Do MMORPG gamers love math?

raystantz

It seems like every game that I try to play now, the majority of the playerbase are people who spent an abundance of time number crunching every single aspect of the game, trying to min/max their stats as quickly as possible and just completely ignoring the exploration and immersion of the game in favor of more or less gaming the system to be the best? It's like their enjoyment of the game stems from doing math and crunching numbers, so it makes me wonder.. did these people love Math in school?

When I first started playing MMO's it was just about exploring, and socializing with people from all different areas. It wasn't about being the best in the shortest period of time.. but every game forum I hit all the posts are about, "How fast til level cap?" "This game is P2W" or "NUMBERS! NUMBERS! NUMBERS! STATS! STATS! STATS!" It wasn't always this way, at least not for me.. or maybe it was and I just never noticed because there were at least some people just playing to have fun and explore. 

Thoughts?

Phaserlight

I enjoy math; it's a fascinating topic, but not required to excel at the game I play.

Scorchien

Phaserlight said:

I enjoy math; it's a fascinating topic, but not required to excel at the game I play.

   Im a 9th grade drop out , that got straight Fs in Math , and will agree , Its not required to excel in any game i have ever played...

Sovrath

I hate math. Then again I don't try to crunch the numbers or figure out the best builds, etc.

I find all of that terribly tedious.

However, I have noticed that there are a lot of people (at least vocal people) who do this. I always thought that perhaps there were a lot of programmers who played video games. That might not be true but it was a thought.

Zushakon

I absolutely abhor math, especially after all the university math I've studied. But I do hate losing and not being the best even more, thus min-maxing it is!

Not that it's much needed in most of the games I've played recently. Only some basic number-crunching etc.

Theocritus

Math was my best subjest (other than PE) but it has not been much of a factor in most games

LynxJSA

Most avid MMO players don't care about the math behind the curtain until it affects their main.

By "avid", I mean the type that doesn't just play but also visits forums, stream, blogs, etc. 

SomethingUnusual

Competition is the core of what a game is defined to be, for the most part, there are exceptions.

Numbers prove what leads the competition. Just like football, basketball, baseball etc. 
I agree it's a bit over the top with the obsession, but at the same time, have you ever met a hardcore sports fan?

Kyleran

Phaserlight said:

I enjoy math; it's a fascinating topic, but not required to excel at the game I play.

Of course I hate math, which is why we use "Excel" so much in EVE.

waynejr2

Back in the 70s I would DM a dnd campaign.  We would get new players who would ask what they needed.  I said just paper and pencil is all you need.  But I quickly found two types of these players:  Those who just brought paper and pencil and the second type who would buy all the books and read them.  They wanted to know everything about the game and what they faced and the stats and such.

But watching the two types play something interesting differentiated them.  The ones who studied everything didn't enjoy the games nearly as much as the ones who came to play.  They were surprised by things and were in awe of the fascinating things that happened which is an experience the second type didn't get.

Now there is playing the game and there is playing the meta-game.  Playing games is fun but playing meta-games is something else.  Especially in games where you don't win and the journey is the game. 

Kaisen_Dexx

Mathematics is a tool - a very useful tool that when used properly can give you an advantage in many faucets of life. Its a shame that so many people view mathematics as an obstacle instead of a tool. I fear this is a failing of our school systems...however, I digress.

I think the reason you're seeing so much mathematics everywhere these days is because of how shallow the MMO experience has become lately. The vast majority of games all distill down to combat. And not particularly deep or interesting combat, mind you. Very simple mechanics that can be easily modeled mathematically, void of any real meaningful choices beyond specific rotations that give optimal numbers. Any thought given to exploration, or "The Journey" is secondary to combat. If someone gets a run speed bonus on boots, its not to better explore the world, its to maneuver in combat better, since the world is now chock-full of fast travel.

Viper482

Agree 100%. Hate that this is what the genre has become.

Eldurian

Well, if you play World of Warcraft no math is required. It does your whole build for you now!

So yeah I actually enjoy games that involve math and thinking about your build. I think you should have to do a lot more than crunch numbers to determine what the best build for you is, but I would rather some math as part of deep character customization than no math because the customization has been destroyed.

That doesn't destroy immersion for me at all. The alternative certainly does though.

raystantz

This post wasn't a bash on Math, it was a bash on how MMORPG's have been come just simply "MMO"s" because the role playing game part has been traded for stat and number crunching.. it's less about playing and developing a character who lives in this world and more about making sure all his stats are maxed out so you always win. I know it's been this way a long time, but reading forums is what drove me to the "It didn't use to be this way..." train of thought.

