Why do some people think that min-maxing is a problem with the system, rather than a problem with the player?
I mean, many systems allow for ridiculous amounts of optimization, and the type of player who is inclined to break one system is just as likely to break any other, right?
It just seems like a bizarre argument.
Because if people were rational about things they wouldn't get to start big stupid fights on the internet.
>>44225443
Min-maxing is a problem for systems if the system is *particularly easy* to break, or if some options are significantly better than others; this can make players have significantly greater or less impact on the game as a whole.
This leads to two problems;
First, the GM will find it difficult to judge what level of challenges to throw against the players as three players could be super-fantastic and stomp all over the opposition, or all three could be bullshit weak and die in one hit. Or any mix inbetween, and in particularly, challenges of too high a rating may cause one player to be doing all the work while the other two if they even take a glancing blow would die instantly.
This can be alleviated by a good GM that can tell how optimised a player is, and can also be gauged after a couple of encounters, but it's far from ideal, and if you've got featherweights and heavy hitters together it's not going to be very immersive.
Secondly, players can start to be angry at each other and the GM, if they see each other as trying to game the system, or holding each other back, or deliberately trying to kill off their characters. If everyone can contribute at least on the same power level, then it reduces the levels of conflict between the group.
Shadowrun is a good example of this. A poorly build character in that will be horrifically outshadowed by a powerful one. And that will just make the GM AND all the player's jobs much harder. But you do have to have a good knowledge of the system to get a good character; not just D&D level "roll a druid, get cool powers lol".
If the system doesn't give as much leeway between classes, that also works out well.
>>44225443
>>44225744
I admire Mutants & Masterminds because the book openly admits that the game is blindingly easy to break if you looked at it hard enough, and it trusts you, as players to not do it. It's a game that trusts you will build for the narrative than for the power; build the character you want, not the character you need.
>>44225443
Because trying to optimize your character is only a problem if the system is especially fragile.
Lots of people like to approach games as challenges. It's fun to try to work out how to become the strongest. It's considerably less fun if it's easy to make an OP character and experienced players have to deliberately rein it in to not ruin everyone's fun.
Telling players like that that they're doing it wrong is the kind of culture you get surrounding games that have been broken for a long time, like say older versions of D&D. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the kind of behaviour that leads to minmaxing and in an ideal world players that work out how to break the system would motivate their groups to use better systems or house rules.
>>44225603
But... but... then what would we do with the meaningless expanse of our lives in-between sessions?
>>44225796
I think that's slightly different though. You can't minmax effectively in M&M because characters have hard limits on how high their stats can get as fixed by the campaign power level. Every PC in the group is going to hit about equally hard and be equally effective at whatever they do.
Where M&M admits it's broken is in the availability of superpowers with insane power to control the narrative, like say at-will time travel or perfect mind control. You need to allow these things to be able to play characters from superhero comics, and in fairness the book does flag up potentially problematic powers. But these aren't powers that CAN be balanced. You can't do any more than say to the GM, is this the kind of thing you want to happen in your game? If so, let them have it, and allow for it. You can ensure everyone's on an equal footing in terms of action economy and survivability, but when it comes to world-changing powers all you can do is encourage every character to have some cool unique shtick.
Even so M&M could be better balanced. IDR if the last game I played was the most recent edition, but it definitely undervalued having versatile powers - you could throw any number of alternate uses on any superpower for practically no cost in build points, so having telekinesis that doubles as energy beam and force field is worth about the same as a single-function energy blast.
I'm more inclined to wonder why it's considered a *problem*. I mean it doesn't preclude you from actually roleplaying well, it doesn't preclude you or anyone else from having fun, and quite bluntly, if your character isn't holding up his end of things in a fight, you're letting down your whole goddamn team. The only problem there is when one guy's good at it and won't spread the love and help everyone else at the table minmax or at least optimize a bit.
>>44225889
>implying all the people who bitch and moan even have sessions to go to
>>44225443
I don't think I've ever heard the argument that min-maxing was a problem with the system.
Imbalance is a problem with some system. It0s a problem becuase if you *don't* min-max in those systems, some character options are going to render other options useless.
This is in a sense the exact opposite of min-maxing.
