History Main / AntiGrinding

* The 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 points" 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. 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.

*** Dojos in Join Avenue also lets you just ''pay'' to have your Pokemon level up[[note]]You could do this before with the Daycares, but that required taking thousands of steps and could accidentally delete moves you can't replace[[/note]], although there is a limit to how much you can do this in a day and they can't learn level up moves this way (necessitating going to a move relearner).

** Also in ''DragonBallZ: Gokuu Gekitouden'' for GameBoy, you can level grind, and if you do you'll [[Curbstomp Battle 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]].

* ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight'' very quickly reduces weaker enemies to giving a mere one experience. Thankfully, it's not necessary to grind.

* VideoGame/SuperRobotWars uses a similar system to Fire Emblem.

** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'', the developers seem to have learned their lesson from ''Sacred Stones''. You can grind in skirmishes all you want on Normal mode, but on Hard or above the item that summons [[OurZombiesAreDifferent Risen]] actually costs gold to use... enough to ensure you ''always'' make a loss even with the RandomDrops you get from enemies. But [[HarderThanHard Lunatic Mode]] is especially cruel about this: not only are Streetpass teams rigged to give out almost no exp, but regular random skirmishes throw Lv 20 promoted enemies with maxed out stats at you when you aren't even a quarter of the way through the game!

* ''VideoGame/New Worlds Ateraan'' stops players from overdoing things via a 'borg' meter that gets higher with each kill. If you go into the red, your character is marked as a bloodthirsty killer and conflict roleplay might commence.

* ''{{Castlevania}}: {{Symphony of the Night}}'' very quickly reduces weaker enemies to giving a mere one experience. Thankfully, it's not necessary to grind.
** ''{{Castlevania}}: {{Order of Ecclesia}}'' actually downplays this a lot by making bosses and enemies still deal incredible amounts of damage despite having high levels. Those thinking they could still grind their way to defeating tougher enemies will be in for a surprise.

** In Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest, you can only level up to a certain point in various point on the map. For instance, you cannot advance past level one in the first area preceding the first mansion.

** ''Dragonfable'' instead prefers [[LevelScaling to level up many enemies to your level]]. Also, when [[PlayerVersusPlayer PVPing]], wins don't count unless you're no more than ten levels above your opponent. These features make grinding a lot less practical.

** ''zOMG!'' does this a bit differently. The items you need to level up [[RandomlyDrops randomly drop from fallen monsters]], and enemies that are weaker than you drop items less frequently, if at all.

* ''Anarchy Online'' takes the same route as Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines - you only ge experience for beating missions (though you do get items and such if you wish to beat up any enemies in a mission). However this resulted in a different sort of grinding due to the relatively simplistic nature of the randomly generated missions and the sorts of abilities one could get. Players would create characters that run very very fast and literally run through a mission (sometimes in as short a time as six seconds), grab the MacGuffin to complete the mission, and then repeated the process.

* LegendOfZork allows you to choose at which level you want to take a level at, but each level below you gives diminishing experience and currency. If you're playing at more than four levels below your own, you receive no experience whatsoever, and only a pittance of money. Which takes forever, but since you don't need to go anywhere to buy equipment and battles are determined by percentage values, it might be worth the month of grinding for 30 zorkmids.

* ''Videogame/Wizard101'' starts out with level grinding as a viable but slightly tedious since the player receives experience from a fight not based on how strong the enemies were but the number of pips used fighting the enemies. However it Quickly becomes impractical since the amount of experience required to level up without doing missions means doing hundreds of fights using up as many pips as possible.
* ''Videogame/Pirate101'' plays this straight fro the get go. Yeah you can try grinding for hours to level up, but it will be faster and easier to just do quest.
* ''PAYDAY 2'' discourages players from abusing level grinding on high difficulty levels by ''deducting'' EXP points from your gains at the end of the heist if you try to play on a heist whose difficulty level is above your recommended level.
* ''Divinity 2'''s introductory village, Farglow, features a training area where the player is allowed to fight low-level goblins as many times as he or she pleases. Obviously, this would have been easy to exploit for a slight head start in character progression. Unsurprisingly, though, the developers decided to program the training goblins so that each kill was only worth 1 experience point. Still, it was a great help to the players who inevitably decided to go nuts with their newly obtained mind reading ability, which incurs an experience debt for each use.

* ''Monster Girl Quest'' has scripted fights (Some can be skipped depending on your choices), so it's only ever possible to be as strong as you would be from fighting all available enemies. Thanks to a GoodBadBug in Chapter 2, though, it is possible to fight Yamata-no-Orochi over and over to level grind.

** ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' does away with combat XP altogether, replacing it with fixed rewards for story and side missions, at the rate of 1 per level and 4 per level, respectively.

** The Playstation 2 remake of ''VideoGame/{{Tales of Destiny}}'' surprises level grinders of the tape-the-analog-stick-to-the-right kind by greeting them with Barbatos, a [[HopelessBossFight near impossible]] BonusBoss [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aApNG5RB2s&mode=related&search= fight]]. It is possible to beat him in the BonusDungeon, but not on the overworld map where he appears to punish levelers. He even kicks off the battle by saying, roughly: "You bastards, what do you think you're doing dilly-dallying in this place? Try to run away like rats, but you will die by this axe!"

