Why I Don't Min-Max In My Game Guides (or in general)
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- Опубліковано 29 січ 2025
- A bit of a shorter video from me this week, as I'm still recovering from the flu so I couldn't record something super long (and my other two scripts are quite lengthy... something to look forward to!).
I've decided to make a sort of channel introduction to explain why I personally don't like to min-max or optimize builds in games, as well as why I make these "unoptimized" builds on my channel. It's a short video, but the TL;DW is that I don't find min-maxing enjoyable, and more importantly it can actually make it harder for me to perform well in the game. I've found that a balanced approach results in better performance as well as a more enjoyable experience in general for someone less skilled like me. I think lots of instructional gaming content online is too focused on being the "best", most optimized version of something. I just want there to be some "above average" guides out there, too - something more accessible and easier to pull off for those of us who don't have good reflexes/perception/motor skills/etc.
Do let me know in the comments what you think about this topic, as well as if you're a more casually-inclined player and have some specific issues that you think aren't addressed by most guides out there. I want to improve my guides so that they can really help the casual-ish players they're created for!
Roleplaying/having fun > minmaxing. Always and forever. I feel it
I like trying hardest modes in Crpg. Often that kind of requires some minmaxing.
Its pretty crazy we live in an age where ppl need to Google "BEST KATANA BUILD" before even booting up the game
Guilty of this and I hate it
@@Keeks540 Stop doing it then lol.
Going blind into a game always feels better.
If after 10 hours you realize you messed your build, start over.
@user-pc5qj2ix2c luckily, newer RPGs are making it easier to respec your characters so that you can just get in the game, fuck around and find out, and change up if you want to explore different playstyles. Takes the sting out of getting deep in a game and having to restart from scratch
Min/Maxing is the reason I play games. Not in the traditional sense of min/maxing the meta build but instead, finding some ability or weapon that I find fun and finding how far I can push it . Sometimes it’s not optimal or even feasible but it has made me find some seriously hilarious interactions that honestly feel better than the meta builds
Try two-handed assassin rouge. Underated crit build if i must say.
I appreciate that you care about keeping builds in-character. Blood Mage Wynne bugs me too
I wish that you could only get Wynne to be a blood mage by manipulating her into it. It may not be comfortable for every player to do, but if you care mostly just for power, and your character does as well to the point where they will manipulate someone and get them to go against their morals for it, then it shouldn't be a problem.
@@channel45853 Yeah if there was an in-character reason, I would be totally fine with it. Same with say, Reaver Alistair.
I consider modern gamer's to be anti gaming, the fun in video games is discovering what the game has to offer. Not listening to somebody else who has played it.
@@boomshanka4667 true! The fun is discovering for yourself what you enjoy
This happened with me and Baldur's Gate 3 months ago. I was playing a campaign with my brother and cousin and out of the blue, my brother would respec his character into something "broken" and we'd just trash the mobs. He had convinced me that Gloom Stalker for the Ranger was the best specialization, couple it with Rogue. By the end, I was not having fun, for my experience was completely ruined because they played and beat it multiple times by that point whereas I hadn't even gotten to the second Act because of responsibilities in other games. I hadn't played Baldur's Gate until I offered to help a friend learn the game, but haven't touched it since. All because my experience with it was ruined by my brother who insisted I play an ambush-styled character (which went against what my character was).
I play games for fun and to pass the time. If I want to play a hyper competitive game, I'll play Ranked in League of Legends, learn who is the most OP champ for that patch, practice them, then try and rise the ranks. Rinse and repeat. But doing that, I will end up burning myself out.
Shouldn't surprise you they prefer better builds when they have 600 hours in the game and you have 12. Should they just nerf themselves actively?
@@jdavis7993 you seem pretty jumped up
It reminded me of when i wanted to find a build for Lann in Pathfinder: WOTR. Most viewed build was where a dude made a RANGED CHARACTER go into MELEE RANGE while riding a companion, because companions in this game are supposedly very overpowered. The default autolevel build was fine for even the core difficulty, it just needed some little tweaks thats all, but the dude just went over board and fucked up the whole fantasy of a ranged monk by inserting some companion just coz theyre "OP". Thank god i found other guy with 20 times less viewers who actually gave good build for Lann.
