posted 07-31-2002 12:16 AM               

yes

"If I'm a high level player who whines about moves AND learns to counter them (perhaps by getting them outlawed through whining :P) am I still a high level player."

depends, if you somehow outlaw the move u are a scrub, if you learn how to counter it then ur still a high level player... though one could argue that your counter was getting it outloawed... which hurts my head to think about it. =P

This problem will always exist because scrubs think their way is better and non-scrubs think their way is better. Actually thats not the problem, thats a fact that will always remain. The problem occurs when a person of one group enters the other group to play.

Is it annoying when a scrub whines about a cheap tactic? yes. But imo it is just as annoying if not more annoying when you state custom rules you are playing by, and then the "high-level" player ignores these custom rules and then spokes some speech about how he is just playing to win so that somehow ok's his dishonorable actions. One way your being a poor loser, and the other your being a poor winner. They are equally bad, I just look down upon "poor-winner" moreso because I consider arrogance to be on of the worst human traits that exists.

posted 07-31-2002 12:04 PM            

I think dominating strategies in games make the games no fun. If you can do a move in a game that guarantees you winning, the game is no fun, and I won't play the game anymore... Especially if I know how to do that move. Games that require you to use dominating strategies, so it turns into a game of reflexes, are fun in a limited way ("Who's gonna get that killer combo off first?"), but games of reflex eventually become mindless...

Seemingly dominating strategies are more fun, especially when you discover the ways you can beat them... in SF2 specifically, when I first played against someone who played Ryu/Ken well, I thought, "Well, that's it, there's no way to beat Ryu/Ken players." Then, in playing the game more, I discovered that it's actually EASY to beat someone who bases their strategy on the Dragon Punch.

However, it is still a game of reflexes and Pavlovian reactions. That's not entirely fun... Starcraft, f'rinstance, has a lot less to do with reaction time, and more to do with strategy (build order, resource management, etc.). Sure, I'll waste time with SF2, and I'll even struggle to improve, but it's no fun to win all the time or lose all the time... and if it's just because of my reflexes, that's REALLY not fun. Because my body is wired to respond faster I have an edge over someone who's slower? Yeah, no thanks.

I'm not saying you can't develop strategies for reflex games, or that they aren't fun, but I don't take them as seriously as I take games like Starcraft, Warcraft III, Age of Empires, etc... because those games offer improvement that goes beyond those Pavlovian reactions... the choices are at least interesting, not just "he's doing A, so I'll do B to beat him".

Or, I could be completely talking out of my ass 'cuz I just woke up. ( ;

Edit: My first sentence didn't make sense, so it's gone now.

posted 07-31-2002 02:22 PM            

In general, the sad realistic fact is not all games are well-designed - particularly if they are breaking new ground in genres. Look at Warcraft 2. It had a rich unitspread, detailed levels, good administration. Other then playing rules-games with fellow scrubs, I never played a round that wasn't a big unruly mass of footmen and nothing else. Of course, WC2 can hardly be blamed - it was one of the first RTS games to even offer multiplay. In cases like this, honour-system rules are needed or the game is just no fun. It all depends on whether or not the game is designed for hardcores. If it is, then any rules are unnecessary except possibly for specially unlocked equipment. If it is not, the entire feel and fun of the game can be ruined by the hardcore play. If 90% of the variety of the game must be discarded to win, then I say just ban the other 10% so I can have fun. Many will agree.

I can think of many games with terrible balance that I play anyways because there is no better substitute for the game. I will continue to play these games until someone makes something similar that properly balances the game without overly sacrificing the game's fun features. Until then, certain weapons, tactics, and features of these games will be agreed as banned before play begins.

But still - as mods/patches become more and more prominent/powerful, there is no excuse for being a scrub in a hardcore FPS or RTS. If you really don't think a feature of the game is fair, chances are there are patches or mods that will fix that for you.

posted 07-31-2002 11:43 PM            

quote:

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Also, the big mistake a lot of people seem to make is thinking that the fun is in winning for everyone. This is only true for very competitive people. When I play Tennis, either with friends or in a tournament... I don't really care if I win and get no enjoyment out of doing well in a tournament. I get enjoyment out of playing the game.

---

I have to agree with Slayn there: playing to win != playing for fun. Not always. While I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm not always trying to get better, I wouldn't say that I'm always playing solely to beat the other guy down right then and there. In fact I rank getting better above winning, and I think the former is more important than the latter, as the former can lead to the latter.

