use women's bathrooms and compete in their sports just by saying they were female?
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Grind isn't really grind in a sandbox type game. If everything you needed was down a 'path', then what would be the point of the game.
Players play these games to get longevity from them, well I do anyway. There is very little longevity in normal games, a matter of hours usually.
So don't view it as grind, it's survival to find what you need to get on in the game, plus get on in a way/style that you like.
That tends to be what these games are about, they put a world there for you to live in, 'the game is' doing the living.
Players play these games to get longevity from them, well I do anyway. There is very little longevity in normal games, a matter of hours usually.
So don't view it as grind, it's survival to find what you need to get on in the game, plus get on in a way/style that you like.
That tends to be what these games are about, they put a world there for you to live in, 'the game is' doing the living.
Don't even get me started on pronouns.
I would like to point out I never mentioned seat belts.
Regarding bicycle helmets, please see:
What's wrong with bicycle helmets?
bicyclesafe.com
I mentioned them because many people lump the two concepts together.
I'm rather allergic to grind, so if a game overdoes it with that kind of design, I usually quit it rather quickly.
ED may be pretty grindy with all those materials and stuff you need to collect, but as someone else said, it's well playable with standard equipment and everything else is mostly a cherry on top. However, I probably would have found it too grindy before the mining boom, and I might also find it too grindy if I were starting just now, after the end of the goldrush. But as I started just in time (Jan 6 or so), I managed to farm all the money I'll ever need in just a couple of days.
The grindiest game I've played and stuck with for a considerable amount of time has been World of Tanks. I started playing that 8 years ago, usually for a few months at a time, then I get fed up with it and don't touch it for another few months or sometimes close to a year. Actually I played it rather a lot in the last couple of months, but then one particular tank grind frustrated me SO much that it pushed me over the edge again.
Even though I still had some Premium days,
even though there were still Holiday specials with a metric crapton of bonuses,
even though there was a special marathon where you could grind a Premium tank for free
-- I just couldn't bear it anymore, and aborted my WoT season.
ED may be pretty grindy with all those materials and stuff you need to collect, but as someone else said, it's well playable with standard equipment and everything else is mostly a cherry on top. However, I probably would have found it too grindy before the mining boom, and I might also find it too grindy if I were starting just now, after the end of the goldrush. But as I started just in time (Jan 6 or so), I managed to farm all the money I'll ever need in just a couple of days.
The grindiest game I've played and stuck with for a considerable amount of time has been World of Tanks. I started playing that 8 years ago, usually for a few months at a time, then I get fed up with it and don't touch it for another few months or sometimes close to a year. Actually I played it rather a lot in the last couple of months, but then one particular tank grind frustrated me SO much that it pushed me over the edge again.
Even though I still had some Premium days,
even though there were still Holiday specials with a metric crapton of bonuses,
even though there was a special marathon where you could grind a Premium tank for free
-- I just couldn't bear it anymore, and aborted my WoT season.
And, that's how we get ants, Lana.
There are many games with high levels of grind. They seem to share the same characteristic and that is progression is based on itemization which is RNG based. Worse still the stats on those items are also RNG based. You can put in a lot of effort/time to get the right item to drop only to find the stats are not very good/desirable. Examples, Destiny 2, Warframe Liches and Railjack reactor and there are many others but those 2 I have first hand experience in. It seems to be an industry trend currently and not a good one but it spins out limited new content for a longer time. ED is not as bad as some of these other games just yet.
Grand Theft Auto V
Never had to grind for anything in ED. But NMS was pure grind (it may be different now), LOTRO did become a grind fest to get anything later in the games history. Those two are the only ones that come to mind at the moment.
And we all know why
Its funny how it works for different folks, I honestly never felt the grind in NMS, altho I can clearly see why one can say you need to grind for materials and such. I guess hopping from ship to on foot, to building and so on makes it way more engaging for me. Would explain why I starve for above mechanic in ED to make it less grindy
That's how I feel about Space Engineers. One could argue that it is grindy, and indeed it is to some extent, but the beauty of the game is as you progress, you invent new and better ways to gather resources, through better equipment and eventually automation. It is the challenge of, "How can I make a better drilling rig?" and "How can I automate component production?" that makes the game so wonderful IMO. Perhaps HG has also added this aspect to NMS since I played last (which was before all the "wires" were added).Its funny how it works for different folks, I honestly never felt the grind in NMS, altho I can clearly see why one can say you need to grind for materials and such. I guess hopping from ship to on foot, to building and so on makes it way more engaging for me. Would explain why I starve for above mechanic in ED to make it less grindy
"This game" (by which I assume you mean Elite: Dangerous) doesn't require you to grind. Pretty much everything you want to do in the game can be done in small ships. Even large ships can be acquired and outfitted without grinding, but doing so requires you to actually pay attention while playing the game. Players grind because they choose to do so, either out of a belief it'll get them what they want faster, because they'd rather split their attention while playing this game, or just because they can't be bothered to learn how the game actually works.
Games that I've played that required grinding?
Biggest one I've ever played is NMS. You need to grind for the materials necessary to grind for the materials necessary to grind for the materials you need to stay alive on a planetary surface long enough to grind for the materials necessary to launch your ship. Survival games in general tend to have a bit of a grind by nature, but that game took it up to 11, to the point where not even VR could keep me engaged long enough to accomplish anything, which is really saying something. For me, the early game is the most important aspect of a survival game, because I tend to play them iron-man once I've learned the basics, but the early game in NMS was just too much of a grind for me to ever want to play again.
There are other games I've played outside the survival genre that could be a grind at times, but generally that grind is limited to getting past certain stages of the game, as opposed to the entire game itself.
I think there is others
Nonsense.
After spending three years trying to supervise our store's inventory/stocking team, and trying to get them to reach the minimum level of expected productivity, I have to agree. Half the new hires would quit because I actually expected them to do the job they're being paid to do, while many of those that lasted eventually got promoted to other, better paying positions.
I recently stepped down from that position, because of the stress of having to rebuild that team constantly, because the company recently added salaried management responsibilities to the position (if I had wanted those responsibilities, I would've gone into the management program long ago), and quite frankly I'd gotten tired having to get up at 3am and missing out the rest of my family's lives.
The funny thing is that I actually lasted a lot longer than most of my predecessors, as well as my successor. It's telling that it took him less than a week to come up to me and say, "Now I know why you stepped down."
E: D has the biggest grind of all the games I've played. Need to unlock a system or ship? Grind for it. Need rep? Grind for it. Need money? Grind for it. Want rank? Grind for it. Want engineer access? Grind for it. Etc. There are very few shortcuts you can take.
NMS frankly doesn't have the same grind (yes, the early game can be quite grindy as you lack resources), since once you have a reasonable sum of cash you can buy most things in bulk (and store it!) so you never have to mine anything ever again. The rest of the game isn't locked behind grind walls.
I remember playing Ultima Online back in the day, and that was ridiculously grindy too. How many chopped trees & failed bows make 5cp again?
NMS frankly doesn't have the same grind (yes, the early game can be quite grindy as you lack resources), since once you have a reasonable sum of cash you can buy most things in bulk (and store it!) so you never have to mine anything ever again. The rest of the game isn't locked behind grind walls.
I remember playing Ultima Online back in the day, and that was ridiculously grindy too. How many chopped trees & failed bows make 5cp again?