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.

Calling the Shots Part 4 – Taking Rounds

We've talked victory conditions and knowing your limits, and even a bit on when it's okay to just go crazy. Today, I'm going to talk about how to allocate resources.

In some team environments, one player determines who gets what resource over the course of a game. In others, it's simply first come, first serve. Maybe it depends on the situation. Maybe it depends on the victory conditions. But regardless, knowing what qualifies as a resource and how to determine who gets it is an important aspect of shot-calling.

Since the majority of my audience are Halo players, I'll address the context of resources in Halo first.

What are the resources in Halo?

If you're playing along at home, your first reaction was probably “POWER WEAPONS!” And congratulations, you got the #1 answer on the board. But power weapons aren't the only resource in Halo.

Map objectives are another obvious resource. Whether it's Oddball, Hill time, the Flag, the Bomb. Someone says “Hey, take hill.” He's allocating a resource.

But from there, what qualifies as a resource becomes a lot more subtle. I'll make a bulleted list.

• Power Weapons
• Objectives
• Power Positions
  • What? How can a position be a resource!? Power positions are important areas of the map which offer escape routes, sightlines, and combat advantages. But you don't want everyone to be in the power positions. Some players have to keep moving, pushing for objective, cutting off pushes, flushing out players, et cetera. Determining who gets to stay in the power position is allocating a resource.
• Help
  • Other players responding to your call-outs, pushing behind you, or watching your sightlines are a resource. Your teammates are a resource. Who they decide to work with on a moment-to-moment basis determines who receives that resource.
  • As an example of a team that uses this, listen to Towey coach Evil Geniuses. Often, he will tell a player who has just spawned to “Go help x” – he's allocating the resource for the team and ensuring a player isn't left stranded on the enemy side.
• Communication
  • Even call-outs are a resource. Because it's hard to hear when players talk over one another, it's important to make sure communication is streamlined. A player on the opposite side of the map from teammates should not be trying to talk over those who need to communicate their plans to work together (unless it is pertinent information to those three.) An isolated player making callouts of players his teammates have no possible way to see is flooding a resource, giving information that isn't valuable or useful.
• Ammo
  • Apart from literally being a resource for your guns, ammo is a resource that sometimes has to be discussed among the team. In stalemate situations (especially H2A's Lockdown TS), a player with a Sniper may not need their Battle Rifle ammo, while his teammates need it for trading or creating shield advantages to set up a push. Allocating weapon ammo among teammates to ensure everyone is combat capable can be the difference between winning or losing a stalemate situation's resolution.

As you can see, there are actually several resources in Halo that need to be split up among the team. Knowing who needs to receive what resource at what time, or who should forego a resource to do something else (such as pushing up and letting the next player to spawn grab a power weapon on your side), are key to shot-calling toward victory.

What are the resources in LoL?

In League of Legends, there are even more resources to track. Many are less nuanced than in Halo, so I'll keep my bulleted list a bit more concise:

• Gold (minion waves, tower gold, assists)
• Experience (minion waves)
• Farm (jungle)
• Ganks (or pressure from a teammate's presence in general)
• Vision (where your wards are)
• Vision denial (where you clear enemy wards, who gets the ward kill)
• Summoner spells (how many do you expend for a kill)
• Abilities (especially ults, how many do you expend for a kill / to save someone / who do you use them on in a team fight)
• Buffs (red/blue/abilities)
• Globals (TP pressure, global range ultimate pressure)
• Wave control (what waves you set up to slow push, what waves you just flash farm)

Much of LoL strategy revolves around power spikes and funneling farm into specific players. Whether it's to get them to their power spike sooner, or to get them into a state to counter an enemy power spike, you want to make sure farm goes where it's needed. Experience comes with farm. Who do you try to make sure stays ahead in levels? Do you sacrifice EXP on your support/jungler and rely on team fights / skirmishes to catapult them back with the catch-up mechanics of the game?

Ganks and jungle pressure can determine the outcome of a lane. Determining who gets said ganks may depend on champion match-up, skill match-up, or the opponent's priorities. As a shotcaller, you have to know who needs pressure when.

Expending too many summoner spells (or long cooldown ultimates) for a gank can leave you vulnerable for a long period of time. If you're planning a gank 90 seconds before Dragon, do you all flash to finish the kill and the moderate gold spike? Or, do you let him live, knowing you'll need those flashes for the potential team fight at Dragon? Those flashes could mean a tower kill. Or, if you're out of sync with the team, one flash could mean the play gets turned around. Before the play is made, the shotcaller should make it clear if you're burning summoners and ultimates or not.

Vision needs to be rotated depending on your current focus on the map. Pink wards are not meant to stay in the same place all game. They need to be moved to ensure zones of denial or longer lasting vision. Deep wards need to be placed to know what's coming in a situation. Sometimes, placing deep wards can be risky and requires the escort of your jungler as a support to get the wards down. (Note KT Rolster, or last season's Samsung White often having Score+Piccaboo or Dandy+Mata respectively synchronizing their backs and duo-invading early on to ensure they can get wards down together.)

In both games, it's important to be able to identify your resources and determine where they need to go. A good shotcaller must gauge who needs what when.

If you're struggling to determine how to allocate resources, ask yourself some questions when faced with a decision:

• What are the victory conditions right now?
• Who is important to fuel our path to victory?
• Who is closest to the resource?
  • Do they need it?
• Will we lose anything if x goes for this resource?
  • Is it worth it?
  • Who else could take it instead?
• Are we transparent in our resource allocation?
  • Can/Will our opponents try to counter it?
• Can we deny our opponents' resources?
• X doesn't have the resources they should, do we sacrifice them and put resources elsewhere?
  • Or do we sacrifice elsewhere to put resources on them?
  • Which path is safer?

