Like, oh, the deck.
Or my daughter's car.*
Or that garden plot we keep talking about putting in the backyard.
I tend to drive my kids bananas with plotting out how I'm going to get stuff done and when, because efficiency is a big deal when you've limited time to get something done.
And right now, you're probably snickering because I rail about the min/maxing that goes on in MMOs, when I do it myself in real life.
That's the difference, really: when I'm in an MMO I'm there to not do what I do irl; I want to relax. It takes some doing, but I do force myself to not min/max my way in MMOs. Sometimes it just leaks out, like knowing what crafted gear gets me good boosts while leveling, but in general I keep it under control.
While I rail against min/maxing in general, I'm fine with individuals doing it if that's what they want to do in game. Just don't expect me to do it. And the quickest way to make me dig in my heels and become as stubborn as a mule is to try to force me into doing it. After all, that's not the way to change someone's mind.
#Blaugust2023
*My youngest drove up to visit for the weekend, and when I happened to lean against her car it felt... chalky. "When did you last wash the car?" I asked.
"December."
"Uh oh." Her car needed a good polish or she was in danger of losing her paint job. Maybe if the car was only 5 years old she could have gotten away with it, but it's 14 years old (she bought it from my sister-in-law). "Let me work on that."
"December."
"Uh oh." Her car needed a good polish or she was in danger of losing her paint job. Maybe if the car was only 5 years old she could have gotten away with it, but it's 14 years old (she bought it from my sister-in-law). "Let me work on that."
So I spent several hours over the weekend washing and then polishing her car to remove all the built up residue on the paint job. I hadn't used the car polish in ages, but I finished the bottle on Saturday and had to run to the auto store early on Sunday morning.
Min/max is an odd thing. It really is what drove me off of Wrath Classic.I do think it can go overboard, at least the true min/max, but at the same time I can tell when I gear "properly" according to theorycrafting, where I do more damage, or survive longer as a tank, or have an easier time healing, so I totally understand the personal side to it. I also understand the social side of it, being driven to "not fail" your group. At least with the Mythic/Heroic/Normal split on raids that's given people space to reduce the min/max. And I can run most M+ reasonably well short of bad affix weeks without having "perfect" gear, but I also can see the desire to do the min/max. Finding a like minded group is the most important part of these stupid games.
ReplyDeleteTruth.
DeleteAnd what the min/max drive makes the Wrath Classic community do in pursuit of that goal is what drove me away. Okay, there was also the realization that the story wasn't what I remembered it was, and that I never realized what I was missing when I wasn't raiding in the original game. Now I do, obviously, and that all consuming passion is what makes people create these GDKP runs, buy gold, be a slave to the meta, and ostracize former friends from Vanilla Classic in pursuit of pixelated glory.