History Main / AntiGrinding

Compare AntiHoarding, measures similarly designed to prevent the players from indefinitely hoarding up '''items''' they obtain. See also AbsurdlyLowLevelCap, which is when a game makes it possible to reach the level cap without excessive or even any grinding at all, and ExperiencePenalty. Contrast ScoreMilking, in which there are no measures in place to deter players from excessive scoring and experience gains.

** Reputation gains used to suffer from the same diminishing returns once you outleveled the mobs/quests you earned them from, but this had the effect of making certain older reputations difficult to the point of {{Permanently Missable|Content}} to acquire for high level players, and was reversed in a patch.

* Although magic in ''VideoGame/EverybodyEdits'' is [[RandomEvent randomly rewarded]] from coins collected, the magic system was deliberately designed to discourage players from farming for magic. The details of this are mostly secret, but it's generally understood that worlds with more coins have a lesser chance of magic.

* The original ''VideoGame/CrashBandicoot'' prevents easy 1UP grinding by making Crash Crates non-respawning. Returning to one after collecting the 1UP inside will see it replaced by a ? Crate that gives out a bunch of wumpa fruit.

** In ''Dragon Ball Z: Gokuu Gekitouden'' for UsefulNotes/GameBoy, you can level grind, and if you do you'll [[CurbstompBattle easily beat]] every enemy in the game. Even [[FinalBoss Frieza]]. However, if your characters are above a certain level when you beat Frieza you'll be locked out of [[MultipleEndings the true ending]].

* In ''War of the Dead'', an ActionRPG for the UsefulNotes/PCEngine, the player's EXP could overflow from 9999 to zero. This perverse mechanic was apparently intended to be a feature.

* The UsefulNotes/Nintendo3DS features a pedometer that rewards you with "steps" for taking it with you on walks (not to mention the ability to gain other peoples' Miis on [=StreetPass=]). You get "play coins" for walking enough (or just shaking the device up-and-down and side-to-side), which you can use in Mii games, but you can only get 10 a day, and can only store 300 at maximum. This was probably implemented so that people [[AntiPoopSocking wouldn't spend all of their days farming for points]], and possibly also suggesting that the owner of the system just take a nice, long easy walk, and not risk a wrist cramp.

** ''VideoGame/PokemonScarletAndViolet'' implement a similar system to ''Black and White'' where defeating Pokemon significantly weaker than you yields less EXP. However, it also includes rematchable trainers on an (albeit slow) cooldown so that you're not stuck using exclusively wild pokemon for grinding in the post-game eventually resulting in very slow progression. It also did an overhaul of the systems in ''Sword and Shield'' that made getting stupidly over leveled Pokemon incredibly easy. First, incorporates the overhaul to the mandatory EXP share that Legends: Arceus included where Pokemon that were not active participants in the battle receive half EXP, meaning that if you just use one Pokemon the whole game, the rest of your party is going to fall behind. Second, it heavily restricts the availability of EXP Candies, which similar to ''Sword and Shield'' can be obtained from Tera Raids. While they're useful in getting a weak Pokemon up to the same level of strength as the rest of your party, they quickly become not viable as your primary method of gaining EXP. Your Pokemon are going to be in the mid-60's at the end of the game, and by that point the strength of the EXP Candies you get from anything less than a 3-star Tera Raid aren't worth the time it would take to beat them. You'd get EXP faster just fighting wild Pokemon in the end game areas, especially if you prepare a Sandwich to boost the encounter rate of normal types and spawn in a whole bunch of Chanseys.

** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' implemented several improved methods to combat grinding. Taking a note from their ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' sister series, enemies within an area scale to whatever level you are when you first ''enter'' that area. Additionally, you now have to spend all your abilities (but not perks) at the one time, so you can only recharge health, stamina, and magicka [[LevelUpFillUp through leveling]] up once. Finally, it keeps the (rather justifiable) logic that leveling up non-combat skills still means facing stronger enemies who have scaled to your level.

