Grinding or not grinding... that's the question

[Pace675]

Ugh, I hate grinding personally.

It's a part of old JRPG style games that should just die in 2013.

I concur with this, grinding of any sort really puts me off. I also understand the need to make combat challenging for the more "hard-core" players, where you would want the player to HAVE to over-level just to succeed. The way I feel about this is; why in heck do I have to grind to fight big bad monster to have a chance at succeeding? If I am playing the game for the story itself. I figure that the monsters should scale with the player to present a challenge, and scale even more for people who want every fight to be an epic battle.

So in theory you can do this for easy, normal, hard, and call my mommy modes:
In Easy mode - (This is assuming a player that wants story over combat or a realitivley newcomer to this type of game.) All monsters are lower in level than the player, and they seldom use skills/abilities/magic and they should hit for less.
Normal mode - Monsters will be near the player's level and will use their abilities more often and they hit for normal.
Hard mode - Monsters are at the player's level or higher, they use their abilities frequently and work in a coordinated manner.
Call my mommy mode - Monsters will be higher in level, they will spam their abilities, they work as a cohesive team, and player has reduced damage, you can also reduce experience gain here too, to make it even more of a challenging

*Chants* Death to JRPGs grinds!!!!.

[jack1974]

All good points, but the problem is that SOME people love grinding, see the many players who reached Loren end at level 25 or such . So I think my system (maybe was suggested by Anima, not sure) is the best.
For example, hard point with a tough fight, enemy level 9 and your party is lower rank:
a) easy mode - just fight it!
b) normal mode - maybe is better to do some side quests first?
c) hard mode - DEFINITELY must do some side quests!
d) nightmare - must grind my way up to level 9 at least to win!
this solution makes everyone happy. I think hardcore players have a sense of satisfaction when they stumble into a hard battle, but can go back and level up and then get back to that fight and win it. I know that years ago I was feeling like that (now I don't have time anymore to play games, so I just play all of them in easy mode!)

[Jaeger]

Level scaling isn't necessary if combat and enemy encounters are balanced right.

[jack1974]

In my experience "balancing it right" is near impossible, since it depends on the player skills, and you can't know if "Easy" for you matches "Easy" for everyone. You can't also know what gears people have equipped, and different items could have a different impact, and so on.
I remember in Loren, during testing that for the Toobar fight some users were complaining that in Hard mode it was "impossible". Now I have users saying that Loren's Hard mode was too easy (in general, so I assume including that fight). Who is right? bwaaaa
On PS1 was somewhat easier to balance since there were less items and skills, so less variables to take into account (also less approaches to the game combat) and I could balance it better even working alone, but big companies doing big games have rooms filled of testers playing the games 8h a day, recording Gb of video feedback. I obviously can't do that but of course will try to balance the encounters nonetheless!