>>44225443
I know this problem more from videogames. You have this class of people who will moan and bitch that a game is "broken", and they're always the ones breaking it while the rest is just playing the game.
It's a character flaw. Most people enjoyed Oblivion without ever using the chameleon exploit, but the few who couldn't stop themselves also couldn't stop themselves from complaining about it ad nauseum.
They consider the system broken because they feel compelled to break it. Like it's a challenge. These are probably the same people who are always obsessed with being the "best" in the party. And when they GM, they're the That GM's who want to kill the party.
>>44225443
It's not the players responsibility to balance the system. It's as simple as that.
>>44225443
> Why do some people think that min-maxing is a problem with the system, rather than a problem with the player?
Kill before the save-or-die.
http://www.gnomestew.com/gming-advice/an-apology-to-some-min-maxers/
> "As I began to understand what the mechanics were doing in an RPG, I came to realize that there was a mechanic in some games, a type of character protection, which often came in the form of some in-game currency. (...) In games using these mechanics, the player has the option to use this currency to improve situations for their character, providing them a degree of in-game protection."
> "Other games, especially the d20 family, don’t have this feature. Those types of games do not have an in-game currency (by default, a number have options to add them in) to provide protection. The players are at the fickle mercy of the roll of a die, be it their roll or that of the GM. On top of that, in d20 games that roll is often a single d20, which has much more random probabilities than something like Fate dice or dice pools."
> "So when we look at games that lack any kind of character protection, the only protection a player has, is to make sure that they have the best bonuses possible to help minimize their reliance on the roll of a fickle die."
TL;DR: "The player’s best defense in a game without in-game protections is to min-max their character."
>>44226788
People only bitch and moan about balance when the video game is multiplayer
With good reason
>>44226726
I came to this thread to post this, only to discover another anon had already posted it
>>44226788
>Most people enjoyed Oblivion
Those are broken people, anon.
Why do some people think that minmaxing is a problem with the player, rather than with the system?
There will always be players who want to make an optimal character. Easily broken systems will break for every single one of these players.
It just seems like a bizzare argument to me.
You need both to make a problem senpai.
>>44225443
Minmaxing is a tricky thing to deal with. In the more extreme cases it's obviously a problem with the players. If you're using ten obscure splatbooks to give yourself retarded amounts of gold at level one, fuck you. You're intentionally trying to break the game and that isn't fun.
At the same time, minmaxing can very easily be a system issue. If it's really easy to Minmax, you can't really blame the players for taking the obvious choice. Unfortunately, in every game system I've ever played, minmaxing was almost never uniform across classes.
This leads to a situation where you have a fighter or something that is so high above the rest of the party they oneshot everything. You can't increase the difficulty of encounters, however, because then the rest of the party is just going to die.
It's an unfortunate situation.
>>44225443
Nothing wrong with optimization, the problem is powergaming, ruleslawyering and munchkining, optimization is fine.
Systems that are "broken to minmaxing" are ones where knowing how to build your character makes them far and away better than others. These encourage minmax, because not knowing how to do chargen causes characters to be massively better than others completely at random.
Or, basically what >>44225744 said.
>>44228156
>fighter
>that is so high above the rest of the party they oneshot everything
Fuck, we have a visitor from the bizarro verse
>>44225443
Because it's a game, and as a player you want to be good at the game. This means you have to look at the options presented and pick ones that will suit the character you want to play and make them effective.
In a robust, well-designed system, there are lots of interesting choices that are all good, and drawbacks hurt you as much as help you.
In a poorly designed system you're forced to choose between a select few mechanically effective choices and having a character who is incompetent, which limits the scope of your roleplaying.
Even worse, these systems will often weight things such that your character can be made more effective by taking a bunch of minuses and hindrances to improve his job efficacy, because those penalties are more-or-less meaningless to him.
Minmaxing can be a problem with players, but it is also revealing a shortcoming of the system at the same time.
>>44228520
Of course, it's never actually a fighter. That was just an example.
I did play 4E for a couple of games, and I accidentally made the world's most retarded rogue. I don't know if we were playing the game wrong or what, but if I had somebody flanking a monster I hit for insane damage at level one. So much so that I could do as much damage as the rest of my party could do in three turns inside of a single hit. That seemed pretty retarded to me.
