Are Min/Max'ers common?

To the OP, I think it depends to what extremes your thinking about.

I believe that there are EXTREME Min/Maxers - Those that will pick a defense power or offense power over a travel power and will make sure they ride that ED line to make sure they do not go over by 1% in any Damage, To Hit, or Defense.

Then there is the concerned Min/Maxer- ( This is where I believe myself and many fall in ) They understand that some powers might be a few percent and maybe up to 5 to 10 percent over the cap, and their To Hit might be a bit below the cap. But they pick up a travel power for the sheer aspect of being able to move from A to B faster. I think they have a concept and then create the theme around the power set.

Then there is the player who thinks Min/Max is diet substitute product. They have Super Speed and Super Jump because that is what there theme dictates they should have. They have Group fly that they have on all the time, or pick up Swift and Hurdle. Again it's about theme. And more then likely they are the ones you look at and say how did that person create that look because it looks that good.

This person usually does not have an issue, UNLESS your on a team where the differential is kicked up a bit and you have several "Themed built players" or smaller groups where the DPS and Crowd Control matters. Then eventually the min maxers will start to notice the swing and miss attacks and the AOE hold that didn't take effect and now has aggroed every mob on that player.

Themes are great until you start to discover, sometimes too late. That that key person will not be able to hold the aggro or do the CC your looking for on that Taskforce your running, simply because they lack the power to do so. But they do look good dying

Then finally you have the I just don't have a clue. That is usually some player who has been dragged along by friends or just have never played a MMO. They are the one wearing Plate armor with a scarf. Or called Mr. Chill but forgot they picked up fire powers instead.
Or also they could be the parent that plays and sometimes tosses their kid a few levels on his or her toon just so they can run around in atlas killing gray con mobs. These players are the extreme of both ends.. Both color blind, no fashion sense and have super speed slotted 6x with endurance reductions.

I think I covered the whole MMO spectrum

Way uncommon. As others have said, it's rare to see more than an occasional 'Minor Immobilize Resist' or something in somebody's set bonus list. A bit more anecdotally, if you assume my friends in the game are a fairly representative sample, I know about five times as many people who don't understand how set IOs work than I do people who people who've slotted any toward a goal.

I'd go with this ::

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Originally Posted by The_Killbot_5000 ... To answer your question with my opinion; not common, but vocal!

Also, I have to ask:

Are you a min/max-er if you use a mini/max build?
-or-
Are is the min/max-er the one that crunched the numbers to min/max the system?

To me a player that uses a mini/max-ed build is mini/max-ing, and the person that figured it out originally is the mini/max-er.
The vocal ones tend to be mini/max-ing. That is to say that they are trying to find a mini/max-ed build rather than taking time to crack the system themselves.

[NOTE :: I don't intentionally go out of my way to make a mini/maxed build. I go with the flow of each character, and I rarely use a respec. This allows me to have characters that are unique and play differently. It helps keep the game alive and vibrant to me. Naturally, some of the more themed builds are not as strong as a mini/max-ed character - oh ,well, I'm here to have FUN.]

I think those changes are unlikely, because I suspect the IO system's design is also fundamentally related to the market and (indirectly) the earning rate differential of characters of different levels.

During I9 beta, the devs stated that they saw the market as a mechanism for influence and infamy to transfer from high-level characters to low-level ones. The only way that's sensible is if the low-level characters are selling things the high-level ones want to buy. Certainly there are some desirable items that you just can't get at high levels, such as Miracles or Achilles' Heel procs, or Basilisk sets, but I can't help but believe that the way IO bonuses stop working as you exemplar is actually the main mechanism they were thinking of here. I believe this is even more compelling when you consider not just PvE exemplaring, but PvP zone exemplaring. For a very long time, level 25-28 IOs were in high demand, because Siren's Call was the pub PvP zone of choice, and people wanted set bonuses that worked at that level.

Other mechanisms now seem based on these presumed foundational assumptions. For examples, one of the several attractive things about both Purple and PvPO sets are that their bonuses are exempt from the usual 3-level exemplar cutoff.

Changing how IO bonuses stop working now would have several effects outside being handy for people who slot sets. One would be that demand for low- and mid-level items would be reduced even more than it has already by changes making it easier to level faster. Another would be that some of the special benefits of Purples and PvPOs would no longer be special (though I am not sure this would really affect their prices at this point).

