The problem with minmaxing

[Salyon]

The problem here is not min/max itself, It's is when a game becomes less enjoyable because of it, in WoW you can see it as rerolling a class to get a better racial, or even playing a class that you dont like just because the numbers are higher.

Of course, this is a choice, you can just ignore it, but some people will think they are losing something and will have a question in mind: Are numbers > Fun ? And there is the main problem, no one should be forced to do a very drastical change just to get better numbers, like tranfering a guild to other faction to get better results, i mean, it's totally OK to have race differences for example, but it HAS to be balanced, you should not be force to play an Ogre Alchemist because you would be totally better than the Human Alchemist.

"Yes, you can be that, but if you go this way you will do the same things, except that it will be better."

It's probably the playerbase fault and the constant drive to get better, specially in online games. Games like Starcraft are generally very hard to play at its maximum and that can drive new players away from an good/fast online experience. But that's not bad if this is the objective of the game.

As long as min/max don't overcome the enjoyable I think it's fine and fun, it gives more depth to a game and also rewards more dedicated players, but, it's really importante that the DEVS balance it, even abusing of min/max the game should still be played the way it was made to be.

[Yizu]

I think min/maxing for an mmo/multiplayer games is okay, its the only way im having fun playing mmos, minmaxing is just part of being competitive with other players IMO. And minmaxing is not so bad in wow now post cata.

But minmaxing on single player games like RPGs is bad. Makes games unfun later on. Years ago im OC about how i play single player games and look for guides before playing it, on how to build my character, what loot i shouldnt miss, making my character OP before advancing the story etc. And i never finish most single player games before because it gets too easy and really really boring. Eventually i realized wtf am i doing, its more fun finding out on my own and play at my own pace, im actually finishing all single player games now.

[noahjam326]

The problem here is not min/max itself, It's is when a game becomes less enjoyable because of it, in WoW you can see it as rerolling a class to get a better racial, or even playing a class that you dont like just because the numbers are higher..

This is where I stand as well, except I would go a bit further. I also say min/maxing becomes a problem when it affects the actual core gameplay. What I mean by that is when it starts changing the concept of classes and abilities. This ultimately leads to the homogenization the OP talks about and makes the game less fun for people who don't care about min/maxing. It's things like this that have turned raiding from "gathering a group of players to slay a dragon" to "pull out your calculators and let's decide the battle before we even start it." There's nothing wrong with the second method, but I personally find it less fun. The homogenization has made (in my opinion) the actual raid encounters less dynamic and interesting because there are less unique variables controlled by the player.

This is where I feel it becomes a problem. This is where min/maxing actually trickles down and changes the game for those that don't care about min/maxing.

[Toxigen]

Heaven forbid people want to be as "strong" as they can be (virtually speaking, of course).


edit: If you don't want to do it, fine, but don't expect to compete against people who are going all-out.

[Deleted]

Min maxing is pretty much the same in my mind as "power players" in DnD campaigns.

Making a level1 ranger/level 1 barbarian/level 1 fighter half dragon half goliath character in 3.5 dnd (before the various rules that ruled out those abominations) would pretty much mean that you were unkillable unless the DM decided to throw a red dragon in your facing while you were still level 3.
It negated the whole damn thing about playing a Role Playing game. What were you supposed to be? a goliath had sex with a dragon, the rangers raised the baby who then were slaughtered by barbarians who then were taken out by a local fighters guild and thus you came to be?

In topic, are you somehow competing for a world first thus min maxing is the only way? sure. Are you playing to enjoy yourself. Mix max if you like but take it easy and remember that you are playing a game, not calibrating a nuclear reactor...

[wdmshmo]

Min/Max ruins RPGs for me. Even more recently than your Torchlight 2 Example is Path of Exile. This game has such wonderful Potential, but it lacks so many things that seemed core in other RPG/dungeon crawlers I have played before. This game takes Min/Max to the absolute extreme. I thought it was absolutely wonderful, looking at a passive skill tree with 1350 or so possible choices, but in the end, 1330 of those possible points are so freaking bland. You can chose to invest up to 120 points at max level, which is not achievable if you asked me. Here's a link to the skill tree, if you're interested.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMB

It takes the problem you spoke of with Torchlight 2 to a new Extreme. You will pick one ability, and augment that to have added damage or shoot 3/5 projectiles instead of 1 projectile. You will also likely use all your remaining mana on Auras, which are supposed to be group support spells, but in this game its really just self buffs that you will always have. Here's the trailer for it;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDFO4E5OKSE


/startrant

I don't like holding down right click and killing everything with the exact same spell all game. There aren't even any spells with cooldowns or single target damaging spells. Auras are a joke too. A permanent self buff that reserves my mana? It might as well be another piece of equipment that I put on a forget about. There's also still a disparity between people who attack and people who cast spells. A spell might do lesser damage due to resists (Which is almost entirely countered by a single curse and a stat that reduces enemies resist) But melee attacks or ranged attacks have a broken accuracy/evasion/armor system to work off of. On top of all of this, the game is poorly optimized.

