In a recent episode of their show Summoning Insight, MonteCristo and Thooorin postulated on shotcalling and posed the question, "Why is it so hard to find a good shotcaller?" To answer succinctly, it's because taking up the role of the player who calls the shots makes you play worse. Our brains have a limited amount of bandwidth they can access at any given time. Whether it's conscious, subconscious, or even unconsciously accessing information, there is only so much that your brain can do at once.
Oftentimes in professional sports, you may hear a commentator or coach speak of a player "Thinking, and not reacting" when they appear to be playing worse. And that sentence alone speaks volumes about why shotcalling in competitive gaming is such a difficult task.
I mention David Sirlin often in my writing, and I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this particular article several times before, but...Sirlin wrote a blog about Intuition, the Mental Iceberg, and Narrow bandwidth of players when it comes to balancing multiplayer games. The points made in his article can all be applied to players as they play the game to account for the difficulty of shotcalling.
To summarize, the Mental Iceberg is an idea that players have the amount of game knowledge they can explain (the tip of the iceberg), and then a massive unquantifiable amount of game knowledge they can only know instinctively, and not really describe or explain (the underwater portion of the iceberg). The underwater portion grows constantly with experience, while the tip's size may stay the same; a player who can clearly explain why they do everything they do may not have a very deep amount of knowledge under the surface, they are just better at verbalizing the knowledge they do have.
When you do finally try to put the reasoning or logic into words, you're narrowing your manner of thinking. Despite the logic required to make a decision being based off subconsciously assessing many factors, when you try to describe it, you're almost guaranteed to focus on a smaller amount of variables than you actually considered.
Have you ever been asked "Who sings this?" and, despite KNOWING who the artist was, were unable to answer? The answer escapes your brain and hides from the seeking monster of conscious knowledge. As you attempt to access certain information that is stored in your brain, it can hinder the actual thinking process.
Back to the point, a player who is tasked with calling the shots for a game, unless they are operating and communicating purely out of instinct or habit, are spending their entire game thinking. They're accessing the tip of the iceberg, while the underbelly remains unscratched.
Beyond this limiting the game knowledge they actually have, it also hinders their mechanics as well. Except in the case of a true genius player, you will probably find a staunch correlation between the player acting as a team's shotcaller and that same player performing less impressively than his team when viewing games at a professional level.
There is evidence of the same happening in console shooters -- players like Walshy, GhostAyame, or TeePee generally didn't put up fantastic stats in games. But if you asked a player on their team why they won, they would often give credit to those players. When I played Halo, I competed in Big Team Battle (8v8) tournaments, and would often act as the shotcaller for my team, determining plays such as when to take a Warthog, when to push certain areas of the map, where to take the flag. My team would, on occasion, upset better-skilled teams (early on, Master Theory was not the most mechnically talented of teams) due to our superior map movement and strategy. But at the end of the game, I would be lucky to have above a 1.0 Kill/Death ratio. I was a player who constantly tried to ensure the other 7 players on my team were on the same page as me and my strategy, and my own play suffered for the sake of a win.
I think Cloud 9's idea of breaking down the shot-calling into multiple aspects is borderline brilliant, since it limits the burden on any single player and frees them up to each play individually better.
The anime Log Horizon mentions similar battle roles apart from a player's actual character role they are in charge of tracking in battle. Apart from a party's formation being responsible for ensuring monsters attack the tank instead of the damage dealers, two major parts of a party's combat ability fell on the Operator and Field Monitor. The operator's job is to monitor the status of each combatant, keeping track of their ability to keep fighting. The field monitor's job is to monitor the area, tracking enemy movements and reporting them to the party.
Cloud 9, to some degree, splits these two roles between Hai and Meteos. Meteos takes charge of shotcalls regarding buffs, dragons, and barons, timing when they respawn and deciding if they team should contest. Hai controls player lane assignments and rotations, while also being the loudest voice in a team fight, calling who to focus.
The biggest problem that arises with good shotcalling is that...when you encounter a team that is either mechanically superior to your own team or has superior shotcalling, and you begin to lose to them, your team's shotcaller will always be the first ignorant fans point the finger at for the chopping block. Statistically and mechanically, the shotcaller will almost always look to be the worst player on the team. (If this is not the case, then you have a shitty player on your team that you need to replace anyway.) So the role of shotcaller is a stressful one. You'll be constantly under scrutiny if your team is not the team on top of the scene. If Cloud 9 starts to struggle, Hai and LemonNation will likely be under the Reddit microscope. If CLG slips, Dexter will have to bear the brunt of angry fans.
Reginald was, for the longest time, the primary shotcaller of TSM. And for the most part, he was a pretty damned good shotcaller. Mechanically-speaking, he flopped a lot. He was good enough to compete with the North American scene for the most part, and even held his own at S3 Worlds against Faker in lane. But he wasn't really good enough to single-handedly take over games. But he was also shotcalling. When he replaced himself with Bjergsen, TSM didn't really gain much ground over other teams in the region, and they've been criticized quite a bit for their shotcalling in the later stages of this season. Whenever TSM performed poorly, the blame often fell on Regi (except for Worlds where a lot of fingers got pointed at Dyrus for shitting the bed top lane). He's mocked for his Blue Cards on Twisted Fate, but his engage calls by pulling a Misaya on TF were a large part of his 100% win rate as the Card Master.
So my emphatic explanation of why shotcallers are hard to find in League of Legends (and basically every other game you'll encounter) is that when you find someone who's actually good at calling shots, they are always the players who look weakest mechanically. When a team's success rate falls off, they are always the first on the chopping block BECAUSE they look weak mechanically. It is extremely difficult to find a player who can shotcall efficiently at the highest level without being an exploitable weakest link on a team.
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Monday, March 31, 2014
The Kitchen Sync - For the Team with Everything but Teamwork
Teamwork wins team-based competitive games. Individual skill and mechanical strength is all well and good, but if you're not on the same page, you might as well be playing Battleship against one another. Robert Baratheon said it quite astutely when talking to his wife in Game of Thrones (skip to 2 minutes if the video doesn't do it for you.) --
For the team that has everything else, the in-game knowledge, the skill, and even the understanding of how other teams play, how do you reach the level of teamwork necessary to win? Communication. Proper communication is everything, and the only thing that will separate two evenly skilled teams. So what is proper communication? The best comparison to a real-life situation I can make for how a team in competitive gaming should communicate is to compare it to an organized restaurant kitchen.
In a kitchen, every cook has a job to do. While there may be some overlap, and in a great kitchen anyone could be able to fill in for anyone else's job, but in the busiest shifts of the day, it's communication that keeps the kitchen running smoothly.
Whether it's the chef or the expediter (and probably depending on how high-profile the restaurant is), one person is always calling out the present needs of the kitchen. Whether it be the meals themselves, or the individual parts of the meals, with the work split between meat / veg / etc., each person listens to the call for what to do and focuses on their job in it. No one dissents with a voice of, "I don't think we should do that." -- there's neither time nor reason to argue the point. If a dish is messed up -- undercooked, overcooked, shredded to pieces -- the responsibility is put back on the one who messed up, and the expectation is not to offer an excuse or even an apology, but simply to say "Yes, Chef" and fix the mistake while avoiding making the same mistake in the future. There's no time for hurt feelings in a kitchen when you're called out for a fuck-up. Acknowledge your mistake and fix it moving forward.
With a lack of time for conversation in a kitchen, it should be clear that all communication needs to be concise, to the point. (The opposite of my blog.) Orders should not have to be repeated, they should be heard the first time and reacted to the first time. Repeating yourself only clouds communication channels. Likewise, unnecessary words need to be trimmed from a sentence. Trying to tell someone your inventory is going bad, but instead saying "So like, the fucking tomatoes are like, all brown and like, fucking mushy and some shit, Should I, like, work around them or should I like, throw them away?" -- it's a waste of time and brain power trying to understand what's being asked. Instead, "We have mushy tomatoes, keep or toss?" would get the point across much more cleanly. Concise, efficient communication goes a long way.
Generally in a kitchen, only a few customers/tables at a time are being worked toward. Attempting to work on multiple tables at once creates chaos. This bit even applies to fast food -- where, attempting to work on things out of an established order can create confusion in the kitchen. Food orders getting out of order can result in the wrong meal being handed out, or the wrong items being included in a meal. With everyone working in an established order, this possibility is removed and everything is kept straight and organized.
When you watch an episode of Hell's Kitchen (yes, I'm aware there's a difference between a Reality Show Kitchen and a Kitchen in Reality) -- you'll notice Chef Ramsay will often get angry at individuals for not having things ready; but their response is one of two things, "Coming up now." or an amount of time until they will have it ready. When you're not ready to or in a position to follow the chef's immediate order, give feedback. Let them know. Give an update.
Now, I've briefly brushed over what (I perceive) a kitchen's ideal communication is to be like...how the fuck does that translate into video games?
First, I'm going to touch on League of Legends. It will not be the only game I bring up here, but...because most top teams in LoL already have a dedicated Shotcaller, we've already got the barebones of a chef or expediter in place to tell the team what's needed at any given time.
Although there are quiet phases in LoL and times where not much is needed as far as delegation of tasks go, teams often have a shotcaller who has final say in a team's tactical decisions. This is primarily done to ensure a team's decisions are decisive. To ensure you have Robert's Fist and not Robert's Open Hand. The Shotcaller directs the team on objectives to focus/go after, may be the one to select targets in team fights, and should be the one deciding who leaves the group to go clear a massive minion wave in a side lane to soak up the extra farm. If you're an ADC heading down to that juicy wave bot lane, and the jungle-shotcaller says "Stay mid, let mid laner take that," you do not waste time arguing. You stay mid. If you're nearing a major item or a power spike for your character, let the team know. "500 til LW" or "A few minions from level 11." This will help the shotcaller delegate side waves in times where it's not just given to the nearest person.
Everyone (involved in the call) should follow the shotcaller's call -- consider it the "table" or "ticket" your kitchen is working on. If you disagree with the call and attempt to do something else, you're essentially working on another table, and risking throwing things even further into chaos and making it harder to complete the current order in a satisfactory manner. Again, Robert's Fist. Work toward the same goal, achieve the goal much easier.
This next bit applies more to solo queue than organized play, but can help the latter. In the case of laning phase, where sometimes summoners will be blown leaving wide open windows for a play to be made, one communication trap players will fall into is simply reporting the opponent's flash is down. Reactive communication doesn't help much. It's essentially the same as saying "I burnt the fish." -- the rest of the kitchen doesn't learn anything other than a current status. Other stations are held up waiting on your fish. In LoL, if someone burns a flash, track that cooldown (assume 270s for best gauge). But, rather than saying, "enemy flash up at 10:50" say, "Come gank before 10:50" -- it creates a clear plan for your jungler (putting you in the chef role temporarily) to make a play on the enemy. It's proactive communication, and, unless your jungler is a dick or incompetent, will usually result in him actually coming to gank for your lane.
Also, much like a kitchen needs to know how much stock of what food they have to know what orders from the dining room can be handled and when to cut off certain menu items or when to restock, at least one person on the team (preferably the shotcaller) needs to know and be able to gauge exactly how strong your team's composition is at any given point in the game. If your team knows for certain you are weaker at a point, you can avoid making high risk calls and stall out a game until your power levels even out. This requires in-game knowledge, and isn't really tied to communication, but knowing power spikes is key to making efficient and correct calls.
Call of Duty and other console FPS titles are another area where superb communication and teamwork have a demonstrable effect on success. Two perfect examples of great communication: Halo's Instinct (Ogre 2, Roy, Lunchbox, Pistola, Towey era) and CoD's Complexity (Crimsix, Aches, TeePee, any fourth player, and their coach Mr X).
If you're thinking, "But Audley... I call out all the time, that means I'm a good communicator, right?" No, shut up. You're wrong. Most teams focus on call-outs. They talk about where an enemy target is. Call-outs are essentially the same as, in my League of Legends example above, saying you burnt the fish. Sure, they are information, but they're not good or useful information.
When commentators for CoD or Halo would do a Listen-In on either of the teams I mentioned, the communication was a different story. Sure, there were call-outs, but there was something else there, something much greater, and of substantially higher value in terms of communication.
"I'm coming.
I've got your help.
Back down, I can help you.
Push left with me."
For as much call-outs as these two teams would make, they would have just as much talk directly to one another. Halo players dubbed this "small talk" -- when in fact it's the best and most valuable communication there is.