Obviously you can't ask yourself these questions each and every time a decision arrives. These are just an exercise to improve. As you improve, you'll find yourself giving better valuation and distribution naturally. As you begin to efficiently distribute resources in a game, you will find yourself with more advantages and leads to press in a game.

That's all for this relatively short bit. Part 5 will be a bit delayed, but I'll discuss how to identify less apparent advantages in order to determine when you have a lead or the ability to create a lead out of a mismatch.

Scrupulous Scrutiny: Improving your Self-Analysis in Reviewing Replays

So, you think you're pretty good at video games, huh? But you admit you're not the best. You know you make mistakes. You're humble enough to go back and watch replays of your gameplay to look for areas to improve. That's a good sign of a player who's going to improve. But what about when that VoD review doesn't seem to be helping you find what you're doing wrong? What if you think everything you're doing was right?

How do you approach VoD review in a way that ensures you're improving either the understanding of your mistakes or your understanding of the game?

I'm glad I asked!

If you're finding yourself unable to improve or find mistakes from reviewing your own gameplay, chances are you're not asking the right questions as you go through and watch. If you're not asking questions at all, well... I guess we found out why you're not improving.

Question everything. From everything you've done, to everything you see your opponent do, to everything your teammates do, to whatever's going on within the context of the rest of the game.

The most important question to ask when looking to improve:

Why did I do this?

If you can't understand why you did something, chances are high that it was a mistake. If you can't explain why you did something, you may need to explore the situation further. One thing to note, no matter how skilled you are at a game, the ability to understand something and to explain the same thing do not come hand in hand. Verbalizing instances is a separate skill and not always a necessary one for competitive gamers. (I refer to this mental iceberg often...) 

So, you've run into something you can't explain, but you're pretty sure you had a good reason for doing it. What do you do?

Pause the film. Ask, What are my options at this moment?

Before you answer the question, take a look at EVERY possible bit of information you can ingest. Don't answer based off whatever information you had at the time you made the decision to begin with. As you go, make a list of EVERY possible bit of information you can.

Take note of

• enemy positions
• ally positions
• your own position
• Weapons/Cooldowns/Abilities the enemy has available
• Weapons/Cooldowns/Abilities your allies have available
• Weapons/Cooldowns/Abilities you have available
• Major objectives that are immediately relevant
• Major objectives that may become relevant as the situation resolves
• Major objectives that may become relevant after the situation resolves
• Which players are reacting to the situation first
• Which players seem oblivious to the situation

Now that you've taken in all of the above information, do you have a good idea of the number of options you have available? If not, let's make a short list of generic choices...

• ATTACK THAT POOR BASTARD!
• Run away! HE SKERRY! Don't let him start a fight!
• HE SKERRY! HE STARTED DA FITE! Disengage!
• Move to help teammate
• Move too save teammate
• Sacrifice yourself for teammate
• Attempt to keep enemy from interfering outright
• Stall an enemy from interfering
• Isolate an enemy, then engage
• Feign a fight, then back off into help from teammates
• Pressure an objective somewhere else to try to deter the enemy from their current objective
• Trade an objective somewhere else for enemy's current objective
• Stall an enemy from their objective while your ally trades/takes more somewhere else.

These are just a few generic options that apply cross-genre. Evaluate how many of these options you have for the situation you haven't quite solved yet. For each time you're involved in engaging with the opponent (whether offensively or defensively), list the options you have for how to engage or disengage or stall for time for a teammate to help. Take note of which player is likely to get help first. Check all of the weapons or abilities you may use. Figure out which order of use gives the least windows for your opponent to react.

Throughout this process, you may often find you had options you didn't consider in the heat of the moment. Some of these options may be less optimal. Others may be much more optimal. Regardless, this analysis is a GOOD thing. It increases the amount of options weighing inside the intuitive mind during the game (Audley shut the fuck up about the fucking iceberg I get it okay?). Evaluating the effectiveness of the options while looking at the game analytically rather than while playing it increases your chances of making the right choice the next time.

But in the mean time... did you figure out why you made the decision in the first place?

No?

It's time to ask another question: What information did I miss?

No, not in your above evaluation. Now it's time to re-frame the situation from the whole picture you're currently looking at, back into the heat of the moment. When you made the decision, what information did you already have? Look carefully at what's going on. Did you see everything the first time? Look again. Did you notice any information you had access to that you may have missed before making the decision?

If everything seems to be in order and all the information you acted upon is there, then you ask the next question:

What assumptions did I make?

Because in most cases, you won't have full information when you're making the decision, you have to fill in the blanks. Whether you're doing this consciously or not, you're making assumptions about the state of other players. (If you don't believe me, think back to the last time you asked “WHY THE FUCK IS x HERE?” in a fit of rage after dying to something unexpected. Yep, you assumed he would be playing differently.)

Compare your assumptions to the big picture / full information scenario. Were they correct? Were they wrong? SHOULD they have been correct (was someone else playing sub-optimally or better than you understood)?

Assumptions are not a bad thing to make in games, but they should definitely be taken lightly. If you act on an incorrect assumption, you're making a low percentage play. I mentioned in Part 2 of my shotcalling blog that you should almost always assume your opponent is going to play correctly / make the best decisions. If something smells like bait, it probably is. If you're blind to an objective being taken, but it's the right decision to take or bait that objective, that's probably what's going on.

Unlike your opponents however, it's often wise to assume your teammates (especially in solo queue) are going to make the wrong play / a bad decision. This is why communication is important, whether you communicate through typing, pings, or just saying “Hey follow what I do and we'll win.” – if you're in a situation where voice chat is able to be done, explain what you're intending to do in order to avoid your teammates having to assume what you will do, as well as to avoid assuming what your teammates will do (assuming you all talk in terms of intentions.)

