The time I went from being a Worf Effect punching bag to a Min-Max Powergamer without doing a damn thing

Replying to this thread reminded me of some silly BS which I believe suits r/BadRPerStories, so here goes!

The Setup:

Before anything else, I should explain the Worf Effect trope in the title of this post.

The Worf Effect is when the writer has a new character completely thrash an existing strong character to show how incredibly strong the new character is.

Alright. So years ago I was a semi-regular roleplayer on Champions Online (CO,) a superhero MMORPG. My earliest main character was a She Hulk-inspired bruiser who we’ll call Greenie. Super-strong, super-tough, green skin, etc.

CO has a robust character creation system which allows players to choose any powers they please for their character, instead of arranging things into classes. By cherry-picking the best choices from each available category, CO’s system can make for some REALLY strong builds. As a RPer who wanted to keep their gameplay in-character, however, I narrowed my focus on durability and super-strength powers in order to sell Greenie as a hella strong brawler. This caused 2 major problems when it came to Player vs. Player combat.

First of all, in CO’s early days, melee attacks were very underpowered compared to ranged attacks. Melee did about +15% more damage than ranged, but you had to STAND STILL WHILE ATTACKING. I emphasize the stationary nature of melee attacks, because the grand majority of ranged attacks LET YOU MOVE WHILE SHOOTING. Even with grappling guns, super-speed, flight, teleportation and the like, melee constantly struggled to close the gap and stun/immobilize their target long enough to land an attack. Oh, and those movement powers like flight and teleportation? Ranged characters had full access to them too.

Second, the Super-Strength category was a TERRIBLE melee power category. No bleeds, no effective CC, slow attack times, you name it.

These two factors combined to make a very ineffective PvP build in the hands of a not-very-good-at-all duelist (me.) Greenie got circle-strafed to death by ranged characters and out-melee’d by melee characters, leading to an abysmally bad Win-Loss ratio in PvP. She did fine in PvE (the game isn’t challenging) but there was no hope in PvP.

(You’re probably thinking to yourself “why did you keep PvPing, you dummy?” You’re right to think that, and the answer involves expectations, a lack of self-confidence and a heap of self-loathing.)

Things were made worse by the fact that Greenie’s character was aggressive and confident in her raw strength, someone who would not back down from a fight. As such, a LOT of Greenie’s scenes lead to Roleplay-PvP (RPvP) duels, where she would get crushed handily.

Greenie became someone you could beat up to show how badass your character was. People said they appreciated Greenie’s character as they stomped her repeatedly, they were impressed that I stuck to my guns for RP’s sake rather than going for one of the laser-precise duelist builds used to 1-shot me. I didn’t enjoy Greenie getting Worfed, but I enjoyed the idea of retconning Greenie’s story just to get PvP powers even less, so I took it on the chin.

The Comedy:

Several months after launch, a large balance patch came in with fixes for many powers - including a sorely-needed melee pass. Greenie met up with a crowd of fellow RPers and, naturally, talk of in-character sparring came up. An Iron Man-style power armour hero and regular Greenie-stomper (we’ll call him Tank) wanted to run diagnostics on his suit’s post-patch weapons upgrade. “You’re a tough nut to crack, Greenie. How about putting my new weapons through their paces?”

The duel started and - in a very surprising 10 seconds - everyone realized just how badly super-strength had been buffed broken.

Greenie lunged in on Tank and began charging an uppercut. Tank leapt back to get out of melee. Greenie followed Tank’s retreat, revealing to him that melee can move while attacking now. The uppercut knocked Tank into the air and took a third of his HP on the the way up. Greenie began charging a haymaker after the uppercut, so Tank would fall straight into it on his way down. The haymaker sent Tank flying so far that he almost lost via ring out... Except the punch had dealt more damage than Tank’s maximum HP before his unconscious body slid across the boundary.

Wizard (a Dr. Strange style warlock) wanted a piece of Greenie next, to test out his broken new defensive shields + pets build. Greenie punched through Wizard’s shield and hit points in 2 haymakers.

At this point the IC stopped and things went to OOC.

((haha WOW where did you find THAT combo lol so OP XDDD))

((okay ow haha good thing were just OOC fooling around))

((obviously i need to tweak my build a bit more nbd))

((lol guess this is what happens when you pvp while high XDDDD))

((oof lag didn’t let me activate my heal gonna say IC my armour wasnt working))

I would have been a hypocrite to criticize Tank and Wizard for trying to cover their insecurities - goodness knows I wasn't exactly a rock - but it certainly gave me pause about how sincere people had been when praising Greenie’s willingness to get Worfed. And by that I mean it gave me pause LATER, because at THAT moment I was riding high on the fact that Greenie was as strong in-game as I wanted her to be in-story!!

As you can imagine, the desire for RPvPing Greenie more than once took a sharp nosedive post-patch. I can’t say I minded, since I wasn’t in love with the idea of RPvP... But what happened in the months following definitely make me miss the days before the patch.

Comedy 2 - The Dumb Part

I believed it was business as usual for Greenie and friends post-patch. We got together, we RPed, we did dungeons and collected achievements and VOIPed. Little did I know I had become an asshole.

At least, that’s what people were saying about me - first behind my back, then to my face in veiled passive-aggressive comments. Shit like “yeeeeeaaa not gonna get involved in this scene since Greenie’s just gonna KO me 9_9” and “lol well sorry for trying to be original we cant all abuse superstrength powers.” Apparently with the big patch I had reworked Greenie’s entire powerset (hadn’t changed powers for months) and was insisting scenes be resolved with RPvP to exploit it (never once have I asked for RPvP in a scene.)

In time, CO’s melee powers were reeled in and I “learned my lesson about being a powergaming munchkin” (still hadn’t changed my powers since the patch dropped) so those dickheads people were willing to give me a second chance at RPing with them. Woo.

And that’s the story of how I went from a punching bag to a pariah to being welcomed back without doing a thing.

The Lessons for Myself:

1. People is bitches. Seriously.
2. Losing isn’t the end of the world. It’s something I wish I learned earlier, but it’s the truth.
3. You can’t - and shouldn’t - force people to acknowledge your power via shit like RPvP. Being strong doesn’t mean your decisions are the most interesting for the story, nor does it respect the feelings of the people you’re storytelling with.
4. Your character is only as strong in text-RP as the other players are willing to roll with. Being respectful and trustworthy does more to make your character powerful than bullying or manipulation ever will.
5. People were right to not wanna RPvP Greenie. Super-strength WAS broken, and months of being a punching bag didn’t make it okay to get payback for previous defeats. That being said? Those were some VERY SATISFYING PUNCHES.

On a final note: I found it strange how, after the patch dropped, so many characters suddenly learned their mutant genes, magical spells and/or technological gadgets were able to grant them use of super-strength powers...