If you are, for example, pushing long hall on Pit (Halo 3) and hear a call-out of "One their green" -- all you know is that there's a player their green box. You don't know if he's pushing through to your side, if he's coming to long, if he's shooting a teammate in Sword...you really don't know much of anything. But if you hear, "I'm fighting their Green" (one more word) you know two things -- 1) There is a person their green box, 2) That person is in battle. -- If you push out of long hall facing Green, you can easily clean up that player and you can tell your teammate "Back down, I'm coming." Once again, a focus on proactive communication (making plans and play-calls) over reactive communication (target position call-outs) helps direct your teammates in a manner that you can help them or they can make the decision to stay alive over challenging a target you could finish.
If you're arriving at the enemy Blitz point at the same time as a teammate...unless the situation has been discussed outside the game with a clear plan of who is to go first in every situation, one of you should say, "You go, I'll cover." rather than you both rushing in to leave one person stranded and capable of being mopped up.
A single shot-caller is not as necessary in shooters since the situation is in a much more permanently fluid state, but in the case that your team has a player who really loves to charge, even at risk of dying (I call them the "tank" most of the time...) listening to that player will often improve your team's ability to play around their death. Outside of CSGO / SnD in CoD, dying in a shooter isn't the end of the round. Players can give up a death that earns multiple kills for your team, if you play around the person dying. I was often that type of player in Halo that would put myself in positions to die, but be constantly telling my team where I was going so they could follow and be in position to mop up the easier kills from the bad positioning I'd forced of the enemies. A flanker able to communicate they've successfully flanked (and then draw enemies back to them) is an asset to a team.
More important in shooters is the use of concise speech, because of the increased pace, and focusing on communicating as much, if not more, about your own team's position as you do on the enemy's. Keep in mind you have no eyes in the back of your head, so unless you're the last one on your team to leave the base, you know as little about what they're doing as you do about what enemies are doing...unless they tell you otherwise. The four strongest words you can say in a competitive (console) shooter are "I've got your help."
Audley Enough, you'll find yourself winning a lot more games when you communicate well. Oh, and as a quick reminder, since I didn't stress it throughout the blog... COMMUNICATION INCLUDES LISTENING, NOT JUST TALKING. So when you think your team has everything it should theoretically need to win a game...but you're still not winning, check to see if you remembered the Kitchen Sync.
For the team that has everything else, the in-game knowledge, the skill, and even the understanding of how other teams play, how do you reach the level of teamwork necessary to win? Communication. Proper communication is everything, and the only thing that will separate two evenly skilled teams. So what is proper communication? The best comparison to a real-life situation I can make for how a team in competitive gaming should communicate is to compare it to an organized restaurant kitchen.
In a kitchen, every cook has a job to do. While there may be some overlap, and in a great kitchen anyone could be able to fill in for anyone else's job, but in the busiest shifts of the day, it's communication that keeps the kitchen running smoothly.
Whether it's the chef or the expediter (and probably depending on how high-profile the restaurant is), one person is always calling out the present needs of the kitchen. Whether it be the meals themselves, or the individual parts of the meals, with the work split between meat / veg / etc., each person listens to the call for what to do and focuses on their job in it. No one dissents with a voice of, "I don't think we should do that." -- there's neither time nor reason to argue the point. If a dish is messed up -- undercooked, overcooked, shredded to pieces -- the responsibility is put back on the one who messed up, and the expectation is not to offer an excuse or even an apology, but simply to say "Yes, Chef" and fix the mistake while avoiding making the same mistake in the future. There's no time for hurt feelings in a kitchen when you're called out for a fuck-up. Acknowledge your mistake and fix it moving forward.
With a lack of time for conversation in a kitchen, it should be clear that all communication needs to be concise, to the point. (The opposite of my blog.) Orders should not have to be repeated, they should be heard the first time and reacted to the first time. Repeating yourself only clouds communication channels. Likewise, unnecessary words need to be trimmed from a sentence. Trying to tell someone your inventory is going bad, but instead saying "So like, the fucking tomatoes are like, all brown and like, fucking mushy and some shit, Should I, like, work around them or should I like, throw them away?" -- it's a waste of time and brain power trying to understand what's being asked. Instead, "We have mushy tomatoes, keep or toss?" would get the point across much more cleanly. Concise, efficient communication goes a long way.
Generally in a kitchen, only a few customers/tables at a time are being worked toward. Attempting to work on multiple tables at once creates chaos. This bit even applies to fast food -- where, attempting to work on things out of an established order can create confusion in the kitchen. Food orders getting out of order can result in the wrong meal being handed out, or the wrong items being included in a meal. With everyone working in an established order, this possibility is removed and everything is kept straight and organized.
When you watch an episode of Hell's Kitchen (yes, I'm aware there's a difference between a Reality Show Kitchen and a Kitchen in Reality) -- you'll notice Chef Ramsay will often get angry at individuals for not having things ready; but their response is one of two things, "Coming up now." or an amount of time until they will have it ready. When you're not ready to or in a position to follow the chef's immediate order, give feedback. Let them know. Give an update.
Now, I've briefly brushed over what (I perceive) a kitchen's ideal communication is to be like...how the fuck does that translate into video games?
First, I'm going to touch on League of Legends. It will not be the only game I bring up here, but...because most top teams in LoL already have a dedicated Shotcaller, we've already got the barebones of a chef or expediter in place to tell the team what's needed at any given time.
Although there are quiet phases in LoL and times where not much is needed as far as delegation of tasks go, teams often have a shotcaller who has final say in a team's tactical decisions. This is primarily done to ensure a team's decisions are decisive. To ensure you have Robert's Fist and not Robert's Open Hand. The Shotcaller directs the team on objectives to focus/go after, may be the one to select targets in team fights, and should be the one deciding who leaves the group to go clear a massive minion wave in a side lane to soak up the extra farm. If you're an ADC heading down to that juicy wave bot lane, and the jungle-shotcaller says "Stay mid, let mid laner take that," you do not waste time arguing. You stay mid. If you're nearing a major item or a power spike for your character, let the team know. "500 til LW" or "A few minions from level 11." This will help the shotcaller delegate side waves in times where it's not just given to the nearest person.
Everyone (involved in the call) should follow the shotcaller's call -- consider it the "table" or "ticket" your kitchen is working on. If you disagree with the call and attempt to do something else, you're essentially working on another table, and risking throwing things even further into chaos and making it harder to complete the current order in a satisfactory manner. Again, Robert's Fist. Work toward the same goal, achieve the goal much easier.
This next bit applies more to solo queue than organized play, but can help the latter. In the case of laning phase, where sometimes summoners will be blown leaving wide open windows for a play to be made, one communication trap players will fall into is simply reporting the opponent's flash is down. Reactive communication doesn't help much. It's essentially the same as saying "I burnt the fish." -- the rest of the kitchen doesn't learn anything other than a current status. Other stations are held up waiting on your fish. In LoL, if someone burns a flash, track that cooldown (assume 270s for best gauge). But, rather than saying, "enemy flash up at 10:50" say, "Come gank before 10:50" -- it creates a clear plan for your jungler (putting you in the chef role temporarily) to make a play on the enemy. It's proactive communication, and, unless your jungler is a dick or incompetent, will usually result in him actually coming to gank for your lane.
Also, much like a kitchen needs to know how much stock of what food they have to know what orders from the dining room can be handled and when to cut off certain menu items or when to restock, at least one person on the team (preferably the shotcaller) needs to know and be able to gauge exactly how strong your team's composition is at any given point in the game. If your team knows for certain you are weaker at a point, you can avoid making high risk calls and stall out a game until your power levels even out. This requires in-game knowledge, and isn't really tied to communication, but knowing power spikes is key to making efficient and correct calls.
Call of Duty and other console FPS titles are another area where superb communication and teamwork have a demonstrable effect on success. Two perfect examples of great communication: Halo's Instinct (Ogre 2, Roy, Lunchbox, Pistola, Towey era) and CoD's Complexity (Crimsix, Aches, TeePee, any fourth player, and their coach Mr X).
If you're thinking, "But Audley... I call out all the time, that means I'm a good communicator, right?" No, shut up. You're wrong. Most teams focus on call-outs. They talk about where an enemy target is. Call-outs are essentially the same as, in my League of Legends example above, saying you burnt the fish. Sure, they are information, but they're not good or useful information.
When commentators for CoD or Halo would do a Listen-In on either of the teams I mentioned, the communication was a different story. Sure, there were call-outs, but there was something else there, something much greater, and of substantially higher value in terms of communication.
"I'm coming.
I've got your help.
Back down, I can help you.
Push left with me."
For as much call-outs as these two teams would make, they would have just as much talk directly to one another. Halo players dubbed this "small talk" -- when in fact it's the best and most valuable communication there is.
If you are, for example, pushing long hall on Pit (Halo 3) and hear a call-out of "One their green" -- all you know is that there's a player their green box. You don't know if he's pushing through to your side, if he's coming to long, if he's shooting a teammate in Sword...you really don't know much of anything. But if you hear, "I'm fighting their Green" (one more word) you know two things -- 1) There is a person their green box, 2) That person is in battle. -- If you push out of long hall facing Green, you can easily clean up that player and you can tell your teammate "Back down, I'm coming." Once again, a focus on proactive communication (making plans and play-calls) over reactive communication (target position call-outs) helps direct your teammates in a manner that you can help them or they can make the decision to stay alive over challenging a target you could finish.
If you're arriving at the enemy Blitz point at the same time as a teammate...unless the situation has been discussed outside the game with a clear plan of who is to go first in every situation, one of you should say, "You go, I'll cover." rather than you both rushing in to leave one person stranded and capable of being mopped up.
A single shot-caller is not as necessary in shooters since the situation is in a much more permanently fluid state, but in the case that your team has a player who really loves to charge, even at risk of dying (I call them the "tank" most of the time...) listening to that player will often improve your team's ability to play around their death. Outside of CSGO / SnD in CoD, dying in a shooter isn't the end of the round. Players can give up a death that earns multiple kills for your team, if you play around the person dying. I was often that type of player in Halo that would put myself in positions to die, but be constantly telling my team where I was going so they could follow and be in position to mop up the easier kills from the bad positioning I'd forced of the enemies. A flanker able to communicate they've successfully flanked (and then draw enemies back to them) is an asset to a team.
More important in shooters is the use of concise speech, because of the increased pace, and focusing on communicating as much, if not more, about your own team's position as you do on the enemy's. Keep in mind you have no eyes in the back of your head, so unless you're the last one on your team to leave the base, you know as little about what they're doing as you do about what enemies are doing...unless they tell you otherwise. The four strongest words you can say in a competitive (console) shooter are "I've got your help."
Audley Enough, you'll find yourself winning a lot more games when you communicate well. Oh, and as a quick reminder, since I didn't stress it throughout the blog... COMMUNICATION INCLUDES LISTENING, NOT JUST TALKING. So when you think your team has everything it should theoretically need to win a game...but you're still not winning, check to see if you remembered the Kitchen Sync.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
re: "Do Video Games Need to be Competitive?" by Gandhi
This Audley Enough is a response post, to a video from Scott "Gandhi" Lussier where he pondered the question, "Do Video Games need to be competitive?" Go watch that before reading this.
Now, understand that most of this post is responding to that video, and that I'm also equally prone to rambling. I don't have any cohesive message to tell with this Audley Enough, it's just responding to a handful of points.
You made great points on the social comparison and genetics.
I don't necessarily agree that a game needs a method of social comparison to be successful, but perhaps for longevity it is necessary. I think the important thing here is that players need a goal to work towards, whether it be beating the next level of a difficult single-player game (which has built-in limitations) or beating a high-ranked player in a competitive game (which is limited only by the power of the individual to 'solve' the game). I'll touch more on this later.
The genetics argument MAY be inaccurate; after all, we often hear the stereotype "Asians are better at video games" -- StarCraft 2, League of Legends, and even fighting games seem to somewhat support this trend while there aren't evidence of it in Shooters, so it could come down to an argument of infrastructure. DotA2 still has European teams/players win international events despite having an established infrastructure in China, but Korea has just now begun playing the game professionally. We'll find out in roughly a year how much the "Korean Dominance" will apply here and how much their combination of superior infrastructure and potential genetic attunement to reaction speed may apply. However, it's definitely more accessible and more likely for players to reach a high level of play despite their outward physical appearance, as there is less overtly physical requirement to get good at a game.
Regarding the 15%/85% League statement. I find those numbers a bit misleading or vague since you used the word "revenue" -- how much of their events are funded by sponsors, and how much are funded by their organization? How much of their prize pools are provided by the developers themselves? I don't doubt their numbers are true, but I don't think they're the whole truth or outline clearly what it takes to put on a major tournament.
