Limiting Grinding?

I can get behind low drop rates on rare items from strong enemies, but I hope there are items to increase luck, "farming gear" so to speak.

One system I hope stays dead back with Harmony of Dissonance is the system where as you outlevel enemies eventually you only get 1 EXP. It made hitting 99 in SOTN and HoD basically impossible.

I don't know if they actually kept the drop rates they had in the demo but shards drop quite often.
IGA being IGA. im sure there will be a few monsters with obnoxiously low drop rates. killing the same enemy 10 or 30 times is not that big of a problem unless its one of the monsters with special gimmicks that makes them particularly annoying to kill when trying to obtain the shard/soul.
personally i don't mind the low drop rates (except when im trying to get 100% everything) but i can see myself overleveling really fast. i wish there was an option or accesory that prevents you from gaining exp in exchange for a massive boost to your luck.

now that you mention drop rates sucking in these games...
i remember there was an enemy in Aria of Sorrow called Shadow lord or knight? i killed it over 1000 times trying to get his rare item drop for my bestiary completionism. i literally went from lv70 to 99, i maxed his soul and i think i got it over 20 times and i still didnt get the rare item drop. a friend of mine told me it was a super potion (not worth it). to this day i still own my Castlevania Doublepack GBA catridge with an aria of sorrow file missing that item.
something similar happened in lament of innocence when i was farming for the invincible jar relic. that was a monumental waste of time but i had to get that 100%

i love the idea of increasing the drop rates when killing the same enemy multiple times. Altough its probably too late for any changes or feedback so we can just wish they included something like that in the game.

IMO the biggest problem with rare drops is that it puts wanting to collect an ability - let alone all abilities - at cross purpose with not wanting to trivialize the challenge of the content. That is to say, by pursuing specific dropped abilities or items, you're naturally going to level more than if you were just playing the game normally.

The best way to fix this is one use by the Dark Souls series, and that is to give the player an item that prevents experience gain. This would allow players who prefer a challenge to still take on a collector's mindset. Granted, it's a bit late to be bringing that up now, but maybe as something added in as a patch later, either as an item or an equipped ability.

Yeah I would have brought the topic sooner if I had started my binge sooner, but if it's too late it's too late.

I just remembered something. IGA said in some interviews that he wanted the game to have a high drop rate. One of these interviews you can see here ( shmuplations.com/bloodstained/ ) when they still had some ideas they gave up later on, but take a look at this part:  I want Bloodstained to have that collecting component to it, and the drop rate will be set high.

Later on, on another interview (i don't really remember where he said that, but i do remember he explaining that) he said that the drop rate would be higher than usual for his games because most things in the game depends on drops. MOST of the content is drop-dependant (crafting materials to forge new equipment, shards to give Miriam new powers, etc), so, if the enemies doesn't have a higher drop rate, the game would be too difficult due to how dependant you are of drops to improve Miriam.

Still, some equipment, crafting materials and such will be at the game inside chests and such, lowering down your need to hunt for them all the time, and that also puts grinding down a bit.

That reminded me of something, by the way, not completely related to this thread, but still linked to it. Does anyone remembers this?

 
This is a "Shard Candlestick". It was shown at 2017 Demo. Some kind of artifact that for some unknown reason had a Shard that you could break it to get it. At 2017 Demo, they put two Shard Candlesticks. One with Fire Cannon (from Morte Cannon) and another with Double Jump. At the time, IGA said they just put that there to show off the new look of Fire cannon and also because they wouldn't need to put more than one boss at the demo (implying that Double Jump would be a Shard from a boss). 

The Shard Candlestick wasn't talked about again. I wonder if that still exists. It is a bit like the "Soul Keeper" from Aria of Sorrow, an object that had a soul for you to get it. 
If Shard Candlesticks still exists, that's also a small way to limit grinding, like what i said with chests. By giving some Shards hidden on rooms and such on Candlesticks, so you don't need to keep hunting for them to drop from enemies. At least, it would be less Shards to be dependant on drops.

I think the question in this topic depends on our stance to the following: Are the games meant to be played without grinding for levels/items/souls/etc. or is the grinding "part of the game" so to speak?

If grinding isn't part of the game, the logical conclusion is that all those rare drops are meant as a prize for the lucky few players and not something everyone should have in their playthrough. It would be a way to make each playthrough different, since, for example, someone getting the Peeping Eye soul early will have a way easier time finding breakable walls. I rather like this, since I'm not a completionist and enjoy the replay value this approach adds.

If grinding is supposed to be a part of the game on the other hand, then we run into the problem this topic is about: Grinding for drops will unbalance the game. And I would also add that it's not fun (for me at least) to perform the same action over and over hoping to get the desired drop. It also removes the replay value of just going with the flow and playing through the game with the items/souls you get. I think it sounds unlikely that this is the model the designers were intending, for these reasons.

My way of dealing with the issue this topic highlights is simply to not grind at all. I would argue that this is more in line with how the game is intended to be too. Granted, you risk missing out on cool drops, but that's what subsequent playthroughs are for!

4blackout  has a very good point and that's something i thought myself before. Low drop rate (one of the main reasons fo grinding) is something that make sense if what you are trying to get is something that would completely unbalance the game if picked up earlier.

Something i also noted is that Igavanias overral never really needed level grinding, but i remember the dev team saying that Bloodstained is a bit more open-ended than IGA's other games. You can notice certain areas are advanced, with harder enemies ande would be best to go to these places later on,  but you can still try it if you feel you can. That may be a clever way to add grinding to the game as something optional, since you aren't required to go to these places early in the game.

Same. I just want to zen out and grind until my eyes bleed.