Also Monster hunter games, specially rise, are the common victims of Meta culture, where people just post speedrun builds which are very gimmicky and unfun to play, because they're based on reducing your whole hp pool to 1 or making entire bar red/ draining hp every sec, and also not taking any QoL/defensive stats. Then new players just take these guides as gospels, have a bad time and quit the game. Meta gaming is legit cancer for this hobby.
Just replaying DAI myself with the builds basically being giving the characters all the weapon skills first and then worrying about the other skills later and with my mages I just pick one element for each of them. Not at Skyhold yet so still only about level 11 or 12.
Now I'm a genuine power gamer, and I do make my builds to be powerful. But I don't min max. Take for example a build guide I was looking up for a healzerker in GW2. I used it as a general guideline, not a be all and end all. Some of the decisions I thought were dumb, and decided to go my own way. Some of the decisions were rejected out of budget or effort reasons, because I would rather have a minor power loss for a 95% discount on that segment of a build.
Most importantly, I don't try to make my builds perfect. I try to make them 'good nuff'. As in do they do what their role was meant to do without too much issue? If so, I don't worry about trying to optimize for the last 10% or whatever, especially if the content isn't that hard.
And the most important is that I find it fun. I rarely play specter, despite maining thief, because I find it wonky, inefficient and overall unimmersive. Bad mechanical design, and bad theming IMO. Felt like they were forcing thief to have a healing specialization, and I hate it when things feel forced. However, I love deadeye. It's thief, but you replace your mobile steal ability with marking people for death, and lots of guns. It's a simple design that works, I love how it plays, and it's even immersive. I feel like a badass rapid firing cowboy gunslinger, or elite sniper assassin whenever I play it.
Love the detailed explanation! I also like to make builds that are at least decently good to play, because otherwise with a bad build it can get really frustrating. But exactly, I consider a minor power loss to be a totally ok tradeoff for an easier experience (aka less effort), as well as for roleplaying reasons!
I feel envious of people that can take this route of just playing without a care for perfection, 'cause I just feel terrible when I don't try (or fail) to do the absolute best thing in every respect and pretty much always need to have a detailed plan on how to do things perfectly before I even start the game hahaha. I totally recognize that it definitely takes a toll on my fun to force myself to be so rigorous about it, not to mention that it can trivialize some games, it's just that I can't not do it at this point, specially when a lot of games don't really give you the option to correct all of your understandable mistakes down the line or really punish you for making lackluster decisions.
I always promise to myself that in the next game I play, I'll do it completely blind and won't bother to be perfect at everything, but then I start it, make mistakes (which is to be expected) and they eventually come back to bite me, which feels terrible, so I restart with a perfect route to be followed... I'm sure DAO itself would've been like that for me if I didn't go into it with a plan to min-max everybody, 'cause some particular encounters were still pretty hard (some liches and dragons come to mind) even though I had a very powerful "perfect" team (granted, those problems mostly happened on the road to perfection, before I actually got the builds down, but still). In any case, I just know that I would 100% beat myself over the head for not "doing things properly" when a particular enemy or group of enemies locked me from advancing in a quest or exploration.
And of course, this type of stuff isn't a dichotomy between being completely trash or perfect -- there's always an interval between those that is enough for you to get through the game without committing to a stiff play style that you have to fit yourself to -- it's just that I don't think I can reliably make decisions that fall into that interval and, again, my brain has accustomed to doing things "properly" at this point and I feel bad in a paralyzing way when I don't to it and inevitably miss something...
Anyhow, since I already finished DAO completely one time, maybe I can commit to doing an easygoing playthrough next, without using guides to anything (or at least not doing so too much), and just test if I can finally handle it. It's a pity that time is short nowadays and maybe I should use it to play other games that I haven't yet...
