In general, I have nothing truly against minmaxing. I know you can still have fun minmaxing and some campaigns basically require it to some degree just so your character can survive. My problem with minmaxing is less the action itself and more the people who do it. I am not a minmaxer and never will be as, to me, it sucks the fun out of roleplaying for me. It would mean that I would never take certain traits/feats/spells/etc just because they're not "optimal." It takes that fun of being underprepared every now and then and find away around it with the build that I have. However...most minmaxers I know are less than pleased when someone playing a game, for fun, isn't playing with so much optimization that they don't have any room for roleplay. Let's look at some examples.
Fallout is full of traits that are not useful towards helping you in most situations and actually hinder you like Four-Eyes and Claustrophobic. I can agree, in terms of stats, these traits aren't good and are bad if that's what you're looking for. However, these are great for roleplaying because they actually have effects. If you actually needed glasses, as a man whose eyesight is ass since I was six, if I wore actual glasses in an rpg I would want to actually need them. Especially in the case of Fallout's armor and weapon durability, if your glasses break but you don't have the Four Eyes trait, then nothing will change and the rp is ruined. And in the case of Claustrophobia, you do change when you suffer from it as, while it is more on the side of irrational phobias (that's just my opinion, not knocking anyone who has it for any reason) it is still a real phobia and so it would make sense for your character to take penalties for being inside. Yeah, they're not good for your stats, but they allow you to rp more than just trying to remember what traits your arbitrarily gave your character.
Next, I want to talk about Pokémon. I don't play a lot of games with a competitive scene, but I will never join any, much less Pokémon. I could not give less of a shit about EVs and IVs and how natures work because it removes the fun of getting a new Pokémon and taking it for a spin to decide whether I like it or not and trying to see if it gets better when I level it up. I don't want to think about having to have the perfect Pokémon for specific situations because, as I have found and taught a few people, even the best laid plans can fall to ruin. I have defeated people's competitive teams to prove this point and only type match-ups and maybe abilities were on my mind for what team I made. The point around this one is that there's no way to actually be perfect and it's not fun to try to get what you consider a perfect team only for it to be steamrolled.
Back a bit to rpgs, let's talk Paper Mario. I have had to stop watching regular playthroughs, often first times through, because people complain about the person either not using a super broken strat or having the best badges possible equipped. While I myself have not played Paper Mario, I have played Hollow Knight with the charms and, while I have found a pretty solid combination, I don't bother trying to find the most optimal unless I'm trying the Pantheons (I have since given up on P5 because I just don't have the time to devote to it). I don't use optimal strats for anything and hate when people try to make it seem like there's only one (check out my Dark Souls community rant). It's a game...yes, good strats do make the game easier...but not everyone wants that.
Just as a last bit, I'm going to talk about tabletop rpgs like D&D and Pathfinder (mainly PF since I prefer it and always will...1e at least). I mainly play sorcerers since I've always liked using magic in games when I can except I've found my calling as a sword and shield guy in Skyrim, scythes are usually my go-to in Dark Souls (if I can) but otherwise I'm the spellcaster. I do not take spells that are necessarily the best for my bloodline or in general simply because what people consider as the best spells, I don't really think are that good. Fireball is my favorite example since, in all reality, quite a few monsters in late game campaigns and high level adventures are at least resistant if not straight up immune to fire. Cold is usually a safer bet with sonic damage being the best even if there are only a handful of spells that deal it. And that's just beyond how people will choose races and classes as they consider the combo the "best" even if it does just work, but then they'll practically never play anything that's not optimal.
Like I said, I don't have a problem with minmaxing itself, it's the people who believe that if you don't use the current meta for whatever it is that you are playing it "wrong." If you do that, you're literally just an ass who is trying to ruin people's fun with a game they might've just picked up. Let people play and let other people have their fun while you have yours. You have your day in sweeping whatever you're up against.
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