* In ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' 3rd edition, the amount of XP you get from a given monster shrinks as you level up, and is cut off to nothing when you are more than eight levels above a monster's challenge level. [=DMs=] usually scale the monsters they use to the party's level anyway.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Atelier}}'' series tends to punish level grinding and encourage other ways of surpassing obstacles. The most obvious method is the [[TimedMission time limit]] in games prior to Shallie: spend too long killing monsters for experience, and you'll run out of time. Additionally, the bonuses from levelling up tend to be quite minor outside of sometimes learning new skills at specific levels, and experience gain is lowered against weak enemies. Most of the time, if you're having trouble, the solution lies not in increasing your levels, but in using the game's ItemCrafting system to make better bombs, healing items, and equipment, which have a much bigger impact that your level.

* In all Creator/PalladiumBooks games, three ranges of XP are assigned to Minor/Average/Major threats. The GM decides how to classif them relative to you. An enemy who was a major threat before can shrink to minor if you gain power or tactical advantage. If you severely outclass them they may not even be considered a minor threat and give no XP at all, or a collective group of enemies might qualify as a singular minor threat.
* In its third edition, ''TabletopGame/TheDarkEye'' awarded a large amount of experience for the first encounter with a creature and decreased it with every following one (as it is less of a new experience, one can learn from). Since the fourth edition, experience is only awarded for completed tasks and adventures to avoid grinding.

* In most tabletop [=RPGs=], the GM can decide to stop giving or severely restrict XP to high level characters who look to grind by going to places with lots of low level monsters that they can easily kill in one turn. Depending on the GM, he of course ALSO has the ability to replace the goblins and what not the [=PCs=] THINK they're about to go slaughter for easy XP with say, high level dragons...
** Another variation is once [=PCs=] reach a certain level, most of their XP will be from completing quests/storylines as a whole, with maybe only specific enemy XP given out for the higher level baddies they defeat.

* ''VideoGame/WorkshopInTheIronwoodGrove'': After level 10, the last level that seems to give skills, the other levels serve to only give stats, and at level 12, it takes more than 500 ExperiencePoints to reach the next level, where the final enemies only give 50 to 60 EXP per battle. The typical cap would be level 99, a long, long way away.

* ''Xenoblade Chronicles'' series

* In most {{Roguelike}}s, there are a finite number of levels, and each level is only stocked with monsters and items when it's first generated. While there are RandomEncounters, they happen infrequently enough that the [[WizardNeedsFoodBadly scarcity of food]] forces the player to move forward.

* ''{{VideoGame/NetHack}}'' uses a combination of RubberbandAI and unfeasible numbers of experience points being required at the top end (each level from 21 to [[{{Cap}} 30]] requires another ''ten million'' XP), although there are instant UpgradeArtifact[=s=] available.

* ''VideoGame/{{Robopon}} 2'' does this in an interesting (and infuriating) way. Your robots can evolve, but when they do, their level drops by half, so you have to build them up again. No matter what their evolutionary stage, they eventually reach a stat cap, which means that even though their level increases, their stats won't.

* In ''VideoGame/BarkleyShutUpAndJamGaiden'', enemies don't respawn and due to the slow rate of gaining levels and the game's relatively short length, you'll probably be coasting around the final boss at about level 15. To circumvent this, your characters obtain all their skills early or through story events and battles are based more on skill then stats.

* ''Oceanhorn'' discourages grinding by having monster hunting not be a practical way of getting experience in the first place. The amount of experience needed to gain a level ranges from a couple hundred XP to just under 2,000, and there are exactly two kind of non-boss enemies that give more than 5 XP per kill. The primary source of experience in the game comes from achievements, which can only be done once each per playthrough (Though three achievements do involve grinding kills of a certain monster type). In addition to this, gaining levels never grants increases in health, defensive power, or offensive power, which removes the normal reasons why a player would want to grind for levels.