By this point, you should have gotten an idea of why you made the decision in the first place (and if not, you may be fucked beyond all hope, or may just need to ask someone better than you for help.)

But, along the way, you may have discovered some better options that you could have done. So let's backtrack to the “What are my options?” and ask a second question: How did my opponent react to my decision?

If they reacted aggressively, there's a good chance they had some information you were not accounting for (or they made an assumption they were stronger in the moment.) If they reacted passively, they made the assessment or assumption that you were the stronger force in the instance. You can gloss over your opponent's options/assumptions to try to better understand why your opponent reacted the way they did, but often times their initial reaction gives plenty of information about their self-perceived state.

While still focusing on your opponent's reaction, there's one more question to ask. Regardless of their reaction (which, as I said is a decent barometer for how they expected the situation to play out), ask How could I have altered his perceptions?

If you were attempting to bait your opponent into making a bad decision, but he reacted passively, did he have information that could have been denied? If you were attempting to peacock and he aggressed onto you, did he evaluate you were weaker? Did he underestimate you? Overestimate?

I assume you're reading this because you're doing part of a team game. So that means you have teammates also making decisions on the fly. So after you've figured out why your opponent reacted the way he did...it's time to ask:

How did my teammates react to my decision?

If there was a teammate nearby you expected to help or join in on the play (or in the case of LoL, across map with teleport you expected to come in) then ask: Who could've helped me? Then ask what their options were. Skim your teammates' nearby opponents' option. Could the opponent have stopped your teammate from helping you? Then chances are you expected too much of your teammate. (Was this a miscommunication or a bad assumption from you?)

Unless your team has some sort of shotcalling schematic set up (which is unlikely in the case you're self-reviewing to improve your solo queue gameplay), then chances are you're operating off assumptions and your teammates are making decisions based off reactions rather than cohesive plans made ahead of time. If your expectations of a teammate are at odds with how your teammate actually reacted, either your communication needs improved, or one of you made a mistake.

Take on your teammate's perspective of your play for a moment. If roles were reversed, what would you have expected your teammate to do?

By now you have a very clear picture of why you did what you did. And along the way, you may have found a few areas where your expectations of the situation didn't match up with how it actually played out.

Now let's frame the situation a little more by asking another question:

How did I get in this situation in the first place?

Oftentimes when you're in a position to make a mistake, you often made other decisions on the way there. Granted, if you're asking “Why did I do this?” over every step of the way, you'll already have this question answered. But in laying out other options, you may find a way to avoid putting yourself in the position to make the mistake. Ask yourself, What could I have done to avoid this situation?

After acknowledging your potential pre-emptive routes, it's time to look at the other end of the chronological spectrum...the future. How can the result of this situation play out?

Consider options both good and bad; proactive, reactive, aggressive, passive, whether you're trying to catch up or get further ahead. Pick what you think the best decision is from the current situation. Resume your video.

Did you make the decision you expected to be the correct one?

You didn't? What did you do? Well now... it's time to ask yourself...

1. Why did I do this?
   1. What are my options at the moment?
      1. What aggressive options do I have?
      2. What passive options do I have?
      3. Did I take the best option?
   2. What information did I miss?
      1. Did I see everything right the first time / in game?
      2. Was there something else I should have seen that I didn't?
   3. What assumptions did I make?
      1. Were my assumptions correct/incorrect?
      2. SHOULD they have been correct?
         1. Did I assume the best of my opponents?
         2. Did I assume the worst of my teammates?
         3. Did I properly communicate my intentions to teammates?
   4. How did my opponent react to my decision?
      1. What were his options?
      2. What were his assumptions?
      3. How could I have altered his perceptions?
         1. Does he have more information than I expected?
         2. Could I have appeared stronger?
         3. Did he mis-evaluate me?
   5. How did my teammates react to my decision?
      1. Who could have helped me?
      2. What were their options?
         1. Did I expect too much of them?
            • Was this a miscommunication or a bad assumption?
         2. What did they expect of me?
2. How did I get in this situation in the first place?
   1. What could I have done to avoid this situation?
3. How can the result of this situation play out?
   1. What is the best decision from here?
      1. Did I make that decision?

Just rinse and repeat this rubric of rhetoric as you review your replays. You will find you better understand your own gameplay, and if you can find where your assumptions, assessments, or expectations are wrong, you can begin to improve your ability to make the right decisions in the future by correcting your approach.

So, happy VoD-hunting, self-reviewing gamer. Hope this helps!

Calling the Shots: Part 2 – Limited Range

Some time last year, I started a multi-part series about shotcalling in competitive gaming, starting with discussing victory conditions. I said I wasn't sure when the next part would come, but I didn't mean to leave you in suspense for 16 months (oops!).

Anyway, it's time to revive the series with the next important part of shotcalling. Apart from knowing what it will take to win a game, there is one more important piece of information: KNOW YOUR LIMITS.

Sorry, Cady, that's just not true.

When you're ahead, you almost always want to get further ahead. You want to put the game out of reach of your opponents. But in order to do that, you need to make sure you don't end up overreaching and making mistakes.

Too many League of Legends games get thrown by a team believing they can stay for the inhibitor and ending up getting aced, losing Baron, losing an ensuing team fight, and consequently the game. Halo games can be thrown over a forced flag run leading to the team all dead and enabling the team to set up a counter cap (RIP every Sanc Flag game ever.) You were too confident in your abilities to make a play that wasn't going to happen, and gave away the game.

But Audley, how do I learn my limits?

