Grimrock

Well for me it was helpful to know that starvation will be not a problem anymore - at least if I can always return to this room ...

Sol_HSA wrote: Soo anyway, I'd like to ask - do you want the possibility to grind to make the rest of the game easier, or do you just enjoy playing zynga games?

Good question, I don't grind espcially myself as it gets boring, but I suspect people who do, don't do it because they want to make things easy per se, no I suspect they are munchkins who just like to be as powerful as they can for the sake of it.

I mean have you seen all those awesome skills, it so tempting to get several up as high as you can!

Daniel.

Sol_HSA wrote:I personally hate to grind. When I hit a position in a game where I have to grind to get onward, I hit the game with a cheat. I stopped playing paper mario because I couldn't advance, just because I had skipped a couple of enemies.

I'm with you on this, but with a slightly differently flavoured reason.

If you grind, you exceed the ability level that the following levels are designed to test. So if it was possible to stop at the end of level 2 and gain 5 levels by grinding before hitting level 3 then you'd find the game too easy, so you'd break the difficulty.

I think the perfect dungeon crawl *would* allow grinding, but there would be one essential resource that you would be entirely finite (food is ideal). The result of that would mean that you would want to preserve as much food as you could, so that you could either take your time with difficult parts and sleep lots, or stop and grind a level or two as a reward. While food is limited then it's fine.. it's like solving a puzzle and getting a powerful level.. you play efficiently and have a small surplus of food, which you can reward yourself with an extra bit of experience.

As for being as powerful as I can for the sake of it... I did do that in DM and I did enjoy it.. however I think that was because I had nothing else to do... I'd beaten the game with a normal party, with a normal party trying to skip combat, with a single character... etc.

This reminds me of the automated difficulty system in original Max Payne. The logic was simple: if you die a lot, the game becomes easier. Lots of people complained that the game was too easy or too hard. Why?

The people with low skill loaded a lot (and thus "never died") while the folk with high skill didn't bother with quicksaves (and thus "died a lot"). Oops.

So anyway, what I think you're driving at is that you could "buy" easier difficulty with grinding. If you can't get forward, grind for a while, try again. That sort of thing? The problem with that is that some of the better players will want to grind a lot and then complain that the game is too easy again.. =)

Exactly... and that's why the no grind works.

Where it doesn't work, though, is where people run into difficulty. Can you imagine a hypothetical dungeon where for example if you got as far as level 5 and the game is set to provide very little food in level 5,6,7. Now a talented player who was careful gets to level 5 with tons. A newer player gets to level 5 with very little...

The result is similar to your Max Payne example (never played it). The good player finds it easier than the newer player. At least though it's clear _why_ that is the case and the poor player has the option of repeating it, and they will do much better. I think that's where difficulty settings should come into play though, they sort that out.

In a way, the feeling of outsmarting the system - dungeon with a bit of grinding is good, it is a part of the playing activity, to think outside the box: but if it is too openly given by design as option, the fun kind of ends and it remains the tiresome task plus the eye tearing of staring at the screen moving too fast (professional grinding at best!)

I remember I felt like a king of the dungeon when I discovered that the kenku (avian/beary monsters from Eye of the Beholder I) were respawning in a nest room, when I don't even knew what respawning was, since EoB was my first dungeon crawler, and taking them one by one for a while, I gained a couple of levels of experience for my party.

But, now that I'm thinking about it, that was level 6 of the Waterdeep severs, built on a marble like stone like the one in Grimrock level 6, both levels of both games being built around a large thoroidal open space, both with your one big chance for grinding, you also find an orb of power object in both of them... Plus I believe you have to backtrack from the level below, in both games, to access an hidden area here.

Am I reading too much into it?

Anyway, I brought my front fighters both to level 13 of experience here, just because I had stashed a huge lot of unusable heavy armor for one of them and without it nobody, even the other fighter with lots of evasion, but no armor, could stand the fighter challenge.

So I trained a bit here. I'm just wondering if it is worthy now to keep on grinding to level 14 both of them before going down.
I don't plan to train the other two, a minotaur rogue and the insectoid mage, which are currently around level 11, as they are fine anyway as long as the two front guys stay alive.

People get so focused on the combat system. Only reason i wanted to play this game was for the puzzles and story. I just put the game on easy, picked a party that looked fun to play, and played. I didn't worry if I was making the elitest team ever or if we were high enough level or whatever. I just played to see the game.

The same mindset I take with me to other games, and i don't get bogged down doing the same thing over and over, that's madness.

I sometimes like to grind

Grinding is great, useful if a character falls behind, useful if you arn't quite up to notch in versing the next group of mobs, useful if you arn't in the mood for a puzzle and just want to level all your peeps up. I can't wait to grind on the level 6 floor mobs

Heh I know what you mean, sometimes it can be fun just to wander round battering the enemies!

Daniel.