Playing to Win

Yes, this will be another block of text from me. I hope to get real discussion from it, so I'm posting more than a single paragraph. I'm truly sorry if it offends people with low patience levels (no sarcasm or aggression intended, since tone is hard to communicate in text).

I understand that there is a big difference in how people play games. Primarily, there is a "play for fun" crowd and a "play to win" crowd, aka casual and competitive. Generally, both sides get on each other's nerves. This thread is written for those who believe my type, the "play to win" type, is a detriment to games, but of course I think anyone will find something thoughtful here. I'd like to start by plugging David Sirlin's book Playing to Win: Becoming the Champion. I would go so far as to say it's required reading for anyone that seriously desires to be a competitor in any competitive setting, even beyond gaming. It is a philosophy that cares only about results, wins. That's merely the measurable objective, though: the end result really is about fulfillment through self-improvement. (No, it is not a religious text. I just take it that seriously.)
To get to the point, all of you casual gamers need competitive types like us. Competitive gamers are constantly the bane of game designers, yet we usually improve the overall product (to my knowledge, only Blizzard tends to disagree). We believe that the only boundaries are those built into each game, effectively the game's "rules." Of course, hacks are definitely off-limits, but in-game glitches are completely solid. If abusing something about the game maximizes the chances of winning, there's no reason not to do it. We will also tell each other how we did it, because we want people to discover answers to our threats. As others can answer our threats, we can find answers to the answers, they answer the answers to their answers to our threats, and so on. It's a continuous cycle of self-improvement until the game is merely a means for our heads to communicate.
We don't always need game designers to tell us what should be done, though. Competitive gamers are usually not blind to the unfair tactics they use. If something can't be reasonably answered, then it probably shouldn't be allowed to happen. To this extent, we have a couple answers. We can appeal to the game designers to patch the game so we are incapable of doing such things, and we are fortunate that Uber Entertainment is happy to oblige us with that. If that fails us, good tournament organizers are capable of clearly defining what conduct is not allowed in the game with clear penalties for breaking such rules. However, this only applies in a competitive tournament setting (which does include a casual game by people willing to accept tournament rules).
Examine Chess for a moment. Chess has gone through numerous alterations in its lifespan. With such a devoted following, I'd find it very hard to believe that any rules changed because people just "felt like it." Pawns were given the ability to move up two squares in order to speed up the early game, since people would often just move them twice anyway. They were not so stupid to think that the rule would only apply early, though. They had to consider what people would do with the rule later with pawns that had been sleeping the whole time. One response to that was en passant, essentially allowing an opposing pawn to act like the rule doesn't exist in specific turns. The history of Chess is full of such things, but they would never have happened without game designers working with competitive players.
Bring this back to Monday Night Combat. Look at how many changes Uber is making to the game's balance. We'll soon be getting a second set of balance changes in response to feedback from thousands of games. Scramblers are coming out in greater numbers because they're practically useless individually (and still might be in 2, we have yet to see). Heat vents are coming to spawn points to make spawn-camping less viable, though not by much. Many more things have happened and will continue to happen because people like me will use what we have available to the best of our ability. This makes us less able to do the most dangerous things, allowing for an overall more enjoyable game. We will continue to use what is in the game to our advantage (both hidden and obvious), and in the best-case scenario, this relationship will create a game in which two truly skilled teams will always be able to challenge each other. (By the way, I am taking no credit for any of the changes, nor am I calling myself a pro at this game. I am simply of a similar mindset to the people who are responsible.)
For those who "play for fun," fun is an entirely subjective subject. For competitive types, the fun is in doing what we can to win, expecting the other side to do the same, and constantly trying to one-up each other. Win/loss records clearly measure any player's skill. It is objective, not subjective. If my means of having fun are at odds with your idea of fun, then we clearly are not people who should be playing each other. It is as simple as that, and I think none the less of people who don't want to play with me for that reason. You can have fun with your friends your way and we all will end up finding friends with whom we can have fun our way. The presence of high-skill competitive players is no more a burden or contribution than the people who just play to screw around. We simply contribute/hinder in different ways.

There, got that off my chest. Beware a bored Organous.

To me, these statements seem to disagree with each other. Using that second statement's logic, robbing a bank would be fine if you could do it, and the system lets you get away with it, instead of getting an education or training to get a better job, and earn that money honestly.

If I misunderstood what you are getting at, I'm sorry, but I find that people who use expliots in anything shouldn't be treated with respect, and I do not treat them with any.

