Audley Enough!!!

Competitive Gaming: Hunting Big Game for Sport

2011-12-19T07:26:00.000-08:00

So, it's been a while since I've written an Audley Enough. I've been busy as a Halo Coach and more recently as a writer/blogger for MLG. Lately, I've been following the professional gaming scene even closer, and one debate just keeps springing up wherever I go.

"Should competitive games be labeled as sports?"

Now, I'm sure 95% of my audience just said, "No, they're not athletic, so they're not sports."

What's my catchphrase? NO. SHUT UP. YOU'RE WRONG.

And since that's not a valid way to argue, I'll go ahead and be so kind as to break down the argument and explain, in detail, why I personally believe eSports should be qualified and viewed by outsiders as actual sports.

First, going to drop a few dictionary definitions.

sport
noun
1.
an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.

So, the dictionary definition of sport is that it is an athletic activity. "Ha, Audley, you're wrong after all!" Read further.

ath·let·ic
adjective
(I deleted 1 and 2 of athletic because they were actually less descriptive.)
3.
of or pertaining to athletes; involving the use of physical skills or capabilities, as strength, agility, or stamina: athletic sports; athletic training.

ath·lete
noun
a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill.

Athletic - something with athletes that requires physical skills.
Athlete - a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill.

There's no denying video games require a great deal of hand-eye coordination in order to play. In fact, apart from thinking and reacting to the information given on screen, the majority of gaming is hand-eye coordination. You move your joystick or mouse, your character (or army) moves across the screen. An enemy army appears, you see it, you move it as fast as you possibly can to get the fuck out of there! It's ALL reaction time.

Hand-eye coordination is an athletic ability. It's what allows baseball players to hit a tiny ball with an oversized stick. It's what allows basketball players to arc a ball into a hoop. It's what allows boxers to not get knocked the fuck out. Sure, these other sports I'm naming ALSO require stamina, strength, speed, et cetera, but I would go so far as to argue that several competitive games require a greater deal of hand-eye coordination than these sports to make up for that (maybe not boxing...but that depends on how much you're reading an opponent's muscles versus how much you're just hiding behind two arms and getting beaten up waiting for an opening). Information is presented for fractions of seconds and players must react to them accordingly.

If you have slow reaction speeds, or can't really get your hands and eyes on the same page (I have stupid fingers, I know what it's like)...you will fail at competitive gaming. It is both a talent and a physical skill which can be trained and improved upon.

Some competitors even go so far as to train in gyms in order to improve their body's physical strength, believing quite firmly that this physical training benefits their reaction time and mental health when competing in the game of their choice. Flamesword and Roy of Halo, and eG.InControl of StarCraft II are a few examples of this.

But here, I'm just arguing semantics, which is not my goal. Come on, you know me better than that. I push the envelope with my arguments.

The crux of my argument comes down to three bullet points. Competitive games should be viewed as sports because:
1) Participants have to invest large quantities of time in practice in order to remain competitive.
2) Competitive games gather a significant number of spectators to watch the players or teams compete. If there are no spectators, there is no sport. It's just two guys in a dick-waving contest.
3) Players, now, are capable of making a livelihood off practicing and playing their game.

The latter two of those are recent developments, sure, as eSports have exploded into wide popularity with StarCraft 2 and League of Legends driving competitive gaming to a new level of popularity.

The first bullet, regarding practice (Yes, Allen Iverson, we're talking about Practice. Again.) is one I've talked about in a past Audley Enough. Skills go dull when they're not kept sharp. And, above, I explained that video games do require skill. Not that I had to, we all know competitive games are competitive because someone can be better than someone else at them.

I don't feel I really need to explain the logic behind including practice. It's self-explanatory, and I kinda feel like I'd be beating a horse that's already been turned to glue and bits. So let's move on.

Spectators. They matter.

As I said in the bullet, without spectators, a competition between participants is ultimately just for naught. There's no fan investment. There's no glory. There's no being hoisted above the shoulders of Billy Iwannagopro and carried off the field. It's just you, and some butthurt guy you beat in something.

Sports are played for spectators. Even as far back as the gladiators, sports were all about pleasing the people in the seats of the arena just as much as seeing who would win. If there weren't asses in the seats of the arena, it's just two slaves beating the shit out of one another until one dies. Or a man stupidly wrestling a lion. We'd label him a lunatic, not an athlete.

Spectator numbers for eSports have been skyrocketing recently. This isn't arguable -- MLG has been releasing numbers for their viewership after each tournament, and numbers have been consistently going up. Fandom of StarCraft 2 and now League of Legends is expanding rapidly, and even gaining mainstream viewership as events like BarCraft are getting organized worldwide.

(For those of you that don't know what BarCraft is -- it's essentially a giant party and at a local bar, where StarCraft II tournaments are streamed. There is also Bar of Legends, which is essentially the same thing but for LoL. If this sort of thing interests you, check www.reddit.com/r/BarCraft for more details and attempt to find a local BarCraft.)

At MLG Providence, the viewership among males aged 18-24 surpassed MTV, FX, Comedy Central, and TBS for the weekend and over 3.6 million hours of combined video were consumed over the course of the weekend among the 1.2 million unique online viewers. (Source: http://www.majorleaguegaming.com/news/mlg-delivers-the-largest-season-in-esports-history The 1.2 million comes from dividing amount of video by average viewing time per viewer. Logical maths.) Concurrent viewers jumped from 138,000 at Raleigh, to 180,000 at Orlando, to over 240,000 in Providence. The spectator base for eSports as a whole is rapidly growing.

A large part of this is that the games themselves are being designed to be more friendly to spectators. The mechanics have less senseless complexity. Visuals are being "cleaned" up to make it rather clear to viewers what's happening on screen. Games are given Spectator Mode so commentators broadcasting the game can give a full picture of the game's goings-on, much like the SkyCam set-ups in football games. Additionally (and again, much like real sports in this age), commentators are required to have a deep enough knowledge of the game to translate the in-game action to the viewing faithful. Through graphical and mechanical enhancements over the years, video games have reached a state of watchability by a much larger market than there was back in the days of colored squares and slightly different colored squares, and those in control of broadcasts have a lot more control over what is communicated to the viewers.

Commentators like Day9 go a long way in bridging top-level gaming to new and experienced viewers alike, with a combination of colorful humor and deep game knowledge that makes complex maneuvers understandable to even the most n00bish of n00bs.

The existence of a large spectator base helps facilitate the next bullet point: the players have to be able to make a livelihood off their game. No, I'm not discounting college sports (see: scholarships) or amateur events like the Olympic games (which, I'm pretty sure they have sponsors to feed them anyway).

But up until recently, gamers still had to work part-time or full-time jobs in order to get by in life. Three things have changed. Prize money, sponsors, and the advent of streaming.

Prize money has gone up for many of the games we label as eSports. Not necessarily at individual tournaments, but the quantity of tournaments and leagues that are able to sustain themslves has increased dramatically with the success of new competitive games. But prize money is only awarded to players who...well...win. If only winners got paid in sports, the Columbus Blue Jackets would be one broke-ass organization.

This is where sponsors and streaming come in. Sponsors, whether they be sponsor teams like vVv, TeamLiquid, Evil Geniuses, Complexity, Quantic Gaming, or Dignitas, or products/organizations like Red Bull, Stride Gum, or Dr. Pepper, take off a chunk of the financial burden on players by paying their way to the tournaments they attend. I'm not entirely sure about the details these sponsor teams go through, but on several recent podcasts (vVv's Loser's Bracket and Live On Three to name a couple), eSports personalities like djWHEAT, SirScoots, and LordJerith have mentioned that sponsors are actually able to make money off eSports these days and give a livelihood not only to the players, but also to coaches, commentators, and even little guys like me who simply write about games.

This, of course, trickles down to players. Team houses are springing up in the American eSports scene. Team houses are a staple among Korean StarCraft players, but only recently have American teams and players become able to afford the investment. In StarCraft, Evil Geniuses have a team house. In League of Legends, Team Solo Mid have their own place in New York. Even in Halo, pro player Naded is attempting to reach out and start a team house. For the latter two teams, which aren't under any major sponsorships like EG, they are paying for their house through one of the best things to happen to eSports: Streaming.

Thanks to organizations like Twitch.TV and own3d.TV, players are able to sustain themselves financially through streaming. For more popular games like StarCraft or League of Legends, the income is quite a bit more substantial than, say, Halo Reach (where the most popular pro streamer, Ninja, rarely reaches 1000 viewers...compared to the several thousand to over-nine-thousand of League of Legends pro players.) However, players are able to partner with these two companies and include advertisements on their stream, and for each view (or thousand views) the ads get, the players earn money, simply for playing (and practicing) their game.

This has a doubly beneficial effect since it allows players to invest more time into practice, which ups the level of competition, which can gain more fans for the game, which can increase stream numbers. Players that don't have to work a full or part-time job to sustain their livelihood and can instead just invest their time into practicing are given a leg up on their competition. It also serves as a way for players and fans to interact with one another, through streamers offering community rewards, or through simply talking in chats for the streams. In this manner, players can earn more fans for themselves, meaning more retained stream viewers, meaning more revenue.

Through streaming and the growth of sponsor teams, players are getting larger exposure and are finally becoming able to support themselves outside of tournament rewards.

So, I've made my three points. And I know it's not the standard argument people use in the "is professional gaming a sport or not?" -- but I am of the opinion that as long as you're arguing about the physical demand of the game (which, professional gaming DOES have, mind you) they're only arguing semantics, and the argument will go nowhere.

I feel sports need to be defined not by the skills required, but by the goal to be brought out through the competitions. The amount of competition and skill (physical or otherwise) required to compete is not particularly arguable for competitive gaming as a whole (though some individual games may be argued). However, as competitive gaming is growing, the focus of tournaments is shifting toward the spectators, much like many of the sports we've known and loved for the last century, and the competitors of these games are becoming able to focus on it as a career. This paradigm shift is what I believe (and debate) qualifies competitive gaming as a sport.

If you really have that much trouble with the name, because you think gamers are all unathletic nerdsacks and nothing they ever do could possibly be qualified as a "sport", at least acknowledge our collective banner and rallying cry of eSports. This call goes out to members of the FGC as well -- I know you separate yourself from eSports (and, based off precedent, I don't blame you) -- but for the good of both our communities, we need to unite and show off the power of competitive gaming and eSports.

Look forward to my next Audley Enough...whenever it may be. You know how few and far between these can be. However, I think I shall be writing again soon, with a deeper look at how games need to be designed for Spectators in order to be successful tournament games these days. I wonder why that is...

Red Bull Gave Me Wings!

2011-10-04T22:43:00.000-07:00

So, for those of you who haven't heard, I am now the coach of the MLG Pro team Turning Point (with the current roster of Walshy, Ninja, Naded, and Mikwen). As part of my initiation into the team, I was invited to join them at the recent Red Bull LAN in Santa Monica, California.

Before I delve into my experience and the technical aspects of what went on at the LAN, I would first like to give a huge thanks to the entire Red Bull Gaming (@redbullgaming) team, and especially to Nils (@nilsgranger), Sam (@slkeene), Audrey (@AudreyAdair), and Kevin (@kdoohan). Red Bull took care of nearly all our needs over the course of the weekend, and delivered an amazing experience.

I'll start off with a recap of my experience of the whole weekend, then switch over into a short (by my standards) explanation of the mechanics of the weekend.

But first...my trip. It started off with a plane to Los Angeles. I met Status Quo's coach, Diesel (@tylerhoyt) during my layover at Dallas/Ft. Worth. Next was LAX, where a shuttle service (provided by Red Bull) picked the two of us up, alongside my teammates Ninja (@Ninja_MLG) and Mikwen (@iMikwen) and several of the StarCraft 2 pros, including Destiny and Slush (I'm not sure who else was on board.) We checked into our hotel upon arrival. (Walshy (@Walshy304) and most of Status Quo were already there...Red Bull had taken them skydiving that day! LUCKY THEM!)

That night, we all gathered at a local bar called Barney's Beanery where dinner and everyone else awaited. I sat with Turning Point, getting past that awkward getting-to-know each other phase, and was approached by some of the Red Bull team, who were all very sociable and made me feel very welcome to be there (I was still nervous at this point!).

Friday morning, after breakfast, we headed to Red Bull Headquarters, where the very impressive set-up was waiting. A huge platform housed the eight XBoxes for Halo Reach while three stations were set up for StarCraft 2, with about 10? 12? computers total provided for the players, including two in an isolated booth.

Friday afternoon, the scrims began. It was my first time ever coaching, so I was a little wary at first. I was doing by best, but still easing my way into the process. I think I zoned out a few times, just focusing on one player at a time, a little unable to shake the fact that I was standing right behind pros playing Halo. Regardless, my team encouraged me and said I was doing fine. It helped build my confidence, but I still knew there was a lot I was missing. Overshield timers, especially.

Friday evening was the first night of streaming. I've never been a part of anything streamed before, so it was completely foreign to me, but everything was set up completely professionally. Red Bull attempted to keep everyone moving and focused on keeping everything flowing smoothly for players and fans alike. The cameras didn't really make me nervous, but I still felt like I wasn't doing my best as a coach.

Afterward, we headed back to the hotel. I checked the MLG forums from my phone and saw Snipedown had posted that it was the first time he had fun playing Halo in years. I knew this was a bad sign for the weekend to come, but I headed to bed. I was frickin' exhausted.

Saturday, breakfast again. I was the first one up, so I spent quite a bit of time talking to the guy who had been bringing the food to our lounge. We talked about several games from the past. Audley Enough, the guy providing our food every morning was a gamer (aren't we all?).

Back to Red Bull. Believe the Hype's day to pick gametypes. They picked mostly standard gametypes, apart from picking Countdown Flag twice in a row during their practice against Turning Point (because we won the first one in a nailbiting 5-4 fashion. The rematch went the other way.) I felt a lot more comfortable as a coach this day, and I think TP's performance on the day, for the most part, reflected my comfort.

Saturday evening, stream time. I don't remember many details from Saturday.

Sunday morning, more breakfast. I stayed down in the Red Bull lobby for quite a long time, not really wanting to stay in my hotel room. I mostly remained hidden behind the couch until I heard a familiar voice, though I did manage to startle a few StarCraft 2 players who came down for breakfast early (Should've scouted better, guys!)

Back to Red Bull. We had lunch waiting in the theatre, but once the theatre was down to just Halo players, Nils and Audrey brought in a surprise -- since it was Cloud's birthday, they had prepared some awesome cakes-on-a-stick that were shaped and decorated to look like XBox 360 controllers. Happy 20th, Scotty. After lunch, I remember seeing Bomber (of the Korean team StarTale) preparing to play LiquidTyler, and having just this amazing expression of pure joy on his face. He looked like a kid who'd just unwrapped a new toy on Christmas. It was so refreshing to see someone of such stature in the StarCraft II pro scene enjoying himself so much.

It was our day to pick games. We focused on our weakest gametypes and played phenomenally that afternoon. If I'm not mistaken, we won both our afternoon series before stream time, including our very first game of Zealot Team Slayer, due in part to Mikwen's reborn playstyle on the map, and partially due to my timing of the Evade power-up (I'm allowed to take SOME credit).

That evening was more streaming, and more watching Snipedown win games (okay, Believe the Hype were all playing well... but Snipedown was just... well, you remember 2008? Yeah, he's back.)

Again, I don't remember many of the precise details during the streaming portions (as it was very hustly-bustly) but I had a blast during all of it. I felt my coaching was the weakest during this evening. I blame fatigue. And Best Man.

Afterward, back to hotel, rested up for my long flights back. Connected in Chicago-O'Hare with Diesel and Ninja. Talked to Diesel a lot about the title update and potential settings while waiting on our flight from LAX to arrive and got some advice on how to improve my coaching a bit come event time. Chicago was very beautiful from above at night, but the plane was cold and tiny. Then finally, home!

And now on to the less mundane details!

Although past Red Bull LANs have been strictly for Halo teams (such as the most recent one, in New York, with Turning Point, Status Quo, and Warriors) this time, Red Bull brought along the legendary Day9 and a group of StarCraft 2 stars to give them an opportunity to practice in their awesome environment.

If you follow MLG at all, you know that typically, Halo teams use LANs to prepare and practice for the upcoming event. Red Bull decided to facilitate this and give each of the three teams present their own "day" to focus on whatever gametypes they wished prior to the beginning of each evening's streaming of the LAN (at which point, the teams would play games out like a regular series).

