Why not both? Perfectionists exist.
I roleplay most of the time. Even my builds in games like CoH are not made to drain every DPS. I like having characters i can make people laugh, or groan…a bit of personality instead of Superman.
In SP games like Baldur’s gate I usually take the high road once, then the low road.
I find it interesting that, for most games, going too far in either direction just ruins the game. Power Game and it’s too easy as you’ve seen through all the rules. Just role-play (and it’s not really role-playing - but doing stuff for the fun over effectiveness and investing in the story) and you risk it becoming far too hard.
(The old Marine character with healing as only psi ability in System Shock 2 as something which makes everything too easy as you can turn every syringe psi in the game into health* versus playing a conversation-based character in Vampire: Bloodlines**)
Generally, I respond to the game. If it’s a game just about hitting people, I play it as a strategy game and mix-max. If it’s a game which tries to hit the emotions, I roll with it.
(Diablo vs Planescape)
KG
*Also appearing in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.
**And it’s especially nasty in Bloodlines where they actually lure you into playing a character who talks their way through the game in the first half before dropping you into the dungeons. Cheers, guys.
I have a flash version on my site, but it’s in Danish, so you just have to remember the original wording of all 50 questions…
Def. I powered my stats in Morrowind and combat became trivial. I made it nearly to the end and then couldn’t be bothered to finish.
BUT I voted for “can’t decide” in the poll because I do some of both. I’m definitely guilty of sneaking a look at FAQs while playing most games to make sure I don’t choose useless skills or pass up hidden stat/exp opportunities. But I hate pick-pocketing and won’t do it unless it’s absolutely necessary – both out of a sense of morality and because it usually breaks the game by making money too accessible. I pretty much always choose the good path when available and feel bad when I pick mean dialogue responses.
I guess now that I think about it I am a goody-two-shoes min-maxer.
Seeing as much as possible of the game’s content and quests is my primary goal, having a viable & fun-to-play character secondary, and having a consistently & thoughtfully role-played character tertiary.
This question doesn’t really make any sense. There’s only one type of game where you can roleplay - an RPG. A roleplaying game. And of course you’re roleplaying when playing those and then powergaming everywhere else. It’s not like you’re going to join a game of Counter-Strike and not try to do as well as you can. Doesn’t that make you a powergamer?
Bartle sets me off because it doesn’t deal with roleplaying as a seperate thing than socializing. There are plenty of “social” players who aren’t interested in roleplaying at all and plenty of roleplayers who aren’t interested in socializing with them. The question is why? That goes to immersion and simulation. Other elements that Bartle doesn’t touch. His study, I think, was done in the late 1800’s on a old steam powered Babbage machine back before people did roleplaying and spend most of their time wallowing about in MUD.
So when people limply trot out the Bartle study as the rosetta stone of online game design I die a little inside each time. Life isn’t that simple.
Well, presuming one defines powergaming as “doing what maximizes my character’s (combat) abilities” and roleplaying as “doing what seems most in keeping with my character’s nature,” they tend to be at cross-purposes at least some of the time.
A simple example: let’s say that the “good” solution to a quest gives you more XP, while the “evil” solution gives you more money. If you’re a powergamer, you’ll pick the solution you think benefits your character build most (i.e., gold if you’re saving up for a cool item, XP if you’re trying to hit next level quickest). If you’re a roleplayer, you’ll pick the solution you think fits your character’s nature best, regardless of the reward. Even if the powergamer and the roleplayer end up choosing the same solution, they’ll have done so for different reasons.
Not every RPG forces you to make these either-or decisions, but personally I think those are bad RPGs - in terms of role-playing - because it means your choices have no bearing on the game narrative.
EDIT: of course, one could always define powergaming as a kind of roleplaying, but it usually implies that you care more about killing and phat lewt than you do about pretending to be Sir Broody McCockangst for 30 hours…
Sir Broody Cockangst. Wasn’t that Stephen Colbert’s paladin?
