Logic is cold

Thanks to Scott for the original link.

One of the problems I find, not just in games but also in life, is that people have an unwillingness to accept logical truth. There is a basic dichotomy to any competative game: if someone wins, someone else has to lose.

Look at something non-MMO, like Baseball… the teams with the most wins last season still lost just over 40% of their games. The Mets and Yankees finished with .599 records. 97 wins and 65 losses. And its considered a pretty good season. Yet somehow, in PvP games, lots of folks find that ratio, dying 4 out of 10 times you enter a fight, to be completely and utterly unacceptable. On the other hand, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays had a .377 season, 61 wins and 101 losses. More than 6 out of 10 times, they lost… if people can’t accept a 40% death rate, a 60+% rate would drive them completely off the “unfair” deep end. If you are winning 6 out of 10 fights… someone out there is only winning 4 out of 10.

There seems to be, among players of computer games, a feeling that somehow them being human playing against a computer (even if its actually another person controlling the enemy on their screen) gives them an edge, that the game will be “more fair”. Of course, the idea of “more fair” is a total waste of time. There is fair and there is not fair. Something cannot be more or less fair, once it stops being fair it is not fair. What they mean by “more fair” is that they will win more often. Against computer AI in most games this is true simply because the game doesn’t learn. It may kick the crap out of you all the time when you first play, but as you play more you will (should) get better, and the computer will not. Eventually, you’ll win all the time because you will have learned all the moves it is programmed to use. Computer games are old dogs, and they don’t learn new tricks.

But when a player takes control of the enemy, now you are playing against… you. When he loses, just like you, he’ll learn. The both of you will learn, and keep challenging each other, and over time what will show is that one of you is better at learning than the other and therefore stays ahead better, winning more often. One of you will be the Yankees, and the other one will be the Devil Rays. And there is nothing wrong with this. Its true. Its logical. And from the point of view of the Devil Rays, totally and completely unfair.

So, what’s the answer? There isn’t one. Like I said, its not fair, and that’s just the way it is. But I will leave you with a thought…

It comes from the movie Rudy, about Daniel Ruettiger. Rudy doesn’t make the real team, but he makes the practice team. In practice, one of the real team guys yells at Rudy for trying too hard. Rudy fires back with this great line (which of course I can’t find right now) about how he has to do his best in order to keep the real team at their best. When you PvP, keep in mind that you may not win all the time, or even most of the time, but by God you can make them work for it.

Can Someone Really Do That?

One thing that irritates me in games is the lack of reality in certain aspects. Don’t get me wrong, I think being able to carry a half dozen backpacks loaded with gear is actually a good idea because reality in this care would impeed fun since you’d have to keep running back to town and dropping off loot instead of playing.

However, in combat, I am annoyed with people who whiz around running at full speed and jumping like they are on crack.

In reality, if you tried to attack someone with a sword while you ran around them in a circle, sidestepping, while jumping every second, you’d be fairly inaccurate and your swings would be pretty weak. In order to get good power into a swing, either you have to be charging, using your momentum to push the blade, or you have to plant your feet on the ground to support the muscular force you wish to bring to bear.

So, to that end, I wish to introduce a little reality into the game. Movement in any direction other than toward your enemy should have a negative impact on accuracy and power (damage). Moving toward an enemy should increase power based on the distance travelled (makes horseback lance fighting a possibility), and standing still should positively impact accuracy (chance to hit). Jumping should pretty much destroy accuracy and power. However, on the other side, if you are moving any direction but toward your enemy, your ability to dodge should increase. Jumping will actually make you harder to hit.

Now the question is “Well, I could just be jumping when I’m defending and stand still when attacking. Right?” No, not with any noticable effect. The jumping, or moving away from an opponent, would cap fairly quickly and be only a small modifier. The attack bonuses would be greater the longer you stayed still (or charged). So the end result of the proposed scenario would be “You’d be a little harder to hit, but have almost no attack bonus.”

It makes the combat engine very complex, and means that reduction of client/server lag is of paramount importance, but I think it would make for a much better game, especially in PvP.

You go long.

It weird sometimes when you realize that you see or understand something that other people don’t. Team Fortress Classic for Half-Life is a team game. Most maps, you and your team protect your flag or key or base, while trying to take the other team’s flag or key or base. Pretty simple.

So I hop into a game, and I’m assigned to the blue team. Before I spawned, I had to do a couple of things (clean up my desk a little, stuff like that). While I’m sitting in limbo I’m listening to the game. “The enemy has your flag.” “Your team has the enemy flag.” “The enemy has captured your flag.” “Your team has captured the enemy flag.” These four lines repeating over and over. I sit back down at the PC and before picking my class I see that the other team has five people and we have five people (including me, not yet spawned). So I choose soldier, and the map is 2fort so I take up residence in the ramp room. The map has 3 choke points inside the base: the ramp room, the basement, and the flag room. By choke point I mean only that it is a room you HAVE to go through in order to get the flag. The flag room is a poor spot to sit, mostly because if a scout gets your flag and you don’t drop him with the first shot you don’t get a second chance, you can’t keep up. The basement is almost as bad, the two entrances are on opposite ends and its so narrow that if you blink you might miss the enemy running through. The ramp room is where its at. Two entrances on the lower floor, two ramps up, two exits on the top. This room offers the best opportunity to stop the enemy AND allows you to have a shot at recovering if they do happen to get your flag.

One of the great things about TFC over the original TF is the footsteps. You can hear people running. In the ramp room, if you are on the upper level, the entrances to the room are below you, so you can hear people coming. You hear them coming, prime a grenade, then when they come in you attack them with grenades and rockets. You even have a resupply room right near by (just make sure to pop a nail grenade before you go so you can hear hasty enemies getting hurt while you are away).

Anyway, I’m in the ramp room and I start killing enemies. I tell my team to avoid the ramp room, so whenever I see a “friendly” face, I know its a spy and blow them up. And just like that, the enemy stops taking our flag. Sure, they get me every now and then, even make it to the flag room once in a while, but I always stop them at the top of the stairs.

I guess I’m not as rusty as I thought I was going to be.