I'll pick my class, gender and race based mainly on lore but also on server/guild/friends. Once that is done, I'll generally min/max that character from there. Yeah, there might be better races to play, but whatever...
Probably will not be as big an issue in Pantheon, but in other games where weapon sets don't matter as much, I'll actually use whatever looks the best and piques my interest the most. For example, with my Rogues I'll usually use the sword/dagger set (because Gray Mouser).
Hopefully the "Perception System" and "Horizontal Leveling" will play a big role on character delevopment. I hope these systems outweighs the thought of have one piece of particular gear; or "must have" character class/race combos.
If I want to create Archai Water Monk, the challange should be seeking out the mysteries in the world. Finding that rare skill that make your character unique is what I am expecting. Your character Tactics should outweigh stats.
Naunet said:Aesthetic and RP potential always, always trump "min-maxing" for me.
However, if racial differences are so great that certain race/class combos are squeezed out of group spots, that's a quick way to get me to stop playing entirely.
This. I don't agree with Naunet 100% of the time but this is spot on. Racial features shouldn't have an effect on one's ability to find a group. I think though the niche nature and general style of game that Pantheon is claiming it is will prevent much of this. And one of the reasons I am looking forward to this game.
alephen said:The point is that *I* care. At work, some might think, 'so what if I take a nap on the toilet, Tim is a nice guy, he wont complain about having to answer my phone calls as well as his own.' I do not. Teamwork breaks down when some in the team do not work.
I do not care how good someone is at the game. Some of the best memories I have had were caused by accidents, like having an entire group accidently ported out of a raid. I never had one ounce of hesitation grouping with that person. They (I am being purposefully vague) were a great person, worked to become a very good player and made a mistake. NO WORRIES! But if you show up to raid and AFK and come back when it is time to roll for loot... People that are purposefully choosing their own 'fun' over helping their team, yeah, I do have a problem being that guy.
If I roll a DPS specced healer that can neither heal worth a crap nor do enough dps to make a difference and expect to be in a raid, I am a selfish jerk. I simply do not wish to be a selfish jerk.
Even if there were no limits on raids, I would not want that guy because it causes bad community. The raid leader says, well Sir Brainiac is going to be lower in the loot order because they are a crap race/class combo? I do not want a raid leader deciding on who is priority since that breeds resentment as to if something is fair. Mains over alts is fine and non-discriminatory. 'Prioritized mains over lower order mains' often becomes 'raid leaders friends over everyone else.'
If someone wants to play a race/class that they like but is crap, great. Go for it. More power to you. In Vanguard I had max toons of almost every class, many were poor combinations so I could play starting areas or for RP reasons. I agree it was often fun. I did not raid with these toons.
Playing a DPS healer isn't the same as playing a Wood Elf Rogue. Not by a long shot. I wouldn't want that to happen either. A DPS class playing a race with fewer starting stats than that of another race will still do DPS, just less than the other race. This is until gear allows everyone to cap stats. They aren't lazy, they aren't afk, hell from another thread on the forums people don't even want stats to be explained and if that was the case they wouldn't even know at the time of making a character that they choose a poor combo, not until it was too late.
In EQ we never excluded someone because of their race. They just didn't get first crack at gear until everyone started hitting the soft cap on stats at which point it no longer mattered.
Yes some guilds played favorites, that an issue with the guild. The raiding guild I was in didn't run DKP. We talked about it but it was decided we would stick to loot council. We very rarely had any issues with it. This is turning into a discussion on loot but that sentence sort of bothered me because we spent a ton of time in my guild ensuring that didn't happen. The loot council consisted of 1 person of each class plus a random, non officer, member of the guild. Transparency ensured what you're saying never happened.
I'm kind of split on this. On the one hand, it is very important to me to play the race that I like best stylistically for a given class, but I do also want my character to be as strong as it can be. My hope is that stats and their effects will be varied enough that no one race is objectively the best for any one class. For instance, if a Halfling Warrior has lower strength than an Ogre, but higher agility, I would be perfectly happy playing a Halfling, provided agility had some benefit to the Warrior class and wasn't just a throw away stat. My hope is that stats (and racial abilities) will work this way, so that different races will bring different strengths to the table for a given class, but still be more or less equally viable.
Wobels said: Ill Min max everything. From the race i pick to the class to attributes or skills or what ever we get. Im a perfectionist when i make stuff and lets face it number 2 is first place loser.
But if your playing a social MMORPG, wouldn't perfection be not min/maxing?
What if you role playing a character that was not perfect? Could you imagine a story about a perfect person, it would be boring. No one could releate because there isn't a perfect person.
How would you ever become the #1 wood elf tank if never decided to try to over come the obsticles.
If you pick the absolute best race/class combo don't you automatically rule yourself out at being #1 because you took the easy way out?
