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[PATV] Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - Extra Credits Season 5, Ep. 13: Counter Play

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

image[PATV] Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - Extra Credits Season 5, Ep. 13: Counter Play

This week, we discuss the design concept of Counter Play (with thanks to Tom Cadwell).
Grey Jenkins is a pretty skilled artist, in case you didn't know.
Come discuss this topic in the forums!

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  • sloporionsloporion Registered User regular
    I think the absolute WORST example of counter play (or best example of a lack of it) is any game in the CoD franchise.

    As the latest installment of Modern Warfare is just teetering out and the new installment of Black Ops is just revving up (complete with horrible server issues). I'm going to refer to both of them (as there are many design flaws in the multiplayer).

    Ideally the game mechanics SHOULD be as follows: Snipers shoot long range, get weaker at mid range and utterly useless at short range. Shotguns are the exact opposite, etc... The basic function is (or should be) the more rounds you can shoot (and the faster you can shoot them) the less accurate you are at a distance (in this function, think of the shotgun as shooting multiple shots all at once).

    MW3 had done away with quick scoping for a while, but quickly brought it back after complaints in order to help snipers be able to fight at close range. For those who don't know, quick scoping is the ability to pull up your sight and pull the trigger immediately. With the aim assist that the game provides (that you usually can't turn off) it basically makes it an instant upper body shot, which in the case of the sniper means a one-shot kill.

    The issue of no scoping (or hip firing) a sniper rifle is just as bad (especially with the fact that most sniper rifles are semi-automatic and shoot strong bullets fairly quickly).

    I haven't had enough play into Black Ops 2 to know if that is an issue there; however, the shotgun and light machine guns have more than made up for this lack of balance in their own right.

    In BO2, there is a shotgun (available fairly soon into the leveling) that has a relatively high range stat. Most people who are familiar with the franchise can tell you that there are always problems with shotguns being deadly accurate from a much further distance than should be possible.

    Also in BO2, the light machine guns have quickly taken up the mantle as most complained about in my group of friends because of it's high power, rate of fire, and surprisingly high accuracy at LONG distances (we're talking sniper rifle long).

    The idea of balance would indicate that someone with a sniper rifle would be awesome at long range, but when someone finally was able to sneak around and get close enough that they would have the advantage. However, with quick scoping that is not the case. And just the opposite is true. While someone will undoubtedly lose to a shotgun or light machine gun in close combat, if they should be able to put enough distance between themselves and the opponent, a long to mid-range weapon should have an advantage in an open area, but that is rarely the case with these two weapons.

    TL;DR - There is no rock, paper, scissors in CoD. Weapons that are meant to be used primarily for one range can basically be used at all ranges, thus someone who takes the time to master one weapon can basically make or break an experience (there's nothing worse than losing a close quarters firefight against a sniper while you are using an SMG).

  • Mobius01Mobius01 Registered User new member
    edited November 2012
    Even in noncompetitive multiplayer games this concept applies. A mechanic that is fun for a player should also prove fun for his/her allies. Games that execute this poorly end up with some ability or weapon that no player can do without or a class that outshines most if not all others.

    When it comes to games that revolve around a shared experience, the overall experience should be fun for everyone, even if you're the player that just got sniped or got your life bar saved by your ally sniper.

    Mobius01 on
  • SavageMinnowSavageMinnow Registered User new member
    @sloporion

    Balance does not translate to rock-paper-scissors mechanics. There are plenty of problems with CoD, but to say "I should win if I'm using an SMG against a sniper at short range" is an extremely short-sighted view. Because of the nature of those games, all weapons need to be usable at all ranges, and individual skill at aiming and movement needs to be far more important. In a game like CoD where the skill ceiling for individual play is so easily reached already, we really don't need to lower it any more.

    That said, quickscoping is pretty much bullshit. It violates the way snipers work in a severe fashion. I don't actually have any useful solutions for CoD's balance, but making rock-paper-scissors dynamics be your balance is a very good way to kill any team game.

  • Peter EbelPeter Ebel CopenhagenRegistered User regular
    Is a Grey Jenkins anything like a Brown Jenkin? Also, the video isn't loading for me. Stuck in eternal buffering.

    Fuck off and die.
  • mugulordmugulord Registered User regular
    I also feel CoD multiplayer is a bad example of counter play, but my biggest gripe was something else. CoD was too chaotic. Even when my choices had meaning it felt like they didn't. I could have a great round and climb to the top of my team or the server even, but then next round I could have a series of bad spawns and have the lowest score on my team and there wasn't a choice available to me that could change that. And then next round I might be at the top again. So, I wondered, if I am good enough to climb to the top, how can I also be bad enough to also be at the bottom?