>>44228618
>I played a Striker who dealt more damage than several non-Strikers together
Thats 4e, and that was your class's job
If so many GMs weren't terrified of the players actually succeeding at something, this wouldn't be a problem.
>>44228973
But if players succeed how else am I going to make my GMPC be the main character of my story?
Saying that minmaxing is a problem with the player and not a problem with the system makes sense if we're talking about a player deliberately trying to crack the system, but when it comes to the degree to which character optimization is expected by the game itself vs. the degree to which the player wants to put effort into crunching the numbers, it becomes a problem.
In Monte Cock's Ivory Tower essay, he explains that he designed some options to have specific uses, and then assumed players would be smart enough to figure out that the specific use for, say, the toughness feat was to make 1st-level elf wizards more survivable. I get that it shouldn't be a problem for some feats to be better for certain characters in certain situations than, but if you're going to deliberately go down that route and bake that into the game, you really should do more intuitively.
Let's say I have a character concept in my head - a grizzled, badass merc. Strong as an ox and tough as nails. I browse the feat list and see one labelled "toughness". What will my first instinct be? What if I have an elf who is wimpy and nerdy yet has the power to reshape the world with naught but thought, word and gesture? What feats sound appropriate for that character? Not something called "toughness", that's for sure.
Now, after a comedy of errors that's funny to everyone but me, I finally find out the hard way that the toughness feat is not in fact intended for tough people. How will I feel? Clever for mastering the system, or frustrated with the misleading description? Add this to the stigma against munchkinry, which means that a lot of people are likely to actively try not to think too hard about the mechanical implications of feat choices (the exact opposite of what the game wants you to do) on the rationale that they should be focusing on roleplay instead of rollplay, and the problems only compound.
This is very much a problem with the system rather than the player.
>>44231578
(cont'd)
I get that Cook's entire point when writing that post was to say that he shouldn't have assumed that the players would figure these things out on their own and that he should have explained things better in the book, but the fact that you'd introduce a feat intended for weak characters to make them more survivable and then call it "toughness" at all is rather telling. Now, I'm no narrativist hipster, but I do think that it's bad form to have this sort of disconnect between fluff and crunch. Reasonable builds should feel like they fit the way the character is fluffed out. It should be only the horrendously under- or over-optimized builds that feel wrong from a fluff standpoint. As an added bonus, this way it'll really stick out like a sore thumb when That Guy's wizard takes a few levels in fighter because not because he actually wants to try playing a fighter-wizard, but because he just wants a few more hit points and weapon proficiencies.
>>44231578
>frustrated with the misleading description?
wotc doesn't mislead you, they outright lie to your face
>>44232176
Oh man, that is horrible. That whole page is horrible. Not only are they not giving enough advice to new players, the are giving bad advice.
>>44225443
Some games actively encourage min-maxing.
Warhammer 40k for example. A given codex will have some units that obscenely powerful compared to the rest. Not to mention Games Workshop has put in place a buff system that rewards the best factions for taking certain units.
Do players have to exploit this? No.
But all it takes is a couple assholes in a meta to ruin it. Everyone else either stops showing up, loses every game, or becomes a min-maxer themselves.
>>44231578
Monte Cook's essay is stupid on several levels. For example, he makes a parallel with Magic the Gathering with zero understanding of the psychographic profiles of the players he quotes.
I dont mind someone building their character to be a murder bot as we go.
What I fucking hate are people who build a character or use an internet build/one they made for another game without knowing what my game entails.
Fuck anyone who plans out their character from buck ass baby nude to being 1000 years old when you have not played a single session of the campaign. Having direction is fine, making choices that make sense is fine.
Telling me at session 1 you are taking x levels of this, then x levels of that or all your xp is going into these 4 skills because you can do x with them tells me you are not interested in my game, you just wanted to show up to masturbate to your character concept.
>>44225443
>min-maxing is a problem with the system, rather than a problem with the player
Game systems are not, as a rule, loud, ignorant, arrogant faggots who should have been put down at birth.
The same cannot be said of people.
>>44228520
I now want bizarro fighter as class.