Best example that comes to mind is when me and some friends were backyard boxing: I was boxing against some guy who was about 25 pounds meatier than I was, but the advantage was I had the quicker fists. If I really wanted to, I could just outpunch the guy until he fell over. However, there were times when I just took hits I didn't have to, took knockdowns and knockouts that I might have avoided had I just rabbit punched him into the ground. Why?

Cause I know one day I might have to fight some mofo who's 50 lbs heavier than me and just as quick, and then I'm going to want the endurance I got from fighting that 25 lber as an extra edge.

Yes, playing to win is a bit more than "clubbing some chump into the ground the easiest way possible every single time because I can." Playing to win also includes playing with enough restraint to lose the battle and still win the war if necessary. If X tactic works against an opponent every time, why not use it over and over again? Cause eventually the guy will probably catch on big time, and then if you havent been using anything else you're screwed. If X tactic works every time against an opponent, I can still take a loss trying out Y and Z tactic: that way if X tactic suddenly becomes unavailable (the controller breaks) or useless (opponent wises up), I'm not stuck against an opponent with no options at hand.

posted 08-01-2002 07:18 AM            

Starcraft is an excellent example. The Zerg rush means that it is quite possible the decisions you make at the beginning of the game will end it right there. If you go for a hardcore rush and he's ready, your dead. If he's not, he's dead. Many players don't want a game like this - often I like it, but to me, there's no complexity involved - you may as well flip a coin. Its paper-rock-scissors instead of a complex strategy game. Actually, because of this I like playing "open handed" RTS games, as in the whole map is visible, so you can never say "he only won because he overspecialized" - you should've seen his overspecializing.

In a way, I consider starcraft broken because of this. TA has rushing protection in the form of the Commander. Starcraft has only whatever defenses you can muster.

When I make custom maps in SC, I always start the players out with a few defenses (use the Duke hero siege-tank in siege mode, remove its transforming ability, and tweak its stats for terrans), extra peons, and a barracks. This saves the player from the annoying pre-game where everbody does almost the exact-same thing anyways (so it may as well be done automagically), plus making sure that a rush is not an option - or at least, it won't entirely decide the fate of the game unless one player really screws up.

Yes, I realize I am a scrub. But there are different ways to be a scrub. You can be the childish scrub who looks at a tactic and decides its unfair because he lost. Or you can be a mature scrub, look at a tactic, play with it a while, use it yourself.... then decide its a part of the gameplay that you and your friends do not enjoy. Then work around it - by house rules, by hacks, modding, whatever. Yes, this makes you a worse player of the main popular game. But it means you and your friends are having more fun, which is ultimately the point of gaming.

An examples of "broken" gametypes are in Unreal Tournament. UT has traditional DM and CTF. It also has 3 original gametypes called Domination, Assault, and Last Man Standing. These are obviously flawed gametypes, suffering from insufficient playtesting. Now, here's a shocker for all you "Play To Win" players. Assault was retarded in its first form, as once you learned to play to win, you found out that there were shortcuts you could take so that a 5 minute map could be done in 20 seconds. Rushing the attacker's spawn points meant you could sew up the defense so tight that you would spend the rest of the game spawnfragging. But fundamentally "as the designers intended" it was a good gametype with good maps. So, while the "play to winners" abandoned the gametype, the scrubs noticed "this game is fun if we have unofficial rules, like no spawncamping and no shortcuts". So, rather then just bitch, a smart guy named Eavy made a mod called "assault bonuspack" that included spawnshields, removed hammerjumping (the main source of shortcuts) and added improved scoring and in-game guides for newbies (AS is hard to play without getting lost). Now, nobody but small independant scrub players play without the AS bonuspack. "Play to win" tournamenters use the bonuspack or don't play AS. The scrub rules have become the tournament standard.

Unfortunately, the flaws in DOM are more just due to bad mapping, and the flaws in LMS are very hard to avoid (and exist in many other games - ever notice how the cowards always win in MarioKart Battle mode?).

posted 08-01-2002 09:48 AM               

First off, I'm a scrub. I play without exploiting bugs, I don't rush, I don't use infinites, I don't even know how to infinite.

You said that for every uber-tactic discovered, the "expert" players will discover a better tactic that makes that one look like trash, right? What about rushes. Rushes have been used since C&C first came out, they're still used in nearly all wargames today, except for ones that were designed with preventing rushes in mind (like Warcraft III). What new tactic makes rushing look stupid?

How about keep away in fighting games? That's been done since STREET FIGHTER. Hadooken, Hadooken, Hadooken, SHORUKEN! What new uber tactic replaced that? Now it's just more complex, still the same at heart.