    Either, the game is random and chaotic and to play it means accepting that my placement on the scoreboard was not a result of my choices, or the game was balanced and my choices had meaning, but the scoreboard didn't have meaning. If the scoreboard is the win/loss condition, the final reward for playing a match of CoD, then I can't accept that it is meaningless, but to say it has meaning means the game has to be chaotic and I have no choice where on the scoreboard I wind up, which in the end makes the scoreboard meaningless again.

    So, realizing that the scoreboard was meaningless no matter what skill level I was at, I stopped playing. CoD multiplayer is a bad game. If I'm making the same choices and they are the right choices, but in one game I am on the top of a chart and in the next I'm on the bottom, or somewhere in the middle, then the choices provided by the game are moot. The only good choice is to not play.

  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    This whole counterplay argument sounds very much like a more limited version of a concept that I've seen before in an article somewhere, but can't remember where (might have been here, be nice if someone could help me find the thing).

    It's a concept that was most specifically targeted at multiplayer arcade fighting games, when you wanted to design or balance a new powerful move for a character in it. Like in this video, you need to think about what the second character can do to avoid it or counter it altogether, because no-one likes getting punched repeatedly with an uncounterable uppercut. So you give the second character a counter sweep kick that avoids the punch entirely. But then you need to give the first character something to counter that and so on.

    The concept-which-has-some-oriental-name then had four levels you needed to consider and implement when adding the new move:
    1) The new move
    2) The new move's counter
    3) The counter counter
    4) The counter counter counter

    From here, you don't necessarily need any more counter moves, because 4) shouldn't counter 1) as well as 3), so the first player can use the new move freely when they expect the second player to bring out the counter counter counter. If it also hits player 2 hard because they used the counter counter counter, so much the better.

    The article then went on to talk about how players think on each level, and that when you're learning the game you may only think on level 1) and just be spamming your awesome attacks, only to be defeated by someone who knows how to counter appropriately, who would then be defeated by someone who can predict the counters and use counter counters and so on. It then went on to talk about beginner's luck and how someone used to thinking about counter counters is often thrown off guard by someone who doesn't play optimally, because suddenly their counters are being blasted by unexpected 1)s or just plain unpredictable play.

    Anyhow, the article was mainly directed at arcade fighters, but to a large extent I think it can be applied to all multiplayer games. Each mechanic generally needs a counter mechanic, and that leads naturally to the 4 levels unless it's a straight mirror match (Like imo Counterstrike; You counter getting shot by shooting first in pubs at least).

    You don't necessarily need to give each person access to each tier in a team based game. Like to counter a sniper you might walk through cover to flank, but the sniper shouldn't necessarily be able to repel that. You might instead have other player loadouts which are better at close combat fighting who can fight better in cover instead which would combat the flankers. And then another player may use a rocket launcher on the cover to get rid of the close combat (and cover), only to be eliminated by the sniper.

    In any case, I very much agree that every mechanic should present some decision to the victim which they can exploit to try and change the battle to their favour, even if chances only go from 70% loss to 65% loss due to previous mistakes. But it goes a little bit deeper than just mechanic - counter most of the time.

  • gryfegryfe Registered User new member
    Man, I love that UOIT U1350 lecture hall pic you used, makes me smile to know it is internet worthy.

  • LeonickLeonick Registered User regular
    Well the snipers was a good example... Oh, the times I've wished there was a Battlefield or Planetside or similar large area team based shooters where there simply didn't exist a sniper rifle.

  • fodiggfodigg Registered User regular
    Isn't this just "balance" or "rps"? I mean, the examples of how it increased options were just ways to negate the advantage. That's balance to me, that's not "being sniped is so interesting."

  • R3DT1D3R3DT1D3 Registered User regular
    The killstreak/scorestreak rewards in the later CoD's are the complete antithesis of this episode yet millions of people still "enjoy" the mechanic. You touched on it but in general, public or low skill players actually like these broken mechanics that don't have counter plays because it's their only avenue to feel powerful or in control. The majority of most game's audience is at this level so it's no wonder multiplayer games are rarely designed with counter play.

    I can't believe you didn't use examples from the RTS genre which was practically founded on counter play almost from inception. Everything from the original Command and Conquer games up to Starcraft 2 are all based on strong counter play principles (to varying degrees of success).