Step 1: Play more. Be willing to experiment whenever the stakes are low. You learn limits through practice. Whether that practice is directed practice like scrims or micro drills (practicing CSing in LoL or jumps in Halo), practice helps you learn what you can and can't do. Even if you're playing solo queue, don't be afraid to try new things. You can never know if something has the potential to work unless you try it.

Competitive play revolves around high percentage plays and consistency. Practice does not. Practice is where you not only improve your play, but learn exactly what you can and cannot do.

Part of this is why players with thousands of games on a single champion in LoL tend to be really good at that champion – they know what risks aren't really risks. They've been in the situation before. Their mental iceberg tells them “Hey, we've been here. Do this.” – they know their limits and come away with an individual play that works.

“But Audley, I know my personal limits. How do I learn the limits of the 3-4 other guys on my team?”

I'm glad you asked, Reader. And for that, I point to one of the world's best shot callers ever to grace Summoner's Rift in LoL. Mata, formerly of Samsung White, now on Vici Gaming. Although he's not at Worlds this year, it's pretty hard to say Mata is to fault for Vici's failures. The team played a fantastic cerebral style of play and won games off incredibly smart plays. With MVP / Samsung White, Mata won two seasons of OGN Champions and a World Championship. It was fairly common knowledge Mata was the shotcaller of the team. When he was on point, the team executed as a well-oiled machine. When he was thrown off his game, the team looked like a mess. When White were on point, it was hard to find a player more aware of how to win than Mata.

But there's one fact about Mata most people are unaware of: he had multiple Korean solo queue accounts in Challenger tier. And on each one, he mained a different role. He wasn't a support only player in Solo Queue. He also played Jungle and (I believe?) mid lane extensively. This enables him to know the limits of other lanes on his team. It helps him learn match-ups and the needs of his teammates.

You don't necessarily have to attempt to play other roles to improve as a shotcaller (though, it definitely helps) – at the very least, however, you should try to observe your teammates in practice and discuss their mindset during their games (or while watching replays together).

Ask a few questions such as

• Why did you do that?
• What would happen if you did this...?
• (In the case that he's losing) – What do you need to come back from this?
• (In the case that he's winning) – How do you keep your opponent from coming back?
• How do you deal with pressure in this situation?
• How could pressure be relieved in this situation? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Learn how your teammates think. Learn their limits, or at least the limits of their style of play. Knowing these helps you know what you can get away with.

Other than practice and post-game discussion, there is one other important way to assess your limits, and is key during a game.

Step 2: Get more information. Most competitive games are Imperfect Information games, where you do not know everything that is going on for the other team. Whether hidden in fog of war or simply not visible to your personal camera, knowing what's going on elsewhere is important to knowing what your limits can be.

It's probably not a coincidence Mata is one of the best shotcallers in the world and also one of the supports with the most wards placed. In League of Legends, vision is information. Madlife rose to power known for being one of the first players to time even the most minute of cooldowns of his opponents.

Beyond mini-maps and vision control in LoL, communication is your key to information influx. This applies to any game – especially First Person Shooters. A mistake many make is simply communicating what's going on among enemies. Calling out targets, calling out weapons, et cetera.

If you want to know your limits, you also need to know your teammates' status. In shooters, communication focused on telling your teammates where you are helps them know how soon they could have help or come help, or where their team's gaps in vision or sight line coverage may be. In League of Legends, it may help them know when your important engage abilities will be ready to go.

Whether you're the shotcaller or not, focus on proactive communication. Speak about what you CAN do, or SHOULD do in a situation. It helps the team create a much more clear picture of how to move forward, rather than focusing on what an enemy is capable of. Think in terms of enemy perfect execution, and plan the best way to play against it. Always give your opponents the respect of assuming they will play the game properly.

Silent moments are moments where information isn't being generated. Information should be generated constantly throughout a game. If no one is talking, get the wheels turning by asking questions as the shotcaller. “Can you do this?” “Can we do this?” “Where can we push?” “What [cooldowns/weapons] do you have?” “How close are you to [item/weapon/location]?”

TALK.  TALK MORE.  NEVER STOP TALKING.

You'll never have a complete picture of the game. You must make decisions based off an incompleted jigsaw, or a painting where the colors haven't been blended all the way just yet. Every bit of information your teammates feed to you fill the picture just a little bit more to help you know what call to make, or what calls to avoid as you learn the situation a little bit better.

But regardless, getting into the minds of your teammates in and out of game and objectively assessing yours and their abilities will help you KNOW YOUR LIMITS as a team, and as a result, help you call the shots in a way that reduces mistakes and leads your team to more victories.

I'm not sure when part 3 will come (hopefully it won't be another 16 months ;D) but this series isn't done just yet.

Also, I've added a Paypal Donate link to the main page of my blog. If you enjoy my blogs and would like to see more of them, I encourage you to Donate in order to help me get closer to quitting my day job in fast food to focus on writing and game design. If you can't afford/don't want to donate but still enjoy the blog, PLEASE, comment / tweet / message me and let me know what you enjoy / what you'd like to see more of! I've got a few plans for upcoming entries, and I intend to write more in the upcoming days, but any support you can give me (verbal or monetary) is greatly appreciated!

Audley out.

Competitively, Halo and League of Legends are basically the same game.

Competitively, Halo and League of Legends are basically the same game.

"Okay Audley, you've gone off the fucking deep end. How can a first person shooter with equal starts and a top-down MOBA with 100+ champions be the same game?"

I'm going to start off with extremely generic descriptions, but transition into more complex facets of play that exist in both titles that players may be completely unaware are parallel.

The team is more important than the individual. In both games, it's extremely unlikely one player will single-handedly carry the game. Furthermore, a team of 4/5 players that work together well are more likely to win than a team of 4/5 players that have superior skills, so long as the individual skill gap isn't enough to outweigh the teamwork team's ability to execute at all.

