Is LevelGrinding actually a trope?

Is Level Grinding actually a trope?

It just seems like "The ability to do something to gain Experience Points", done ad nauseum. It seems basically omnipresent in RPGs. But, I would say Anti-Grinding would be a trope, as it shows the creators thought about how to counter Level Grinding...

edited 9th Apr '18 8:16:41 PM by Malady

Its a supertrope to a lot of more specific level grinding tropes like Forced Level-Grinding and a few others.

Honestly I could see YKTTWing all the rest of the tropes and leave this an exampleless index.

Stuff like

• Long Levels: Takes a very long time to level.
• Min Max Level Grinding, Requires very specific ways to maximize grinding such as leveling your character down then back up to make them stronger.
• Multiple Level Mechanics: you got levels, weapon levels, item levels, and such all stacked on top of each other and require different forms of grinding to level up.
• No Leaked Experience so you must grind characters to keep up with the others, usually forces people to pick a 'main team' and metas built around it.
• Level Catch Up: some mechanic that allows others to catch up to the Hero in levels thus encouraging Level Grinding to get them higher.

edited 9th Apr '18 9:57:33 PM by Memers

Technically Level Grinding is a player behaviour. It's not strictly a trope by itself, but it's deeply connected to several game design tropes. I'm not quite sure about many of the non-game examples.

No Leaked Experience isn't a trope. It's a lack of a mechanic, but not a trope in itself.

It might be a lack of a mechanic but the fact that the game forces you to level grind, play gimped, or forced to use specific party members cause of the level grinding required is a trope.

edited 9th Apr '18 10:12:38 PM by Memers

Player behavior is still a trope, as in many cases that is what is intended by the game developers. You don't play World of Warcraft casually and expect to travel through the campaign in a linear fashion. It's essentially the gameplay equivalent of filler. It's similar to Lethal Joke Character, as player behavior has an impact on how the game is played.

I agree that it is a trope, likely an YMMV trope since it entirely depends on how you play.

But I don’t think it needs examples like it currently has, all the examples on the page are describing various subtropes of it and those can be defined as objective.

Player behaviour and intended player behaviour are not the same thing. One's what the player does, and the other is what the creator intends the player to do.

In this particular case, Level Grinding can only occur within the confides of particular game mechanics (ones that involve upgrading skills/weapons via points acquired in non-linear gameplay). It is functionally impossible for the trope to happen if that mechanic is not offered to the player. Individual examples may reflect unexpected glitches or bugs in the game, but in general player behavior that is unintentional would have to come from Script Breaking or mods.

Intended player behaviour is not all behaviour possible without glitches or bugs. Level Grinding can occur within any game that has levels and more experience (or whatever you need to gain levels) sources than you're expected to use in a single playthrough, which include any respawning sources.

Intended player behaviour is what the developers want the players to do, regardless of what's possible. Some games intend the players to do whatever is possible, but others do not. Developers often talk about curbing player behaviour they do not think is conducive to interesting gameplay. If something is discouraged, but possible, it's not intended player behaviour.

edited 11th Apr '18 11:58:07 PM by AnotherDuck

The examples don’t cover that at all, they are all over the map of the tropes I listed in my previous post.

Long Levels are pretty much the only one that is not on the example list that much. But I can think of plenty where there isn’t a smooth leveling curve (not counting games that have a smooth leveling curve for the main game but high level cap for bonus bosses). such as Vanilla Wow where it’s later game being incomplete required you to pretty much just had kill things to get from 52 to 58ish.

edited 11th Apr '18 6:00:01 AM by Memers

Friendly reminder here that if you are talking about significantly changing the definition and/or examples of the trope, it should go to Trope Repair Shop.

I didn't say ALL player behavior but was talking about within the context of the trope. If the game includes Level Grinding as a feature that means they intend for gamers to level grind, and may even include some Anti-Grinding features to balance it out. Just because players may do something outside the exact intentions of the developer, like level grind for 10 hours rather than 2, does not mean it is invalidated as a trope. That's why I'm affirming that Level Grinding is a gameplay feature (often mandatory to even beat the game) and not merely player behavior.

Level Grinding is not a feature. Levels for characters and/or equipment is a feature. Respawning enemies is a feature. An Anti-Grinding mechanic is a feature. The method of gaining levels through repetitive gameplay is a player behaviour.

As a side note, there are actually rather few games where Level Grinding is actually mandatory to beat the game. It's a little more common to be mandatory for post-game content like extra bosses and challenges, but even then proper skill or knowledge may suffice. Also commonly the way you're supposed to play online games, but those don't tend to be beatable as such (much like open-ended sandbox games).

Level Grinding is a feature of some games, most notably being Disgaea and Makai Kingdom. With their 9999 level cap (the final boss's default level is usually around 70) and reincarnation system letting you relevel to 9999 as much as you want getting stronger every time, weapons that level, weapon usage levels, and the ability to scale enemy's levels in and out of the story and even more.

Grinding from doing 1 damage to the 184.5 Quadrillion single hit cap in Disgaea 4 is a huge feature of the game.

