Disagree. Progress is good. It’s grinding when it becomes too much. A little salt on my chips is good, too much is inedible.
Doesn’t experience points based progress imply grinding?
There are more ways to have progression and I agree that exp points is a lazy (or pay2win) solution.
Really depends. Exp points range from a mere UI feature for skill progress (you’ve picked a lock you’re this much closer to getting better at picking locks), over fungible skill progress (you’ve picked 100 locks so you get stronger and can spend a skill point on archery), to pay2win madness.
Structurally exp points come into play each time any progression in a game is not immediate – “defeat the guardian at the gate, now you can go through the gate” has a 1:1 relationship between things-you-do to more-access-to-things, if you have to collect ten fox skins to gift to the guardian to let you through that’s a 10:1 relationship. Doesn’t sound like exp but in the raw game mechanics those things are isomorphic.
…to bring that later point a bit into perspective: Imagine a card game where you have five stacks of ten cards. You draw cards from the first stack (not just the top card) until you get a certain card that’s guaranteed to be in there (say the ace of spades), once you have it you can continue to draw from that stack, or move on to the second stack. Once you’ve drawn the special card from the last stack the game is presumed over though you’re free to both draw from any stack that still has cards on it, as well as sit around on the table doing nothing.
Doesn’t sound like a game? Uninteresting? It depends: It’s the mechanics of your usual walking simulator and they can tell very good stories. It’s progression by (semi-)random n:1 actions. If the environmental storytelling is good, if the setting is engaging, if the mystery is enticing, then time will pass like nothing. If you’re doing it with actual cards yes it’s pure grind.
tl;dr: It’s (modulo pay2win bullshit) not about the raw game mechanics, but how they’re dressed up, that make things grindy or not.
There are lots of other ways for progression instead of inflicting more damage because of some numbers.
I think of:
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Just getting better at jumping/slashing/tactics
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Having limited gear that you have to switch out or improve throughout the story
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Gaining new abilities or allies
And just that if you keep “improving” and inflicting more damage and have higher defense, at the same time the opponents become stronger, it would have been the exact same difficulty level if the numbers just stayed the same.
It implies a reward for work, which is a basic model all games use for basically everything you do.
How is it pay 2 win if you’re not paying anything?
[edit] Okay, you said “or” xD Yeah, I’m sure Call of Duty would sell it to you.
If you cannot complete a task cause you aren’t strong enough, you have to either grind for exp or get better gear by collecting pointless objects and doing the list based crafting.
These things have nothing to do with any story progression and just suck up time and that’s the point of the meme. You can perfectly design a game that uses less lazy ways of giving players a rewarding feeling that don’t hold off the story line or take loads of time.
There is nothing wrong with gamers that want to have this, it’s that every game that goes this route is not for a lot of casual games so it’s not nice that almost every rpg goes this route.
Why I’m dragging pay to win into this, I don’t know. Frustration with current generation games probably 😆 Also that they want you to spend lots of time in the game so you would spend more money in it, while I want to just play 1-2 hours and have a nice experience and story.