Turning Point, for example, believed Zealot and Countdown Team Slayer variants to be their weaker gametypes, so they made sure to play those in each of their afternoon matches in order to try to hammer out the kinks in their gameplay on their designated day, Sunday. It was a rather nice change of pace from the regular LANs, where teams just play out a full eleven game series versus one another, on one of each gametype, and expect the best.

If you read my last blog about Practice, you'll know which method I believe to be better. If you didn't read my last blog about Practice... you should. ;)

For StarCraft 2, Day9 and Red Bull gave the players an even better method of practice than just outright playing -- each day focused on specific matchups. For example, Day 1, I believe, was TvT and ZvP, while Day 2 was PvP and ZvT, and Day 3 was PvT and ZvZ. (I may be slightly mixed up on those...also the players took liberties with those).

In addition to this, players were given the opportunity to tell their designated practice partner what they wished to work on. If, for example, Sheth (shout out!) thought he had a weakness to Cannon Rushes from Protoss, then while he was practicing ZvP, his Protoss opponent would cannon rush him. This would allow him to practice countering his hypothetical Achilles heel. If a player wanted to focus on his overall gameplay and macromanagement, his opponent was barred from any sort of cheese or all-in type play.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the LAN was the addition of the physiologist team, who took blood and urine samples of participating players (those participating in the physiological study, that is...it was entirely optional) -- to test markers like the hemoglobin in the blood and the urine's specific gravity -- to weigh a player's hydration against their own self-judgment of how they played that day. Additionally, the players wore a heart rate monitor and their heart rate was tracked over the course of the day.

This was the first time (at least, as far as this physiology team knew) that such variables have been tested for gamers, and is yet another step toward recognition of competitive gaming as a true sport, as diet and nutrition come into play regarding a gamer's performance. Who knows, this could lead to stricter regimen for gamers who wish to focus and perform better over the course of a tournament.

During all of this, Red Bull provided those who wanted to see the performance of these players (whether they be fans of Halo, StarCraft, or both) with several streams, including selectable streams for every single Halo player (and I believe there were a total of three available StarCraft 2 streams, but I am not entirely sure). And of course, there was also a main stream featuring updates and commentary from Day9 and DMAQ.

If you wish to see what went on at the Red Bull LAN, go to http://www.twitch.tv/redbullgaming for rebroadcasts of the main stream. And you can find stat breakdowns for all the players at http://www.redbullusa.com/LAN

Many thanks, again, to Red Bull for this amazing experience, and Walshy, Ninja, Mikwen, and Naded (@Naded_MLG) for the opportunity to coach them on team Turning Point. Also, a thanks to Master Theory's founder, Anubis, who initially helped me with setting up Audley Enough, which Audley Enough helped get me the exposure that led to me ending up with Turning Point! Shout out to all the StarCraft 2 players, Diesel, all of Status Quo and Believe the Hype, to anyone who pitched in for the streaming of the LAN, and to the masseuses who worked very hard this past weekend!

I look forward to representing Turning Point well in ten days at MLG Orlando! And if you have Twitter, you should follow all of the awesome people I mentioned over the course of this blog, and me, @TiberiusAudley. Because I said so.

Practice: What I Preach

2011-06-18T21:17:00.000-07:00

So, it may come as a shock to my readers (and anyone who knows me online) that I used to play baseball. That's right, this Lilliputian blogger and habitual nerd used to actually play a physical sport. And despite my stature, I was pretty good at it.

You may offer any explanation you want as to what led to my ability in the game, but I will always respond to one thing that heavily influenced my skill: Practice.

Practice is one of the most important aspects of improving your skill level at anything. Whether it be playing sports, playing an instrument, doing math, cooking, or any other activity where one can be "good" or "bad," practicing the activity will display improvements in one's ability.

My dad hammered one phrase into my brain, and the brains of any of my teammates whenever I played (he was usually one of the assistant coaches) -- you've probably heard this before, but: "You play like you practice."

When it comes to the competitive side of things, the attitude you exhibit in your practices carries over to the attitude you'll likely exhibit during games. Players who go through practice with a haughty attitude tend to leave themselves open to overlooking their opponents, or sometimes their own mistakes. Those who show no will to practice tend to likewise fail to show up (at least mentally) when it comes game time. Those who tend to goof off during practices tend to goof up in games. You see my picture.

Since this blog is most related to Halo, I'll use a recent example from MLG to demonstrate my point -- MLG Columbus. The winners of MLG Dallas, Status Quo, seemed a bit complacent between events. Despite two multiple team LANs being held at the LAN Network famed "Basement," Status Quo attended neither. Prior to Dallas, they LAN'd hard and prepared for the event they were fan favorites to come in and finish Top 3. Prior to Columbus, however, some of their players focused a bit more on other activities and the team did not LAN (although they did set up a LAN with their new sponsor, Red Bull, to take place prior to the third event of the season).

Status Quo finished a disappointing SEVENTH place in Columbus.

Now, I'll admit there are external factors (such as the formation of the fan-acclaimed "Godsquad"), but the fact remains that Status Quo went into Columbus with less quality of practice than they had for Dallas.

Skills need to be used in order to remain sharp. A skill that goes long periods of time without proper use is much like a car that sits in a driveway without being turned on. Eventually, when it comes time to use it, it simply won't work like it used to. (Trust me, I've had a car sit for months and then when it came time to drive it, the battery was dead.)

Keep your skills sharp by maintaining their use. Practice whatever it is you do.

Now, I mentioned "quality" of practice up there. Did you see it? I'm sure you saw it. I'll say it again just to be sure. You need to make sure the quality of your practice is rather high as well.

So what is quality practice? You're probably (I hope not) thinking "Audley, if I want to be a competitive Halo player, I should just search MLG with my team all day and expect to be the best, right?!"

No, shut up, you're wrong. In fact, I'm of the opinion that by just playing the game over and over, your improvements will be miniscule at best. I mean, how many Reclaimers and Inheritors do you see in Halo Reach that just outright suck?

I'll reference physical sports again, to demonstrate my point: in the off-season, how often do teams just play each other over and over as their method of practice? Compared to the other activities they do, it's a very small amount, right?

Baseball, most teams take batting and fielding practice in very stripped down circumstances.
Basketball, players will run up and down the court stopping at a farther line each time. Prior to a game, they take practice shots.
Football, the quarterbacks practice throws. Wide receivers practice routes. Linesmen push dummies around.

Everything gets dumbed down into what we call "drills." Elements of practice designed to improve a player's abilities.

I'll admit this next part comes slightly from something I picked up from Wikipedia (their source: Roberto Moretti) while researching for this Audley Enough article, but it is also something I've stressed to my own teammates when designing practice gametypes throughout Halo 3 and Halo Reach.

There are five processes in ensuring you are practicing quality...well...practice.

First, Identification. Learn what it is you are practicing, to make sure you know how to do it. You have to know what you are looking for in order to find it.

Next, Isolation. Isolation is identifying a single piece of the whole act. Then you move into stage 3, Repetition. You repeat this one process over and over until it becomes second nature. As an example, these two stages could be demonstrated by a beginning piano player playing scales. Once these scales become mindless dances of the fingers, the learner is ready to move on to more complex stages.

Step four, you Integrate your different individual actions together until you they work seamlessly together. This leads to the ability to perform more difficult tasks within your actions.

Finally, you find more tasks that further your abilities as you work toward mastering your craft, Escalating your abilities..

So for the Halo players out there... the Identification stage: Halo Reach as a whole.

But what do you isolate? Most players will immediately focus on their DMR or Sniper accuracy. This is the most basic skill in the game, and it's something that will constantly be in question. It's also one of the skills that will deteriorate the quickest from being out of practice.

The dexterity that is required to aim in first person shooters is all related to muscle memory and hand-eye coordination. These will simply be learned from maintaining a fairly consistent practice schedule. Players who play a lot will typically have a more steady aim than players who take long breaks, then game hard for a few days, rinse, and repeat.

However, there are several other skills that need to be isolated in order to improve as a whole.

I'd like to hail MLG pro player Naded here for something I saw him doing at Columbus as a warm-up, that I thought to be very clever. While most players play a free for all to warm-up, Naded was in a game alone, on Zealot, running around with Sprint and/or Evade practicing different jumps and escape routes around the map. He displayed a very deep knowledge of the map (despite rarely getting to use any of these in a game). He made sure all of those routes were fresh on his mind prior to beginning a series against an enemy team, while also remembering to look at important sight lines (such as top landing to holograms) and ensure he knew where he could see from where he was.

So, Audley, can you name some of these skills that need to be isolated?

All right, for the MLG fans that may be reading this, here's a brief list of INDIVIDUAL skills: Routes, More Routes, Routes Still, Sight Line Studies, Flag Routes, Slayer Routes, Bomb Routes, Escape Routes, Grenade Angles, Grenade Bounces, A Few More Routes, Strafing, Juking, DMR/Sniper Accuracy, Routes Again But With Evade Instead of Sprint, Now Routes with Jetpacks, One More Routes for Good Measure. If you're wondering why I used that one word (If you missed it, I mean ROUTES) so much, I suggest you go back and read the last few Audley Enoughs from before my hiatus.

Now, for your TEAM skills: Sight Line Studies, Routes That Allow Similar Sight Lines from Different Positions, Communication (again, see an older Audley Enough), DMR/Sniper Accuracy, Set-Ups, Routes to Set-Ups, Routes that Counter Set-Ups, Angles that Annoy Set-Ups, Communication, More Sight-Line Studies, and just in case you have a blind person, a final Sight-Line Study.

By Sight-Line studies, I of course mean knowing where EACH AND EVERY POSSIBLE SPOT ON THE MAP can see and be seen from. In MLG, especially in Halo 3 and Halo Reach, team shooting is way more important than your individual ability to win a one on one battle. Additionally, being able not to BE shot is also important, when attempting to flank or run a flag/bomb to their goal.

A team will build chemistry by playing with each other (although some teams have natural degrees of chemistry based on their individual playing styles -- see Dallas '11 Believe the Hype or Anaheim '09 Carbon). However, a team that studies sight lines and routes that can be taken together will use this practice as a catalyst (yes, pun intended) for a quicker chemical reaction.

For those of you that instead play Big Team, and wonder what kind of skills should be practiced... One of the drill maps I had made for Master Theory back in Halo 3 involved a small team attempting to team shoot a Warthog or Banshee (depending on the map/gametype) to death using only BRs or ARs (again, depending on gametype) in order to practice taking down vehicles. The catch was that the Banshee or Warthog users did not have teammates to clean up -- it was a simple drill designed to improve the ability to shoot at vehicles in order to disable them (as well as improve the vehicle pilot's ability to evade heavy focus). To prevent camping and stand-offs, it was a Territories gametype in which territories were placed at each of the standard set-up points, and the round would end if the vehicle allowed the set-up team to capture each territory.

In Reach, back when Countdown was in Big Team, I had made a very plain, nondescript map to go along with a gametype where players spawned with Armor Lock and had the goal of "Out-Armor Locking" each other as their only way of EFFECTIVELY killing one another. I unfortunately never got to test this to see how well it worked, but it was a minor skill that determined a lot of encounters on the early BTB stages of Countdown.

In addition to the skills required for MLG, Big Team players should practice Vehicle routes, angles to teamshoot vehicles, and a shitload of sightline studies if they wish to improve. If you don't understand why this can't be done in normal gameplay, I ask -- is it easier to find out where all you can see in a game where an enemy Sniper is shooting at you, or in a game where you can stop, look in all 360 degrees around you and all angles above/below you? (Easy question. I won't even answer it for you!)

In addition to all of these individual skills, there is also the necessity to practice the most important part of a game -- the opening. I personally find there to be more gain to gotten out of practicing the first four minutes of a game than any of the remainder, regardless of the game type. (The exception to this would of course be for sequenced versions of King of the Hill, where certain hills are not spawned until much later in the game.)

The initial push for power weapons will often determine the pace -- but beyond that, there is also the set-up for the first respawn of power weapons. Even if you are behind after the opening, securing an enemy's Sniper two minutes into a game, or securing the next set of rockets can turn the tide of a game. If you cannot secure the second set, why should the game drag on to give you a chance at the third set? Rinse off the bad game, and repeat it. Try to adjust what you messed up in the opening, and see if the snowball carries you to your second spawn. Keep making minor adjustments on those first few minutes of the game until you can carry momentum throughout.

Of course, Halo is a bit more dynamic than sports like Baseball or Football, since players are temporarily removed from the game for a short duration -- so a lot of these fundamental practices cannot be executed in-game. Beating up on randoms in playlists is a fine way to ensure you all know your roles from the start, but it will rarely reveal chinks in an otherwise fine suit of armor. Scrimmaging other teams -IS- necessary to see how practical what you've practiced can be outside of practice.

Some situations may not ever repeat themselves, some may reveal themselves deep into a game's growth and become commonplace. But the more you expose yourself to the potential of these situations occurring (once your fundamentals are flawless, of course ;) ) the more you can prepare yourself for meeting them a second or third time.

Film review is an important part of practice in competitive gaming as well -- although I'll save that more in-depth subject for a future Audley Enough, I'd like to point out its relevance. Whether you're watching film of opponents or watching film of yourself, you are improving your abilities. I'll even (probably mis)quote Sun Tzu here, "Know your enemy and yourself, find victory in a hundred battles. Know yourself, but not your enemy, find victory and defeat in equal measure. Know neither your enemy or yourself, find defeat in every battle."

It's a lot easier to learn from your mistakes if you are able to see your mistakes played back to you. It's a lot easier to find weaknesses in an opponent's playstyle if you are able to take a break and see your opponent's playstyle up close.

I'll save anything further for a future Audley Enough, going more in-depth on what to look for out of film review, or at least what I personally look for, but I still felt the need to highlight it here.

I've covered so far that practice can improve competency, and it can improve chemistry. However, there is one more C-word that should be the goal of your practices. Confidence.

If your practices aren't building confidence, something needs to be re-done. A practice that destroys confidence is a poor practice. I'll admit I've made mistakes that caused confidence to drop after a practice. The leadership of a practice should be sure participants stay focused on the goals of practice -- even in defeat, positive gains are made. If you're practicing against a tougher opponent, find out what it is the opponents are doing right. Or better yet, find out what they're doing wrong. Look for the Achilles' heel and attempt to exploit it. If that doesn't work, then you know next time what NOT to do. If it does work, then you've... well, I was going to say you have your opponents on their heels, but I doubt Achilles really stood on his heels when he got shot there. Regardless, you've found a way to force the opponents out of their comfort zone.

In the case that these opponents happen to be your practice partners (everyone in StarCraft 2 has a practice partner, why don't Halo teams?), you've likely found mutual benefit for both teams in the process. You've exposed a way to break a set-up, while they've discovered a hole in the hull of the Titanic.

However, if practices are absolutely not working out to build confidence in the players involved, it is imperative that the practice set-up be shifted in order to find a better way for the waning side to benefit as well. A confident team is a strong team. A team that doubts themselves or each other is a disaster waiting to happen.

So again, practices should build competency, chemistry, and confidence. Practices should teach both fundamentals (the basics) and situationals (the what-the-fucks). And to avoid being out-of-practice, practice should keep muscle-memory sharp and skills refined.

Audley Enough, you'll find a team that practICEs enough won't be as cold come time to perform. And on that terrible note, I'm going to end this Audley Enough. Good luck getting that one out of your brain.

Awareness: Seeing the Big Picture

2011-03-27T20:51:00.000-07:00

You know those pictures that, after you stare at it a long time, you're supposed to see a different image?

Well, I'd like to subvert that sentence and say "It has nothing to do with Halo." But if you really like to overthink things, like I do, then Audley Enough you could make the argument that it does.

Today's topic is Awareness. On the base level, Awareness is being able to see what's around you. But if you really look at awareness on a bigger scale, you start to see it differently as well.

If I were to generalize Awareness into separate categories, I would divide them into three: Spatial, Peripheral, and Situational.

Spatial Awareness is an obvious one. It's what you see. In gaming, Spatial Awareness will usually be reflected by a player's reflexes and how fast they respond to visual stimuli.