"eSports Savvy"
Spectator mode is great. Ranks are great. League of Legends had neither of these when it first launched. The elo for players' normal games was hidden, although the Devs at one point were open about providing a player's elo. The unranked games did have some hint of ranks to them. I was the #314-ranked player at the end of League of Legends' beta and now have a Master Beta Summoner Icon. The Spectator Mode however did not exist at all until I believe WCG 2010, where it was implemented in a very wonky fashion of a summoner spell that gave you full vision of the map. Nothing near what it became at the start of Season 2, where the full Spectator Mode was first unveiled.
Regarding Developer Support, this is a large part of what made Riot so successful. Early on (in Beta), the developers from the top of the company down were very active in the community, and even had weekly rundowns on Ventrilo where the top players at the time could give feedback about things directly to a member of the design team, and new players had a separate designer to interact with. Good developer support helps make good games, but there are two pieces of the puzzle missing here that I think you should consider mentioning in future discussions on the topic.
1) Publisher support. You mention Developer support, but I'll point you to a game/series that, I think you'd say had good developer support: Gears of War. CliffyB is a legend in the industry and for good reason. So what made GoW flop? It has a large amount to do with why Halo 4 launched with incomplete features, a lack of beta, and several bugs: their publisher. And it's funny, both of them had the same publisher. Some jackass company called Microsoft Game Studios.
I'd like to mention another game... that was supposed to be the spiritual successor to Diablo 2, long before Diablo 3 was ever announced. Let's hop in our time machine back to the year 2007 and talk about a game I was looking very forward to, known as Hellgate: London. A lot of Blizzard Entertainment employees, namely of Blizzard's acquired branch "Blizzard North" left the company due to Blizzard's publisher/owners at the time, Vivendi Universal being a bunch of...for lack of a better description, useless cunts. So they started their own company with a massive venture capital investment and named themselves Flagship Studios. These were all more or less the exact developers behind Diablo and Diablo 2. David Brevik was the lead designer on this new game...and it seeked to blend FPS gameplay with the Diablo action/RPG gameplay (sort of like Borderlands eventually did.)
However... the publisher for the game... was Electronics Arts. And the game was announced to have a release date before they had even considered an alpha or beta test for the game (and note, that... it's pretty standard fare for MMOs these days, and even back then, to have long, protracted beta phases to get all the kinks worked out. No dice here, they had to get the game out in a hurry. Because EA weren't given them enough money to pay off their venture capital debts. The game launched in an awful, buggy, unpolished, and underdeveloped state. Very few people opted to pay for the premium subscription in the game to unlock new content...Flagship defaulted on their loans, and ultimately the company had to close down and sell off the assets of the game to the company that was publishing the game in Korea. (If you need more evidence EA is a shit publisher, take a look at MAXIS' most recent launch of Sim City.)
Now...that long rant aside... the second piece of the puzzle:
2) Good Quality Assurance Analysts. (And skilled players as Designers) This is where Riot Games truly kicks the ass of every company in competitive gaming.
Riot Games has a position they constantly hire for called Game Analyst. Literally the role of this person is to essentially give balance and clarity feedback about the game and new features before they ever reach public consumption. They're game testers, but rather than seek out bugs or ensure things work properly... they look for ways to break them balance-wise...or look to make sure that, as a player, the purpose of any skill or item is clear and the majority of its use-cases match developer intention.
That sounds like a pretty decent job, but here's the catch: You have to be -at least- Gold League in League of Legends to even apply for this job. That's right, you have to PROVE you are good at the game before they even consider you for the job. And the majority of people they hire for this position, when such applicants are available are Diamond+. Statikk, who is now a member of the design team, joined Riot a few years ago as a Game Analyst. He was the 11th-ranked player at the end of Beta and a top elo player at the time of his hire. Classick held the #1 spot at one time, he's now either a QA Analyst or Designer. Jatt, the commentator, was hired at Riot as a Design-team member before shifting to his position as commentator...he was a professional jungler for Team Dignitas prior to being hired by Riot.
League of Legends has one major thing, design-wise, that sets it apart from pretenders and other games of the genre, as well as many other games in general. From a base design standpoint, it seeks to make sure that everything is 1) Clear and 2) Consistent. Skills that are too complex for a new player to understand require too much of a burden of knowledge to play with or against; they're frustrating for new players and confusing to spectators. League of Legends avoids skills like these. Apart from critical hits and Sion/TF's passive, there are almost no random effects still in LoL. Although the game had several when it was first designed, they've slowly been weeded out...and even the existence of Crit at level 1 has been cut down to requiring a rune investment, when previously it could exist from masteries or even characters' base crit scaling.
This design purpose makes sure all the power is in the player's hand, but that using a skill better than another player is nuanced to the point that a good player learns how to do it from experience, rather than randomly doing it or randomly failing it because the game engine said so (*cough* Bloom *cough*) and using a skill poorly is usually clear because, well, either you missed or you got killed afterward.
I forget where you mentioned Titanfall and Destiny because I forgot to make a note of it while watching your video, but I do want to include a prediction regarding Titanfall. The game will flare up and die quickly. At launch, there will inevitably be problems with the online platform (See: Electronics Arts publishing.) -- but once those frustrations subside, the remaining players will be sorted into two categories: The really fucking good players, who enjoy it because of its unique movement mechanics and clear ability to separate the good players from the bad... And the bad players, who hate it because of its difficult movement mechanics and the fact that they're getting shit on by players who are clearly better than them, as they struggle to improve and give up, moving onto something easier for them to manage. As the latter category dwindles in size, the gameplay will stagnate and slowly bleed players to other, newer games where the casual playerbase is larger, and there's more potential for growth. It will be like Tribes: Ascend all over again. Regarding Destiny... I don't think competitive console FPS players will stick around it for long. I think it will appeal more to the crowd who prefer Borderlands over Halo/CoD, and seek to fulfill that same lootfest thirst (see: story coming up in a few paragraphs).
I don't believe the Forced Grind to 30 before playing ranked is a good thing, nor is the forced grind for Runes. I disagree with the concept of Forced Grind, but I do acknowledge that there is something there that is important, and it ties back into the social comparison and something you briefly mentioned regarding Halo in your discussion about Ranks (when you mentioned the katana on the back of your armor)...and it's another specific position you'll see game companies hiring for, and Bungie constantly attempted to hire for near the end of Halo 3:
Player Investment Design. What is Player Investment? It's how tied a player is to the game. In World of WarCraft, a player gets invested because they want to get their Warrior to the level cap with the top tier equipment and be fully decked out so they can finally go raiding. In League of Legends, it's unlocking more champions and runes with your IP. In Reach, it's getting that Inclement Weather armor effect so you can look like you're doing the electric slide all the time. In CoD, it's unlocking the guns and prestiging.
I'll relate this to a personal story...
I have played several thousands of hours of Diablo 2 in my life. Several. Thousands. And for me, I didn't really enjoy the game when I played it. It was a chore. But there was always one thing about the game that appealed to me...(that I now look back at disdainfully, but fully recognize it was what kept me playing the game)... Because Diablo 2 had unique items and runewords with very specific effects, and there were places on the internet that I could see all the skills and theorycraft some awesome build... I could plan out my end-game character the moment I started playing a new character. I could have every detail of the character down to the rings on their fingers ready before the character even started into the game...but there was one obstacle:
I still had to level that character up and FIND or TRADE for those items. So to do that, I had to grind. I hadta power level to the point that I could just run Mephisto all day with my 600% Magic Find gear on in order to find either the items I was looking for, or similarly valuable items that I could potentially use to acquire what I wanted. Just so I could see if the build I'd made for my character beforehand was as good or fun as it seemed on paper. My Cold Sorc with full Energy Shield with an Insight RW+Prayer Act 2 Merc was almost literally immortal once I got her build. (The exception being wh en she encountered unique mobs with Extra Fast+Mana Burn or if Baal managed to clone himself.) I didn't care that the gameplay was tedious at that point. I just wanted to build the character I had thought up. And for me, that kept me playing for THOUSANDS of hours.
It isn't that a game needs to be competitive. But a player needs to have clear goals. Whether it be beating the next fucking level of Candy Crush (at the expense of all your friends on Facebook, or your significant other's debit card that mysteriously went missing), or in the case of Peter Molyneux's strange game where players clicked away at an enormous cube made of smaller cubes where the lone goal was to reach the center... Players will keep playing until their goal is reached. Ranks make it easier to make it clear what the goal is. Top level external competitions and LAN events make the goal more attractive to the best and most skilled players. But neither of those are truly required for longevity. Diablo 2's PvP was a mess, unless you participated in LLDs (low level duels) where a strict level cap was enforced to ensure the massive late game balance and problem of dying too fast was a problem...but a massive majority of the player base didn't play for that. They played to farm items to complete their build they thought up...to farm more items to complete another build they thought up.
One final note, and this is just a nitpicking bit... You mentioned a need for a report function, then mentioned "You have Community Managers, use them." - just pointing out, it's actually the Player Support team's job to deal with reported players; not Community Managers. Player Support handle problems with the game, such as billing inquiries and such, and are also the team that ultimately issue bans in cases of abuse or extreme circumstances. They are referred to in MMOS as "GMs" or "Game Managers" -- but they are not to be confused with COMMUNITY managers. While the LoL Tribunal system was a joint effort of CMs, Player Support, and Game Designers, the system is overseen by the Support team.
I only nitpick this because a friend of mine has been Community Manager at a few game development companies, and at one, he constantly bitched about how the company essentially only wanted him to be a glorified forum moderator. When, at his previous jobs (Flagship Studios, Garage Games) he drove initiatives to improve player investment, market the game, foster fansite appreciation, and even develop some additional website features. Community Managers are a much broader, high-level job than someone who has time to sit and read xAnauiram420's report on how l33tSn1p3r was obviously cheating, and his teammate fRaNkLyMyDear didn't give a damn and just AFK'ed all game. Again, it's Semantics and nitpicking, but it's still something to note for future reference.
Audley Enough, we agree on a lot of things here... but I wanted to expound upon some of your ideas and bring to light some things you may not have been aware of.
Now, understand that most of this post is responding to that video, and that I'm also equally prone to rambling. I don't have any cohesive message to tell with this Audley Enough, it's just responding to a handful of points.
You made great points on the social comparison and genetics.
I don't necessarily agree that a game needs a method of social comparison to be successful, but perhaps for longevity it is necessary. I think the important thing here is that players need a goal to work towards, whether it be beating the next level of a difficult single-player game (which has built-in limitations) or beating a high-ranked player in a competitive game (which is limited only by the power of the individual to 'solve' the game). I'll touch more on this later.
The genetics argument MAY be inaccurate; after all, we often hear the stereotype "Asians are better at video games" -- StarCraft 2, League of Legends, and even fighting games seem to somewhat support this trend while there aren't evidence of it in Shooters, so it could come down to an argument of infrastructure. DotA2 still has European teams/players win international events despite having an established infrastructure in China, but Korea has just now begun playing the game professionally. We'll find out in roughly a year how much the "Korean Dominance" will apply here and how much their combination of superior infrastructure and potential genetic attunement to reaction speed may apply. However, it's definitely more accessible and more likely for players to reach a high level of play despite their outward physical appearance, as there is less overtly physical requirement to get good at a game.
Regarding the 15%/85% League statement. I find those numbers a bit misleading or vague since you used the word "revenue" -- how much of their events are funded by sponsors, and how much are funded by their organization? How much of their prize pools are provided by the developers themselves? I don't doubt their numbers are true, but I don't think they're the whole truth or outline clearly what it takes to put on a major tournament.
"eSports Savvy"
Spectator mode is great. Ranks are great. League of Legends had neither of these when it first launched. The elo for players' normal games was hidden, although the Devs at one point were open about providing a player's elo. The unranked games did have some hint of ranks to them. I was the #314-ranked player at the end of League of Legends' beta and now have a Master Beta Summoner Icon. The Spectator Mode however did not exist at all until I believe WCG 2010, where it was implemented in a very wonky fashion of a summoner spell that gave you full vision of the map. Nothing near what it became at the start of Season 2, where the full Spectator Mode was first unveiled.
Regarding Developer Support, this is a large part of what made Riot so successful. Early on (in Beta), the developers from the top of the company down were very active in the community, and even had weekly rundowns on Ventrilo where the top players at the time could give feedback about things directly to a member of the design team, and new players had a separate designer to interact with. Good developer support helps make good games, but there are two pieces of the puzzle missing here that I think you should consider mentioning in future discussions on the topic.
1) Publisher support. You mention Developer support, but I'll point you to a game/series that, I think you'd say had good developer support: Gears of War. CliffyB is a legend in the industry and for good reason. So what made GoW flop? It has a large amount to do with why Halo 4 launched with incomplete features, a lack of beta, and several bugs: their publisher. And it's funny, both of them had the same publisher. Some jackass company called Microsoft Game Studios.
