power creep in starting ability scores

[chainer1216]

Why are they picking anything except 18 in everything?

Because not everyone is a power mad ******* only held back by the rules.

I'm my groups resident optimizer/minmaxer and if given that option I'd just go with 18/16/14/12/10/10 unless I was playing something like a monk that really needs multiple ability scores, in which case I'd go with something like 16/16/16/14/12/10.