There's a stigma on optimization in RPGs that come from tabletop but really doesn't make any sense when it comes to videogames. If you're playing tabletop with 4 people and your character is abusing some broken synergy while the other players aren't, let's say you're solving 75% of the problems (combat, skills, roleplay encounters, etc) without help, that can be bad because you're monopolizing the experience. Now in a single player video game it's the complete opposite, a big pull of the experience is solving it's mechanical complexity and your npc companions are taking no pleasure in solving anything because they're not a person, you're the only one getting something out of it.
for videogames the stigma is (or at least should be) on the developer's side, in the sense of creating enough mechanical complexity for a big range of players. some "roleplaying" games don't do that so well...
I get why someone would make the argument because, personally, once I'm min-maxing, I am utterly, terminally bored with a game - once I've "solved" it, I don't want to play it anymore, and it's much more fun to just go with the flow and feel things out. But that said, I think the real crux of why that article is misguided is that you're just never going to talk someone out of the way they like to enjoy games.
but it also works the other way round. In a single player experience there is no one else to compare yourself to, so you're not feeling bad if you're "underperforming theoretically", as long as you're still overcoming challenges. Your build doesn't need to be minmaxed, it only needs to be average. You're not missing more powerful builds when you don't know they're possible. (unless you watched other players on stream or sth)
Exactly! In a tabletop game, your character weaknesses can become RP strengths: the Barbarian is a lovable idiot, the Wizard is so absent-minded she wouldn't even notice if it's night outside, all these little hooks and idiosyncrasies that can make a character fun to play and interact with while at the same time making a powerful TEAM. And if you run into bad luck or have a frustrating session, the DM can fudge some rolls or alter the encounter to keep the players engaged and having fun. Not so in a video game RPG. The computer doesn't care about your simple country charm, it only cares that you have a -1 to INT. The computer doesn't care if your adorably clumsy, it only sees your poor AC and Initiative. The computer won't allow you to add the "Low-Cut Blouse" bonus to your Persuasion, only an unskilled stat roll. The computer only cares about numbers: if they're big, you win. Optimization doesn't deny yourself a quirky and fun character: it empowers you to meet the computer on it's own level.
The only thing is you might be taking your own enjoyment of an otherwise difficult game by using an exploit or abusing a strategy to get past the "intended design". But that's where it wraps around to the TTRPG influence, getting around the intended design makes the experience far more interesting for the party, DM and player by bypassing the "plan".
Joshua Sawyer is my favourite professional Hitman 3 streamer (I heard he was the first person to ever beat Hitman 3), but I have no idea how it translates into knowledge on RPGs.
Within me there are two wolves. One says, "Just play the game, relax, and have fun," and the other says, "Min max and be the most optimal build possible." Both wolves are correct. They're friends, actually.
Yea its always a false dichotomy, the ideal system integrates the two so that good optimization's elevates the roleplay beyond banging two dolls together.
So min-maxers don't play video games to have fun and/or relax? Why are these two exclusive to each other? How do you think min/maxers specifically play the game? Do you honestly genuinely think they don't have fun?
@@GusJenkinsElite No they don't. Being a smelly number nerd makes it so you wont enjoy shit. You think you do, but you don't. Stop being a smelly dirty wannabe tryhard in a video game
I think key thing to take away is that, whenever you play a game like BG3, or DnD in general that has dicerolls, people are naturally going to want to increase their chances of success as much as possible. We don't specifically "powergame" at our table in-so-far as we don't have 6 different multiclass characters who are only dipping into classes to minmax feats, but we do try and specialise our characters so that everyone in the party brings something they're *really* good at, so that everyone can everyone's character really gets their time to shine.
The problem is "min-maxing" is rarely properly defined. Some people consider making a character with 7 INT "min-maxing", others think it means making some munchkin hybrid monstrosity with seven different class dips.
I find Josh to be a remarkably interesting person. As someone who is fond of many games he's worked on its really cool to hear his thoughts on these things. I even showed his talk about managing small remote teams to my boss and we've learned/used some of it in our own (non game dev) work
It's all good as long as you don't turn into that guy from Eminem's Stan. And yes - Josh is pleasant to listen to. There's a handful of people on RU-vid I like having on in the background and he is one of them. Alanah Pearce being another. A lot of it has to do with neither being typical "RU-vidrs". Alanah's sponsorships aside - their style is very early-RU-vid. Not really any fancy editing, transition effects, screaming at the camera, etc.
I think you really nailed the reasons why people powergame and why it's not always a blind focus on winning. Even video games that do allow you to fail forward like XCOM are still unforgiving enough that optimal play is still heavily encouraged.
XCOM is a death spiral game, it's most certainly not a "fail forward" game. If your captain gets shot to pieces by a muton you weren't aware was just around the corner, you get fuck all in compensation for that veteran trooper's death. If too many veteran troopers get murked, you'll fall farther and farther being as the force multiplier advances with the in-game weeks and months and eventually be unable to succeed at critical missions. It's why XCOM is widely known to be immensely challenging in the first two or three in-game months and then becomes progressively easier and easier and you're basically curbstomping the aliens by the end.
I think that’s why I loved Shadowrun so much, because as a system and concept, your characters are literal min-maxers weeded out and literally better than common people. It helps its just an aspect of an interesting setting/system.