Let's say that what you're saying is true, every new strategy has a counter. Let's apply that to chess. Let's say that you discovered a way to win every chess game in 2 moves, no matter what. Then, somebody discoveres a counter for these two moves, you counter that counter, so on and so forth. Eventually, every game of chess is the same set of moves over and over until somebody forgets the pattern and loses.

posted 08-01-2002 10:49 AM               

I most definitely play to win. Of course, I also recognize the value of friendly games and have the ability to understand my opponents. If I'm playing against a scrub (outside a tournament) then I'm probably not going to beat him with the equivalent of jumping up and hitting fierce punch (sirlin's zangief example) esp if said scrub is a friend of mine. I'd rather learn something from the game. Thus, I try moves that no one uses, practice combos, do crazy things just to see what happens. If I happen to lose a bunch and the scrub gets vocal, I'll bash him a few times real quick.

My first point is that "playing to win" can't be about doing only the best things all of the time unless you honestly know a game inside and out. I would think that even for the best players, there must be some time set aside for experimentation. If you happen to be in a room full of people that you can beat by pressing jump and fierce, you'd be doing them a favor if you did. However, if you know they won't learn from their mistakes (and you certainly won't learn anything by pressing jump and fierce) then experiment. Experimenting can look a lot like "playing for fun" and everyone in that situation walks away satisfied.

My other major point is that for the non-scrub, getting your ass kicked is nearly as much fun as kicking someone's ass. I'm not talking about losing to superior game mechanics. I'm talking about losing to better strategy. When you realize that your opponent KNEW what you were going to do (Yomi 2?), that's when a game gets fun. For a real gamer, a game is a set of rules/mechanics that provide a ground for a psychological battle. The scrub thinks the game is about who has the better reflexes, the better aim, the better timing. A real gamer would be planning according to that. (He has better reflexes than me, so I better do X.) I see this attitude in sirlin's writing and in some of the posts here. I think I've finally found a place where my kind of gamers hang out. You'll be hearing from me fairly often now.

posted 08-01-2002 11:02 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by ComMan:
You said that for every uber-tactic discovered, the "expert" players will discover a better tactic that makes that one look like trash, right? What about rushes. Rushes have been used since C&C first came out, they're still used in nearly all wargames today, except for ones that were designed with preventing rushes in mind (like Warcraft III). What new tactic makes rushing look stupid?

Let's say that what you're saying is true, every new strategy has a counter. Let's apply that to chess. Let's say that you discovered a way to win every chess game in 2 moves, no matter what. Then, somebody discoveres a counter for these two moves, you counter that counter, so on and so forth. Eventually, every game of chess is the same set of moves over and over until somebody forgets the pattern and loses.

Sound fun? But wait, you said that you enjoyed being able to predict your opponents every move and utterly crush them! You could always beat down on little kids. But why? It's a waste of 50 cents. You know you can win, it's no challenge. Do you own any fighting games? Yes/no? If you do, do you play them on the easiest difficulty setting so that you can annihilate the computer with little to no effort? No, you play it on the hardest difficulty for the challenge of it. Why play the game for challenge and then go and try to beat people with as little effort as possible?

---

First of all, rushing is a solid tactic and a great way to beat scrubs. If you can produce units fast enough for a rush to work, you are likely producing units too fast for the person your playing against anyway. Why stretch out a game? Just so some scrub gets chance to try some high level units? That's silly. In most games, a player producing at the same (or close) speed will be able to out number and out gun an early attack. If the attacker fails to damage the enemy production, he is now at a severe disadvantage. If the game truly makes it impossible to stop a rush, get a new game. More than likely, if you lost to a rush, you lost to a better player.

In chess, there probably are "best moves". Sufficiently good computers would probably do the best move every time and the game would play out exactly the same way. Thankfully, there are too many options for our little brains (or even our best computers) to figure out the best move given any situation. Otherwise, chess would be as boring as tic-tac-toe.

I do (almost) agree with the last point. If you have no vested interest in beating a scrub (tournament, he's a jerk), then experiment and learn something. There's no sense in embarrassing someone and not learning anything yourself (unless you think the scrub might learn something, but most scrubs won't).

posted 08-01-2002 12:25 PM               

See, part of his point is that in a well-deisgned game, these uber-strategies should each have counters, but those counters should have counters which may be open to other strategies....including the first one. It's not just a linear equasion in which newbie < two-move win < counter < counter-counter. It's more like a complex map of strategies and potential counters and bluffs, all of which crush a new player and seem "cheap," but really are just a small part of the overall complexity of the game.

