What is a good multiplayer game that is both (almost) endlessly replayable AND with less grinding as possible?
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When you ask for something without ‘grind’ I have to ask if you know what you are asking. Grind is entirely subjective. It’s not a mechanism of a game but rather what happens when you personally don’t find a game mechanism fun/rewarding.
Take classic examples, like mining in… most games, really. It’s smacking a rock. It doesn’t have much variety. For some people, they love their own little game of ‘hit the rocks in the most efficient way,’ or they like to relax with music and bust rocks, or they feel like every rock is a loot box. Other people hate it for being too complex to automate and too simple to feel engaged.The difference between ‘grind’ and an ‘endlessly replayable part of the game’ is how the player looks at it. You are asking for ‘the drug to which you will never build a tolerance.’
Beyond all reason
fall guys among us
Both infinitely replayable and has nothing to grind for except some cosmetics that doesn’t affect game play
My interpretation of your request boils down to “what’s a good co-op roguelike” where the grinding is the replaying.
So, depending on how many players you need it to support and preferred genres, you might check out games like
- Risk of Rain 2
- Enter the Gungeon
- Children of Morta
- Vampire Survivors
- Streets of Rogue
- Gunfire Reborn
- Barony
There’s also a game called Jumpship that i’m keeping an eye on the development of that’s supposed to be hitting early access in the coming months.
Battlefield 1
Unreal Tournament 99.
To this flavor: splitgate
I’ve spent countless hours in the 2004 version
Sea of Thieves.
There has never and will never be any pay to win. Everyone has access to all weapons at any time, no unlocking, just pure skill.
Up to 4 players on your team (ship) open servers with other players all sailing around all the time. You can get in an organic fight over treasure, or matchmake for ranked battles.
All of the progression is cosmetic based.
The devs have been adding content constantly since launch that fleshes out the game systems and makes for more interesting interaction.
I come back to this game all the time. Highly recommend.
This game is so much fun, even when I’m the loner getting my ass handed to me on my sloop (which is most of the time). Seeing a ship looming in the distance and wondering if it’s going to come after you is such a rush.
Is it worth getting this late?
Absolutely, it’s still constantly getting updates, and got an actual anti-cheat recently which helped the health of the game a TON.
Huge learning curve to the game, but there’s nothing else like it.
Definitely, even better if you can try during a free weekend or get it half price on a sale.
Amazing with friends, on your own or with randos.
So many organic ways to interact and communicate with other players. Seriously cool, unique and worthwhile experience.
Really depends on what you consider grinding.
Pretty much all MMOs or PVEs have you grinding for gear (helldivers 2 I don’t feel is grindy in comparison, but some do)
Survival games like ark, valheim, etc… Have you grinding for bases and the next section of the game
Pretty much all PvP games (CS2, valorant, apex, starcraft, Rocket league, etc…) have you grinding out muscle memory skills
The antithesis to these are instance-based games where at max you grind aesthetic gimmicks, but in single player games they don’t have those like REPO where you always reset and fall guys where it is minigame based
The problem with these games is since you don’t have a “reward for work” (grinding), people get bored of them.
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✍︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.lichess good
Checks out
Trackmania, although depending on how you want to slice it, you might consider it ONLY grinding.
Incredibly low skill floor (4 button racing sim) but with near infinite skill ceiling as you learn to master all the nuances of movement, surface types, tricks, etc.
Endless amounts of content with the seasonal campaigns, tracks of the day, and weekly shorts, but also just a full blown track editor for community content on the side. Each track is like a little puzzle where you memorize all the details then try and get your best performance. Play in an online server with your friends and just chat, listen to music, or watch a movie in the background. Find your favorite style and master it: tech, dirt, NASCAR, lol.
It’s my favorite game to just turn my brain off and drive.
There is a game i would recommend called Mechabellum. It’s a mecha auto battler where you can’t really move units between rounds. You build up a bug army trying to constantly counter your opponent with the 20ish available units.
What do you want? Lots of games fit that description.
In some shooters, you basically only grind for cosmetics, like Overwatch, Marvel Rivals or Counter-Strike. Dota 2 is a Moba and also only has cosmetic unlocks, I think.
Maybe Minecraft or Terraria? I don’t think you really grind in these games, but you do very similar stuff all the time.
I consider digging hours for diamond as a form of grinding, and you have to get it for crafting advanced stuff. I could play creative mode, but at that point it’s more like a 3d Paint than a game
Vintage story has grind also but it makes it way more interesting and satisfying.
These are the features that I want to avoid: grinding for resources, cosmetics, and anything that require repetitive and/or mindless action. Any genre is good, the question is more like a test to see if a game like this can exist
No cosmetics pretty much disqualifies almost every game, because all of them have it, even old games.
In my comment before, I probably wouldn’t describe cosmetics as a grind. You just unlock stuff on the side, as a bonus, since most of it is random. It’s not like you’re going to play a thousand games of Ursa in Dota to unlock some rare skin.
A bit of cosmetics on the side is ok. What I want to avoid is cosmetics like in Sea of Thieves, where the main reason to gather resources and completing mission is unlocking them
Fighting games:
- Endlessly replayable because there’s always more to learn.
- No grinding because there’s nothing to grind.
I’ve enjoyed Tekken more than Mortal Kombat.
I mostly played Tag Tournament 2
Tetris effect connected.
It made game of the year for a reason.
I think I’ve sunk 200 hours into tetris this year alone, I have it on like 4 systems including my SP handheld clone
Edit: my phrasing here was unclear, there effect connected has not been ported to portmaster or the ports collection, I use Tetris RR, a custom patched og GB tetris to have all the same amenities (hold, hard drop) as modern tetris.
If you like tetris and want tetris RR, find a GB tetris ROM and patch it yourself
A link to the Romhack (for the mods, this is a link to the patch, not the rom, i know VL has pirate content but this aint it, it does however have a link to their archive, where the rom does exist) https://vimm.net/romhacking/hacks/5813
I got my hopes up it was on portmaster for a moment and you were talking about rg35xxsp.
Oh, no I play Tetris Rosy Retrospective on that. All the new amenities on classic GB tetris.
That’s exactly the handheld I was referring to, the anbernic rg35xxsp
The obvious answers are the games we endlessly replayed historically: Mario Kart, Goldeneye (VS mode), Halo (VS), Smash Bros.
If you specifically want ones on PC, I’d suggest Starcraft, Age of Empires, and probably Counter Strike (I wasn’t into that one, but it had a huge following).
Many board games fit the bill as well. Codenames (physical or online at horsepaste.com) comes to mind, and another commenter also mentioned chess.
Basically any games that were made before endlessly grinding became a thing (yep, that’s only been a thing for a decade or two).
