What Style of Player Are You?

I'm often cautious (but not overly cautious as Marty) but I'm also an achievement addict. If there is a way to finish a mission to get some credit, unlock side mission/quest or something, I will keep replaying the mission until I do it. I also like doing every side quest that is available. And I hate loosing my troop if I can take them in the next mission with me.

To illustrate what I wrote above with some example, let's look at a few strategy games that I've recently played.

Fantasy Wars (and it's successor Elven Legacy) covers the most of it.  It's a turned based strategy when you do mission by mission in a campaign and allows you to bring all of your troops to the next mission.  Depending in which turn you achieve the victory, you can score a Gold, Silver or Bronze victory.  The Gold one gives you most benefits (sum of gold to use on upgrades or recruitment, a unit and an artefact), the Sliver gives you only gold and a unit and bronze only gold.  In some cases a Gold Victory could unlock an additional mission.  So, I was always trying to achieve a gold one, even though the artefacts weren't that useful and you could only put a certain number of units on a map, no matter how many you had, so additional units weren't such a bonus.  Additional missions were, of course, fun, but they were rarely offered (not once in FW, it started to happen in EL only).  And of course, if I lost a unit that I invested so much in upgrading, I would restart the mission (or load the most recent save if it was applicable) even though I could probably finish the campaign without that unit.

Next game is Warlock: Master of the Arcane, which is another turned based strategy.  However, here you don't have campaign or missions, but single game on a random world (you select size and type), against certain number of opponents (you can choose this number too).  Like in Civilization type games, everybody fights everybody (although alliances are possible).  It's a game where you build cities, then in the city you build buildings and different buildings allow you to recruit different units.  You have to manage gold income, food production and mana production. You can cast research spells and cast them (direct damage, curses, enchantments, city bonuses, etc). You can found new cities and/or capture neutral ones or, if you are in war with an opponent, capture their cities.  There are a few different ways to win a game, but the most common one is by wiping out all the opponents.  It this games, quick expansion is a must, since if you don't claim the land with your cities, you will get into situation where you won't be able to put as much army on the field as your opponents.  Also, if you find them early (there is fog of war), you can destroy them with less difficulties. So, I'm not having cautious approach here, because you need to move fast, but eventually I reach the point where I can easily destroy all the opponents - usually there is only one left and that one is much weaker than me.  Do I strike? No, because I want to explore the whole world, destroy lairs of neutral creatures to maybe find a fancy artefact (that I obviously don't need), get my heroes to reach higher levels to see what abilities that would unlock, see what new spells I could research, see what new creatures I'd be able to recruit if I progress with building my city, etc.

The last example is Heroes of Might and Magic series, but starting from the part III.  That part introduced an option to move one or a few heroes into the next mission in the campaign.  So, I became absolutely anal about getting into every corner of the map, killing every single neutral creature, capturing every city (even those not required to win the mission), doing every side quest, etc.  But the reason here was actually pragmatic - you wanted your heroes to get the maximum level allowed for the mission before you bring them into the next one, or you could get near the end of the campaign with a hero not strong enough to finish it.  Sometimes, that actually stole some charm from the game, since it was prolonging playing time without adding more quality to it.

So, that was my response.  I was trying to think what kind of player I was when it comes to real time strategies, but the truth is that I don't play them that much.

I'm more of a "get it done and survive" type of person. I rarely play the same game twice as I am easily bored and need constant stimulation in order to keep playing. Although having said that, I'm also a sucker for a good story so in rpgs if there is (and there usually is) a story involved I will play till the end so I can find out what happens.

I'm also not into challenges that are ridiculously difficult. For example I never finished playing Riven because I couldn't get past the first bit. I tried for a few days and then got the sh!ts and chucked it in. I'm basically an impatient person. I will persist at something for what I consider to be a sensible amount of time, but if I can't figure it out I usually throw something, threaten it a bit and then move on.

I do the same in p&p games Just ask Pex.