Do you prefer to put points into stats or auto level?

One of the best feelings in any Fire Emblem game is leveling up. You've kept your troops alive long enough to get a bit of a boost and become better on the battlefield. There's also that moment when you level up and you get +1 to Magic on your non-magic character. Terrific.

As RPG elements have decimated into every game that has ever existed, the event of leveling up is also practically in every game.

So when your character is boosted a bit, do you prefer to painstakingly place points into new stats? Or would you prefer a fabulous flourish as it auto-assigns your character's stat points?

I usually don't trust games to do it how I'd like, even when it's a complicated system and I don't really know the game. Maybe I value a specific trait more than is practical.

If its only stat points that I am assigning, I often let the game do it automatically. The idea is that it likely will improve on the role the game expect the character to have.

If the points go to selecting skills or something (hopefully) more significant than a +1% defense, I always assign them by hand, mostly to help on the way I am playing the characters, and I almost always prioritize improving old things over new toys, and passive skills over active ones.

Almost certainly assigning them by hand, just because the games that let you do that are generally the ones that are really fun to break with min/maxing.

Fire Emblem isn't really comparable in the sense that it's random by design, and the stat growth rates of each character are different so the 'auto-assigning' is there to introduce variance in a playthrough which is its own sort of fun. Even in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn when they introduced the 'Fixed' stat growth, I always ended up sticking with traditional random mode.

I always put the points in myself. Partially because it enhances a sense of ownership over my character and partly because most auto-level systems are total garbage.

That's not to say I think there's isn't a lot of value in having a game do it for people, particularly if they aren't familiar with RPG mechanics. However, those systems need to be absolutely on point when distributing stats, and my experience has been that a lot of them are kind of terrible at doing it.

Case in point, Code Vein. In that game, classes were basically an equippable item that you could swap out and the game would automatically re-balance your stats when doing so. On the surface, that's a great idea for a Souls-like, since the min-maxing can be intimidating to a lot of newer players. However, the game did an absolutely garbage job of assigning stats, so you would end up with a warrior archetype with a bunch of points in magic boosting abilities.

I much prefer to do it by hand because I can customize my character to fit my playstyle, rather than adjusting my playstyle to fit my character. If I hate two handed weapons in a game I do not want the game nudging me to use them because that's how the character's stats work out.

If the only way your game is fun to play is as a long range archer then let me built a powerful fun to play archer, damn it!

For my own character I will always put points into stats; I like to be hands on my own character or the main. For party members, I will often allow the system to auto level if it does a good job. If the auto leveler for the party stinks I will do it myself grudgingly.

Most games rarely know my playstyle and preferences.

Automatic skill point distribution is a nonexistent feature as far as I'm concerned.

Rather do it myself. Gets my party and main character just right instead of blowing a level up on garbage stats/talents/skills.

If it’s either or then I always want control but I don’t have a general preference on whether or not games do it automatically by design.

I love the Fire Emblem system though. Tons of unique playthroughs.

It depends on the game, but in most cases it's best to do it yourself. Some games have good auto leveling and you don't have to do much, but even in those games, eventually special unlocks and stuff exclusive to a character will often get overlooked.

It depends entirely on the game for me. Some games I do this manually, others I don't. If it's a game that just chucks upgrade points at me constantly I'll usually end up using auto upgrade because it gets tedious. It all depends if the system is designed to make these kinds of decisions matter or not.

If I can put points into things, I like to put them in myself. If they wind up being mistakes, they're my own beautiful little mistakes. Luckily I don't play many games where this is the case, and when I do, it feels like there's some latent SNES-era affliction that helps me realize I can overcome anything if I just apply the philosophy of more - more time, more XP, more boom on the baddies.

Mostly yes, my favorite part of RPGs is character-building and customization so I will almost always manual spend those points. One recent exception was Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. I just couldn't grok the Pathfinder system, and found leveling up extremely confusing. I've played a lot of CRPGs, but couldn't wrap my head around that one. I decided to just manually level the main character but auto-level the others, although I haven't played a ton of the game yet.

I'll also sometimes just skip it if I don't feel like a game is giving me interesting choices, and the various stats, skills, etc. don't seem to make meaningful differences in play style.

If given the option, I prefer to assign stat points over letting the game choose for me. However, if your question is "do you prefer games where you assign stat points or games where you can't?" then the answer is "it depends on the game."

For example, I wouldn't want to have to spend stat points in a borderlands game, and I wouldn't want stat points to he chosen for me in a dark souls game.

I want as much control as possible in any game.

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous lets you auto-level everyone or everyone excluding yourself. I chose the latter when I played it (I never quite finished it but I made it quite a ways in). I did this because I always thought that the player making decisions for a bunch of pre-defined characters was a little weird. The idea in a lot of games is that you're the party leader and thus you're determining what you want those characters to focus on, but I still think the idea of giving everyone in the party their own autonomy to achieve things their own way is way better for story and immersion and whatnot. These characters are supposed to be powerful people. Frequently, they were very much their own person before you met them, with their own goals, their own powerful sense of agency, and their own adventures before ever having met you. Are you telling me that someone who has been wandering the land by themselves, improving their fighting skills or learning more about magic or whatever, is going to suddenly let this random guy that just walked into their lives direct where their attention goes?

On the other hand, that line of thinking is what leads to Mitsuru endlessly casting Marin Karin in Persona 3.

Anyway, it's one of those strange video game disconnects, where you just have to accept that a mechanical structure such as a game is going to clash with a more fluid, artistic thing such as a story and there are cases where leaning more towards a world and story that makes more sense is going to sacrifice something more mechanically interesting, or vice versa.

I'll finish playing, or maybe just restart, Wrath of the Righteous at some point. When I do so, I'll probably just start leveling characters myself instead of letting the game do it. I eventually came to feel like I was missing out on some great gameplay ideas because I never bothered building characters in a way I found interesting. And in the future, I'll probably also stick with leveling characters myself, regardless of how strange it is for them to submit so easily to whatever my main character wants them to do.

Or more games could just be like Icewind Dale, where you make your own party of six characters and determine everything about them yourself. You are their creator, so it's not strange for you to determine everything about their future development.

I prefer putting my own stats for my character, so I know what to prioritize when I play the game.

Assigning skill points is something i've never really enjoyed but i used to have the patience to do it begrudgingly, i don't anymore, and will use an automatic function if available.

I do like leveling up, but it's best in something like Elder Scrolls where you level up the things you're using.

If it's a good system I do it myself. If it's bad I just let the game handle it, like in FF7R (whose idea was it to make the weapon upgrading so unwieldy?)

I'm a bit of a control freak and I like micro-managing stuff so I'll always do it manually if it's an option. I do love Fire Emblem though so it's not a deal breaker or anything.

I like to put points in my character stats and party member stats. I don,t tend to trust game to do it correclty although I'll do it sometimes if there's a way to respec the points later