In Halo, the most basic form of spatial awareness is seeing your enemies. The better your spatial awareness is in that regard, the sooner you'll acknowledge and react to enemies as they come into your field of vision. While gaming reflexes aren't ENTIRELY tied into spatial awareness, better awareness will improve your reflexes. On the flip side, better reflexes won't necessarily improve your spatial awareness.

Additionally, knowledge of data presented on your HUD (such as your radar, ammo counter, or any other data presented in any other game) are related to spatial awareness. Being able to be aware of your radar as well as your gun's aiming reticule is a very basic skill that can make a large difference in a player's gameplay.

Spatial awareness can also improve your mobility around a map. Players with keen vision are more quick to notice the different ways they can get from Point A to Point B when first playing a map.

Spatial awareness is the difference between barely being able to make a jump, and having the ledge only meet your ankles, leaving you to fall to oblivion.

Since spatial awareness is almost entirely taken at face-value (there aren't many nuances to it. You either have it, or you don't) I won't linger too much on the subject, apart from one aside: how to improve your spatial awareness.

Most often, when I see VoD of players reacting very slowly to enemies appearing on screen, I have but one recommendation for them. Go play a Rhythm game. DDR, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, FFR, BeatMania. Any game of this type is excellent for improving your spatial awareness. You have split seconds to react to colored stimuli scrolling up your screen to a certain point. Even if you have generally slow reaction time, you'll find that with practice, you eventually become able to react more quickly to the notes you have to hit. Once you've improved at that, you'll also notice you begin reacting more quickly to that enemy that ran across the top left of your screen.

You can call me crazy for a recommendation like that, but I've always found an improvement in my reflexes when I play a few rounds of Flash Flash Revolution before a scrim in Halo.

If you're finding you have trouble moving around maps due to difficulty making jumps, the only way to improve is to spend time practicing those specific jumps until you can make them running backwards with your eyes closed and controlling your joysticks with your teeth. Knowing the nooks and crannies of a map comes from experience.

Now, on to type 2: Peripheral awareness.

How do you react to enemies beyond your visual periphery? Well, that would be peripheral awareness.

In gaming, most peripheral awareness is auditory in nature. And among the triggers that can clue you in toward objects outside your vision, there are generally two main sources.

In-Game Sound and Communication. In-Game Sound is another pretty skin-deep facet of awareness. You either hear what's going on or you don't. If you don't, you either need better speakers or better ears. (I use an Astro A40 headset. So if I fail to hear a sound in-game, it's lack of ears. If you're on the market for a headset for gaming, and have money to spend, I highly recommend Astro's products. Be sure to get the MixAmp. )

Now, since I've already talked a TON about Communication in my inaugural Audley Enough, hopefully everyone reading here already has top-notch communication! But...what about RESPONDING to communication?

When your entire team is talking, sometimes it's hard to pick out the call-out you need to respond to. Sometimes it's hard to hear an important call-out over one that doesn't pertain to you. If your team's Sniper is screaming out a one shot guy he failed to pick up the headshot on, and the teammate next to you is calmly asking you to back down and stay alive while he finishes the opponent you're fighting, chances are your ears will focus on the Sniper screaming, and you'll keep fighting only to die or trade a 1 for 1.

Being able to train your ears to hear what you need to hear (and even more, to hear EVERYTHING and respond to which one you needed to hear) is a very important skill when playing with highly communicative teams. While sometimes people need to learn to be more quiet in their calling out (so as not to yell over quieter teammates), it's still necessary to be able to sort layered calls out in an instant and react accordingly.

If three people are talking at the same time, there are a few possibilities for how you will react, or even what you will get out of the communication. A very weak peripherally aware player will fail to obtain any information, and tell everyone to stop talking at the same time. Other weak PA players will hear all three, but their minds will combine them all into one garbled message. "No, I'm sorry, I don't know about the elephant that trampled the New York Giants' win streak." Nor do you know about peripheral awareness!

As peripheral awareness in that instance improves, the sentences get heard individually, with the person speaking them separated. At the apex of awareness, the player whose call-out is most relevant to you personally is the one whose gets focused on in your mind.

The best way I can recommend to improve your ability to pick out the important call-out when several are being made is to, in less important gaming times, have some form of loud background noise also layered in with your sounds. Music or talk radio is usually a good choice (especially for players with headsets, when the music can be sent through the same headset as your in-game sound). As you grow more accustomed to hearing call-outs over music or unrelated talking, you'll be better at hearing important call-outs when you're in a more serious game, with the extraneous sound stripped.

As you become more peripherally aware, you'll know more and more often where your enemies and teammates are, even if you don't see them yourself. Once you're aware of where your enemies are, and where your teammates are, then it's time for awareness category #3, the big one: Situational Awareness.

Now, I talked about a large important chunk of situational awareness last week, when I discussed positioning. You'll always want to position in ways yadda yadda yadda goreaditifyoudidn'talready.

Situational awareness is knowing what to do and when to do it. Not just knowing what kind of situation you're in, but how to move into a better one.

Often, it's referred to as "decision making." But situational awareness is a little bit deeper, as it also explains why you're making the decisions you're making. If you were on Let's Make a Deal, and presented with the options of Door #1, Door #2, or Half-Opened Curtain #3, you wouldn't just pick Half-Opened Curtain #3 without being aware of the fact that there was clearly an Ogre behind it, with the demolished corpse of your long-lost brother smashed upon his club (unless you were seeking vengeance, that is).

Decision-making is usually something you can only improve retrospectively. Go back and watch your game films and look to answer a few criteria:
1) Why did I make this decision?
2) Did making this decision put me in a better position?
3) If it put me in a worse position, was the trade-off worth it? (Did you secure a power weapon? Did you improve your team's lead?)
4) Was their another way I could've achieved the same result with better consequences?

Experience is the best teacher for decision making. Analyzing your gameplay is a lot easier and saving game film to watch and analyze can take your improvement progress through the hyperbolic time chamber (That's right, I just made a Dragon Ball Z reference, readers. Deal with THAT.)

But again, decision making is just a part of situational awareness.

Even if you have excellent decision making, your situational awareness may not necessarily be as good.

I'll give a scenario to explain myself here.

Two players on Countdown are standing in cross positions at each side's third floor balcony. They each fire equal, max firing rate for the first two shots. Each lands the first shot and misses the second. Both players spam a third shot. Player one lands his shot, but player two misses.

From here, Player 2 makes the decision to back down from the fight. Because he was behind in the fight, this is a good decision (probably...we're theorizing in a vacuum here which can be impractical at times). Anyway, Player 1 knows he landed two shots, which means a grenade could finish the kill. So he throws both his grenades toward radio (Player 2's best escape path) and attempts to get the kill. Player two dodges.

Both get their shields back. Now there is one important piece of information Player 2 has that should come into play before he makes a decision on where to go from here.

If you said "that Player 1 has a better DMR, lol!" then no, shut up, you're an ass. Player 1 no longer has grenades. Either 1) Player 2 will have an advantage in the next fight. or 2) Player 1 will be moving to a place where grenades spawn. This kind of information is directly related to situational awareness.

Imagine the scene in Dirty Harry, if the guy had been a bit more situationally aware, he would've known. Clearly, Clint Eastwood's character fired six shots. (Not that it would've mattered, the guy only had one useable arm and was already on his back in front of a standing foe...but still.) Knowing how much ammo your opponent has remaining in a magazine, whether or not a weapon you're about to pick up has to be reloaded, or other subtle nuances of that type are all forms of situational awareness.

An opponent fires one rocket at you then immediately switches to a DMR and tries to clean you up. You still kill the enemy. Upon the enemy's death, a set of rockets falls to the ground. A situationally aware player will immediately be able to realize, "Those rockets have to be reloaded!" Because in almost any situation, a player would not switch off of Rockets (unless it was a long-range battle) if a second rocket was loaded and ready to be fired. So if you were no shields after the fight with the rocket guy, it would generally be a poor decision to rush to those rockets. Picking them up will lead to a reload animation and you would not be able to fight back immediately.

The final form of situational awareness is strategic awareness. Sometimes there's a "best option" a player can take to get from one position to another. This may mean a better route you can take to get to a power weapon. It may mean a better weapon you can use to counter an enemy. Sometimes, though, it's not related to the options available to you.

Situational awareness also includes being able to get into the mind of your opponents, and know what THEIR decisions will be. Knowing the potential routes an opponent can take, and being able to guess what their goal is, will allow you to be a step ahead of your opponents. Take the standard BTB opening from Standoff, for example. The majority of games on that map began with both teams trading massive amounts of grenades at each others' Warthog spawn area. Why? Because from your initial spawn, there was really only one way to go: forward. Both teams wanted the laser, located a short rush in front of the base. The grenades could disrupt the warthog and damage any enemies that went directly forward in front of the base. This grenading was a response to strategic awareness.

Sometimes, opponents may attempt to use strategic awareness against you. They may expect you to take a specific action based off what they expect to be the best action. So how do you respond to this? Intentionally take a less desirable action in order to catch the opponent off-guard. This is called Meta-Gaming. (And it's something I'm going to talk a lot more deeply about in a future Audley Enough.) But for now, we'll summarize metagaming as: when two players are equally aware of the best decision, it's often a better decision to make a worse decision. Open bracket slash confusion close bracket.

Because of its reliance on spatial and peripheral awareness, taking the steps I mentioned to improve those will have positive effects on your ability to take in the information with which you're presented in a game. However, situational awareness, like decision making, is something that must ultimately be improved through experience. The more experience you have, the more you can guess an opponent's likely responses, and the more you can pre-emptively react accordingly. The more experience you have, the more you can guess an opponent's guess of your guesses, and counteract accordingly.

If you want to improve your situational awareness, the first start is to improve your other forms of awareness. Put limitations on yourself in more relaxed games that push you to improve certain skill-sets ("Only use Hologram" for example is one limitation I like to give myself. That way I never have any guaranteed way out of a bad situation. I have to learn not to get into a bad situation, or find easier ways out.)

Well-rounded players typically have better situational awareness than specialized ones. While specialized players may have excellent decision making for their specific role they bring to a team, well-rounded players have more experience filling other roles. This unique trait gives them more first-hand knowledge of potential situations they may have gotten into in the past. Because well-rounded players have been in another players shoes and sometimes Evaded a mile, they're generally more equipped to know what can happen in a given situation.

These bits and pieces of seen, heard, and thought information all combine into one moving unit we call a game. And being able to perceive and conceive all of these potential ways a game can go, and react in a way to make the game go the way YOU want it to do, all stems from that one trait we like to call Awareness.

That's all for this week, folks.

Positioning: The Paramount of a Skillful Player

2011-03-19T22:06:00.001-07:00

So, you guys remember a few weeks back when I wrote a big huge article about how Movement was the most important aspect of a competitive game?

Today I'm going to talk about something that stems from that: the most important skill of a competitive game. If Movement is the most important aspect, then it's a logical conclusion that Positioning is the most important skill.

(I'm going to go ahead and cut in on anyone who said "Manual dexterity" or "Awareness" are more important. I'll agree on the latter, as Positioning is actually part of awareness, more specifically, a part of situational awareness. But for the purposes of this blog, I'm going to talk about how movement around a map is the most important skill to a competitive game.)

It's fairly obvious based off my previous blog that I believe competitive games should encourage movement. Players should have goals that require them to leave their most powerful positions in order to gain advantages so they may get ahead and still be encouraged to get further ahead. Situations in which a player is encouraged to 'camp with the lead' are typically less competitive (although sometimes more tense) than situations where a player must press his advantage or lose it.

Now, it's time to apply that to the player's actions, rather than the design of the game. This is where Positioning comes into play. By positioning, of course, I mean the placement of a player (or his units) around a map at any given moment.

In StarCraft 2, this could refer to the bases to which you expand, as well as the location you decide to move your army. A unit positioned at a Xel'Naga Watchtower, for instance, is at an advantage over one attempting to move within the vision radius of said watchtower, as the former unit has vision much sooner of the latter and can react accordingly.

Currently, StarCraft 2's most consistent-placing player (with two First Place finishes in the Global StarCraft League in Korea) is oGsMC. MC is notorious for a heavy Sentry-based army composition he wields against his opponents. For those of you reading that play StarCraft 2, you may be thinking "But Sentries don't really deal that much damage." For those of you that don't play StarCraft 2, you're probably lost right now.

It's true, Sentries' attack is essentially tickling someone to death. They deal much, MUCH less damage than any other unit available to Protoss (save for a Probe, Observer, or Warp Prism, which aren't designed to engage in combat). However, the Sentry has one ability that isn't available to any other unit in the game: Force Field.

Force Fields create a (mostly) impassable block over terrain. (I say 'mostly' because certain units such as the Thor and Colossus can walk over the force field to pop it, and Roaches can move while burrowed under it.) For those of you still scratching your head as to why this is important...it's positioning.

Sentries allow you to completely determine the positioning of your opponent's army. If you're at a choke point, you can block it with a force field and only allow a few enemy units up at a time. If you're in a wide open area, but you have multiple sentries (like MC does), you can literally cut an enemy's forces in half by spamming force fields along the concave of his army. With his forces split, that means at least half his army is out of positioning, while yours is all at fighting force. If your opponent is trying to run with a weaker army, you can force field his escape path in order to ensure your army mops up and continues to push.

I personally believe Protoss are overpowered in StarCraft 2 almost entirely on the backs of the Sentry's Force Field ability (although Blink Stalkers are pretty B.S. as well). Those two abilities are the only two non-transport abilities in the entire game that can affect a unit's positioning.

To further support this case -- LiquidHuk (a Canadian/North American player) has recently made it to Code S (meaning, he's a Top 32 StarCraft 2 player in the world). Mechanically, his gameplay is much weaker than his opponents. However like oGsMC, he plays a more Sentry-focused build and positions his force fields well. Plenty of mechanical mistakes can be made up for by proper positioning.

This brings us to the next title I brought up in my blog about movement, League of Legends. I'll keep this one brief, but there are a few main important things regarding positioning in League of Legends.

The first is EXP Range. Minions that die have a certain range in which you must be in order to gain EXP from them (unless you were the one to actually kill the minion...but most skills don't have a long enough range to kill from outside EXP range). This means that during the laning phase, a player or team with a stronger lane can zone an enemy out from this range, while remaining in range to gain the experience from enemy creep that are dying. In essence, they are denying experience to their opponents, and gaining a level advantage.

It's a very basic skill to learn, but it's often only exhibited by skilled players. It is an example of pressing an advantage (a better lane composition) to gain a bigger advantage (a level advantage) by being encouraged to move. Sure, you could sit back and safely farm, but if you can move to threaten an enemy to force the enemy to back off and let you free farm without being able to farm themselves, WHY WOULDN'T YOU?

The next piece regarding positioning in League of Legends is simply the positioning of a team fight. I mentioned in a previous article (see: Composition) that you typically want to target down DPS players before Tanks. Can you see where I'm going with this?

If you said "I should run straight at a DPS player and try to attack him!"

No, shut up, you're wrong.

First: DPS positioning. You should almost always be near the back of your team, but not back far enough that you cannot deal damage, nor back too far that you can easily be flanked. You need to be near to your supports (who can protect you) and near your tank (so you can damage what he disables.)

Support positioning: You should be near your DPS Carries (so you can protect them) but as far away from the enemy as possible (supports often get focused before DPS because of their ability to protect so well.) The exceptions to this rule are the carries who also deal tons of damage or are hybrid tank (like my main, Alistar.)

Tank positioning: This is tricky, and really varies from tank to tank. However, tanks are generally tasked with initiation. This means they have two goals: 1) Be in a position to convince your opponents to attack you first. Generally, good players will "ignore the tank, focus on DPS." So sometimes, even if you run straight at opponents, if your team is nearby, they'll ignore you. 2) Be in a position to immediately threaten the enemy's DPS.

If you attempt to walk directly at the opponents they'll either 1) counter-initiate, and disable your entire team or 2) kite you, dealing long-range damage and retreating from your failed initiation. This generally means a tank's job is to flank in League of Legends (which makes the positioning for the rest of his team kind of tricky, unless they are simply baiting the opponents out of position for the tank to do so).

So tanks have the most complicated job of positioning themselves. How do you come from an angle from which the enemy DPS is exposed, while still being in position to prevent your unguarded allies from being initiated on? Tank players that can answer these questions to themselves are usually those that shine in their role. Anyone can play a tank, but few can play a tank extraordinarily well. And a large part of that comes from the player's positioning.