Ya like, being a chaotic neutral? I always struggled with this concept of a dumb jocky action hero with a middle class, mundane, "everyman" background? When i think of battle and warriors i think roles, and specialties. I dont wanna see an every day hero, like John Mcclane? Theyre boring. I wanna see the neutral chaos of a min maxer elite true master in their field, KEEPING IT INTERESTING. I liked that you dropped SHadowrun cuz it was always about elite techies and people who just werent normal in any way. And i loved it. Like Snake Plissken or something, Hitori Hanzo, Kill Bill ladies, The Desert Fox, or Jackie Chan. Luminaries with tons of background doing very technical war stuff. Growing up we were taught to respect a true master the utmost because; the speciality cannot be taught. It must be earned through experience. I never wanted to worship everymans, john mcclane or john connors, im looking for people with min max throughput; like: Sarah Connor, Bruce Lee, Ripley, Einstein, Tom Brown, Usain Bolt, Sherlock. Both the snakes. All the snakes. I dont want to hear about Dr wilson, i wanna hear about dr house. He was the one slaying the big demons, Like Gut A hero should stand out in their field and now it seems like every day heroes are all we see, or marvel. Now should everyone be usain bolt? no. But its def more interesting
i loved your perspective here. i really hope you make more of this kind of content going forward. it’s fascinating to not just hear your opinions from a d&d perspective, but that of from a developer as well.
The first time I min-maxed my character was in Fallout: New Vegas. I had no idea that was even a strategy, I just wanted to make a character that was exaggeratedly strong but stupid. It made role playing easier when being convinced by Caesars Legion that I was doing the right thing. I also made a backstory where I had become a cannibal while being imprisoned by Tabitha. Eating tabitha was my real end game in that playthrough. What a game!
3.5 minmaxing left such a wound in our collective psyche that people associate any form of optimizing with the most joyless, flavorless, game breaking type of play. Like, 5e is good, but there's _really_ not a lot going on mechanically or customization wise. You get +4/+5 in your two main stats _so you can interact with the game on a basic level,_ and that's about it. There's flavorful RP options for every stat combo, and I'm sure Larian was especially diligent in making sure no character felt left out.
They even gave it a dumb fancy name: The Stormwind Fallacy The idea that mechanically strong characters are inherently worse narratively and vice versa.
Favorable stat spreads is the most superficial optimization, and there's a lot of wiggle room available in the 5e skeleton not merely from stacking numerical bonuses together for effect, but from making the right non-numerical progression picks that allow deterministically solving challenges and advancing the game state. For example, having Speak With Dead opens up a lot of content that you simply can't engage with otherwise, both in tabletop and it seems in this videogame.
@@StalinsGhostYeah, there are two easy ways to have Speak with Dead: there's an evil necromantic tome you can find that a character can read and with the right skill checks (and not just intelligence, I think wisdom and maybe constitution can also pass the checks?) and learn Speak With Dead from as a permanently prepared ritual cast without using up a spell, and even easier, there's an amulet that gives you Speak with Dead too. Very straightforward!
@@NephilmXthe game literally hands you a speak with dead amulet. Are you complaining that spellcasters are inherently stronger than martials? Welcome to DnD. Where every spellcaster will dominate creative problem solving in out of combat scenarios while every martial that’s not a rogue will just twiddle their thumbs.
Building correctly is part of the challenge for me. Regarding BG3 - being optimal on tactician is a given and part of the parcel; playing an unoptimazed mish-mash build on purpose is another layer of difficulty you can give yourself, when the game cannot meet your difficulty wishes. Playing in an unorthodox way usually involves a lot of cheesing, and is more about metagame mastery than anything else. Making unorthodox builds that may, or may not work is one of the most fun experiences you can get in an RPG imo. After I'm done with my staple tabletop Oathbreaker Fiend Warlock & Lore Bard GOO Warlock I'll move onto other, less optimal builds like heavy armor wearing great axe swinging bard.
I mean heck you can play a naked barbarian and make it work. Thats the fun of the game, coming up with builds and ideas and optimizing it to make it work.Thats why from software games are so beloved because people can try to beat the game in different styles and ways.
@@WusterWasti From software games are different though because you can dodge 100% of damage, this allows you to still be able to theoretically beat the game even if every enemy has 1,000,000 health and you do 1 damage per hit. With BG3 you cannot do that, there is some amount of damage which is just unavoidable and there are fights which can just be mathematically impossible to win because your stats and build are just too poor.
Yes but how likely is that? That is an extreme case that nobody will experience, so my take still stands. Also it was more about how you play the game build wise. Which weapons, spells and combat tactics you use that make every run special. Or the challenges you impose yourself. I mean BG3 is out for just some weeks now and we dont fully know how you can break every inch of the game even when speedrunners are already beating it in 11 minutes. I think that we will see many more strats on how you can beat seemingly impossible fights. Just like when there where challenge runs in Dark Souls that where deemed impossible. @@NihongoWakannai
I have never met a person who rolls a fresh game with unorthodox characters. They beat the game. Again and again and the unorthodox characters is how they mitigate their boredom by making the game seem fresh. The unorthodox stuff comes later.
Unless it has truly extraordinary levels of reactivity, I cannot imagine that the game is going to reward you with a better narrative experience or more interesting conversations for making a narratively coherent build, such as recognising you took a mechanically bad feat that happens to make sense narratively.. On the contrary, with class reactivity, unless you need to meet particularly level thresholds, you are probably going to be rewarded with the most content making some cheesy frankenstein build.
I agree that it terms of building your character, a video game is unlikely to reward sub optimal choices more in terms of narrative than it would more powerful ones. The article's message there would be more applicable in terms of narrative choices that are suboptimal in terms of accumulating raw character power but provide more interesting or challenging overall experience. That last point is also potentially applicable as a general reason to avoid minmaxing to some degree. Because in a game like BG3 that provides a ton of extra, less than obvious options for effective combat, building a character that can solve any challenge using only the most straightforward, number reliant once can hamper the experience.
