How to avoid grinding

So you've decided not to have grinding in your game. Good on you! But you're worried that the some players will grind anyways, just because they are used to it, or as a way to avoid the challenge. You fear that grinding players will ruin the balance, that a boss at the end of level 1 is suited for a level 8-9 character, and that players that grind may face the boss as level 20s. Though this is a valid concern, it is no reason to put grinding back in to the game, requiring all players to grind so that the hard core grinding players will not gain a significant advantage.

Games that require leveling usually implement it with increasing costs for each level. These games also reward the player with higher returns, that is more gained experience, for killing tougher opponents. The effect is that if a player does not move on to the more difficult areas of the game, and instead remain at the current level and grind, the gains in levels will take longer and longer to achieve.

To further enforce this, the game can reward the player with an amount of experience that is proportional to the difference in level between the player and the enemy. If the player has a certain level, he or she will gain a certain amount of experience for a given opponent, while if he or she has a higher level, the experience gained will be less. This discourage grinding and forces the player to seek new challenges, however, as always, the game should inform the player that this is the case, so that the player does not get frustrated by the lack of experience gained.

Another way is to implement diminishing returns for grinding, is to keep track of how many enemies a player has killed of every type, and reduce the experience gained for enemies that he player already has defeated in scores (there is only so much to learn from fighting the same kind of enemy over and over again).

A game that successfully implemented diminishing returns for grinding, both by increasing the experience needed for each new level, as well as reducing the experience gained is Star Ocean – till the end of time. Unfortunately, that game also required an excessive amount of grinding which makes it very painful to every time you want to progress the story.