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[PATV] Wednesday, December 5, 2012 - Extra Credits Season 5, Ep. 15: Balancing for Skill

DogDog Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
edited December 2012 in The Penny Arcade Hub

image[PATV] Wednesday, December 5, 2012 - Extra Credits Season 5, Ep. 15: Balancing for Skill

This week, we talk about the factor of player skill when balancing multiplayer games.
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  • J. D. MilknutJ. D. Milknut Lord of Chipmunks Portland, ORRegistered User regular
    THE CAKE IS A LIE.
    THE CAKE IS A LIE.
    THE CAKE IS A LIE.
    THE CAKE IS A LIE_____

    gekm71tpnnd5.gif
  • Titanium DragonTitanium Dragon Registered User regular
    Thing is, Street Fighter is actually a really lousy example. Hundred Hands and all the moves in that game are not actually a question of skill at all; they're a question of execution. Skill lies in how to use those abilities properly; execution lies in how to actually even do them in the first place.

    While execution is a type of skill, I would tend to say that it isn't a very GOOD type of skill or a FUN type of skill - the real fun lies in actually feeling like you're figuring things out, outsmarting the game, rather than just being a tool for executing moves. That's why minimizing execution difficulty is good.

    A lot of games really do fail at making people improve their skills gradually; I feel like the original Devil May Cry did a good job of it, while Devil May Cry 3 started too high (but felt good once you got to the right level of skill).

  • KononekoKononeko Registered User new member
    edited December 2012
    This reminds me of what happen to me with Final Fantasy VIII. Summons in that game are super easy to latch onto, and I just used them over and over again. Then I got to the end of disk 3 with the fight where you can't use AOE attacks because it would hurt Rinoa. Needless to say I was rather boned at this point because I never drew magic and I didn't really even pay attention to the stats, as I was plowing though every fight by summoning and then smashing the ever loving crap out of the square button. Also since this was my first RPG that I had played in over 7 years, needless to say I only had one save file. So I ended up starting over again having learned from my mistakes, and now I try to pay attention more to what mechanics the game was throwing at me.

    Kononeko on
  • sloporionsloporion Registered User regular
    @Titanium: Pretty sure you misunderstood this whole thing... They weren't saying that Hundred Hand slap was a move that required skill, they were saying that it's a move that anyone could do and probably even figure out for themselves as they were spamming buttons.

    While still using the SF2 reference, you can look at different characters and see the amount of skill required to use them properly as sort of a stepping stone. While characters like Chun-Li, E. Honda, and Blanka are all very good for those starting out in the game, once you get to a character like Ryu/Ken, Dhalsim, or Guile, you'll soon learn that your strategy must change (as they have projectiles).

    As with Blanka and E.Honda, Dhalsim and Guile have fairly easy movesets, but are more difficult than the Slap/Kick/Shock spam abilities.

    In the case of Ryu/Ken, there is a slightly more difficult learning curve for their moves. The dragon punch is much more difficult than say the flash kick or yoga flame, and their other moves (fireball and hurricane kick) are on par with the difficulty of Dhalsim/Guile.

    Then the last, and hardest character to master in the original SF2 was Zangief. He was large and slow, he had no projectiles, no way to avoid them (I don't think you could do it with the spinning punch until SF2:CE, but I could be wrong), and his moveset was unlike many of the other characters. The spinning piledriver is by far the most difficult move to perform on an SNES controller. It also requires precise timing or a good combo to be able to pull off, as you are left very vulnerable afterwords. However, it is the strongest move in the game, taking away 1/3 of the healthbar and knocking the opponent to the ground. So, if you do hit with it, it's almost a guaranteed victory.

    I think Street Fighter was actually one of the best examples that you could think of when discussing this topic, as it is very easy to see the progression of skill to power. And, while the progression of skill to character is obvious, you can also find those who can use the lower tier characters (the spam ones) at a higher skill level. My one friend would play with E.Honda and if I let him back me into a corner, I was pretty much done as he would grab me into the bear hug throw and while I'm in that would be spamming the punch button so that I would get hit by the hundred hand slap multiple times on the fall backwards.

    This wasn't a noob tactic, as he would actually fight me without doing it most times, but if I made the mistake of getting trapped in the corner he'd make me pay for it.

  • sloporionsloporion Registered User regular
    Also, @kononeko: that sucks man. Though honestly I thought the best part of the game was getting to augment your stats the way you wanted them. So, I was able to look past the whole draw system (which is horrible), because I had fun customizing my characters' stats.

    There's a whole lot about that game I didn't like, but the idea of having to get spells from enemies and even worse having to figure out what spells each enemy had, was horribad.

    God forbid you want a spell that a boss has, because then you'll basically stand there taking boatloads of damage in a boss fight like a jackass and be no closer to actually killing the boss.

  • MinuteWaltMinuteWalt Mister Registered User regular
    edited December 2012
    Button Mashing. This is my takeaway from ExtraC today:

    The most annoying thing that ever got me into fighters was mashing buttons, and winning, and then trying to skillfully p'wn my friends, and getting skilled at it, and arguing about the best way to play... and then getting smacked hard by a noob who was pressing the buttons randomly with their palm/face/butt.