To be fair, BG3 is so beloved out of the gate in large part for having extraordinary levels of reactivity. It's basically like as long as you are competent and/or creative in handling combat then almost any way you decide to build your character will offer you some kind of rewarding content.
Tbh because skill checks are more frequent than class checks you're rewarded with the most reactivity by being a drow bard and just having crazy good stats.
Interesting watch and interesting points. I am doing a replay of pillars 1 (I actually prefer it to deadfire) and man do I wish we could get a pillars 3. Damn it Josh make it happen somehow! :D Great to hear from you. Hope you enjoy BG3!
My major problem with POE is the way that the attributes operate. It's so counter-intuitive for Barbarians to be stacking intelligence or Clerics to be stacking Dexterity and it makes building a character feel odd.
@@Velot_ I agree but I adjusted fast. Its just different. To be fair might is an interesting stat as you could be a mighty powerful mage or a mighty barbarian :).....thats my way of looking at it but yes int I understand works differently but it is explained very well with the mouseover so I dont mind really. Odd though yes
Thanks for the upload. Always funny to see the time-honored tropes trotted out for BG3's release. It was just as fun to see online discussion that came about during the early resurgence of crit role/pillars 1, where a new generation came in contact with the genre space. And now it happens again
as a power gamer myself, picking odd-ball choices just makes me want to min-max even more haha. it increases the pressure on your character to be built well and I enjoy this pressure a lot.
The one thing I did find resonant in the PC Gamer article was the idea that if you have a tendency towards making characters who are kind of trash at the beginning of a game when it is supposed to be easy and are pretty good at the end when it is supposed to be harder then you might want to try making a straightforward character for a change; fair enough. I have definitely played my share of characters who just die immediately in the early game if I do something wrong, and it might be fun to just try being a big tough dumb fighter for once or something
Every class is incredibly weak at low level. Honestly I'm surprised hit points were not more balanced properly with level ups, you literally near double your hp in 2 levels but basic weapon attacks do not increase by much.
Senergy is fun. Making a build that mechanically "clicks" is fun as hell imo. The only caveat is that when it breaks the game (e.g. make it a walk in the park), it stops being fun imo (some people have fun that way, though, and I dont judge). I even feel like the ultimate goal of a gamedev should be to make the players feel like they are "almost cheating", but *without breaking the game*. Btw, someday I might try making something like that (maybe when I retire 😂)
even then 'find the synergy literally breaking the game, like you have to be careful about what you're doing or you'll crash the game' is why i still play binding of isaac to this day, so
@@Denny_Boi for me it's the opposite, if I stumble upon a broken combination I feel like I'm cheating myself out of the fun challenge of actually engaging with the game mechanics by winning too easily. If you like wiping combat encounters why not just play on the easiest difficulty?
Always nice to hear your opinion, Josh! Ultimately, people should just do whatever they want to have fun. If it's power gaming or going strictly with narrative choices, but not optimized, then just go for it. Who gives a shit?
@@fafanir82 His portfolio is awful. Not a single good game to his name. Pillars of eternity 1 and 2 are some of the dullest rpgs Ive ever played. And Ive played almost everything this side of 1995. Hes just bad at his job.
A lot of computer games don't make failing interesting enough and thus I understand optimization. In a tabletop game with a good dm this isn't the case and so I like min maxing semi good or even bad concepts, but min maxing something that is already strong, just to make it broken, would be something I would only consider in certain groups that are less roleplay focused or if everyone is power gaming. DnD 5e is too simple for extreme min maxing anyway unless you talk with the dm about what artifacts one could get.
I don't think it's that simple. Not in the least because of your added caveat of needing a good GM that runs their game in certain ways. But at the end of the day it also comes down to preference. Your fun is not someone elses fun. And this shows in how you describe your perception of min-maxing and powergaming aswell. The idea that it is necessarily about power or winning. The belief that if roleplay options were presented by your good GM they wouldn't want or need to do these things and could have fun the way you have fun. Fundamentally missing the point that, while you have great fun your way? Not everyone will enjoy that type of fun. There absolutely is a group of people who is drawn to what you describe. And obviously there are people who are drawn to a more roleplay oriented style, where "failing" still progresses the story in interesting ways. There are also going to be people who think both these groups are nuts and why are you wasting your time playing make-belief. Be it that they built their entire existence around productivity and disdain anything that does not directly contribute to that or simply because they have other interests. You pose an interesting premise "Minmaxing something that is already strong just to make it broken" -- wouldn't your "good GM" be able to present an equally strong counterbalance with ease if that were the primary concern? Let me shift that question into a different shape - is a chess player bad for chosing the optimal moves? Are they breaking the game? Because that is how some minmaxers approach the game, a complex game of chess. Where all the mechanics and class features etc are pieces they get to compile their side of the board with. Where you see someone trying to "break the balance", they see a puzzle to solve - an obstacle to overcome. Does having these disparate playstyles within the same group often lead to friction? Absolutely. But this is true for anything. When two or more people with different ideas and definitions of fun are forced to play with the same ball they will often both end up unhappy for it or worse. Let people have their own fun. You don't have to play with them or "teach them" your fun is superior.
Fully agree. I'm the type of player who will purposfully handicap myself or choose suboptimal abilities just so I can RP better. Could be fun with other gamers tho
@danjal87nl Can't say I agree with anything you said. I specifically said that I would consider doing so in specific groups and outside of those groups I wouldn't ! Simple as that. Tabletop is played as a group and if you want to play your super min maxed what ever and need to outshine everyone, thats your problem. Its not about YOUR fun and its not about me telling others what they can and can't do, but rather about the fun of the group. You think most would like that your char solves a disproportionately large amount of challenges, because you crunshed numbers ? Chess is a terrible analogy as its competitive, if that is how you approach a tabletop game, I don't envy anyone you play with.
