I used to play this game called RAGE many years ago. It was a first person shooter, with a bunch of late game overpowered guns, had a crafting system to make ammo and the like, shops to sell and buy said ammo, but had strict resource controls to keep it competitive and fun.
So I spent around four days tabulating values of every ammo and crafting material in the game, mapping out which in-game traders sold what and when, and then spent maybe the next three days just craft-selling the cheapest item, a wingstick(basically a boomerang) in the game.
Hundreds and hundreds of wingsticks, grinding like a little kid in a sweatshop. I made enough money to max. out capacity on every ammo capacity in the game. As a result I breezed through the endgame, and what was supposed to be a long, tough, engaging mission into the heart of the enemy turned into a caricature of a boss fight, and I probably spend more time admiring the environment design there than worrying about dying or running out of ammo. I think I ran out only on one ammo type, and in total I used only the three most powerful ammo types in the game.
A level I should have enjoyed and formed the neat little bow for that game to be wrapped in, turned into a comical doom guy-esque slaughter of the scariest enemy in-game.
I am truly my own worst enemy.
It’s like that saying goes. “Players will optimize the fun out of a game.” Game studios spend many, many man hours on just this one aspect of development. It’s the reason Skyrim’s systems were fewer and simpler than Oblivion and Morrowind. I believe Todd Howard himself said they were trying to get away from all the spreadsheet inducing aspects of their games.
What they fail to realize is that optimizing and spreadsheets are fun for some people
Man finally someone else who enjoyed rage. Everyone is so negative about it every time, it was one of the coolest games ever (the first one). Especially if you like min maxing it!