    Just like me. (PSA warning: "Where did you learn to do that?!?!" "Wah! I learned it by watching you dad!!!").

    I learned by winning, and then losing; and then "we" figured it out, and we were Gods! These buttons mean something!

    Except there were all these idiots who didn't do it right but still kept kicking our collective asses! No worries, once they started ACTIVELY TRYING TO WIN, they started failing left-and-right. (By "they," I mean every fighting-gamer who tried figuring out the moves and then instantly started to get worse. ("They" includes "me," btw))

    And then our enemies became skilled, both simulated and my i.r.l. fellows, and it was awesome!

    (And then we were beaten by our little siblings who smacked the controller with their knees)

    It's embarrassing, but if you haven't been taught by a masher, you're lying to yourself and others. A great round of punch-inna-face is about ebb and flow, strategy, and reactions. A genius design allows different skill levels to play a game together. A random happenstance of a game that was meant for hardcore players but unintentionally lets mashers in is fine by me. At least it's not Mario Party.

    This is part of why we are sometimes humiliated by the skillz of our children. Accept that we may be pwned by our kids: the important part is schooling them hard enough they can still represent while being tomorrow's leet, as we were before them.

    MinuteWalt on
  • Titanium DragonTitanium Dragon Registered User regular
    @sloporion: Unfortunately, the problem here lies in the fact that you're living too much in the world of executional skill here. Super Street Fighter 2 requires more skill in execution than most games - indeed, fighting games have the most complicated execution of any game type, with the rare exception of very poorly designed games. This is because characters have dozens of different attacks and movements that they can do at any given time, and there are only a limited number of buttons you can reasonably have on a controller.

    Indeed, SSF2 is a good example of a game which breaks down in many respects. Beyond many moves requiring overly complicated inputs (Zangief, dragon punches to some degree, inconsistency of how to execute moves between different characters) the truth was that input difficulty was no indicator of strength, and indeed is not meant to be in most fighting games, SSF2 included. Moreover, the best things in that particular game were not actually difficult to execute - yeah, dragon punches are great (and importantly) but projectile spam is actually very, very good in general in that game - many characters are wrecked by good projectile spam, and while it isn't ALL that you do during the match, it is a major component. The ability to deal with projectile spam is a major part of what makes a character really "viable" in that game.

    The fun skill lies in what you're talking about at the end - trying to actually fight each other, avoid getting backed into corners, ect. Executional memorization is busywork, and memorizing all the controls in that game took a lot of effort - more than it should have. And that was how you gained the skill you needed to just play the game against a live opponent (or even the smarter AIs). That's before you get into the skill of actually beating what your opponent is doing by executing.

    Moreover, the game gives no indication of which characters are "easy" or "hard" to play, which is also bad for such things - I know I picked the characters I thought were cool, and I suspect that is how most players pick who they play as.

  • KaligorKaligor Registered User new member
    I keep hearing this excuse for the Grenade launcher all the time. Its for the new player, etc etc.
    But for a new player the Grenade launcher is not at all helpful for you. It does not teach you how to play the game as it requires a completely different approach to all situation.

    On the other side of the coin you have the problem of really good players using the Grenade launcher against new players, With its massive damage often one-hit-kill and Stupendous Area of effect, it leave new players unable to do anything, it doesn't matter that they both have Grenade launchers because knowledge of the map and understanding of the Weapon comes with experience.

    So the problem with the Grenade Launcher is lack of counters, and a fundamental disconnect in the map design. Black Ops II sort of addressed this by putting it second to last on the unlocks for weapons. meaning it will take a lot of dedication to unlock it, and by the time you can use it, you will have a gained some experience in the fundamentals of the game.

    So how can the grenade launcher be incorporated into the game so its not annoying for veterans or a double-edged sword for newbies. Easy just limit the Grenade launcher to game modes its appropriated for, Game modes like attack and defend were only the attackers can use it at the cost of there primary weapon.

    Kaligor.

  • DreampodDreampod Registered User new member
    One thing that the folks at Riot Games talk about when balancing for skill is the skill required to counter a strategy. Ideally you always want to skill required to counter a particular strategy to be slightly higher than the skill needed to execute it so that players are constantly being pulled towards increasing their skill and constantly see a goal to motivate them to keep developing. Done properly this avoids the flaw of people getting out of their depth using extremely simple, hard to counter strategies (see Zerg Rush) because it forces them to go through a horde of people capable of bopping that strat on its head.

    One thing that the episode eluded to but really deserved an explicit mention is that the form of balancing for skill you need to implement depends very highly on how players get matched up together. Single player games need a different approach than games that use a ranking system to match similar skill players which need a different approach than games you find your opponent personally in real life which it turn need a different approach from games that mix strangers with disparate skill levels together.

  • Link68759Link68759 Registered User new member
    Quake 4 multiplayer is essentially a veteran community. I don't understand how I can be so good at Quake 3 and yet so bad at Quake 4. The people playing Quake 4 are ridiculous, though.

