Also I quit Pokemon for good because doing min maxxing via breeding for stats and letting most my Pokemon go because really, stats were the only thing important because everyone already knew the key strategies, and in a turn based game you cannot ever make up the difference. Citing that as a good example of a min maxxing game that casuals still play it nuts, remember who it is aimed at - children, most of whom never bother with stats, it's just fun collecting animals to them. Of course that sort if marketing is going to make for a successful game. Yep, casuals have ruined games for me too, but I'll never in a million years play all the games that still get released that require skill, so really all it takes is trying to ignore the 360 owning idiots at the game store, and importing half my stuff because stat based rpg tend to stay firmly in Asia these days.
Quit Pokemon because you can't be ever the best at it without wrecking your life. It's like crack. It took up more of my time than any skill based action rpg ever will. Stats are nice, but skill always trumps stats in these games. How fast you kill something is not always the most important thing, if you can solo a bam or even a main dungeon boss (as I once found myself doing in Tera when we lost the lancer and the party wiped) it takes forever but pull it off and you get a sense of pride.
Min maxxers always run in Max capacity teams of other min maxxers, and it makes the game boring skill-less sludge.
What you said about Pokemon there actually further proves my point as to why I chose to use it as an example as a great min-max styled game. It can be played and enjoyed on a casual level, it is aimed at a general market, but at the same time it has depth and complexity as far ast statistics and mechanics go. Maybe not as deep and complex as many other competitive RPG style games, but enough that you can really sit back and appreciate what went into creating it, and if you're so inclinded, delve into it and feel damn good about knowing all this neat, intricate stuff that you can do.
Of course, most players will breeze through the game, blissfully ignorant about EV points or IV's or proper moveset composition or breeding or metagame, and will still for the most part enjoy it while the more dedicated and hardcore players are experiencing the joys that come with learning and more analytical exploration.
I say, if you're going to do something, do something properly. A casual gamer is like someone who takes a chicken leg and eats just enough off the meat while leaving a majority of it still stuck to the bone, then moves on to the next chicken leg. A min-maxer carefully strips the bone, picks off that little rib-like bit and studies it, picks the cartelege off it and crunches, then does the same to either end, nibbles on the marrow a little, and leaves behind something that could proudly be presented in some sort of chicken museum. The casual gamer wouldn't have thought twice about that weird little rib-thing, nor would they experience the childlike delight that comes with chewing cartelege, and the satisfaction that comes with knowing that you got everything out of that chicken leg that you possibly could have gotten...and then they boil it into stock to make soup.
To take your transexual example into account, yes it's possible for min maxing to go overboard, but sorry, 3% is something I would make a big deal over too. As a long time player of RO, I know that people would pay millions of Zeny to get hold of a Pirate dagger for high end PVP, a mid headgear with a +2 attack and +1% crit modifier, or something equally meagre like that. It makes a difference, even if a small one.
Secondly, there is no skill in choosing something you know is weaker than the better option unless you have very good reasons for doing so. Max capacity is run at max capacity because it's freakin' MAX CAPACITY. It's a terrible strategy to rely on your opponent to suck.
Finally, min maxing is never about needing to be the best. Bad min-maxers try to push for this, but the majority of hardcore players are content to settle for less, so long as they know how to strive for perfection when possible and appreciate what goes into such a pursuit. I cannot be satisfied with knowing that I just don't care enough to not do a job properly, or at least not try to do the best I can/create to the best of my ability. You can be a min-maxer and still have a full time job so long as your attitude is good, so playing the life card just makes you look like an even bigger casual gamer. And yes, you don't have as much time to invest in the game as others? Tough. You SHOULDN'T have greater or equal rewards to someone who does. It just means you're going to take a little longer to get where they get, or about the same time overall if you're smart about your management and competitively-minded. Even then, it's the learning process that's truly what it's all about, not the instant gratification that most gamers these days seem to expect.
Fact still stands that if you go and make a game solely catering to a crowd that is scared away by numbers, options and technicality, then your game is most likely going to be oversimplistic, shallow, and bland at high level. You're creating boneless chicken just so that lazy people don't have to use their mouths too much.
Sorry, what, you think I'm a casual gamer because as somebody with a full time job I recognized I would never have the time to devote to Pokemon, and instead these days opt for games that add a skill metric that make those small percents mean even less?
Do you play Castanic over everything else? I play Popori, the race differences don't mean a damn in Tera vs what they mean in Phantasy Star.
I'm just short of a min maxxer, but I play with casuals, because I like the challenge and pride of holding up my party.
Also you're responding in a thread created by a guy who thinks that Castanic are his only choice but doesn't like how flamboyant they look.
The whole point is completely silly from both perspectives.
Without min-maxers, games would be mush.
Whenever there are choices to be made, whether in gameplay, or anything else, like fashion, restaurants, wines, love-making, logisitics, marketing techniques w/e, people want to follow "best practices". Complaining about that is like making weewee against the wind.
Stupid thing is min maxxers make up perhaps 2% of the community, so arguing that without them games would be mush is stupid, because without them the game will still aim for balance, still reward the skilled and still have the maxxing element, because while min maxxers won't be there to accept no alternative, mid range players who are not actually casual will feel a sense of achievement at getting a reward that amps their power,and continue striving for more rewards.
You can be skilled and not a min maxxer in an action based RPG. You can strive for rewards while not kicking those who haven't yet got them. It may take longer to play til you get the reward, but so what? There might be somebody who sucks on your party, sapping your time but so what? I was in a game the other day with a [filtered] healer who boasted to everyone that he was getting high in-game. If anything it was funny. You can laugh about it and commiserate later, then appreciate the amazing healer you get next game a lot more.
That's funny, because I know where the boundaries are, I also know that 1% difference in an action based game means a lot less than 1% in pure stat based games, but even so that 1% only makes a difference in both a lot less than 1% of the time in actuality because (example):
A monster has 3000 HP. One player does 1200 damage, another player does 1212 damage. For your exam paper, calculate the amount of times that both players have to attack to kill this monster.
Now that's an extremely simplified example, and of course sometimes you're going to come across things that will die faster with that 1% extra. Andthen you of course have multipliers that can make the 1% extra mean even more in some games.
However I would argue that playing Castanic over anything else and saying that they are the only option is taking this way too far, and hating how they look because the males look flamboyant is an argument that's a whole other magnitude of ridiculous.
Could understand it in phantasy star where the racials mean a lot. Cannot understand it in Tera, where they don't. But in phantasy star I guess the devs give us sliders so you can make your poncey elf look as stupidly call of duty buffed up as you like. Still we had "Wah I don't wanna play a furry" levels of idiocy because the beast class had highest ATP.
It is nigh on always min maxxers who cry about being "forced" to play characters they don't like the look of, and in my opinion they almost always hate them for a stupid reason.
I mean let's cry about dps til the cows come home, but look at us all responding in a thread where the min maxxing OP calls Castanics nancies without any of us drawing any attention to how utterly homophobic that opinion is.