Game Design 101: The difference between Grinding and Leveling

Leveling refers to playing through level-appropriate content to help your character grow in power to be able to progress to more difficult content. It is common for games to require a bit of repetitive action to level up characters by making certain milestones increase difficulty such that characters cannot progress freely because it is simply too challenging. A poor balance of this factor leads to the game being "too easy" and losing the benefit of novelty if the level progress is too quick, or "too hard/boring" if the level progress is too slow. If there is insufficient game content to keep the game challenging between milestones, Leveling can become Grinding.

Grinding refers to creating an artificial need for currency (or experience) that involves gameplay that is not challenging but highly repetitive and absolutely necessary to unlock game content. Grinding encourages addictive type behavior, which is the cornerstone of the new Free2Play gaming movement since it allows game developers to create in-app purchases as an alternative and a way to allow players to experience faster novelty in a self-feeding loop.

Examples of games that feature grinding in a Free2Play setting in a way that encourages bad habits and addictiveness: Star Trek Online, Injustice Mobile, most popular puzzle games for mobile.

Examples of games that offer Free2Play with a revenue model that does not encourage addictiveness: DCUO

How are they different?
In the first set of examples, in-app purchases buy specific items which can then be used to play games of random chance that have a small chance of returning the desired item (ie lockboxes, booster packs for special cards).

In the second example, real money is used to pay for a time where these restrictions are removed and can be used as many times as desired, although other methods are used to throttle back the gameplay (ie making certain content available once a day/week). Players still have to build their levels which are the core of the gameplay in the same manner.

In simpler terms, "Sell a man a virtual fish, he'll play for a day, sell a man a license to use a virtual fishing pond for a week and he'll fish every day for a week."

How to keep a feeling of challenge and excitement?

What to get for the person who has everything? A little something to combat the ennui?

How to create a campaign that gives a good level of difficulty plus a good quality reward...

Challenges are good, but bad for long-term play since they aren't really useful unless you have a broad selection of fully leveled up cards. And even still, you can only play through to get Elite II if you manage to complete the Nightmare mode. This is not very good for new players, who might be able to complete the normal mode the first time they encounter a challenge, will probably have to pay to complete expert mode on the second challenge and probably won't be able to even consider completing a nightmare mode challenge for a few months. Even if you can, you'll still be unable to use your new rare card for much of anything since it will only be Elite II or maybe III.

Which will put the player back to needing to rely on cash and the cycle of grinding that is to be avoided.

Even with the hack enabled, it can still be quite difficult to push through a challenge because you need to build up those levels.

2.0, anti-hacking and why you might want to just hold off on that epic update.

But isn't cheating lame?

Stuff about the hack and why it is good for the game makers, good for the players and recommendation that people who wish to support the game actually go out and buy the game for the console, NOT in app purchases.

We do not want to encourage this kind of pay2play mentality. etc...

Taking away the challenge? How to get it back...

Welcome Post

Welcome to the Dreams Factory Blog. This is a little something to test out templates and themes and get a few things working. This is the first post.

Recent posts indicate 32-58 million credits to get Elite V for the rarest cards with 100k gold packs. With Elite VII now available, expect to spend as much as 100 million credits to get maxxed. Playing for an average of 1000 gold per battle for approximately 1 hour per day would take THIRTEEN AND A HALF YEARS to gain 100 million. Or you could spend $6700 USD to get that much game cash.

Aren't you glad some people want you to just have fun?

We feel that Injustice is a fun game on mobile, but we disagree sharply with the concept of pay2play - especially when the game content is so strongly geared towards grinding.

As a result, we have decided to try to make the game available to those who don't have the time, energy or inclination to while away their life playing a casual game on their phones. It's a nice game, but it's $100 USD for 1.5mil in game cash. Things in the store cost hundreds of thousands of game cash to purchase just once.

Not actually as much fun
as you might think...

In a single playthrough, with no battles repeated, collecting all the 'first time' bonuses, you will accrue around 100,000 credits, two or three bronze cards and three or four silver cards. All gold cards must be purchased or obtained through the challenges. Repeating battles helps you gain experience and level up, but the cash payouts on the first playthrough will be gone and you will get anywhere from 650 credits per battle to around 1000 credits per battle. A large amount of time will be put into repeating these extremely uninteresting battles and you will end up with a new gold card for 75k after a few hours of grinding - unless your game glitches and you can't get the discounted gold booster pack anymore...

The alternative then is to give the players a way to ignore this cash requirement and let them enjoy the fun things in the game, like building up the cards, using rare cards, figuring out effective combinations to complete difficult battles with underpowered cards and limited power reserves etc...

Don't forget to like and share!

All we ask is that you give us a like on our facebook page and maybe click on some of the ads we have to generate a bit of 'good will' on the behalf of the people who are trying to make it possible.

Next article: But isn't cheating lame?