Ambiguous Revelation: The Dangers of Uncertain Exposure

It's been a while since I've worked on any Audley Enough stuff. But today, while reading a Reddit post distressing over the lack of power supports have in League of Legends these days due to repeated nerfs to vision control over the last few seasons... I thought it was about time I talked about a subject that's been weighing on me for a few weeks now.

That subject is what I'm labeling Ambiguous Revelation...and it's a very bad thing to have in competitive games centered around imperfect information.

When I say Ambiguous Revelation, I specifically mean, “When you give away information to the enemy, but cannot be sure if you've given away that information.”

Because imperfect information games are focused on reacting to what information you have and attempting to control what information you give away to your opponent, it's imperative to be able to determine what that information is.

Since League of Legends is the game that triggered this blog for me, I'll start with talking about its Sight Wards. And it's not the first time I've referred to invisible wards as bad game design. Hell, Ghostcrawler himself has mentioned he thinks LoL's current state of vision control is the opposite of fun (which, while I agree, I feel his approach to changing that is heavy-handed and ignores the fact that some players actually enjoy playing intelligently rather than playing to win via execution.)

Stealthed Sight Wards have a few problems:

• They have very little interactivity on their own, and are a great example of power without gameplay. Riot hate auras in League of Legends because it's hard to see how much power you're giving with them. Vision is similar.
• They have very poor Counterplay. While generally, you can sweep them or kill them with pinks if you know where they are...champions without an AA reset cannot kill them on their own upon them being placed, nor can you kill them if you don't already know where they are.
• They are not good for Clarity. Riot have alleviated this slightly with how trinket wards work in this season with the “ward debris” system for showing where wards WERE placed, but while a ward is stealthed and doing its job, there's almost no way to tell if you have been revealed.

Of course, the last point isn't true around lanes at the highest level of play – you can observe the opponent in that lane for behavioral changes to gauge where a ward was or wasn't placed. It leads to a level of Yomi layering where the player may feign ignorance and buy time for his teammates to make a counterplay.

But when you do not already have vision of nearby players, then you cannot be sure whether or not you are giving information to the enemy team...and in this case, the best option is to err on the side of caution and assume you WOULD be giving away information, thus electing not to go there.

Ambiguous Revelation hits an extreme in high level games of Halo, when the Motion Tracker is enabled. The Motion Tracker is similar to a radar in that it reveals nearby players, but it only does so if they are moving full speed or shooting.

If you are standing still or crouching, you do not show up on the Motion Tracker, and this is an enormous problem for competitive play. If you approach a high traffic area at full speed, and an enemy is hiding around the corner, they know you are coming, but you have no idea that they are there, nor that they know you are coming. It's a Revelation to the opponent that is unclear to you. Because of this, the “correct” play when ever approaching trafficked areas alone is to instead play it extremely slowly and crouch with your best CQB option ready. If they aren't there, you've wasted time and bored yourself with crouching. If they are there, you've got your spray and pray ready for combat.

It leads to really slow, dull gameplay.

While MLG had control of Halo, they left the Motion Tracker disabled to avoid this issue of Ambiguous Revelatiton in lieu of preventing the sharing of free information at all, leaving it up to the players at the highest level to figure out the information on their own through awareness and communication.

Let's say hypothetically 343 insist we need to keep some form of radar, for the sake of casual audience. There are a few approaches they could take to erase Ambiguous Revelation while keeping the flow of information in similar circumstances.

1. Make the Motion Tracker flash/change colors when you have been revealed on another player's Motion Tracker. Do NOT reveal the location of the player who detected you.
   1. This change alerts you that you have been detected, removing the Ambiguity of the Revelation, but still puts the advantage in the hands of the opponent, as they know your exact location, while you only know that you are in range of the person.
2. Convert the Motion Tracker to a full-blown Radar, revealing all players as long as they are in range of you.
   1. This change puts the advantage in the hands of the aggressor, giving them free information just for moving around the map. A player constantly moving can spot immobile enemies, even without actually getting them in their sights.
3. Convert the Motion Tracker into a “spotter” system – If a player is shooting, they show up. They don't need to know whether or not they are near an enemy player, because by shooting they are giving up SOUND that fills the entire map, ensuring they know enemies know their location. If a player is BEING SHOT (in the cross-hairs of an enemy AND taking damage), they show up. Again, they know their location is compromised. Moving or making local sounds (thrust, sprint) would not reveal you, as these sounds are too close range to be certain you are revealed. With this system, the range could be greatly increased without much effect on gameplay (and it actually reduces the advantage players with better sound equipment have over their broke peers).