Video games also put a much higher emphisis on combat. In tabletop if your character is only average to bad at combat you can still help the party in other ways, even if it is just coming up with creative solutions to problems. In a game a character that is bad in combat very easily becomes dead weight.
I didn't recognize your name at first but it sounded familiar and you've worked on games that got me into CRPGs (POE) so thanks for posting this and thanks for all you're work too.
First of all I just want to say. Holy crap man thanks for what you've done for the genre of ttrpgs that's awesome! Second I agree. I have been playing for a few years and I am not super great at coming up with character ideas off the start. I rarely go "OH I want to try this this and this and it doesn't matter what else is happening". Usually I find out what the story is about and what my fellow players are doing and from there I build something I think will be fun. There is no reason that your RP can not be supportive of your character that also fills your teams roles. I like to build my personality of how I would want to play a character with the tools I have. I was in a party with a satyr, dragonborn, and lion race (I forgot the name? Leon?). And I decided to make a human druid of the sheperd that "could not wildshape" and was in love with animals and people who resembled animals. It was a great time for the short time we played. Is it so bad to make your character fitted to your enviroment? Heck no!
I think what Larian has done with Baldur's Gate 3 that is so unique is that they DO incorporate 'fail forwarding' into the game! And strongly encourages finding alternative solutions to encounters. There are many dialogue checks where failing the check results in a richer story, additional story content, better results, or just a more fun situation. As a power gamer is very easy (in early access anyway) to make a super skilled party face and pass literally every check . . . I've done it. But you miss out on so much story, and you lose the fun of having to figure out solutions to encounters . . . its pretty boring actually. Its much more enjoyable to be good at some skills but weak at others . . . then every encounter you have to weigh your options and you will fail sometimes and experience unexpected adventure! Heck you even need to decide if you should be making dialogue checks in the first place or if there was a better check-free action you could have taken instead. The same holds true for combat . . . once you start combat you are pretty much compelled to 'win' the fight. But the majority of combat encounters in BG3 are optional (seriously 80% of combat encounters in EA can be avoided). And its really fun to find creative ways to either avoid combat entirely, or alter the encounter before starting combat so that you can have better odds. Many encounters have options to acquire allies, remove or incapacitate some enemies prior to combat, cause enemies to flip sides, etc. A power gaming team that is geared to optimizing killing everything can likely steamroll through encounters . . . but again I don't find that as much fun as accepting that my team might not be the strongest and figuring out creative solutions to get through things. The full respec option and ability to change game difficulty levels anytime encourages taking chances and not getting stressed out if your build doesn't measure up. I don't think Robin Valentine's PC Gamer article arguments were very well though out or written . . . but the basic thought of 'just enjoy the story' and don't stress about min/maxing is a good one.
It's not the first time an RPG reacts to player failure with interesting alternative reactivity. Disco Elysium did it, I think both Torment's did it. But yeah it's relatively rare and I hope if BG3 becomes a huge success that more RPG devs make the extra effort to focus on that aspect.
I don't really agree that BG3 has good interesting fail states. Sometimes I think they even actively want you to fail or randomly fail (outside of your control) because they think it makes it interesting (except said failiure isn't actually interesting). It's an idea they failed to execute on properly. I also really don't like randomly failing bigger things that are outside my control. I even think the very idea is flawed. "Failing should be fun". You're right there admitting that it's a "fail". If you want to make "failing" feel equally as viable/satisfying as a success, then you should not approach it as a "fail", nor frame it as one, during design. It's a flawed understanding of the actual "problem", which leads to an inherently flawed attempt at a solution.
@suplextrain sounds like you wouldn't like playing DND either. There is no bigger rolls or smaller rolls, it's all up to the same fate, and you get plenty of bonuses, especially with the inspiration system, if you let the roll be what it is instead of trying to "win" at everyone, when you actually want to get a good roll on something, you'll have inspiration gathered to roll again if you fail the first time.
@@artorhen The difference between a game and PnP is the human element of having a DM, things being more granular and most likely more tailored to the group. So "failing" in say your PnP group is not even remotely the same as "failing" in BG3. If in a game you frame something as success & fail, then obviously the prefered option is success. So by default you will not be happy with the fail. Even more so if it doesn't feel "fair" in that it was randomly given to you. This would just lead to people most likely just reloading. This is what I mean when I say it's a flawed idea from the beginning and results being too binary. To solve the problam Larian wants to solve, they would have to approach it from a different angle.
@@suplextrain I played the early access and it's not at all a regular game in the first place if your definition of a regular game is success=good, and fail=bad. It's literally Dnd as a videogame, with all of the dnd feel, and uses the exact same dice based system. And again, you get lots of inspiration from exploring based on your and other character's backgrounds, for example if you are a sage, you get inspiration from that when you find something magical and so do your companions that have the sage background, so you get multiple inspiration from just one thing that you can easily find of stumble upon in the game which you can use if you fail a roll to reroll. You also get a lot of bonuses from you proficiencies and should also have a system to switch characters so that you can roll with the optimisation of another character. So the game does nothing against the player. And an example of times where it's boring to succeed a roll would be intimidation, a lot of situations where an npc might provoke you or want to attack you, if you just intimidate a character, they don't fight you and that's it, but if you fail and fight them, you can convince them that you're badass by beating the leader up without fighting the whole crowd which sometimes gives you more dialogue, and companion comments. Sometimes an extra approval, or sometimes you get an approval regardless of whether you initially succeeded the first intimidation roll or if you just beat up the character and humiliated him afterwards or spared him or killed him. So you do sometimes get more choices if you are not always "winning" the first roll. A lot of the encounters are usually dependent on a sequence of rolls and dialogue choices and you can fail one and succeed at another, but it feels more fluid when you let it go than if you just try to succeed all of them when the outcome can still be in your favor regardless.