Finally, there is one Support champion that is generally regarded as hands-down the best support champion in the game, and "a complete counter to Area of Effect clusterfucks."

That champion is Janna. Her ability set allows her to disable enemies from a range (meaning she can be quite far away from enemies and allies and still disable to protect those in danger). It also allows her entire team to move faster, as well as her to move even faster than that. She can shield an ally who gets out of position in order to mitigate the damage they take. And finally, she has one ability that out-shines almost any other in the game.

It's called Monsoon. Once every two minutes, a Janna player can press his or her R button and in an area around them knock back any enemy champion. The direction the champion flies depends on where they were standing in regards to Janna. This can be used to knock away chasing enemies, split up entire enemy forces, get a pesky enemy off one of your squishy teammates, or knock an enemy back toward your towers and your team. It can single-handedly affect the positioning of all five enemy players. And all she has to do is be semi-kinda-sorta near you for you to be affected by it.

Janna is in a state right now of being banned in nearly all high-elo games, due in no small part to her ability to say FUCK YOU to the necessity of intelligent positioning, whether it be hers, or that of her opponents.

And now, on to Halo. Since I'm sure most of you reading this play Halo, and probably don't care about those first two games. But I include them, because they help to make a point (and you're probably subconsciously thinking about how to apply some of those examples up above to Halo, even if you don't realize you're doing it.)

Some of the important facets of positioning in Halo are pretty obvious, even at face value.

You want to move to places that have power weapons, because duh power weapons are powerful. If you don't understand that, you probably have nothing to gain from reading this blog.

You want to move side to side to attempt to avoid bullets in a fire fight. We call this strafing. While this is micromanagement of positioning, and more reliant on manual dexterity, it still can mitigate a lot of potential damage. A player with an excellent and unpredictable strafe will typically win the majority of their one on one battles against an opponent with a weaker strafe.

You want to move to a high ground. High ground offers some immediately obvious advantages. Most of you probably jumped straight to: you can see more of the map from up high, which means you have more potential targets to shoot at. (Caveat: this also means more people can see you, which means more potential assailants upon you. If they have a weapon with range to fight you...which, given DMR starts, means they DO have a weapon with range to fight you...then they will probably shoot you if you are a threat.)

The largest advantage of high ground is something that people use often without consciously realizing they're doing it. It's natural cover. If you're fighting someone on the ground below you, less of your body is showing (since you fire from your upper body, rather than your toes.) This means the opponent has less surface area upon which they can hit you. It also means that you can remove yourself from an opponent's vision by moving backwards.

If you are to do this, the opponent not only loses track of where you will assault from next (assuming you strafe just outside of their vision), but it also means they have only one way to regain vision of you easily: jump. Jumping makes them more visible, and forced into a predictable strafe. This will allow you to more easily land your shots upon them.

Because of high ground's positional advantage, a lot of (well-designed, competitive) maps will stray away from placing power weapons in high positions. This is a good thing, because it requires players to make positional trade-offs in order to gain their advantages.

Some of you are probably saying "Hey Audley, what about MLG's Snipe 3 on Guardian?" Well Point 1) It was a more balanced location than Snipe 1, since both teams could reach it with fairly even contestation, Point 2) it was a relic from the map Guardian was inspired by (Lockout), and Point 3) Snipe 3 is one of the most vulnerable locations on the map, due to its ability to catch grenades so well. Attempting to Snipe from up there was a death trap unless your opponents were already forced low. Stop arguing with me, Hypothetical Reader.

So if you can't get a power weapon from a high ground position, or said high ground position is too dangerous to fight from...what are you supposed to do?

First off, you have to put yourself in a position to get the power weapon in the first place. Generally, these are in positions where players will have to fight for them.

Remember when I was talking about League of Legends earlier? (No? You skipped it? Scroll back up and read that section, trust me.) Well, if you were to rush straight to a DPS Champion, which I said was a bad thing to do, you'd probably die to his entire team very quickly (focus fire hurts). The same goes for rushing straight to a power weapon (when it's placed well).

A player who mindlessly runs straight in to, say, Rocket spawn on Pit from MLG in Halo 3, or straight to Laser on Standoff in Halo 3, or straight to rockets on Boardwalk in Reach is generally going to die, quickly. These are in positions that either pass through choke points (Pit/Boardwalk Rockets) or are in areas of wide-opened sight lines (Standoff Laser) that all make it easy to kill someone who attempts to rush straight there.

I've mentioned the word "choke point" a couple of times now over the course of this article. The first was with regards to Force Fields from Sentries blocking choke points. Just now, I mentioned passing through choke points in order to reach a power weapon.
Choke points are dangerous places. They have very little room for lateral movement. You can either go forward, through them, or go back and leave them alone. If you decide to go through them, you are limiting your options for movement (and thusly your options for positioning).

If your opponents are attempting to haplessly advance through a choke point, there's one tool in your pocket that can halt that idea in its tracks. Well, hopefully you have at least one handy. You spawn with two of them. Say it with me now, class, Pistol cli--okay, I'm kidding. Grenades.

Grenades in the Halo games are often misinterpreted as tools for killing. In Reach, this is even more the case as the grenades feel very powerful. However, if you observe extremely high level play in the Halo games, you'll find that more often than not, grenades are not used as a weapon. They are used more as a Swiss Army Knife. It's not often you use a Swiss Army Knife to gut open a guy (although it is an option). You bust out the can-opener attachment and have yourself some Campbell's Soup. Eff yeah. Campbell's Soup.

Audley, what the devil are you talking about, Campbell's Soup? I thought you were talking about Grenades. While I admit the analogy was a bit odd, Grenades from skilled players are used most often to do a task without damage as a requisite consequence.

Sentry Force Fields can do it. Strong laning champions can do it in League of Legends. It's called Zoning.

Zoning is a way of forceably controlling your opponent's positioning. Typically, if players observe a threat to their well-being, they move away from it (or avoid passing into it.) So, for example, if you were attempting to rush through a choke point to get to a Rocket Launcher, and a grenade lands just barely ahead of you, you are given two options. You can suck it up and take the damage, leaving yourself very susceptible to a quick clean-up shot to kill you, or you can back off and let the grenade explode harmlessly.

Except even if the grenade doesn't deal damage, it still wasn't harmless. Like a Sentry force field that prevented you from pushing up the ramp into the enemy base, or like a Garen hiding in the bush to scare you out of experience range in lane in League of Legends, the grenade has zoned you out of your goal. You're delayed during the fuse time of the grenade, which means a few more seconds an enemy may move into position to battle you. Controlling your opponent's movements is one of the single greatest positioning-related skills you can begin to master.

If an opponent is running away, and you know where they are going to go, which is the better choice: attempting to shoot at them, while they're evading/sprinting/strafing away, or throwing a grenade just beyond where they are currently, forcing them to either die to the grenade, or stop and face certain death anyway?

The latter is the safer option. If you take the former choice, and the opponent manages to find cover or escape around a corner, you've missed out on a kill.

Another situation where a grenade can be effective without dealing any damage -- when enemies are attempting to reinforce their teammates. If their avenues to do so are limited, you can limit them further by placing a grenade along the path they would be most likely to take. If an overaggressive enemy over-extends onto your side in blatantly obvious bad positioning, throw a grenade where you believe his teammates will come from, THEN engage the stranded enemy. Chances are, that aggressive player is a Tank, and he's simply trying to get your attention long enough for his teammates to deal the damage to you. Cutting off those allies' reinforcement routes will also reduce the chances of his gambit being a success.

Halo: Combat Evolved gave grenades yet another positioning-related power that is not exercised nearly as prominently in the more recent titles. You could grenade weapons and even power-ups away from their spawn. This meant two things: 1) You could knock a risky weapon out of a risky position and 2) You could anticipate where a power-up would land from a grenade and knock it out of the generally expected position.

While we can still grenade weapons out of position in Reach, it's not nearly as effective as it was in the original Halo. It leaves me a little bit sad.

Another obvious positioning-related bit of information:
You want to move with your team.

This does not mean you want to bunch up together in a Flying V formation and run across the map. While humorous to see and be a part of, it's stupid and impractical.

More specificially, you want to move in a manner that allows you to help your team without being susceptible to splash damage.

Take Rat's Nest on Halo 3 for example. If you wanted to invade an opponent's Kitchen, it would be a poor idea to send four people across the bridge at the same time. A few grenades, a rocket, or a clip of Brute Shot would deal enough damage for someone to claim an Overkill. Instead, you'd want to try to engage from multiple entrances. Maybe one person across the bridge, one through the turret door, and two from the bottom floor (uh oh, no height advantage!) This would allow you all to help one another (the two coming from down low would likely have sightlines on anyone visible to the person coming from bridge, save for people directly above the bridge door, while the person coming from turret would be able to help the person coming across bridge with anyone actually at the bridge door).

A Sniper doesn't really want to move forward with his team, but he wants to put himself in a position that allows him to shoot what his team needs him to shoot the most. In Halo 3 (again with the Halo 3 references, Audley, what gives?) this was most prominent on Valhalla. If your team did not have hill control, the Sniper's biggest concern didn't need to be the enemies on the hill itself. Typically, a Waterfall Sniper needed to worry about the opponents at Turret (they controlled the choke point known as Water Cave). A Beach Sniper needed to worry about the opponents on the Pelican (they controlled the choke point known as Territory 4). Once the enemies possessing the ability to slay your choke point pushers were slain, you could begin to take a foothold back and potentially regain control of the hill. Teams that were unable to retake hill control were often unable to do so because of their Sniper's positioning.

In Halo Reach, one of the most common tactics on smaller maps outside of situations where it's not available, is to group up with Armor Lock. When you engage an enemy at a choke point, one player goes through first, getting the enemy's attention (and dealing a little damage). He or she then armor locks, and the next player (or two) come through, cleaning up the kills in the next room. This is an example of players moving as a team, as well as practicing the Tank / DPS roles (tank gets focus, gets enemy to burn ammo/grenades, then DPS come in to clean up).

On Hemorrhage in Halo Reach, attempting to assault an enemy Wraith is a daunting task. While a large part of that is the sheer power of the Wraith, one may find that an organized team is also protecting their Wraith with the very agile, anti-vehicular menace known as the Revenant. The Revenant moves in a manner to guard the Wraith from assaulting Warthogs, Ghosts, and enemy Revenants. And guess what? The Wraith stays alive for a long period of time, thanks to the Support (yes, capitalized) from the Revenant.

Being aware of your teammates' movements is a staple for positioning yourself. If you end up herp-a-derp zerging closely behind an ally, chances are the both of you will end up dead. If you both go for the same power weapon at the same time, that's less presence your team has on the map at any given time.

And that brings me to my next point, zone control.

At any given time, you want to have as much map presence as you possibly can, without leaving any of your team isolated.

The more holes you have in your cupboard, the more likely a mouse will feed. Likewise, the more holes you leave in your team's defenses, the more likely a player may sneak past and get behind your team.

An isolated teammate is a teammate you're asking to have killed. (Or if the case was self-isolation, the teammates is asking to be killed.) An uncontested zone is a zone you're asking to have taken.

We'll go back to Valhalla from Halo 3 again. That's right, gang, more Halo 3 references. If you did not control Pelican, your enemy took Pelican. And that meant they had a foothold from which to retake the hill. If you did not control Turret, your enemy could control turret. And that meant a foothold from which to retake the hill. Uncontested zones being given up led to loss of hill control.

On The Pit, in a 4v4 setting, this was a mess, and a large part of why I had a strong distaste for the map in Slayer variants. There were essentially four lanes across the map: Long Hall, Green Hall, Bridge/Sword, and OS. In 4v4, this meant you had two options: Leave every lane with an isolated player to control it or heavy push one lane and risk the enemy taking another lane.

In close games of Slayer, because of these choices, it typically led to the third option: "Sit around out of view for two or three minutes until the next power weapon spawns, then do what you can to get it." Although these games were tense when the score was near tied, it led to some of the most boring spectator experiences I've ever had from MLG.

In Halo Reach, this lesson is probably best taught on the Noble map, Tempest. I see two mistakes made rather often even in organized play on the map.

The first mistake is with regards to uncontested zones or isolated players. For some reason, players like to gravitate toward the Long Sword side of the map (and disregard the fact that the map is functionally the same on the opposite side). This often allows deviant players to slip past into the enemy's base via the river, or push down the sole defender of the side and continue advancing. Sorry Gandalf, but this time I SHALL PASS.

The second mistake I see made is with regards to the form of pushing I see employed upon the map.

I'm going to ask you readers to ponder for a moment, what is the strongest shape an army can take?

To anyone that said Flying V!!! No, shut up, you're wrong. Unless you mean a backwards V, then you're at least close. But that would be a Flying Lambda. I'll give you a hint: I mentioned the word earlier in the article. Up there in the StarCraft section.

Concave. You ideally want to be Concave around your opponents. It constricts opponents' movement options the most and allows you the most strength in your zoning and reinforcement.

Oftentimes, players try to push the enemy turret before attempting to secure their flanks. And this is where they are mistaken.

It's much easier to assist your allies who are pushing the enemy caves or man-cannon from your turret than it is to do so from the enemy turret. The sight lines are more open.

Additionally, it's much easier for your allies in those positions to assist YOU once you begin to push than it would have been if they were still around your mancannon or shotugn. If they are pushed up to semi-surround your opponents, then they are not only limiting your opponents' retreat options, but chances are they also have sight-lines into the side of the enemies, allowing a much easier team shot opportunity.

Once you have secured a concave around the perimeter of your opponents' base, it's much easier to collapse that perimeter where it's necessary in order to completely control your enemies.

Attempting to pressure your opponents in this manner also prevents those gaps through which those pesky aforementioned "mice" may sneak into your base, leaving your team from being forced into a situation of uncontested zones or isolated players, which happens much more often when teams attempt to push in a much more expanded Flying V that sometimes tends to happen on Tempest.

Once you've mastered moving with your team in a manner that prevents you from being caught alone, prevents your allies from being caught alone, allows you to secure power weapons, prevents your enemies from moving to reinforce, and prevents enemies from escaping, you've begun to master what it takes to position yourself properly to be a superb Halo player.

While intelligent positioning (and zoning) do not make you a master of the game, they can often serve as buffers from other weaknesses, such as poor accuracy or lack of communication. And that is why Positioning is (one of) the most important skill(s) in competitive gaming.

When you Master positioning, you not only control your own destiny, but often you control your opponent's.

Feeling Defiant

2011-03-14T10:10:00.001-07:00

Reach has fallen. The glassing has begun. No weapons we unearth now can save us from the Covenant.

But despite all that, Certain Affinity and 343 Industries have banded together to bring us three brand new play spaces for Halo Reach: Highlands, Condemned, and the brand new Firefight map, Unearthed.

For their first map pack as the new hands controlling the Halo series we've all grown to love, Certain Affinity decided to offer up three vastly different settings for their new maps.

Highlands takes place in a humongous two-base (somewhat/functionally) symmetrical map, on the planet Reach with the Covenant glassing the planet in the background. Condemned takes place upon a defunct UNSC space station, with the dying planet below, and Covenant/UNSC ships battling it out in space outside the station. Unearthed takes place upon a massive dig site.

If you like Big Team, Highlands is the map for you. Each side is given a Sniper, a set of Rockets and a Warthog to work with, guaranteed, with a quick jump to the middle (through a one-way teleporter, of course) where one may also secure a Shotgun.

Neutral, contestable weapons include two Ghosts, a Grenade Launcher, and two more power weapons connected by a two-way teleporter: the Spartan Laser and the Plasma Launcher. The map will definitely help to fill up that craving for a larger vehicular BTB map not dominated from the skies.

All in all, the play space is beautiful -- it's got a similar style to the Firefight map Overlook, with a sort of moss-covered, pastoral pallet. The map feels like a painting, with intricate detail that allows the player a freedom from ever feeling lost, even if he or she has never played the map before.

The map is similar in size to Hemorrhage (possibly larger), but the sight lines are segmented in such a way that it makes the map feel even larger. Individual skill will definitely be displayed even in the 8v8 contests of Big Team, as some important zones of control will not be prone to bumrushing with a few spare hands. A well-placed grenade (or two) and a solid DMR can quickly turn a 1v2 in a choke point into a victory for the outnumbered.