Kaisen_Dexx

raystantz said:

This post wasn't a bash on Math, it was a bash on how MMORPG's have been come just simply "MMO"s" because the role playing game part has been traded for stat and number crunching.. it's less about playing and developing a character who lives in this world and more about making sure all his stats are maxed out so you always win. I know it's been this way a long time, but reading forums is what drove me to the "It didn't use to be this way..." train of thought.

You mentioned it yourself, that you saw MMOs trending this way. I think the more interesting question to ponder would be: If the inverse happened instead, and MMOs polarized toward world design to the point that combat and gameplay took a back-seat to exploration (Think No Man's Sky), would we be seeing the same type of threads? Or would that extrema be more desirable of an outcome? Would world design still be shallow like combat is now, despite its primary focus?

The ponderings of these questions focus less on the results of the genre, and more about the ability of the people who shape the genre. Are these games shallow because the developers are incapable of imagining anything different from the norm? Or is it the result of a large team comprised of individuals with many perspectives finding the middle ground on a project?

Its interesting to think about, at least.

Eldurian

raystantz said:

This post wasn't a bash on Math, it was a bash on how MMORPG's have been come just simply "MMO"s" because the role playing game part has been traded for stat and number crunching.. it's less about playing and developing a character who lives in this world and more about making sure all his stats are maxed out so you always win. I know it's been this way a long time, but reading forums is what drove me to the "It didn't use to be this way..." train of thought.

It's not really clear what you want though? Personally the only point I see a problem with customization and games that cause you too really think about your build is when properly customizing a build comes down to nothing but optimizing damage, optimizing healing, or optimizing aggro generation and survivability. 

If characters aren't one dimensional and there are many interesting things you can do, then I don't mind spending weeks honing my character to be exactly the way I want it. It's more enjoyable that way actually.

And that's nothing new, that's the way I've been as long as I've been playing games with enough depth to allow me to do it. At least as far back as Guild Wars 1 and Dungeons and Dragons 3.5.

Aethaeryn

raystantz said:

It seems like every game that I try to play now, the majority of the playerbase are people who spent an abundance of time number crunching every single aspect of the game, trying to min/max their stats as quickly as possible and just completely ignoring the exploration and immersion of the game in favor of more or less gaming the system to be the best? It's like their enjoyment of the game stems from doing math and crunching numbers, so it makes me wonder.. did these people love Math in school?

When I first started playing MMO's it was just about exploring, and socializing with people from all different areas. It wasn't about being the best in the shortest period of time.. but every game forum I hit all the posts are about, "How fast til level cap?" "This game is P2W" or "NUMBERS! NUMBERS! NUMBERS! STATS! STATS! STATS!" It wasn't always this way, at least not for me.. or maybe it was and I just never noticed because there were at least some people just playing to have fun and explore. 

Thoughts?

I completely just play for fun.  If a game "requires" more careful builds etc. to be viable in PvP then I will just google something and adjust to fit what I like.  I played a balance druid in vanilla wow if that helps you to know how much I cared

VideoJockey

I only worry about the numbers if I'm having trouble with something or (rarely) if am doing something competitive. If I can't figure out if the new item is better than what I have within 5 seconds, I probably won't keep it. I do enough of that stuff at work. 

raystantz

DMKano said:

OP - I min/max in games I play as well as my guild, it really has nothing to do with "love of math", it has to do with maximum efficiency of spending time online for maximum gain. I do happen to love math, but the correlation of min/maxing and love for math is not really there, its more human nature for efficiency.

So, comparing MMO gaming to bodybuilding would be a better comparison. I go to the gym because I want to be healthy. I want to look good, but I just enjoy the social aspects of going to the gym. I'm not there looking to be Arnold. I'm not getting ready for a big body building tournament. I'm just there to be consistent and maybe lose some weight or stay fit.

In MMO's I'm the guy who plays for the social aspect, exploring, adventuring, killing monsters, progressing my character, still paying attention to stats, but I'm not worrying about every little detail and trying to ring every ounce of progression I can out of the game as fast as I possibly can.  I just felt like when I started playing MMORPG's back during UO etc... I was the majority, and now it's flip flopped to some extent where those things are less important and what's more important is being the absolute best, as fast as possible with the least amount of work possible. I guess that's fun for some people, it's not for me.

raystantz

Aethaeryn said:

raystantz said:

It seems like every game that I try to play now, the majority of the playerbase are people who spent an abundance of time number crunching every single aspect of the game, trying to min/max their stats as quickly as possible and just completely ignoring the exploration and immersion of the game in favor of more or less gaming the system to be the best? It's like their enjoyment of the game stems from doing math and crunching numbers, so it makes me wonder.. did these people love Math in school?