Good discussion. My hope is that the article will help people who feel like they're /trapped/ into min-maxing to feel more freedom to do what they want, even as you said knowing that an intelligence fighter will be working at a disadvantage, the game is still playable and fun and the path is possible if that's what you want to do. As someone who plays games much more for the story than for the combat, there are some games that I won't go near because it doesn't seem like I'll be able to make the character I want. This game has that freedom even if it is a challenge, so I hope that that message has been spread well enough.
Well put. I had to remind myself what min-maxing is. I haven't played an RPG since Wasteland 3. I maybe played 20 minutes of Icewind Dale. Absolutely zero time with BG1 or BG2. Bits of NWN2 and of course a good bit, in pieces, of the expansions. But almost no PoE, no Deadfire, and, ugh, no Pentiment yet. I have a major backlog issue and possibly even executive dysfunction when it comes to playing for longer than an hour. At the same time I'm glad i know what a powergamer is, what min-maxing is. There's powergaming in RTS somethin' fierce. But a comforting understanding of the spectrum of play styles from casual to hardcore. Your mic is cool and patting the kitty is also cool.
I think there's a difference between power gaming and optimising. Power gaming implies aiming for power as the priority; which tbh can be detrimental to a cohesive narrative character (though not always). Optimising, on the other hand, I feel simply means taking a path and trying to make it as good as you can. So you might optimise a dart throwing build, even though darts are never do as well as a longbow. This is about narrative character and making your concept play well mechanically. Both can be bad at a tabletop, it's all about communication and making sure the group is on the same page about what roles and power levels each characters is bringing. That might mean one character is powerful in combat and another is great at skills or social interactions. So long as the group is ok with it that's not an issue. But the group might want to be more balanced and then its up to everyone to communicate what they want and what's fun for them. Sometimes that means some people don't play together and that's totally OK. In solo digital gaming, I don't think it's an issue tbh. If you want to play a nonsense munchkin build that monsters combat but fails hilariously in social interaction, so what? It's only you playing, you're not harming anyone's experience.
I engage in almost exclusively top-down design when rolling a character. I tend to find a mechanical interaction that I think is interesting/powerful and then flesh out a character that fits that interaction. Feels like a lot of people think if you optimize your character his name is Vanilla McWhiteBread when in reality coming up with a fiction that matches a chassis can be very fun and rewarding.
In video games it makes zero sense to be against optimization. Play how you want. However on the table top as someone who optimized their character, it does get boring if you're always using the most OP combo of your powers. I often find myself choosing suboptimal abilities or doing a suboptimal thing in combat because it helps me RP plus it helps other people have fun
Agreed. The "crit/hit/graze/miss" and "armor class vs. weapon/spell penetration" mechanics are hands down my favorite of any game I've played. Makes D&Ds basic "armor class=hit chance" mechanic feel really boring whenever I go back to it.
@@thewardenduncan DnD is a much, much worse and dumbed down system...Now, granted, i would not want to figure out all those calculations in a sit down game, but Pillars leveraged computing power in exactly the best way.
I think part of it is that a video game like BG3 doesn’t just have rules and a game system but an actual engine and code that you can’t deviate from. If you want to play as a ‘wizard with a bow’ like you give in your example, in BG3 you’ll just be a bad (or at best mediocre) wizard/archer, if you’re sitting down and playing 5e or some other system the DM/GM can work with the player and sort of ‘bend’ the rules. Maybe they’ll allow the player to have proficiency with bows when they shouldn’t, either for free since it seems like a relatively minor concession, or maybe at the cost of some other proficiency. The GM might allow the player to create a custom spell or two (as long as it stays balanced), or take a spell like Swift Quiver which shouldn’t be allowed to a wizard normally, or even they could just ‘reskin’ normal spells like Magic Missile to be shot as sort of arcane arrows, etc.
Josh, I'd love if you could talk about your experiences as a game designer, and how you got to where you are today. Game design as a career is something I've considered for a long time but never really took myself seriously about it. I'm sure there are others who would be interested in hearing your perspective on the career!
So my problem with all of this is that if I power-game, games tend to become trivially easy. The supposed solution to this is to set a higher difficulty level, but I very much dislike how this is implemented in the vast majority of games. If I have a plate mail and the enemy guy has an identical plate mail, I expect both plate mails to offer identical protection. But because of a higher difficulty level, the enemy guy's plate mail protects better. Hence I'm usually stuck with the "authentic" difficulty level and have to artificially limit my options just to maintain a semblance of challenge within the game. For a BG3 example; no multiclassing, no GWM, no PAM, no casting two full spells with quickened metamagic, no bonus action abuse with certain items, no torch dipping, barrelmancy, hide abuse etc.
I don't think it's even possible to get through the game on Tactician without multiclassing, SS, GWM, PAM and strategically selected magic items. Unless you prepare for each encounter beforehand, I found it very difficult to beat some of them without "cheese" builds.
@@helgenlane I played through tactician with no multiclassing, no barrelmancy, no pre-fight preparation, no surprise rounds, no stealth, supplies modded to take 150 per long rest, and lots of other self-imposed limitations including what I mentioned before, and it was still too easy...
