Playing to Win, Part 1
SirlinI wrote this article many years ago. It was so widely quoted and valuable to so many that I spent two years writing the book Playing to Win. The book is far more polished than these articles, better organized, and covers many, many additional topics not found on my site. If you have any interest in the process of self-improvement through competitive games, the book will serve you better than the articles.
Playing to Win, Part 1
Playing to win is the most important and most widely misunderstood concept in all of competitive games. The sad irony is that those who do not already understand the implications I'm about to spell out will probably not believe them to be true at all. In fact, if I were to send this article back in time to my earlier self, even I would not believe it. Apparently, these concepts are something one must come to learn through experience, though I hope at least some of you will take my word for it.
Introducing...the Scrub
In the world of Street Fighter competition, there is a word for players who aren't good: "scrub." Everyone begins as a scrub---it takes time to learn the game to get to a point where you know what you're doing. There is the mistaken notion, though, that by merely continuing to play or "learn" the game, that one can become a top player. In reality, the "scrub" has many more mental obstacles to overcome than anything actually going on during the game. The scrub has lost the game even before it starts. He's lost the game before he's chosen his character. He's lost the game even before the decision of which game is to be played has been made. His problem? He does not play to win.
;)
Historical Scrub: Neville Chamberlain. He didn't even try to win, instead offering "appeasement" to Hitler. (Caution: not serious historical commentary.)The scrub would take great issue with this statement for he usually believes that he is playing to win, but he is bound up by an intricate construct of fictitious rules that prevent him from ever truly competing. These made-up rules vary from game to game, of course, but their character remains constant. In Street Fighter, for example, the scrub labels a wide variety of tactics and situations "cheap." So-called "cheapness" is truly the mantra of the scrub. Performing a throw on someone often called cheap. A throw is a special kind of move that grabs an opponent and damages him, even when the opponent is defending against all other kinds of attacks. The entire purpose of the throw is to be able to damage an opponent who sits and blocks and doesn't attack. As far as the game is concerned, throwing is an integral part of the design--it's meant to be there--yet the scrub has constructed his own set of principles in his mind that state he should be totally impervious to all attacks while blocking. The scrub thinks of blocking as a kind of magic shield which will protect him indefinitely. Why? Exploring the reasoning is futile since the notion is ridiculous from the start.
You're not going to see a classic scrub throw his opponent 5 times in a row. But why not? What if doing so is strategically the sequence of moves that optimize his chances of winning? Here we've encountered our first clash: the scrub is only willing to play to win within his own made-up mental set of rules. These rules can be staggeringly arbitrary. If you beat a scrub by throwing projectile attacks at him, keeping your distance and preventing him from getting near you...that's cheap. If you throw him repeatedly, that's cheap, too. We've covered that one. If you sit in block for 50 seconds doing no moves, that's cheap. Nearly anything you do that ends up making you win is a prime candidate for being called cheap.
Doing one move or sequence over and over and over is another great way to get called cheap. This goes right to the heart of the matter: why can the scrub not defeat something so obvious and telegraphed as a single move done over and over? Is he such a poor player that he can't counter that move? And if the move is, for whatever reason, extremely difficult to counter, then wouldn't I be a fool for not using that move? The first step in becoming a top player is the realization that playing to win means doing whatever most increases your chances of winning. The game knows no rules of "honor" or of "cheapness." The game only knows winning and losing.
A common call of the scrub is to cry that the kind of play in which ones tries to win at all costs is "boring" or "not fun." Let's consider two groups of players: a group of good players and a group of scrubs. The scrubs will play "for fun" and not explore the extremities of the game. They won't find the most effective tactics and abuse them mercilessly. The good players will. The good players will find incredibly overpowering tactics and patterns. As they play the game more, they'll be forced to find counters to those tactics. The vast majority of tactics that at first appear unbeatable end up having counters, though they are often quite esoteric and difficult to discover. The counter tactic prevents the first player from doing the tactic, but the first player can then use a counter to the counter. The second player is now afraid to use his counter and he's again vulnerable to the original overpowering tactic. (See my article on Yomi layer 3 for much more on that.)
