86 Wins Takes a Long Time

The national Evolution Fighting Game tournament that I help run is coming up in under two weeks. We held some preperation tournaments at Sunnyvale Golfland yesterday. The turnout for Guilty Gear XX (ggxx) was too low, so I cancelled the tournament so there was just casual play while the tournaments for other games were going on. I got a win streak of 20, then 11, then took a break for a while, then came back to get a win streak of...86(!?). The two best players were busy with other tournments, and none of the out of town players came...but still.
 
I don't have much a point, other than to mention that it's damn hard work to win for like 4 hours straight with no losses. It kind of feels like another plane of consiousness. That far into a streak, there is no longer any concept of "taking it easy" on people; it's just pure slaughter, trying to kill each opponent as quickly and efficently as possible. I even got perfects on fairly good players. One of the better players had one round where he was way ahead, and about to beat me, but I pulled off a miracle air throw--ok, I should mention that I airthrow about 10 times per round, but this particular one was only like 1 inch off the ground and caught everyone by surprise. After the airthrow, I did the guaranteed "otg gamma blade" which then lets me attempt a mixup. At this point (I HAD to win right here since I had like no energy left), I tried a totally bootleg setup that I never, ever do because it's completely unsafe and easy to avoid. Yet it worked, and I won off that. When it comes down to the last pixel of energy, I've noticed that the person with the big win streak pretty much always wins. Is it because of the "fear aura" created bythe streak? Or is it because of the natural correlation between being good enough to have a streak and being able to win in the high pressure situation of the end-game?
 
Anyway, it'll be a much different experience at Evolution. All the best players from around the country, and even several from other countries will be there. Last year I placed around 17th in ggxx and 7th in ST (Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo). I got 6 perfects in the ggxx tournament(!) and was only perfected 2 times myself! lol. Will I improve my record this year? Or will I totally scrub out? Stay tuned.
--Sirlin

PvP in World of WarCraft

I was reading the forums on worldofwarcraft.com yesterday and I was actually laughing out loud at some of the poor saps complaining about pvp (Player versus Player). For some background info, I've played World of WarCraft since the alpha test, and I'm on my 14th character now. I've played every class, and played to the cap when it was 25, to the cap again with other characters when it was 30, then took a couple months off around when beta started. Then a couple days ago I made yet another character (LimeSirlin) on the PvP server. I'm only level 15, and haven't encountered the nightmare of PvP that occurs to horde players when they reach the low 20s. Basically, the Horde races don't have a safe area to level up from 20-30, while the Alliance players do. Futhermore, the zone for level 20-30 for Horde is inches away from a place that level 30-35 Alliance players go to quest, and while those players are waiting for their friends, they tend to rape the poor level 20 Horde players all day out of boredom.

But that problem is neither here nor there. My point is to pass on some views about pvp from the forums. One camp says that the PvP server is full of griefing (mostly citing the situation I mentioned above). Other players say "there is no griefing on a PvP server." It was amusing to see what some considered griefing. Here are some examples:

Getting killed by someone way higher level than you when you had no chance
Getting killed while afk
Getting killed when you are very low on life or mana from some other fight

Viewpoints such as this were pretty easily dismantled by even the routine logic that on a PvP server, that's what you're signing up for. Then another guy said something like "ok, so you kill a much lower level guy who's on a quest, sure. It's PvP. But it becomes griefing if you repeatedly kill him. It's possible to get 5 high level characters to surround his body so that when he approaches to ressurect, he is always within range of at least one enemy who can kill him instantly and keep camping him." That, he says, is clearly griefing.

Then another guy had this counter-point. "So I can kill a guy on a quest once, but then I'm supposed to stand aside and let him go on his merry way? Are you seriously trying to apply wacky rules of honor in your head to my behavior? Besides, that poor 'victim' can just resurrect himself at a spirit healer any time if he's willing to take the small experience hit. Oh no, he had to use a spirit healer! boo-hoo!" And of course, guy #2 is right. On a pvp server, it's ridiculous to expect anything except getting raped in every way possible by all enemy players (note that right now your only enemies are the other faction...Horde vs. Alliance...so half the server is on your side.)

As per my Playing to Win articles, it's very silly to play by any artificially imposed rules outside of the game. If you think too much "bad" PvP is going on (created by the poorly designed situation I opened with) then criticize the game design for giving such incentives. Blizzard really is listening to the players, so lobby to change the rules if you wish, and you might improve the system. But no one (Blizzard included) should expect players to do anything less than EVERYTHING POSSIBLE within the automatically enforced rules of the game. If you are dying on the PvP server, either get more hit points, some better strategy, or lobby for systemic rule chnges and incentive structures to change the behavior of players.

Most of these online game companies seem to not understand these basic concepts and write silly Terms Of Service expecting players not to use the "taboo tactics" rather than acutally implementing fixes or incentive changes in the game. I was worried that Blizzard would fall into this trap, but as someone on the forums pointed out, the whiners are clearly in the wrong this time. Check out this quote from Blizzard's TOS, that everyone agrees to before playing the game:

Q u o t e:
"Note that Blizzard considers all valid play styles in World of WarCraft to be part of the game, and not harassment, so player-killing the enemies of your race and/or alliance, including gravestone and/or corpse camping, is considered a part of the game. Because World of WarCraft is a "player vs. player" game, you should always remember to protect yourself in areas where the members of hostile races can attack you..."

Blizzard is Playing to Win.
--Sirlin

Another game pad

I'm your one stop source about game pads! So anyway, I think this is kinda weird. First, check out the "best ever" controller, the SuperPad 8.


Ok, now check out one of the recently announced controllers to be released along with the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection for PS2/Xbox.


Kinda cosmic, isn't it? Maybe there's a new "best controller ever" in town. ;)
--Sirlin