Playing what I like is more important to me then Min-Maxing.
Why? Simple! if all I focus on is Min-Maxing then I'll be inadvertantly sucking the enjoyment outta the game for myself as all I'm caring about is numbers instead of my own enjoyment. You can find many other MMOs that have suffered the same issue of their players focusing so much on Min-Maxing that they are now prone to unfriendly behavior due to their frustrations on focusing so many years on numbers instead of enjoyment.
So, yeah. MinMaxing is a no for me dawg.
But Playing what I like? That's a yes for me, dawg.
EppE said:Playing a DPS healer isn't the same as playing a Wood Elf Rogue. Not by a long shot. I wouldn't want that to happen either. A DPS class playing a race with fewer starting stats than that of another race will still do DPS, just less than the other race. This is until gear allows everyone to cap stats. They aren't lazy, they aren't afk, hell from another thread on the forums people don't even want stats to be explained and if that was the case they wouldn't even know at the time of making a character that they choose a poor combo, not until it was too late.
In EQ we never excluded someone because of their race. They just didn't get first crack at gear until everyone started hitting the soft cap on stats at which point it no longer mattered.
Yes some guilds played favorites, that an issue with the guild. The raiding guild I was in didn't run DKP. We talked about it but it was decided we would stick to loot council. We very rarely had any issues with it. This is turning into a discussion on loot but that sentence sort of bothered me because we spent a ton of time in my guild ensuring that didn't happen. The loot council consisted of 1 person of each class plus a random, non officer, member of the guild. Transparency ensured what you're saying never happened.
I was using hyperbole to make a point. If one class/race combo is VERY slightly lower producing (in whatever you are getting from that toon) then it may well not be noticeable. If it is 5% as the original poster mentioned it will be noticed. If everyone picks 5% lower it will take significantly longer to take raids.
Again, I am giving MY reason for max/min. That it is not about being 'leet.' It is about not wanting other people to have to make up for my 5% because I thought 'wouldn't it be funny to make this gimp combo.' I have stories for my toons, and general personalities. I keep the role play out of raids because while I liked the idea of having a goblin named Krutch who became a Necro and murdered and rezzed as undead slaves the people who tortured and mocked him for his needing help walking due to a disability. I don't think it is fair for me to say 'it is going to take me an extra 20 minutes to get to the raid because this toon has a leg deformity. I simply gave his minions traditional goblin names and then dropped meat and summoned my orb and more dots! (Yes. Vanguard Necro)
I get things like halfling guilds, and if people wanted to put one together, I might make a sucky combo for it. But in this case, even if a halfling sorcerer did 20% less damage than an elven sorcerer, an elf would not be available for the guild. That halfling Sorcerer would likely add something, like counterspelling, that would be a great boon to the guild that would make up for the lower dps of, say, adding a 5th halfling rogue.
The point is not that guilds play favorites on loot, it is that if you have a subjective method for distribution it is almost impossible to avoid at least the appearance of playing favorites. I do not want this because of the drama that disrupts gameplay not for fear of not getting loot, btw.
edit: Another thing to mention: this game is expected to be difficult. 5% less means at least 5% longer to level for the entire group. If leveling takes 6 months at 20 hours a week, as some have suggested before. That 5% translates to over an additional week of leveling. Also regarding difficulty, if a group of decent players with those 5% players can barely complete a task, kill a boss, complete a timed quest, etc those tasks will be trivial for max/min group of good players. If this game is actually difficult for the very good players, it may be mathematically impossible for a -5% group.
I respect that some people want to min/max. I agree with the idea of paying attention to the details as well, but... my issue is having all that data "handed" to the player without any effort on their part. If people want exact formulas to the systems, they need to parse it themselves. This is a game where "everything" is about putting in the time to earn something, this should be no different, no easy hand outs, no freebies... if you want the details, start logging everything, start parsing combat, and collect all that data to analyze to find out the details. We did that in EQ, just like we did a lot of things that are "hand outs" today in mainstream MMOs. This is no different. You want it, you go get it.
Well coming from the old time gaming. Statistics that deal directly with your character and your perfromance should be known to a degree. I mean the character you created may only be minutes old in RL but the theory is the toon has been living in that world. So, being a 1st level paladin whose been living in this world and training I may or may not know the exact scores but I would know what improves my performance and what doesn't. So I might not know increasing my strength to 18 gives me a +4 to damage, but I would certainly know it does have an increasing affect.
But since the character template will have numerical scores assigned to each stat and in all probablity you will be able to manipulate those stats to some degree I see no issue or freebie to letting people know what they're doing to their character. That's been around since long before EQ was even a notion.