** The Reaper in ''{{Persona 3}}'' serves to punish those who do try to level grind too much. If the player '''does''' defeat him, though, the game opens up a bonus dungeon where you can grind all you want. He's most dangerous when the player is mid-level and well aware of the need to escape the dungeon, but unable to run from The Reaper or exit the battle (i.e., avoid certain death) -- the game takes away the "escape" option at whim, at which point all the player can do is hit "rush" and wait to die. The game's [=AI=] is rather finicky and seems to enjoy deploying The Reaper ''just'' after you've reached your goal, while the dungeon itself doesn't provide an exit on each floor. It's entirely possible to explore floors you need to explore, get hit with The Reaper, and die before you can advance to an access point and save the damn game. The best you can do is split your party, hope The Reaper goes for one of your party members, and ''run''. If you don't have party members with you: ''run even faster''. Since players are often required to advance 10 to 20 floors in one go in order to activate the next checkpoint, The Reaper will sometimes appear to punish you for doing what the game demands.[[hottip:*:If you avoid combat as much as possible while advancing to floors with a terminal, you have better odds of avoiding him -- your goal is a No Damage Run to the boss floor, then to return for combat experience... at which point The Reaper will be putting in regular appearances.]]

*** Dojos in Join Avenue also lets you just ''pay'' to have your Pokemon level up[[hottip:*:You could do this before with the Daycares, but that required taking thousands of steps and could accidentally delete moves you can't replace]], although there is a limit to how much you can do this in a day and they can't learn level up moves this way (necessitating going to a move relearner).

* SuperRobotWars uses a similiar system to Fire Emblem.

** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'', the developers seem to have learned their lesson from ''Sacred Stones''. You can grind in skirmishes all you want on Normal mode, but on Hard or above the item that summons [[OurZombiesAreDifferent Risen]] actually costs gold to use... enough to ensure you ''always'' make a loss even with the RandomDrops you get from enemies. But [[HarderThanHard Lunatic Mode]] is especially cruel about this: not only are Streetpass teams rigged to give out almost no exp, but regular random skirmishes throw Lv 20 promoted enemies with maxed out stats at you when you aren't even a quarter of the way through the game!!! Now that's what I call a ScareEmStraight approach to AntiGrinding!

** ''VideoGame/PaperMarioStickerStar'' got rid of the level-up system altogether. The only way to get more powerful stickers is to continue through the game and get them from stronger enemies, pull them off the environment of a new area, or buy them from newly-reached stores. Grinding against weaker enemies in earlier areas of the game simply results in you wasting your good stickers against monsters that were only a challenge when you had weaker stickers. The HeartContainer items even increase the damage you give when jumping on or hammering the PreExistingEncounters, to the point where earlier enemies can be {{One Hit Kill}}ed without ever having to go to the battle screen.

** ''VideoGame/PaperMarioStickerStar'' got rid of the level-up system altogether. The only way to get more powerful stickers is to continue through the game and beat stronger enemies, pull them off the environment of a new area, or buy them from newly-reached stores. Grinding against weaker enemies in earlier areas of the game simply results in you wasting your good stickers against monsters that were only a challenge when you had weaker stickers. The HeartContainer items even increase the damage you give when jumping on or hammering the PreExistingEncounters, to the point where earlier enemies can be {{One Hit Kill}}ed without ever having to go to the battle screen.

** ''VideoGame/PaperMarioStickerStar'' got rid of the level-up system altogether. The only way to get more powerful stickers is to continue through the game and either beat stronger enemies or buy them from newly-reached stores. Grinding against weaker enemies in earlier areas of the game simply results in you wasting your good stickers against monsters that were only a challenge when you had weaker stickers. The HeartContainer items even increase the damage you give when jumping on or hammering the PreExistingEncounters, to the point where earlier enemies can be {{One Hit Kill}}ed without ever having to go to the battle screen.

* In the first two ''VideoGame/PaperMario'' games, each time you level up, the number of Star Points you can get from enemies decreases by 1, so that eventually, you can't get any from the enemies you can currently face. (The second game does, however, give you a consolation point if the enemies don't give any.) Then, in the next area, new enemies appear, the enemies start giving Star Points again, and you can resume LevelGrinding.

** The .Hack games also do this, exactly the same way.

* Each of the original [[DotHack .hack//]] games had a level cap built in, mainly so that you don't start out way too strong on the [[OneGameForThePriceOfTwo next installment]]. The only game in which this was really noticeable was the first: Infection. Even once you've hit the level cap (around 30), the FinalBoss, Skeith, is [[ThatOneBoss enormously difficult]], and for once simply grinding past his strength level is not an option.

* In ''{{ADOM}}'' the higher the kill count for a particular monster race the tougher the members of that monster race become. In extreme instances this can lead to situations where a pack of jackals can kill a demon lord.

* In ''LegendOfDragoon'', random encounters give pathetic amounts of experience. Bosses, on the other hand, nearly guarantee a level up for every character in your party. There's no need to grind in the first place, but if you try, be prepared to spend a ''long'' time hunting enemies. On the other hand, the Addition system in combat is pretty fun, and using Additions over and over again levels them up. So the game is pretty well balanced, and when it's not, it's usually in your favor.

* ''{{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.