The biggest argument against min-maxing and 'following the meta' is that one size rarely fits all. Very often, these kinds of hypothetical approaches assume perfect conditions, perfect play, highly controlled environments. It doesn't take into account bad RNG on crits, player ping, player experience (or lack thereof), favoured gameplay approaches... and so much more.
I still remember WoW WotLK during some patch where I was playing Fire Mage. 'The Meta' demanded I play Arcane, because 'that's what everyone was doing'. But I was far more experienced with Fire mage and found a hybrid build with Arcane that worked out even better. Not long after, "my build" _became_ the meta.
The key part should always be to have fun. Why else would you play games?
Exactly! I think players can become too focused on what's "meta" that they can forget all these other factors that go into someone's performance with a build or playstyle.
Rpgs for me about relaxing, winding down and enjoying the scenery etc.
Min-maxing is what drove me away from MMOs (such as WoW) towards single-player titles (palyin DA:O now). I did the first playthrough relying just on my own judgement, and I am looking up guides now for my further playthroughs. Your videos are ideal for that, since you offer many different options, giving me best of the both worlds: optimization AND flexibility.
This is the kind of content i can support. Try-fun over try-hard mentality.
I max out my protags as best I can, because it's part of the roleplay that they be the very best in their group. As for the companions, I guide them along the path I think suits them best in terms of their pasts and personalities. It isn't as important for them to be able to one-shot an enemy.
That's a very interesting approach! Why do you think your protagonist needs to be the best in the group? I'm curious if there could be a situation where one of the companions is much more likely to have a higher skill than the protagonist. Would you max out the companion instead in that situation?
@@btiermutineer Thanks. Part of it is because I think it's only natural to want to get your own character as powerful as possible gameplay-wise, but also from a role-play perspective you want your companions to be able to rely on your protag and see them as the problem-solver or the savior. The one who can be relied on to carry the team to victory.
Leliana has some good dialogue leading into her romance path where she points out that she sees you as the party's leader and friend. Morrigan also comes to trust that you are capable of slaying Flemeth on her behalf. In DA2, Aveline usually comes to Hawke for help on certain problems facing the City Guard. Isabela will approach Hawke as well for help. Merrill also needs Hawke for emotional support in talking to Merethari. And of course everyone looks to the Inquisitor. "No one is ever lost in the Inquisitor's party", as paraphrased by some soldier in Griffon Wing Keep.
But keep in mind, this does not necessarily mean getting the absolute maximum out of your protag, like looking up a guide and following some long, elaborate equation. It just means being smart with your attribute point investment, picking good specializations that can easily cut down foes while also telling the story you want, and going for as many bonus attribute points as you can, and to a lesser degree getting some of the better weapons and armor. It's not a 100% perfect approach, but rather a 95% excellent approach.
Would I max out the companion? I mean, I don't see a problem with making a companion character stronger than your protag, especially if the story calls for it. If that's how it shakes out then so be it. My Inquisitor for example was a mage, which means Cassandra should always be able to trounce him in a fight using her Seeker ability that she references but doesn't use in-game. So technically my mage's companion is stronger than him. But she also looked to him to make the tough decisions. Most of which she didn't even agree with, but they worked out in the Inquisition's favor. Cass was also my romance, so there was that private team dynamic going on as well. So yeah I would have no problem with a companion being stronger than my protag. The only goal would be to have the protag function as the savior of the overall story and be extremely powerful in the own right.
My Hawke was also technically weaker than some of the party companions, as I built her to be a glass cannon type. Female archer Shadow Assassin. Someone like Fenris or Aveline would be able to one or two-shot her, but she could one-shot either one of them with the Assassinate skill. So her main strength was that she had high damage output. So against the Arishok, she would die in two hits, so her main defense was to drop into stealth, use decoy, or pin him. Similar case with Meredith.
Really the only protag of mine to be ultra-powerful was my Hero, and that's mainly due to the specilizations, especially Spirit Warrior, which is just broken.
@@BelieveIt1051 thanks for the explanation! I never thought of it that way before, but what you're saying makes a lot of sense from a roleplaying perspective.
Agree 100%. I do have fun min-maxing in competitive games with friends but in single player narrative games I go for maximum immersion and try to build my characters in a lore friendly way.
