History Main / AntiGrinding

* ''Monster Girl Quest'' averts grinding entirely due to having a finite amount of battles, some of which are skippable based 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 bug in Chapter 2, though, it is possible to fight Yamata-no-Orochi over and over to level grind.

** The Directors Cut version of the Playstation 2 remake of ''VideoGame/{{Tales of Destiny}}'' surprises level grinders of the tape-the-analog-stick-to-the-right-and-set-all-characters-to-auto kind by greeting them with Barbatos, a BonusBoss [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aApNG5RB2s&mode=related&search= fight]] which is [[HopelessBossFight literally impossible to beat by normal means]]. It is possible to beat him in the BonusDungeon, but not on the overworld map where he appears to punish auto-levelers. He even kicks the battle off by [[WhatTheHellPlayer calling out the player for taking the cheap way out]].

* The MMO{{RPG Mechanics Verse}} that is ''LightNovel/IsItWrongToTryToPickUpGirlsInADungeon'' seems to use this to avoid "Level inflation." While StatGrinding is allowed and only limited to diminishing returns and a cap of 999 stat points, levelling up requires a "heroic feat." While defeating level bosses counts, level bosses are ''also'' RandomEncounters... and they spawn ''once every 14 in-universe days''. More than half of the adventurers in the universe never had a level-up as a result.

** The first game takes this a step further, but only once, and actually limits the number of enemies you can possibly fight in the first dungeon; once all your characters reach a certain level, they just stop appearing. Since KO'd characters get no XP, knocking out Jenna (who gets [[DistressedDamsel kidnapped]] after this dungeon) allows Isaac and Garet (who remain playable) to grind as long as they like.

[[folder:Light Novels]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* ''Literature/ChrysalisRinoZ'': The System permits some amount of LevelGrinding, but restricts the benefits in a number of ways, forcing individuals to descend into the deeper levels of the Dungeon, and face stronger monsters, if they want to progress. For example, levels and mutations and core strength are all [[{{Cap}} capped]] by evolutionary level -- but evolving increases a creature's mana requirements, and imposes a penalty for experience and biomass points gained from less-evolved monsters. So, a monster that wants to stay in the first stratum will find it increasingly difficult to gain any experience, and will eventually hit a hard limit, where it can't grow without evolving, and can't evolve without descending. Anthony does eventually find ways to reduce the biomass penalty for eating weaker monsters, but not eliminate it.
[[/folder]]

** Traded Pokémon are a variant of this. Traded Mons above a certain level won't obey you unless you have enough badges, which is explained by the idea that since you aren't its original owner, it has little reason to respect you until you prove you're actually a capable trainer. As such, it will do whatever it wants in battle, this usually being to ignore you and just laze about, making it difficult to level them up at all. Of course, this isn't meant to restrict level-grinding per se, so much as it is to prevent you from quickly beating the game with a friend's Level 100 Legendary Pokémon. There's nothing stopping you from catching a random Mon and grinding it to ridiculous levels without worry. So long as you got it at a low-level that is, as ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield'' and ''VideoGame/PokemonLegendsArceus'' would extend the disobeying mechanic to wild Pokémon that are caught at high levels as well.

* ''VideoGame/TheLastRemnant'' has the infamous Battle Rank. This is one level up system which is explicitly bad. The higher the rank gets, the harder the enemies are. So as you fight, your enemies get experience instead of you! The key in the Xbox version is to upgrade your equipment, keep monster fighting to a minimum and go for the strongest possible monsters available during grinding. Most importantly, upgrade your equipment if at all possible. Grinding is a last resort and can only be carried so far before enemies start outpacing you.

* In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfDragoon'', 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.
** Not only that, but the game also had two very good armor pieces, the Legend Casque and the Armor of Legend, both of which gave a significant boost to a character's defense and [[Main/OneSizeFitsAll could be used by every party member]], unlike every other piece of equipment, which was tied to a single character, or [[Main/GenderRestrictedGear only usable by male/female characters]]. Both armor pieces had only one problem: they cost 10000 gold each, in a game where most equipment usually costs around 150 gold to 800 gold. Needless to say, money grinding is virtually impossible, as most random battles fetch you less than 100 gold.

** ''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 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.

* In ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'' the amount of experience needed to reach the next character level increases on a linear scale, making grinding fairly quick and easy compared to most [=RPGs=]; however, all this does is increase your HP. To increase your stats, you have to give your characters food and digest it by fighting battles, and they can only eat so many large items every ''real-world'' day.

** Gaining HP is easy, and the original Famicom version has an HP cap of 65535. However, some attacks have the property of draining 1/16 of maximum HP per hit regardless of defense, and in the final dungeon there are enemies with eight-hit attacks that have that property. If you equipped enough heavy armor to lower your evasion rate to 0%, you will lose over half your HP with each attack, and if you ground up your HP no healing will keep up with the damage. This combined with the maximum number of hits a character can dodge only increasing when targeted by an enemy results in an ugly Main/DifficultySpike when players who ground stats by attacking their own party reach the final dungeon.