At the start of the game, both games have a generic win condition. Whether it be "Destroy the Nexus" in LoL or whatever the game type in Halo it is you're playing, there is a condition for victory.

On your way to the ultimate victory, there are smaller conditions that must be executed to accrue an advantage to set you up for that victory. In Halo, this is generally related to map control and power weapons. In LoL, it can range from taking towers and Dragons to item powerspikes, to certain level breakpoints that give you a certain skill powerspike.

Depending on your current circumstance, your actual "win condition" may vary wildly. In LoL, some team compositions simply reach a point that they can no longer be fought. Others rely on pressuring advantages early to get a large enough lead to overcome later troughs. Some rely on team fighting, while others rely on avoiding team fighting at all costs. In Halo, your win condition is not always "reach the max score" -- but simply to have a high score than your opponent. Near the end of Oddball games, you may simply try to keep the Oddball in a neutral location to keep the opponents from racking up score while you sit on a lead, rather than try to hold the ball yourself.

Information wins games. Both are imperfect information games, where you know for certain where you are at any given time. LoL gives you a minimap with other areas of revealed vision (allied towers, allied champions, allied wards). Halo gives you icons that show whether your teammate is in combat or not. But neither of these are enough.

You still need to know where your enemies are, whether through warding, pinging or calling out their location. You need to know what weapons or major cooldowns players have available to use, both on your own team and on the enemy team. These bits of information get fed into you through communication in games and empower you to make better decisions on where to go or what sort of plays you can potentially get away with attempting. Aggressive plays while the enemy outnumbers you in an area get punished, but knowing the enemy are concentrated on one side may let you know you can jump out and out-BR the fellow in the rocks (or all-in the enemy top laner and take his tower.)

Each game has lanes, and a blown lane assignment must be compensated elsewhere. Halo's lanes aren't as pronounced as League of Legends, but if you examine the successful competitive maps carefully, there is a general trend of aisles of play with segmented sightlines that force map areas to operate in a nearly linear fashion. On certain maps (Sanc, Pit) if a team takes map control from one “lane”, the best way to offset that is to press your advantage in another lane and “flip” the map to neutralize the bleed caused in one lane. In LoL, you'll often find successful solo queue junglers abandon losing lanes and attempt to snowball lanes that are doing well. Or in competitive LoL, you'll see teams that lose an objective on one side of the map often attempt to mirror the objective on the other side whenever possible.

When you're leading, you want to get further ahead. In LoL, this can mean continuously beating down on your lane opponent, taking objectives, or simply getting wards in the enemy jungle to track his movements so you can continue to execute. It could mean forcing a team fight, or overloading another lane while your opponent tries to catch up in your lane. Snowballs are common and easy to spot in LoL.

In Halo, snowballs come from two things: power weapon control and spawn killing. If you've got a numerical advantage, you push, you take over map control (or grab a power weapon). If you've reached the enemy base, you take their flag (and run it wherever their numbers are going to be weakest once they spawn.) Whenever possible, you kill the people as they respawn to avoid letting them influence whatever play is currently happening. You never drop an empty enemy Sniper in H2A, to keep them from ever seeing their rifle again. You always try to position in a way that will influence enemy spawns in a way that make killing them like fish in a barrel.

Sitting on a lead leads to comeback opportunities. Pressing an advantage leads to frantic decisions, forced mistakes, and steeper advantages.

When you're trailing, it's better to stall out than to try to force plays against the team with the advantage. In LoL, attempting to team fight at Dragon while down a few thousand gold in the mid game can turn into a dire situation of being aced and hemorrhaging towers. You can often offset leads by getting small areas of vision control and making a pick-off to slowly ease the gold lead into your favor, while champions with waveclear keep your towers safe. The longer the game goes on in LoL when you are trailing but avoiding giving up larger advantages, the less that flat gold advantage means as the percent advantage decreases.

In Halo, if your opponents have map control or power weapon control lorded over you, it's often best to play passively until your opponents overextend, and retake map control while you've gotten a numerical advantage. Map and weapon control are fluid, and avoiding hemorrhaging kills will allow your team to either take over new focal points on the map as weapons respawn / hills move or to take over the strong areas of the map to set up to slay your opponents and close the gap.

Team compositions are important. In LoL, it's pretty obvious that you don't want to run a team with 5 Marksmen. Such a composition relies on nearly perfect play to be able to execute a win, and the susceptibility to enemy burst or crowd control can leave you in big trouble. You generally want someone to tank, someone to support, a mage/assassin with damage from spells, and an ADC to deal damage with clicking (and probably double down on the tankiness).

In Halo, it's less obvious, and although many pros deny the existence of roles, time has shown again and again, rosters with a player dedicated to Sniping (ADC!), one generally dedicated to “selfless” plays (support) (flanking, objective-running), one player balls-out aggressive with a dominant BR (tank/bruiser), and another dedicated to controlling certain areas of the map (control mage) tend to have the most consistent high placings. Teams made of players of similar styles often struggle, and teams made of lesser skilled players with a decent composition often out-perform expectations.

Speaking of controlling certain areas of the map, Zoning is an important aspect in both games. In LoL, zoning usually refers to a player with high burst potential or CC / Engage potential standing in a position and using their presence as threat enough to keep a damage dealer from moving forward (or in some cases, like Alistar W, using the ability to keep them from coming near Baron while you finish off your smite.) Zoning can also accrue you advantages in minion kills or experience during the laning phase by keeping the enemy away from the minion wave.

