Powergaming. Being a min-maxer. (I believe that min-maxing means to play optimally.)

In PuzzleQuest, I want to get a good combo going. The feeling of glee when you first use Haste, then Web h(makes enemy lose 3+ turns), then Burn to turn Green gems to Red gems, then Wake the Dead to turn Skulls to +5 Skulls and finally Flaming Skulls to turn Red gems to Skulls.

The resulting damage is 27 with a 50% for an extra turn. I KNOW that there are much more powerful combos but this one is SOOO satisfying

Equipment:

Helm of the Ram

Great Axe

The below requires something like this board:

! = Skull

r = red gem

g = green gem

y = yellow gem

b = blue gem

x = whatever

xx!g!g!x

Guilty Pleasure, why I really play. I like to play with games rather than play games per se. Oh, sure I may finish a campaign, but the main reason to play is just to have fun.

Now about the bashing ... I have put up a couple posts that were factual. There is some nasty stuff going on out there. People ought to know about it.

But I think I know what you are talking about. The classic case was Hellgate London. I was on the test server from very early on, shortly after release and the game was a lot of fun for me because I could respec whenever I wanted and so forth. And I was friendly with one of the devs, actually a consultant I think who ... er ... expedited things for me would be the polite way to put it.

So I was a Fanboi, and I contributed huge amounts of positive information to the official forum under the name DarwinJames. I helped players with builds, provided info on quests, and acted always in defense of the developers and their decisions. Yet it came to pass that this game inspired more player hatred than any other game I can think of. A special web site was formed called www.flagshipped.com that simply threw everything but the kitchen sink at Flagship and everyone associated with the game. The primary contributors were former super fans and fanboys like myself who had turned on them after being treated shabbily, kicked in the teeth once too often, and ripped off many of them. Some of them had paid $150 pre release for a lifetime membership that meant nothing. I stayed loyal.

Then my friend, himself on the way out the door, told me what was really going on. The test server shut down shortly after that. I lost all my work. I began to pay attention to flagshipped.com and realized I had been played for a fool. And you know the rest of the story. Sudden death for Flagship. End of the online game in the US probably forever.

Point is, being a fanboy accomplished nothing. Bashing accomplished nothing.

Maybe posting at all is a waste of time. But when I do, in the future, I will try to simply state facts without injecting my own venom.

I like games for the story.  Starflight, Planescape Torment, Monkey Island, Civilization (the story of progress), Alpha Centauri, Baldurs Gate II, Mass Effect 2.  Put a good story with some fun gameplay in front of me and I'm hooked.

Except for Dragon's Age oddly, which I felt really bored and can't explain.  Pretty though, did I mention I also play games to appreciate the artwork?  World of Warcraft was awful for me, I kept touristing and getting eaten by crocodiles.

Being good at games is a matter of practice, and I can get very good at games, but with so many great books, magazines, parties, friends, it takes a really great story to get a long-time gamer like me to keep playing.  So nowadays I mostly power through games to get the story and appreciate the art work.