Is a little bit of blatant broken mechanics fun?

[Zinegata]

So the real question is: how much is minmaxxing and broken things a selling point of an edition?

A fair bit. Discovering new strategies is a pretty big aspect of making a game fun for a lot of players.

[MGuy]

Figuring out the "I Win" button is extremely fun. Pressing the "I Win" button gets boring as hell pretty fast.

Pretty much. As I said, we just counted coup - "I could have pressed the 'I win' button five times so far.".

For the people that do enjoy the act of min maxxing I'd reckon that this is it I only have one person who ever does so at my "regular" table. I don't need to most of the time since I primarily DM and when I play I tend to avoid doing so both out of courtesy and because I feel that going to that extreme is unnecessary in most games. Outside of setting up encounters I don't really get much enjoyment out of creating combos from DnD characters. I usually save that thought space for CCGs (my CCG of choice being yugioh) and videogames.

[Koumei]

Yeah, I'm a big fan of doing it Sun Tzu's way. Win first, then go to battle. It's fun to put things together so that it happens, choosing all the specific elements that add up to your victory, and it's fun to watch the inevitable result as your strategy pays off and you steamroll things with enough time to spare to roast some bees afterwards.

[Maxus]

Yeah, I'm a big fan of doing it Sun Tzu's way. Win first, then go to battle. It's fun to put things together so that it happens, choosing all the specific elements that add up to your victory, and it's fun to watch the inevitable result as your strategy pays off and you steamroll things with enough time to spare to roast some bees afterwards.

Odin Sphere was good for that one. Of course, some bosses and fights were so nasty Blizzard + Overload + Cyclone or Big Shot/ETC weren't I Win buttons, but equalizers...

[Judging__Eagle]

Arguably you could call a strategy player more of a knot-cutter, but even still I don't feel like people who enjoy strategy want to walk in with an advantage, because the whole point of masterful strategy is creating the advantage through your strategy, not because you innately had the edge going in.

Experts disagree.

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

Maybe when you're playing for reasons other than fun.

But in terms of strategy games, I can tell you that it takes the fun out of the game knowing I had the edge going in. At that point, you can't feel good for having a good strategy, because you're already the projected winner anyway. The most you can do is embarrass yourself if you lose.

Spoken as someone who doesn't play many strategy games.

The advantage you have "going into" a fight in D&D is not the same as playing a giant map in Supreme Commander 1 or 2.

In D&D the entire campaign has been you "game"; so you'renot walking into any specific encounter with an "unfair" advantage.

If anything, you're actually playing with one of the oldest strategies that Sonshi/Sun Tzu talks about, that of bringing your heaviest forces against your enemies most fragile positions, "grindstones against eggshells" and "water descending a mountain" are how Sonshi describes those types of military actions.

Battles that you win so hardcore that, when watched from a distance, makes people think about eggshells trying to fight a 500 lb granite grindstone. That's... rather extreme as an image, but accurate for the results that good strategy can accomplish, a seeming auto-win.

The thing is, these PC units are terribad against non-fortresses; such as against armies. Sure, they can kill hosts of enemies; but enough hosts or just plain old cloak and dagger assassination can do the trick. I'm sure that NPC assassins may stalk the PCs; although, being an adventurer, I doubt they're really surprised (the Former Nobility background by Frank & Keith really explain it;

For myself, having the "i win" button simply means that I have more things that can be consistent in the story of a character. Once you can automatically do something, the next step is to use that to develop risky/challenging manoeuvres.

Or, start taking new risks to apply your "sure thing" in more creative ways. The melee-blender barbarian that starts pumping up their assassination suite of skills now has more "risky" things they can do while playing. Now the game is "will they find me before I murderize them all?" Not "can I hit them, and drop them?"


The real problem with having an "i win" button isn't the over pressing of it, it's that most people aren't willing to take one new risks once their previous risks are minimized.

People tend to get bored, because they are boring, and aren't willing and eager to broaden their character's potential options.

That's a fundamental issue that RPGs can't solve though, some players really are fine with defaulting; and that's fine. Those players can pick up "Multi-Style" and play Wheel of Fate "randomness"; ideally, buying a bigger and bigger dice, with more and potentially moe interesting options. Players may "feel" like thy're Wakka from "FF:Super Predictable Scenes"

Some players are about as standardized as a re-forming blob of clay (or play a Phasm). I tend to sit on the fence between the experimenting and defaulting fields, while I love playing something that will be something different as I feel necessary; just doing a planned out action is able to be very stress/choice reducing.

[edits, needs more still...]