I'd like to mention another game... that was supposed to be the spiritual successor to Diablo 2, long before Diablo 3 was ever announced. Let's hop in our time machine back to the year 2007 and talk about a game I was looking very forward to, known as Hellgate: London. A lot of Blizzard Entertainment employees, namely of Blizzard's acquired branch "Blizzard North" left the company due to Blizzard's publisher/owners at the time, Vivendi Universal being a bunch of...for lack of a better description, useless cunts. So they started their own company with a massive venture capital investment and named themselves Flagship Studios. These were all more or less the exact developers behind Diablo and Diablo 2. David Brevik was the lead designer on this new game...and it seeked to blend FPS gameplay with the Diablo action/RPG gameplay (sort of like Borderlands eventually did.)
However... the publisher for the game... was Electronics Arts. And the game was announced to have a release date before they had even considered an alpha or beta test for the game (and note, that... it's pretty standard fare for MMOs these days, and even back then, to have long, protracted beta phases to get all the kinks worked out. No dice here, they had to get the game out in a hurry. Because EA weren't given them enough money to pay off their venture capital debts. The game launched in an awful, buggy, unpolished, and underdeveloped state. Very few people opted to pay for the premium subscription in the game to unlock new content...Flagship defaulted on their loans, and ultimately the company had to close down and sell off the assets of the game to the company that was publishing the game in Korea. (If you need more evidence EA is a shit publisher, take a look at MAXIS' most recent launch of Sim City.)
Now...that long rant aside... the second piece of the puzzle:
2) Good Quality Assurance Analysts. (And skilled players as Designers) This is where Riot Games truly kicks the ass of every company in competitive gaming.
Riot Games has a position they constantly hire for called Game Analyst. Literally the role of this person is to essentially give balance and clarity feedback about the game and new features before they ever reach public consumption. They're game testers, but rather than seek out bugs or ensure things work properly... they look for ways to break them balance-wise...or look to make sure that, as a player, the purpose of any skill or item is clear and the majority of its use-cases match developer intention.
That sounds like a pretty decent job, but here's the catch: You have to be -at least- Gold League in League of Legends to even apply for this job. That's right, you have to PROVE you are good at the game before they even consider you for the job. And the majority of people they hire for this position, when such applicants are available are Diamond+. Statikk, who is now a member of the design team, joined Riot a few years ago as a Game Analyst. He was the 11th-ranked player at the end of Beta and a top elo player at the time of his hire. Classick held the #1 spot at one time, he's now either a QA Analyst or Designer. Jatt, the commentator, was hired at Riot as a Design-team member before shifting to his position as commentator...he was a professional jungler for Team Dignitas prior to being hired by Riot.
League of Legends has one major thing, design-wise, that sets it apart from pretenders and other games of the genre, as well as many other games in general. From a base design standpoint, it seeks to make sure that everything is 1) Clear and 2) Consistent. Skills that are too complex for a new player to understand require too much of a burden of knowledge to play with or against; they're frustrating for new players and confusing to spectators. League of Legends avoids skills like these. Apart from critical hits and Sion/TF's passive, there are almost no random effects still in LoL. Although the game had several when it was first designed, they've slowly been weeded out...and even the existence of Crit at level 1 has been cut down to requiring a rune investment, when previously it could exist from masteries or even characters' base crit scaling.
This design purpose makes sure all the power is in the player's hand, but that using a skill better than another player is nuanced to the point that a good player learns how to do it from experience, rather than randomly doing it or randomly failing it because the game engine said so (*cough* Bloom *cough*) and using a skill poorly is usually clear because, well, either you missed or you got killed afterward.
I forget where you mentioned Titanfall and Destiny because I forgot to make a note of it while watching your video, but I do want to include a prediction regarding Titanfall. The game will flare up and die quickly. At launch, there will inevitably be problems with the online platform (See: Electronics Arts publishing.) -- but once those frustrations subside, the remaining players will be sorted into two categories: The really fucking good players, who enjoy it because of its unique movement mechanics and clear ability to separate the good players from the bad... And the bad players, who hate it because of its difficult movement mechanics and the fact that they're getting shit on by players who are clearly better than them, as they struggle to improve and give up, moving onto something easier for them to manage. As the latter category dwindles in size, the gameplay will stagnate and slowly bleed players to other, newer games where the casual playerbase is larger, and there's more potential for growth. It will be like Tribes: Ascend all over again. Regarding Destiny... I don't think competitive console FPS players will stick around it for long. I think it will appeal more to the crowd who prefer Borderlands over Halo/CoD, and seek to fulfill that same lootfest thirst (see: story coming up in a few paragraphs).
I don't believe the Forced Grind to 30 before playing ranked is a good thing, nor is the forced grind for Runes. I disagree with the concept of Forced Grind, but I do acknowledge that there is something there that is important, and it ties back into the social comparison and something you briefly mentioned regarding Halo in your discussion about Ranks (when you mentioned the katana on the back of your armor)...and it's another specific position you'll see game companies hiring for, and Bungie constantly attempted to hire for near the end of Halo 3:
Player Investment Design. What is Player Investment? It's how tied a player is to the game. In World of WarCraft, a player gets invested because they want to get their Warrior to the level cap with the top tier equipment and be fully decked out so they can finally go raiding. In League of Legends, it's unlocking more champions and runes with your IP. In Reach, it's getting that Inclement Weather armor effect so you can look like you're doing the electric slide all the time. In CoD, it's unlocking the guns and prestiging.
I'll relate this to a personal story...
I have played several thousands of hours of Diablo 2 in my life. Several. Thousands. And for me, I didn't really enjoy the game when I played it. It was a chore. But there was always one thing about the game that appealed to me...(that I now look back at disdainfully, but fully recognize it was what kept me playing the game)... Because Diablo 2 had unique items and runewords with very specific effects, and there were places on the internet that I could see all the skills and theorycraft some awesome build... I could plan out my end-game character the moment I started playing a new character. I could have every detail of the character down to the rings on their fingers ready before the character even started into the game...but there was one obstacle:
I still had to level that character up and FIND or TRADE for those items. So to do that, I had to grind. I hadta power level to the point that I could just run Mephisto all day with my 600% Magic Find gear on in order to find either the items I was looking for, or similarly valuable items that I could potentially use to acquire what I wanted. Just so I could see if the build I'd made for my character beforehand was as good or fun as it seemed on paper. My Cold Sorc with full Energy Shield with an Insight RW+Prayer Act 2 Merc was almost literally immortal once I got her build. (The exception being wh en she encountered unique mobs with Extra Fast+Mana Burn or if Baal managed to clone himself.) I didn't care that the gameplay was tedious at that point. I just wanted to build the character I had thought up. And for me, that kept me playing for THOUSANDS of hours.
It isn't that a game needs to be competitive. But a player needs to have clear goals. Whether it be beating the next fucking level of Candy Crush (at the expense of all your friends on Facebook, or your significant other's debit card that mysteriously went missing), or in the case of Peter Molyneux's strange game where players clicked away at an enormous cube made of smaller cubes where the lone goal was to reach the center... Players will keep playing until their goal is reached. Ranks make it easier to make it clear what the goal is. Top level external competitions and LAN events make the goal more attractive to the best and most skilled players. But neither of those are truly required for longevity. Diablo 2's PvP was a mess, unless you participated in LLDs (low level duels) where a strict level cap was enforced to ensure the massive late game balance and problem of dying too fast was a problem...but a massive majority of the player base didn't play for that. They played to farm items to complete their build they thought up...to farm more items to complete another build they thought up.
One final note, and this is just a nitpicking bit... You mentioned a need for a report function, then mentioned "You have Community Managers, use them." - just pointing out, it's actually the Player Support team's job to deal with reported players; not Community Managers. Player Support handle problems with the game, such as billing inquiries and such, and are also the team that ultimately issue bans in cases of abuse or extreme circumstances. They are referred to in MMOS as "GMs" or "Game Managers" -- but they are not to be confused with COMMUNITY managers. While the LoL Tribunal system was a joint effort of CMs, Player Support, and Game Designers, the system is overseen by the Support team.
I only nitpick this because a friend of mine has been Community Manager at a few game development companies, and at one, he constantly bitched about how the company essentially only wanted him to be a glorified forum moderator. When, at his previous jobs (Flagship Studios, Garage Games) he drove initiatives to improve player investment, market the game, foster fansite appreciation, and even develop some additional website features. Community Managers are a much broader, high-level job than someone who has time to sit and read xAnauiram420's report on how l33tSn1p3r was obviously cheating, and his teammate fRaNkLyMyDear didn't give a damn and just AFK'ed all game. Again, it's Semantics and nitpicking, but it's still something to note for future reference.
Audley Enough, we agree on a lot of things here... but I wanted to expound upon some of your ideas and bring to light some things you may not have been aware of.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Halo 4 Global Championships: When Marketing Campaigns play Dress-Up as eSports
Disclaimer: I want to make it absolutely clear that 343, the players, and the commentators were absolutely fantastic this weekend. Nothing I'm about to say is directed toward any of those three groups unless I explicitly mention them in the statement.
So...how about those Halo 4 Global Championships? They were pretty fantastic, right?
Audley Enough, it left a bitter taste in my mouth.
I saw some tweets about how it was a great tournament. And here's where I'm going to stop you, and correct you.
That was an awful tournament. It was a good show. It was a good (expensive) marketing campaign. But again, from a competitive integrity standpoint, that tournament was terrible.
First, the format. A...100+ team FFA feed into a 4-player 1v1 BEST OF ONE finals? The fuck is that? Best of one? Really? Now, time constraints are one thing, but getting yourself so constrained that you have to limit yourself to best of ones for GRAND FINALS for (one of) the LARGEST PRIZE POOLS Halo has ever seen? That's pretty fucked up. Seriously.
FPS titles have traditionally been a showcase of multiple maps and sometimes multiple game variants. Hell, even Quake Live, which still gets played at Dreamhack events has Best of 3 finals showing off three different maps. And if you're unfamiliar, its format is always 1v1.
By my next statement I mean no offense to the winner, Aaron Elam...but when a player openly admits to only having practiced for an event for about a week prior and ends up winning Two HUNDRED THOUSAND dollars at said event over players who have put in substantially more time and effort...you know the format of the tournament is a little fucked. Again, don't take this statement wrong. Ace played fantastically and he earned his win...but as someone who preaches practice, I can't help but feel if there was a little bit more consistency required of the tournament, he may not have seen as great of success. I still extend my congratulations to him. Hey, he was the first Halo pro to have ever had me on his friend's list. I can't hate.
Secondly, the trailers.
Okay, what the fuck. This is a Halo tournament, right? It's the HALO FOUR GLOBAL CHAMPIONSHIPS, right?
WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU SHOWING ME A FUCKING TRAILER FOR BATTLEFIELD 4 AND FUCKING PLANTS VERSUS ZOMBIES GARDEN WARFARE? I don't go to LoL events and expect to see a trailer for DotA2. You know why? BECAUSE THEY FUCKING SHOW YOU LEAGUE OF LEGENDS at LEAGUE OF LEGENDS EVENTS.
For this to have been as marketing-focused as it was, I'm confused as fuck as to what Microsoft was actually trying to market. I mean, they gave us some of the most limited scope of what Halo has to offer as humanly possible -- FFA and 1v1s of a team game... And then they go off and show us three trailers for three different shooters all coming to the XBox One console. This event's about Halo, right? So why are you trying to draw us to different shooters, Micro$oft?
Thirdly, the production.
Wait, the production? Those production values were insane, Audley! What are you smoking?
I'm not going to disagree that the production values were insane. But the part that bugged me about it was how painfully scripted it was. If you couldn't tell the two hosts were reading from a teleprompter, you weren't watching. Granted, they would go off-script on occasion...but in those instances, it was the only time the two would actually engage each other or their surroundings during the show. Otherwise, they just kept looking forward. You could even feel when they felt the teleprompted jokes ("Spartan badassery") were too forced, and grit their teeth to grind through it.
I know Riot and the LCS use teleprompters, and often the casters read from it when setting up transitions. However, most have enough genuine character of their own merit that it doesn't feel as awkward.
I do want to make it clear -- I enjoyed my time in Benaroya Hall during the finals. It was a good show. It was executed very well, and the games were intense and fun to watch. But when I see people praising the event and lauding it as proof that "Halo is back!" and "343 gets it" I just shudder.
I repeat what I've said all along: Halo 4's launch state being poor isn't 343's fault. That launch state is a publisher issue, not a developer one. Publisher determines release date, and when something's released with no beta, tons of bugs, and missing content, you don't say "Oh, well clearly that's what the developer wanted. What idiots." That's a "Big Daddy Moneybags decided we had to release by this date or we wouldn't get paid." Oh, and by the way... Microsoft Game Studios published Halo 4.