In Halo, zoning is what makes Ogre 2 great. Whether he's controlling an actual power position or a portal on Warlord and watching cross-map sightlines, he's often in a position to keep other players from threatening his team, while staying relatively safe himself. Players also often use grenades to cut off a route or impede an enemy's advance moreso than to actually attempt damage. In H2A's King of the Hill on Warlord, controlling the base counter-clockwise from the hill often meant the best sightlines to assault the hill, while also great amounts of safety from the players spawning directly opposite of the hill's base – able to force those players into a less optimal path in order to advance for the objective.

Both games also emphasize Spacing quite heavily. Again, Spacing is something more prominent / known in LoL than in Halo. It generally refers to the distance between you/your teammates compared to the distance between you/your enemies. This mostly comes into play during laning phase and team fights. In bot lane, you usually don't want to attempt to trade when you are in range of both enemy laners – you want to trade while you+your ally are in range of the enemy ADC, but not in range of the support. This ensures you have more damage potential on a single target than you would with improper spacing. Qiao Gu demonstrate the power of teamfight spacing with the synergy between their mid laner and ADC, who are almost always in position to focus the same target in a teamfight.

In Halo, you'll find the more successful teams often talk to each other on positioning, and communicate whether they have another's help or not. Less successful teams focus on enemy positioning entirely, and don't focus on whether or not they have the ability to cover each other's sightlines. This also ties back into the aforementioned “lanes” of Halo – you can see OpTic Maniac often shift to the opposite side of Shrine off spawn to cover an uncovered lane while also guaranteeing he has additional angles on players his teammates may be fighting. Coach Towey of Evil Geniuses does a great job coordinating EG's ability to cover one another and ensure they are spaced well.

In both titles, if you were to make a sort of imaginary venn diagram of your potential damage / engage ranges over the course of an entire game, you'd likely find the most successful teams have the highest concentrated / most occurrences of overlap whenever they're in combat.

Mobility is survivability.

This aspect of both games is both accepted and entirely overlooked simultaneously. Sure, people acknowledge Flash is almost 100% must-take on most champions in LoL. They acknowledge that the amount of champions with dashes or hastes in their kits has been gradually increasing over time. Halo players acknowledge Sprint gets used defensively more often than offensively. And that often, attempting to chase is more dangerous than attempting to flee. But what they don't seem to acknowledge is the amount of damage you can avoid simply by being mobile.

Dodging engages in LoL with a blink, staying just-out-of-range of those melees through the Captain's aura from your Janna as you flee toward her with 18% increased movespeed...every missed skillshot or second you stay out of range simply by moving, you've given yourself additional survivability that can't be directly quantified. Is 20 movespeed worth more than 200 health? If it gets you out of the way of that Morgana binding, it absolutely is. If it helps keep you 50 extra range out of the way of Annie's ultimate as she activates Talisman and starts booking it straight for you, it is.

In the upcoming Halo 5, the Thruster Pack and Sprint combine to add so much additional survivability (even with the cost of delaying your shield respawn, it gives more than it takes). Grenades lose relevance as player mobility increases (limiting them almost solely to zoning potential or spot-checking). Close range combat becomes a battle of who can out-maneuver the other, with several areas of low ledges offering potential to parkour your way out of there with a combination of clamber and thrusters. Hell, even being able to get from one location to another more quickly can mean you snagging the power weapon before your opponent, or getting clear of a line of sight before an opponent has a chance to set up a shot with their sniping pick-off tool. Projectile weapons like the Plasma Caster are not much different than a LoL skillshot, and with the leaps granted by the Thruster, this means your best tool to survive isn't whether or not you have shields, but whether or not you can dance.

I truly believe that, at their core, almost all of these aspects of gameplay can be applied to any competitive title (and actually, to any team sport in existence) – LoL and Halo are just the two I have the most experience with and can generate the most examples of overlap from.

While I don't feel I am THAT mechanically skilled at either game (I honestly can't aim for shit in Halo), I take an analytical, measured approach to playing both and focus on playing smart over playing well. I am currently Diamond 4 in League of Legends and have coached a few pro and amateur Halo teams. I also never lose a matchmaking game of Warlord King, by applying the LoL concept of Zoning to every game I play.

Thinking about games in terms of overlapping concepts can help you improve your individual and team-based play and help you see a marked improvement in your ranking.

Why I support AR/Pistol Starts over BR Starts as the Competitive Option in Halo 5

Over on the TeamBeyond forums, there's been a debate raging for weeks now over what we believe the starting weapons should be for competitive settings in the upcoming game, Halo 5 Guardians. If you've been following the thread, you can skip to the section with bullets, because I'm starting off be reiterating some of my points made in the thread.

For a decade now, it has been whatever the game's best-suited headshot rifle was labeled (usually the BR). This has caused a schism in playlists, where “casual” gametypes (and some ranked, in TS playlists) would start with the game's standard automatic weapon and “hardcore” gametypes would start with a headshot rifle. We've heard counter-arguments during Halo 4 that in order to return to Halo's past glory we need to “keep it vanilla” – and while moving toward a more standardized weapon set across the whole of the game would help, it ignores the reasons we moved away in past games.

In Halo 2, there were three starting weapon options for UNSC weapons: SMG, Magnum, and Battle Rifle. Let's take Lockout for example. Say everyone starts with SMG/Magnum. One team gets control of Sniper tower and BR tower. The SMG can't really fight at a range from building to building capably in Halo 2. Nor can the Magnum (a shame it wasn't the HCE Pistol). And a BR spawns on TOP of the BR tower. In the high ground.

Let's move to Warlock. 4 BRs on the map. All on high ground, that can only be reached from two methods: Lifting up a slow lift and then jumping out into the open onto the platform, or walking up a ramp from one direction onto the platform. Very predictable methods where, if you don't ALREADY have a BR, but your opponents do, it's damned near impossible to grab one.