>>44236766
>System has some options being clearly better than others
>It's player's fault to choose them
No, it's the systems for not having equally powerful options instead of making some better than the others
If the system is "minmaxeable" then it's a shitty system
>>44225443
people have issues differentiating between minmaxing and just number crunching. minmaxing is when even roleplay can be solved by a minmax'd build. When all aspects of a game become subject to a finite solution then yes that is a systematic problem. Most people just use minmax to refer to retards who play a game with no roleplay and all stat abuse, as if there's any game in it. It's not only not a game at that point it's also still not an accomplishment. It's a weird compromise of ego boosting that ironically puts excessive time and effort into a system incapable of making consistant returns in terms of the illsuion/sensation of accomplishment and conquest that is the sole motivating factor when you remove actual immsersion. They're the kind of people who would by all rights be better off applying themselves to business practice if they weren't so crippling afraid of being failures. At which point their reflex is to take refuge in failure to avoid the responsibility/expectation of success.
>>44225603
Congrats this is 4chan's most underrated post.
>>44236766
>Game systems are not, as a rule, loud, ignorant, arrogant faggots who should have been put down at birth.
Not literally, but figuratively, some absolutely are
>>44226788
>Most people enjoyed Oblivion without ever using the chameleon exploit
Umm...
...Chameleon explpit?
>>44239227
In vanilla, you can make chameleon enchanted armor that makes you impossible to spot by anyone in the game that is not scripted to or you are initiating interaction with.
Really useful if you want to explore dungeons or like to kinda phone it in while playing.
>>44233042
in w40k, people are terrified of losing power, either through rule or codex changes or comparatively by the introduction of other more power codices or special units such as Forgeworld.
The composition of your army makes or breaks the game. Power gaming, in a sense, IS the game.
>>44225910
No, it didn't undervalue it. It put the exact proper value on it. Arrays aren't meant to be the end-all, be all. You have to keep that shit IN THEME.
The book expounds on that. Repeatedly. It's up to you to set proper themes, and stick to them. It's not an invitation to have it all.
The simplest way to normally keep things from becoming a problem is this one, simple question.
"Would you like to read/watch a comicbook/cartoon about this character?"
If the answer is no, you dun fucked up.
>>44225443
Because sometimes, it really, really is the system's fault.
Take Exalted, any edition. 1e through 3e.
All of them use a separate set of resources when building the character from character advancement, later. Build points in CG, progressive XP costs later.
The problem is, this makes it very, very easy to be out a solid 100XP or so, if you build your character 'wrong' compared to someone that did it 'right'.
And thanks to the devs being screaming fuckfaces, this is still a thing in the newest edition.
If I'm playing Exalted, I'm -going- to be forced to min-max, because it rankles like a motherfucker to be punished by such a stupid fucking system.
>>44240347
But WH40k is a wargame, not an RPG. Isn't playing to win expected in pretty much any wargame that isn't Brickwars?
>>44238149
Actually very accurate description of PF imho.
>>44239227
Invisibility made you 100% undetectable, but went away when you attacked. Chameleon made you x% undetectable (so enemies had, say, a 20% chance to not notice you) but didn't drop when you attacked. It was possible to enchant armor to give you +100% Chameleon, making you completely undetectable all the time.
To reinforce the other anon's point, 100% Chameleon armor is something the vast majority of players aren't going to run to in the course of natural play, they have to actively try to do it. Compared to, for example, the fact that light armor is better than heavy in literally every way in Skyrim is something only a small subset of players WON'T run into. Any system can be broken if you apply enough effort to it, but if you can break it through natural play (a la a druid taking a bear for an animal companion) then it isn't a very good system.
>>44241650
Some people expect it to be a challenge, not simply spending money in the "right army". The drive to win exacerbates it, but the true objective is the short term bottom line.
>>44241777
>Any system can be broken if you apply enough effort to it
Not true, you can easily build a system that can't be broken, it's just fairly difficult to do that and make it as open as people like RPGs to be.
It also gets harder the more rules you have and the more they interact with each other.
>>44241755
PF is just an annoying, moderately pretentious copycat who can still be a decent buddy if you can put up with his bullshit. Only the likes of FATAL are truly insufferably overblown, stubborn, and obtuse broken condoms.
>>44225443
If the fluff and crunch of the character don't go hand in hand, if I have to compromise effective character strength for a character concept, then you fucking bet I'm going to dump the concept to the wayside. Being forced to choose between one and the other makes the system bad, because the alternative is putting more work on the GM to accommodate my character, and putting more work on me to try and join devotion to concept with the fact that my character has to mechanically live up to the concept.