I use guides and builds more like they are advice rather than something set in stone.
I've never worried about copying other player's builds. I have always played with more balanced builds but that's mostly because I want to be able to play how I like and I like to have access to more than one weapon type, magic, range, etc.
I think a lot of the fun of arpgs is coming up with your own build
I tend to naturally min/max my builds in games. But that is for gameplay reasons, I don't pick a build, I pick a playstyle. And then try to get the best performance out of that playstyle.
For example, I recently played through morrowind again and wanted to play a "Brawler" class. Unarmed fighting but heavily armored. Before I knew it, I was min/maxing my levelups to get the best performance out of my build and looking up pieces of gear for the unarmed playstyle.
In bg3, my first playthrough to get acquainted with the game was a human fighter, battlemaster subclass. A classic one might say. Or "booooring!" as some other people might say. Now that I know what I am doing in that game, I am coming up with different crit fishing builds based on the Warlock and those builds are optimized to hell and back, so powerful that I banned myself from using them on any difficulty below tactician. My most recent build makes use of sneak attack AND smites in the same attack, with 2 attacks per normal action and 1 or 2 attacks as a bonus action.
I completely understand your approach though. A lore friendly build that is in character makes a lot of sense.
And picking out a build and using it as a foundation for your own playstyle... I thought that's what everybody does when they look up guides from the net. Is that not normal?
Honestly I don’t even understand what min/maxing is at this point I’m too afraid to ask. I will literally wear armor because I like the way it looks. Or equip a staff cause I like the ambient magic effect is gives off. I platinumed DAI on PS5 so go figure.
Games are meant to be fun. If it feels like you have to check a guide or build a excel sheet to figure out the best skills and abilities / tactics... then it's not fun.
Even in ttrpg I make sure my character has a flaw
I have been trying to make "my" wardens/hawke/inquisitors more flawed
I have never subscribed to a channel so fast. I perpetually struggle with my desire to know what all the best things to do in a game are, But because of similar difficulties with focus, Reflexes and borm fail to execute "optimal builds constantly. I tend to try optimal builds for the first while than branch off into what I find fun inevitably, and I can get hard on myself for being suboptimal but I'm just a suboptimal kind of person
A channel focused on Dragon Age content? Subscribed.
Oh man thank you!
My friend constantly called me an idiot (mind u I think it was in jest mostly) cuz I wasn’t optimising all my stuff. I just couldn’t be bothered and didn’t want to be in my menues looking at numbers all the time.
Depending on the game and the environment I'm playing it in I often min-max or get close to it. I'm still in my first playthrough of DAO (game has been over a decade in my steam library) and feel like it's not the game to min-max. I did look up what attributes do and that f.e. the Bard buffs scale with cunning. The party I use has Morrigan, Alistair and Leliana (cunning focus). My own character is a Bard as well as I started out as an Elven archer (dex focus). Having 2 Bards is kinda fun because you get both buffs up, but for early on it was bad. On a sidenote I notice that heavy armor got relatively too much love. Nearly every set is heavy/massive.
Path of Exile is a game where it's all about min-maxing if you want to get to end-game.
100% agree, i have the same problem and a lot of min max builds "start to work from 3/4 of the game". So i try to make by builds fun from the beggining, so when in end game i can look back and remember when i was weak, lol. (Sorry for my english, no native lenguage)
Min-maxing is what allows me to make whackier builds. When you know how to make a good spell completely broken, you can probably use the same method to make a bad one decent enough to finish the game with.
Pushing past a boss with 80% magic resistance using a magic only build through sheer optimisation and game knowledge is fun in and of itself.
That's a cool approach to min-maxing! Making weird or wacky builds is definitely fun, so I can see why you enjoy it 😊
I agree it gets boring to play any game with the "META" and it always presents a very interesting challenge when you play the game from a roleplay perspective including your own stats
I never min max first playthrough. But that 2nd and 3rd i find it fun to see just how powerful i can make my characters.
I've only ever min/maxed in Dragon's Dogma 1/Dark Arisen.
