my brother-in-christ the ambiguity was definitely unrelated to the term "grinding"Grinding is a term for repeatedly picking fights with enemies to earn money and XP from them. It's standard practice for games, especially RPGs, but can be boring and repetitive. Which means not everyone will do it unless the game forces you to, which is considered bad game design in some corners of the Web.
He said he wanted more frequent gems and I told him where he could find them
I meant this bit: "but I couldn't argue with people who had a problem with grinding that much, at all."