The flag spawns, in objective, atop a three-story tower with each floor giving access to a lift to take you to the top floor, where the Sniper may also be found. From here, the player may make the daring choice to pull the flag further into the base (in a style similar to Avalanche) in order to run the flag out through the Portal that leaps to roughly mid-map. Alternatively, the player can attempt to zerg the flag across the map, or coordinate with a teammate for a pick-up to beat a hasty retreat.

The downed Pelican in the center of the map houses the Grenade Launcher, which will be important for stopping the ghosts that may be given free reign over the map with it's much more refined sight lines. Being caught in the open without rockets or armor lock is likely to be paramount to leaving the skin of your face to melt upon the Covenant speeder's plasma cannons.

All in all, the map feels as though it will bring a complete package of gameplay. There's enough open air to have larger scale firefights, while there's also enough to break view to allow for stealthy play, and enough room-to-room combat to allow an individual's skill to shine.

Up next we have the smaller of the matchmaking maps, Condemned. I use the word smaller lightly, as it's one of the largest non-Big Team maps I've had the pleasure of playing on.

The atmosphere of the abandoned space station is not a happy one -- although there's plenty of light to allow you to see where you're going, the backdrop is a constant reminder of how alone you are.

The indoor map sports a low-gravity section in the center, where Rockets are mounted upon the station's generator. The low-gravity section is marked by a new implementation from Certain Affinity -- rather than using shield doors as the other two low gravity maps (and countless other maps) have used in the past, the marker is more akin to Halo Reach's Hills and Territories marker, a mostly transparent barrier that does not block your weapons.

On either side of the Low-Grav section outside the higher doors, Snipers may be found. These Snipers are in direct cross positions, with both having a nearly direct sightline on each other. Players looking for awesome plays will probably gravitate to this area of the map. The sliver of hope to Snipe a player from across the map's longest sightline lives here.

Moving clockwise from Blue Base, a few hallways lead the player from Blue Sniper to the Sword spawn. Much of this area is sealed off, but it sports an excellent view of the planet below.

Continuing clockwise, the player may find one of the lower entrances to the low-grav center, as well as eventually finding the Shotgun. While neither of these weapons are outright given to one of the two teams in a 4v4 based off spawn, the sword and shotgun are favored toward the blue and red sides, respectively. However, with the contours of the map, it's possible neither could hold onto them for long.

From here, you pass by the Red team's spawning area, past it's Sniper (as I said, it is across from the Blue Sniper), then down a flight of stairs to the docking bay, where a disabled, partially dismantled Sabre serves as a battle platform.

Although this area does not sport any power weapons, it is the shorter path between the two bases if you venture around the map, and features a very aesthetically interesting combat space. The Sabre can be accessed from a jump up on the nose, a lift onto one wing, or from a platform adjacent to the opposite wing, and serves as a hub between those areas, as well as a power position to cut anyone trying to reinforce from their respective bases on the shorter path.

The map's derelict pallet gives a certain hollow feel to the entire map -- leading me to believe it could make for a very excellent zombie space. Not that I play Living Dead gametypes. I don't. But the thought of being locked onto an abandoned space station with zombies, with no hope of escape, and no true hideout? It sounds like fun to me.

The map is well-suited to free for all, due to its size and the risky paths to cross the map to the desired power weapons. Players will find contests over the central hill in a Crazy King gametype to be quite fun. You just can't get angry when you're floating through space. You just can't.

The map could potentially also sport 6v6 gametypes as well. It's much larger than the majority of other skirmish-sized maps, so there's plenty of room for splitting up your team across the map. But don't get separated from your battle buddy...because in space, no one can hear you scream. (Well, except the other 5 guys with microphones on your team.)

Anyone who likes to stray away from Big Team will probably find themselves playing Condemned often. It suits just about any matchmaking playstyle one could imagine, short of Grifball, and allows for very dynamic gameplay.

That brings us to the last of the three maps, and the first of its category to be included in DLC for a primary Halo game: Unearthed, a Firefight map.

Now, I'm normally not a Firefight kind of guy. I never really get into fighting wave after wave of grunts and jackals with a pre-programmed AI when I could be out trying to out-think a human with the other controller.

But even I have to take a step back and applaud Unearthed.

It's a VERY open map, with a ton of freedom of movement. There's maneuverability room for the map's lone Rocket Hog (don't waste it!) as well as for the Wraiths which are periodically dropped for you to snatch from their operators' hands.

Although drops frequently occur on the open outskirts of the map, some occur upon a landing pad that attaches to the mining facility. The interior portion of the map is still rather open, both in spirit, and in choice. Tons of cleverly placed paths to the upper floor can be found to those who look for them, and the aware Firefight player will always be able to find a way to escape a chasing Suicide Grunt.

Cliffs surround the map, meaning there is one complaint I am allowed to voice: BRAGLRGJAELBKJARLKGAERGakl FOCUS RIFLE SKIRMISHERS!

Of course, I only say that in the frustration of having those things tickle me to death with their Baconator Beam countless times. The truth is, it is an excellent obstacle for the tunnel visioned Firefight players to overcome.

Visually, the map is equally astounding to those before it. The backdrop lends a sense of epicness which I never thought could be dug out of such a deserted map. Puns definitely intended.

If you loved Firefight in ODST, you'll love Unearthed.
If you love Firefight in Halo Reach, you'll love Unearthed.
If you don't really care for Firefight at all, you should still play Unearthed, because chances are you'll love it too.

There are several subtle nuances to its design that, as an aspiring game designer myself, just cause me to grin happily and say "I like this."

There's not much to say about the map that I haven't already said, as the Firefight experience is still much the same. But you'll find yourself enjoying the repeated runs of the Rocket Warthog over and over as you play the map. Because let's face it, why NOT ride in a Warthog that fires six rockets at a time?

There are supposed to be some screenshots with this article, but unfortunately for anyone who was looking forward to my first Audley Enough article with imagery, the screenshots I took are considered Classified Intel, and cannot be shared as of yet. Hopefully I can have them uploaded by the time the maps go live, so anyone on the fence about the maps who happens to read this article will have to say "That looks awesome, I'm going to buy it."

If you are on the fence about the maps, get off the fence. Go get the maps (when they're released). If you've got time to sit here reading a blog by some random guy who writes about League of Legends in his Halo blog, then you've got time that SHOULD be spent playing Halo on the new maps with a group of friends. And heck, you may have time to finally go get that Firefight achievement you're still aiming for. With Unearthed letting you roam free on a Rocket Hog, you really don't have an excuse NOT to anymore.

Audley Enough, some of you still won't be convinced. So I have but one thing left to say (which is supposed to be my catch phrase): No, shut up, you're wrong. Get the new maps. They're FUN.

Lone Wolf: The Ambiguous Fourth Role

2011-03-13T14:17:00.000-07:00

So last week, I talked about three roles players are typically divided into based on their playing style. And generally, a strong team will be balanced with those three roles.

I also hinted that there was one more role I did not discuss.

It's tricky, but there is yet another role that is often crucial to completing a team's composition: The Lone Wolf.

I'll first make a quick comparison, once again, to League of Legends, where even if you have a tank, two DPS, and a support champion, your team composition has one more role to fill: the Jungler. The Jungler in LoL is much like a Lone Wolf player in Halo.

A Jungler's job, from the start of the game, is not to venture into the lanes with the rest of his or her team. Instead, the Jungler ventures into, well, obviously the jungles... where he or she will level up and gain buffs (I touched on Jungling briefly in my article about Movement.)

In addition to the experience benefits having a Jungler nets your team as a whole, there's one more excellent benefit -- the Jungler is given the freedom to roam. This means they can show up in any lane to help their team at any time, and possibly secure a kill or two. They can show up in the opponent's jungle to interrupt, intercept, or just engage the unprepared or weaker jungler. Not having a Jungler sets your team behind on levels, but also means at any given time, all your players are accounted for.

Generally, your players with specific roles are going to gravitate to specific positions, specifically the ones that allow them to perform their job the best. Tanks will have standard routes they take. DPS have power positions that allow them to cover the most ground and deal the most damage. Support have positions that allow them to cover the most area necessary to protect the DPS and set them up for kills.

In League of Legends, the Jungler is not restricted to being a DPS, a Tank, or a Support -- as a few champions from any of those roles can be a passable jungler. Likewise, a Lone Wolf-style player is not restricted to a single role.

Don't mistake that statement as "Lone Wolves are never just one role." That's not true either. Some Lone Wolves are tanks. Some Lone Wolves are DPS. Some Lone Wolves are support. The difference is that Lone Wolves have a completely different mindset in doing so.

A traditional tank will often be constantly communicating to his team where he's pushing or when he's about to bait, and pull his team along with him. The Lone Wolf tank will instead go where action is necessary and draw attention to himself in whatever way possible. They'll want players shooting at them, but unlike a more traditional tank, the Lone Wolf tank is often a player who expects to triumph over at least one (usually more) obstacles on their way to their objective.

A traditional support will often control specific zones of the map, depending upon where best allows them to protect their DPS or weaken enemies. A Lone Wolf support will instead drift from DPS to DPS or engagement to engagement, softening up whomever they can wherever they can.

The traditional DPS and Lone Wolf DPS are the closest in appearance. Both somewhat expect their team to play around them (in the case of a traditional DPS, the team SHOULD be playing around them, period. Everyone else's positioning should be in a manner that allows their DPS to do their job.) Lone Wolf DPS are a bit more difficult to specifically set up around -- unless your team's composition is also built around it.

Lone Wolf players are usually excellent route-takers. Look at any FFA winner from an MLG event, and you'll see a pattern: They know how to move around the map to stay alive, but still have vision where they need it. Pistola is a prime example -- he was fairly well known for his FFA abilities in Halo 2, but in Halo 3 he began to shine on teams. A large part of this came from his dynamic duo partner, Heinz, but even after the two were forced to split, Pistola continued to shine as he was partnered with another versatile teammate in Ogre 2.

Lone Wolves by name may not seem to be a positive attribute to a team, but they allow your team to be more dynamic in its gameplay and less at risk to fall into a stagnant, predictable pattern. They are often more reactionary by style, while remaining proactive, whereas more traditional players are more apt to follow a similar pattern game after game.

It may seem like I'm saying "You must have a Lone Wolf-style player to win any game ever, otherwise people will always know what you're going to do before you do it!" Well... No, shut up, you're wrong. (Anubis says this should be my catchphrase.)

I'm not saying Lone Wolves are absolutes in their necessity for a balanced team composition, nor am I saying players who aren't Lone Wolves are inherently counterable.

Lone Wolves are a huge boon to a team's ability to adapt to multiple circumstances and playstyles. They are less prone to being metagamed by opposing teams. However, because of their more reactionary nature, they are also players who tend to benefit the team less as the team as a whole begins to underperform. This doesn't necessarily mean the Lone Wolf will play poorly -- often, it's the exact opposite and the Lone Wolf will continue to put up impressive stats. But, unfortunately, their skillset is not geared toward pushing a snowball back up a hill.

The Lone Wolf's permanent state of flux acts against a team in the case where teammates are underperforming, as the necessary catalysts for their reactions increase in number.

Lone Wolves are just another role that should be considered when attempting to assemble your perfect dream team. If, upon looking at your team's line-up that you believe it to be heavy on players with extremely predictable or molded styles, a Lone Wolf would be an excellent addition to your team, allowing one amoeba to float among your prokaryotic team. If your team seems more dynamic by nature, or more tactical as opposed to strategic, then a Lone Wolf would likely fit into the group like a glove.

However, if your team relies on strict teamwork, with all units working as one, a Lone Wolf would go against this grain, and be a risk toward dissent among the group. Exercise caution.

(Note: Some of you who read my articles are also League of Legends players, and you'll probably make the observation that not having a Jungler is a STUPID idea in 99 out of 100 cases. While this is true, I believe it to be more of a balance issue with experience in the jungles and the overpowering strength of the Jungle Buffs. In Solo Queue, not having a Jungler is a death sentence, just like not having a Tank.

In a more organized setting, there are additional benefits toward not having a jungler. You are able to zone the top lane, negating their EXP advantage, and often you're also able to get the early tower kill on that lane. Strong zoning champions like Alistar are excellent alternatives toward a Jungler in this case. Additionally, you can still fill the role of a permanent roamer with champions such as Poppy or Evelynn, so long as they continue to get kills, but without the time spent in the Jungle.)

Audley Enough, despite me talking up the Lone Wolf in such detail compared to the other three roles, I am NOT a lone wolf myself. I'm a traditional tank in the most traditional sense of the word, with a little spice of Support mixed in. While I can Jungle in League of Legends (I'm the inventor of the Cloth Armor + 5 Potion opening. I've Jungled as Twitch. I know my way around those jungles.), I do not find it to be my preferred playstyle of choice, and typically underperform when asked to do so.

Be sure you check back tomorrow night. There will be an extra special Audley Enough article, with a preview of the Defiant Map Pack, complete with pictures.

Composition: Balancing a Powerful Team

2011-03-05T12:08:00.000-08:00

Everyone competitive wants to play on a good team. When looking to put together a good team, there's one fatal flaw some players make, regardless of how good they are at the game. They ignore composition.

Rather than considering the strengths and weaknesses of the players they're picking up, they choose instead to pick up players who are just perceived as good at the game by their peers.

Before I continue, I am going to go ahead and quote the hundreds of raging MLG fanboys who say "There are no defined roles in Halo."

And then I'm going to call them on their B.S. Playstyles and tendencies lend themselves to roles. In fact, I'd go so far as to say there are as much of roles in this game as there are in MMORPGs like WoW and MOBAs like League of Legends. And may of those roles are the same.

Many players are stuck in the tired labels of "Main Slayer" "Objective Player" and "Support Player" and labels like that -- but there's a much deeper correlation between players than that.

In an MMORPG, there are three primary roles your party typically has:

1) Tank
2) Support
3) DPS

The first category is the most important to have. In a MOBA, the tank's job is to keep your DPS alive by being a big enough threat to draw the opponents' focus onto them. Additionally, their job is to initiate fights. In League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth, the tank champions are the ones with a skill set to disable or disorient their opponents long enough for the team behind them to deal a load of damage.

Tanks do not win games on their own, but the lack of a tank can quickly lose games. In a game of League of Legends, not having a tank is comparable to not having your mouse plugged in for the duration of the match. Unless you massively outskill your opponents, you're going to lose.

Furthermore, not following your tank is just as bad as not having one. If you're leaving your tank stranded, you're going to find yourself in awful situations. Even if he's running out into a bad engage, it's sometimes better to go ahead and follow and engage alongside him than it is to let him get caught alone, die, and be forced to fight 4v5 shortly after.

So how does this relate to Halo? Some of you may be going "lulz Scorpion Tanks and Wraiths, yarrr!"

And like I said to the people who cried "Laser!" at my prompt re: Paradiso in the last article:
No, you're wrong. Shut up.

The two most iconic Tank players I can label from the MLG circuit of Halo 3: Walshy, and ToTz.

Some of you may be saying "But Audley, ToTz is BAD!"

Those of you who are, didn't watch his gameplay. Didn't watch his TEAM'S gameplay around him. You weren't aware of what he was actually doing.

His job? To take damage. Sure, he often would die because of this. C'est la vie d'un citerne. He did his job well. He took a LOT of damage and drew a lot of focus to himself. What happened while he did this? His team pushed and slayed the enemies who weren't focused on them.

The thing that made ToTz an excellent tank was his ability to so often be able to get players to focus on him, as well as to always pull those players into a position that his opponents could see them.

You'll also often find that tanks are the players going for the flag most in CTF. Why? Well, what better way to get opponents to focus on you than to grab their flag? If they just ignore you at that point, you've scored. The more intelligently you move with the flag, the longer they'll have to search to stop you -- which means less time they've got to focus on killing your team.

I personally am a tank player. In League of Legends, I main Alistar. In Halo, I'll run into a group of several enemies and armor lock like a bitch just so my team can get a one or two shot advantage on a few different players. I simply love being able to get enemies to focus on me without being able to kill me.

Up next, we have Support players. In MMOs, these are divided into three groups: Debuffers, Buffers, and Healers. The Healer group doesn't apply to Halo (I mean, the best you had for that in 3 was the Regenerator.) The job of all three of these is to help make sure your DPS players are able to get their damage done.

So we're left with the buffer and the debuffer.

For anyone reading this that doesn't happen to play RPGs, a buff is a temporary improvement to your player's stats.