So, to a newbie, a six pool rush seems overwhemling. How can they attack so fast? It seems unfair and 'cheap.' But, once he learns to play more, as long as he doesn't get sucked into the dull world of "no rush" games and money maps, he'll learn that rushes are easily stopped with proper scouting and defense, but that they are an effective counter if he notices the opponent mining gas early- a sure sign that they want to sacrifice defense to move up the tech tree quickly.

posted 08-01-2002 12:44 PM            

And plus, with the sixpack rush I can almost always make it worth my while. As in, I can take down at least 4 SCV's (usually more) before I lose my zerglings. That makes the encounter more then worth it. It took blizzard years to admit that the sixpack rush was just stupid (they eventually jacked up the price of the spawning pool eventually).

posted 08-02-2002 01:04 AM               

Oh. Unless I'm fighting against my girlfriend... then I back off and take a few hits... not on purpose of course... it's because of her skill... um... yeah. That and so I don't get thrashed in real life. Am I more whipped than Drac in a Castlevania game? Maybe. But do I get some? Hell yes. And that is much more important than ANY video game.

...well... SSBM comes close... but that's it.

posted 08-05-2002 08:06 PM               

However, it is much better to err on the side of permissiveness. Why would you NOT use a ring-out in a fighting game?

A lot of the problem is that people invent rules, and then expect the game to play by these invented rules, even when the game was never intended to be played that way.

A good example is no throws in a fighting game. The invented rule here is "the only way to take damage is to not block an attack." So people complain about throws and they complain about block damage. But there is a VERY good reason that throws and block damage exist - the invented rule is idiotic. Old Street Fighter didn't have overhead hits - the fact is if I don't want to be hit in SF2:WW I won't be - ever!

Similarly ring outs. Here the invented rule is "the only way to lose is by losing all your health." Clearly ring outs aren't some sort of glitch! The rule was just invented by scrubs. Ring outs introcduce another level of complexity - you might be ahead on energy but in a poor position. Now you have all sorts of interesting decisions to make. Maybe its worth it to take some damage if it means switching places with your opponent.

posted 08-06-2002 06:03 PM               

Now this game was actually a well balanced fighting game. Nothing at all was wrong with it. Characters had their strengths and weakness. It was a balanced game for any level of player. I always considered myself good at the game. One day i played my friend who said he was good. Turns out he actually wasnt. If all you can do is the same little thing over and over again, your obviously lacking skill.

That tends to be a situation with MvC2. ANY tournament you see in a magazine or online, is won with Cable, Magneto, and (insert usual character here). Wheres the fun in that? By now haven't these so called "experts" realized that they in actuality have almost no real skills. I'm actually good with Ryu,Ken, and Akuma. But you dont see them winning tournaments. Why? Because they dont have the speed,power, and ridiculously jacked up abilities of Magneto, or the total 3xHVB air combo.

I truly think most people are called scrubs because they state the pretty much truth about a game and ppl dont agree, thus they are deemed a scrub. It's visual proof all over the net too. Go to Gamefaqs.com and go to the MvC2 board and say Blackheart sucks. They'll immediately label you a scrub just because you dont think he's good. And in actuality he isn't. I had to demonstrate to my friend that he isnt. He plays Blackheart well, but he just cant stand up to my Strider. I dont even need Dr.Doom with Strider. Dr.Doom is actually a poor character too. He has no real strength, his design is based off of block damage alone. Thats why he wins not because of his combo abilities or his power. Its just his block damage and annoying rock assist.

posted 08-06-2002 07:38 PM               

You are making a prime scrub mistake. "This game is easy to win if you use <insert name>" or "this game is easy to win if you abuse <insert tactic>."

If that is true, prove it! Funny that the people who say that are NEVER the people who actually win!

Let's say that in fact most Magneto players are not good, but that Magneto is overpowered. And you are really good, but the characters you use aren't. How do you PROOVE that? The answer is use a character like Magneto and win.

It is very self-serving to make the argument you are making.

You: You Magneto players suck.

Mag Player: Prove it.

You: I would but I use Ryu/Ken/Akuma and they can't beat Magneto.

Mag Player: Well use Magneto then.

You: Magneto is for scrubs, sorry!

So you purposely eliminate any basis of comparison, while still claiming that you are better.

If you think Blackheart sucks prove it. Proving it does NOT mean beating your friend. The other day I beat a friend in Chess and I was playing Black. Does that mean White sucks? No. "But gee, my friend is good at Chess." Says who? Me? Compared to what?

This is like the people who say "anyone can win in SF3, just 'Poke n Parry.' Yet those people never won anything." Or the people who say Marvel games are just beams, or block damage, or keepaway, or pixies, or dashing short - none of those people can actually win using those strategies or ANY strategies.