Purging your life to hell due to excessive video game grinding!!!

[ShadowStar Mila]

Im sure everyone here knows about grinding in videgames, some people also call it "farming". Its pretty common for rpg's but theirs other games that may have something where this is also possible. It can be anything from staying in area to level up, attain certain skills,gettng a certain item or even trying to get money/gold. Grinding can either be fun or it can totally suck and end up with you in a crappy mood. This depnds on the mechanics of the game and what your grinding for as well. Some game's are perfect to grind on, they wont piss you off and its fairly easy to do. However anybody thats ever grinded before is sure to have a moment where their just pissed off.

I have a few pain in the ass storys, like the game im currently grinding on. The game doesnt have levels but you grind for stats/skills instead. their's no need to go into detail about how frustrated I am since I can simply say the game mechanics suck and can almost make you not wanna play.

The thing about me is that Im "CRAZY" when it comes to grinding/farming on any videogame that has something for me to do where its needed. What do I mean about being "crazy" when it comes to grinding. Its being obssessed with having strong characters early on, having lots of money, just anything "every chance you get". I always grind on my games early,mid game and after I beat the thing. In return I can say its worth it, having the game be much easier,happy that have lots of money and I know tons of skills or whatever and I barely just got into the game. Games that have "HP" values which is usually rpgs Im obssessed with. they start you off with crap for hp some even give you under a 100 hp. Ill grind my ass off until I hit that 1000+ and then aim for 3000+ and so forth, I love high hp on all my games "early" on. Yeah I can confirm Ill kill myself over low HPwhich is why I need to grind right away, sometimes Ill say screw the storyjust let me fight so I can train allready. I do call grinding "training" most of time if its just doing battles to level up. Theirs too many games ive played that ive grinded on and theirs not one that I havent done any form of grind on. A perfect example is FFX, ill use this game since this is site is dedicated to it. Anyone thats played would know the main character Tidus learns 4 overdrives by simply using one X amount of times. Well me being the crazy grinder that I am, the very beginnin of the game where the party has to head to the beach on Besaid Island to goto luca. I didnt go and instead started training for leveling up on the sphere grids,getting lots of spheres and learnt his 4th overdrive right from the gecko. All my games I do I like that, first chance I get I train. New area I visit that has any from of fighting and respawning Its time to train, I wont accept a weak part especially with crappy HP or skills. Grinding your life away sucks period, cause it can take you a whole week some times or a full weekend if you barely have time to play games. The thing thats absolute is you need to sped "time" when you grind, which means the better of half of your day is dedicated to seeing the exact same animation,victory screens,same quotes and same battles over and over and over again until you feel like your ready to take a few shots and pass out so you don have see it again. But overall it feels nice knowing when your done and seeing the results of your training when you continue the game is rewarding. I can say Ive proudly lost lots of sleep over grinding in videogames, hell even right now I planned to goto sleep an hour ago before writing this but Im multi-tasking cause im grinding right now.

I see that now Ive grinded my entire life straight to hell, but the game im currently playing ... is grinding my life even deeper into it. Sometimes I wish I wasn't obssesed with grinding to save myself the headache. But I can't change that its how I am but Im proud about it actually, I always have strong characters and you getthose moments when you know your stronger than that boss but its still hard, really lets you know when a developer did a good job with the enemys when that happens. I find it entertaining when a boss kicks my ass and I know I trained for a longer time than I wanted too. Makes it that more rewarding whhen I finally win. Being battle Crazy like me can make the game pretty easy but if your not dedicated cause you dont have time for the nonsense thats training or maybe you dont do for it along time and you like just moving the story along, can make your game pretty damm hard in my book.

So what Im asking, how many of you have grinded and farmed many precious hours of your life for something on a game? And when it comes to grinding are you crazy about it (like me) maybe you dont care about grinding period, or maybe you grind but only every now and again? And lastly what game did you hate having to grind on? Maybe some of you might have got an achievment that forced you to grind something and it pissed you off.

Im dedicatng my game to "The Last Remnant" and its crappy battle system that im grinding on, that pissed me off to the point where I can't shut the hell up about it and its the reason for me making this thread. I am so freaking done with this game when I beat it that im "NEVER" playing this crap again and especially skill/stat grinding thats for damm sure. Im sure when the other pissed off gamers who played this like myself also hopes the game gets sent straight to hell where it belongs

 

[Tyler Breeze]

..... ..... It's nice to know I'm not the only insane one here. I used to do this in the games until I said "fuck it" because I thought the exact same thing you said. I'm grinding my life away. I find grinding very irritating, but now that I realized I was wasting my value time doing that while I could have been doing something else, I just level up along with the story. I just couldn't take it anymore. I was unhappy more often than not. But now.... I barely ever stress over a video game.

