"Umm....you're missing the point..."

[Indecipherable]

Time to expand on that too.

Let's say you're in a survival situation, and you come across a pistol and an assault rifle. Sadly there are some people who say "well my character concept is some cool guy with a trenchcoat who is all cowboy-western style so he should use the pistol". 99% of rational real people would pick up the assault rifle and start using that, developing skill (you know, those skill points or attributes you get to spend) by practicing. Funnily enough it's because we don't want to die because we thought we would be cool with a pistol. People who limit themselves to a concept to the point of exclusion of outside forces are doing funny RP business right there. As someone who studies economics, it is a fundamental principle that rational people migrate to choices that are most effective, and so would your in game persona.

Except games don't have to follow real world physics, that handgun could fire 60mm supersonic mortar sells if you code it into the game. And then people will go for the handgun.

Hell the "magnum" pistol in Halo: CE was ridiculously overpowered with a damn zoom scope on it. It's amazing the effect of labelling a pistol as "magnum" in games, maybe thanks to Dirty Harry people got the impression that "most powerful handgun in the world" extended to "most powerful weapon... full stop".

Thing is, handguns are generally weak as fuck, a magnum revolver gets it's ass spanked by a rifle that is twice it's age.

But, it's a gaming convention, you can make the Magnum more powerful than the 12 gauge shotgun and more accurate than the assault rifle because it is just remotely plausible.

See magnums are "rare" (shiny) while shotguns and shells are cheap and common... you can't make the cheap/common weapon more powerful than the rare weapon, that breaks the game mechanics.

Not saying you can't go the relaisti route.

I'd love a game where the frequency of weapons and ammo in games was relative to their real world prices. Like you'd find way more AK47s ($200 per gun) and AK ammo than M16 rifles ($900-$2000) and pistols will bearley be worth it at $500 per weapon compared to cheap submachine guns.

"You're missing the point". My point is not specifically about one particular instance, but about what the character's reaction to the world they are in. The original question posed was "why would someone powergame" and my response is the justification for why someone would. It is just like real life - if given two opportunities for survival, one very difficult, and one much more likely, which would you take? Transfer this thought across to the game genre and you'd see why in a "life and death situation in an RPG" you would be likely to take the easiest route.

I don't care about the specific example of pistols versus assault rifles. It could be telepathy versus magic card tricks for all I care. The point behind it is the justification in character for the choices made, and a rational character in the game will gravitate towards the choices with the highest perceived success rate.

Unless they have a deathwish.

I do read your post and wonder how much was a response to mine and how much was just a rant about pistols.

 

[Treblaine]

Spoiler

Time to expand on that too.

Let's say you're in a survival situation, and you come across a pistol and an assault rifle. Sadly there are some people who say "well my character concept is some cool guy with a trenchcoat who is all cowboy-western style so he should use the pistol". 99% of rational real people would pick up the assault rifle and start using that, developing skill (you know, those skill points or attributes you get to spend) by practicing. Funnily enough it's because we don't want to die because we thought we would be cool with a pistol. People who limit themselves to a concept to the point of exclusion of outside forces are doing funny RP business right there. As someone who studies economics, it is a fundamental principle that rational people migrate to choices that are most effective, and so would your in game persona.

Except games don't have to follow real world physics, that handgun could fire 60mm supersonic mortar sells if you code it into the game. And then people will go for the handgun.

Hell the "magnum" pistol in Halo: CE was ridiculously overpowered with a damn zoom scope on it. It's amazing the effect of labelling a pistol as "magnum" in games, maybe thanks to Dirty Harry people got the impression that "most powerful handgun in the world" extended to "most powerful weapon... full stop".

Thing is, handguns are generally weak as fuck, a magnum revolver gets it's ass spanked by a rifle that is twice it's age.

But, it's a gaming convention, you can make the Magnum more powerful than the 12 gauge shotgun and more accurate than the assault rifle because it is just remotely plausible.

See magnums are "rare" (shiny) while shotguns and shells are cheap and common... you can't make the cheap/common weapon more powerful than the rare weapon, that breaks the game mechanics.

Not saying you can't go the relaisti route.

I'd love a game where the frequency of weapons and ammo in games was relative to their real world prices. Like you'd find way more AK47s ($200 per gun) and AK ammo than M16 rifles ($900-$2000) and pistols will bearley be worth it at $500 per weapon compared to cheap submachine guns.

"You're missing the point". My point is not specifically about one particular instance, but about what the character's reaction to the world they are in. The original question posed was "why would someone powergame" and my response is the justification for why someone would. It is just like real life - if given two opportunities for survival, one very difficult, and one much more likely, which would you take? Transfer this thought across to the game genre and you'd see why in a "life and death situation in an RPG" you would be likely to take the easiest route.

I don't care about the specific example of pistols versus assault rifles. It could be telepathy versus magic card tricks for all I care. The point behind it is the justification in character for the choices made, and a rational character in the game will gravitate towards the choices with the highest perceived success rate.

Unless they have a deathwish.

I do read your post and wonder how much was a response to mine and how much was just a rant about pistols.

Yes, sorry about that, it was at least significantly a rant about pistols.

"Unless they have a deathwish."

Some people (and by that I mean what I often do and assume others do) deliberately don't use the most effective weapon in the game because they/I find it too easy.

Like in Bioshock I've been getting most of my kills with the Pistol, I suppose partially I am conserving ammo for bosses or Big Daddy, but in other games I'll use the weaker weapon because I perceive the weaker enemies of the game shouldn't have "high power" weapons/ammo wasted on them.

Or maybe it is that RPGs are significantly different from the action-adventure games I play, I have only played a few J-RPGs (Final-fantasy-alikes) and did find them a bit of a chore. It's not something I'd want to trudge through with a weak ass weapon, ANYTHING to get the battle sequences just bloody well over with as soon as possible.

But in Half Life 2, fucking around with the admittedly less effective Gravity gun to kill zombies is worth it because the challenge is more fun.

 

[Bocaj2000]

My biggest gripe about missing the point is probably these:

It's not about the gear, it's about the challenge and the fun: Just about every game brings up this discussion, but primarily World of Warcraft. I don't car how many lvl 80s the person has. They treat it as if it's a commodity. There's nothing I hate more than lvl 11s with epic gear in pvp. It seems inane to me.

Games are art: I'm not putting this up to debate. More goes into a game than one may think. First, there's the game design- how the game plays. Whether this is an art or not is disputable. However the animation and music score is not disputable. For animation, the character starts as a sketch, then becomes a clay model, and then goes through a rigorous process of being created into the computer. The musical score (any music for that matter), no matter how simple, is an art form -from the final boss theme from Final Fantasy, to the map theme from Lost Odyssey. Anyone who argues otherwise is an ignorant prig.