Also, how soon do you think an event that size will get done again? Microsoft and Virgin gaming just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for a tournam-err, excuse me, MARKETING CAMPAIGN, that had a couple months worth of qualifiers, weeks worth of headaches for the staff that had to moderate the online qualifiers (I honestly feel for Bravo and bsangel after seeing some of the tweets they got every time a loss or a leave happened during the Online quals.). If they manage to do another one of these before PAX Prime of NEXT year, I'll be speechless.
Microsoft still hasn't shown that they understand eSports...neither from a format standpoint, nor from the standpoint of building storylines. Hell, there wasn't TIME to build storylines with this mega-condensed faux-tourney they held this past weekend. I don't even recall Bravo or Goldenboy mentioning that Ace's older brother happened to be at the Halo 4 GC as well (and, if you saw, ran onto stage to hug him when he won).
So for me, this was not an entirely reassuring experience. It still shows a deep ignorance of competitive gaming from the corporate dogs at Microsoft and there's still miles of room for improvement in nearly every avenue. I hope Microsoft takes a more serious approach to one of its most historically successful franchises and attempts to turn this into a more focused attempt to bring the series back to what it used to be, rather than an attempt to dump money onto a game whose fans are turning away from it in a half-assed attempt to bring them back to the game. I sincerely hope the latter is not the case.
Anyway, in closing... I want to thank 343, all of the players (even Gamesager), Goldenboy, Gh057Ayame, Microsoft, Virgin Gaming, and PAX Prime for enabling the Halo 4 Global Championships to happen. It is a step...maybe not in the right direction, but at least in a less-wrong direction...toward bringing Halo back to the limelight. And without all of their help combined, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to rant about it.
It was a great experience, and the finals were extremely tense. Regardless of my gripes, I'm still elated that I went. And I hope to see more in the future. I leave you with photographic proof that "Halo is dad" though. Gandhi and Maven casting Call of Duty:
So...how about those Halo 4 Global Championships? They were pretty fantastic, right?
Audley Enough, it left a bitter taste in my mouth.
I saw some tweets about how it was a great tournament. And here's where I'm going to stop you, and correct you.
That was an awful tournament. It was a good show. It was a good (expensive) marketing campaign. But again, from a competitive integrity standpoint, that tournament was terrible.
First, the format. A...100+ team FFA feed into a 4-player 1v1 BEST OF ONE finals? The fuck is that? Best of one? Really? Now, time constraints are one thing, but getting yourself so constrained that you have to limit yourself to best of ones for GRAND FINALS for (one of) the LARGEST PRIZE POOLS Halo has ever seen? That's pretty fucked up. Seriously.
FPS titles have traditionally been a showcase of multiple maps and sometimes multiple game variants. Hell, even Quake Live, which still gets played at Dreamhack events has Best of 3 finals showing off three different maps. And if you're unfamiliar, its format is always 1v1.
By my next statement I mean no offense to the winner, Aaron Elam...but when a player openly admits to only having practiced for an event for about a week prior and ends up winning Two HUNDRED THOUSAND dollars at said event over players who have put in substantially more time and effort...you know the format of the tournament is a little fucked. Again, don't take this statement wrong. Ace played fantastically and he earned his win...but as someone who preaches practice, I can't help but feel if there was a little bit more consistency required of the tournament, he may not have seen as great of success. I still extend my congratulations to him. Hey, he was the first Halo pro to have ever had me on his friend's list. I can't hate.
Secondly, the trailers.
Okay, what the fuck. This is a Halo tournament, right? It's the HALO FOUR GLOBAL CHAMPIONSHIPS, right?
WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU SHOWING ME A FUCKING TRAILER FOR BATTLEFIELD 4 AND FUCKING PLANTS VERSUS ZOMBIES GARDEN WARFARE? I don't go to LoL events and expect to see a trailer for DotA2. You know why? BECAUSE THEY FUCKING SHOW YOU LEAGUE OF LEGENDS at LEAGUE OF LEGENDS EVENTS.
For this to have been as marketing-focused as it was, I'm confused as fuck as to what Microsoft was actually trying to market. I mean, they gave us some of the most limited scope of what Halo has to offer as humanly possible -- FFA and 1v1s of a team game... And then they go off and show us three trailers for three different shooters all coming to the XBox One console. This event's about Halo, right? So why are you trying to draw us to different shooters, Micro$oft?
Thirdly, the production.
Wait, the production? Those production values were insane, Audley! What are you smoking?
I'm not going to disagree that the production values were insane. But the part that bugged me about it was how painfully scripted it was. If you couldn't tell the two hosts were reading from a teleprompter, you weren't watching. Granted, they would go off-script on occasion...but in those instances, it was the only time the two would actually engage each other or their surroundings during the show. Otherwise, they just kept looking forward. You could even feel when they felt the teleprompted jokes ("Spartan badassery") were too forced, and grit their teeth to grind through it.
I know Riot and the LCS use teleprompters, and often the casters read from it when setting up transitions. However, most have enough genuine character of their own merit that it doesn't feel as awkward.
I do want to make it clear -- I enjoyed my time in Benaroya Hall during the finals. It was a good show. It was executed very well, and the games were intense and fun to watch. But when I see people praising the event and lauding it as proof that "Halo is back!" and "343 gets it" I just shudder.
I repeat what I've said all along: Halo 4's launch state being poor isn't 343's fault. That launch state is a publisher issue, not a developer one. Publisher determines release date, and when something's released with no beta, tons of bugs, and missing content, you don't say "Oh, well clearly that's what the developer wanted. What idiots." That's a "Big Daddy Moneybags decided we had to release by this date or we wouldn't get paid." Oh, and by the way... Microsoft Game Studios published Halo 4.
Also, how soon do you think an event that size will get done again? Microsoft and Virgin gaming just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for a tournam-err, excuse me, MARKETING CAMPAIGN, that had a couple months worth of qualifiers, weeks worth of headaches for the staff that had to moderate the online qualifiers (I honestly feel for Bravo and bsangel after seeing some of the tweets they got every time a loss or a leave happened during the Online quals.). If they manage to do another one of these before PAX Prime of NEXT year, I'll be speechless.
Microsoft still hasn't shown that they understand eSports...neither from a format standpoint, nor from the standpoint of building storylines. Hell, there wasn't TIME to build storylines with this mega-condensed faux-tourney they held this past weekend. I don't even recall Bravo or Goldenboy mentioning that Ace's older brother happened to be at the Halo 4 GC as well (and, if you saw, ran onto stage to hug him when he won).
So for me, this was not an entirely reassuring experience. It still shows a deep ignorance of competitive gaming from the corporate dogs at Microsoft and there's still miles of room for improvement in nearly every avenue. I hope Microsoft takes a more serious approach to one of its most historically successful franchises and attempts to turn this into a more focused attempt to bring the series back to what it used to be, rather than an attempt to dump money onto a game whose fans are turning away from it in a half-assed attempt to bring them back to the game. I sincerely hope the latter is not the case.
Anyway, in closing... I want to thank 343, all of the players (even Gamesager), Goldenboy, Gh057Ayame, Microsoft, Virgin Gaming, and PAX Prime for enabling the Halo 4 Global Championships to happen. It is a step...maybe not in the right direction, but at least in a less-wrong direction...toward bringing Halo back to the limelight. And without all of their help combined, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to rant about it.
It was a great experience, and the finals were extremely tense. Regardless of my gripes, I'm still elated that I went. And I hope to see more in the future. I leave you with photographic proof that "Halo is dad" though. Gandhi and Maven casting Call of Duty:
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Fighting Chance: Randomness in Competitive Gaming (and Sports)
If you're reading this, you probably play video games. In fact, you probably enjoy competing, or attempting to compete in video games. And if you're like me, you really hate arbitrary systems that limit your ability to outplay your opponents. Often, people will talk about how "random shit" screwed them out of a win, or a kill, or whatever.
So...what is randomness?
The dictionary has a few different definitions both formal (from statistics) and informal regarding the word "random" - but for the sake of this blog, I will be using a bit of a fusion of the definitions. In the context of competition, the word random means...
"Unable to be accurately predicted or controlled based off the knowledge any participating player has available to them at a given time."
To clarify, this means any action within the rules of a game taken by a player cannot, by definition, be random. Being unable to predict an opposing player's actions is not an act of randomness, but rather an act of them out-playing you. Sirlin covers the concept of reading and predicting an opponent's actions quite well in his article about "Yomi Layer 3."
In competitive gaming, many of the anti-randomness camp tend to cling to the argument, "There is no randomness in real sports." But, let's take a closer look at that.
Say you're playing baseball. A ground ball is hit toward third base. On its way there, it hits a rock in the ground and bounces toward second base instead.
It is highly unlikely and completely unrealistic to expect that any player participating in the game has an intimate enough level of knowledge of the field's terrain to know that there was a rock there likely to cause such an awkward bounce. This is an act of randomness.
Say you're playing basketball. You go to participate in the tip off. The referee (not a player participating in the game) throws the ball up, but the referee's hand is not level, sending the ball closer to you than your opponent. Neither you nor your opponent had any idea or say in this occuring. This is an act of randomness.
Football, wind during field goals. A sudden gust or cessation of gusting can completely change the outcome of a kick. Unless the wind is completely consistent, the wind's effects are random. Nature is random.
Granted, many of these random factors are limited and often will only occur in edge cases. Most random factors are able to be reacted to in a way that does not overall affect the outcome of a game. And in most cases, the random factor is not enough to outweigh the differentiation in skill.
Of course, I emphasize my use of the phrase "in most cases" and point back in recent history to the "Inaccurate Reception" -- a play in the 2012 Packers/Seahawks game in which Seahawks QB Russell Wilson threw an interception to Packers' defender M.D. Jennings, which was ruled by the officiating staff as a completion to Seahawks receiver Golden Tate. Even after video review that showed overwhelming evidence this was an incorrect call, the call stood, giving the Seahawks a win in an otherwise lost game. This outcome, completely unpredictable and uncontrollable by the players (and wRONG by the actual rules of the game) was a random factor (by the above definition) that determined the outcome of the game.
This randomness extends into various video games, even those of a competitive nature. Often, random factors are met with a certain level of disdain from the players. Critical hits and status effects are referred to as "Hax" by the players of Pokémon -- and in niche competitive communities, moves and items that increase the randomness (lowering accuracy, raising evasion, increasing crit chance) are forbidden.
In many shooter series, the gun's bullet trajectory can be random through mechanics such as bloom or bullet spread. This sort of mechanic proves especially problematic in games of higher kill times, as the longer an engagement lasts, the more opportunity there is for the randomness to affect the outcome of a battle between individuals.
Throughout League of Legends' development, various random factors such as "chances" to stun, critical chance being available at level 1 through masteries, the ability to dodge basic attacks (and at one point, towers), and Gangplank's ultimate have all been either stripped or reworked in a manner that makes them more consistent and predictable.
So, clearly with the fact that randomness can affect the outcome of a game, or greatly influence it without the player being able to predict it, randomness is bad, right?
I won't use my catchphrase (No, shut up, you're wrong.) here, but I will offer further insight on why a certain degree of randomness can be useful.
First, I'm going to bring up the game Connect Four. This game has no true randomness. Each player has full control over the actions he or she takes. There are no arbitrary influences on the game except for the selection of who goes first. So, this game is a perfect example of determining who is better at the game, yes?
No, shut up, you're wrong (there, I got to use it.) Connect Four is a SOLVED GAME. If played correctly, it is impossible for the first player to lose. He or she can force a win regardless of any action taken by the opposition. Checkers is a solved game. Played perfectly by both sides, the game ends in a draw. Chess is, with our current level of technology, too complex for an absolute solution, but has been solved for all 7-piece end game situations.
Solved games mean there is an ultimate barrier on the level at which a player can out-play another. Ultimately, the game's rule set already has determined the winner, and the interactions of the players are completely meaningless. This is poor.
If we were, however, to remove all randomness from the games I mentioned above, only one of those could eventually become a solved game (Pokémon.) The others all have one distinct difference from board games that makes the implementation of randomness completely unnecessary.
They each require mechanical skill. Players can out-position, out-maneuever, out-shoot, out-itemize, or out-skill their opponents in various ways through methods of both strategic and mechanical play. Inconsistencies in gameplay more often come from the player's failure to properly control rather than the game determining they have failed through arbitrary rulesets, dice rolls, et cetera.
