Don't use enchanting, or don't use smithing, or both. Or just run up the left (elemental) side of the enchanting tree. Forces you to make choices.

I beat the game with a character that used the Blades Armor from the first minute I could get it until the end. Love that armor even though its good, but clearly not the best.

I thought Paladins used healing magic and turn undead? Or do you just mean sword & board. Just wondering.

Yep. Personally, if I was "frequently dying" in a game, I'd think that something's wrong with the game - either it's balanced incredibly poorly, or it's not the game for me (part of why I have absolutely no desire to go near the Souls games).

Dragon Age:Origins had several cases of "frequently dying". At first on boss fights, and then on various random fights. I started out turning the diff down to low for bosses, and then finally just left it there.... the combat was getting incredibly tedious anyway - only reason I wanted to keep going was for the story. (It didn't help that I had what was most likely a very non-ideal party. No mage AoE, for one. Shale, Wynne, Leliana, and my rogue.)



I've mentioned before in other threads.... I don't naturally do the whole min/max, "best you can be" thing when I play games. Never done it in PnP RPGs, nor in CRPGs. I have to research and force myself to play that way (similarly to how, apparently, you'd have to force yourself not to). In most games, it's not a big problem. In games that are designed specifically for that style of play (D&D Online, Diablo 2 at higher difficulties, Sacred 2, etc) it can cause issues. Not everyone has "squeeze the best out of the system" hardwired into their playstyle.

(heh.... it reminds me a bit of my undergraduate Shadowrun campaign - I accidentally ended up making a character that was too strong... actually managed to find some of those "best combinations" of skills/etc. So I retired the character and made one that wasn't nearly so combat-centric. Was much more interesting.)

I hope this is not how you approach life.

I dont see it that way if you want to play your character as if he/she is real then logically they would work out the best and fastest way to accomplish something then do it. If you have to limit yourself to make it fun then thats more a result of poorly thought out game mechanics than anything else.

Self gimping is a contradiction to role playing. Why would your character want to do that to themselves?

why would your character want to smith, enchant and also be an alchemist at once?

why would your character never be a pure warrior, like the ones from the companions? do you think the companions can smith? no, they are totally bad at it and only care about fighting. eorlund is doing the smithing.

edit: just because the game gives you an option, you don't have to use it.

Gimps can easily be justified through RP. My character never takes/wears armor from corpses. That's a minor gimp, but it's easily justified: why would you want to wear something that probably wouldn't fit you and is covered in gore? Any gimp can be justified. It's not a RP issue, it's a design issue: you shouldn't have to come up with gimps to increase a game's difficulty. There are always going to be people who gimp themselves naturally through their RP decisions, which is perfectly fine.

roleplaying, gimping and ubergod should always be available in rpg's, imo.

however, certain gameplay options and customization should always be able to become a part of the actual in-game gameplay. otherwise, it's all in my head.

the ability to enable basic gameplay features is missing in skyrim.

Why?


The character and the player are two different things. So, the player not wanting to min/max (or "be the best") is different than the character's goals. Also, not every living being wants to "be the best"... that's for the overly ambitious. If I were making a character who was a lazy slacker (who still managed to get involved in adventures and squeak his way through), I certainly wouldn't play him as a macho, pumped up, competitor type. Would be wildly out of character. There's all sorts of character archetypes that wouldn't have the character striving to "be the best".


(As for the player always wanting their character to be the best, that's not always true either. Good or interesting, yes. Best? Nah, that's frequently boring. Like I mentioned, I abandoned a Shadowrun character because it was "too good". Of course, pen-and-paper RPGs have the advantage that you don't have to fight against the system, possibly forcing you to min/max in order to survive. Having a GM, it's easy for them to tweak the adventure and encounters to be more reasonable for whatever party the players have put together. Heck, there's even pnp games where the GM's job is to keep the players from going too far - Champions, for instance, has various control systems that the GM can use to define for the players when they have to stop making their characters stronger. It's kind of necessary in a spreadsheet/formula/point-buy character-building game, where creative enough players can really abuse the system if they're not reined in.)




...I guess it's a personality thing. I tend to avoid many competitive activities. I didn't participate in team sports, I don't play multiplayer PvP style games, I don't care that my WoW character might do less DPS or not have the "correct" build, etc..... Honestly, the unpleasant attitudes of many of the people who do enjoy those things kind of bother me.

Time to limit this thread....

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