Notice that the good players are reaching higher and higher levels of play. They found the "cheap stuff" and abused it. They know how to stop the cheap stuff. They know how to stop the other guy from stopping it so they can keep doing it. And as is quite common in competitive games, many new tactics will later be discovered that make the original cheap tactic look wholesome and fair. Often in fighting games, one character will have something so good it's unfair. Fine, let him have that. As time goes on, it will be discovered that other characters have even more powerful and unfair tactics. Each player will attempt to steer the game in the direction of his own advantages, much how grandmaster chess players attempt to steer opponents into situations in which their opponents are weak.
;)
Historical Scrubs: The British Redcoats. The ultimate example of being too bound up by rules to actually fight. They fought "honorably" in a row. (Caution: not serious historical commentary.). Let's return to the group of scrubs. They don't know the first thing about all the depth I've been talking about. Their argument is basically that ignorantly mashing buttons with little regard to actual strategy is more "fun." Superficially, their argument does at least look true, since often their games will be more "wet and wild" than games between the experts, which are usually more controlled and refined. But any close examination will reveal that the experts are having a great deal of fun on a higher level than the scrub can even imagine. Throwing together some circus act of a win isn't nearly as satisfying as reading your opponent's mind to such a degree that you can counter his ever move, even his every counter.
Can you imagine what will happen when the two groups of players meet? The experts will absolutely destroy the scrubs with any number of tactics they've either never seen, or never been truly forced to counter. This is because the scrubs have not been playing the same game. The experts were playing the actual game while the scrubs were playing their own homemade variant with restricting, unwritten rules.
The scrub has still more crutches. He talks a great deal about "skill" and how he has skill whereas other players--very much including the ones who beat him flat out--do not have skill. The confusion here is what "skill" actually is. In Street Fighter, scrubs often cling to combos as a measure of skill. A combo is sequence of moves that are unblockable if the first move hits. Combos can be very elaborate and very difficult to pull off. But single moves can also take "skill," according to the scrub. The "dragon punch" or "uppercut" in Street Fighter is performed by holding the joystick toward the opponent, then down, then diagonally down and toward as the player presses a punch button. This movement must be completed within a fraction of a second, and though there is leeway, it must be executed fairly accurately. Ask any scrub and they will tell you that a dragon punch is a "skill move." Just last week I played a scrub who was actually quite good. That is, he knew the rules of the game well, he knew the character matchups well, and he knew what to do in most situations. But his web of mental rules kept him from truly playing to win. He cried cheap as I beat him with "no skill moves" while he performed many difficult dragon punches. He cried cheap when I threw him 5 times in a row asking, "is that all you know how to do? throw?" I gave him the best advice he could ever hear. I told him, "Play to win, not to do ˜difficult moves.'" This was a big moment in that scrub's life. He could either write his losses off and continue living in his mental prison, or analyze why he lost, shed his rules, and reach the next level of play.
I've never been to a tournament where there was a prize for the winner and another prize for the player who did many difficult moves. I've also never seen a prize for a player who played "in an innovative way." Many scrubs have strong ties to "innovation." They say "that guy didn't do anything new, so he is no good." Or "person x invented that technique and person y just stole it." Well, person y might be 100 times better than person x, but that doesn't seem to matter. When person y wins the tournament and person x is a forgotten footnote, what will the scrub say? That person y has "no skill" of course.
Depth in Games
Scrub of the Future: Captain Kathryn Janeway. Voyager would have been home ages ago if it weren't for her silly rules. (Caution: Voyager is a bad show.)
I've talked about how the expert player is not bound by rules of "honor" or "cheapness" and simply plays to maximize his chances of winning. When he plays against other such players, "game theory" emerges. If the game is a good one, it will become deeper and deeper and more strategic. Poorly designed games will become shallower and shallower. This is the difference between a game that lasts years (StarCraft, Street Fighter) versus one that quickly becomes boring (I won't name any names). The point is that if a game becomes "no fun" at high levels of play, then it's the game's fault, not the player's. Unfortunately, a game becoming less fun because it's poorly designed and you just losing because you're a scrub kind of look alike. You'll have to play some top players and do some soul searching to decide which is which. But if it really is the game's fault, there are plenty of other games that are excellent at a high level of play. For games that truly aren't good at a high level, the only winning move is not to play.