 

[Twilight Sky]

I think it's kind of mean to have purple text on a dark background...

but yes I have and still do "no life" video games that have tradional leveling systems. I haven't changed my grinding routines in other of the older games either. I'm slightly more loose when it comes to this in MMOs though, because how much you enjoy grinding, depends on the people you're grinding with.

 

[Linnaete]

Well. I will freely admit that I have dedicated an astonishingly inflated number of hours on FFXIV just purely to grind out levels and other miscellaneous repetitive content to accrue various in-game currencies for whatever reason, but "purging [my] life to hell" is probably too dramatic a consequence.

I think other FFXIV players here are very aware of the pains I went through to marathon all 8 crafter classes concurrently to level 50 and beyond in the short space of maybe a month or so. Did I reap rewards that were at least equal to or more than the effort that went into levelling them up? Hell no. Do I regret doing it? To a small extent, but it felt good to be able to assist with crafting gear for friends, and to be able to swan around with the Builder of the Realm title for a short while, even if it had already become obsolete by late June.

Would I carry on with the omni-grind to 60? Despite how much I hated the trudge past level 50 and the apoplectic fury I would often be subjected to when a crucial finishing craft failed - thus wasting a lot of time and scarce materials - I would bloody well continue to do it if given the chance. I started the crafting grind with distant hopes of some profit to be gained from it all down the line and I may as well finish it, even to my own short-term psychological detriment.

 

[Galadín]

To say that I grind would be an understatement. To say that I excessively farm would also be a delicate way of putting it.

Yes, you are talking to the individual who leveled both Tir McDohl and Ted (Suikoden I) to LV. 35 before the game had even really started. Basically, I fired up the game, did the intro story line which consists of talking to the King, then main character's father, then the strange looking captain and then explored the city. When that was done, I went to Tir's house, walked in, Ted joins the party, then out I was on the battlefield level grinding both characters within the limited low level areas available. Did I previously leave the city to fight with Tir alone? Hell's yeah, just didn't get very far with the enemy parties with over 3 monsters. (-___-) For those not familiar to Suikoden I, leveling these guys up to 35 at this point, is like leveling Squall to LV. 70 in the Balamb Garden Training Centre. Yup, it's that fun. Can't recall why I did it to this day though, which is a bit weird.

And like Linnaete says, no need to mention FFXIV, just don't go there. Ever.

Ok, so the game I hated grinding the most is Final Fantasy X hands down. I get nauseated just thinking of the Sphere Grid system. . . it's still too painful to talk about really.

 

[The Welsh Paddy]

Back when I was like, twelve or thirteen, I would occasionally pull of an all-nighter just levelling up my characters in FFVII or IX. Mostly it would be on weekends when I'd be staying over at a friend's or vice versa and we'd both be playing the game together. That slowly dwindled as I progressed through secondary school though, and eventually grinding only ever became one of those things I did if I really needed to. I'd probably spend about an hour grinding, beat whatever boss I was stuck against, save it and then carry on the next day or the day after.

I don't regret those times I'd stay up all night with a couple of friends just hammering the shite out of monsters to make our team stronger. I still hold some of those memories quite dearly. But if I was ever to do anything like that nowadays, I'd be killing myself. I haven't played any game that involves grinding in a really long time (or traditional grinding, at least. I do still go on the occasional dungeon raid in Skyrim or Oblivion just to get tons of loot and gear to sell). It's the same reason I never play online games like WoW, or Guild Wars, or FFXIV. I just don't have the time to invest in it.

 

[GothicSyn]

Grinding used to frustrate the hell out of me, just an extra level or two so I could move, now it's part of so many games I play it becomes a matter of oh well what else can I grab while I do it. By combining a slightly annoying task with retrieving something makes it somehow seem less irritating to me.

And yea the amount of hours I've sunk into FF14 has pretty much eliminated any dislike of grinding for the pure fact the first time I went through and had to grind out poetics and soldiery so I could access the coil raids was absolutely nuts! I must have spent 100+ getting all that together and then got my ass kicked for a fortnight trying to get through T5.

So in conclusion yea used to bug me but nowadays I accept it as part of the game so I just move along.