The Daily Grind: Do you like optimizing your character?

Not really. Optimisation is only interesting if the skill of the players is optimised. If the player lack skill, or is simply a "medium" player, it doesn't really matter to add 0.01% of "that uber stat". It will be a waste.

When I'm playing I try to have my character correctly geared and speced. But I'll not min - max it, because I'm not skilled enough to see my performance changing.
I'd rather work on my own abilities to perform my role correctly.

I consider myself a 'core gamer' (ugh), but I prefer a more casual approach to my MMO toons. I don't have to be the best at what i do. I just want to be good. Good enough to do what I want to get done, and useful enough to help my guild/friends with whatever they need to get done.

I'm one of those people who see optimization as searingly tedious and I just want to have fun. As long as I can do what I want well enough to get it done then I'm A ok.

I don't have an issue with people who do spend endless hours aiming to be the best though. It's their own version of fun just like how I have mine.

I like to optimise, then at least I know that any deficiencies in performance are down to me and not because I've set myself up poorly.

I min-max, it's the only way to play.

(I'm also skilled enough to see stat changes affect my play)

PrimeSynergy pretty much took the words out of my mouth. I am not trying to be first, fastest or strongest with any of my characters in an mmo. The most important thing is that it is fun and I will generally go with what's fun over what is going to optimise my character to the last %

Good luck to people who do enjoy that sort of thing and I have nothing against that sort of approach but its not for me. Sometimes good enough is .... well .... good enough :)

I'll scroll through handfuls of online guides and analyze charts, tables, and the like; just to make sure the character I want to play is fairly up to their full potential.

I don't consider myself an elitest, however, as although I find it exciting to play to my full potential, I understand others might not want to play the same way and won't put someone else in a negative spotlight in my MMO group just because they aren't doing the same. More like a personal objective for myself. I still have fun doing it regardless, probably my OCD kicking in...

I like to have one or two characters who're optimized, but the extent to which I'll go depend entirely on how tedious it is. I'm certainly not the type who'll flip out because there's someone on my raid (or whatever) who's not in the 98th percentile. If I have to work at it then, well, no. I'm here to play a game. If people consider putting that much effort into a character to be fun, more power to them. That's not my definition of entertainment.

I can also understand certain content being set up so that you can only experience it if your character has been optimized to a certain point. There's a logic there that I can appreciate. However, I also like my alts and if I have to work away at every single one of them to get them to get to experience that content with them... That fun is going to wear down fairly quickly. Sooner or later I'm going to pack my bags and go looking for places that better fit my definition of fun.

Last but not least, I don't mind if it takes a long time to improve/optimize my characters so long as I can have my fun doing it. Which tends to rule out crap shoots or only doing X, Y or Z ad nauseum; worse still if it's a combination of the two.

I just like to succeed. If I need to squeeze out another percent to be able to succeed, I will, but I won't do it out of some compulsive need to optimize for its own sake.

I try to always make my character be at the very least *good* for their gear level, but I won't spend hours finding diminishing returns and jut how much weight I should put on stat X.

Especially considering I play tanks and healers, how you play is ar more important than the character itself.

In general I do not prefer to "optimize" my toons. That said, I will read up on my class in the forums and work a bit to make sure that my character is reasonable. It is more important to me for the class to be fun to be get that last bit of performance.
I will occasionally (for fun and only solo stuff) take a very NOT optimized toon to play. I had a "Minion Master" in CoV that had no minions... but he was weilding dual pistols (before that was a "real" power).

Luxx

Nope.

To use a Rift example, I always like a little defense mixed in with a build made for DPS. In a perfect world, it might work to go with a 100% DPS build. But in reality, the tank drops aggro. You lag (or you're a bit drunk) and don't run out of fire immediately. In those circumstances, I'll gladly drop points out of DPS in favor of a heal or shield.

I'm the anti-optimizer. I play the gnome berserker. I go asteroid mining in my Dominix and trolling for goons in my Hulk. I take the healer class and spec it out for DPS. If there is a class that the forums are up in arms about being weak and uncompetitive and that nobody wants to play, that's probably what I want to play.

It's not that I can't min-max. ANYONE can min-max. Taking a sub-optimal class/race/skill combo and succeeding with it, on the other hand, is an actual honest-to-goodness challenge.

Using the car analogy... sure it's fun to trick out a sports car, but it's even more fun to soup up an old VW microbus, because nobody expects it.

And that element of the unexpected, of playing against type, also happens to be great roleplaying hook.

Pfft...Thats not an Engine, dude...

http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/3802/hpim1557.jpg

THIS is an Engine.

Anyway, I do enjoy optimizing my character, however, only when I have the spare time to do so. Its not THAT high on my priority list in a MMO, but its still up there. #1 is of course doing what entertains me the most, and raiding 4 days a week of 7+ hours isnt even close.

Yes and no. Im not obsessed with it and i don't use spreadsheets and calculators and that sort of stuff, but but some times i do like to spend time carefully studying skill and talent descriptions and getting gear to squeeze just a little bit more power. Not to confuse optimization with specialization, i don't like to do that ...

If by optimizing you mean fleshing out the character, maxing out the craft skills, maxing faction reputations and things like that? Yeah I do. Do I care if I am the first to do something? Nope.

Depends on your meaning, and the intended play style.

I always do everything I can do in a character; crafting, quests, feats, I try to be as thorough as possible.

Then, if I'm playing in any way where other players depend on my performance, and fine-tuning my character improves success chances even slightly, I will do so. I hate when I feel like I'm the guy holding back the team, and I will do anything in my power to make that feeling go away.

For solo play, I often fine-tune my character when it's not actually a hassle, but not exactly for power; I try to make my character as fun to play as possible. I would rather wipe 10 times while having fun than win 10 times while being frustrated with the gameplay.