What is a good multiplayer game that is both (almost) endlessly replayable AND with less grinding as possible?
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.
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.’
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
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.
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).
The Finals or Rocket League.
I also recommend The Finals! It’s exclusively multiplayer, and the only “grind” one needs to worry about is unlocking all the weapons and gadgets; it doesn’t take long to do, and you don’t even need all of them if you aren’t going to use them. But there’s nothing to level up or upgrade, so once you buy an item, it’s just a permanent part of your kit. There’s no story or campaign that you have to progress, no cutscenes to sit through. You just launch the game, pick a mode, and queue for a match.
I have like 750+ in-match hours logged, and have no plans on stopping.
Battlefield 1
Warthunder is really fun without much of a grind
I especially love how warthunder js a f2p game but doesn’t feel like it forces you into parting with youe money.
I agree :) and honestly paying for premium and planes you want is worth it. I have 750 hours and have spent maybe $100-200 on premium and planes. $3.75 per hour of birthday Monday seems decent to me. Better than my VR header which I’ve still only played down to $10 an hour
I was being sarcastic, wt is a pretty bad and poorly designed game, especially planes.
Don’t forget about the great bonuses for participating in the community forums, such as classified documents, toxicity, classified documents, and classified documents.
This is how you bait a bot, folks.
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.
Beyond all reason
honestly check out archipelago, it’s a framework that allows you to play a lot of different randomized games with your friends. you can play synchronously or asynchronously, and if you’re handy with code, you can even add any game you want to it
appendix
“what’s a randomizer?” a randomizer is a method of scrambling the items in a video game, while keeping it solvable, to be able to re-experience the same game with a fresh sense of progression. an easy game to think about this with is something like metroid or zelda. you need powerups to unlock certain parts of the game, but what if you could find those powerups anywhere you found a missile expansion or a chest? that’s what a randomizer is
“how does that work with multiple people?” now imagine that, between you and your friend’s randomized games, the items for both games could end up in either game. if we use the metroid/zelda idea from earlier, metroid might have zelda’s boomerang, while zelda might have metroid’s morph ball. the logic to ensure the games are solvable is still there, but you might be stuck waiting until your friend finds your key item. this is called “being in burger king” or 'being bk’d"
other vocab
check: any spot you can collect an item in a randomizer (think all collectibles and powerups in metroid, for example)
burger king: when you have run out of checks of your own and are waiting for someone else to send you a critical item you need to make any meaningful progress again. named after the first multiworld randomizer, where someone was stuck for so long, they were able to go to burger king for six hours and return only to still be in the same situation
Thanks, that’s interesting
fall guys among us
Both infinitely replayable and has nothing to grind for except some cosmetics that doesn’t affect game play
In all honesty, Rainbow Six: Siege is as ungrindy as any game could be, and it is as endlessly replayable as there are combinations of all the active players. The whole game is about finding ways to use the deep sandbox to outsmart your opponent, utilizing yours and your teammates abilities in unique combinations and it’s wonderful
Titanfall 2