The main example of a Support player in Halo is a Warthog Driver. You're giving a large damage and movement boost to the person in your turret, whether you look at it as buffing the on-foot version of the gunner, or buffing the Husky.

Support players are also those annoying bastards that pick up the Plasma Pistol and actually use it the way it was intended. It knocks out shields, it knocks out engines...It debuffs the hell out of anyone it comes into contact with.

They're also the players who'll drive a Mongoose to go pick up your tank (player) who grabbed the flag. Or put down tons of suppressive fire in the Revenant to prevent movement.

The best way to describe a support player in Halo is by this: they protect your primary DPS as well as paint his targets. Support and Tank players have an area of overlap -- they also want the focus on them rather than on your DPS, but they are typically there to draw focus AFTER the battle's begun. Tanks attempt to draw focus to start a battle.

Most of the players who say there are no "roles" in Halo are the ones responding to other players labeling Walshy and ToTz as Support. Which they are not.

Examples of some Support players from MLG Halo: Ogre 2, Destin, Chig, ElamiteWarrior, Heinz. Players like this tend to become unsung heroes behind their DPS (barring Ogre 2, of course, as his repeated success puts him in the limelight.)

These players didn't try to draw focus on them constantly, but knew when and what to do to keep their teammates alive. And that is the mark of a good support player.

...Which brings us to DPS. Damage Per Second. Whether it be wielding iron fists, bows, machine guns, sniper rifles, swords, or a fan that summons bees that shoots guns that shoot swords...DPS are the players you want to be dealing your team's damage and picking up most of the kills.

There are two divisions of DPS champions in most MMORPGs and MOBAs: there are physical DPS and magical DPS.

In MOBA games, physical DPS champions are made to inherently scale better with items, so you're encouraged to attempt to funnel the kills to them. A carry in Defense of the Ancients can almost single-handedly kill an enemy team if they were supported well early on.

Magical DPS on the other hand, are powerful from the get-go and often pull your team through the bulkier, more difficult midgame.

In Halo, there's not really "magic" damage, and your damage doesn't change throughout the course of the game, so DPS are funneled into two main categories: Power Weapons, and Power Vehicles.

Snipers, Rockets, Laser, Scorpions, Wraiths, and Banshees. The people who specialize in this are usually DPS players. There's some leeway, as some players still focus on consistent long-range DMRing. They are also DPS-style players, just less reliant on support to do their job.

People want to kill your DPS. They have to. Otherwise they're going to die a lot. This is why tanks and supports are important. Drawing focus off your Sniper or Laser for even a second is a play that can snowball. Saving your laser person's life once as he secures it can lead to four kills later on as they are allowed to set up.

If you have a Sniper in a power position, you've become one of the scariest beings on the map in Halo Reach. The Sniper is POWERFUL in this game. I mean, it kills a Banshee in five frickin' shots (without any help from teammates... which you should have)! FIVE SHOTS!

Wraiths and Scorpions can completely shut down movement in a given area. Banshees are agile bastards who can quickly strike down anyone they please.

When it comes to team composition, having players that wield those weapons with confidence and expertise is important. It gives you obvious benefits to have a player with a Sniper who can land every headshot. It's elementary, even.

DPS players are the rockstars of your team. They're going to get the stats, and they're going to look good. Neighbor, FearItself, Cloud, Snipedown, Strongside, Naded. These players deal a TON of damage and look good doing it. They're known to be strong players. But would you ever put any four of those on a team together?

Anyone who just said "Of course! Dude, that'd be awesome!" is missing the point of this article.

You need balance on your team. If you had players who are not accustomed to being without those power weapons, they're probably not going to be as efficient when it comes to attempting to protect the player who does have it. They're used to sneaking around the map, taking routes that get them to the strongest position safely.

While players CAN be proficient in multiple roles, you really want players who can cleanly fulfill roles that synergize.

Take Triggers Down from late in the '10 season for example -- They went from being SK-Hysteria-Neighbor-Pistola to being Hysteria-Best Man-Neighbor-ToTz.

A lot of players criticized them for dropping Pistola for ToTz. I mean, Pistola was a rock star DPS... but so was Neighbor, and to a degree, so was Hysteria. SK was somewhat of a tank, somewhat of a Support, but did not shine in either role.

They replaced a hybrid SK and a DPS Pistola with a Support Best Man and a tank in ToTz. And their placings improved (compared to their placings earlier in the season)...they never did reclaim their Top 2 splendor from the '09 season.

ToTz and Neighbor's playstyles synergized very well. Neighbor likes to sneak around and clean up kills from odd angles. ToTz likes to herp-derp into the open, dealing a little damage and taking a lot more. While those two worked as a great duo from their opponents' side of the map, Best Man was able to keep targets from rushing Hysteria by keeping their shields low as they attempted to push off the ToTz/Neighbor-occupied side.

Playstyles typically dictate your movement around the map. Your movement around the map will reflect your role and job to the team.

And if your team is loaded with support players and tanks, without anyone confident or as proficient in dealing the MAD DEEPZ, your team will suffer.

Likewise, if you're too concentrated around MAD DEEPZ, without any support, your team will suffer.

A lot of players criticize RuffGonja, A Team, NamelessHero, and BoneGrindinPain for their playstyles, but they were dedicated tanks who helped their team to numerous victories they would not have otherwise had if the team was attempting to all strong-arm their way versus a team that had better slaying power or control.

Tanks disrupt slayers. Supports keep slayers alive. Slayers then kill other slayers. Once those slayers are down, the enemy tanks and supports are but chaff before your thresher.

So if you ever find yourself trying to build a team, or watching MLG and wondering why a team line-up that looks strong isn't performing as well as it should, take the team under the microscope. Look at their roles. Try to figure out what it has, then you'll see what it's missing.

Audley Enough, you'll find that nine times out of ten, a team that isn't performing that SHOULD BE, is failing because of an overconcentration of rockstar DPS, or an underperforming tank.

See you guys next week...where I'll talk about the one role I didn't mention this week.

Movement: The Significator of a Competitive Game

2011-02-26T23:55:00.000-08:00

So, you want me to let you in on the secret on what lends strength to a competitive game? Whoops, my title gave it away. One word answers the question clearly: Movement. Over the course of this Audley Enough blog entry, I'll highlight a few competitive games, and how they manage to be successful.

And ALL of them revolve around movement.

First off, I'm going to start with what I consider to be the greatest competitive game around currently. That would be the national sport of South Korea, where a certain Boxer is known as king. No, it's not Pugilism. It's StarCraft. Well, for this article, StarCraft II, but the concepts remain largely similar.

StarCraft II (in a competitive setting) starts off with two players, pitted against each other, with nothing but a bare base to start. Players amass forces and send them to destroy each others' bases.

Apart from knowing which units to pick, how does StarCraft 2 manage to be a competitive game? Movement incentives.

What are these movement incentives?

Well, unfortunately, your base does not provide you with infinite amount of resources, and there is a limit of speed on how fast your worker line can mine. So in order to out-resource your opponent, there is but one option: Expand.

You must leave the easily protected confines of your starting area to expand. The game provides you with one relatively easy expansion referred to by players as their "natural." Again, the resources are limited. However, players are offered a choice once their opponents begin to expand: Do you attempt to restrict your opponents movements and invest in offense to stop their expansion, or do you expand yourself, and continue to tech up and defend until it becomes an opportune time for another expansion?

In addition to expansions being a primary incentive to move, StarCraft II added an additional incentive for players to move at least part of their forces across the map: Xel'Naga Watchtowers. Controlling these watchtowers allow you to preemptively scout moving enemy forces as they attempt to venture into your territory. For skilled players, this means knowing when you need to switch off a more Macro-based play into a defensive stand, or sometimes when you need to move your units to a different front in order to defend the on-coming attack.

The majority of StarCraft matches are decided very quickly, with one player securing an earlier advantage due to more intelligent movements. You'll notice, however, that for the longer games on smaller maps, the match quickly degrades into a stalemate as movement incentives are collected. Amoebic masses of units will squirm about the center, weighing each other out, but more or less will not attack one another until one side has a decided advantage or opportunity.

Although these situations are tense, they ultimately weigh out to a less competitive situation. It boils down to which player has the greater unit composition at 200/200 supply. If both are fairly even, it ends up being who is the first to grow impatient. Especially in a Terran versus Terran setting where Siege Tanks must move in order to change their attack ranges, the first player to unsiege loses his tactical advantage and is more likely to lose the game.

In a Terran versus Protoss match, unless a player makes a mistake of moving his Colossi too close to the Viking Flower of the Terrans, the two groups will dance about the middle, waiting until the other makes a mistake big enough to capitalize with a few unit kills. Either one side will commit at this point and go all-in, or they will simply back off, replace their unit, and begin the perpetual unit-ball dance again.

Without anything to strive for at this stage in the game, the more PATIENT player has an advantage over a more SKILLED player.

The second competitive game I want to mention is Defense of the Ancients. Actually, I'll talk about League of Legends (due to being more familiar with it), but touch on similarities to DotA.

A typical game of LoL has three lanes connected by a river and several winding paths through the forest, and endless amounts of minion (creep) waves leaving your team's Nexus along those three lanes, attempting to push to the enemy's Nexus, going through three towers and an Inhibitor.

Now, if there were no incentives for moving, players would simply split up into the lanes and endlessly farm those minions until their hearts' content, or until an enemy made a mistake and died in the lane, at which point you could push a tower.

The first movement incentive in the game is rather intrinsic from the champion bounty bonus (meaning, you get more gold for killing an enemy champion). Leaving your lane (at the risk of losing out on EXP and gold from creep) allows you to attempt to kill an enemy champion. This is called "ganking." It is the most basic movement incentive in the AoS genre. Killing the inhabitants of a lane allows you to push the lane uncontested and attempt to kill the towers (which also give a global Gold bounty).

Beyond this, there is a rather large movement incentive that actually occupies most of the map. This is called the Jungle. In League of Legends, each team's Jungle has two main incentives: The Golem Camp (Blue Buff) and The Lizard Camp (Red Buff). Both of these buffs give the champion who kills the respective Golem or Lizard a rather large boon that improves their ability to combat enemy champions.

Moving to control your team's Jungle (which is usually done by a dedicated Jungler early on in the game, and later done by the champion who benefits from the buffs the most) allows your team a significant advantage. In addition to this, it allows your team one champion who is free to gank any lane which allows the opportunity. The Jungle's existence reduces the passivity of laning by offering a movement incentive to the player who controls it. Skilled junglers will attempt to disrupt one anothers' jungle (venturing into the risky enemy team's territory to try to steal a buff, or kill the enemy jungler while he's low health from the powerful monsters there).

Finally, there are two more primary incentives: Dragon and Baron. Baron does not spawn until 15 minutes into the game, so earlier focus tends to revolve around controlling the Dragon. The Dragon gives your entire team a substantial amount of gold. It resides in the lower middle portion of the map, meaning both teams have a fair shot at killing it. Several teams tend to group around this objective to slay it, or bait it for the enemy team. Additionally, enemy Junglers around the 10 minute mark will attempt to gank middle or bottom lane in order to ensure their team has a numbers advantage, then proceed to Dragon while pressing that advantage.

Baron Nashor, the other incentive, grants a team-wide buff that greatly improves your combat ability (though, he requires most of your team present to take down. Attempting to kill him alone usually results in death!). Because of the power of his buff, teams gravitate toward him as games drag on. Once he has been secured, a new movement incentive is given: The team with the Baron buff can push down enemy buildings a LOT more easily, because attempting to fight a team who has the Baron buff is risky at times, and borderline suicidal at others.

These various objectives ensure gameplay continues moving the majority of the time. In higher levels of play, these objectives are constantly guarded by the watchful eyes of a Sight Ward or a Vision Ward (the latter able to detect stealthed units, including other wards). The game becomes a cat and mouse battle to see who can control the buffs and push the towers the best, and the TEAM of greater skill will more often come out ahead (although imbalances in the game can often cause the better team COMPOSITION to beat out a more skilled team... that is a story for a different time.)

Finally, we come to Halo. And now that I've touched on two games that are fairly successful (for the most part) at encouraging movement... I'm going to go more in-depth on the Halo games.

I shouldn't have to point out what the movement incentives in Halo are. Power weapons, power weapons, power weapons. In the earlier games of Halo series, the power ups of Active Camo and Overshield also filled this role. First, I shall give an example of a map from Halo 3 that handled movement incentives very well.

Rat's Nest.

Wait, Audley, why the heck would you mention a map like Rat's Nest? It was rather closed off, and there were lots of individual battles and...

And the Rockets were as far from a power position as possible, the Active Camo was in one of the most easily killed spots on the map, and the Sniper was in a place of limited sight lines. The map was perfect, from a competitive stand-point.

With the limited sight-lines, the risky positions of power weapons and power-ups, and the relative enclosure of the map, it meant the team with better team work, and better ability to win individual battles almost always won. The matches were usually won by a team that played better throughout the entirety of the match. And, although matches were usually over quickly, they did NOT feel like they were decided solely by the opening push.

Now, two examples of maps that were NOT good, competitively speaking.

Valhalla and Avalanche.

Okay, Audley, now you're being downright blasphemous. Those maps were awesome! You're retarded!

Hear me out. On Valhalla, there is a single, solitary, one and only movement incentive: The Spartan Laser. Both teams are given a Sniper in their base, and typically, unless something tricksy happened, they kept control of their Sniper for the majority of the match.

In the majority of matches, the team that controlled the hill FIRST also controlled LASER, and thus controlled the game. The hill was far and away the power position of the map (although it was important to control Pelican and Turret to -secure- the hill, having at least one person controlling the hill at all times was key.)

Once you've secured the hill... what do you do? In non-objective gametypes, the answer is: "Nothing." You stop where you are. You play it patiently. You've got such a huge advantage at that point, off your single opening rush, that there's no reason to rush and potentially make a mistake. At this point, movement is no longer a requirement for your team. Assuming you're not making mistakes, movement is no longer an OPTION for the opposing team. The game degrades into a stalemate. Barring a mistake by the winning team or SPECTACULAR play by the losing team, the team who had the better start will win, rather than the team that is always better.

Of course, this isn't to say hill control was a guaranteed win, but it was such a huge advantage for the winning team, in addition to being the only movement incentive on the map, that there was no reason to attempt further movement and risk losing its control.

So, now, Audley, why Avalanche?

Avalanche did one thing right: It put the laser away from a power position (although it ultimately ends up NEAR its spawn once a team has full control and their laser guy just camps partition until he can get a shot on the Hornet). However, barring a Black Screen, only one Laser could exist on the map at a time.

What did this mean? Once the laser was secured, a team could simply bring it back to their side of the map, hold on to it, keep it secure, and never have to leave their side of the map.

Avalanche became a turtle fest once laser was secured. Supporters of Avalanche will say "But it made such tense games that were so fun to play in!" But they're not as COMPETITIVE. A team with an advantage is told to just sit on that advantage. In both StarCraft II and League of Legends, it's different. As quoted by a commentator of the GSL StarCraft II league: "When you're ahead, there is one thing to do: Get further ahead."

On both Valhalla and Avalanche, this was not the case. You were to get ahead and PROTECT that advantage. Both teams were given similar tools, except for the one neutral incentive to move, and the team that secured that incentive no longer had the need to move.

On Rat's Nest, this was less the case until your ass was pressed firmly upon the spawn points of your enemies, keeping them from being able to do anything.

This case is also true for Standoff. Although the laser is equally powerful in Standoff, you are NOT encouraged to sit back and just protect your laser person. You man up, press their line, get someone in their base, and run a hog to just demolish your opponents until they're so demoralized they cannot fight back.

In the MLG incarnation of Halo 3, one could compare a gametype such as Amplified Team Slayer or Narrows Slayer (both of which were CONSTANTLY active, regardless of how much players would bitch about spawns), to a gametype such as Pit TS, which featured little movement at all for three minute spurts.

A game of Pit Team Slayer was more prone to upsets, due to its drawn out nature and the fact that a little advantage turned into a long stalemate. Narrows and Amplified required a much more proactive approach, despite one having no power weapons or power-ups at all (Amplified) and relying on its permanently open sightlines as a movement incentive (MOVE OR DIE!) and the other combining these open sightlines with power weapon spawns located away from power positions, to encourage the team with the advantage to move in order to keep up their advantage.

So where does that leave us with Halo Reach?