Boundaries of Playing to Win
There is a gray area here I feel I should point out. If an expert does anything he can to win, then does he exploit bugs in the game? The answer is a resounding yes...but not all bugs. There is a large class of bugs in video games that players don't even view as bugs. In Marvel vs. Capcom 2, for example, Iceman can launch his opponent into the air, follow him, do a few hits, then combo into his super move. During the super move he falls down below his opponent, so only about half of his super will connect. The Iceman player can use a trick, though. Just before doing the super, he can do another move, an icebeam, and cancel that move into the super. There's a bug here which causes Iceman to fall during his super at the much slower rate of his icebeam. The player actually cancels the icebeam as soon as possible--optimally as soon as 1/60th of a second after it begins. The whole point is to make Iceman fall slower during his super so he gets more hits. Is it a bug? I'm sure it is. It looks like a programming oversight to me. Would an expert player use this? Of course.
The iceman example is relatively tame. In Street Fighter Alpha2, there's a bug in which you can land the most powerful move in the game (a Custom Combo or "CC") on the opponent, even when he should be able to block it. A bug? Yes. Does it help you win? Yes. This technique became the dominant tactic of the game. The gameplay evolved around this, play went on, new strategies were developed. Those who cried cheap were simply left behind to play their own homemade version of the game with made-up rules. The one we all played had unblockable CCs, and it went on to be a great game.
But there is a limit. There is a point when the bug becomes too much. In tournaments, bugs that turn the game off, or freeze it indefinitely, or remove one of the characters from the playfield permanently are banned. Bugs so extreme that they stop gameplay are considered unfair even by non-scrubs. As are techniques that can only be performed on, say, the player-1 side of the game. Tricks in fighting games that are side-dependent (that is, they can only be performed by the 2nd player or only by the first player) are sometimes not allowed in tournaments simply because both players don't have equal access to the trick--not because the tricks are too powerful.
Here's an example that shows what kind of power level is past the limit even of Playing to Win. Many versions of Street Fighter have secret characters that are only accessible through a code. Sometimes these characters are good, sometimes they're not. Occasionally, the secret characters are the best in the game, as in Marvel vs. Capcom. Big deal. That's the way that game is. Live with it. But the first version of Street Fighter to ever have a secret character was Super Turbo Street Fighter with its untouchably good Akuma. Most characters in that game cannot beat Akuma. I don't mean it's a tough match--I mean they cannot ever, ever, ever, ever win. Akuma is "broken" in that his air fireball move is something the game simply wasn't designed to handle. He's miles above the other characters, and is therefore banned in all US tournaments. But every game has a "best character" and those characters are never banned. They're just part of the game...except in Super Turbo. It's extreme examples like this that even amongst the top players, and even something that isn't a bug, but was put in on purpose by the game designers, the community as a whole has unanimously decided to make the rule: "don't play Akuma in serious matches."
Sometimes players from other gaming communities don't understand the Akuma example. "Would not a truly committed player play Akuma anyway?" they ask. Akuma is a boss character, never meant to be played on even ground with the other characters. He's only accessible via an annoying, long code. Akuma is not like a tower in an RTS that is accidentally too powerful or a gun in an FPS that does too much damage. Akuma is a god-mode that can't coexist with the rest of the game. In this extreme case, the community's only choices were to ban or to abandon the game because of a secret character that takes really long to even select. They chose to ban the secret character and play the remaining good game. If you are playing to win, you should play the game everyone else is playing, not the home-made Akuma vs. Akuma game that no one plays.
My Attitude and Adenosine Triphosphate
I've been talking down to the scrub a lot in this article. I'd like to say for the record that I'm not calling the scrub stupid, nor did I even coin that term in the first place. I'm not saying he can never improve. I am saying that he's naive and that he'll be trapped in scrubdom, whether he realizes it or not, as long as he chooses to live in the mental construct of rules he himself constructed. Is it harsh to call scrubs naive? After all, the vast majority of the world is scrubs. I'd say by the definition I've classified 99.9% of the world's population as scrubs. Seriously. All that means is that 99.9% of the world doesn't know what it's like to play competitive games on a high level. It means that they are naive of these concepts. I really have no trouble saying that since we're talking about experience-driven knowledge here that most people on Earth happen not to have. I also know that 99.9% of the world (including me) doesn't know how the citric acid cycle and cellular respiration create approximately 30 ATP molecules per cycle. It's specialized knowledge of which I am unaware, just as many are unaware of competitive games.