>>44241779
Oh, I get it. I was thinking in terms of costing, not pricing.
>>44225443
Trying to optimize your character is a problem inherent to a system, in that the system is designed around the sub-game of optimizing your character. In systems that pit the avatar strength of characters based on their optimization level against the avatar strength of monsters controlled by the DM, it is *necessary* to optimize to some degree in order to survive the challenge, and there is *necessarily* a power gap between optimized and non-optimized characters. This creates an imbalance between "poorly made" characters (which may be perfectly fine in terms of roleplaying characterization, but have badly planned numbers/stats) and the so-called "min-maxed" characters.
In a system where all characters are intentionally balanced to be equal, or at least never redundant in problem solving, min-maxing doesn't come up. But then people whine because it feels "too samey" because all the time they spent on their "build" gives them no advantage.
>>44241755
>PF
>Not the game that Wizard's pitched by saying that everyone that liked Planescape is stupid
I gotta be honest it's not anything with the actual game that turned me off it, it was how Wizards went about building their hype for it, it's one thing to talk up your new game but to actively insult long time players is something I'd expect form 4chan not an actual buisness
>>44241858
Let's just say that since Warhammer 40k's 4th edition, I have not bought a single model. I just skim the new codexes and compare the new units' mechanics to the old. Shit tier units brought to godhood level as the mini was also redesigned.
Time after time.
>>44242004
Seriously, PF got me riled up when they purposefully avoided correcting the whole "Pounce" mess and insulted their own players when criticized.
I am not aware of WotC's poor marketing choices with 4th Ed. I kinda liked it (especially the healing surge mechanic) up until they changed their character creator program for that online program. Something about the developers bailing. That, combined with VERY poor testplay, 99+ expansion books and its hybridization with essentials killed what remained of my interest.
>>44242004
Company advertises for new thing by claiming it's superior to old thing.
News at fucking 11, I think you discovered something legitimately new and unique. Do you want your parade as soon as possible or do you want the customized floats?
>>44232176
Pretty sure the writers didn't even understand the system half the time. There was a bit in the (iirc) DM's Guide that talked about how to make prestige classes - the example it gave was an "Undead Hunter", which was based off the Ranger, but with the Rogue's weapon proficiencies. Which is fine and dandy, except for the fact that most of the Rogue's weapons dealt piercing damage, which Undead were resistant to.
>>44242004
4e marketing showed mostly that 3.5 players fans have a very thin skin.
People got offended for the smallest things.
Remember 4e launch slogan: Ze game will stay ze same.
>>44227747
>You need both to make a problem senpai.
You only need an easily breakable system to break it, with or without a minmaxer in the game.
I.e. if you have a druid and a fighter in the party, both newbie players, the fighter is very easily outclassed. Having a minmaxer druid only makes it worse, but the problem is already there.
On the other hand, in a less breakable system, minmaxer will have less gains and will be easier to fix.
>>44225443
There's rational people who see table top games as a collaborative effort for fun. And then there's D&D players.
>>44242062
>Seriously, PF got me riled up when they purposefully avoided correcting the whole "Pounce" mess and insulted their own players when criticized.
What was the mess and what did they do about it?
>>44232176
This is straight up evil
>>44242844
People like to be relevant and bring something they can only add to the group, no matter how much "collaborative" you mind is settled for.
>>44243001
I guess is unfair that martials can get access to pounce at low levels, PF fixed that by only giving you pounce at so high levels the game already ended months ago.
People don't like to believe this, but PF is actually even worse than 3.5, is more casters supremacy and more fuck you martials disguised as the system that fixed 3.5, if I have to choose one for some reasons, I'd choose 3.5.
>I can't enjoy a game in which I'm not relevant
Yeah, fuck minmaxing, any kind of minmaxing, the monk dude wants to be better than the druid at something? fuck him, the class is intended to be a trap option, so no optimization for him to be good at punching stuff.
>>44243232
Well... yes.
Do *you* enjoy games where you're irrelevant?