I didn't respec any companions. Main was a tempest cleric. In addition to raising main ability scores, I used feats for medium armor proficiency and shields for characters such as Gale and Astarion, and picked mobile for Lae'zel and Minthara. For main cleric I picked resilient(con) and war caster. @@helgenlane
As a youth I spent endless hours playing and power gaming icedwindale 2 using mods that made that game significantly harder and all of it culminating to a solo sorcerer playthrough where even a single minor battle required multiple reloads in order to win. I can't imagine this would of been fun for 90% of people but it was fun for me. It was not about overwhelming the game it was being overwhelmed by the game (via mods or choices like solo play) and using the game systems to be on par with it.
Power gaming in D&D makes sense when you understand its based around dice rolls. Even if you min/max you can still get unlucky and run into bad situations. If your character is overall balanced or worse, a charisma fighter as you said, if you get unlucky rolls chances are you just die.
In tabletop a DM can fudge dice or outcomes to keep players alive and the game interesting. A videogame is still just binary win/loss outcome. In fact BG3 introduced karmic dice to essentially fudge dice after an unlucky roll so players don't tilt and quit.
*Delighted to hear that you make d&d character is very similar to how I make them lol.* You start out with a vague concept of the character that you wanna play, mechanically refine that character through intense metagaming, and then bring it to a cohesive whole through roleplay. Some on my friends think that I'm an alien for doing it like this, but I think it has some advantages, other than making the character good at the game you're playing if course. The chief one being that limitations are good for creativity. One of my best characters that I still get compliments regarding years later is a hexblade warlock. And why did I want to play a hexbladr warlock? Because the classes nuts and I wanted to add my carisma to attack roles and damage! An ability that's so powerful it alone makes the class-a go to for multiclassing. I don't think there's anything wrong with it obviously, and they largely agree with your stance of who gives a shit. Articles browbeating people for minmaxing are douchey to say the least. While it can be shitty if a game demands minmaxing and that takes away from enjoyment, that only the really severe problem if there is not a good variety in ways to min-max. 5e being a great example of the opposite, 9 classes, all capable of minmaxing, and then even variations on those classes with the subclasses that require different minmaxing. That's a lot of variety, enough to facilitate a huge number of unique character concepts, and then suddenly min-maxing isn't really an issue, even if paladins are straight up busted
I loved Warlocks at the start but the fact that you get far less spell slots compared to Wizards, Clerics and even Bards really bugged me. I know it's supposed to be a good fighter/spellcaster at the same time, but the slots aren't enough for me. The upside of only needing short rests to get back your slots is far from worth it since camp supplies are ubiquitous
It looks like one of the most ambitious goals Larian set for themselves was fail forwarding as you describe it. We'll see the results soon. As for catering to different levels of ability or power gaming, being able to change difficulty midgame seems like quite a plus for that. Assuming tactician mode is truly challenging.
7:06 great example for why not having difficulty options can work really well. We all know who I can reference here about difficulty in gaming that people have shouted for difficulty options for. Those games are a great example of being able to trust the difficulty curve. I mean, you can beat them naked with your fists, it's hard and takes a long time but people do it! You can also go in with a +10 chaos zweihander and vaporize everything in a couple seconds. They're both fun.
Is anyone ever convinced when other people tell them that their way of playing a game is 'wrong' and they should do it differently, because "they will be sure to enjoy it more"? Because I highly doubt it. As a power gamer myself, I've always found it curious how other people try to talk you out of planning your build with power in mind(or planning a build at all). It barely ever happens with other types of players, while they can be just as annoying and disturbing for a play session. Just let me play the game the way I want, and if it bothers you that much, I'll just go do something else. But that's not even the case for BG3. Because BG3 will for most people be a single player experience. So how and why someone could care enough to write an article like that, is honestly beyond me. All articles like those do for me, is remind me why I never read opinion pieces on gaming sites anymore.
you are a legend man, I love obsidian games, owlcat games, and larian studios, top 3 best hard working, dedicated and passionate companies, bg3 is going to be amazing, i hope rogue trader and Avowed will be too!
I think there's also something to be said about the differences between a tabletop and video game approach, and the assumptions made for playing each. I personally don't like playing as a character that I think might fail at a lot of dialogue checks, or really any other skill checks, and I'm likely to reload my game when I fail, but there is narrative merit to going with what you get and embracing failure. I operate under the assumption that the developer centers content around success, or alternatives to success. I"m under the impression that a lot of risky assumptions have to be made about what players will like and do when developing a game, whereas, if a player assumes something about a developer choice, the stakes are lower. Really, players should just play how they like, minmaxing or not.
My favorite types of games are the ones where you can make a "bad" character but still have fun, though that usually also requires the player to have a creative imagination, and maybe broad interpretation of the word "fun." I think, for me, the cumulative nature of leveling you talk about at 6:13 is really what drives me towards build optimization. I don't want to miss exciting high level content because I didn't optimize my build. But at the same time, I do like quirks in my builds, things that you wouldn't necessarily expect to fit together or which are maybe a little unusual, unexpected, or out of alignment with a build purely angling for optimized stats. Can make for some really fun RP at the cost of never reaching the power of other builds, which I think was probably what Robin Valentine was trying to get at? But it still requires you put care into your builds, carefully making up for built-in weaknesses to your suboptimal combinations. That's how I do things a lot, and I find most games come with a difficulty setting that can accommodate that style of play. So, uh, that's my takeaway I guess. I really like games where you can get yourself into bad situations with poor build choices, but get out of those situations with good gameplay choices. More games like that, please, I guess. I feel like there's enough stuff being put out there on the market, you're bound to find something which has a design philosophy which meshes well with your preferred playstyle, so what's the fuss, really. Also, I'm sure you get this a lot, but more Sesame please :) Very good kitty
I feel like theres an inherently positive aspect of mechanical limitations for certain builds that doesn't get talked about enough. (at least in the context of single player videogames, in the context of a multiplayer tabletop experience there are social expectations at play and generally if your build slows the game down or results in you not doing your job, people can get understandably upset) Having suboptimal character builds and imbalances offers something of a natural difficulty slider where whacky builds can offer something akin to challenge runs in other games.