Also several games I can think of that require levels to progress, MM Os in general have quests, dungeons, raids and game features start once you reach a certain level instead of progressing linearly in a story. Some single player RP Gs do do this as well.

The most common one I think is the Paragon System infinite forms of 'leveling', Daily Quests and Reputation Systems but there are plenty of other things that are locked behind levels.

edited 12th Apr '18 3:27:45 AM by Memers

Level Grinding in Disgaea is an intended player behaviour.

Level requirements (such as Level-Locked Loot) are tropes. Absurdly High Level Cap is a trope. How you get there is a player behaviour. How you're intended to get there is an intended player behaviour.

Not all games have level grinding as an option. Not all games with a leveling system have level grinding as an option (due to a highly linear story with precisely allocated points for each action). Since level grinding is only possible with a precise series of gameplay elements that makes it a gameplay feature. Whether or not it is required to beat the game is irrelevant, as it's actually considered good game design to not mandate 100% Completion (while 100% Completion is typically only possible due to Level Grinding).

There's an example from Xenosaga that seems to be misuse and belongs to Peninsula Of Powerleveling instead.

What KJ said is correct. Level Grinding is a design mechanic of games. It's either present or it is not. Whether it is expected or required is a different matter.

The question isn't whether Level Grinding is present or not. It's whether it's possible or not. It doesn't exist in a game without a player. It doesn't exist if a player chooses not to level grind. It's an action by the player. Not a mechanic. The ability to level up is a mechanic.

You only need respawning or sufficiently plentiful resources along with a level system to make Level Grinding an option. Calling it "a precise series of gameplay elements" is vastly overstating it.

Level Grinding is the acquisition of experience/resources in the course of playing a game, which are used to increase the abilities of the player. If the mechanics of a game allow level grinding at all, then the very act of playing the game IS level grinding. Those mechanics don't start and stop based on what the player intentions are, you generally can't choose to not get that bonus upon reaching a certain level or getting experience points from defeating an enemy.

No, it is not. You're talking about plain leveling. The very act of playing the game is absolutely not Level Grinding. It's very explicitly about repeating the same action for the sake of gaining levels. Just playing the game is not repeating the same action, since you're always moving forward in the game. The description mentions that it's considered rude to level grind and then complain a boss is easy, which means it's not something that just happens over the course of normal gameplay. You have to actively take a break from the story to go and grind levels.

I understand what you are saying, but "leveling up" is a lot broader than that. Candy Crush has a level system, that doesn't mean your avatar is more powerful.

A Level Grind is more than just repeating the same action, it is doing anything non-essential to the completion of the game that gives you resources/experience. You start one sidequest, find one hidden room, open one loot chest, finish off the last mook before moving on or even accomplish a decent skillshot (which gives more rewards than a generic kill) and you are technically grinding. Good game design usually introduces these things to you so that you can best play the game, and the leveling system is designed with that in mind. A Speed Run shows that it is often more difficult to avoid these non-essential elements.

No, singular actions are not grinding. Doing things once does not correlate with "over and over", which the description defines it by. Doing sidequests is not Level Grinding, unless you're doing repeatable sidequests over and over.

"Non-essential" is meaningless here. It's usually practically impossible to do nothing non-essential towards completing a game when you play it, since you can always do less than what you did, unless you play a perfect low-percent pacifist (as far as the game allows) run.

For instance, calling completing any quest in Fallout Level Grinding because it's not essential to completing the game is meaningless. You're not Level Grinding the moment you don't choose the exact right path for completing the game with as few quests as possible. You skip a lot of the main storyline like that. Skipping content is not necessary to avoid Level Grinding.

If you want to pick something like Candy Crush (I know very little about it) as an example, you'd level up if you played some stages in some storyline, level pack, or something like that (assuming it doesn't fall into the above), it wouldn't be Level Grinding. If you played the same stage over and over again for the purpose of gaining levels, you'd be Level Grinding. Getting more powerful is irrelevant. Getting levels, in whatever way that's defined by the game, is relevant.

At the end of it, it's still what you do. It's not what's in the game.

I'm of the opinion this isn't a trope outside of In-Universe parodies. The act of grinding is purely a player action disconnected from the game itself.

Plus I don't know how the fuck you'd write good examples for this anyway if it's not being lampshaded or lampooned.

Mechanicisms to allow for easy grinding or the game making you grind are definitely tropes, though.

The existence of something like a sidequest or boxes to open serve no purpose other than extending the game and offering you a chance to level up outside of the main gameplay, it is no different than the traditional "wandering around attacking respawning animals" form of level grinding. Both are generally intentional on the part of the game design, otherwise Absurdly High Level Cap wouldn't exist. A lot of sidequests are exactly what you are arguing, do the same thing ten times to get a reward. Even if not enforced, game developers want you to keep playing the game and it is certainly encouraged (barring the hacking or exploiting glitches type of grinding).

Beyond that, this is mostly just a chicken or the egg type of argument. The trope is only possible due to game mechanics but can only be documented due to player behavior. I think we are at least in agreement it IS a trope and not ymmv as suggested earlier.