    I can't help but feel that most PC-centric or exclusive games thrive of counter play since their market is more hardcore and dedicated than most of the console lineup.

  • thewaeverthewaever Registered User regular
    This sounds alot like the kind of thing that the folks at Blizzard talk about in their blue posts regarding the way they design for WoW & DIablo.
    http://alexanderbrazie.blogspot.jp/

  • imperial1imperial1 Registered User new member
    After re watching the ep on perfect imballence (just to make sure i am getting this right before i post this) it looks to me like this idea seems to tie directly into that one. Much like what the fokes talkign about CoD are talking about counter play help to make a perfect imballence by weakening power via having a way around them.

    at least thats the idea i am gathering

  • MinuteWaltMinuteWalt Mister Registered User regular
    Nice to see an episode about mechanics and gameplay again after so many about plot and abstract concepts (not that there's anything wrong with those!). This seems like something that could come back to haunt us in a Part2, or at least in an episode of little things that didn't make the final cut in various episodes but are worth talking about.

    It seems like counterplay and balance are subtlety but assuredly different concepts, although they overlap and depend on each other. "Balance" exists to ensure no one class, ability, weapon ect. can steamroll over others. Not the same as "counterplay," which is about giving meaningful options to counter an opponents tactics.

    An extreme example of good balance, bad counterplay: I played a very simple deathmatch top-down (Gauntlet-style) where you could choose to be a barbarian, archer, or mage. If you wre a barbarian, you smashed things with your hammer, or threw axes as a ranged attack, which depleted an "axe meter." The archer smashed things with a sword, ranged w/ arrows, arrow meter. Mage smash w/staff, fireballs, meter. Basically, the 3 classes were palate swaps. Balance was great, counterplay nonexistent.

    I'm sure there are examples of good counterplay but bad balance, the best I can come up with is an RTS or other strategy game where one side will inexorably win every time despite tons of ways where the other side can harass and stymie their opponent. It makes for an incredibly long, drawn-out conflict, where both players know what's going to happen.

    There may be better examples of good counterplay/bad balance out there, but I think they're harder to find because: good counterplay buffs balance. Even when facing a vastly overpowered opponent, if you can engage a strategy to defend against, counter, or effectively attack, it tips balance back to equality.

    In fighters, often "couterplay" is what a reviewer means when they say "balance." When they say a certain character or the boss has "cheap" moves, that's when they're really talking about "balance." The "oddball" characters with seemingly useless moves or depend on a moveset that seems to come from a different game (Voldo, Shun Di, Yoshimitsu, etc. you know who I mean), weak in the hands of most but devastating in the hands of someone who's explored that skillset: counterplay equalizing balance, to the point where a player of a powerful character needs to develop a strategy to counter the opponent's counterplay, etc.

  • spiffy_Kingspiffy_King Registered User regular
    and yet Riot designed Darius....

    In all seriousness this is why I prefer League over DoTA, The majority of league champions are designed with this concept in mind. DoTA on the other hand is full of abilities and heroes who do not follow this concept.

  • MagmarFireMagmarFire Registered User regular
    Great episode--and you know the best part? Counterplay is by no means limited to just multiplayer games. Many single-player games can benefit from this, too, especially in regards to enemy design.

  • motigistmotigist Registered User regular
    MinuteWalt, Command & Conquer 3 is that RTS. The idea that a certain unit type is strong against a different unit type is driven to its very extreme, so even a few counter-units can trash a huge army of expensive units. Counterplay is plentiful and evident, so taking your opponent by surprise is the only option. And I don't mean clever, "mind games" style surprise, I mean "random bullshit" style surprise. Race that has more opportunities for it generally wins.

  • esb422esb422 Registered User new member
    @discrider, you're thinking of David Sirlin's "Yomi" articles. Sirlin's a big name in the fighting game community, though he's taken up to designing board and card games lately. He's also famous for writing the article "Playing to Win" which most competitive players will point to as a Holy Bible of competition.

    http://www.sirlin.net/articles/yomi-layer-3-knowing-the-mind-of-the-opponent.html

  • CombobreakerCombobreaker Registered User regular
    You guys need to read David Sirlin's "Playing to Win!". It has so much to deal with the mentality and design of competitive games. Its a shame that this didn't get any mention when dealing with balance but good episode anyway.

  • lolpatrollolpatrol Registered User new member
    You use the term multiplayer games as if all multiplayer games are player versus player.

  • Titanium DragonTitanium Dragon Registered User regular
    David Sirlin, professional game designer (and fighting game player) called.