I agree with a lot of what you said but I would also like to point out an issue I had with the article, that's telling people what they will find fun in a game. Personally I like min maxing, it's fun for me to work to understand a system and try as hard as I can to make a character that's really good at the thing I want it to do, be it combat or dialogue. It's annoying to me when people tell me that I'll have "more fun" if I don't do that, I have hundreds of hours in multiple RPGs and I've tried not min maxing in many of them, I just don't find it as fun, I don't find purposefully gimping my character to be rewarding.
The main point is probably that they actually DID spend time making failing interesting, which is not the case in most games. There is definitely a spectrum between gimping a character on purpose and power gaming btw... Gimping would be the low str/dex fighter, normal would be the obvious stat distribution as dnd 5e is super basic and power gaming would be gimping ones stats extremely, because you already know what items to wear that set your attributes to fixed values (which is terrible game design btw).
If the purpose of 5E was to exclusively interact with the story, then a character sheet would just be some background information in paragraph form and all encounters would just be acting out reactions to prompts like a semi-improvised play. Instead, the players select abilities/class/etc. and that's part of the game. I think it's very cool that Larian added in enough reactivity to make missed rolls not feel "wrong", but they also chose to use 5E and let players build their characters around the things that go into those rolls. Players who decide to full on in min/maxing their builds aren't playing it "wrong" either.
A testament to Sawyer's innocence, is that he didn't know the topic of BG3 is more about the same subject of Elden Ring. A testament to my innocence, I had to google what is "powergaming". A term I am going now to use all the time.
I love building optimized characters. Usually around specific themes or ideas. Like, all you really need for an optimized fighter is Polearm+Greatweapon feats. and the rest is just character decisions. One thing ive seen in a couple Baldurs Gate vids is the idea of "respeccing" your character at certain levels to optimize individual levels. For example, having 16 Str at level 1. And then respecing at level 4 to get a +1 Str feat, and respeccing your Base Str to 15 (+1 from feat). That type of optimization feels more like in the realm of save scumming. I think a better idea the article should have focused on is less "play a wizard with a bow" and more "allow skill checks to fail to see how it plays out."
"One thing ive seen in a couple Baldurs Gate vids is the idea of "respeccing" your character at certain levels to optimize individual levels. For example, having 16 Str at level 1. And then respecing at level 4 to get a +1 Str feat, and respeccing your Base Str to 15 (+1 from feat). That type of optimization feels more like in the realm of save scumming." Which is precisely why the nearly cost free respeccing was such an embarrassingly terrible design choice. You have to go out of your way to play objectively poorly in order to have a natural character progression in BG3.
On the topic of fallbacks at failures: I try to approach BD3 with the mindset, that if my build fails later its not a big deal. I take my learning and start with a new character. Maybe the old concept, just better executed, with more knowledge, or somethign different. The first playthrough is so valuable, because its a first, with everything beeing an unknown. Thats gone after the first run. So going with the flow maximises my enjoyment.
I know you're surfing on Pentiment's glory now (rightfully so) but I have one thing to tell you: The best game you worked on is called TYRANNY. And it's a damn shame we will never see it unfold to its full potential, with the IP rights with Paradox and Microsoft owning the studio, the commercial "failure", etc. Thank you so much for being part of the creation of that brilliant stunted masterpiece. That's it, thanks or listening.
cRPGs in general I find I am much more inclined to min max. They are far more combat oriented than a traditional OTB experience *can* be if you really flex your imagination. If a character dies in OTB, that's their legacy and a story was born from it, go again it's time for a new story! If you die in a video game you have to reload your save and do the same thing over, but hope you roll differently this time. I could re-roll another character every death, but I'm playing the exact same story with slight deviations instead of a brand new one. You will die far more often under-statted because the game doesn't care that you could think of 10 ways to RP your way out of this encounter, it's not mechanically capable of replicating a DM RP-tailored experience. The stories in cRPGs also almost always already make the assumption that your character is a giga-chad to even get through it by design. It wouldn't make sense for your average joe to conquer all these death defying odds.
Little off topic but Just wanted to say, NWN2 played a huge part in my taste in video games, thank you from younger me for shaping dozens of hours of enjoyment with friends! I generally agreed with what you addressed in the video, good points all around in my opinion
I hate imbalance bc it narrows build options. Sure, play as you like, but no one likes to be weak compared to others in coop. Hope they work to make the game as balanced as posible
I do think its useful to remember that for many players obsessing over min maxing will be less fun, but some will feel pressured to do it anyway. But yeah plenty of people love that stuff
I just want to see JS make Icewin dale 3 or pillars3 with BG3's budget so that I can die happy. I love Larian to death, but the writing in pillars is on another level.
I agree with what you said, and i also didn't read the article, but my instinct when it comes to primarily single player games is, you play how you want and let me play how i want.
What I love about the TTRPGs systems and their mechanics is that they are so abstract you can make a small rule modification be a huge deal. that +1 or -1 can make a difference. Powergaming in CRPGs is fine in the fact that to put it simply, its a computer game. The rules in this realm doesnt apply to that in TTRPGs. because youre against AI controlled "handcrafted" encounters without initial thought to what the player built , you would be force to "Min max" a Party that would be able to take on all kinds of threats. If you like to have a Story driven experience go on right ahead, play in the Story difficulty. but for other people the fun comes from theory crafting the optimal build for their characters.