;)
Not everyone has to know every subject. This chart is for biologists and Playing to Win is for those who want to win tournaments.
In the end, playing to win ends up accomplishing much more than just winning. Playing to win is how one improves. Continuous self-improvement is what all of this is really about, anyway. I submit that ultimate goal of the "playing to win" mindset is ironically not just to win...but to improve. So practice, improve, play with discipline, and Play to Win.
--Sirlin
Reader Comments (308)
LiquidBen, anon: I think my statements that "the AoE community is kid gloved" and "the SC community, if they learned to play AoE, would beat the AoE players decisively" are hand in hand and probably warranted.
Anon, admittedly, is our sole representative of the AoE community. It is unfortunate that he is so biased in his beliefs. It is, in general, unfortunate that most representatives of most gaming communities are biased. SC is certainly no different, if you look at teamliquid's forums. This doesn't excuse defending a game's flaws with religious fervor. If it has flaws, those flaws should be addressed.
The main point is that random maps, the preferred way to play the game, are somehow balanced. This is an absolute impossibility in other games. There is no other way to say this nicely. If you take another RTS, such as SC or C&C3, a randomly generated map would be completely unbalanced. If you take a fighting game where the stage selection matters at all, such as Smash or Soul Calibur, a randomly selected map is asking to bias the match heavily in one fighter's favor - a randomly generated map would be far worse. If you take a randomly generated Halo or Counterstrike map, if such a thing were possible, the map would most likely be unbalanced for one team or the other - at least at the beginning of the match, in the case of Halo (Halo's design is more resilient to bad maps than CS is).
Instead of designing specific competition maps in order to achieve the level of balance, the AoE community enforces a rule, claiming that you cannot steal the opponent's livestock. This is absolutely ridiculous from a competitive gaming standpoint. If we take a look at another competitive community, the Smash community bans virtually any stage that has some easily exploitable instant kill trick in it rather than saying "you can't waveshine" or "no chain throwing." Stages are a discrete entity and can be easily cordoned off and banned, but Fox's waveshine is less discrete. Yes, it's certainly a move one can do in the game, and it is fairly easy to recognize when it is done. But it opens one up for accidents. What if someone accidentally does the waveshine in the middle of nowhere, when it could not hit anyone? Should that person be kicked out of the tournament? What if someone does the waveshine accidentally and the opponent jumps into it? What about if the person does the waveshine once, but doesn't follow up afterwards?
In much the same way, AoE probably could have similar problems. What if the opponent accidentally somehow kills the enemy's livestock? What if a cow randomly steps into the line of fire of a battle? What if the opponent attacks the enemy in such a way that enemy area effect attacks will kill their own livestock? What if a sheep wanders into the enemy area? Should they claim it? Should they not claim it, but deny the opponent the ability to claim it? Should they give the sheep up to the opponent, relinquishing control of the map?
This rule is not discrete at all. It is scrubby. It has many loopholes and a real player, playing to win, would exploit every one of them. A real player would do everything in their power to win, and a real community would develop strategies around this sort of play. A scrubby community would ban 'cheap' strategies rather than figuring out real counters.
This is why 'ledge camping' isn't banned in Smash in any reasonable tournament, despite it being a very powerful and abusive tactic. If ledge camping someday becomes banned in Smash, I will also consider that community scrubby too, because it is not a discrete bannable entity.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with the 'pro Akuma' crowd here.
You set yourself up by saying that a 'scrub' adds additional mental rules to themselves - no repeated throws, for example.
This is the same thing as picking Akuma. According to your train of thought, the players should think like the following:
- Akuma always wins.
- They will always pick Akuma.
- Therefore, I should always pick Akuma.
Yes, this devolves the game down to an AkaVAka match every time. However, that matchup is determined by 'best practice' - any deviation of that is, according to your own text, a 'scrub' rule.