/endrant

[Deleted]

More recently we have Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. While it isn't very common on public servers, I'm a bit worried this will spread to the general playerbase and make it unenjoyable for me. It's difficult to explain for someone who hasn't played Chivalry and isn't familiar with the melee combat mechanics. Basically the more skilled, competitive players have adopted these convoluted mousedragging mechanics to maximize their performance. It makes the characters look like they're spazzing out and having seizures. It's completely ridiculous and I very much doubt this is how the developers intended the game to be played (Ironically, these same players usually scorn other players using the basic feinting feature).

I completely disagree, manouvers like mousedragging or (now removed) combo-feint into parry make the game much deeper and ejoyable. The mousedragging gives you much more control over your attacks which is a good thing IMO. IIRC the devs said that they are ok with mousedragging aswell.

[Remilia]

I'm not really fond of min-maxing, not because of the playstyle, but because of the community.

Exaggeration inc.

AHMAWGAWD YOU NOT DOING 2% MOAR DEEPZ AOPKEKRAKRJeklJ SCRUB ALERT LKD:FJLASdfa.

Why I hate damage meters. Doesn't mean you should be incompetent, but it just means that performing to the absolute max is just well... pointless in a stat based game.
It's not like osu! or Touhou where it's more skill based.
I play for the enjoyment of the game, not to be competitive and freak out every time a new stat change occurs. I understand some people enjoy it and that's fine for them, but when it becomes toxic to the people around you is when it really gets on my nerve.

[Lazy Gecko]

I don't think there is an inherent design problem with Torchlight 2. Maybe they could tweak the spells a bit to make other spells more desirable than Prismatic Bolt, but it's really nothing I concern myself with too much when I'm playing by myself (which is the majority of the time). TL2's talent system offers an amazing amount of flexibility and there are tons of unorthodox builds you can use. Want to play a melee-focused embermage? Then go for it. It may be far from optimal if you're playing super-hardcore at the highest difficulty, but that doesn't mean it's not viable (not to mention fun). I wouldn't trade this sort of versatility for anything and I think this is one of the fun RPG things we lost from WoW due to the rebalancing.

[Sj]

Min maxing is pretty much the same in my mind as "power players" in DnD campaigns.

That's where min-maxing in gaming really started. I'm not sure why people have such a problem with min-maxers, though; they act like it's sacrilegious to try and squeeze as much benefit from your skills, talents, gear, what-have-you. Charisma? Ain't nobody got time for that. Play your way, don't worry about what others are doing. Certain stats are always going to be better for certain people depending on the situation, otherwise, this would be an "omg homogenization of stats sucks" thread instead.

[Bigbamboozal]

So if i understand you correctly the OP is pissed that people want to get better at the game ?

I guess you don't understand correctly.
I am pretty sure the OP is suggesting that while SOME minmaxing is good, TOO MUCH leads to some shitty things, and he's right.
Having one spec/class benched over 1% dps is not captivating game play is it?
I mean, have you ever said "oh I love when I have to reroll for 1% dps or get benched, that's my favorite part of the game!" ?
Me thinks not.

[Dtloweca]

I usually only do MinMaxing in games when I'm bored. I would usually do it in Fallout games and maybe pokemon games.

[Dawnshadow]

Minmaxing stops being fun when it becomes compulsory, basically.

I personally don't really enjoy minmaxing in most cases-- I generally don't play in situations where I would need to minmax, and while I want to do reasonably well, optimizing too hard takes away from the fun of the game for me. I don't care how other people play as long as they're not going out of the way to ruin other people's fun.

But-- in a WoW context, although there would be analogues in any game-- outside of heroic progression raids, extremely high-end arena, and other very high-end modes of gameplay, minmaxing should be optional-- as long as someone has the right idea in general, they should be okay, even if they're not 100% optimal. When I'm being spammed about how bad I am because I'd do 3% more DPS in spec x instead of spec y, or people start kicking low level players out of groups because they don't have optimized leveling gear, or basically try to force everyone into minmaxing as hard as they do in casual content, minmaxing is a Problem.

[OrcsRLame]

Min maxing is pretty much the same in my mind as "power players" in DnD campaigns.

