Grind Achievements

Achievements given by repeatedly performing some action in a game.

Many activities in games are either trivial after being done for the first time or become routine as one's expertise as a player grows. They may still be necessary to complete the game, but to recognize the effort players' can put into that specific type of activity game designers can reward players with Grind Achievements. These achievements differ from most other achievements in that players will sooner or later get them it they persevere. For games while allow several different ways of playing, Grind Achievements can be a way to official confirm the way a player has chosen to play a game.

Examples

High-Score lists can sometimes function as keepers of Grind Achievements. This is the case when the scores they keep track of start to depend on endurance rather than meeting challenges that steadily become more and more difficult. Early console games such as Pac-Man and Donkey Kong qualify to this, since reaching the highest recorded levels require uninterrupted gameplay for several hours (the first perfect score for Pac-Man took about 6 hours, which by 2010 been shaved to less than 4 hours).

More modern games, especially those built as online games or distributed through online platforms such as Steam or XBox Live, have specific grind achievements. The action-adventure game Torchlight gives Grind Achievements for most types of activities and events possible in the game:

walking (Walkabout for taking 25,000 steps), gambling (Gambling Addict and Gambling Fiend for doing this 50 and 100 times), fishing (Angler, Fisherman, and Fisher King for catching 50, 100, and 100 fish), smashing items (doing this 1500 times gives Master Smasher), selling items (10,000 transactions gives Cash for Trash), getting gold (having collected 250,000 gold gives Rich), killing enemies (Wabam! for 5000 monsters and Supreme Slayer for 50,000 monsters), achieving critical hits (Gibbed for blowing 25 enemies to pieces), drinking potions (Potion Whiz for 5,000) and dying (having done this 500 times gives the consolidation price Tormented).

Fallout: New Vegas in the Fallout series has Grind Achievements for crafting and repairing a certain number of items (Crafty for crafting 20 items and Jury Rigger for repairing 30 items) and others for simply discovering places in the game world (Walker of the Mojave for 50 locations and Master of the Mojave for 125 locations). It also has Grind Achievements that reveals what type of weapons one uses (the achievements Lead Dealer, Love the Bomb, Old-Tyme Brawler, New Vegas Samurai, and Blast Mastery are given for causing 10,000 points of damage with guns, explosives, unarmed strikes, melee weapons and energy weapons respectively) and what type of healing one uses (healing 10,000 points with food gives Desert Survivalist while doing so with Stimpaks gives Stiim-ply Amazing).

Left 4 Dead Series 

L4D2

World of Warcraft

Using the pattern

Grind Achievements can easily be constructed from requiring the success of small goals, Optional or Enforced. Given this, they can also can be constructed from the goals that make up Testing Achievements but combining them only makes sense when providing a Testing Achievement for the first success and then the Grind Achievement after the specified number of successes have been achieved. Goal Achievements can also be used but since these goals most likely require Game Mastery, this solution is more likely to work for games striving for Challenging Gameplay. Although Handicap Achievements can be difficult to use as a basis for Grind Achievements, most of the options and consequences of Achievements in general are available to Grinding ones as well.

Interface Aspects

To show how many times a goal has been achieved and how many remain before the Grind Achievement is rewarded, Progress Indicators are typically used in combination with Grind Achievements. Further, since games using Grind Achievements often have many of them, the information about them are typically available through Secondary Interfaces.

Consequences

Grind Achievements share many of the consequences of Achievements in general, e.g. being a type of Reward and a basis for Meta Games. Since they consist of reaching some form of goal multiple times they are each an example of a Hierarchy of Goals which are simultaneously Optional. Achieving them are also quite naturally require Grinding.

History

New pattern created in this wiki.