I know you feel very strongly about this, but, you really should see the flaw in your argument. it will make you a better writer overall. You could put in a paragraph about how games with such obvious flaws should be avoided - however, Akuma is in the game, and it isn't like if YOU pick Akuma, I can't. both players have identical toolsets.
Not picking Akuma is a 'scrub' move.
If your opponent has an advantage that you can also take, choosing not to is your own failing.
Response by Sirlin: You're way out of your element here. As has been explained over and over, it's a question of whether the game was worth saving. The players who played the game for a year in tournaments and loved it wouldn't abandon it because a cheat code was discovered. The cheat code is not something you ever could accidentally enter, it's clear if you do, and tournament matches don't allow cheat codes.
And again, I thought it would be more useful to give a rule of thumb and the extreme where the rule breaks down so that the reader could better understand the issue. There seem to be several readers (like you) who have a very bad grasp of these issues though.
As an additional quote to an above message:
"Even in an Akuma vs. Akuma match it will be two Akumas throwing air fireballs at each other over and over."
That is true.
That is not a fun game.
However, it is the path you have to take if you are going to title 'unofficial mental rules' as scrub play.
Sure, he's overpowered, and turns the game into an AirFire match.
But, that's the best way to play. AkaAirFire is just 'throwing over and over again'. the 'simple way to counter this telegraphed play' is to also pick Akuma, and Air Fire yourself. Even though the best this can do is 'even' the matchup, since not doing so is an auto-loss for you, you have to do it. Just because it is Akuma doesn't mean it isn't just a matter of scale.
That's the crux of the matter - if you define a 'scrub' as 'one who adds unnecessary rules', then, regardless of the fact that AkaVAka is destructive to the core of the game, you HAVE to allow it. Doing otherwise is disingenuous.
Please, you are an excellent writer. Being wrong is okay. It makes you better in the end. But don't dismiss the argument, not matter how ill-written the explanations are. It is solid.
Response by Sirlin: And another poor comment by you. For the 100th time, the entire point is that 99% of the time, an overpowered thing isn't overpowered. Juggernaut glitch in MvC2 seemed really strong when it was discovered, now it's so weak as to never even be used in a tournament. Most things have a counter and that is WHY you shouldn't ban things usually. Akuma is not the same type of situation. He doesn't "appear" overpowered, like most things in the 99% case. He actually, seriously is. He is akin to playing StarCraft with infinite resources or something.
i think the idea with including bugs as part of the competitive gaming is whether the bugs will 1) enhance the game to a greater depth and 2) whether the bug will be fair to both sides. so this usually applies to bugs that are difficult to perform but still doable by anyone who has the skill & knowledge to perform them. i am not very knowledgeable about street fighter, i guess if akuma is so overpowered then both sides should be able to pick him, but that will reduce the entire game to both sides spamming jump fireball which reduces the depth of the game play so it violate the first requirement.
i am fine with including bugs to enhance gameplay on some level, but i want to point out that those bugs are not designed by developers so it is not something that developer should take credit for. if a game reached higher lvl of play by the aid of those types of bugs, it is not because the game was designed well, it is because it just happens.
I used to play AoE2 a lot when it was still a highly popular game before AoM and WCIII came out and most players moved to those games. Really the players that still play now with some exceptions are just not that good. The named L_Clan_Chris, amazing that he's still playing, was one of many very good players.
On the topic of random maps. Pretty much all money tournaments were played on Arabia, by far the most balanced map. It did happen occasionally that someone got a worse map but reading the map and playing it to your advantage was one of the defining features of the game. I'm playing SCII beta now and while set maps have their own charms knowing where everything is at start can also be boring and certain maps by definition favour one race over the other always.
Many of the rules laid out by a previous poster I don't recognize as well. When I still played if I didn't find my boar or sheep it was considered a case of bad scouting and in competitive games sometimes players even send their scout out early to steal the opposing players sheep or kill their boar. Killing a boar with a scout took quite some micro as you didn't want to get hit but you also couldn't risk running too far away or it would wander off to it's starting position. I remember tourney games where people pulled this off and it was considered awesome the first time someone did it.
After the patches there weren't any banned civs as well. Pretty much everyone played Huns (after the Chinese nerf) because of the macro and micro advantage but noone banned them. You played Huns on Arabia. Vkings on water and you'd usually choose between either on random maps.