  • scw55scw55 Registered User regular
    Torchlight 2 normal mode has a devious jump in difficulty near the end. I blame the 'Foo' strategy. The mobs have deadly abilities who by themselves are manageable. But sadly in combination it's pure hell. Turret that shoots long range projectiles with a mobs that lays down AoE Dots on the floor with a mobs that pulls you towards them... makes for a painful and frustrating experience.

    Another issue is halfway in Act 2 as a "glass cannon class". In till then you had no reasons to invest in defensive abilities or defensive stats. Mobs died so quickly, and you could run away from things with ease. Then all of a sudden you may find yourself out of your depth because you have insufficient health/armour/defensive utility abilities. It's good that the game reminds you that things won't be this easy for the whole game. But it doesn't half punish you for "not having the ability to predict this outcome". You then have to painstakingly with every level up 'correct' yourself. This isn't a major problem if you have researched class builds before hand. If you are playing "how you want to play" you may find this very frustrating (I rerolled because I was fed up of my Embermage constantly dying. Since I have respecced [due to a console cheat command] and I find the game so much easier. Either my skill has increased from playing a Berserker through to Game+ or I have using a more efficient character build).

  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    I don't really agree with this episode.

    What I see happening in games is either one of two things. Either as you get more skilled at the game, you become more effective at playing it, or there are simply too many "power balanced" moves in the game that make becoming more skilled at the game an ineffective investment of time.

    In the first case, yes, you do get the brick wall effect. But it's less clear cut than described. What actually happens is that when the game comes out everyone is bad at it. The skill train is at the base station and ready to roll. As time progress, the train moves forward, the average skill level rises and everyone on the train has a great time. But everyone who came in late, back at the station, has to catch up to join in. If that train is too far ahead, then they face an insurmountable challenge, hit that brick wall, and give up. Eventually, the amount of people on the train atrophies as people get bored and try new things. But so long as they play each other, they will never have either the "brick wall" or "bored of doing the same thing" reason to quit, and will constantly play off each other to get better, at least until they run out of track.

    Personally, I like trains, and I see this as a healthy lifecycle of a game. I enjoy the climb, and will try to catch up if left behind. When it finally stops, it's sad, but there are more games out there to find and enjoy.

    In the second case, you have a revolving door. People who are sick of doing the same low skill moves for massive benefits wind up quitting as new people who find doing these moves fun jump in and start enjoying themselves off the bat. You don't keep any one player for very long, but you maintain a healthy playerbase by enticing new ones to come in, and old ones to reinstall.

    To me, this is the distinction between hardcore and casual games. Hardcore games encourage building skill to become more effective. Casual games allow anyone to be effective immediately. These games suit different types of players and I don't think that either model is superior.

    And I'm yet to see a happy balance where skill and experience is rewarded and yet a new player can jump straight into a high skilled game and be effective immediately. I believe these are mutually exclusive. Either you have your low skill FOOs or a higher skill FOOs that over-rules the lower one.

    Ideally, every game would have some gated approach to skill balance. So either matchmaking, where the entire playerbase is stratified by skill so that no-one is left behind the skill train and yet new players can feel immediately effective against new players, or FOOs that can be turned off as the player skill level increases. For an example of the latter, look at competitive Team Fortress 2.

    TF2 has the crit mechanic which is a 3x damage multiplier on random shots in normal matches. This helps new players get more kills (even though players who get more damage, i.e skilled players, get more crits) because they fight losing battles all the time. If a skilled player gets a crit against a new player, it doesn't normally matter because the skilled player would normally win the conflict otherwise he would have not begun fighting in the first place. However if the new player gets a crit, and aims and hits the skilled player, suddenly the tables are turned and the skilled player is, if not dead, at least severely injured and losing the battle. This helps the new player win a matchup which he probably should not have fought in the first place.

    As a result of this, competitive TF2 pretty much universally turns random crits off. There is not much point trying to play skillfully if a player can get the blessing of the RNG and turn a battle, if not the match, on its head through a conveniently timed crit. As a result, competitive TF2 often draws ire from the pub community because it is not the same game. And it's not. But they both serve different communities and different player styles, and so TF2 marches on as a hat wielding mercenary dress-up abomination.

    So really, if you want all the people, you either stratify your players through matchmaking, or segment the community into different games with different rules and sell the casuals hats.

    Otherwise feel free to make your punishing skill curves or your constant player churning anyone can play games. Either strategy is fine, but it's not going to satisfy new or old players respectively.

  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    Zangief was the first character I learned to use in SF2 i really did not find him that hard to learn yes his lack of a projectile was a hammper
    then I picked up Chun Li taking down the bonus car and other things just felt so right and smooth

  • XadinsXadins Registered User new member
    As a gamer who occasionally delves into the world of Flash games, I've seen quite a few instances of FOO strategies paying off for a much longer period than they should. It's been a while since I've played any of them, so I can't provide a specific example, but one that I have seen several times comes from shooting-gallery-style games where the player is stationary and enemies scroll in from the opposite side of the screen. Oftentimes the player is granted a default weapon with infinite ammo, followed by several progressively stronger weapons with a limited ammo supply. In most of these games, I could plow through entire sections using only the default weapon, simply because I didn't need to watch my ammo and could therefore spam everything into oblivion. The only times this strategy would fail were if the enemies suddenly became too powerful for the default, or if a boss suddenly showed up.