P.S. Paragraphs REALLY make those block statements more readable.

i agree that the two different groups have a hard time getting along. some tactics shouldnt be used though. before the patch there were people that would shoot the moneyball down with the assassin. that was unintended and was fixed. but before it was fixed the better(morally not skillful) people in the community decided not to use it because the devs said it wasnt supposed to happen.

grievers are going to grieve. people that dont want to play against them just need to leave that match and find a new one

Glitches are not OK and are banned in serious matches, so I don't where you got "glitch to win" from. If you mean stuff like shooting through walls or overhealing jackbots, then people will use it since it's technically incorporated into the game.

:roll:

Playing to win =/= glitch to win. Glitches can be a part of it, but it's far from the objective. It means you do anything that is legal to do and maximizes your chance of winning. If a group (casual, competitive, tournament, whatever) bans certain things, then obviously you do not do them. Ideally, this happens because the community has given full consideration to the issue as to whether it's warranted. Then there has to be a concrete definition of the rule/ban and make it enforceable.

I'll give you an example of defining something. Let's say players are not allowed to "juice rush." You have to define what juice rushing is so that everyone can easily obey the rule. Uber Ent. is helping define this by making juice stations recharge for a while, though players are still free to just save their juice until they can all activate it. You could set some sort of limit on when players can activate juice, in which case players can just wait for the frame in which it is legal to juice.
What about banning spawn-camping? You have to define how many times a player can kill another player (including 0) within a clearly outlined boundary, at which point if spawn-camping was the best strategy, the best strategy is now to camp at the edge of the new boundary. This is merely another form of spawn-camping of course, but you can only take it so far before kills themselves are impractical. Whether such a rule is warranted is another matter entirely. You need clear rules, or else you'll have "I know it when I see it" judgment calls. I'm sure everyone here has experienced what they believe to be bad calls because of judgment issues.

The point some seem to have missed is that once a game begins, the time to consider what should be legal is over. However, it is the experience you get from the game that leads the debate as to whether any bans are warranted. Ideally, it's patched away only after extensive testing shows it to be too abusive, and patched technically so that it's impossible to break that "rule."

As to the bank-robbing example, that gets more into the morality deal with society. Military virtues do not apply so well there, as we generally all depend on each other for our quality of life. In games, I play for the clearly defined win, but there is no such thing in life.

Finally, I do use paragraphs. I just don't double-space them. I've been told doing so is irritating, like padding them to make my post look longer. Is this more suitable for you?

P.S.S He really did have paragraphs, they just were not indented. ><

i just like a game that works as its intended to.

when you make most guns unable to shoot through walls, there is no reason one certain one should if you stand at a funny angle (tanks).

when you design a game with 6 classes (guns, weapons, perks, abilities, characters, ect.), they were all meant to be used as a strength in some way and a weakness in another way, where its good against some classes and for some jobs, and bad against other classes and for other jobs. thus, when one class can beat any other class with no repute against what they do, its overpowered. so 99% of people will use it and it ruins the other 5 classes that never get used again.
A PRIME EXAMPLE, in MW2, there just simply is very little if anything that can beat a ump45. it hits in one bullet across the map, why use a sniper? it fires rapidly with little recoil, why use a assault rifle? it penetrates with very little damage reduction, why use an LMG? you can move (run and switch weapons and jump/crouch/prone) quite fast, why use any other SMG?
everybody uses it and just spits ammo everywhere and does better than anyone who uses another gun with good skill and trying as hard as they can. first people who want to win by all means uses it constantly. then people who play for fun cant have fun because they cant do anything but die unless they use it, so they use it. at this point, 99% of people use it and everyone (using it or not using it) calls it garbage-trash no-skill try-hard no-honor manhood-compensation tactics.
nobody likes it, nobody likes the game, wala... game broken.
$60 well spent... scarasm...

by this standard, street fighter 4 is a good game, as one character can almost never beat a certain other character, and most classes have moves to counter other moves across each character, so you learn and you play better and you can use any character and be competitive to the same degree as any other character. no god mode, just balance. the closest things to god mode are akuma, gouken, and seth. still beat them, still not god mode, just fairly strong...

so if everyone put forth an "uber effort" to make the game and its features work in balance, where they do good in certain areas but still have certain weaknessess, then i wouldnt have a very stiff, very jagged piece of toilet paper sitting in my modern warfare 2 case...

I mean, we are talking the difference between rock-paper-scissors and rock-paper-nuclearbomb when we talk about balance issues.