    He wants you to read his website, where he spoke about this over a decade ago. And wrote a book about how good competitive multiplayer gameplay is entirely dependent on Yomi - the art of predicting what your opponent is going to do, and then taking steps to counter it.

    So, uhm, yeah. Not a new idea, and certainly not from Riot. Indeed, it isn't from David Sirlin either, but he has written on it extensively.

    http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/7-yomi-spies-of-the-mind.html

    http://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-1-definitions.html

    You might want to start reading there, if this is a new concept which hadn't been formalized to you. You'll likely learn a lot.

    Just you know, a thought. Its pretty hard to design any sort of good multiplayer game without understanding these concepts.

  • teknoarcanistteknoarcanist Registered User regular
    The multiplayer in the Assassins Creed games does all this stuff very well.

  • WyvernWyvern Registered User regular
    I'm kind of surprised that this discussion arose from a League of Legends dev, because in retrospect, I'm pretty sure the reason I stopped playing League of Legends around a year ago was that I felt that counterplay in that game was rather bad and steadily getting worse, at least at a metagame level.

    In the early days of LoL, the main champion archetypes were the tank (high durability, high utility, low sustained damage, no burst), the mage (high burst, good utility, decent sustained damage, low durability), and the carry (high burst, high sustained damage, low utility, low durability). Obviously there were exceptions and variations on those themes, but in general terms, that was what you could expect. Late-game teamfights during this era were usually very short and brutal. Since most of the damage-dealers weren't very resilient, having a slight jump on your opponent or stunning the right person for just a second or two at the right time could result in lots of people dying immediately and drastically affecting the outcome of the fight, making positioning, timing, and precision with crowd control abilities really important.

    Starting in 2011 (mostly, at least), Riot started designing a lot of what the community referred to as "tanky DPS" champions. Basically they were characters with high durability, decent sustained damage, low burst damage, and low utility. Since they didn't have good burst or stuns (and had relatively little to gain from even an ally's stun), they weren't very reliant on the precise positioning and timing that traditional damage-dealing champions needed, and since they were so durable, they were very unlikely to die in one barrage of nukes or in the duration of just one stun, so those old tactics also didn't work very well against them either. If I'm a burst mage in a teamfight and I see a tanky DPS run in, there isn't really much of anything I can do to him that's worth my valuable cooldowns, so I pretty much just have to accept that he's going to run up and punch me in the face a bunch of times and hope that we're winning the fight by the time that I die. Get 3-4 of them together in the same game and teamfights started to become less about smart tactical play and started looking more like slugging matches where the team with the most overall damage output (i.e. the team with the most gold) would probably win.

    Exacerbating this problem was the fact that the laning phase was getting more passive (people would rather hang back and farm than take risks looking for kills), and Riot was relying pretty much entirely on the jungler to break the stalemates and make action happen. 1/1/2 lanes plus a jungler became more and more solidified as the only way to play, and since most of the best solo-tops and virtually all of the viable junglers were tanky DPS champions, the game revolved more and more around them--which, as a consequence, made it more attractive to farm gold in the midgame than look for fights, because a gold advantage is the only practical way to win a battle between tanky DPSers. Sometimes even the junglers themselves would rather farm for the late-game than risk wasting time and money on a failed gank, because since they have nothing to offer except their stats, they need a gold advantage to compete more than anyone (except maybe carries).

    It wasn't as asymmetrical a situation as a sniper in Team Fortress or Call of Duty, and I'm not sure if it was ever a balance problem per se, but the end result was that I felt the game kept becoming less about tactical counterplay and more about bludgeoning the other team to death with your team's aggregate stat total, and the metagame was stagnating at that level with no signs of a new direction being encouraged in the near future. I haven't played in about a year, so it's possible that things have improved since then, but at one point I think these low-utility brawlers outnumbered any other role in the roster by at least a factor of two. I really couldn't see a way for the designers to dig their way out of it at the time.

    Switch: SW-2431-2728-9604 || 3DS: 0817-4948-1650
  • ArekExcelsiorArekExcelsior Registered User regular
    Axe's Battle Hunger in DotA is a good example as are a lot of movies like Puck's chain ability. This is also when good fighting games are interesting: When 50/50 options and managing those, figuring out how you fight back, are good. In Guilty Gear, when fighting Eddie or Testament, one has an array of crap coming at them and they have to make very good choices, but Potemkin is playable because those correctly timed choices are big upsets.

    @Wyvern: To be fair, this will tend to happen in any MOBA which are always about farming, and
    rushing has been successful.

