Though grinding is used to provide a "level playing field", this effect could be achieved with any time-consuming behavior that is accessible to all and provides game advancement; The behavior need not be tedious or repetitive, as the term grinding generally implies. For example, in a game where advancement is gained by killing monsters, the game could provide such a huge variety of monsters and environments that no two kills are ever the same. As long as all players remained equally capable of killing the monsters, the same leveling-off effect would be generated. Thus, the "level playing field" effect is considered by some to be a misleading attempt to hide the real reason for grinding: unwillingness to budget sufficient content resources to produce a varied game.

To solve the grinding issue, E McNeill proposes that "the most effective path to victory should also be the most fun".[8] For example, challenging tasks should give better rewards than easy tasks.

Another alternative to grinding is to remove designer-defined objectives, leaving players free to do whatever they want. This creates a new problem where many players might be confused about what they are supposed to do, or they might lack the motivation to do much of anything in the virtual world.[6]

Players of subscription-based online games often criticize grinds as a heavy-handed attempt to gain profit. The most interesting and challenging gameplay is often only available to characters at the highest levels, who are those strong enough to participate in raids or player versus player combat.[citation needed] Grinding is seen as a reason to increase the amount of time it takes to reach these levels, forcing the player to pay more subscription fees along the way.

The IGDA Online Games Special Interest Group has noted that level treadmills are part of the addictive quality of MMORPGs that caters to those who play more than 25 hours a week.[9] Another criticism of the entire leveling concept and level playing field approach is that it often allows the player to avoid difficult strategic or reflexive challenges that one might encounter when fighting a powerful opponent challenges. By spending a large amount of time battling weaker or easily defeated characters (a practice known as bottomfeeding), players can gain levels so as to have little difficulty vanquishing the more difficult enemy.[10] In contrast, enthusiasts of the genre have objected to the term grind as an oversimplification of MMO gameplay. They argue that, like traditional role-playing games, there is no goal in MMORPGs other than to enjoy the experience. However, some would argue that in traditional RPGs, players play to act out their character as well; in fact, some players deliberately create weak characters because they find them interesting to play.[citation needed]

It has also been observed[by whom?] that intense grinding can actively damage the role-playing aspect of a game by making nonsense of the simulated world. A classic example of this occurred in Star Wars Galaxies, where skills were improved by using them. It was therefore possible to see groups of three people, in which: one person was repeatedly deliberately falling over, taking a small amount of damage each time; another person was healing the first, increasing one's healing skill, and taking "stress" damage oneself; a third person was dancing for the other, relieving their "stress" damage and increasing their dancing skill. Star Wars Galaxies later revised the skill system with a sweeping overhaul called the New Game Experience (NGE). A number of players left the game afterwards, claiming that NGE made the game simplistic.[/QUOTE


Exploiting: the use of a game mechanic in such a way as that it causes an unintentional effect which is usually beneficial to the player but sometimes not and hence by extenstion the use of such game mechanics to cheat.

Hacking: breaking into software, or otherwise changing code either for nefarious purposes, or in online gaming usually for the purpose of cheating in whatever form that might be, such as having infinite health or creating invincible characters/methods of leveling up etc.

Thanks for reading if indeed you made it this far.

I would ask a question but since the trolls seem to be very very angry today, I will refrain from winding them up by simply writing in a laanguage that infuriates them for some bizarre reason. ie English.