I don't also recall Nomad being competitive. It was just too random. It is a fun map too play 4vs4 in a friendly game but noone ever used to play tournaments on that map. Maybe people now do.
Look if we're going to make a fair comparison between something banned from AoE2 with Akuma you could probably only look at the Teuton towncenter, affectionaly knows as the Teuton Deathstar. And why was it banned? Because it was close to impossible to rush Teutons until it was nerfed. Having a Teuton TC meant you had a huge line of sight, huge range on arrows shot from it and iirc it even shot extra arrows compared to normal versions. It was like having a machinegun vs others people's handguns.
And I think here is the main difference between the game than and now. Back than people didn't like stuff that kept you from attacking early, nowadays it seems people don't like stuff that makes you able to attack early.
If I go to the club and play a tabletop game I'd like to have a nice and fun evening... that really works.
If I go to a tournament, I play to win (I don't really find it fun to see the same army about 90 times, but its a tournament)... that works
If I play an unranked match in a Pc game, I'd like to have fun playing... that doesn't work
If I play an unranked match in a PC game to lern and improve... that doesn't work
Playing to win is fine - within your borders
Is it really fun to win in under 2 mins without actual fighting?
Is it fun to lose in under 2 mins whitout even knowing what did hit you?
tournamen, ranked,... -> play to win
FFA games -> scrubs
scrubs rarely cross the "border", experts do it all the time
Your articles have been linked by me since many years.
Of course the recipients often would not learn the lesson, but that's part of their fail role.
The Akuma example is kind of like the Yu-Gi-Oh TGC Forbidden and Restricted card lists, which are used at almost all major tournaments. As more cards came out, certain cards like Raigeki and Harpies Feather Duster that could wipe the field and certain other one-turn win combos were banned because the community wanted to see different Decks in tournaments, not everyone with Raigeki/Harpie's Decks just like people don't want to see Akuma v Akuma every game.
playing to win bores me... unless i have someone who can ebat me (its not that im good enough, its jsut that im competitive and my friends aren't and im usually more skillful)
usually i just play for fun
Hey, Sirlin, I don't disagree with you, but I do see how others could... You know? They do have a legit argument even if you don't want to acknowledge, I'll tell you now that I haven't played ST, but I think the better choice would be to abandon the game so as not to be scrubby. Either way though, scrubbiness is fine for friendly battles.
Anon BlazBlue player: abandoning ST because of Akuma is an absurd stance that is certainly not legit. You just don't understand the issue. It's been explained to death why a secret boss character that takes an annoying code to pick, that wasn't even known for like a year after the game was in tournaments...is perfectly fine to ban. It's amazing that you or anyone would find "contradiction" in this. It's clear as day and a great example of how extreme something has to be to rightfully ban it. HD Remix Akuma is way less bad than ST Akuma and he's rightfully banned, too.
Akuma is banned because he breaks the games mechanics. It's as simple as that.
Imagine an FPS with a cheat to unlock a test gun that instantly killed every other player on the map. It's not overpowered. It breaks the mold of the game. It goes beyond rules and breaks the game mechanic without any counter.
If there was a cheat that allowed you in a fighting game to become invincible for the entire match just by entering an arbitrary code before the match, that breaks the game. It removes the element of competition completely because there is nothing an opponent can do.
You could say that in order to stay competitive others would have to do the same thing. Two invincible characters fighting each other. With zero chance of winning.
That is why Akuma is banned and should be banned. He removes any competition.
I still send people to this post 15 years or more after it was written originally. I first saw how it applied to warcraft 2 on kali with 'ogre rules' and even to this day the games I play still have the same mentality.
I think the early posts making semantics with you on akuma are always going to be around. The problem is you can't write a hard law about what is unbalanced and have people who don't understand the idea of a scrub understand the difference between a gamebreaking problem and a 'cheap' move.
This sort of thing has come up in some games where you are in a beta or are some part of the design process. What is an overpowered technique? Is this mechanic fun? I think the only answer really is you have to keep playing the game and trying things, and even when you run out of ideas, you have to keep trying them over and over. Only then can you make an appropriate judgment.