Let's take a closer look at Halo. In Halo Reach, for example, Bungie implemented a mechanic known as Bloom. As a player fired faster than the arbitrarily determined ideal rate of fire, the gun's accuracy would drop, leading to missed shots regardless of the player aiming properly. This was counterintuitive given the game's comparatively long kill times (compared to not only other Halo titles, but more specifically to other shooters which included Bloom, which often have instant kills for headshots). In any individual engagement, players' primary goals are to kill the opposition prior to being killed themselves, which means firing at the fastest rate of fire is often optimal, even if it becomes a gamble.
In this system, players were not punished for missing (as they would be in the case of an instant kill headshot game) -- but rather, punished for engaging. Scoring a kill merely meant you had to immediately disengage (which was not often possible) or else start out at a huge disadvantage in any ensuing engagements. This drastically reduced the power of an individual in games.
This implementation of randomness is completely unnecessary, as it only serves to limit the individual's capability for outplaying, rather than to facilitate the potentially intended goal of assisting less skilled players in scoring kills. If the designers wished to include a cadence to assist newer players, the "bloom" should've been replaced by a sort of on-board aim assistance for the gun. As the rate of fire increases, the computer's "processing speed" decreases, reducing the aim assistance and bullet magnetism of the gun and making the bullet actually fire more accurately in regards to the player's reticule. In the case of high levels of player skill, the players can shoot at the max rate of fire without being punished for their level of skill. In the case of lower levels of player skills, players can fire at cadence with moderate accuracy and still be able to score kills in a consistent number of shots.
In Halo 4, a new form of randomness was implemented in the game's Ordnance system. Personally, I like ordnance. I even don't mind some degree of randomness in the ordnance. However, the implementation in the release version of Halo 4 was entirely out of whack. Players could get anything from a set of extra grenades to the most powerful weapons in the game, just for earning enough points to call down a weapon.
Players could press any of three directional pad buttons to call down a randomly generated weapon, item, or power-up upon acquiring Ordnance. Interestingly, there were three "classes" of weapons in the game -- Human, Covenant, or Promethean. I found it odd that the Orndance choices were not first tied to selecting one of these three classes to further specify what kind of weapon ordnance the player could then get. After selecting a class of weapon, the three directional options could've then been reduced to something along the lines of "Close Range" (Shotgun, Scattershot, Energy Sword, Gravity Hammer), "Explosive" (Sticky Detonator, Concussion Rifle, or any of the grenade choices), and "Powerup" (available to all 3 class choices, randomly selects Speed Boost, Overshield, or Damage Boost). The "up" button could be used to return a menu and investigate the other options. It would reduce the randomness and improve a player's ability to quickly determine what they want.
Alternatively, they could've been organized in a manner that focused on primarily what they improved -- Left = Mobility. Speed Boost, Jetpack, Thruster Pack. Down = Defense. Overshield, Hardlight Shield, Regenerator. Right = Offense. Damage Boost, various mid-tier weapons like the Railgun or Concussion rifle. The main reason I defend the possibility of randomness in the Ordnance system is that regardless of the choice, they are all better than whatever the CURRENT state of the player is. There's no chance that the randomness will yield a worse outcome.
In League of Legends, there are very few random factors remaining. Currently Twisted Fate's passive and Critical Chance are the two most notable. Twisted Fate's passive is mostly a non-factor as it averages out to the same effect over the course of a game.
Critical Chance, however, is a factor that has had to be limited and hammered by design into a form that was made acceptable due to various abuse cases due to its random nature. Once again, this is an ability that doesn't have to be random. Rather than critical hits being left to the whims of a calculator, they could instead occur on a pattern.
For example, the Brawler's Gloves grant an 8% chance to critically strike. On average, this means a player will critically strike once every 12.5 attacks. Instead of this system, it could generate a range (for example, 10-15) of "focus" per attack. Once the amount of focus reaches 100, a critical hit occurs. (Yes, this is still random. It does keep the element of randomness, but takes away the most important element that makes randomness bad -- unpredictability.) This would also serve to eliminate problematic edge cases of double critical hits or long strings without critical hits. And since the next "critical hit" would be a trackable occurrence, it would encourage interactivity between players in the case of a laning phase in which one player has generated enough focus to crit. It brings about more options for outplaying and counterplaying situations while reducing the randomness tied to one of the last bastion of offenders of RNG fuckery remaining in League of Legends.
Now, to return to Pokémon. I mentioned randomness is necessary to prevent it from being a solved game. Do this mean I believe that, on a given attack, a player should suddenly be able to deal double damage and disregard any defensive bonuses of the target (how crits work in Pokemon)? No.
The primary issue with the randomness in Pokémon, as a competitive game, is that it is ABRUPT. There is no chance to react to the issue. A crit will always come without prior warning, and will often completely screw you over. This is a huge negative. However, crits do serve a positive purpose in some occasions. They can prevent guaranteed stalls, or help break a wall attempt in an otherwise hopeless case.
So, how do you eliminate the abruptness? It's really quite easy. You delay the effect of the crit until one turn after the game has determined a crit occurs. This could be done by replacing "Critical Hit" with "has been knocked off-balance!" -- where an off-balance character is treated as +0 on defense upgrades, and takes double damage from the next attack to occur. This status effect always only lasts one turn.
A method like this proves more interactive for both the person getting the critical hit as well as the person who was hit, as once you are knocked off-balance, there are a number of choices you can make. The player who has knocked the opponent off-balance will likely want to use their current Pokémon's most powerful move in order to inflict as much damage as possible. The person who has been knocked off-balance has a few options they can select: 1) Leave in the current creature, hoping the damage is not enough and the wall can continue. 2) Use a faster move in order to attempt to knock-out the opposing Pokémon. 3) Attempt to swap out their Pokémon to avoid the critical hit taking effect.
If the attacking player guesses that the defending player will likely use #3, the mind games begin. "Do I stick with my strongest move, or do I try to guess what Pokémon they will swap to, and instead swap my own Pokémon to something that will be strong against their likely switch?" The level of Yomi (again, go read the Sirlin article I linked earlier. He's a great design mind.) that occurs just from this one mechanic change greatly increases the amount of fun and interactivity between the two players while drastically reducing the amount of frustration from a random moment in the game, while still in essence keeping that randomness which can reduce or prevent the game from ultimately devolving into a "solved" game.
Randomness in gaming is not all bad. It creates a certain level of chaos that can, in many circumstances, improve the interactivity between players. However, randomness that exists as an unpredictable factor, or solely to limit the level to which a player can outplay another has no place in a game of skill, and wherever possible should be removed.
Audley Enough, very few games since the most popular early game, Pong, has seemed to grasp this concept and we are left with the artifact of 80s and 90s dungeon crawlers keeping random factors in our games. As the competitive gaming envelope continues to get pushed, hopefully we can stamp out any remaining randomness that limits player skill and replace them with mechanics that instead reward skillful interaction over dumb luck.
So...what is randomness?
The dictionary has a few different definitions both formal (from statistics) and informal regarding the word "random" - but for the sake of this blog, I will be using a bit of a fusion of the definitions. In the context of competition, the word random means...
"Unable to be accurately predicted or controlled based off the knowledge any participating player has available to them at a given time."
To clarify, this means any action within the rules of a game taken by a player cannot, by definition, be random. Being unable to predict an opposing player's actions is not an act of randomness, but rather an act of them out-playing you. Sirlin covers the concept of reading and predicting an opponent's actions quite well in his article about "Yomi Layer 3."
In competitive gaming, many of the anti-randomness camp tend to cling to the argument, "There is no randomness in real sports." But, let's take a closer look at that.
Say you're playing baseball. A ground ball is hit toward third base. On its way there, it hits a rock in the ground and bounces toward second base instead.
It is highly unlikely and completely unrealistic to expect that any player participating in the game has an intimate enough level of knowledge of the field's terrain to know that there was a rock there likely to cause such an awkward bounce. This is an act of randomness.
Say you're playing basketball. You go to participate in the tip off. The referee (not a player participating in the game) throws the ball up, but the referee's hand is not level, sending the ball closer to you than your opponent. Neither you nor your opponent had any idea or say in this occuring. This is an act of randomness.
Football, wind during field goals. A sudden gust or cessation of gusting can completely change the outcome of a kick. Unless the wind is completely consistent, the wind's effects are random. Nature is random.
Granted, many of these random factors are limited and often will only occur in edge cases. Most random factors are able to be reacted to in a way that does not overall affect the outcome of a game. And in most cases, the random factor is not enough to outweigh the differentiation in skill.
Of course, I emphasize my use of the phrase "in most cases" and point back in recent history to the "Inaccurate Reception" -- a play in the 2012 Packers/Seahawks game in which Seahawks QB Russell Wilson threw an interception to Packers' defender M.D. Jennings, which was ruled by the officiating staff as a completion to Seahawks receiver Golden Tate. Even after video review that showed overwhelming evidence this was an incorrect call, the call stood, giving the Seahawks a win in an otherwise lost game. This outcome, completely unpredictable and uncontrollable by the players (and wRONG by the actual rules of the game) was a random factor (by the above definition) that determined the outcome of the game.
This randomness extends into various video games, even those of a competitive nature. Often, random factors are met with a certain level of disdain from the players. Critical hits and status effects are referred to as "Hax" by the players of Pokémon -- and in niche competitive communities, moves and items that increase the randomness (lowering accuracy, raising evasion, increasing crit chance) are forbidden.
In many shooter series, the gun's bullet trajectory can be random through mechanics such as bloom or bullet spread. This sort of mechanic proves especially problematic in games of higher kill times, as the longer an engagement lasts, the more opportunity there is for the randomness to affect the outcome of a battle between individuals.
Throughout League of Legends' development, various random factors such as "chances" to stun, critical chance being available at level 1 through masteries, the ability to dodge basic attacks (and at one point, towers), and Gangplank's ultimate have all been either stripped or reworked in a manner that makes them more consistent and predictable.
So, clearly with the fact that randomness can affect the outcome of a game, or greatly influence it without the player being able to predict it, randomness is bad, right?
I won't use my catchphrase (No, shut up, you're wrong.) here, but I will offer further insight on why a certain degree of randomness can be useful.
First, I'm going to bring up the game Connect Four. This game has no true randomness. Each player has full control over the actions he or she takes. There are no arbitrary influences on the game except for the selection of who goes first. So, this game is a perfect example of determining who is better at the game, yes?
No, shut up, you're wrong (there, I got to use it.) Connect Four is a SOLVED GAME. If played correctly, it is impossible for the first player to lose. He or she can force a win regardless of any action taken by the opposition. Checkers is a solved game. Played perfectly by both sides, the game ends in a draw. Chess is, with our current level of technology, too complex for an absolute solution, but has been solved for all 7-piece end game situations.
Solved games mean there is an ultimate barrier on the level at which a player can out-play another. Ultimately, the game's rule set already has determined the winner, and the interactions of the players are completely meaningless. This is poor.
If we were, however, to remove all randomness from the games I mentioned above, only one of those could eventually become a solved game (Pokémon.) The others all have one distinct difference from board games that makes the implementation of randomness completely unnecessary.
They each require mechanical skill. Players can out-position, out-maneuever, out-shoot, out-itemize, or out-skill their opponents in various ways through methods of both strategic and mechanical play. Inconsistencies in gameplay more often come from the player's failure to properly control rather than the game determining they have failed through arbitrary rulesets, dice rolls, et cetera.
Let's take a closer look at Halo. In Halo Reach, for example, Bungie implemented a mechanic known as Bloom. As a player fired faster than the arbitrarily determined ideal rate of fire, the gun's accuracy would drop, leading to missed shots regardless of the player aiming properly. This was counterintuitive given the game's comparatively long kill times (compared to not only other Halo titles, but more specifically to other shooters which included Bloom, which often have instant kills for headshots). In any individual engagement, players' primary goals are to kill the opposition prior to being killed themselves, which means firing at the fastest rate of fire is often optimal, even if it becomes a gamble.
In this system, players were not punished for missing (as they would be in the case of an instant kill headshot game) -- but rather, punished for engaging. Scoring a kill merely meant you had to immediately disengage (which was not often possible) or else start out at a huge disadvantage in any ensuing engagements. This drastically reduced the power of an individual in games.
This implementation of randomness is completely unnecessary, as it only serves to limit the individual's capability for outplaying, rather than to facilitate the potentially intended goal of assisting less skilled players in scoring kills. If the designers wished to include a cadence to assist newer players, the "bloom" should've been replaced by a sort of on-board aim assistance for the gun. As the rate of fire increases, the computer's "processing speed" decreases, reducing the aim assistance and bullet magnetism of the gun and making the bullet actually fire more accurately in regards to the player's reticule. In the case of high levels of player skill, the players can shoot at the max rate of fire without being punished for their level of skill. In the case of lower levels of player skills, players can fire at cadence with moderate accuracy and still be able to score kills in a consistent number of shots.