Well, Halo Reach's matchmaking has stripped us of one of our most important movement incentives: Active Camo and Overshield. It elected instead to allow Active Camo to be selected at the start, and Overshield to be replaced by the option to start with Armor Lock.

This alone already suggests the matchmaking incarnation of Halo Reach is less competitive than its predecessors.

Now, to compare the BTB maps with me singlefold criteria:

Hemorrhage:
A single power weapon lies in the middle of this map, and is not a guaranteed kill even when aimed well. While it's good to have them, neither team is going to actively move to them to attempt to gain or further an advantage unless there is no risk involved.

A Sniper is on top of the base. Combined with the ability to spawn with Active Camoflage, the only movement incentive for the Sniper is sightlines. Moving too little leaves them at risk of being killed by the enemy Sniper. Moving too much leaves them at risk of being killed by the enemy Sniper. So, they're left to find a nice hiding place and peck away at the enemy team from a distance.

The Wraith is given to both sides... a vehicle that can fire across the map at long distances, as well as instantly kill any enemy vehicle that comes nearby.

All players are given DMRs, which means attempting to step into the open at any range can (and usually will) lead to being lit up like the fourth of July. Moving? Ha, you're funny.

Paradiso:
As much as I hate this map, it's more competitive than Hemorrhage. There is one powerful movement objective on this map. Any of you who just thought "The Laser, Audley, the Laser!"

No, you're wrong. Shut up.

There is a spot behind each base that, once a tank is placed there, pretty much ensures you're going to continue to get farther and farther ahead. If you have a tank there, your Banshee is pretty much free to roam, your tank is able to spawn kill, and the rest of your team is free to move as they please.

Additionally, there are less open sight-lines, apart from when approaching the enemy base, so a little more movement is encouraged.

Boardwalk:
Yes, Boardwalk. The most important item on the map spawns in the most death-trappy section of the map. VERY well done, Bungie. However, for Slayer you made one mistake.

The Sniper that spawns up on the perch really hurts this map's movement incentive. Controlling that Sniper, as well as the Skybridge, leaves your opponents with only one true path to attempt to hurt your Sniper (and little reason for your team to leave their power positions, save for maybe two people to dip down to Rockets periodically to re-secure them.)

The Elbow becomes the only path an enemy may safely take to get near your team's Sniper (far back of the map? Nope, sorry, you're in Sniper sight lines.)

Biggest weakness: Not symmetrical! Competitive (slayer) maps should always be symmetrical! You don't want one side to have an intrinsic advantage.

Tempest:
Speaking from a Big Bro Slayer standpoint, Tempest Slayer is excellent.

With two Snipers in VERY weak positions (directly across from a Rocket spawn), teams are encouraged to move constantly to attempt to secure those areas for when the power weapons spawn.

Sight-lines are open enough that teams can assist-fire one another, but closed and short enough that a well-timed rush through the opening can allow a player to cross the map if he chooses to take the risk (and not be guaranteed to die!)

With most of the spawn points in the open, behind the base, it also has the reminiscent feeling of Standoff, where a team in the lead relies on their Warthog to press their advantage.

And finally
Breakpoint:
Low Sniper, Tunnel Sniper, Low Wraith and a Neutral-ish Laser in a spot susceptible to death.

A high power position that leaves you open to fire from all sides in exchange for the ability to fire upon all sides.

And a Banshee for each team.

Excellent. None of the power weapons are placed in a location that discourages a team with the advantage from moving away from that position. Most of the power weapons are placed in a location completely fair to both teams (exception: Laser).

This map did everything right, except for BE SYMMETRICAL. For non-symmetrical gametypes, the map is perfect. For Slayer (symmetrical), it's probably the best choice we have in BTB right now in terms of competitive merit.

There are a few ways to improve the potential for these maps to be competitive.

For Hemorrhage, the best option (and I'm laughed at every time I suggest this) is Magnum/AR starts, with a few extra DMRs placed on the map, and either the Revenant or the Warthogs removed. Without the Triple Zoom Death-ignated Marksmanship Rifle, players without a vehicle would be forced to move up in order to support their team. The Magnum is a very underestimated weapon (although, I agree its clip size is far too shallow...)

Additionally, the teleporters would need to be balanced in placement to make the movement OPPORTUNITIES equal for each team.

For Paradiso, better symmetry in movement potential for each team is the key to making the map more competitive. Blue side is given less reason to move, as they are given greater opportunity to control the mountain, and an easier time keeping that control.

For Boardwalk... the removal of the top Sniper (and movement of low Sniper to where Defensive Shotgun is now) would be the key way to balance the map and encourage movement. The one place where the Sniper cannot truly remain eagle-eyed becomes the place he must control if he wants additional ammo.

For Tempest, I would make no sweeping changes. (for Big Bro. For standard BTB Slayer, giving Tempest spawn zones to make it symmetrical would be more than enough.)

For Breakpoint...making the Laser more truly Neutral, and balancing the opening potential for each team would be the only changes I would make.

Additionally, one more important change needs to be made: Powerful Armor Abilities (or power-ups) need to become Movement Incentives.

Since the Overshield does not display properly, it's ruled out, but the potential for a Custom Power-up DAMP (Damage Amplifier) or DRED (Damage Reducer) with Color Swap could be given instead.

Making players have to fight for the ability to bait with Armor Lock, hide in Active Camo, fly with a Jetpack, or roll around the map with Evade greatly improves the potential for movement incentives outside of power weapons.

Imagine if BTB Countdown had only two Armor Lock abilities, located at the bottom of each base. Teams would CONSTANTLY be fighting from the bottom of the map to attempt to control the two immunities to grenades. (Of course, grenade count would need to be reduced to curb the nadespam that led to Armor Lock being the best choice in the first place.)

Imagine if BTB Paradiso featured a Jetpack that spawned directly below Laser. Rather than rushing through their portals, the teams may instead rush a Ghost or Mongoose to laser side in an attempt to secure that Jetpack for a faster grab.

Imagine if Slayer on Tempest featured a solitary Evade in the center of the map, or Holograms at your man-cannon (allowing you to lift more safely by using a holobait)...or Drop Shields somewhere in the vicinity of (but not directly on) Sniper, allowing your team to shield the middle of the map to secure their pushes...

Imagine on Hemorrhage if the Sniper could not hide in Active camo all game, but instead had a periodic pick-up that gave him 30 seconds of the invisibility and required him to use it well! BLASPHEMY!

I feel Halo Reach really reduced some of the movement incentives with the armor abilities by default, and it really hampers a lot of the potential some of the maps otherwise have. Improving this movement incentives will greatly increase the competitive merit of the game, and remedy the stale, repetitive gameplay like what exists on Hemorrhage.

So yeah, if you're looking to make something competitive, you have one task: Look to make the players who are WINNING move.

There should only be three conditions under which a winning team no longer has any reason to move:

1) The enemy team has begun fighting back evenly.
2) The winning team has pushed the enemy team all the way back to their spawns, and their spawns are being completely controlled.
3) The winning team has won the game.

If none of these three conditions are met, and your team in the lead doesn't want to move... you have succeeded only in making a situation where the team with a superior opening is given a victory on a platter.

If Slayer in Halo were a 2 minute long game, that would be fine. However, games have a 15 minute clock and a 100 kill score limit. Something needs to fill in that time other than sitting there watching paint dry.

You may try to argue that making the winning team move leads to a greater chance that the losing team will come back...HOWEVER, there are two possible ways the winning team got in the lead in the first place: Luck, or Skill.

If it was luck, they likely will lose to a better team that got down early. If it was SKILL, the team that had the advantage in the first place shouldn't have any problem retaking their abandoned map control once they regain the tools that helped them get it in the first place.

So if you're looking for competition, there is only one word for you:

MOVE!

Master Theory versus HaloCharts Prophet League

2011-02-26T21:55:00.000-08:00

Tonight, the band of brothers known as Master Theory faced off once more against the claimant clairvoyants who call themselves the HaloCharts Prophet League.

The series was set to be a best of Five showing, with the HCPL team selecting Big Team Slayer up by the cafes and gift shops known as the Boardwalk as the opening gametype.

Master Theory donned their fiery red Mjollnir armor, while the Prophetic ones wore blue.

The Master Theory team each grouped off into battle-buddies and set to control the elevated portions of the boardwalk. HCPL's team must have foreseen a bad future, as two of their members leapt to their death immediately off the start.

Master Theory's team controlled the sky bridge for the following minutes, as the gap climbed from 6 to -2, to 18 to 4, and then further on to 27 to 7. The bodies continued to hit the sidewalk of the Boardwalk.

However, HCPL buckled down as they saw the score gap increasing. Taking a crowbar to Master Theory's locked down map control, they wedged the masters from their lofty perches and began to trade blows with them.

The score gap began to jitter back and forth, slowly leaning toward a favorable future for the HCPL as they pulled the gap down to 14, despite the shaky start. However, with each kill putting Master Theory closer and closer to the final goal of 100, their time was limited.

With around 30 kills to go, the Master Theory group finally resecured their control of the Sky Bridge and hunkered down until emerging victorious by a margin of twenty.

Master Theory wins 100-80.

MVP: Cloud, with a dominating 15-2 performance and 8 Sniper kills.

Game two came to a newer, colder battleground. Suited to a more one-sided objective play, the selection from Master Theory was One Flag on Breakpoint.

The first round put the MT group on defense versus the HCPL aggression. An early push combined with clever strategery allowed the Master Theory team to neutralize the Prophets' laser control -- with Tseng Mao even pulling the laser all the way back to the MT side of the map before being chased down and terminated.

The small victory of resecuring laser was not quite enough for HCPL, however, as dtmwerks pulled back the Neutral Wraith. Master Theory's ground-pounding squad funneled through the central caves of the map while the British Banshee ace, Matclan took over the skies. Open fields and narrow bridges were impassable with the skies so carefully watched, leaving the HCPL team with but one path to the Master Theory side: the tunnel.

Alas, as they approached the tunnel, the purple hover whale of doom secured by dtm met them with a mortal mortar blast, leaving them with no option to cross the map.

Master Theory held fast, without a single fingerprint left upon their beloved banner.

Round two swapped the sides. A three-pronged attack by Master Theory allowed them to cover the entire map off the start -- securing the Wraith in the hands of dtm once more, the laser in the hands of Triton, and an unguarded push through tunnel allowed Audley a nigh uncontested flag grab.

As Audley desperately ran the flag toward tunnel, he was picked off from behind, but the damage was done, and Master Theory quickly scooped up the loose flag for planting upon their glacial home.

The second offensive attempt for the HCPL team opened much the same, with fights on all fronts leading ultimately to Master Theory in control of the skies and the Wraith. With the open areas of the map once again in the MT team's control, HCPL was given the choice to rush across the open to be picked off, or to funnel like lemmings into the repeated shelling from the fearsome Wraith.

Ultimately, the Master Theory team once again let not a single hand soil their flag, and ensured a victory regardless of the final round results.

The fourth round led to much different tactics than the previous, with much of the HCPL team seeking to keep the hover whale from entering into the MT possession.

An unfortunate miscue led to HCPL's zZacky self-destructing in the Banshee. To make matters worse, an early Warthog from the Master Theory team arrived to stealthily steal the flag, and make off with haste.

The over-eager lead foot of TsengMao caused the Warthog to tumble, but with none of Thor's green Thunderbolts to capitalize on the mistake, the MT team escaped with a second flag capture.

Master Theory wins, 2-0.

Co-MVPs go to Matclan for his +22 showing from the skies, and dtmwerks for his +13 performance in the Wraith.

Game three seemed a much more fitting gametype for the HCPL's selection: Stockpile in the Box Canyon (Hemorrhage, that is.) Perhaps they had a sense of irony to reflect their stockpiling of Halo player data, or perhaps they just enjoy a good game of horde the acorns...Either way, the stage was set for the third game.

Both teams quickly rushed from their bases in all manner of vehicles. Wraiths, Revenants, and Warthogs split off to go fulfill their respective roles. The snipers began their game of cat and mouse, each one attempting to take up a position to support his team from afar.

The Master Theory Warthog was immediately neutralized by the HCPL Revenant while the MT Revenant focused on a more supportive role, with the Matclan/Tsengmao duo utilizing the nicknamed Reptar to transport the flags. Master Theory gained the first point of the match, giving them a slight advantage as the match settled into its meatier portion.

With all manner of projectiles flying about in the midmap foray, and vehicles ferrying flags faster than they could be found, both teams' scores began to accumulate. Each team collected their proximate flags.

However, with the HCPL team not managing to score a single kill out of their wraith, the situational spiraled beyond their control, allowing Master Theory to secure the more neutrally located flags, leading to their imminent victory.

Master Theory wins, 10-7.

Co-MVPs once again go to dtmwerks for his Wraithwork, and Matclan for his supportive driving ability.

Master Theory secured victory in a decisive 3-0 sweep. The HCPL foresaw no reprieve from the relentless assault, and graciously gave the "Good Game" signature to close out the series in Master Theory's favor.

Good games, HCPL.

Master Theory Battle Report: MT versus Halocharts 40 and Above

2010-08-25T09:29:00.000-07:00

Master Theory returned to the battlefield once again. After a close series the last time the two sides fought, HC40A wanted another shot at downing the ever-vigilant Master Theory gang. The gametypes were decided to be the same as the time before, with the only difference from the previous skirmish being the color uniforms the teams decided to wear.

Up first, a true deathmatch on the frozen tundra of Avalanche.

The gods of the Halo universe planted the HC40A squad on Light Side, and Master Theory on Dark Side, and the two teams clashed for laser. HC40A sent a hog and hornet to attempt an early kill on TsengMao, Master Theory's Hornet ace pilot. However, they met with surprise as TsengMao's shields had been boosted above their usual level, thanks to his overshield. Master Theory secured laser, and destroyed the Halocharts' hornet shortly after.

With laser control, vehicles patrols began pouring from the Master Theory side, with only a few foot soldiers to ensure map control was not lost. With nhd and Achronos sharing the Ghost, Audley and Pie took a lone Warthog out of the shadows to harass the HC40A team. The Master Theory team had a small lead, with very few kills being given up in one direction or another, until Master Theory took its second Warthog, again with the crack crew of Audley and Pie. With the completion of production of HC40A's second hornet nearing, Audley and Pie sat quietly in the HC40A base, while the others all fought for control of the middle of the map. The hornet spawned, and Audley hopped in the pilot and took off to become the Iceman to TsengMao's Maverick.

With two aircraft patrolling the skies, Anubis' Sniper controlling the keyhole from afar, and the possession of Laser by Stembo, Master Theory took solid control of the match, gaining almost two kills for every one from the Halocharts squad. Master Theory's air support regimen flew confidently onto the HC40A squad to attempt to score the kills even faster, forcing TsengMao to eventually become gunned down and Audley to retreat. As the clock wound down, the deathmatch score read 91-55. The hornet duo combined for 36 assists, displaying the value of a little bit of air support.

Up next, a return to the box canyon, with the objective of scoring the opponents' flag. Valhalla Multi-Flag.

The game opened in traditional fashion, a bloody battle at the top of the hill, both sides charging for the Ark of the SPARTAN program, the Laser. Despite heavy casualties on both sides, Pie secured the laser for Master Theory, pulling it back to territory 4.

The two teams continued to fight for control of the hill, understanding its tactical merit. Some time after the second laser spawned, Master Theory cleared the hill with the warthog duo of Audley and Rob, using the opportunity presented by its vacancy to take a foothold of the hill it wouldn't soon relinquish. Despite not controlling the hill, HC40A tightened up and would not concede ground at Watercave or their waterfall ledge.

Unfortunately for HC40A, their more defensive position gave way for Master Theory to finally get a Banshee up in the hands of Stembo, who used it to pick at HC40A's defenses. After 15 minutes, Anubis finally broke through their defenses long enough to get the flag into the man cannon, where he eventually finished off the flag run.

A few minutes later, Achronos disloged a second flag in an attempt to increase the score, but HC40A charged the hill guns a-blazin' to ensure the score did not pass 1-0. Time expired with HaloCharts sending everything they had in a last-ditch effort to score, but none could break Master Theory's heavy wall of defenses.

With a 2-0 series lead, the teams decided Standoff Slayer would be the next battleground, pre-empting the choices of Sandbox Flag and Neutral Assault on Rat's Nest.

And so the battle went.