>>44225443
Speaking not to my idea of popular opinion, but my own perception... I think the fundamental problems with very unbalanced systems are the mixed group and the... disingenuity of having to hold back. The mixed group bit has been gone into well before, it thrashes balance. Having to hold back... well, we all know part of the fun in these games is trying to build a powerful character. Even if you're working with a weak concept, [i]trying[/i] to become more powerful helps immersion. When some concepts are easily optimized or have tools that are too incredible to ignore, you start to wind up with the dilemma of "I can't really play this class/concept unless I bullshit myself away from the really effective stuff". This is silly and unfun, not to mention frustrating when you refrain from, say, Polymorphing, then get chewed up by an encounter, balanced for that lower-op environment, that you could roll over if you weren't trying to be sane.
Basically, it creates all sorts of metagame problems on top of the obvious room for abuse.
>>44243255
Yes.
>>44225443
Wait, why is min-maxing a bad thi... OH, you mean munchkins!
Yeah, it is a player problem.
>>44243292
Munchkins are cheaters, I think you meant powergamers.
>>44243280
But why? What's the point of playing if your character doesn't even matter in the context of the game? You might as well just be watching other people play.
>>44232176
>Monk is a good class
>Monk
>good class
I... I think I need a brain doctor
>>44243308
>Doesn't enjoy watching other people play
See, that's the problem with you, spotlight stealers, you want to do everything.
>>44243309
keep reading, I promise you it'll hurt more
>>44243338
... but that's not what I said. When did 'relevant' mean 'best at everything'?
>>44243348
You are wanting to steal a role spotlight from a better class that can and should be doing everything.I am not the other guy and I am not entirely sure if he's sarcastic as I am.
>>44243369
you can't stop me
>>44243305
I'll take the bait, munchkins are slang for minmaxers, which powergame is also slang for.
>>44227198
>L;DR: "The player’s best defense in a game without in-game protections is to min-max their character."
How do I deal with players who try to milk in-game protections AND min-max?
>>44225443
Some systems require it, like Pathfinder. Absolutely ridiculous.
>Be barbarian
>Want to be big, menacing and a killing machine
>Pick extra rage, power attack and cleave
>Put my best stat into Str, then Con then Cha
>GM "Huur durr minmaxing!"
>Druid picks bear, then natural spell then turns into bear with wildshape
>Puts best stats into mental stats because wildshape overwrites his physical stats
>GM "Well done, very fitting"
Every.fucking.time.
>>44243517
Munchkins are people who cheat the rules in their favour. Minmaxers and powergamers simply exploit the rules in their favour.
>>44244939
Minmaxers are less aweful than powergamers though, you can see people minmax a monk for example, and that's fine, powergamers will never play a monk.
Some people like to call the less awful minmaxers, optimizers.
>>44225443
A bunch of systems being broken does not excuse any particular system from being critized for it.
>>44245012
Teminology is somewhat variable.
Munchkin has a negative connotation and means something on the lines of someone doing dubious shit for power (in RPG terms).
Minmaxing is the act of maximising particular abilities or functions of a character at the expenses of other areas. It's seen as bad as it creates unbalanced characters, where they can only function appreciably in one area of the game, and poorly elsewhere.
Optimising is simply making a character concept to the best of its ability. It's very similar to minmaxing, but it can take this approach to any concept, even if it's a suboptimal concept to begin with.
Powergamers will choose what they perceive to be the strongest concept, then try to choose the best options for it. This may involve minmaxing their choice, but they'll not choose a suboptimal concept, just something that gets the biggest numbers out or shuts down the enemies the best.
>>44244200
Sounds like your DM is a fucking moron.
>>44245464
Sounds like his DM is the average D&D DM
>>44231617
Ivory Tower game design is retarded on a lot of levels because rewarding system mastery to that extent makes you teammates feel shitty and useless. If we were talking about chess then yeah the more skilled player should be better, but in a COOPERATIVE game it's pointlessly elitist
>>44242004
Clearly you don't play MtG
>>44225443
It's both
>>44243001
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page=177?Ask-James-Jacobs-ALL-your-Questions-Here#8808
> James Jacobs Creative Director
> That's why we have GMs. So they can make those tough decisions for us.
> Pounce works best as a monster ability, to help monsters stay "caught up" to the PCs.
> Not all abilities should be farmed out to anyone and eveyone.