An example is when splinter cell pandora tomorrow came out I played the demo frequently with friends. We had several nights of gaming where our opinion of the game balance swung wildly back and forth as to which side had an advantage or made the game just 'not fair'.
It started with the spys being OP cause we didn't know the building lay outs. We learned layouts and had a balanced game. Then we figured out that the mercs had sound indicators. We then had a night where the building was on lockdown and no spys got in. Then we figured out you could walk quietly with the spy to not have sound transmit, and we went back to balance for a bit... but then we just got so good at locking the building down the spys still couldnt touch it, game unbalanced!
Then we learned some teamwork tricks with the spys, and the mercs were having a hard time of it. We finally ended having a problem with the spy shooting a spy cam into sleeping gas, the merc couldn't avoid it no matter what we tried, which then blew the whole game out of the water, spy just has to taze the merc, spy cam him and gas, no avoidance for it, no danger anymore.
We stopped at this point but who is to know what might have changed if we kept playing. There were so many back and forths where we felt the spy was overpowered and impossible and then the next night, oh wait the merc is crazy overpowered now, you can't beat them! But you keep playing and learning and trying different things and there may just be a way around it, and you've then found a deeper game.
But yeah, at the end of the day, the message is don't give up or dismiss a tactic / character / whatever until you really have given it a through looking at.
This is one of the most informative and well written articles on the subject of winning I've ever read. It makes complete sense and as I've been into gaming of all sorts for a number of years, I understand and agree with the "Akuma rule". For anyone who's ever played MtG on any sort of competitive level, the Akuma thing is basically equivalent to Standard around the time of the Miroden Block when Affinity was first introduced- something so ridiculously unbalanced it literally took multiple waves of card bans to make it remotely fair to play against. There's a difference between "Don't keep throwing me" vs "Stop using an attack that will win you the game 99.9+ % of the time."
I don't think it's a bad thing to want to play "for fun", as long as everyone involved has that as a goal, but it's absolutely necessary to know the difference between "for fun" and "to win." I might build a MtG deck for casual play because it's interesting and different, and I'll have one that is meant for competitive play. Just know when it's appropriate to bring out each one- not everyone wants to be hyper competitive all the time, but when you're playing to win, hold nothing back.
"If you are playing to win, you should play the game everyone else is playing, not the home-made Akuma vs. Akuma game that no one plays."
Direct contradiction to your entire first section.
emyrion: that is not a contradiction, what are you even talking about. There are zero people on earth who play the Akuma vs. Akuma version of ST. Tournaments and even casual play don't use Akuma. Unfortunately, you just don't know what you're talking about here.
For the 100th time, I thought it was helpful to provide an example, rather than no example, of something worth banning. I even made sure to provide one that is super OBVIOUSLY clear as a ban, so you can see how extreme such a thing is. Totally mind-blowing that you can't comprehend that it's ok to ban ST Akuma.
This article is one of those observations that's funny no matter what game you apply it to. There's an Il-2 FB server where they kickban (without any kind of warning) anyone who uses hit and run attacks. Needless to say the server's pretty empty most of the time. It's an interesting position given that it was by far the most common and effective tactic in WWII air combat. :S
There's also a huge epidemic in IL-2 for banning vulching - basically spawn-camping, attacking players before they take off and on some servers also before they get above 1000m altitude. I think the perceived problem is that multiplayer games are not really conducive to teamwork, so there's not much of a chance that the players on the receiving end of the attack can put up any kind of effective patrol to catch these guys before they start strafing people on the ground other than to just do the same back. Many servers are weighted toward the casual player, it's true, but the vulching rule is accepted almost without exception even on many of the hardcore-settings servers. I suppose it's because teamwork isn't really something you can enforce. Do you consider that rule scrubby or just realistic? Personally I dislike it but I see it as an unfortunate necessity given the average player's lack of inclination to do anything other than throw themselves into a multi-participant low-altitude scrap and inevitably die.