    As I was composing the above paragraph, I did remember a specific example of a FOO strategy paying off in a tower defense game called Cursed Treasure. Essentially, you get 3 basic tower types: Archer tower with medium damage and range with a decent fire rate; Fire tower with a small range but high RoF and damage; Ice tower with long range and high damage with slow fire rate. At first, you're required to mix and match these towers to proceed. But as you progress, you can specialize your towers. In my case, I ended up dumping everything into my Ice towers to the point that they could kill anything in 1-2 shots, keep 3 shots in reserve during downtime, cast fear on their target 33% of the time, and fire on targets clear on the other end of the area. After a given point, I was able to clear the entire game using only those towers.

  • fodiggfodigg Registered User regular
    I've been seeing this in the Mechwarrior Online community as of late. Lots of angst against guided rockets as no-skill weapons, especially with rigs designed only to use these weapons (e.g., LRM boats, streak-Cats). The complaints weren't baseless mind you--LRMs were broken for a while and it's only yesterday that they finally introduced ECM devices that let you slow or disrupt weapon locks--but I feel like these players were missing the benefit to the game of supporting the lock-on style of play.

  • teknoarcanistteknoarcanist Registered User regular
    edited December 2012
    This is one of the better EC episodes in a long time. Actually surprised me by presenting an insight I hadn't thought of before.

    I like to look at it like this: in all games, there are base abilities, and meta abilities.

    Base abilities are the in-game skills your character has. Jumping. Shooting things. Etc.

    Meta abilities are the game-transcending skills required of you, the player, to succeed in-game. Learning how enemies' sight-lines trigger them aggro. Being cautious in open spaces. Learning to scavenge efficiently.

    What this video is basically saying is that, the more skill a base ability requires to use, the less powerful it should be. Ideally, all base abilities have the same net effect.

    What that means for the skillful player is that, rather than learning a few secret techniques and bulldozing all opponents, they must instead become better at the meta-game (fighting game fans will be nodding vigorously here). This means that, rather than have access to more powerful base abilities, the advantage the skillful player has over the amateur is a RICHNESS of control. The amateur can only flail his hand wildly, where the skillful player understands how to move each individual finger.

    The skillful player therefore still has a distinct advantage, but in a way the designers intend.

    To put it another way: suppose we have a race on a curved track. The skillful player is a Nascar machine: fast, capable, and fluidly controlled. The amateur player is a V1 rocket. Faster, sure -- but totally unrefined, and lacking in subtlety and fine control.

    Maybe the rocket will pull it out in the straightaways, but a Nascar car will beat a V1 rocket in a five-lap race every time.

    As always, Dark Souls is a good example here. Players lament the backstab ability for its ease of use and exorbitantly high amount of damage; and, like the noob tube, you will sometimes see a more skilled player done in by an amateur's lucky backstab.

    And yet skilled players will be the first to tut-tut and tell you that a backstab is obvious, easily avoided (lag notwithstanding), and anyone done in by an amateur fishing for backstab opportunities needs to go back to school.

    teknoarcanist on
  • Punk RexPunk Rex Registered User regular
    I remember playing as a tank on WoW. I quit multiple times and only got back in each time to either experience new areas/story or because my friends wanted me to group with them. Learning end game tanking in raids is so freaking hard because, unlike dundeons, you need percise stratergies to defeat EACH mob/boss, with said stratergies userly depending on the tank. Its a HUGE amount of stress on a player. I had several friends playing as DPS moaning at me to get better, I said "You give it a try butt hole", they switched to a tanking tree and came back a week later and apologised, felt good man.

  • ANTIcarrotANTIcarrot Registered User regular
    I remember meeting this in Mass Effect 1. My guns and healing had caried the day up until that point, and suddenly I was forced to rush a large groups of powerful NPCs, with one healing token left. Special powers? Squad tactics? What are these?

    On the other hand, I feel no discussion of online multiplayer skill is complete without also mentioning lag or hacking. No one's reflexes can be two seconds in the past, and regular players don't have auto aim. Veterans will use FOOS in such situations. In team games you will also find yourself in situations where you need to give your team massive area support straight out of the box, and having a rarely used class loaded down with FOOS will do that.

    FOOS can also be relative. The handgun from Halo was not a FOOS, but it was a Second Order weapon; which was often reguarded as a FOOS by many players. Which didn't stop it from being loads of fun or challenging when using it at long range or in handgun only games.

  • DBonesDBones Registered User regular
    Great episode. I would also love to see you talk about balancing out time requirements (low commitment vs. high commitment players) and how F2P games do that.

    Basically I just love to hear you guys talk about game balance in general. It's fascinating.

  • untestedmethodsuntestedmethods Registered User regular
    FOO strategy? like assassin's creed has had for 5 games? Yeah, they need a page out of this book. (AC3's rope dart vs Countering... well, any AC games Countering vs Anything)

  • TwoflowerTwoflower Registered User regular
    I ran into the worst example of this when I was a kid, playing Final Fantasy Adventure on my Gameboy.

