What if we changed the paradigm of "I am going to go fight these enemies so that they give me EXP" to "I am going to go do this quest because it was given to me by the story of the game, and any enemies I face are obstacles in my journey." Completing the quest will yield EXP, but enemies are merely obstacles just like puzzles, exploration, etc.. It would also be better to think about a game that doesn't have massive numbers of encounters, but a smaller number of more meaningful encounters.
Beat you to it.
I didn't want to remove "grinding" entirely, but I wanted to change what it meant to "level up". So, what did I do? I divorced stats from the level up. Stats are given out as a reward for questing (each quest awards items which you can use on any character to raise stat amounts by 1, 2, 5, 10, and 20 for base stats and 5, 10, 25, 50, and 100 for HP/MP). But, I didn't remove Experience entirely. I changed its purpose. Level of characters simply grant new ways to get around my maps. Maybe a tree vanishes when you hit level 3. Maybe a ladder appears when you hit level 6. Maybe a bridge across the river appears at level 10. Maybe a quest shows up at level 2 to get the main storyline running. The purpose of this was two-fold. First, I wanted players to be constantly exploring my maps and levels. Each time they leveled up, I wanted them to go looking for what was new, what paths became easier, or what new places opened up (most times, you just get shortcuts to get around easier, but there are fun exceptions). Second, I wanted the option to grind to be less about gaining power and more about gaining greater agency in the world. To get across the river, you might have had to walk around the mountain, through a forest, through a cave, and across a small bridge at level 4. But, when you hit level 10, there's suddenly a bridge built across the river before the mountain and it connects two villages. You could grind for that level to skip a good chunk of the game if you wanted, but you could also play normally, hit that level, then come back to town and realize there's a bridge back to where you came from... and look, there's some other things that popped up over there since you've been there! Hey, what's this crystal for?
When creating the system, I just dissected what it is that made it work, what it's purpose was, and how I could alter it without just removing it. It didn't take me long to realize that the point of XP was to gain a level... which you did to get more stats, more spells, more abilities, or just get more powerful in general. XP would always serve this purpose so long as a Level Up granted more power. So, if the only way to gain power was to grind monsters, thus get XP... what point was there in doing any kind of sidequests except as a means to more XP, sick lootz, and to advance the story (if the story was good enough to care about from a player perspective)? I wanted a story driven game, so the natural solution I came up with was simply changing what it meant to level up. Why did it have to mean "more power"? Why couldn't actual character improvement be tied to what they'd done in quests themselves? Why did I have to tie that to whacking rabbits with swords for 3 hours? So, I hit on the idea of "Doing a quest grants power, leveling up grants mobility and agency". So, I redefined what it meant to slay monsters as well. Slay them if you like, but it isn't entirely necessary. Slaying most bosses is even "optional" up to a point. Okay, so you get XP for a monster kill, but it doesn't give you power. Maybe, maybe not. Most monsters have drops, and those drops can be useful. They also drop money. Money is your lifeline. My game has NO dedicated healer and NO healing magic. What does that mean? It means without money, you cannot heal your character, you cannot cure status ailments (which can be inflicted upon you by terrain or story!), and you cannot stay at Inns. This means, the vast majority of my treasure chests also do NOT drop money. It also means most monsters carry some items that may be "unique"... or maybe story driven. Or maybe there's a 1 in 100 chance that slaying this monster can grant you +1 Attack.
I ended up changing a lot of the game because I wanted to find a way to disincentivize "grinding", without punishing it. I changed a lot because I wanted players to focus on the narrative and the combat and not on the level ups and blowing through the enemies.
Is it fun? As a biased creator, I couldn't tell you. What I can tell you, is that more often than not, a player testing my game actually does move around the map looking for what changed when they gain a level, and they do try to pick up every quest they run across in an effort to get their stat points.