Those are just a few alternatives off the top of my head, all of which would improve how the game plays at the competitive level versus the currently enabled Motion Tracker in Halo 5 – a full-blown radar, although noobish and “unfair” would have less negative effects on the outcome of gameplay, as players would instead be encouraged to keep moving rather than to stop and sit still, autos primed.

Because not knowing whether your opponent knows where you are or not leads to assuming they'll find out if you play as though they don't. Which leads to playing more cautiously. Which leads to immobile, stale gameplay.

Back on the subject of League of Legends, how do you reconcile this with invisible wards?

DotA2 has quite an interesting answer to that, with its inclusion of Smoke of Deceit. Smoke of Deceit stealths you and all nearby allies for a moderate duration, but attacking or moving within a specific range of enemy units will break your stealth. It's literally a tool to grant you and your team the ability not to be seen by regular wards. In many games of DotA, you will see teams purchase Smoke and make aggressive plays, knowing with absolute certainty they are undetected until they are upon their target. Because they are unambigulous unrevealed, they are able to make this play. Of course, if your game is League of Legends, there's one player on the team who EVERY GAME relies on being unrevealed as long as possible to exert the most pressure on the map...and because of that, vision needs to at least be able to detect people consistently.

Being revealed by abilities in League of Legends, whether Hawkshot, Traps, or various skillshots always give an icon of two eyes on the player, showing them they have been spotted.

One potential way to handle Warding is to drastically reduce the vision radius of wards but make them untargetable – similar to how the Scuttle Crab's shrine works. This would grant counterplay to players who have detected them, as they could move around them. In the case of Wards being placed in brush, after spotting the ward once, players could know how to avoid being spotted as they pass back by that brush a second time.

Another method would be to replace Wards with items that work similarly to Nidalee Traps...granting only an immediate burst of vision on their own, but then simply resting dormant until triggered by an enemy walking directly over them. Again, enemies can avoid the detection by simply moving away from them and taking a different route, but if they happened to trigger them, they know they have been detected and know their options for decisions based off that detection. They are not limited by anticipation of whether they have been detected, and can make smarter decisions based off confirmed information.

In both of these cases, players don't have to fear they have been detected without their knowledge, greatly increasing the amount of aggressive decision-making they are allowed to make, and increasing the interactivity of the game as well as the enjoyment aspect for spectators who don't wish to observe a golf match.

By improving the clarity of whether or not a player is detected, players have less reason to play scared or overly cautious due to inability to valuate their potential – and improves the ability for a player to valuate based off facts, rather than assumptions, and thus improves the health of the game as a whole at its top level of play.

Turning back to Halo momentarily, there are some options that could be explored WITHOUT removing the Motion Tracker in its current incarnation, by modifying one part of the Halo sandbox, its grenades. Most modern shooters include smoke grenades, flash bangs, et cetera to empower teams to push through choke points without being gunned down systematically.

Halo's Frag Grenades could be given a smoking component (Halo 2's actually had that) to enable you to get around a corner unseen (though detected), while its Plasma Grenades could act as a flash bang (they do distort vision in Halo 5), stunning players who look directly into the exploding sun. Splinter Grenades could revert to Pulse Grenades, and send out a radar pulse as they detonate, revealing players on motion tracker if they are nearby its explosion. Each of these would encourage players to grenade around corners before rushing and enable them to have counterplay for corner-crouchers...without actually requiring the removal of the casual playerbase's crutch.

That concludes my discussion about Ambiguous Revelation – I think it's a subject for much debate, but personally I feel it brings more negatives than positives when it comes to how it affects high level competitive play...and should be avoided wherever possible.

Awareness: Seeing the Big Picture

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.