Making a level1 ranger/level 1 barbarian/level 1 fighter half dragon half goliath character in 3.5 dnd (before the various rules that ruled out those abominations) would pretty much mean that you were unkillable unless the DM decided to throw a red dragon in your facing while you were still level 3.
It negated the whole damn thing about playing a Role Playing game. What were you supposed to be? a goliath had sex with a dragon, the rangers raised the baby who then were slaughtered by barbarians who then were taken out by a local fighters guild and thus you came to be?

In topic, are you somehow competing for a world first thus min maxing is the only way? sure. Are you playing to enjoy yourself. Mix max if you like but take it easy and remember that you are playing a game, not calibrating a nuclear reactor...

Uh, not sure what 3.5e D&D you played, but a combination like that is far from broken, in fact, it's ludicrously underpowered compared to tier 1 and tier 2 builds. A Goliath has an ELC of +1, a half Dragon has an ECL of +3. That means in a standard game, it's not even possible, (without DM approval) to play a character like that until the party's average level is 4, and even then you'd have to join with no character levels, meaning you'd have hp of like 12+con when your party is fighting level 4 encounters. So, 1 crit and you die basically.

Furthermore, a 1 fighter/barbarian/ranger build is awful and provides no synergy. A proper multiclass build is one that actually builds into something with a purpose, for example, 10 wizard, 6 incantatrix, 4 archmage as a human for the extra feat, could certainly be considered a tier 1 build, and it's not even that complicated. Initiative starts: Sorry, I'm playing an initiative stacking wizard so I have a +24 initiative, I go first. I cast time stop then I cast quickened limited wish to cast favor of the martyr, end round 1 of my 2-5 round time stop. Then I cast polymorph any object to transform myself into a CR 94 Paragon Pseudonatural Great Wyrm Force Dragon. Then I cast greater celerity to get an extra full round action, which I use to cast a twin max empowered vortex of teeth, end round 2 of my 2-5 rounds of time stop. I spend the remaining 1-3 round of time stop, if any, casting twin max empowered vortex of teeth twice per round using my normal action and greater, saving one greater celerity for when time stop ends as well as making a ready action to cast Mordenkainen's disjunction as time stop ends. Time stop ends; I cast greater celerity and I immediately use Mordenkainen's disjunction to destroy all of my opponent's magical gear and buffs. I use my full round action to do a full attack action, which is 24 tentacle attacks each attack being made at a +124 bonus and inflicting 2d8+80 damage per hit, with the first one being a critical. That's an average damage of 2225 single target, and all the vortex of teeth spells tick instantly for 52 force damage per spell per round in a 40 foot radius spread area.

And that's not even a god tier build. That actually makes fucking sense! At least it's not Chuck... http://community.wizards.com/forum/p...hreads/1164211

[Slant]

I think minmaxing is something that's not getting nearly as much discussion/debate as it needs in gaming and game design. It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I think originally the term came from P&P roleplaying games but the term now is pretty much exploiting systems and mechanics to maximum efficiency in any type of video game.

Actually, minmaxing was part of game theory involving a 2 player zero sum game. In WoW it describes maximising the minimum gain in statistics. Which leads us to theorycrafters and their mathematical models that most of the time are quite useful, even more if you combine that with SimC and actual experimentation in raids. Basically, what this boils down to is that whatever a game developer does, this group will always flock to the (perceived) optimal setup for their purpose. Even if it's just a 1% increase in efficiency. The fun thing is that it works so well and has done so for many years. The sad thing is that no game developer can win that game, yet Blizzard tries every patch and by doing so they mess up more than they fix, usually. I suspect it's because they don't actually have a clue what they're doing and don't actually use anything more elaborate than napkin maths to reach their conclusions. Or just blindly stare at some meaningless stats from their server that somehow contradict WoL a lot of the times. Who knows, perhaps they just flip a coin.

Edit: Wikipedia teaches me that what we're doing here is actually maximin, while in gametheory it's minimising the maximum loss, hence minmax. Guess we just kidnapped that term because it basically means the same approach and maximin sounds stupid. :P

- - - Updated - - -

I guess you don't understand correctly.
I am pretty sure the OP is suggesting that while SOME minmaxing is good, TOO MUCH leads to some shitty things, and he's right.
Having one spec/class benched over 1% dps is not captivating game play is it?
I mean, have you ever said "oh I love when I have to reroll for 1% dps or get benched, that's my favorite part of the game!" ?
Me thinks not.

Luckily, a 1% difference in theorycrafting doesn't translate into the game due to player skills. Those 1% calculated by theorycrafters are theoretical and assume laboratory conditions. So no movement, no boss abilities etc. Most of the time I'd even let the player play a 1% less efficient spec if he's better at it or more comfortable with it, because that would let him make up the difference easily.

