A grind is a lapse in content. A grind is a hamster wheel in place of interesting mechanics. To grind is to toil, all in the name of throwing it away next season to start it again. If I’m purchasing entertainment, I expect to be entertained and not simply convinced I am entertained. It is not a problem that it is possible to do in a game, that much is fine if you wish. It is a problem when the developers expect you to grind hours to achieve something. It equates to nothing but a long days work at the long day factory.
Example: AC6: Fires of Rubicon allows you to purchase mech pieces in a shop for credits. These credits are handed out at mission end. You can grind “The Wall” mission in under a minute to recieve a hefty sum. Or you can just play through the story again. Thats fine within the context of the game and I can choose to grind if I want.
Diablo on the other hand expects us to literally restart every 3-4 months and do everything all over again (except the campaign itself). Which in itself is alright cause the “Immortal Realm” exists. But that effectively turns each season into a massive grind. So if you want to participate, you have no choice but to grind. Its just a little upsetting I bought a grinder and not a game.
Decrease grinds. I want to play the fucken game not do chores. I drop games nowadays as soon as I have to grind. Grinds aren’t fun, they are methods of artificially increasing playtime and engagement. That doesn’t mean hand everything out, it means make the things you do for stuff varied. I didn’t think this would be so hard but over the last 20 years grinds have gotten worse not better. We should be doing away with them in favor of engaging mechanics. Instead everything is more or less the same game with different flavor texts and models. But they all have grinds.
They did that in the last one. This looks like another reboot that has in universe reasons. Which means the old stuff still happened but due to the time stuff its happening again but different