In Halo 2, the range discrepancy between the BR and the not-BRs was high. To exacerbate that problem, the BRs were often in places of optimal use case already, so once you grabbed them, you had little reason to move. Design-wise, this makes starting with not-BRs incredibly snowbally. But it's illogical to say “We did BR starts because the SMG can't fight the BR.” – the placement of BRs on map were equally at fault. (Let's skip the irony that Bungie intentionally stripped the Magnum of power from CE to 2 in an effort to gut skill gaps to force closer games and then set up maps in an absurdly snowbally manner.)

In Halo 3 we returned to BR starts again, although the range discrepancy of the weapons and their placement were much more sensible. (Granted, that range discrepancy was fixed by nerfing the everliving fuck out of the BR to the point that it was essentially useless on large maps, making BTB a nightmare.) The pistol was still useless. A desire to stay away from Spray and Pray anything fueled the decision to keep the BR as the starting weapon, and rightfully so.

In Reach, the Beta pistol showed promise, but at launch it was clear we had no option but the DMRNG. In Halo 4, an enormous debate arose over whether the BR or DMR should be the starting weapon (disregarding #TeamOrange who all believed the Light Rifle to be the superior skill gap weapon to use). Ultimately, the BR was chosen despite having random spread and being burstfire, when the mostly-cosmetic bloom and single shot of the DMR made more sense for a competitive rifle. Why? The DMR shot too far. It was too oppressive in the game, and would assist players in aiming over literally entire arena-sized maps. Despite very correct and well-articulated articles opposing the BR, the BR was healthier for the game and simply felt better. The Pistol was a lot better in this game, but it was still ultimately a lottery cannon.

With Halo 5, however, things have changed. Automatics now have headshot multipliers (they're more skill-oriented, and less spray-and-pray). They have the definitely-not-ADS-nope-not-one-bit Smart Scope to encourage using them at range. The Pistol is the fastest killing headshot weapon in the game, and had what we were told were bugs (flinch, recoil) that made it unwieldy. Additionally, the Pistol could fight at a range beyond two feet in front of you, already making it superior to the H2/H3 incarnations that we had to avoid like the plague.

So let me repeat that. THE PISTOL IS USEFUL AGAIN. And less importantly, the AR isn't a “let me camp around a corner and just shoot+melee you” weapon. It is also useful at range.

The reasons we avoided ARs and Pistols in previous titles are gone/heavily mitigated in Halo 5. We have good reason to try them out as the starting weapons from the get-go, and avoid separating the entire community into our we-don't-like-your-gametypes-we're-going-to-make-our-own...with-blackjack...and-hookers “hardcore” settings.

But before you rattle off all your reasons why you think the BR is more skillful or use reasons like “we've used the BR for a decade, why should we change now?” or “hodor hodor hodor” to try to dissuade me from continuing my support of the AR/Pistol... let me return to a rubric I've used in past Audley Enough blogs.

Riot Games' six core gameplay tenets they use for League of Legends. You know, literally the most popular PC game in the world, and the esport with the greatest success world wide in terms of viewership. I wrote about this six gameplay tenets as they relate to twelve of my favorite vehicles from Halo history in some blogs last summer, but now it's time to relate them to guns!

As a refresher, those six gameplay tenets are:

• Mastery – Mastery is essentially a constant ability to improve. In Halo, that can range anywhere from improving your shot, to route-taking, to map positioning; basically, any way you can get better at the game, there's always room to get better. In short: Mastery is your Skill Ceiling.
• Meaningful Choices – Meaningful Choices are where there are tradeoffs to your decisions made in game. Whether that means you have to mitigate weaknesses or simply take less risky plays, it means you're constantly making a choice that isn't already made for you.
• Counterplay – Counterplay means there is room for your opponent to outplay you with what they are provided. In League of Legends, this commonly gets confused with building certain items to counter things, when in reality it is focused on moment to moment gameplay and the ability to fight back regardless of build.
• Teamplay – Teamplay is where a team comes together to bolster their strengths, cover weaknesses, or simply work together toward winning the game. In League of Legends, this is focused around having team compositions need to provide certain roles to the game. Despite denial from pro players, this also exists in competitive Halo, where players' playstyles provide roles similar to a MOBA's “tank” “carry” or “support” roles.
• Clarity – Clarity is simply the presentation of information in a clear and precise way. Any important/relevant information should be communicated to the player. This won't actually be relevant for this discussion.
• Evolution – In Riot's definition, evolution more refers to their constant addition of new mechanics or rebalancing of old ones. For the sake of this argument, it will focus on how the weapons affect an evolution of a metagame.

So first, let's start with Mastery. It will be quick to go over. Regardless of the starting weapon, there's a clear skill set related to accuracy with a gun. I'm not going to argue either choice has an outright greater skill ceiling, but I will point out that, assuming the Pistol has a shorter red reticule range than the BR – then pistol fights at medium range (for example, health pack/BR to Carbine on Shrine) or longer become more about the player's dexterity rather than the game's assistance. Based off the H5 beta, the Pistol was capable at Medium range. Less so at longer. The BR, on the other hand, had aim assist across the entirety of Truth, leading to much easier time killing players who exposed themselves. While battles directly between the weapons in their intended range don't have much discrepancy, encouraging more skill rather than surefire kills in ranged battles is a good thing (see: Halo 3.)

Now, the tenet where I feel AR/Pistol greatly supercedes the BR: Meaningful Choices. If you spawn with a BR, you almost never have a reason to drop the BR. Your BR is love. Your BR is life. You almost never have a reason to swap to the Pistol, even if it kills faster. (Because why should I go into the range where Pistol is better?) The situations where a Pistol is better than a BR are outshined by situations where other weapons in the sandbox are better than the Pistol (why get a Pistol secondary for my BR when I could get an SMG?).