OOO we're already talking BG3. this is epic. i was hoping this would be the case. would love a talk on BG3s writing and the heavy choice-consequence design used by Larian. I'm sure that might be a tired topic at this stage but I think this game is interesting enough to warrant its own take.
There is one excellent point that Robert Valentine makes about min-maxing in games - the builds that take a long time to go online and the whole purpose is minmaxing for 5 minutes of the end of the game - at the cost of being less than average for most of level progression. Indeed that is something I feel provides a sub-par experience of an cRPG and is not exactly a cRPG practice in the first place. Late-online builds are something I feel came to "us" (as in cRPG gamers) from MMO. And that makes sense in MMO where end content is *the* content and often you hit the level cap well before that. BUT in most cRPG games the journey is the game. And having a build that goes online on level 9 (while the entire game has 12 in total) means most of the time - your min/maxed character is an unfulfilling work in progress, sometimes even it needs to be carried by the rest of characters. It always puzzled me as an old minmaxer - the idea of minmaxing was always to keep the character best at something (and squeezing the rules as much as you can) since the beginning until the end - not sacrificing most of the experience just to at some point very late in the game make *AWESOME BIG NUMBERS*. Because sure, you hit a point where RAW you finally squeezed everything there is out of rules - but at the same time you played a nonsensical gimp for most of the time :)
Hey Josh, have you ever played roguelike RPGs like Cataclysm, Caves of Qud, and UnReal World? They tend to have a lot of unique and very in-depth RPG mechanics unseen in more "visual" and story oriented games, but despite that they feel overlooked in the RPG community.
IMO Daggerfall has one of the best character creation systems because it lets newer / more relaxed players not have to worry about optimization, but also lets vets set drastic handicaps that either are more or less overcome through acquisition of better spells/equipment later on, or are so significant that it steers every facet of the playthrough (for example, you can set up your character so that they're afraid of all classes of creatures / monsters more or less, which would give you disadvantage on rolls vs them). The thing is, there's no bonus attribute points you gain by assigning yourself weaknesses, so min-maxing isn't present in the conventional sense. By doing this, it's telling the player that the most powerful build is easily accessible so there's less incentive to play towards the meta build. Because of that, a suboptimal character in this game actually becomes the kind someone who powergames is more likely to build because of the thrill of that challenge. Not only that, but an awesome bonus to inviting the player to handicap themselves is that it helps the player get into the head of their character by offering them those limitations.
I'm a tad confused, your tweet appeared to support the article but the video refutes the points it made. I think I may have misread it. Thanks for making the video, absolutely agree with the majority of it.
We DO have intention. We have history. We have interviews in print and video formats. We know intention exactly up until the point people state as you have: toss intention out the window, state we don't know, and then begin to 'optimize' in the image of others.
The binary pass fail result on checks in 5e , and given how combat assumes you have high stats for your primary ability, makes 5e quite brutal when you do NOT optimize your character. I've seen players hate their character because they play into a gimmick that leads to bad roles. It really sucks when you keep rolling dogshit and keep flopping in combat. So whenever someone rags on min-maxers I get more than a little frustrated. With all that in mind, there are ways to play into a gimmick while not harming your stat curve. I made a "smart" barbarian by having him find a headband of intellect in his backstory. He was basically this buff librarian who loves to learn and read, but is capable of kicking ass when the need arises. It sadly does fall on the DM to ensure a player can run a theme or character without bricking their character when it comes to combat and checks.
You can't really prevent minmaxing any system, you can squeeze out efficiency out of any system that isn't just pure randomness. The greater issue is becomes from couple of choices being vastly superior to anything else and it's enhanced if the difficulty essentially forces you to go those paths. Trying to tackle minmaxing can also make a game way less fun if you homogenize the builds to the extend that everything feels very similar not just in terms of viability, but in function too. People often make the notion that the balancing philosophy in Dota is to give everyone something overpowered in a different way, which in my opinion is leads to funnier interactions than the kind of staring at spreadsheets to find out if a particular build does 4.872% more damage output in given amount of rounds approach.
Like I get wanting to make the best character possible but don't come and tell me " I raise the difficulty so I can get a challenge" 5 minutes later Your cleary doing everything you can NOT to have one.
On Characters - I like the freedom to build a bad character or uncommon combo. If its bad... thats on me and on my RP ability and yes.. then it does rely on a ton of min/maxing to "fix" I just saw a video today on a guy who made a Half-Orc NecroBard in BG3.. and its crazy. Its basically garbage until level 11 then just gets silly powerful and he min/maxed very hard on this to get it to work out. I love that the character now exists and we will see nutty combos in months to come.
One thing that is worth mentioning in regard to BG3 is that it has the ability to re-spec. This can allow you to try not mix-maxing, and then if you feel bad, go ahead and change the build. I personally like min-maxing, but in a way where I choose a ridiculous concept that shouldn't work and then go ahead and try to make it work while trying to link any decisions to the character's backstory, making a cohesive character in the end. Recently, I've also been trying to play the games without reloading, going with the flow as much as possible (well, this was the only way to do it in Pentiment, and I didn't mind; great game, btw), and that's what I would try to do for my first play-through of BG3.
Especially because I tend to automatically powergame when creating characters, I really appreciate more narrative TTRPGs where you can play most types of characters without suffering mechanically. E.g. I'm really into Blades in the Dark atm.
It's kinda weird to try and say "don't min-max as you end up making a character that doesn't work narratively" At the end of the day BG3 is a video game. You can make a character in 5e in a campaing that is not suited to that campaing at all and a DM might tell you "that character doesn't work pls reroll" But there's no DM in BG3 for a player to go against. Sure you can't bring in a new book nor homebrew stuff so the options are limited anyway. But whatever mechanically works in a video game can very easily be justified within said video game.