Sure people will eventually parse things out. In EQ there really weren't that many gimped character race/class combinations post lvl 75, but yeah the gnome rogue thing was a big deal early on. That said, I also played WoW and when I played initially I chose Troll for my warrior (in the hopes regen would actually be useful - it wasn't remotely.) The problem was that Cows got such a huge HP boost and none of the other tank races (at least on the Horde side) had anything comparable imo. Sort of like EQ's frontal stun immunity for ogres. That really mattered until frontal stun immunity was turned into an AA (at which point there wasn't any point in the racial since you could get it simply anyway.)
For me though, this time around I'm explicitly not going to choose a class/race combo that I feel are gimped in a bad way (or have less than useful racial traits comparatively speaking.) Static +x stuff won't matter eventually. But specific things like frontal stun immunity or +x% HP etc will really matter to some classes. This really depends on what they end up looking like.
Thecklos/Celegrom
alephen said:
It sounds like you would prefer to play on a RP server. None of the things you listed have anything to do with min maxing except the maindhand weapon dps things and the guild or group not inviting you because you arent up to par.
For the weapon issue... you may not care about how well your weapon performs, but I'm sure there are players out there that do. The reasons weapons have evolved is because people strive to make stronger, deadlier weapons. Is this not similar to min maxing.
As for a group not wanting you because you lack xxxx stat. Why is this an issue? You expect to be considered for every group you want to join? What would acceptable reasons be for you if a group decides to turn you down? At least they are giving you a reason.
Also. Most people who min max do so for raiding. And very rarely care who joins their groups. If you attempt to join a raid you arent prepared for. That's a you thing not a them thing.
To clarify - when I say I min/max now, I'm not saying that I try to edge out every mathematical advantage (just the obvious ones), to use EQ1 as an example, the Ogre warrior was VASTLY superior to say the Dark Elf warrior until lvl 70 or so due to base starting stats, and even after that, being immune to stuns was still superior until AAs leveled the playing field. And this is where the min/maxing that I'm referring to comes into play.... while the Dark Elf had to spend 6 AA points to get the ability to bash without a shiled and another 6 AA points to be immune to stun, the Ogre could spend those 12 points on something else like regeneration. Not a huge deal, but still a significant difference considering it took about 5 years to get to that point. When I say I plan on min/maxing, I should say that I'm not playing the race/class combo that has to work extra hard to be as efficient as another race out of the gate... again. Some people enjoy that challenge and I can appreciate that; I'm not one of those people any more. Given a choice in EQ1, people would choose an Ogre warrior as their tank over any other tank until many expansions later forcing the other races to struggle just to still be second pick (regardless of skill).
@Porygon - I'm not min/maxing to raid, I'm min/maxing to not be excluded from exp groups. I promise you there will be elitists (possibly even entire elitist guilds) that won't accept certain race/class combos into the groups/guilds. Maybe not in the first few months, but within the first year I'm guessing (there are too many modern MMO players to avoid this). There will be "progression" guilds that force their members to be certain levels by certain deadlines and have specific stats/gear before certain events - I won't have anything to do with them (intentionally), but they will exist and likely have SOME kind of influence on the community.
@Darch
I think that's an important point as far as exclusion goes. I don't remember a time where someone was ever denied a spot in a group based on their race/class combo. Raids were different, but groups it really didn't matter.
Min/max isn't just race combo's imo. For example if 1 strength will make my attacks hit 1% harder but dex increases crit chance by .5% I'm able to decide on what item is better for my character. I have a weapon with 5Str and a new weapon with 2Dex and 2Str drops I'll be able to figure out how much an improvement, if any, my character will get. This gives the player information to make informed decisions. Further more when making a character, if we are going to have the ability to allocate stats, I should know what those stats do. If CHA increases the Bard/Enchanter ability to not have a Mez resisted that should be noted at character creation. If stamina directly affects my health pool, agility armor class, I should know. I should know by how much so that I can make an informed decision. Not knowing your stats does not, in my opinion, add to the discovery of any game. It often just frustrates the player. Again look at any comtemporary game where stats are hidden or misrepresented and you'll see a community demanding clarity.
Porygon said:alephen said:It sounds like you would prefer to play on a RP server. None of the things you listed have anything to do with min maxing except the maindhand weapon dps things and the guild or group not inviting you because you arent up to par.
For the weapon issue... you may not care about how well your weapon performs, but I'm sure there are players out there that do. The reasons weapons have evolved is because people strive to make stronger, deadlier weapons. Is this not similar to min maxing.
As for a group not wanting you because you lack xxxx stat. Why is this an issue? You expect to be considered for every group you want to join? What would acceptable reasons be for you if a group decides to turn you down? At least they are giving you a reason.
Also. Most people who min max do so for raiding. And very rarely care who joins their groups. If you attempt to join a raid you arent prepared for. That's a you thing not a them thing.
Think you got the wrong guy. Either that or you completely misread my post.
I do not raid on non-min/max toons except under VERY specific circumstances.