The devs pretty explicitly intended IOs to be an alternate progression mechanism, not one we're particularly intended to get for free in parallel with our XP progression. They also partially intended them to be something for level 50s to chase after once they're already level 50, so making them easier to obtain as you level up would run counter to that purpose.

There are things I don't like about the system myself, but I'm pointing out what look like design assumptions in the overall picture that make changes of the sort you're suggesting seem pretty unlikely.

I see it differently, though I can't say your wrong about how the devs might see it.

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Originally Posted by UberGuy During I9 beta, the devs stated that they saw the market as a mechanism for influence and infamy to transfer from high-level characters to low-level ones. The only way that's sensible is if the low-level characters are selling things the high-level ones want to buy. Certainly there are some desirable items that you just can't get at high levels, such as Miracles or Achilles' Heel procs, or Basilisk sets, but I can't help but believe that the way IO bonuses stop working as you exemplar is actually the main mechanism they were thinking of here. I believe this is even more compelling when you consider not just PvE exemplaring, but PvP zone exemplaring. For a very long time, level 25-28 IOs were in high demand, because Siren's Call was the pub PvP zone of choice, and people wanted set bonuses that worked at that level.

If IOs leveled smoothly you'd still have low levels able to make influence on the AH for several reasons:

~ Level 50s still drop influence outfitting their alts. In fact, this would be more likely. This is why Luck Charms sell for so much. This is also how it works in other games.

~ Lots of desirable unique IOs would still drop. *One* of those can outfit one of my characters in SOs all the way to 50.

I doubt they they expect my level 12s to have already accumulated 100 million influence which can happen now.

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Other mechanisms now seem based on these presumed foundational assumptions. For examples, one of the several attractive things about both Purple and PvPO sets are that their bonuses are exempt from the usual 3-level exemplar cutoff. Changing how IO bonuses stop working now would have several effects outside being handy for people who slot sets. One would be that demand for low- and mid-level items would be reduced even more than it has already by changes making it easier to level faster. Another would be that some of the special benefits of Purples and PvPOs would no longer be special (though I am not sure this would really affect their prices at this point).

Purples and PvP IOs don't need this additional functionality to be special. They are highly sought after due to higher overall bonuses and would continue to be sought after. I see no benefit to the game in continuing to inflate the ultra prices of these IOs with this side functionality when they already have greater bonuses.

I see the reduction in fun leveling through the 30s and 40s to be a much bigger loss than any marginal benefit gained by inflating the value of these with Exemplar tricks.

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The devs pretty explicitly intended IOs to be an alternate progression mechanism, not one we're particularly intended to get for free in parallel with our XP progression. They also partially intended them to be something for level 50s to chase after once they're already level 50, so making them easier to obtain as you level up would run counter to that purpose.

The creation of level bands for sets already covers this. The high level sets are limited by level. That's the restriction that makes those sets end game sets. Ultra powerful sets (purples) are strictly limited to 50s. The design sort of disagrees with your point that the system is meant for end game by including sets that drop at low levels and in fact don't drop for high level characters.

Since there is already an explicit design to place to force chosen IOs to be used by high level characters (certain sets only exist in certain level bands) I can only guess that the systems we are talking about are a by product of the design and not themselves an explicit goal of the system.

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There are things I don't like about the system myself, but I'm pointing out what look like design assumptions in the overall picture that make changes of the sort you're suggesting seem pretty unlikely.

You might be right about what the devs are thinking, but I think if they are thinking that way they are hurting the game more than helping it. Well, at least for me. I'd much rather have a rich 30-50 experience while I have content left to play than speed grind to 47 and have nothing to do when I finally get to the meat of my build.

I'm not sure why you seem to feel compelled to swap out for level 50 sets, Moonlighter. My defender, for example, has full sets of level 30 thunderstrikes in his single target blasts. That gives him 56.6% acc/end/rech and capped damage. Swapping out for level 50s would give 68.9% acc/end/rech and capped damage. I've already got accuracy out the wazoo, and the end and recharge would make differences of less than half a second and half a point of end even on the longest recharging and most costly of the attacks.

That's a specific case, but in general I just don't see the sort of boosts that would make a compelling case for going to the hassle and expense of completely rewriting your enhancements. The set bonuses are the same either way, and the enhancement number differences seem pretty small to me, in most cases. Given that I exemplar frequently and like to be able to start slotting my characters before 50, it seems more of a win/win to me than anything else.