The most common forms of this are escalating "experience to next level" values, where the higher your level goes, the more excessive the amount of experience you need to level up, and adjusted experience gains, where the amount of experience you earn for defeating an enemy is relative to your current level -- a level 50 party curb-stomping some level 4 enemies would get a whopping 1 experience point for their trouble. Another option is to [[LevelScaling make enemies gain levels along with the player]], so grinding an extra ten levels leaves you with enemies ten levels tougher, too. If the enemy also learns new attacks and powers as they level up, this could backfire on the player, making those {{Giant Spider}}s extra [[DemonicSpiders demonic]]. A few games (but not MMORPG ones) [[TimedMission add a time limit]] to discourage excessive grinding so a player must go to next area / complete objectives within a certain amount of time. A few others keep the requirements to the next level static but ''decrease'' your rewards for winning battles against weaker enemies, with the most extreme cases denying you any progress at all if they're too weak. A common way to keep players from excessively grinding for money/resources as opposed to experience is to restrict what is available to buy/do with them until the story has progressed further, making gathering more than can be used at the current point in time pointless. Unfortunately, when these systems are balanced poorly, they can make grinding slower without actually making it less useful or important, thus causing players to [[GoneHorriblyWrong spend more time grinding]] to get the same reward.

* Despite having no traditional levels to speak of,

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' manages this by putting arbitrary ceilings on the Crystarium, its character advancement system. No matter how many Crystarium Points you earn, you'll only be able to move to specific points on the chart. Where you can move on this chart is dependent on your point in the story, so it's necessary to advance the plot to advance your character.

''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'' has a minor example. In order to obtain [[InfinityPlusOneSword Excalibur II]], you have to reach a certain room near the end of the game's [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Final Dungeon]] within [[TimedMission 12 hours]] from the start of the game--a game that covers 4 disks!
''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' manages this by putting arbitrary ceilings on the Crystarium, its character advancement system. No matter how many Crystarium Points you earn, you'll only be able to move to specific points on the chart. Where you can move on this chart is dependent on your point in the story, so it's necessary to advance the plot to advance your character.

* Despite having no traditional levels to speak of, ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' manages this by putting arbitrary ceilings on the Crystarium, its character advancement system. No matter how many Crystarium Points you earn, you'll only be able to move to specific points on the chart. Where you can move on this chart is dependent on your point in the story, so it's necessary to advance the plot to advance your character.

* ''[[VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines]]'' had an ingenious system wherein the player got experience points solely for completing quests, ''not'' for defeating enemies. It elegantly provided incentive to seek out sidequests, and made stealth-runs and verbal conflict resolution perfectly effective ([[StupidityIsTheOnlyOption except]] [[ViolenceIsTheOnlyOption for the]] ScrappyLevel.) There are even cases where killing enemies will give you ''less'' experience than charming or sneaking your way through, most notably the Elizabeth Dane mission, where killing a guard will not only lower the XP you get, but piss of [=LaCroix=] and seriously hamper your ability to get the Downtown haven.
** Said system is a more or less faithful adaptation of the [[TabletopRPG Storyteller System]] of the TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness, which was ''built'' around this trope and awarded character points for moving the story along rather than just killing things. That said, ''Bloodlines'' does dish out character points at a rate that no GameMaster would ever allow IRL.

*** [[SkillTree Blade affinity charts]] have a ton of requirements to power up their skills and special attacks, usually of the MassMonsterSlaughterSidequest variety. For any blades that you can send on merc missions (and most of them can be), most of these requirements will be filled in on said merc missions, even if there's no logical connection between the mission and the requirement. Since merc missions happen in the background, all you need to do is remove the blade from your party from a while, send them on missions, and they'll come back stronger.

* ''VideoGame/DarkMessiah'' makes grinding completely impossible: XP is awarded only for advancing in the story.

** It has the odd side effect where if you take a low level character into the [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon final dungeon]] and kill something, their level could slingshot past everybody who [[HardWorkHardlyWorks fought their way there]]. Taken to [[UpToEleven the extreme]] in that the least ground characters are the only ones who can reach max level.

* The ''[[Franchise/ShiningSeries Shining Force]]'' games also decrease the experience you can get from enemies as you go up in level, so that if you're intent enough on LevelGrinding, they will eventually start not giving any experience. Healers are easier to grind, as the experience from healing only depends on whether the spell/item actually did any healing, and a successful heal spell or healing item will always give a healer at least 10 experience (out of the 100 needed for each level up).

The most common forms of this are escalating "experience to next level" values, where the higher your level goes, the more excessive the amount of experience you need to level up, and adjusted experience gains, where the amount of experience you earn for defeating an enemy is relative to your current level -- a level 50 party curb-stomping some level 4 enemies would get a whopping 1 experience point for their trouble. Another option is to [[LevelScaling make enemies gain levels along with the player]], so grinding an extra ten levels leaves you with enemies ten levels tougher, too. If the enemy also learns new attacks and powers as they level up, this could backfire on the player, making those {{Giant Spider}}s extra [[DemonicSpiders demonic]]. A few games (but not MMORPG ones) [[TimedMission add a time limit]] to discourage excessive grinding so a player must go to next area / complete objectives within a certain amount of time. A common way to keep players from excessively grinding for money/resources as opposed to experience is to restrict what is available to buy/do with them until the story has progressed further, making gathering more than can be used at the current point in time pointless. Unfortunately, when these systems are balanced poorly, they can make grinding slower without actually making it less useful or important, thus causing players to [[GoneHorriblyWrong spend more time grinding]] to get the same reward.