What I like is that I see a quite interesting parallel between what you consider 'scrubby' and what hardcore Il-2 players would call similar words, but for purposes of realism. A lot of servers ban shoulder-shooting (shooting past another player at a target they are firing at) and cutting in (making any kind of attack on an enemy that's already been engaged by a team-mate), but in hardcore servers the attitude to such "matters of honour" is more like "Would you be worrying about your personal kill-count if you were fighting in a war?" One more dead enemy can only be a good thing, even if it's not going on your personal score. The only thing that's really frowned upon is kill-stealing, i.e. shooting at planes that are already going to crash just to steal the points (more like a bug that was never fixed), and shooting ejected pilots' parachutes.
Re: Akuma ban
A gun that distorts the way the game works is what he is. I could win by kicking my opponent in the face, during an arcade match of street fighter. I could rip up their trading cards. These things aren't acceptable. Akuma, played skillfully, makes it such that other people's skill level is irrelevant. Its not like they allowed something to happen, where in some games I can generate an unrespondable combo or loop because I was allowed to do so, Akuma shows up with jacked stats. I just need to know how to pull the trigger. I feel like the potential scrubby remark is "Not everyone has to know every subject. This chart is for biologists and Playing to Win is for those who want to win tournaments." Really, playing to win is a life skill. Argue that the 'honor' scrubs value but is inappropriate in games sometimes applies in real life? Sure, but then its just a matter of balancing that with good solid game play.
Wow, i cant believe people got so bent out of shape about something as simple as Akuma.
Its quite simple really: when you Play to Win, you use any methods AVAILABLE to you to win. If you have a tournament where Akuma is banned, then you cant play him, and he is not a tool available to you to win. Just because he is in the game, doesnt mean he should be allowed to be used. Technically, you can use any piece on a chessboard as a Queen if you really wanted to, but its not allowed by the rules that everyone adheres to. Just because something can be done, doesnt mean it should be allowed to be done.
I really don't see the argument for Akuma. He's not a legitimate character, he's from a cheat code. If some tournaments want to allow him, that's fine I guess, but they'll just be Akuma vs Akuma fests. Personally, I don't think cheat codes should be allowed in tournaments.
There is a cheat code for Goldeneye 007 to turn invisible during multiplayer matches (L+C-Up, L+R+C-Left, R+Up, L+C-Right, R+C-Left, L+Right, L+R+C-Left, L+C-Right, L+Up, L+R+C-Down). I'm not sure GoldenEye tournaments exist, but if there were, this use of a cheat code would certainly be banned. Are you pro-Akuma people also pro-invisible code for GoldenEye? Is it that unreasonable that cheat codes be not allowed in multiplayer matches?
I don't know this but can both players pick Akuma? What would that game be like if both can?
Yes both players can pick Akuma. Or to put it another way, both players can use a cheat code to access a hidden, intentionally broken character and play a single, bad mirror match instead of the actual good and well-balanced game. ;)
Look, if you are posting here about Super Turbo Akuma, and trying to look cool saying Sirlin (who I don't particularly like (Note from Sirlin: um, what's your problem, man? Nice random insult) is being a hypocrite about him; then either you are:
a) Too young to have played Super Street Fighter II Turbo, and by consequence, you don't know what the hell you are talking about.
b) Really bad at measuring game balance. And most likely, you don't know how to play Street Fighter at any decent level.
The only way you can defeat Akuma when controlled by another player, is if the other player is looking in another direction and has never ever touched a Street Fighter game and cant perform basic maneuvers or blocking.
I mean, come on, the character in question has UNBLOCKABLE, INVULNERABLE crouching heavy kicks, and that's just for starters. What sirlin is trying to say here is; poking and then throwing out of blockstun might look cheap, but you can work around it. Akuma in SSFIIT is a walking god mode, you can't play around him. End of discussion.
Why are people being so thick-headed about the whole Akuma thing?
I guess they'd also be in favor of legal gold and shadow characters in Guilty Gear...?
Or how about a special button on char select that just declares the match in your favor before it even starts?
I just reread over this article against since the last time I read it some years ago. This article actually did change my entire play style in fighting games.
And I have to agree with you on the Akuma thing and I wonder why some people seriously think he's a contradiction to your logic. He's clearly something that is a garunteed win. Even the most top tier characters, overpowered strategies, and most abusable bugs aren't 10-0. They make your character better yes. But they don't make him "walking god mode" as Art Art put it.