I think that there are definitely varying degrees of competitiveness. You can be competitive and not use exploits, can't you? Have some honor about it, I say. Don't consider it a win if you need an unfair advantage like having more players on your team to win. What's the use in winning if it's a totally one-sided affair? I don't find that there's a use in winning like that.

If it's a good game and pushes both teams to their limits, now THAT is the kind of victory that I find to be enjoyable. Maybe it's just me though, but I think any good game that pushes the limits of both teams is going to be a lot of fun whether I win or not.


That's how I view gaming competitively. I know a thing or two about it as well, I'd been in the clan scene for the 360 version of TF2 for about two years and played both with and against players of all kinds of mindsets. Just my two cents.

I'll agree that a team having more players is unfair and definitely not something any competitive player should want. I'll still do everything I can to win, but it will be all too easy. It's certainly not improving myself. If it somehow happens in a tournament, I definitely will take the advantage, but it'd be very unusual.
The SF4 comparison is almost accurate, except I don't know any matchup where someone "almost never" wins. The worst matchup I know is Seth vs. Zangief, but as long as Zangief knows what he's doing, it's definitely realistically attainable. All matchups will come down to superior guesswork, assuming maximum skill each time. (SSF4 is my specialty game, so I know an awful lot about it.)

I like it better. Indents also work.

As for the bank robbing example, I was trying to say that instead of improving yourself, you work around what is clearly defined as "legal" and cheat your way into getting money. MOST glitches are common sense. Should you be able to hack through a wall? Probably not. Should you be able to fire a gun through a wall? Again, no. But other glitches are not so obvious. Should you be able to cloak while grappling? That was really a question for the developers, because there isn't any real way for us to know what they were thinking. Obviously now we know that you are not supposed to, but at the beginning of the game, I had no idea it was a glitch.

did you read the part where the assassin uncloaks while doing any damage?

now, take this into consideration:
1.they cloak at the beginning of the grapple.
2.they do damage afterwards, during the middle of the grapple.
3.you should not be able to cause damage with your weapons/abilities while cloaked.

now, isnt it a lot clearer that it was a glitch? that wasnt hard to explain at all.

and the point in SFIV was that no character is quite useless. everyone has a use. some are almost useless against another character, but those are in turn useless against another character. if there is a reason to choose and use each character, each gets used. balanced. tbh, if even 6 get used, balanced. if only 1 or 2 can beat the rest, and none of the others have a chance outside of incredible luck... broken.

and i also agree in the desire to win not having to be at all cost. i like winning. i play to win. i play to win within bounds i know would count as a skill-win. because winning and looking like a cheating or exploiting dingalong isnt fun. its like im labeling myself as worthless when i cheat someone using skill out of a win they woulda had, by using a skill-less exploit/glitch/hack. i wouldnt resort to using the ump45 in MW2 for that very reason, i just stopped playing altogether when that was the absolute last option

i used the vector if i had to use an smg, and that took skill to actually use a sight and aim at a vital part of the body, not spraying and hoping you hit their toe at least, which a toe-shot is a kill for the ump45. at one time, i could find ways to use it to play at some equivalent. eventually people started spraying more and more after realizing that a lucky hit kills with a ump and is more easily accomplished before a accurate hit from a vector is accomplished. after it started looking in every killcam that they were trying to do a shoryuken-to-hadouken-combo with their controller, as they shot wildly and mashed every wrong button and aimed not even completely and just shook their screen wildly as they held the trigger down, and they were rewarded with kills against me, i simply said ill be on tomorrow, and i wasnt.

Yes, I now know that you are not supposed to be able to do any damage while you are cloaked. But when I first started playing, I thought that cloak grappling was legal, and that the smoke bomb jump was the glitch. Rueben fail.

Ah, but the developer's intent does not really matter. What does matter is if certain exploits degenerate the game. For example, the left tunnel of LazeRaor is just barely open at the innermost end, so I can shoot through it almost entirely covered. I highly doubt you're supposed to do it, but it hardly is overpowering to do so. You're easily cornered if someone comes to you. It's generally better to just work with the regular entrance. Using the slot for cover does not maximize your chances of winning.
In Smash Bros, there's a technique called a "wavedash" that takes advantage of its awkward physics to make any character super-fast (think of a Tank being able to continuously move at the speed of Assassin's lunge). This was clearly not intentional, as it got mostly removed in the latest version. However, players worked with it, evaluated it fully, and concluded it didn't make the game degenerate (just faster). Nintendo even started teaching people how to do it!

Eh, I think the point has been made and we all understand each other.