In Halo 4, a new form of randomness was implemented in the game's Ordnance system. Personally, I like ordnance. I even don't mind some degree of randomness in the ordnance. However, the implementation in the release version of Halo 4 was entirely out of whack. Players could get anything from a set of extra grenades to the most powerful weapons in the game, just for earning enough points to call down a weapon.
Players could press any of three directional pad buttons to call down a randomly generated weapon, item, or power-up upon acquiring Ordnance. Interestingly, there were three "classes" of weapons in the game -- Human, Covenant, or Promethean. I found it odd that the Orndance choices were not first tied to selecting one of these three classes to further specify what kind of weapon ordnance the player could then get. After selecting a class of weapon, the three directional options could've then been reduced to something along the lines of "Close Range" (Shotgun, Scattershot, Energy Sword, Gravity Hammer), "Explosive" (Sticky Detonator, Concussion Rifle, or any of the grenade choices), and "Powerup" (available to all 3 class choices, randomly selects Speed Boost, Overshield, or Damage Boost). The "up" button could be used to return a menu and investigate the other options. It would reduce the randomness and improve a player's ability to quickly determine what they want.
Alternatively, they could've been organized in a manner that focused on primarily what they improved -- Left = Mobility. Speed Boost, Jetpack, Thruster Pack. Down = Defense. Overshield, Hardlight Shield, Regenerator. Right = Offense. Damage Boost, various mid-tier weapons like the Railgun or Concussion rifle. The main reason I defend the possibility of randomness in the Ordnance system is that regardless of the choice, they are all better than whatever the CURRENT state of the player is. There's no chance that the randomness will yield a worse outcome.
In League of Legends, there are very few random factors remaining. Currently Twisted Fate's passive and Critical Chance are the two most notable. Twisted Fate's passive is mostly a non-factor as it averages out to the same effect over the course of a game.
Critical Chance, however, is a factor that has had to be limited and hammered by design into a form that was made acceptable due to various abuse cases due to its random nature. Once again, this is an ability that doesn't have to be random. Rather than critical hits being left to the whims of a calculator, they could instead occur on a pattern.
For example, the Brawler's Gloves grant an 8% chance to critically strike. On average, this means a player will critically strike once every 12.5 attacks. Instead of this system, it could generate a range (for example, 10-15) of "focus" per attack. Once the amount of focus reaches 100, a critical hit occurs. (Yes, this is still random. It does keep the element of randomness, but takes away the most important element that makes randomness bad -- unpredictability.) This would also serve to eliminate problematic edge cases of double critical hits or long strings without critical hits. And since the next "critical hit" would be a trackable occurrence, it would encourage interactivity between players in the case of a laning phase in which one player has generated enough focus to crit. It brings about more options for outplaying and counterplaying situations while reducing the randomness tied to one of the last bastion of offenders of RNG fuckery remaining in League of Legends.
Now, to return to Pokémon. I mentioned randomness is necessary to prevent it from being a solved game. Do this mean I believe that, on a given attack, a player should suddenly be able to deal double damage and disregard any defensive bonuses of the target (how crits work in Pokemon)? No.
The primary issue with the randomness in Pokémon, as a competitive game, is that it is ABRUPT. There is no chance to react to the issue. A crit will always come without prior warning, and will often completely screw you over. This is a huge negative. However, crits do serve a positive purpose in some occasions. They can prevent guaranteed stalls, or help break a wall attempt in an otherwise hopeless case.
So, how do you eliminate the abruptness? It's really quite easy. You delay the effect of the crit until one turn after the game has determined a crit occurs. This could be done by replacing "Critical Hit" with "has been knocked off-balance!" -- where an off-balance character is treated as +0 on defense upgrades, and takes double damage from the next attack to occur. This status effect always only lasts one turn.
A method like this proves more interactive for both the person getting the critical hit as well as the person who was hit, as once you are knocked off-balance, there are a number of choices you can make. The player who has knocked the opponent off-balance will likely want to use their current Pokémon's most powerful move in order to inflict as much damage as possible. The person who has been knocked off-balance has a few options they can select: 1) Leave in the current creature, hoping the damage is not enough and the wall can continue. 2) Use a faster move in order to attempt to knock-out the opposing Pokémon. 3) Attempt to swap out their Pokémon to avoid the critical hit taking effect.
If the attacking player guesses that the defending player will likely use #3, the mind games begin. "Do I stick with my strongest move, or do I try to guess what Pokémon they will swap to, and instead swap my own Pokémon to something that will be strong against their likely switch?" The level of Yomi (again, go read the Sirlin article I linked earlier. He's a great design mind.) that occurs just from this one mechanic change greatly increases the amount of fun and interactivity between the two players while drastically reducing the amount of frustration from a random moment in the game, while still in essence keeping that randomness which can reduce or prevent the game from ultimately devolving into a "solved" game.
Randomness in gaming is not all bad. It creates a certain level of chaos that can, in many circumstances, improve the interactivity between players. However, randomness that exists as an unpredictable factor, or solely to limit the level to which a player can outplay another has no place in a game of skill, and wherever possible should be removed.
Audley Enough, very few games since the most popular early game, Pong, has seemed to grasp this concept and we are left with the artifact of 80s and 90s dungeon crawlers keeping random factors in our games. As the competitive gaming envelope continues to get pushed, hopefully we can stamp out any remaining randomness that limits player skill and replace them with mechanics that instead reward skillful interaction over dumb luck.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Is that Rally All It Takes?
Today, I'm going to be writing about a relatively unhighlighted facet of top level Halo play. In fact, it's so unmentioned in competitive Halo, I don't even know if players are aware they're doing it or have a term for it. So in this Audley Enough article, I'm going to dub it "Rallying." In this particular article, I will use the term to explain why Pistola is God, and why ToTz and RyaNoob are both much, much better than fans and fellow players give them credit for.
If you've played League of Legends, you're familiar with the laning phase being focused on two major things: killing minions and harassing the opposing laner in order to try to deter them from killing minions. Rallying is much akin to harassing in League of Legends. There are three possible outcomes when you attempt to harass -- you can LOSE the exchange and become behind, and therefore be left to the whims of the opposing laner. You can come out EVEN in the trade, and depending on other factors put yourself in a better or worse position in the lane, or you can come out AHEAD and potentially zone the enemy laner off their minion wave.
So why am I talking about League of Legends in relation to Halo? Because that concept really is what is being applied when I refer to Rallying in Halo. So, now to explain exactly what I mean. You are slightly in cover. An opponent you see is also slightly in cover. You both see each other, and neither of you are in position to really get help from a teammate.
Much like the aforementioned harassing in LoL, there are three outcomes if the two of you attempt to fire upon each other. You miss one shot while your opponent doesn't. Your fate is now less in your control, as you must either back down, or hope your opponent misses a shot. The opposite of this can occur. Or, you can both be even in shots -- leading either to the decision for one player to back down and await allied assistance, or for both players to keep pressing the situation until one or both die.
Generally, players will not attempt to trade deaths. If they're in a situation where they are not ahead in the battle and still have decent positioning themselves, a smart player will back down and try to stay alive with as much health as possible. The other player will either be baited to overextend to chase the kill or also back down / stay in the same position, giving your teammates an opportunity to close and finish the kill.
I refer to these individual gun battle exchanges in which neither player is actually attempting to kill the other as "Rallying" -- they're much different than battles in which a player is mid-push and has no cover to take when a battle starts. In those cases, the player MUST go for the kill. This is specifically for encounters in which both players have cover available to them and may choose to back down at any point. (I chose the term "rallying" because of the word's definition in regards to Tennis. A Rally is an exchange back and forth between two players until a point is scored.)
Pistola is one of the best players at Rallying you will see in Halo. He will fire until either he takes damage in return, or until the opponent catches up in damage, then immediately back down and stay alive. He is what I refer to as a bully (a player that will focus on only favorable rally exchanges). And he's a damn good bully. Granted, there are many more aspects to Pistola's gameplay that make him a fantastic player, but his Bullying is top-notch. And it's a large part of why he's so hard to kill. If he's not confident he'll come out ahead, he won't take the fight.
One of the biggest mistake other players will make when in a Rallying situation...is that they will attempt to force the Rally even if they're still even (trading) or behind (losing / being bullied). This is a great way to get yourself killed either by the player you're shooting, or by his teammate who has now had time to flank you while you focus on your rally.
Players who trade in Rallies constantly are a liability to their teammates. Why? Because if you are even or behind in an exchange, you are relying on your teammates to bail you out in order to come out ahead overall. There are times, however, where being bullied or trading can be a net positive for your team, however...and it's something ToTz was actually superb at, and Ryanoob still does even in Halo 4.
If you are behind your opponents, (i.e., your opponents are between you and your teammates)...then it is okay to trade, lose a trade, or be bullied. Of course, the longer you stay alive, the more net positive you can get out of such a flank. Why is this the case? Because your teammates aren't pulled out of position to save you. They can move naturally. And suddenly your opponents are pinched. Even if they kill you, they have to turn completely around and find your teammates to take advantage of your death. If your flank's timing was proper, this can actually turn into a 2 for 1 or 3 for 1 or other net-positive for your team. In certain maps/gametypes, this can actually force a cycle where you then spawn at your base as your opponents spawn outside their base (as your teammates have pushed into the enemy base), and you can set up another rally where you may be forced to sacrifice yourself in exchange for your team gaining several kills.
Now, I do want to make one thing clear: Although you are LIKELY to die by doing one of these intentionally-bad-position flanks, it is not NECESSARY for you to die. The goal is to be like Singed from League of Legends -- you want to draw as much attention to yourself while being as difficult to kill as you possibly can be. The longer the opponents are spending to deal with you, the more freedom your teammates have to make their plays.
Think of it as a split pushing Tryndamere in LoL drawing 3 people to come kill him as he attacks your inhibitor tower in the bottom lane at 40 minutes into the game... well, now your team has an easy 4v2 at Baron...or a free Rocket Launcher that just spawned.
These bully-baiters and self-sacrificing players relieve pressure from other areas of the map by making themselves deceptively easy targets. Much like the adorable Slow Loris...they may look harmless, but stopping to deal with them is actually poisoning your team's chance to win. And ignoring them is just digging yourself a bigger hole.
The concept of Rallying is one that I've personally never heard players really articulate in Halo, though it's obvious from watching gameplay of players like Pistola that it's not outright foreign to top players. You want to come out ahead in an exchange whenever possible. And if you know it's not possible, you want to stay alive long enough to force players out of position to enable your teammates to get their own favorable positions.
Being able to understand when and how to flank to set up a sacrifice that ultimately benefits your team is why RyaNoob is such a valuable, albeit undervalued, player and how teams he's on manage to win even if audience and statistical perception suggests that he is performing poorly. It's a play style that requires tons of situational awareness to pull off successfully...and Audley Enough, top players still don't seem to understand how much freedom they're given from actions of a seemingly "bad play" setting them up for many kills themselves.
If you've played League of Legends, you're familiar with the laning phase being focused on two major things: killing minions and harassing the opposing laner in order to try to deter them from killing minions. Rallying is much akin to harassing in League of Legends. There are three possible outcomes when you attempt to harass -- you can LOSE the exchange and become behind, and therefore be left to the whims of the opposing laner. You can come out EVEN in the trade, and depending on other factors put yourself in a better or worse position in the lane, or you can come out AHEAD and potentially zone the enemy laner off their minion wave.
So why am I talking about League of Legends in relation to Halo? Because that concept really is what is being applied when I refer to Rallying in Halo. So, now to explain exactly what I mean. You are slightly in cover. An opponent you see is also slightly in cover. You both see each other, and neither of you are in position to really get help from a teammate.
Much like the aforementioned harassing in LoL, there are three outcomes if the two of you attempt to fire upon each other. You miss one shot while your opponent doesn't. Your fate is now less in your control, as you must either back down, or hope your opponent misses a shot. The opposite of this can occur. Or, you can both be even in shots -- leading either to the decision for one player to back down and await allied assistance, or for both players to keep pressing the situation until one or both die.
Generally, players will not attempt to trade deaths. If they're in a situation where they are not ahead in the battle and still have decent positioning themselves, a smart player will back down and try to stay alive with as much health as possible. The other player will either be baited to overextend to chase the kill or also back down / stay in the same position, giving your teammates an opportunity to close and finish the kill.
