Fires of Heaven Guild Message Board - View Single Post - Min-Maxing in WoW

frott · 03-29-2004, 07:49 PM

Sorry, there's a big fucking difference between being a dumbass and simply NOT KNOWING that 1 point of some stat gives you X benefit per second.

So then you spend your point in it, and it fucking sucks. That's just shitty interface design.

It's more of a mystery when you aren't made aware of what the growth curve of mobs are compared to the growth curve of the player.

As a shadowknight, I put in 5 points to charisma on creation. The booklet said "makes stuff in shops cheaper." Now, I was envisioning that I'd be buying mana potions and health potions in shops frequently, just like nearly every other RPG ever made up to that time? Oops. But who knows, next week they could implement something that makes more CHA do something really useful in the game for me. This sort of skill twiddling has happened to often to count.

Diablo 2 is a great example with the Necro class. You can set up a necro that is completely viable up through Hell, but as soon as you hit Hell, suddenly there's a massive physical damage penalty. Nothing tells you this until you're in Hell... so once I got my necro through hell, seen the relative power and relative distribution of types of mobs I was able to set up a necro that was the most efficient for the game - that's besides the point, however: up til playing through hell I wasn't even aware of what the possible "smart move" skill choices were: I had no basis for picking except for choosing something that would make me more powerful in the game I had already tromped through, and not something that would make me more durable in the game I haven't seen yet.

The dumbass factor comes into play when you are just jerking off and dumping points nearly randomly. It just blows when something you've invested in somewhat suddenly tapers off and becomes trivialized for no good goddamn reason, when something you've been light on suddenly becomes essential.

Like: no monsters for the first 30 levels are efficiently killed with SKILL A. So you ignore it. But then suddenly at 31+ a ton of monsters are immune to everything except SKILL A. You're just fucked w/o good interface.

03-29-2004, 07:49 PM	#10 (permalink)
frott Banned Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 3,390 +0 Internets	Sorry, there's a big fucking difference between being a dumbass and simply NOT KNOWING that 1 point of some stat gives you X benefit per second. So then you spend your point in it, and it fucking sucks. That's just shitty interface design. It's more of a mystery when you aren't made aware of what the growth curve of mobs are compared to the growth curve of the player. As a shadowknight, I put in 5 points to charisma on creation. The booklet said "makes stuff in shops cheaper." Now, I was envisioning that I'd be buying mana potions and health potions in shops frequently, just like nearly every other RPG ever made up to that time? Oops. But who knows, next week they could implement something that makes more CHA do something really useful in the game for me. This sort of skill twiddling has happened to often to count. Diablo 2 is a great example with the Necro class. You can set up a necro that is completely viable up through Hell, but as soon as you hit Hell, suddenly there's a massive physical damage penalty. Nothing tells you this until you're in Hell... so once I got my necro through hell, seen the relative power and relative distribution of types of mobs I was able to set up a necro that was the most efficient for the game - that's besides the point, however: up til playing through hell I wasn't even aware of what the possible "smart move" skill choices were: I had no basis for picking except for choosing something that would make me more powerful in the game I had already tromped through, and not something that would make me more durable in the game I haven't seen yet. The dumbass factor comes into play when you are just jerking off and dumping points nearly randomly. It just blows when something you've invested in somewhat suddenly tapers off and becomes trivialized for no good goddamn reason, when something you've been light on suddenly becomes essential. Like: no monsters for the first 30 levels are efficiently killed with SKILL A. So you ignore it. But then suddenly at 31+ a ton of monsters are immune to everything except SKILL A. You're just fucked w/o good interface.