  • caniscanis Registered User regular
    I don't want to be 'that guy', the guy who appears to shit all over everything, especially because I love Riot, I think they are at an unreal level when it comes to design talent, but this is NOT new.

    Every week this show seems to get less and less well researched. This is not a new design concept in any way, and this isn't the first time it's been 'formalized'. People keep mentioning Sirlin, who has been a big name for a decade.

    Go back even further in system design and this is present there too, mathematically as well.

    I think it is funny because currently LoL has a ton of mechanics that work completely one sided, that are not fun in the slightest to fight against.

    Seriously, at least google these things before you say "I've never seen it anywhere before..."

  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    Thanks esb et al. I was definitely thinking of the Sirlin article.

    Can't say I agree with the Playing to win article in a general context though, for the large reason that playing to win is often not fun.

    First, it's not fun to pound less skilled players into the ground repeatedly until the server ragequits. It's often more fun to have a closer match where you intentionally gimp yourself just so you have people to play against.

    And second, playing to win implies you play with the mechanics that have the least counterplay options available to the enemy. That is, you consistently use the least fun mechanics against other people simply because they work and they're in the game. This then propagates the meta that using these mechanics is what you need to do to win, and so everyone uses them and no-one has a good time. Better to make a gentleman's agreement throughout the playerbase that this mechanic is broken and anyone using it shall be verbally admonished, than have everyone leave the game and miss out on the other more fun mechanics because of one broken one.

    Of course this all goes out the window if you are playing a proper competitive game, where everyone takes Playing to win as a given. But in regular multiplayer, there's no point playing against an empty server.

  • the.momawthe.momaw Registered User new member
    I agree with the basic premise presented 100%.

    Which is why I feel compelled to point out that your example of World of Tanks is one of the worst things you could use as an example. Specifically, artillery. These units do SO much damage, at such a long range, and with a high parabolic arc, that they are an extremely one-sided mechanics. Many of the game's maps have few or no safe places where you cannot be hit by artillery, and it's generally suicidal to leave these places unless you're confident you won't be seen (not all scouts are easy to spot!), leading to a REDUCTION of choices. This becomes especially true at the game's higher levels of play, where artillery can miss by several meters and still inflict costly repair bills, immobilize you for an easy kill, or just outright one-shot you. And all of this is aggravated by the game's spotting mechanics, where a scout only needs to see you for a fraction of a second to persistently paint you for his team and will then duck safely behind cover where your direct-fire weapons are useless, long before you can shoot at them to stop their reporting your position. Plus enemies can "see" you through terrain at short ranges, leading to an even greater number of one-sided situations where their artillery can bombard you, or wait to bombard you, and you can't reach the guy who's exposing you.

    Artillery in World of Tanks is probably the worst mechanic it has. There is functionally no way to fight back against it except hide behind the few terrain objects big enough to block their shots. Many battles end in total stalemate because neither side can move or they will helplessly get nuked from orbit.

  • meiammeiam Registered User regular
    I really really doubt that riot are the first one to talk about this, like you said this seems like game 201 and pretty obvious. Heck chess is probably the best example.

    I'd also say that:

    1) Sniping counter play exist, it's called "don't stay in the open", complaining about sniping being unfun mechanic and that no counter play exist is pretty far fetch, and if it's a legitimate complaint it come from bad map design, not mechanic problem.

    2) WoT is actually a very bad example because it's P2W, sure you maybe you'll get the artillery to waste their ammo on the heavy armored units, but guess what, one of the arti on the other side brought penetration ammo and can easily one shoot the heavily armored, so while you did play a good counter, you still lost. In fact the best counter is to hide behind large object, always, which is very boring for everyone.

    3) Riots seems to forget this concept whenever they release new hero, I played some time ago so things might have changed, but a lot of new hero make older hero toolkits obsolete. The example I remember best was the increasingly large number of new hero with leap ability that made a lot of wall (anivia ice wall) less and less useful. Suddenly one of the most complex ability became useless because half the enemy team could jump over it every 15 sec.

  • cloudsurfer45cloudsurfer45 Registered User new member
    Let's think snipers since that was used in the video. The tracer rounds on the sniper rifle in the first Halo great example, once someone got shot, there was a visible cue that pointed out the sniper's position, for those of us old enough this same mechanic was used the in the old Delta Force series. The first Farcry for PC, the scope would reflect against the sun, also revealing the sniper's position. By knowing or revealing the shooter's location, it forced the player to find new spots, while the players being sniped got to go sniper hunting. In this case, it created instances that could be challenging and fun for all involved.