    For 95% of the game, stores sold cheap little one-shot boxes of lightning that could pulverize everything in the game. As a kid I found this awesome and never bothered doing anything else. Why develop your classes or equip weapons when you can KABOOM cheaply?

    Next to last boss? Immune. And by this point, I had no other options open to me because the game never encouraged me to do use anything else. Ten hours of play wasted, game turned off, and ever since then I've been VERY hesitant to play RPGs because I don't wanna make a bad build decision and get screwed later.

  • dontedonte Registered User new member
    i actually lost trust on you guys when you guys said LoL's f2p cash shop is great and will generate unique strategy..

    this is the most blatant way to "casualize" game, this is the big reason why game nowadays tries to cater "broader audience" which remove mechanics because "too hard" or "too complicated"..

    it all good on theory but actually hurt veteran in long shot...

    no wonder now we have shittons 60$ hollywood 4 hour campaign no brain call of duty run and gun..

  • RK5000RK5000 Registered User new member
    This makes me think of player classes in FPS games.

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  • mada7mada7 Registered User new member
    The best example I can think of for this is the original Marvel vs Capcom 3. Sentinel in that game could take a huge beating and had a kick that was mapped to one of the face buttons that interrupted all attacks and did strong damage. It later got nerfed in a patch and players figured out a way around the almighty kick and I got frustrated because I had no idea how to fight properly because of how reliant on sentinel I had become

  • Titanium DragonTitanium Dragon Registered User regular
    What I see happening in games is either one of two things. Either as you get more skilled at the game, you become more effective at playing it, or there are simply too many "power balanced" moves in the game that make becoming more skilled at the game an ineffective investment of time.

    This isn't actually true. And indeed just shows a deep-rooted psychological flaw that many people have called bimodal or "black and white" thinking.

    More skill = better is almost universal. Look at Magic. People think of it as a random game, and yet the better player wins an enormously high percentage of the time, especially if there is a sizable skill gap; I can beat most players without even really trying very hard, but against good players, its hard, and against the very best players it is quite rough - I win maybe 1 game in 3 against PT quality material, which means I can do well enough to scrape my knuckles, but never actually win any "real" tournament with good players. Or at least, I could when I quit playing.

    The question, then, is how crushing it is, and how easy it is to find an appropriate opponent. In Starcraft 2, for instance, it is okay that the very best players would completely crush a new player in an unfun game because they just don't play new players - its a primarily two player or team oriented game and you play against people of similar skill level.

    On the other hand, if you look at a game like TF2 or Counterstrike, you're far more likely to be playing with people of mixed skill. In this sort of game, it is very important for the noob to not be completely useless - they need to be able to get at least some kills. I think a good example of a weapon that helps with this is the automatic shotgun of counterstrike - it isn't the best weapon in the world, but it is not the most expensive either and it can get you some kills. You won't be the feared member of your team, but you can at least contribute, and sometimes even the best player makes a mistake, goes around that corner, and takes a shotgun to the face.
    And I'm yet to see a happy balance where skill and experience is rewarded and yet a new player can jump straight into a high skilled game and be effective immediately. I believe these are mutually exclusive. Either you have your low skill FOOs or a higher skill FOOs that over-rules the lower one.

    It really depends on the kind of game. In an FPS, its actually very much possible for a new player to do something useful, because usually in those games, if you get shot in the head or take a point blank shot or two from a shotgun you are toast - even if you are an amazing player, sometimes the newbie will get off a "lucky" shot or you'll make a mistake that gets you killed - you get ambushed, or you just don't notice them until it is too late, or you're a bit slow on the draw, or outnumbered and the newbie is the one who gets the kill.

    In a game like an RTS or Magic or a fighting game, yeah, the newbie is utterly doomed. It is much more okay for games like this to have that aspect though because it is typically only two or four players, meaning that it is easy to find other games with people more your level.

    Indeed, one of the really lousy things about a lot of MOBAs is the fact that, unlike in a lot of other games, if you have a really bad player on your team, it actually makes the other team actively better against you personally, which leads to a lot of bitter recriminations and unpleasantness. Not to mention the Dunning-Kruger effect.
    As a result of this, competitive TF2 pretty much universally turns random crits off. There is not much point trying to play skillfully if a player can get the blessing of the RNG and turn a battle, if not the match, on its head through a conveniently timed crit. As a result, competitive TF2 often draws ire from the pub community because it is not the same game. And it's not. But they both serve different communities and different player styles, and so TF2 marches on as a hat wielding mercenary dress-up abomination.

    I will note that a lot of competitive players are, in fact, utter scrubs in this regard. Randomness does not necessarily make a game less skill intensive, and (perhaps ironically) actually often acts to make it MORE skill intensive. Magic, for instance, is a hideously skill intensive game - arguably one of the most skill intensive games of all time, and almost certainly the most skill intensive card game. And yet, you can get mana screwed and mana flooded and get unlucky. There is a joke in the community though: "Good players draw good cards." The truth behind the statement is simple: a good player optimizes their chances through the randomness. The best players do win pretty consistently. Which means... well... the randomness hasn't hurt the game at all, and indeed has helped it.