Sadly some douchebags take theoretical numbers as gospel and ruin the game for their team.

[Deleted]

I really dont see the problem here. If you dont like minmaxing, dont minmax. Simple as that. No one is going to force you to do it, so if it ruins the game for you, just dont do it.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I think you're making assumptions here. I was performing rather poorly as embermage and was just looking for some tips and inspiration on improving myself. I specifically wanted to play with an electric-focused spec and that was the one specifically saying I should only cast prismatic bolt over and over. Obviously I did not trod down that path.

I doubt every guide you found told you to do that. I'm pretty much 100% sure. Ive looked up guides and have found many fun builds on TL2.

If you don't like a game that utilizes any form of min/maxxing, like WoW, DON'T PLAY IT, ITS NOT THE RIGHT GAME FOR YOU.

- - - Updated - - -

I guess you don't understand correctly.
I am pretty sure the OP is suggesting that while SOME minmaxing is good, TOO MUCH leads to some shitty things, and he's right.
Having one spec/class benched over 1% dps is not captivating game play is it?
I mean, have you ever said "oh I love when I have to reroll for 1% dps or get benched, that's my favorite part of the game!" ?
Me thinks not.

How many of us in this thread are in top level "professional" progression guilds in WoW though? I doubt very many. If you don't want to possible be benched for playing a less desirable class, don't join a top 10 guild.

[Stir]

OP: Basically, the concern you voice is not so much with minmaxing, but with other people putting in all the effort you don't want to.
Stop wanting to dictate how other people play the game. Honestly.

Actually minmaxing is only really cheap in pen-and-paper games. In computer games, and especially in on-line computer games, it is expected. Take WoW, for instance... Who's going to take along that agility plate? Nobody, that's who. Plate wearers want strength. Defensive plate wearers want stamina. If your stat is not on it, you're not wearing it. THAT is min-maxing. And the reason why you min-max in computer games is simple: Interaction doesn't matter because it is scripted. You perform your role, and your role alone. Your roleplaying encounters rarely if ever are stat-dependent, apart from in games such as the Bioware RPGs and, to a much lesser degree, TES games. Even so, in SW:TOR, your stats did not prohibit you from making any of the choices in the dialogue options... Which brings us back to 'it really doesn't matter; play what you want.'

Minmaxing does not break immersion in online games, because your stats don't generally matter for the pogression of any story.
Minmaxing can actually add some funny stereotypes to pen-and-paper games; the barbarian with intelligence and charisma of 8, but strength and constitution of 18 (with a moderate 13 on wisdom and dexterity) makes a pretty stereotypical barbarian, and if you want to play it like that... Why wouldn't you? Dumpstats are dumpstats; they're stats that aren't useful for your character. You could explain 'dumpstats' as 'not useful for my character, so I won't progress in it,' or you could give it some flair and say 'well; my character is pretty weak, but clever... So it wouldn't really make sense for my character to choose to become a Paladin. My character would choose a class that emphasizes her strengths, so she'd pick the Wizard class instead.' Which explains perfectly why strength is her dump-stat, and she focusses most on intelligence. Dumpstats and other means of min-maxing may portray a character's choices of development as much as the player's drive towards efficiency.

Power play is an entirely different topic, of course, and causes all sorts of monstrocities... But computergames generally do not provide the tools necessary for it. It's simply impossible in WoW, for instance, to play a Protection Paladin Blood Death Knight. Or a Brewmaster Guardian Druid. It's just not possible in most computer games. Pen and paper games are (often) not that restrictive. Especially the Dungeons and Dragons games, with their need to sell a thousand books per version in order to keep the money going. The amount of information is huge, and the result is obviously all sorts of monstrosities. Which cán be fun, but they're usually too extreme to take seriously as characters.

[Deleted]

AHMAWGAWD YOU NOT DOING 2% MOAR DEEPZ AOPKEKRAKRJeklJ SCRUB ALERT LKD:FJLASdfa.

How about "AHMAWGAWD YOU NOT DOING 150% MOAR DEEPZ AOPKEKRAKRJeklJ SCRUB ALERT LKD:FJLASdfa" because you didn't gem/enchant/reforge and have no idea what you are doing? Because that is the case I most often see. The 2% more dps is only relevant for progression guilds

On-Topic: I enjoy min-maxing and I like the feeling that I am getting the most of my characters and my playstyle. I agree that sometimes it can put a dent in the fun of a SINGLE player game simply because choosing the perfect skill/talents/abilities makes some encounters trivial, but that's what higher difficulties are for. If the optimal strategy in a game is to just spam one button then it has terrible balancing problems.

[zephid]

If you don't want to min-max then don't, no one is forcing you to do it.