I’m a wandering chatterer in online games. I raid if the guild needs me, but I’m just as happy wandering around finding new content, talking to npcs, or pvping.
Goddamn, the poll is perfectly balanced again. This is spooky.
At the risk of being unhelpful, I would like to suggest that my style is a third way - explorer. My motivation for playing games is to see as much of the game world as possible, to find as much as can be found, to watch ze wild beast in its naturale habitat, oui? This does have the effect of overpowering my characters at times, since it leads to more combat and the discovery of powerful items in hidden locations. But the exploration is the end of itself - I love this even in first person games like Doom and Jedi Knight that tabulate secret areas - I live for finding them all.
I usually make characters on a whim depending on what I’m in the mood for at the time. Min/maxing is too much like work, so I’d probably go with ElGuapo. Walks on the beach and barfights for me. I don’t like to feel as if I’m playing a very pretty spreadsheet, but that’s just me. If I wanted to do that, I’d go offer to prepare someone else’s taxes for them or something. I’m also an exploration junky, which somewhat goes hand in hand with the walks on the beach thing. :)
You’d do best to disabuse yourself of this silly notion. “RPG” is not a literal descriptor of its genre. It is an arbitrary label for a widely recognized type of gameplay which basically boils down to a character growth simulator with a plot.
“Roleplaying” is entirely in the head of whoever is playing the game. You can roleplay almost ANY game if you get sufficiently wrapped up in it. Thief is a classic example of a non-RPG that nonetheless allows magnificent latitude for roleplaying.
Role-player.
I decide the class/skills I want to use (ex: fighter or mage - melee or magic) and decide the type of character I want to play. (ex: an ambitious mage that starts out neutral and eventually becomes a power hungry evil bastard - this worked good in HotU) And I see if the game allows for that, or at least try and get as close to it as possible.
If the games a hack’n’slash dungeon crawl with all combat and no role-playing, I powergame.
Jaded Role-Player: 1. Make a deep and engaging character whose stats reflect his personality. 2. Figure out ways to make said character dominate. 3. Enjoy
Yeah, this is basically me. I love to role play, but I like to dominate too. So I always come up with a theme. Don’t try to do everything, come up with at least one thing you’ll do better than anyone else in the party… helps with roleplaying too.
Or conversely, such really bad at one thing or a couple of things, also helps with role playing.
Do you treat it as a sport to be won or a book to be read… I’m looking for a journey, personally.
Same here. Though then I find myself roleplaying the character that would have exploration as his main motivation. (it’s no wander all my characters end up as a variant of a ranger.) My choice in RPing and thus his choice is usually what would benefit him in terms of being to explore safer.
Of course, he is chaotic good, favouring money at some times because it’ll afford him the ship across the ocean or experience later because it might prolong his survival in dark cave #52. He’s a loner by nature, laconic to a fault and somewhat snarky.
Sometime his exploration is really a cover for him escaping from something else.
I think I’m turning out to be a nearly even split of the two styles.
In the original Baldur’s Gate I played a super-strong (18/00!) half-elven female archer ranger. She could practically vaporize anything she shot… red mist everywhere! She was neutral good, out to be a hero, stars in the eyes and all.
In Dungeon Siege II I played a hulking half-giant with a huge two-handed sword and a gloomy disposition, a reluctant hero type.
In Oblivion, a cat ninja archer thief, who can jump over damn near anything and who LOVES sneaking around shooting people from halfway across the map.
In NWN2, I’m going to play a drow sorcerer with a personality so magnetic that he’s thoroughly stuck on himself. Hero? Sure, if it’ll make him more famous!
In all cases, I definitely skew towards highly focused game characters that can get really good at their individual skills, but with a fairly wide variation in what I think of as their backstory and temperament. I don’t really like playing the same character over and over.
The only common themes are that they all are gluttons for quests (I like to suck up all the content on one run-through, since I don’t have time to replay anything – do you know the size of my backlog?!), and they’re all either neutral or good. I can’t play a really evil character… I just don’t have the heart for it. I can’t even be mean to a computer NPC!