Grind Fatigue

The point at which repetitive gameplay loops stop feeling rewarding and start feeling like obligation, a progression design failure where the ratio of effort to meaningful reward collapses.

In games, this means

When a player is farming the same dungeon for the fifteenth time to collect a crafting material, the activity has stopped being a game and become a job. Grind fatigue is not about difficulty, it is about the absence of novelty and proportional reward. The fix is not removing repetition entirely (which is often the core loop) but ensuring each repetition offers some variation, discovery, or a clear visible step toward a meaningful goal.