I refer to these individual gun battle exchanges in which neither player is actually attempting to kill the other as "Rallying" -- they're much different than battles in which a player is mid-push and has no cover to take when a battle starts. In those cases, the player MUST go for the kill. This is specifically for encounters in which both players have cover available to them and may choose to back down at any point. (I chose the term "rallying" because of the word's definition in regards to Tennis. A Rally is an exchange back and forth between two players until a point is scored.)
Pistola is one of the best players at Rallying you will see in Halo. He will fire until either he takes damage in return, or until the opponent catches up in damage, then immediately back down and stay alive. He is what I refer to as a bully (a player that will focus on only favorable rally exchanges). And he's a damn good bully. Granted, there are many more aspects to Pistola's gameplay that make him a fantastic player, but his Bullying is top-notch. And it's a large part of why he's so hard to kill. If he's not confident he'll come out ahead, he won't take the fight.
One of the biggest mistake other players will make when in a Rallying situation...is that they will attempt to force the Rally even if they're still even (trading) or behind (losing / being bullied). This is a great way to get yourself killed either by the player you're shooting, or by his teammate who has now had time to flank you while you focus on your rally.
Players who trade in Rallies constantly are a liability to their teammates. Why? Because if you are even or behind in an exchange, you are relying on your teammates to bail you out in order to come out ahead overall. There are times, however, where being bullied or trading can be a net positive for your team, however...and it's something ToTz was actually superb at, and Ryanoob still does even in Halo 4.
If you are behind your opponents, (i.e., your opponents are between you and your teammates)...then it is okay to trade, lose a trade, or be bullied. Of course, the longer you stay alive, the more net positive you can get out of such a flank. Why is this the case? Because your teammates aren't pulled out of position to save you. They can move naturally. And suddenly your opponents are pinched. Even if they kill you, they have to turn completely around and find your teammates to take advantage of your death. If your flank's timing was proper, this can actually turn into a 2 for 1 or 3 for 1 or other net-positive for your team. In certain maps/gametypes, this can actually force a cycle where you then spawn at your base as your opponents spawn outside their base (as your teammates have pushed into the enemy base), and you can set up another rally where you may be forced to sacrifice yourself in exchange for your team gaining several kills.
Now, I do want to make one thing clear: Although you are LIKELY to die by doing one of these intentionally-bad-position flanks, it is not NECESSARY for you to die. The goal is to be like Singed from League of Legends -- you want to draw as much attention to yourself while being as difficult to kill as you possibly can be. The longer the opponents are spending to deal with you, the more freedom your teammates have to make their plays.
Think of it as a split pushing Tryndamere in LoL drawing 3 people to come kill him as he attacks your inhibitor tower in the bottom lane at 40 minutes into the game... well, now your team has an easy 4v2 at Baron...or a free Rocket Launcher that just spawned.
These bully-baiters and self-sacrificing players relieve pressure from other areas of the map by making themselves deceptively easy targets. Much like the adorable Slow Loris...they may look harmless, but stopping to deal with them is actually poisoning your team's chance to win. And ignoring them is just digging yourself a bigger hole.
The concept of Rallying is one that I've personally never heard players really articulate in Halo, though it's obvious from watching gameplay of players like Pistola that it's not outright foreign to top players. You want to come out ahead in an exchange whenever possible. And if you know it's not possible, you want to stay alive long enough to force players out of position to enable your teammates to get their own favorable positions.
Being able to understand when and how to flank to set up a sacrifice that ultimately benefits your team is why RyaNoob is such a valuable, albeit undervalued, player and how teams he's on manage to win even if audience and statistical perception suggests that he is performing poorly. It's a play style that requires tons of situational awareness to pull off successfully...and Audley Enough, top players still don't seem to understand how much freedom they're given from actions of a seemingly "bad play" setting them up for many kills themselves.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Audley Enough: Respawned
Well hello there. It's been a while, no? Sorry about that. I kind of died for a bit. But the best thing about death in video games is that you usually respawn.
Speaking of respawning, that's what this entire Audley Enough entry will be about. Respawning in Halo 4. No fluff. Before I get started, I'm going to highly recommend you all take a visit to the past and read b0b43's Spawn Guide for Halo 3. It is what inspired me to do this, and it will explain things very clearly
First things first, I'm going to define a few terms and probably insult your intelligence:
Respawn Point: The bluish circles in Forge mode that indicate a potential spot for a player to respawn.
Influence: Measurable added weight to a respawn point from the game based off various factors, such as deaths, nearby players, or being looked at.
Forge Unit: A unit of measurement in forge to measure distances. 1 Forge Unit is the equivalent to 3m when looking through the scope of a DMR, Sniper, or through your VISR.
Respawn Zone: A volume placed in Forge mode to add or subtract weighting to an area of the map or a collection of spawn points. There are four types of Respawn Zones: Respawn Zone (heretofore referred to as RZ), Respawn Zone - Weak (RZW), Respawn Zone - Anti (RZA), and Respawn Zone - Anti Weak (RZAW). I will be using the abbreviations for these from here on.
IMMINENT DANGER: (Will Robinson). Explosives or projectiles targeting a specific spot on the map.
Natural Geometry: The landscape of the map that was hand-created by 343i/Certain Affinity and cannot be altered in Forge.
Forge Objects: Any map geometry that was placed in Forge, rather than part of the map's natural geometry.
Second things second. A basic explanation of the spawn system...as it has worked in Halo 3 and Halo Reach (not sure about prior Halo titles.)
Players can only spawn on Respawn Points. Each Respawn Point has Influences that add or subtract Weight from the spawn. Each Influence has a specific value, that, if measured precisely, can tell you exactly which Respawn Point (or group of spawns, as some may end up mathematically the same) a player will spawn on. Although there's very little time in a game to pull out your abacus and try to triangulate the spawn on a precise basis, knowing these influences' rough values helps you make an educated guess.
Okay. Now that we've got that out of the way...I'm going to make a few comparisons from Halo 4's spawn system to Halo Reach's spawn system, since that is the most recent Halo and the one most of you that are reading this are most familiar with.
In Halo Reach, if an RZ had been placed on the map, any spawns that existed outside of that would be ignored by the map (except for one bugged case which I won't go over.). The RZ was a way to say "Hey, Map, these spawns are the only ones that matter. Don't pay attention to those other spawns please." In other words, if there was a "Defender" RZ placed across half the map, all of the spawns inside it would be given to the "Defender" with zero chance of the Red team spawning outside of that RZ.
In Halo 4, this is not the case. The RZ works more akin to how it worked in Halo 3, where it has a specific positive weighting that it lends to the spawns within that respawn zone. In past Halos, this weighting has been enough to outweigh any other positive/negative influences (again, barring one bug in Reach) so that players would not spawn in an opponent's RZ.
Every Respawn Zone (any of the four) in Halo 4 adds (or subtracts) a specific, measureable weight to the respawn points inside it. However, if these weights are outweighed by other factors, players will NOT spawn in the respawn zone, whether it's an RZ, RZW, RZA, or RZAW. Using a single RZ will not guarantee a sided spawn for players in Halo 4.
If you want to 100% guarantee the sided spawns, without any potential for neutral emergency spawns, the laziest, safest way to do it is to set spawns on Red side of the map to "Defender" and spawns on Blue side of the map to "Attacker." However, I find this to be an arrogant way to handle the spawns, as it's a way of essentially telling the game you know better than it where a player should be allowed to spawn. I'm going to describe later in the article how to better handle this, once I've outlined the influences a little more.
Respawn Zone - Weak (RZW) is the influence value I used to measure the other values in the game. Everything was measured in terms of "How many RZWs does it take to outweigh this." Because this was the base unit I used, I have assigned it the value of "100" influence points in order to best represent the next influences I am going to describe.
Here's a list of the influences I have measured, and their approximate influence points on a respawn point:
RZ: +1375
RZ-W: +100
RZ-A: -200
RZ-AW: -50
Death*: -180 (I will explain the * afterward)
Nearby Enemy: -1950
Nearby Ally: +275
Enemy Line of Sight: -340
Allied Line of Sight: -75
Enemy Inside Respawn Zone: -175
Ally Inside Respawn Zone: +275
Note, that these are not EXACT values. They are rough estimates based off measuring them in testing in a vacuum (no other influences present). I will now explain a few terms a little further.
Line of Sight means, simply put, looking at a spawn. But you may be wondering "How do I know if I'm actually looking at the spawn or not? What determines how wide that cone is?"
Line of Sight's cone of vision is best described as "Any spawn visible on your screen while you are in the first scope of a Sniper Rifle." Meaning, if you scope in with your gun, and the respawn point is anywhere on your screen, you are influencing that spawn. And rather heavily, too. It's roughly a -340 weighting.
If there are ANY natural geometry or forge objects between you and the Respawn Point, you will not be negatively influencing the spawn. This means that if you are looking through a glass window at the spawn point, the game will not subtract 340 points from that respawn point.
Nearby Enemy means an enemy is within 9.0 Forge Units of a spawn. (Note: YOU CAN MEASURE THIS WITH VISR, DMR, or SNIPER RIFLE BY LOOKING AT A PERSON. 9.0 Forge Units is equal to 27 meters!)
Nearby Ally means an ally is within 12.0 Forge Units of a spawn. For both this and Nearby Enemy, there did not appear to be any stronger influence for being closer to the respawn point.
Being on the other side of a wall from the Respawn Point, whether it is natural geometry or a forge object does not take away your presence influence. Meaning: STUFF IN THE WAY DOESN'T BLOCK YOUR SMEXIFIED AURA OF RESPAWN AFFECTING.
"Inside Respawn Zone" explains itself. If someone is inside the respawn zone, all the respawn points in that respawn zone are affected. It applies to RZ, RZW, RZA, and RZAW.
And now for the asterisk: Death. Unlike in past Halo Titles, Death is not a flat amount in its entire set radius. Death has a maximum radius of influence of 12.0 Forge Units, just like a nearby ally. HOWEVER, the -180 estimated value ONLY applies within a 3.0 Forge Unit (9m) radius around the spot where the player has died. With each bit further away from that 3.0 unit radius, the death influence is decreased. Around 9.0 Forge Units, the death influence is a meager -50. So deaths only significantly affect spawn points if they are in the immediate vicinity of the spawns.
Death influence lasts for 7 seconds.
There are a few influences I have not measured, as I either forgot, could not reliably test them due to mechanical requirements, or did not consider they might affect respawns in Halo 4...they are:
1) IMMINENT DANGER. Because this requires some precise timing, it was very difficult to test with two controllers. Just know that this is a heavy influence and the game doesn't want to spawn someone into a grenade.
2) Nearby Objective. I know in Halo 3 and Halo Reach, the oddball negatively weighted spawns around it. I am not sure if this applies to Halo 4, as I simply forgot to test it prior to writing this article. It is likely the oddball still carries its negative weighting for spawns, though.
3) Nearby weapon ordnance. I did not think to test this while going through my initial tests (only just thought of it while writing this article.). It is possible that random ordnances or resupplied Initial Drops that have spawned near a respawn point may negatively affect it in order to reduce the chance a player spawns close to a power weapon.
And...back to creating "Sided Spawns" for a map -- (this section is for Forgers or settings-makers):
Instead of setting all spawns per side to a specific color, leave them neutral.
Now, stack 3 RZ (Respawn Zone / Strong Respawn Zone / whatever) on that team's third of the map and label the respawn zone for that team (Red side for Defender, Blue side for Attacker.)
Place an RZA (Respawn Zone - Anti) on that team's third of the map. Label it for the OPPOSING team. (Blue side should be labeled Defender, Red side should be labeled Attacker)
Now place some "emergency" spawns in the neutral third of the map that you have not yet placed influences for. Either put NO respawn zones of any sort on top of this, or place a single RZ-W (Respawn Zone - Weak) set to neutral.
The game -should not- use these spawns ever, but if a situation ever comes up where the game's math has decided "Well shit, there's no possible way for me to spawn them in that stack of Respawn Zones you placed." then the neutral respawn zones -should- always take effect before the Respawn Zone - Anti is even considered.
This is untested theory, but at the time of writing this, it is how the maps Solace and Adrift are set up for TylerHoyt's Competitive Settings.
That's...pretty much it. If you have any questions, be sure to post them in the comments below. I will answer them to the best of my ability.
If you would like to expand this guide, whether it be by adding pictures, or filling in any sort of gaps in my information, either ask me first, or make clear where credit is due. I'm not against someone coming along and making this pretty (Again, I'm a writer, not an editor or a magazine.)...and I'm all for any improvements into the accuracy of this information.
If you wish to post any of this information on your own Halo related website, please link back to my original article with merely a snippet. I wants my pageviews, cause I'm stingy.
Audley Enough, there will be no catchphrase this time.
Follow me on Twitter. @TiberiusAudley
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