Is the roleplay aspect of D&D gone, replaced by optimization?

[Sam K]

I'm a big fan of what 5E is capable of offering to D&D, but if we're being totally honest, I've never seen it actualized. Every forum, youtube video, online or otherwise game, seems to be far more concerned about what is "the best" than what makes for an interesting shared narrative. Which spells you can ignore, which feats are mandatory, which class combinations produce the best results, etc... Doesn't it get tiring?

How does one combat this without abandoning the game altogether?

Take a character I played not-too-recently (yay covid, amirite?) that I had a lot of fun building in my head, but was a pretty huge disappointment on paper: The group was playing in Wildemount around Darktow, doing a sea-faring/pirate theme with The Revelry and whatnot. My character was basically if you took Mr. Gibbs from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and made him a tough-as-nails jobber; uneducated but smart, burly and gruff but loyal and friendly to his own, good head for numbers, etc.
Mechanically, he was a Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian (taking the "Sea" option every time - very thematic I thought). With levels, rolled stats, and some luck, he had very good Str/Dex/Con so I could comfortably forego wearing armor without tanking my Str, which felt like the right thing to do if you spend most of your time on a ship's deck, right? At any time he had on him a cutlass (shortsword), a hatchet, and 3 flintlock pistols, all ready to fire their one shot before being turned into improvised clubs as needed.
If you're used to optimizing, you can probably see the problems already. He was a high Con Barb so he was tough like I wanted him to be, but being able to take a hit doesn't mean anything if you aren't a threat, and a Barb using a 1h weapon and nothing like GWM means a Barb that hits like a feather, comparatively. Since Storm Herald is thematic, but not particularly strong, as a subclass, that held my potential back even further. I ended up with a character I really liked that just couldn't pull their weight in a party of your typical 5e characters.
The worst part is there just isn't anything to be done about it - there are just a handful of options that are so good that not taking them breaks the game.

Who else has run into this problem and how did it go for you?
Is it time I just left D&D behind for other systems that don't cater so much to min/maxing?

In my humble opinion, the reason why builds are so much more commonly discussed than thematic characters and how they should be RPed is simple: builds are objective, thematics are subjective.

Doing more damage is better than doing less damage as far as doing damage is concerned. Having more HP is better than having less HP as far as taking damage is concerned. How MUCH better can be discussed, and you can be in situations where you may not WANT optimal damage or HP (if you're playing in a lower powered game, for example). But then you're choosing to be objectively worse in a role.

What is a good character, thematic build or appropriate for a game can vary, to the point where something that's great for one game can be horribly inappropriate for another. I like playing characters that are essentially high functioning sociopats with some redeeming traits. Those characters worked great with my regular DM (a very mature, experienced guy who runs gritty, high risk games) when we ran solo games, but would have been horrible if his idealistic teenage cousin would have joined a game expecting some heroic dungeon crawling.

On the other hand, I once created a more light-hearted character for a play by post game - he was a inquisitor (role, not class) that was talkative, a slight bit hyper, very chipper and willing to take charge if noone else would. His main point of interest was the conflict between his role (he had been born into the church and was too scrawny to be much good in combat, so he was essentially drafted into "special operations"), and was just trying to make the most of a responsibility that had been thrust upon him. He had an extended family tree and complex relationships with his immediate family.The DM loved the character idea, and praised my RPing of him, but the rest of the party essentially seemed to want nothing to do with him. They were all quiet, brooding characters and most of them were heavy on the traditional duty and heroism - eventually I ended up not enjoying the character very much outside of combat, as I felt my RPing was just annoying people. They weren't bad RPers or bad people, they just wanted a different atmosphere in the game than I was contributing to. The internet could tell me in which order to take my class levels for best effect, but I doubt anyone could have told me that making an original character that filled a social role that was vacant in the party would end up making the game less fun for everyone.

And this, to me, is why it's futile to discuss what's a good character/concept/RPing is. It's too context dependent. Strangers on the internet can give useful input on which class is best used to represent a dashing pirate. But they won't know me, my group or the campaign we're playing well enough to be able to tell if it would be better to use his addiction to rum for comic relief or as a darker aspect of the toll of his lifestyle slowly leading towards his degeneration and early death. I would rather have those conversations with the actual group who will play with the character, because their input is actually relevant on the subject.

That said, I think any system with "classes" and "levels" encourages min-maxing, there are simply so many "hard" choices (choices where by definition of you pick A you can't ever get B) to not have a "build" component. If I wanted a high RP, low mechanics low power game, I'd probably use the storyteller system or something (not the supernatural parts, just the basic system with stats, skills and backgrounds).