There will always be unintended glitches that will be adapted by the community because the developer is often unable to remove them from their game. Wall-walking in MechAssault was a huge issue initially as was reload cancelling in most shooters. Does the fact that the glitch exists and is used commonly make it any less of an unintended glitch? No.

Also, even if a glitch becomes common the fact that the original game was not balanced for its inclusion is often game-breaking regardless of whether or not the developer promotes its use. In some cases the developer may promote the glitch simply because they have no means of removing it and wish to level the advantage that others are exploiting. In this case two wrongs rarely make a right but knowledge of a tactic does help to prevent it from being exploited.

The problem with video games is that not every 'glitch' or tactic is documented in a book of rules. Whereas with chess I can clearly see what my opponent has done and learn from their tactics or moves. Some 'glitches' require practice in order to execute properly as do certain advanced tactics, Armored Core's second stage boosting comes to mind. More often than not video games fail to explain or even teach the use of these tactics to the general players. In these cases it provides a very unfair advantage to the trained player.

The highly trained player is supposed to have an advantage. Besides, this is one of the roles the community serves: to educate new blood.

i still say if a game aspect at least doesnt seem reasonable, then it should go.

the assassin cloak thing came close. they already can kill in front of turrets easily enough. it shouldnt be brain-dead easy.

fyi, to assassinate in front of a turret, just get gold armor and do it if its a weak firebase or lvl 1 turret. or use a smoke bomb and then assassinate and escape.

what the cloak did was allow an assassin to walk around turrets completely immune.

now, a glitch in c&c renegade some people didnt like was obby walking, wall-climbing, and harvester-walking (all instances of infantry units avoiding base defences and all were usually not allowed as a group in some servers). this is debatable as balanced or not. on one hand it was easily countered by a team thats supposed to be paying attention (like your whole team leaving base, ignoring your turrets in MNC, and coming back to find them all converted to neat piles of ash), and was difficult to do anyway, and sometimes took 2 people. on the other hand, it allowed a single $350 unit to destroy a whole building, sometimes a base-vital one, without the enemy team ever knowing the building was going to randomly instantly die (and thus nothing they could do about it)

in that case, i played in servers that allowed all that. i believed it was fair to learn in-game-ninjitsu to annihalate an enemy single handedly (like i do with an assassin to turrets now in MNC), and was exceedinly more difficult than vehicle-pushing and destroying a building out of brute force (since any enemy that prevents intrusion of even the sneaky variety by watching their harvester return and their tunnels for sneaky ninajs, would easily instantly blow you to kingdom come). i also believed it balanced games where you were losing just by a little, because you went from having no way to come back to having some method of retaliation (and it made it possible to finish games where both teams somehow destroyed the others "vehicle-purchase building", and thus destroying buildings is otherwise impossible). finally, it was a fair lesson to the enemy team, that an ounce of prevention is sometimes the ONLY cure for losing a game so quickly it wasnt funny.

there is no countering assassin-cloak-grappling without playing the buddy-system, which there is only 6 people per team anyhow.

if a unintended feature balances the game, its welcome. if an unintended feature breaks game balance, oust it. if an INTENDED feature breaks game balance, it should still be fixed somehow. im sure they wanted the ump45 to do higher damage than other smgs as a trade-off for recoil and rateOFfire, but OHKO in the foot makes it overpowered if it shoots only 1 round a second and jumped massively (which it does neither, its just the perfect gun and makes every other method of play a "i got trashed relentlessly without hope" method)

any feature, glitch, intended, or unintended, should have some way to counter it.

I agree that anything which degenerates the strategy of the game should not be allowed to exist, but only after careful consideration. Most of the time though, people are WAY too quick with the banhammer.

i could agree with that. sometimes, like on renegade and the original CoD and even MNC, people swing the banhammer and dont care what they hit or what unintended damage it creates (some things destabalize others, the assassin cloak-grapple made most people unable to use the assassin afterwards and it broke that class, although i argue its still useable in so many ways)

but hey, thats life. people like to swing big hammers at other people. if they get a hammer swung at them, its all of a sudden wrong. yet, they never learn that its not fun to have a hammer swung at you, its something most people lack in empathy, but its not so bad as long as its a video games. im sure there are lots of people being evil on video games, who wouldnt do it in real life.

The problem with most new players is that they think they are the **** and don't need to listen.

The problem with MNC players, is they're bad. I mean ****, your team is the 'best' team in the game, and it's well known that you're all scrubzillas.

I play for fun, winning is just a byproduct. If you care about wins in MNC, you're a nerd(Grand Prize)