Soenattchi
Well-known member
So, let me start that my intended title for this topic was "Does being an RPG perfectionist ruin the experience of a game?"
In which, I'd like to address something I catch myself doing with increasing frequency, almost disturbingly so. The realization came upon me mostly because of the recent discussion I've been having over at the Fire Emblem Awakening thread with users Bitbot and It's Teri -which you can reference in the subforum- in which I broke down the reasons why certain parents are better suited for some children in order to get optimal results. Now hod this term for me for a minute. By optimal results I, of course, don't mean the best storylines by any means, but best stats. And I had to arrive to these conclusions after trial and error and breaking down the game's "code" so to speak, reducing every character to stats, inherited stat boosts and drawbacks and abilities that could be passed on or not to create a set of optimized units bred to lay waste upon the battlefield.
But this is not the only place where I do that. To me, that's only a natural conclusion of spending hours upon hours playing my favorite eugenics simulator, Pokemon. Back in the day I almost frowned upon people that would obsessively hunt for IVs and EV train because where was the fun in fishing at the same spot for over five hours so you could battle 300 magikarp or 100 gyarados or hatching eggs for days on end for a perfect mon? But nowadays? I find myself biking up and down in a straight line from route 5, through Camphrier town, and to the end of route 7 way too often for comfort, hatching eggs, having them evaluated and then breeding some more, often substituting the mons in daycare for better ones that hatch in the progress.
Of course all is fair in love and war, as they say, and in this day and age there's simply no other way to enjoy a proper online battle unless you're into finding yourself in a curbstomp from which there is no escape. "There's simply no other way" I tell myself as I breed the third hundredth Eevee in my quest for a shiny with perfect IVs. But is it really the case? And at the end of the day, does it derive from the experience of the game as a game?
Now, I'm one that puts story above all else so "I" don't feel like I'm losing out on either end of the spectrum, I just simply burn more hours into it. But looking at it from a game developer standpoint... games are made to be experienced a certain way, story, mechanics, the whole deal. And of course one could argue that Pokemon is built around the fact that it's competitive but when that translates over onto other games... is it still "healthy" so to speak? Do we ruin our experience of the game when we break it down to its tidbits and go math crazy on its formulas? At the end of the day, is there even a "right" way to experience games?
In which, I'd like to address something I catch myself doing with increasing frequency, almost disturbingly so. The realization came upon me mostly because of the recent discussion I've been having over at the Fire Emblem Awakening thread with users Bitbot and It's Teri -which you can reference in the subforum- in which I broke down the reasons why certain parents are better suited for some children in order to get optimal results. Now hod this term for me for a minute. By optimal results I, of course, don't mean the best storylines by any means, but best stats. And I had to arrive to these conclusions after trial and error and breaking down the game's "code" so to speak, reducing every character to stats, inherited stat boosts and drawbacks and abilities that could be passed on or not to create a set of optimized units bred to lay waste upon the battlefield.
But this is not the only place where I do that. To me, that's only a natural conclusion of spending hours upon hours playing my favorite eugenics simulator, Pokemon. Back in the day I almost frowned upon people that would obsessively hunt for IVs and EV train because where was the fun in fishing at the same spot for over five hours so you could battle 300 magikarp or 100 gyarados or hatching eggs for days on end for a perfect mon? But nowadays? I find myself biking up and down in a straight line from route 5, through Camphrier town, and to the end of route 7 way too often for comfort, hatching eggs, having them evaluated and then breeding some more, often substituting the mons in daycare for better ones that hatch in the progress.
Of course all is fair in love and war, as they say, and in this day and age there's simply no other way to enjoy a proper online battle unless you're into finding yourself in a curbstomp from which there is no escape. "There's simply no other way" I tell myself as I breed the third hundredth Eevee in my quest for a shiny with perfect IVs. But is it really the case? And at the end of the day, does it derive from the experience of the game as a game?
Now, I'm one that puts story above all else so "I" don't feel like I'm losing out on either end of the spectrum, I just simply burn more hours into it. But looking at it from a game developer standpoint... games are made to be experienced a certain way, story, mechanics, the whole deal. And of course one could argue that Pokemon is built around the fact that it's competitive but when that translates over onto other games... is it still "healthy" so to speak? Do we ruin our experience of the game when we break it down to its tidbits and go math crazy on its formulas? At the end of the day, is there even a "right" way to experience games?