Master Theory opened Standoff with precise movement, neutralizing the Warthog, the Invis, and the entire left side of the HC40A base. Under heavy suppression, HC40A was forced to forfeit an attempt for the laser, allowing Master Theory to secure it easily.

With laser in hand, Master Theory's driver of choice, nhd drove Cloud in true BTB fashion, focusing on keeping the Warthog alive, and keeping bullets in anyone brave enough to show their faces.

The infantry of Master Theory took control of HC40A's left flank, at their Brute Shot and their BR Rock, keeping the HaloCharts team with only three choices of destination, their rockets, their Invis, or their base. Any attempts to venture elsewhere met with a deadly combination of Warthog suppressive fire and BR clean-up fire for the majority of the battle.

After nearly six minutes of driving, nhd and Cloud's duo ran out of gas, and the Warthog was neutralized. Master Theory didn't give up their control, however, and continued the slaughter in similar fashion, as TsengMao immediately resecured the Warthog and refueled it with Stembo as his gunner, with nhd and Cloud taking over on foot.

A few minutes later, the dust began to settle as the scoreboard showed 100-48.

Master Theory's camaraderie and focus carried them to a sweep of HC40A's challengers. With the series at 3-0, HC40A deferred the last two gametypes, finishing the series with a slew of Good Games and proverbial handshakes.

Afterward, Master Theory's challenge captain TsengMao dubbed the honors of Co-MVP on Stembo for his 5.0 Kill-to-Death performance and Audley for the tactics that secured Master Theory's gameplan and teamwork.

Hephaestus, Spartan God of the Forge.

2010-08-24T10:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the title's a bit of a stretch this time to get a really horrible pun in. But this episode of Audley Enough will focus on helping you take advantage of one of Reach's biggest improvements from Halo 3: Forge 2.0 and ForgeWorld.

Map design is a tricky business. The smallest hitch in an otherwise well-designed map can ruin its ability to be played effectively, but today I'm going to be ranting on a few of the missteps map makers may have in their attempt to assemble an awesome map. You won't become a master forger by reading this, but it may offer a few thoughts that help you rethink your design and improve your map.

First, let's talk about Lines of Sight, and breaking them. There are four basic degrees through which you can break lines of sight. The first is through the main geometry of your map. Walls, partitions, blocks, and the like will always serve to separate your players' abilities to shoot at one another. Every map you'll ever make will establish its main lines of sight through the design you give your walls, bridges, floors, ceilings, walkways, and caves. Once you get those established, it's time for the less prominent, but even more important ways to block lines of sight.

Up next is natural cover, or geometrical cover. This is still a part of your map's intended geometry, but rather than being intended as just a wall to establish your map's form, these are intended to be used by the player as a form of significant cover. The best example I can give of these are the rocks on Standoff. They block large amounts of sightlines from your opponents, and provide safety from grenades and enemy fire, while allowing you to still fire upon your opponents when you choose to peek out. They are a perfect example of cover that is intentional from a design standpoint.

This leaves us with two more methods of blocking lines of sight. Both of these are pretty similar from the standpoint of appearance, but the functionality given by them is what separates them. The first is often called "lazy cover," but I prefer to simply call it CLUTTER. Clutter are pieces of your map that block lines of sight for very short periods of time, but cannot be used to hide behind, move around your map effectively, or offer any sort of control for the person present there. The latter, although it may be an identical piece of map geometry, are what I call Micro-Breakers. A Micro-Breaker is a very small break in your line of sight (or a very small opening in an otherwise blocked line of sight) that allows higher skilled players to micromanage the sightline in order to use effectively.

Clutter is very rarely a good thing to have on your map. It should never be added prior to play-testing your map -- if you end up needing it, don't fret. Sometimes areas of your map ARE too open and need some form of brief respite such as a small rock you can fit behind. But when it comes to clutter, remember that LESS is MORE. If you've got an area of your map that needed clutter to be safe, chances are you're not really expecting your players to be going there often anyway. A map with an example of excessive clutter is the BTB map/Sandbox variant Vindictive. The Brute Towers, the tunnels, the Crow's Nest, and the pillars on top of the base are all examples of clutter. They block lines of sight, but offer very little safety for players trying to pass through that area of the map.

On the other hand, Micro-Breakers are a great thing to have on your map. The Pit and Narrows are two maps that show a great amount of Micro-Breakers, from the yellow padding, to the holes in the partition walls, to the slots on the ceiling of sword room in the Pit, and the different holes and openings littered all around Narrows that allow highly aware players to see positions newer or less-skilled players wouldn't bother to use. Micro-Breakers help your map to establish a skill gap, which is absolutely great if you wish your map to garner competitive merit.

Our next topic is elevation. We all know map flow is important. That's a given. One way to improve your map's flow is to improve the variation of elevation. Especially as we move into Halo Reach, where you'll have to keep the Jetpack in mind (assuming you allow default loadouts), elevation is key.

One mistake newer forgers tend to make is to follow a three-tiered elevation scheme: "Floor, One Block, Two Block." While this can work out for a very basic design, it's not creative and eventually the gameplay becomes very predictable.

There are a few ways to alleviate this. The most elementary of these, throw in a height of half-block! Ha! That'll show those critics...right? Well, maybe.

Another way to improve your height variations is to offer alternate passages between areas where "2 Block" meets "1 Block." For example, you could have a slow grade (slope) leading up behind 2 Block, while you have a series of jumps, or a lift on the other side (more exposed), that allows the player to scale straight up. (See: Pit Sniper Tower)

Keep in mind that your entire map doesn't have to be flat. I'm not saying go crazy and make nothing flat, because that would be a profoundly annoying map to play on, but remember that slopes are a way to offer varied elevation, and with Halo Reach's "Fixed" and "Phased" options of placement geometry as well as the ability to turn things one degree of one unit at a time, being able to make hills and ramps out of pieces that aren't hills and ramps will be much easier. Take advantage of this. Angle your tunnel so it comes out in a way that puts the person coming out of it slightly higher than those who came into it. Now you've got a map of Floor, One Block, 1.15 Block, and 2 Block! It's variety, it's depth. It's a start.

As a final note on this subject, remember what I said about Micro-Breakers? They can be applied to elevations as well. As I mentioned the Pit's yellow pads, little subtle ledges that can be jumped on for slight advantages are a great way to add temporary elevation to higher-level play on your map. Little columns that can be jumped off of to traverse from one elevated portion of your map to another are also great, and can add even more of a skill gap to competitive play on your map.

To avoid writing a novel on general map design, I'm going to limit myself to one last topic before I wrap this entry up: Symmetry versus Asymmetry.

Symmetrical maps are ALMOST ALWAYS better for establishing balance from the start to the finish of your map. That doesn't mean you cannot make an asymmetrical map that is fair to both teams. There are four general types of maps, in regards to symmetry:

1) Totally Symmetrical: One side of the map is either a copy of the other side, or a mirrored image of the other side. Narrows, Pit, Midship, Warlock...all of these maps are symmetrical maps all the way to their core. Whether your map is symmetrical four-ways, two-ways, or flipped-symmetry (like Citadel), a totally symmetrical map offers the exact same opportunities to both sides starting the game.

2) Functionally Symmetrical: The two sides are...almost...the same. They work out pretty the same for both teams under most circumstances, but they're not EXACTLY identical. Standoff is an example of a map like this. The differences between the sides aren't enough to affect the two teams' playstyles. The only real differences in a Functionally Symmetrical map are aesthetics.

3) Mostly Symmetrical: The two sides have the same general features, but the different geometry forces teams to have to play their side differently. Valhalla in Halo 3 is the prime example of this type of map. Beach side needs Pelican to retake the hill, while Waterfall side needs Turret to retake the hill. Mostly Symmetrical maps tend to have equal opportunities for the START of the map, but begin to differ once the initial rushes have played out. MLG's Construct also falls in this category.

4) Totally Asymmetrical: No form of symmetry at all in terms of geometry or starting positioning. It is almost NEVER okay to have two-sided objective gametypes on these maps, but properly designed asymmetrical maps can work beautifully for Slayer, Oddball, or King of the Hill, as well as one-sided objective gametypes.

The important thing to keep in mind when making an Asymmetrical Map (for anything except One-Sided objectives) is to offer relatively balanced opportunities off the opening of the game, as well as equal opportunities for control and safe spawning throughout the game.

This doesn't mean "Red Player A" and "Blue Player B" both have to have perfectly equal travel times to the power positions or power weapons. In fact, that's not a requirement at all. What IS a requirement, however, is that if Player A can get to a power position faster than Player B, that Player B has at least one potential counter to player A rushing that position, whether it be a good sightline on the exposed pathway leading there, or an easier way to obtain a power weapon such as Sniper to attempt to Snipe Player A out of the power position. Likewise, since Player B is given easy access to a Sniper, Player A would have to have some way to harass Player B (such as an accessible DMR from the power position) in order to keep the two positions balanced, and allow the better player to come out on top.

It's important to remember on asymmetrical maps that power positions and power weapons should never be contiguous unless being in that power position is highly exposed and dangerous. Don't place your Sniper Rifle at the top of a tower at the highest point of the map with a ton of cover. Don't place your Rockets on a top middle platform with clear sightlines on everyone on the bottom of the map.

Make sure that there's not only one area of interest on the map when forging an Asymmetrical map. You don't want both teams sending everyone they have to a single location, leading to a clusterfuck off the start. The more paths and choices that can be made from the start, the more that players who display intelligent decision making can shine.

That should wrap up today's entry. I tried to keep it short, because as I said, a novel could be written on Map Design that still wouldn't cover enough to ensure every map ever designed was good. But hopefully, you've read the topics I've covered today and thought, "Audley Enough, he's right! Clutter DOES suck...and I need to add more areas that skilled players can take advantage of, even if casual players would just ignore them!"

Be sure to tune in next time, where I'll talk about [insert future subject here.] That's right, Audley Enough, I still don't know what I'm doing here.

Oh, P.S., if you wish this had pictures to go with it, too bad. I'm a writer. If you want someone to spruce these articles up with illustrations, send all hate messages to Anubis x MT.

Communication: The Difference between "A Beast" and "The Best"

2010-08-15T17:05:00.000-07:00

If you were to ask someone to define what they considered to be a good Halo player, most people would begin by thinking of tangible, measureable details. High kill-to-death ratio and usage of power weapons are certainly important stats to strive for. Some people may venture to less flashy stats, but still attributes trackable by stats, like objective scoring, wheelmen, assists, even map positioning.

All of the above stats are important toward helping your team win, as well as being a good player. A player with a high KpD ratio, a lot of assists, and excellent map positioning is often referred to as a "beast" colloquially. And they deserve the title. You unleash them in a direction on the map and they're sure to kill what you need them to.

But when it comes to truly being a great player, wise Halo'ers know there is one more feature you must have. Communication.

Now, often you'll find some really solid slayers that can kill anything that comes their way, but they won't tell you when something bad happens to them, or if they see a power weapon they need help getting. So you're probably thinking, "Yeah, if (x) made call-outs, they'd be the best player ever!"

Call-outs are great. They help your team know what they're up against, or at least what you're up against. They let your team know what happened to that laser you had on your back when you died, that no one would've known you had if you hadn't called it out. They help your team finish off the guy with no shields who botched a push and tried to escape.

Some of the players in the "beast" category make call-outs, but they're still not communicating at the level that will really show they've mastered the game. Even if you make constant call-outs of enemy current locations, you're still missing some of the other important information that needs to be spoken throughout the game.

The first of these is enemy spawns. This is a small branch of call-outs that are made before the enemy is actually there. On maps like Sandtrap, Sandbox, or Standoff, knowing where your enemy is going to spawn before they do so helps any vehicles you have get into position to stop them. On Valhalla, knowing when the enemy is going to spawn close to the hill can allow your team to be more aggressive and leave less people on the hill to control it. In MLG, it can help you set up to run a flag with as little resistance as possible.

The second facet of communication is vehicle and power-up timing. Enemy banshee down? Okay, when did it die? 16:20ish...or maybe 16:10? Aha! You weren't paying attention were you? You just cost your team a shot at stealing that Banshee the second it spawns next time. Vehicles are relatively easy to time in Halo 3, because the moment they EXPLODE (or de-spawn, if they were left alone, or fell of the map and didn't explode) is the moment their spawn timer starts. Banshees are always on three minute timers, as are hornets. And Warthogs are usually sitting on a 60 second timer on the maps where they're important. Most players know these, and time them when it's pertinent. Since power-ups always respawn at a specific interval after they're picked up (Most of these are 3 minutes), they belong with vehicle timers.

Now, we've covered the two basics that are relatively easy to keep track of. Now let's move into what separates those who call out from those who truly communicate.

The next part of communication relies entirely on ally positioning. A beast positions himself well to get a lot of kills. The best position themselves and their teammates in ways that they can constantly cover one another. Quotes like "I have your help!" or "I'm going -here-, you go -there-" or "Fall back, stay alive" to help a teammate out all go a long way toward helping your entire team. Without suggestions from one another within a game, players tend to fall back on an individualist approach to the game, and unless your team has perfect chemistry, this can mean conflicting playstyles are going to clash. Helping to keep your nearest teammates in position to help you or vice versa separates someone who calls out from someone who communicates.

After that, we have weapon timers. In MLG settings, weapon timers are usually pretty easy to keep track of -- they spawn at specific times over the course of the match. However, in regular Halo 3 settings, the weapon timers operate on a much more convoluted, confusing system that Bungie applied to the game to attempt to keep the more hardcore players from learning the system and gaming it versus weaker players.

A few extremely dedicated Halo 3 players figured the system out (along with MLG's "dirty" weapon timer problem), and a handful of others have received the shared wisdom. Based on my experience, I've seen very few people who actually know and take advantage of this system. Because of this, those that do know how weapon spawns work have an even greater advantage. Keeping track of weapon timers requires you to be aware not only of the actual timer of the weapon, but other factors ranging from enemy's movements, allied deaths, or whether the weapon was dropped just to even begin to track when it will respawn next.

In MLG, weapons are sometimes picked up in a manner that causes them to take on Halo 3's default weapon timer system -- a process called "Dirtying" by most players. Being able to track dirtied weapon timers is a valuable trait in an MLG team's fifth man, the Coach (a player on a team who is literally just there to communicate).

Being able to properly track weapon timers and relay the information to your team is a hard to understate trait. Rather than your team expecting the laser on Standoff to be up "some time after 16:30" when the first laser was picked up at 19:30, imagine knowing "The next laser will be up at 16:13." It frees up at least one of your players from having to keep an eye on that general area, to allow them to move around until the weapon spawns, then pounce on the fresh ammo.

We've established that a player who tells you there's a guy at your Rockets is better than a player who just died with laser at your rockets, and now we've gone over why a player who can track weapon timers and keep your team's movements all on the same page is a step up from the player who can tell you that one dude at Rockets isn't there anymore, now that he's respawned. After all, if you had someone making sure your laser person at Rockets was covered, the guy at rockets killing him would've died before the call-out was needed, possibly even in time to save your laser person.

However, we're still missing one thing. Undoubtedly, from a playing perspective, a player who can slay with the best of them, and transmit all this collected data I've discussed is an amazing player. But to truly be the best, there is one more characteristic of their communication they must possess.

No matter how seriously you take the game, no matter how competitive the game is, and no matter how tense things get with your teammates, remember one thing: it's still just a game.

The best Halo player will always keep that in mind, and keep his (or her) teammate's spirits up. Whether it be through random encouragement for good plays, random jokes throughout the game during lulls in need for call-outs and communication, keeping quiet when he wants to express frustration, or pointing out the ridiculous antics a teammate/opponent is doing, our Communicating Best will remember he (or she) is just playing a game, and the goal should ultimately be to have fun, and relax.

And Audley Enough, sometimes I have to remind myself of the last one. Fortunately, here at Master Theory, I've got a group of those who have mastered that last portion of communication, and can remind me when I need to just have a laugh instead of a groan, or need to mute myself instead of shout.

If you made it through to the end of this inaugural Audley Enough article, I'll go ahead and promise you that not all of them will end with as sappy a tone as this one. I'm not always fun and games. And I know this one went through a lot of stating the obvious. It was just a message bearing on my mind today, as I found myself thinking on who may be the best players in Halo 3. Next time, we may get into some nittier and grittier details on whatever grinds my gea--err, I mean... whatever I find to be, Audley Enough, important.