    The main problem with TF2's randomness is the fact that, unlike in magic, there is little you can do to manipulate it. You simply know that it is a factor. It is not necessarily a bad thing - the fact is, randomness exists in a lot of ways in games that people don't even think about. In lots of games, shooting full auto makes your accuracy go down. Running makes your accuracy go down. But sometimes, you will get a headshot while doing something, even though you didn't have a huge chance of doing so. The fact that you can do so changes the optimal strategy; it doesn't make the game less skill intensive than if you always had perfect accuracy, indeed it does something else - it tends to make it more so, as knowing when to go for it is important to learn.

    Just because a competitive community does things some way doesn't mean they're not being retarded. Look at the SSBB community for an example of a lot of bad stage rules, because certain players hate hazards, especially "random" hazards, as well as the lack of items, even though many items are perfectly acceptable.
    What this video is basically saying is that, the more skill a base ability requires to use, the less powerful it should be. Ideally, all base abilities have the same net effect.

    Note that this needs to be skill in how to use it properly, NOT difficulty in execution, which is why using a fighting game example was such a bad idea.
    Maybe the rocket will pull it out in the straightaways, but a Nascar car will beat a V1 rocket in a five-lap race every time.

    This is actually really terrible design. The V1 rocket is just a trap. Its a pretend option. You never want something like that to exist.
    I remember meeting this in Mass Effect 1. My guns and healing had caried the day up until that point, and suddenly I was forced to rush a large groups of powerful NPCs, with one healing token left. Special powers? Squad tactics? What are these?

    I never met this in the entire series.

    I started out as a soldier with a sniper rifle, adrenaline rush, and backup weapons in the first game.

    I ended as a soldier with a sniper rifle, adrenaline rush, and a backup weapon that I almost never used in the last game.

    Turns out, being a soldier with a sniper rifle and adrenaline rush lets you beat pretty much everything. And the one time it was not really great (Kai Leng), I couldn't change my loadout. So I just fought him until I got down the pattern and just sniped everything quickly, and threw lots of grenades. Oh boy.
    i actually lost trust on you guys when you guys said LoL's f2p cash shop is great and will generate unique strategy..

    this is the most blatant way to "casualize" game, this is the big reason why game nowadays tries to cater "broader audience" which remove mechanics because "too hard" or "too complicated"..

    The f2p cash shop of LoL is not "good for the game" from a gameplay standpoint, but apart from the levelling mechanics in LoL, I would argue that if you're going to go F2P in a MOBA type game, the LoL model is actually very close to correct - get rid of the levelling system and you'd be pretty much set.

    I will note that a lot of very ignorant players don't understand that complexity is not actually inherently good. Complex gameplay is good, but complex execution is not, and more options isn't actually necessarily better.

  • ZodiacMeteorZodiacMeteor Registered User new member
    There is a better way to introduce a stronger Foo Strategy.
    In Guild Wars 2 there is a thief skill called Infiltrators Signet that has a passive ability that my thief gains 1 extra initiative every 10 seconds. That passive is actually weak as you gain 1 initiative every second anyways but my thiefs' traits and abilities benefit from it despite being weak.

    When you activate the skill, you shadow step to your target and break stun. For the longest time I though it was only useful for PvP which I didn't do much of. When will I struggle to close distance between me and a NPC? They are not smart enough to kite. Why would I bother activating it and get rid of the passive until it recharges just to teleport to an enemy to attack? An enemy that doesn't flee nor kite, it's useless in PvE.

    I feel like a total idiot, for the longest time, I could have used that skill in so many situations. A good half of my thiefs deaths in PvE was because of stun. I would get knockdown by a Nightmare Hound and him and his buddies would eat my face. Now if they pin me, WHOOSH, I shadowstep away. Now I use it all the time, not only to break stun but to shadowstep out of danger. A massive fire storm incoming and no endurance to dodge? WHOOSH, out of there.

    The best way to each others the next level of Foo Strategy is to give them a skill or ability that grants them a passive but also gives a use when you activate it.

  • RologtonRologton Registered User regular
    My favorite example of something like this (potentially because I spend waaaaay too much time playing it) is TF2 and the differences between skill floor and skill ceiling in each class.

    If other TF2 players were masochists like me and started playing with a class that has a high skill floor (in my case, Scout), meaning a lot of skills that you have to master before you can even survive, let alone do well with, than you know what it's like to get demolished for months on end before even finishing a round with more kills than deaths. Now granted, this became rewarding as now-a-days I can Scout-stomp KOTH maps (barring any Gunslinger pricks...) to the point of dominating half the enemy team, because I've mastered many skills that a Scout player needs to be really good. This is an example of a high skill-ceiling, meaning a lot for a player to learn and practice before they can move from holding their own in a round and actually doing really well in it. (Please note: This is a Pubber/low-level HL perspective and just some general observations. I have no delusions of taking on Clockwork some day.)