On the other hand, if you start with a Pistol, you have a much larger array of choices. Do I want to be more effective at range and sit back with long range support fire? Let me drop my AR or Pistol for a BR or DMR. Do I want to push harder? Let me drop my AR for an SMG. I can't push now, should I drop my SMG for something else? Because of the more limited range of engagement with your Pistol start (but again, still more than capable in most regards, especially once the recoil/flinch are removed), you have more room to shape your ability in combat. You have clear tradeoffs of effectiveness at long range versus effectiveness at close range based off which weapon you choose to pursue. The pistol is strong, and a very capable Utility weapon. But maybe you just like to play passive. You can bet players like Roy or APG are going to be in your face with their Pistol, though. Fuck your slow-killing BR!

Counterplay. Now, this is where all the pro-BR supporters will chime in “HEY IF YOU SPAWN WITH BRS YOU CAN FIGHT ANY RANGE OFF SPAWN BUT IF YOU SPAWN WITH PISTOL YOU CAN'T HAHA, BR IS BETTER RIGHT?” But again, this is where you're overlooking the fact that... oh, hey, the pistol's actually decent at medium range. You CAN fight back off spawn. Even on big, open maps like Truth. I do have issue with the BR spawning P2 and DMRs in the bubbles, rather than being closer to the safe spawning areas to readily equip a player to fight back off spawn, but in general, the weapons are in positions where players can reach them without dying, and use the amount of maneuverability tools available in H5 to fight back. Granted, yes, BR starts are marginally better with regards to counterplay than AR/Pistol starts would be, assuming a situation like H2/H3 where one team has secured BR/DMRs and the other are all dead. This discrepancy is more mitigated by map design and weapon placement, however. Keep rifles out of power positions and the players in them have reason to move – whether it be that they ran out of ammo, or that they didn't already have a rifle. Imagine back to my Halo 2 example of Lockout's BRs spawned BR1, Elbow, and Top Blue instead, or Warlocks spawned at the bottoms of the ramps, rather than on the Plats. You've instantly better equipped the “losing” side to fight back. Combine that with the fact the non-BR weapons are already comparatively stronger than they were in H2, and you've brought the gap to a manageable ratio.

As I said in the bullets, Clarity doesn't really relate to this argument. The only relation to clarity would be for casual viewers who tune into a competitive stream and wonder “why are they spawning with different weapons than I spawn with in matchmaking?” but given Halo's tiny viewership currently, I don't believe this to be a relevant issue worth worrying about at the current time.

Now regarding the Evolution of the game. I've written in the past about how I believe movement to be the most important aspect of a competitive game. (That even applies to competive card games, where the only things moving are resources.) Longer range weapons promote more stale gameplay. We'll probably never see DMR starts ever again, but DMR starts on large maps in Halo Reach provided absurdly stale games, because players simply couldn't push anywhere without being melted. (Note, competitive people, I'm referring to BTB here, not MLG). Hemorrhage was a joke that relied entirely on Wraith and Sniper usage to get anything done, because they were the only things that could fight from outside the range of a DMR or without dying instantly.

How does that relate to the BR / AR+Pistol argument? Tangentially. Maps with more open sightlines (see: Truth) lead to slower gameplay when the player is more equipped to fight at range. If you can't poke out without being chunked, you don't want to move. If you don't want to move, the game becomes a stalemate. Stalemate games, while they highlight a different skillset than the faster paced variety, also give an advantage to the underdog. Take Pit TS for example in Halo 3. More upsets happened on that gametype than any other. Not because “oh, this team was actually better all along” but because stalemates make it easier to keep an advantage. If no one's able to manage a pick-off, the stalemate keeps going until a viable power weapon or power-up breaks it (Prophet's Bane not really good vs BRs, btw.) If you got a lead in Pit TS, you kept that lead until Rockets respawned unless you just fed kills to the enemy Sniper. If you got the next set of Rockets, you probably kept the lead and won. No one was going to push you while they didn't have rockets unless their Sniper got a pick-off.

With AR+Pistol, although the Pistol's kill time is faster, it requires more care and precision to get those all-the-way-across-map kills. (But in terms of base-to-tower, it's much more reasonable.) If you have the Prophet's Bane you can sprint and thrust and actually move from cover to cover without being melted from multiple angles. You're encouraged to move and push! With more movement, there's more room for in-the-moment decision making (more meaningful choices?!) and much more excitement factor spread through the course of the game.

Additionally, with regards to Evolution (off the topic of movement now), there's more room for player identity, tying back into the choices a player makes. Aggressive slayers like APG, Roy, or Ninja who like to rush constantly will likely prefer the fast kill times of a Pistol over the sit-and-wait approach of a BR. On the other hand, zone control-focused players like Ogre 2 will likely prefer weapons more equipped to fight at range. They find their comfortable corner of the map and position in a place where they can put shots on anyone anywhere they feel like. They'll go hunting for BRs or DMRs. Sniper players on maps without the Sniper may hunt for a DMR for the “next best thing” in marksmanship, disregarding their pistol entirely. This ties into the tenet I realize I skipped in my ranting... Teamplay. Individual playstyles have more room for “role” identification, and teammates may cover gaps created by a player's choice in equipment. The more open the sandbox is, the more the kids will get to play in it.

That pretty much covers all I wanted to say. AR/Pistol offers more meaningful choices and room for evolution as a whole and as an individual, with a comparatively small sacrifice to available counterplay (the main area that forced BR starts in past titles in the first place).

AR/Pistol Starts for Competitive Halo 5, Audley for Color Commentator 2015. Jet fuel can't melt dank memes.

Movement: The Significator of a Competitive Game

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!