    I can think of a few other instances but I feel these are pretty good. It is nice to conceptualize this idea, but it has on a subconscious level at least been executed before.

  • NyxsNyxs Registered User new member
    Pretty sure MTG designers new about this stuff 15 years ago. They don't ALWAYS get it right, but they do always think about it.

  • AzirealAzireal Registered User new member
    edited November 2012
    Two words.

    Cerebral Bore.

    Sure you never had any new options made from that death, but it stopped huge amounts of rage from accumulating by making that kill something simply, comical!

    Seriously, that thing was the greatest example of Counter-Play I can come up with.
    Whenever you got killed by that heinous weapon, you never raged. No matter how bad it had been, because you got to watch your character fountain blood and brain matter all over the ground and camera for thirty seconds. Sometimes you even got mad if someone killed you early and stopped the animation!

    Ever been blown up or killed in an insane way on halo and just had to take a screenshot of it to show to your friends? Boom. Counter-play. It's not about making the game perfectly balanced, or even perfectly-imbalanced. It's about making it fun to play in all situations, not just when you're on the winning team.

    Seriously, just place the bit about snipers with cerebral bores. Much more fun, diverts the rage accumulation.

    Counter-Play doesn't even need to be about making the mechanics open up new options, it's about making the experience of that mechanic (Weapon, power, vehicle, ect.) fun for players on both ends.

    Or at least, that's how I envisioned it, perhaps I was wrong...

    Azireal on
  • smrtssmrts Registered User new member
    You often talk about MTG in explaining game mechanics and I don't know if you keep up with new sets, but the Infect mechanic represents a failure in counter play.
    it combines 2 older abilities that of Wither, and dealing damage in poison counters.
    this is a failure because there's no way around it Infect changes the starting life of the player it's being used against to 10. I have been exaggerated by this mechanic and know people who will quit a game as soon as they see an opponent with an Infect deck.
    me, I've taken to shaming tactics, I tell the person that if they insist on playing with that deck I will never view them as an equal.

  • sp@mb0tsp@mb0t Registered User new member
    since you guys NEVER give fighting game example when you talk about game design, I'll chime in.

    In Street Fighter Ryu has a projectile. This is awesome to use. Now people say its cheap to just throw hadoukens all day but it actually gives the opponent options. The opponent can simply jump over them and inch their way in if they are at full screen. Once they are at midrangeish they can jump over the hadouken and punish ryu once he's still in recovery. In street fighter 3 you can parry them which always feels great since it neutralizes projectiles completely. In Street Fighter 4 you can focus attack which absorbs the hit (any hit, projectile or otherwise) which builds your ultra meter gives you the chance to punish Ryu if your close enough.

    Not to mention that there are a bunch of character specific ways to get around it. Some characters have moves which go through hadoukens, some characters can reflect it, some characters can teleport behind Ryu as he's throwing the hadouken and some characters have projectiles themselves and can engage in a fireball war (which is a whole other topic of discussion.)

    Meanwhile Ryu's hadouken let him set up additional situations for himself. He's got 3 versions which are 3 different speeds. this lets him keep his opponents on their toes if they are getting too comfortable with the timing to avoid hadoukens. With the right distances Ryu can train his opponent to jump so when they get close and try to jump in with an attack he can punish them with a shoryuken. Ryu also has an ex version of the hadouken which hits twice and knocks down, not only does this stop overzealous focus attackers in their tracks but the knock down switches the momentum of the battle in ryu's favor. And at the very least the hadouken lets Ryu simply chip away at the opponents life.

    So many options are provided to both the person throwing the hadouken and the person trying to counter it.

  • sp@mb0tsp@mb0t Registered User new member
    @discrider
    its called yomi and i think this is the article your referring to:

    http://www.sirlin.net/articles/yomi-layer-3-knowing-the-mind-of-the-opponent.html

  • Titanium DragonTitanium Dragon Registered User regular
    @discrider

    Its not fun when you can just crush them at your leisure, and indeed it is rather lousy to be that way - its called "slowplaying", where you pretend like they actually matter, but no, they're just doomed. Its not cool to do and is just a waste of everyone's time. This is different from playing a different class than you normally do or what have you, but deliberately "playing down". It also makes you sloppy.

    The key is to play with other players of similar skill level, or who are better or worse than you are but not so much that you don't learn anything by playing them.

    And as for "gentleman's agreements": the correct thing to do is to design a game that isn't terrible. Anyone who argues otherwise is always going to be wrong. This is not the players' fault. It is always the game designers' fault for being bad at their job.