    Now, if every class were like this the game would be extremely frustrating, but because of intelligent game design, they're not. TF2 has Soldier and Heavy for that. Both classes have low skill floors, so they are really accessible for new players to learn the game with. For Soldier, you have to learn to utilize splash damage to get kills, and some basic rocket-jumping to get into new positions, to start holding your own in a round. It's when you learn to use rockets for mobility, airshots, dive-bombs, intelligent use of your low clip sizes, hitscan aim with your shotgun, how to weapon heckle, and other skills like that, that you become a truly good Soldier, and any TF2 player knows how much a good Soldier can shit on an enemy team. This is why Soldier is so often recommended to new players, as he is easy to get the basics of, but has tons to learn and is useful at every skill level. Heavy, on the other hand, is good for people to start with, but not necessarily to stick with. He has an astronomically low skill floor and skill ceiling, as after you learn to jump-rev, position yourself and track, you've basically learned it all. It's true that a really good Heavy can be an incredible powerhouse in any game mode, but for many he quickly becomes a FOO-Skill in and of himself, as when they meat better players and he becomes less and less effective, they are forced to learn a class with a higher skill ceiling if they want to do well in the game.

    Well, this became way more of a dissertation than I wanted it to be... I need to spend less time on SPUF...

  • RologtonRologton Registered User regular
    My favorite example of something like this (potentially because I spend waaaaay too much time playing it) is TF2 and the differences between skill floor and skill ceiling in each class.

    If other TF2 players were masochists like me and started playing with a class that has a high skill floor (in my case, Scout), meaning a lot of skills that you have to master before you can even survive, let alone do well with, than you know what it's like to get demolished for months on end before even finishing a round with more kills than deaths. Now granted, this became rewarding as now-a-days I can Scout-stomp KOTH maps (barring any Gunslinger pricks...) to the point of dominating half the enemy team, because I've mastered many skills that a Scout player needs to be really good. This is an example of a high skill-ceiling, meaning a lot for a player to learn and practice before they can move from holding their own in a round and actually doing really well in it. (Please note: This is a Pubber/low-level HL perspective and just some general observations. I have no delusions of taking on Clockwork some day.)

    Now, if every class were like this the game would be extremely frustrating, but because of intelligent game design, they're not. TF2 has Soldier and Heavy for that. Both classes have low skill floors, so they are really accessible for new players to learn the game with. For Soldier, you have to learn to utilize splash damage to get kills, and some basic rocket-jumping to get into new positions, to start holding your own in a round. It's when you learn to use rockets for mobility, airshots, dive-bombs, intelligent use of your low clip sizes, hitscan aim with your shotgun, how to weapon heckle, and other skills like that, that you become a truly good Soldier, and any TF2 player knows how much a good Soldier can shit on an enemy team. This is why Soldier is so often recommended to new players, as he is easy to get the basics of, but has tons to learn and is useful at every skill level. Heavy, on the other hand, is good for people to start with, but not necessarily to stick with. He has an astronomically low skill floor and skill ceiling, as after you learn to jump-rev, position yourself and track, you've basically learned it all. It's true that a really good Heavy can be an incredible powerhouse in any game mode, but for many he quickly becomes a FOO-Skill in and of himself, as when they meat better players and he becomes less and less effective, they are forced to learn a class with a higher skill ceiling if they want to do well in the game.

    Well, this became way more of a dissertation than I wanted it to be... I need to spend less time on SPUF...

  • DevantDevant Registered User regular
    Diablo 3, well blizzard games in general, suffered horribly from this. They also always respond in the worst way possible to it.

  • mowinckelmowinckel Registered User regular
    at 5:53 ... is that a clone high reference?

  • GinormousGinormous Registered User regular
    edited December 2012
    @Rologton, you're using the phrases incorrectly. A high skill floor, would mean that with no skill you can do well. A low skill floor would mean that with no skill you will not be good. What you're talking about indicates the variance of the classes are different. Someone can pick up soldier right away and do better than a new scout. However, a master soldier isn't as good as a master scout. The level of output has a lower skill variance than the scout does, e.g. the soldier has a high floor and low ceiling, while the scout has a low floor and high ceiling.

    Ginormous on
  • enistojaenistoja Registered User new member
    I thought of a very sad example of a foo technique: Tales of Symphonia. You can power through the whole game using only Lloyd and button mashing. There are different game styles depending on party setup AND character you control, but all of this tends to be pointless when the player isn't forced to improve. Even when the player's forced to use another character, there is always an option to use a character that functions similarly to Lloyd. This leads to a wide variety of possibilities to be lost, with little to no encouragement whatsoever for the player to experiment and learn.

  • Red RaevynRed Raevyn because I only take Bubble Baths Registered User regular
    This episode feels incomplete. It also didn't feel like it talked about multiplayer much... more about introducing new players and getting them to continue to play. I was expecting it to address class and item balance among equal level/time players with different skills, which would have been more interesting than just discussing noob vs veteran.

  • PirotonPiroton Registered User new member
    @Ginormous, I'd have to disagree with you on the idea that a master soldier isn't as good as a master scout - One of the most novel things about TF2 (as an FPS) is the class diversification, which means that although the Soldier is by far the higher skill floor class, both classes (Soldier and Scout) end up with roughly the same skill ceiling. The Soldier does have more advanced tactics available to him once a player attains the skill required to execute them - they're not FOO strategies, but they do add a lot of unpredictability to his play - and adds to his effectiveness greatly as a result. Against a good Soldier, if you're not watching your flank or what's above you, you can pretty much expect to get demolished, just like a good flanking Scout can.