I only do it because of how NG+ works and also, because I play DD in two different consoles, one is Min/Maxed for Strength, the other for Magick.
On one I can be a anything from a Fighter and Strider, to a Warrior, Ranger and Assassin. In the other, I can play Mage, Sorcerer, Mystic Knight or Magick Archer.
I remember my playthrough with 1-handed weapon + shield warrior with... medium armour😅 I'm not sure that it was super effective, but I actually enjoyed playing with this type of armour. I like how it looks and the fact that I don't waste many stamina during fights:)
Exactly 😂 I love using medium armor even though it's not the best thing, but it looks cool and it keeps your stamina costs low!
My most fun run of Dragon Age Inquisition was playing a mage, on nightmare, with friendly fire turned on fully.
I did it ONCE. It was fun, but stressful. I haven't done another run like it since, for my own health. XD
Sweats and SBMM in multiplayer games are tiring enough to deal with it. Why would I make my single player stories into another version of that? Give me fun and character without any rules or meta to go by!
I made up my mind that i was only going to use sword and shield before the game has finished downloading. Not mace and shield. Not hammer and shield. Not great sword. Not sword and magic. Sword and sheild. And if the best sword is teirs lower or there are no max level swords. Don't care want sword and shield
I like Min/Maxing and don't think there is anything much wrong with it. (as long as it contributes to your enjoyment of a game)
But I do admit, it CAN be a bit of a "trap" at times and (if done ALL the time) can get a bit boring.
I tend to Min/Max quite often or "slide towards" min/ maxing somewhat when I'm not. (being completely ineffective usually isn't fun.)
That said, I will sometimes try roleplaying or naturally hamstrung characters for fun & novelty. That way, even if I start "min/maxing" the character a bit, I am only trying to make the strongest / most effective version of a less effective character.
Nothing wrong with enjoying min-maxing! I personally don't enjoy doing it, but I absolutely love watching other people do it in challenges and other stuff like that.
@@btiermutineer I agree. There is nothing wrong with it. (Just like there is nothing wrong with NOT Min/Maxing.)
I'd say the ONLY time it is an "issue" (one way or the other) is when you are playing in a Team game (like a tabletop game like Dungeons & Dragons) and ONE person is playing ONE way & the rest are playing the other. (Because, either the Min/ Maxer overshadows everyone else, OR the non-Min/Maxer causes the game to "drag".)
When on a team? You all need to be on the "same page". When alone? Play however you like! :)
@@sharkdentures3247 Exactly!
Pretty sure min-maxing can be fun for plenty of people and it's also kind of natural for certain games like number based rpgs, usual problem is just that the proportionality for min-maxing in multiplayer games is kind of whack.
That's what I said in the video, as well! I'm not saying min-maxing is bad, I just explain why I don't personally do it, and why I want to make unoptimized guides for other people like me who don't like min-maxing. But certainly, everyone has different preferences and that's perfectly fine!
completely agree, especially in extreme cases of min-maxing, I thoroughly despise dump stats... yeah never gonna dominate any game with a 3 int über stronk meathead... unless I'm roleplaying one. Some optimization, sure go ahead, utter min-maxed character, no thanks
In SP games, sure... in MMORPGs, you should consider whether repeatedly losing and wasting everyone's time qualifies as "fun".
So yeah, just a distinction for when it's not single-player.
Well, of course. If it's a competitive situation, then you need to be competitive. But even in an MMO maybe you're just playing on your own or with some friends and you aren't doing anything competitive like dungeons/raids/whatever else, so in that case there wouldn't be a need to follow the meta since you're just playing for fun and not wasting anyone's time.
I'm playing DAO now and I min max and manually use all my attacks for every party member
Glad to hear you're having fun!
Good god, Solas with hair is a nightmare.
2:20 Your motor skills comment there. ADHD has another symptom known as dysgraphia. Its a fine motor dysfunction and usually why someone with ADHD has shit handwriting.
Yep! I think it may also be something to do with my autism as well, because I'm really poorly coordinated and I've heard other autistic friends have trouble with coordination and motor skills as well!