    If people playing optimally makes the game unfun, then the answer is already there: The game is unfun. The game is -bad-. That is the truth.

    And Sirlin even notes this in his articles. He notes the objection, and addresses it, because it is a false objection. If the game is really bad to play, then why play it? If you have proven that the game is broken and there's nothing interesting there, then you just put it down and never touch it again.

    That is the correct solution 99% of the time.

    Bans are acceptable in certain circumstances (the rest of the game is fine, but one weapon/character is broken) if and only if the ban is enforceable. If it isn't, then you're just SOL. If the gameplay itself is broken (for instance, camping is too good) then there's really no solution from the player side.

    @meiam

    Sniping is often very poorly implemented in games. It isn't always just a map problem - the AWP is a classic example of a badly designed sniper rifle. The problem is that it puts very stringent limitations on map design, to the point where it distorts the game. Many maps simply don't work because of the AWP's dominance in them, and while it is true that a team of all AWPs is probably not a good idea (especially on offense) if you're defending an objective its hard to beat the AWP in a lot of situations. It doesn't break the game, but it distorts it pretty badly.

    It is true that maps often don't help, but sniper rifles have a tendency to be overpowered in a lot of games independent of the map issues, or make map issues worse.

  • Titanium DragonTitanium Dragon Registered User regular
    @discrider

    Its not fun when you can just crush them at your leisure, and indeed it is rather lousy to be that way - its called "slowplaying", where you pretend like they actually matter, but no, they're just doomed. Its not cool to do and is just a waste of everyone's time. This is different from playing a different class than you normally do or what have you, but deliberately "playing down". It also makes you sloppy.

    The key is to play with other players of similar skill level, or who are better or worse than you are but not so much that you don't learn anything by playing them.

    And as for "gentleman's agreements": the correct thing to do is to design a game that isn't terrible. Anyone who argues otherwise is always going to be wrong. This is not the players' fault. It is always the game designers' fault for being bad at their job.

    If people playing optimally makes the game unfun, then the answer is already there: The game is unfun. The game is -bad-. That is the truth.

    And Sirlin even notes this in his articles. He notes the objection, and addresses it, because it is a false objection. If the game is really bad to play, then why play it? If you have proven that the game is broken and there's nothing interesting there, then you just put it down and never touch it again.

    That is the correct solution 99% of the time.

    Bans are acceptable in certain circumstances (the rest of the game is fine, but one weapon/character is broken) if and only if the ban is enforceable. If it isn't, then you're just SOL. If the gameplay itself is broken (for instance, camping is too good) then there's really no solution from the player side.

    @meiam

    Sniping is often very poorly implemented in games. It isn't always just a map problem - the AWP is a classic example of a badly designed sniper rifle. The problem is that it puts very stringent limitations on map design, to the point where it distorts the game. Many maps simply don't work because of the AWP's dominance in them, and while it is true that a team of all AWPs is probably not a good idea (especially on offense) if you're defending an objective its hard to beat the AWP in a lot of situations. It doesn't break the game, but it distorts it pretty badly.

    It is true that maps often don't help, but sniper rifles have a tendency to be overpowered in a lot of games independent of the map issues, or make map issues worse.

  • TwoflowerTwoflower Registered User regular
    Folks saying "This is nothing new, research more" ... they acknowledge up front that this is a concept which everybody knows but few people talk about. Sirlin certainly talked about it before, as have others. It's not a grand new idea which Riot claims they came up with. The point of the video is to explore that concept in detail, a concept that most people already take to heart without thinking about it much.

    I'd also disagree that Sirlin's "playing to win" embraces counterplay. Quite the opposite. Sirlin's philosophy is "If this game has any holes in counterplay, providing you advantage over all players due to poor design, use that over and over and over to win." It's anti-counterplay; it wants you to find the loopholes and exploit them for all they're worth.

    In a perfect game, a game with amazing balance and good counterplay, this is absolutely terrific because your opponent always has a shot at taking you down. But how many games actually have that? Even the most balanced fighters have one or two "god tier" characters who have repitoires that just shut down most of the roster. This is why you see games with 20+ characters at tournaments where only 5 characters get routinely played. All that effort gone to waste, because playing to win demands you only use the most broken characters offering the least counterplay opportunities.

    Which, in a purely competitive context where prizes are on the line and so forth, is pretty much what you have to do. There, you are not playing for fun in the slightest. Fun is irrelevant. Winning is everything. So, it's understandable... you are "playing to win."