    Just my 2 cents.

  • qeinarqeinar Registered User regular
    I sort of disagree with the noobtube statement. The noobtube was kinda OP in mw2, and the reason most veteran player's did not use it is because they found it a lame stategy. Noobtube was also banned in MLG. Good players did way better with the noobtube aswell since you could learn positions where you could shoot noobtubes across the map at the start of the game for free kills. The noobtube is also superior to grenades at room clearing. I used to play with a pretty good team, and we at times used noobtube if the other team decided to start a noobtube war. Holding a flag or a bomb site just became incredibly easy when all you had to do was wait for the sound of someone planting or someone jumping on a flag and then just shoot a noobtube over there. i can see it as a tactic for noobs, but saying this was a bad one for veteran players to use is kinda wrong since it was way to overpowered. On the other cod games though noobtubes are pretty balanced since the explosion is much smaller.

  • Iron LungIron Lung Registered User regular
    Fantastic episode, A+ topic.
    I think on Virtua Fighter, for being anti-FOOS. But too much so. The sheer volume of critical but, largely until VF4's thorough tutorials, techniques and information just casually omitted was easily crippling to it's growth.
    Sure Jacky and Sarah are beginner-friendly...for about 5 seconds. Then the jab/flurry combos get blocked, and our unfortunate neophyte is introduced to the Throwable On Block property of those string-enders. And of course not told about how Throw Escapes work. And how much of making Throw Escapes work relies on both fantastic timing (8 frames of 60fps to react, better pre-load the commands!) and knowing your opponent's possible range of throws they can use. Oh, and how those throws are actually executed. Good times.
    For all that Tekken is thriving (strong FOOS balance in that one) and VF is basically dead unless Sega decided to start dev on VF6 and not tell anyone.
    For my 2c VF also had a terrible problem with uninspired character designs, but that's probably a later topic.
    Again, loved the topic. See you next week.

  • Iron LungIron Lung Registered User regular
    @ Fodigg
    Just a parting note, but that's kind ironic to have those problems with missiles.
    That's the exact point of them in RL Warfare. They're accurate, too fast to merely "dodge", and can a load warhead that makes any solid projectile look like a spitwad.
    I've played Battletech on and off since the 80's and one of the key caveats to the whole setting was that guided weaponry and computer targeting were overpriced and under-reliable. It had to be, so that there'd be a point to these huge war machines lumbering around to do more then get iced by Elementals with Space Javelins hiding in the bushes.

  • ZworrisdehZworrisdeh Registered User new member
    I kept thinking about Mortal Kombat 9 (the 2011 one) during this video. I think it works better than the Hundred Hands example. In MK9, you build a 3-barred meter. With one bar, you can use an EX move, powering up one of your specials. For 2 bars, you can break your opponent's combo. For all 3 bars (your meter must be completely full), you can launch (but not necessarily land) an X-ray attack, a high damaging "auto-pilot" combo with a little cutscene. X-rays have very easy inputs, simply L2+R2 or LT+RT.

    Except for a few characters, X-rays are for the most part useless and extremely situational in higher levels of play. All they do is burn meter that could be used to break out of a damaging combo or use better moves, but are worth it if the player has full meter and knows he/she can close the match out by using one. More damaging combos can be learned that use one bar of meter (one EX move) or even no meter at all. When I play at tourneys at my college, lots of people are just casual and throw X-ray attacks. This is their FOO strategy. Learning the combos requires much more skill, and none of them seem to know full combos. Taking the time to master the combo requires more skill, but allows more defensive options. Noobs don't get shut out if they can land an X-ray, and end rounds having done a nice chunk of damage without putting any time into learning the game.

  • Sonny_69Sonny_69 Registered User regular
    whats that song at the end??

  • tsholltsholl Registered User regular
    Dark/Demon Souls does this pretty much perpetually. If you don't actually learn to wield weapons with skill and timing you'll get absolutely decimated every time you encounter a new enemy type because your run-and-hack strategy won't play out the same way. But that's part of the game's appeal - if you take the time to learn to fight properly you'll find yourself feeling like a total badass because you can actually handle the many many curveballs it throws at you as you progress. Another good example is the Drake Sword in Dark Souls, which you can pick up very early in the overall game and get provided with a slight defensive boost while swinging a sword that does much more damage at base level than anything else you've yet encountered BUT its damage doesn't scale with your stats so soon enough you have to graduate onto other weapons and actually find something that works for your own style in order to deal effective offence anymore. It's an incredibly engaging process once you twig onto how it wants you to play - there's a reason that so many players (myself included) are complete obsessives and hail it as the greatest thing to happen to gaming in over a decade. But then you have the flip-side, where Black Phantoms know all the equipment inside-out and create builds that are nigh-infallible to anything other than similarly extreme load-outs. Lot of hyphens in that sentence. But still, it's UNBELIEVABLY satisfying taking one of those suckers down with unimpressive equipment and it CAN be done. If you have SKILL.

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