When I first started playing MMO's it was just about exploring, and socializing with people from all different areas. It wasn't about being the best in the shortest period of time.. but every game forum I hit all the posts are about, "How fast til level cap?" "This game is P2W" or "NUMBERS! NUMBERS! NUMBERS! STATS! STATS! STATS!" It wasn't always this way, at least not for me.. or maybe it was and I just never noticed because there were at least some people just playing to have fun and explore. 

Thoughts?

I completely just play for fun.  If a game "requires" more careful builds etc. to be viable in PvP then I will just google something and adjust to fit what I like.  I played a balance druid in vanilla wow if that helps you to know how much I cared

I started playing Archeage and I spent half an hour on a forum trying to figure out what skillsets to pick because I wanted to make sure I was viable later on, instead of picking them based on what was the most fun to play.

FlyByKnight

I don't hate math, I hate when it's required of me to properly play. I understand the desire to have some complexity in systems but c'mon man. An excel sheet to calculate RNG, or need a calculator to figure out how much crap you have to grind is goofy as hell.

rojoArcueid

i don't like math, and i don't like when math intervenes in my enjoyment of a game. MMORPGS and their dependency on gear stat calculations instead of raw player skill is very annoying.

EDIT: RNG is another problem.

Archlyte

I wish that games could have invisible mechanics to prevent accountant supremacy. 

Eldurian

Aethaeryn said:

raystantz said:

It seems like every game that I try to play now, the majority of the playerbase are people who spent an abundance of time number crunching every single aspect of the game, trying to min/max their stats as quickly as possible and just completely ignoring the exploration and immersion of the game in favor of more or less gaming the system to be the best? It's like their enjoyment of the game stems from doing math and crunching numbers, so it makes me wonder.. did these people love Math in school?

When I first started playing MMO's it was just about exploring, and socializing with people from all different areas. It wasn't about being the best in the shortest period of time.. but every game forum I hit all the posts are about, "How fast til level cap?" "This game is P2W" or "NUMBERS! NUMBERS! NUMBERS! STATS! STATS! STATS!" It wasn't always this way, at least not for me.. or maybe it was and I just never noticed because there were at least some people just playing to have fun and explore. 

Thoughts?

I completely just play for fun.  If a game "requires" more careful builds etc. to be viable in PvP then I will just google something and adjust to fit what I like.  I played a balance druid in vanilla wow if that helps you to know how much I cared

I don't see the problem with people doing that. While I personally never play cookie cutter builds I would rather have people play cookie cutter builds when they want to and have my ability to make a fully customized character, then have people trying to remove my customization options because they are "too mathy."

Eldurian

rojoArcueid said:

i don't like math, and i don't like when math intervenes in my enjoyment of a game. MMORPGS and their dependency on gear stat calculations instead of raw player skill is very annoying.

EDIT: RNG is another problem.

I consider the ability to create a build that suits your own skills well an extremely important part of player skill. That's part of the reason I love deep customization so much. For instance in ArcheAge you are picking all your skills. Nothing in your build is there unless you put it there. Picking the skills I need, making sure I can use them all effectively and keymapping them so I can access them when I need them is huge.

My careful planning and playing a build suited to my skillset can give me a massive advantage over someone who does not plan things out carefully or just uses a cookie cutter build that doesn't suit their own skills as a player very well. It can allow me to beat someone who has a better reaction time naturally, but not after factoring in that my setup is meant to increase my reaction time.

Personally I think I deserve that advantage. Twitch isn't everything. Being prepared should give me an edge.

Shaigh

I haven't done that much min-maxing in mmorpg, its more about adjusting the build to the content you are playing. During my raid-leading and heal-leading days it was more about maximizing performance and playing as efficient as possible. Sure, you did have the recruits that had no idea how to gear up and build their character but it was more about failing to understand game mechanics or simply not having geared up enough.

The problem that OP describes is more about poor game design, mmorpg that force you to make important choices where some of the choices are false. To make it worse, you haven't played the game enough to understand what the choices do which can cause you to ruin your character before you even got started.