    But that's not counterplay. That's not fun. And that's not how gaming should work at its ideal state.

  • AbsurdPropositionAbsurdProposition Registered User regular
    @Twoflower

    "Playing to win" is about how you approach a game as a player, not a designer. It's pretty clear Sirlin isn't advocating designing games to have broken mechanics that don't have proper answers. In fact, if you approach designing a game knowing that your players will do every damn thing they can to break it, then you'll actually take care to make proper counterplay answers to every possible element in the game.

    Read his articles on designing multiplayer games for much more indepth explanations, such as: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-3-fairness.html

  • scw55scw55 Registered User regular
    Counter play feels a lot more rewarding than straight-play. Because when you execute a counter-move you feel intellectually superior.

  • Maz-Maz- 飛べ Registered User regular
    This is pretty much the reason why there's no Player versus Player combat in Mass Effect 3.
    Being stuck in a Singularity for 10 seconds, unable to do anything, isn't exactly fun.

    Add me on Switch: 7795-5541-4699
  • mugulordmugulord Registered User regular
    In response to the people bashing LoL, of which I only spotted a couple:

    The greatest complaint is the Tanky DPS meta that is admittedly still the current state of the game in 5v5s, and even to a greater extent in 3v3s. Riot is addressing this, but it is a slow process because the problem is a difficult one, and in the meantime I for one at least still find the game playable for the most part. I do have complaints, but the game is still playable and fun for me in it's current state.

    One example of Riot working on the problem is Ahri, who upon release was played as a tanky DPS character, stacking Rod of Ages and various other tanky AP items until the combination of her tankyness and escapability made her basically unstoppable late game in the hands of a skilled player. She could pick her battles, had high damage output and was difficult to kill if the entire team was not on their game with stuns, snares, grabs etc. Riot has since played with her in subtle little ways and it's worked, people build her as an AP carry and the state of play is conserved.

    One example where riot has some work to do is Darius, as someone else mentioned. Disregarding calling him op or anything, I will just repeat one example of a well thought out argument as to why he was poorly thought out: His ult is a champion last hit effect, but his character is an offtank, or tanky DPS character. The meta still calls for an AP nuke mid and an AD carry bottom, and these characters are made or broken on the kills they get. They need the equipment provided by that money to be effective in the late game, and Darius's ult robs them of that. Darius is not item dependant, he can do his job with very little equipment and sees a sort of linear progression as he purchases more gear. Darius does need some money, but getting solo top as he usually does furnishes him with plenty, he does not need an ability specifically designed to steal kills from the carries.

    That said, my team mates and I don't touch darius, and while we do barf when we see him in the loading screen, we have counterplay options available to us, we can play around him and while currently he requires more work to counter than any other champion, he is beatable. One counter we employ is the "Ender's Game" solution. The goal is not to kill darius, or even fight darius, it's to destroy the enemy nexus. We can kite darius because he is rarely built fast and his range is average. If darius builds fast he becomes less tanky and more killable, providing us with another option.

    Here is a far more interesting problem:
    The current 3v3 map and teemo. The removal of wards has given teemo an almost unique niche of advanced map awareness, not available to many other characters that are considered the standard of 3v3 play. If 5v5 suffers from always having 2 junglers and 2 solo tops playing tanky dps, 3v3 generally has all 6 players playing tanky DPS. Due to the reduction in team damage output it is generally more viable to just be less easy to kill while still dealing some damage. Teemo does not fit this build but his mushrooms have meant he is now a common pick in 3v3s. My group, looking to counter teemo turned to the forums, where smart people get the occasional post in among the wild complaints. We were reminded of the lantern ability to reveal invisible people at no additional cost. We played a round where all three of us bought the appropriate form of lantern, there are AD and AP versions, and the scouting potential of three people with lanterns is amazing. Teemo's mushrooms just became additional farm.

    Our last game was a great example of good play countering the meta, our team was Teemo, Heimerdinger, and WuKong. We were up against Yorick, Jayce and one other tanky DPS I can't remember the name of. We basically won by always fighting a running battle. Teemo and I would kite while WuKong played hit and run, and the fight might go from their tower all the way to ours and be close every time, but we usually came out on top, killing one or two of them and pressing home the advantage to take an altar or a tower down every time they died. Best of all, 2 squishy characters and one that is only moderately tough took down 3 very tough champions to beat. Yorick is even considered a hard counter to Heimerdinger, at least by me.

    TL:DR There are counters to almost everything in LoL, and if you hit something that seems OP, just do some research or thinking and you will probably figure something out.

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