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)
Never heard of Sirlin before or his book/articles.
Came here from the link on tvtropes.org today and since the thread was brought back to life I'll add my two cents.
I can see where both sides of the discussion come from and to a degree they are both right.
That's usually what happens when there's some arbitrary rule that set to 5 is OK but cranked up to 11 is not.
My opinion on this is simple: everything that isn't a feature is a bug. Any given tournament can add rules that forbid a certain feature of being used or not but anything that wasn't coded on purpose into the game should be banned.
Using a bug in a match isn't "thorough research of the game" but simply exploiting.
On the other hand a tournament can enforce any rule they so desire even if it is something like "all participants must play dressed up as Yoshi while standing in a ball." And if that means banning Akuma, so be it.
Akuma's banning in itself is understandable for if they didn't do it who would like to sponsor or watch a tournament where only one character is used?
I just feel that regardless of the rationale is nevertheless a bit hypocritical to ban Akuma from the game but allow exploits just because "they don't break the game as much and can be countered".
No Wyrm, you have it wrong. This is a non-issue to anyone who has ever seen or played the game. It's not "hypocritical" to ban a cheat code that intentionally breaks the game. If StarCraft multiplayer had a code you could enter at the screen where you pick your race, and that code wasn't even known for over a year after tournaments started, and the code broke the game by allowing infinite gas/minerals, it would simply be obvious that it has no place in competitive play.
I'm really surprised this Akuma thing is confusing to people actually. I thought it would be informative to give an example of something sooooooooooooooooooooooooo far over the line that of course it must be banned so that people would realize such a thing is possible.
"Who would like watch a game or sponsor it if only one character was used" is also off base. Everyone who ever came in contact with this game understood a ban was needed long before considering spectators or sponsors. I think you aren't realizing that there already was a tournament scene before Akuma was known, that Akuma is not even ON the character select screen but accessible only through a tedious code, that he is obviously broken in that can do things like lock you in blockstun perpetually, that his matches are all 9-1 or 10-0, that he was intended to be broken by the developers...why would you (or anyone) think it makes sense to throw away an entire great game enjoyed by many because of the existence of a cheat code? Who would think that's a good idea? Not any of the people actually playing the game, because they would never choose to immediately and obviously ruin it. It seems only people who have never seen the game or seen Akuma would choose to ruin it, which is deeply mysterious, and if anything, THAT is hypocritical.
I kind of can't believe you really think that banning Akuma is only ok in the way that it would be "ok" for a tournament to make people dress up like Yoshi. You're saying it's not ok, but hey, a tournament could do it. This goes against the plain and obvious truth that with Akuma, there is no game really, and without him there is a great game. He is not just "the most powerful character", he is a god-mode cheat code in ST. He is miles and miles and miles more powerful than the most powerful thing in whatever game you actually play. I thought by 2010 this would be well known.
Akuma could instakill with one punch that we would nevertheless be more part of the game than an exploited bug.
My comment wasn't about a character who seems to have been included as a joke, my comment was more toward the bug exploiting you are ok with.
If akuma was banned, and i fully agree that it should be banned, then all the known exploits should be banned as well. buffer overflows and the like should have no bearing in the outcome of a match.
Wyrm, A does not follow from B. If you think a completely obviously brokenly overpowered thing should be banned, it does not logically follow that all other things should be banned that weren't intended. I mean, I wrote a whole book on that. Your logic would have us ban the use of Juggernaut's powerup glitch, of Iceman's standard air combo where he uses a cancel trick to get slightly more damage, and so on. You would have us somehow glean the mind of developers we can't even communicate with about exactly whether they meant for various subtle properties to be there or not. Who cares if they wanted those things to be, when all we have is the games themselves, with the properties they have.
You can't ban stuff that isn't enforceable or discrete. You shouldn't ban things that aren't warranted. Your logic is that "given there exists an example of a thing that is enforceable, discrete, and warranted to be banned, we should therefore ban things that are NOT warranted, not enforceable and/or not discrete." That is way wrong, but also way off topic. It has nothing to do with playing to win (use any tournament legal means to win, period) but what criteria you think tournaments should use to ban things. You seem to advocate a crazy criteria where we could ban TONS of stuff. Should we ban players form activating a CC, then immediately doing a crouching attack in Street Fighter Alpha 2 because the developers probably didn't intend it to unblockable when the opponent wasn't already blocking before CC activation? Of course not, and if you even tried, it would create an unplayable mess of rules that shouldn't be there in the first place.
I think people just don't grasp how broken ST Akuma is. Beyond the air fireballs, another good example is his ground fireball. There is almost no delay after him shooting one, thus he can keep someone in a fireball lockdown until they die of chip damage.
Anyone saying that ST Akuma is not broken just needs to play the game to find out themselves.
And quick question to Sirlin, what do you think about O.Sagat? Would you say he's broken as well, with his no delay tiger shots? Many tournament videos I see, a good number of people are using him.
DarkReaper, scroll down toward the bottom of this for what I wrote about Old Sagat:
http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/what-should-be-banned.html
Since then, I am more convinced that he reduces the variety in the game, but actually outright banning him is still kind of problematic. It's honestly better to play SF HD Remix where Sagat is very different and no longer overpowered, so that no "soft-ban" is needed in the first place.
Wow a lot of posts in a repetitive circle, I just read this because my roommate sent it to me, and I agree with you sirlin. I think the best way to address the Akuma issue is that he is a CHEAT CODE designed as an added bonus part of the game. You would have never even LEARNED how to use Akuma in the game unless you looked at the CHEATS section of some magazine years back. But then again, all the people talking are probably the scrubs that would lose with Akuma regardless...:)~!
"Your logic would have us ban the use of Juggernaut's powerup glitch, of Iceman's standard air combo where he uses a cancel trick to get slightly more damage, and so on. You would have us somehow glean the mind of developers we can't even communicate with about exactly whether they meant for various subtle properties to be there or not."
Yes I would. The rest of the paragraph is just rethoric. You don't need to go into the dev's mind to understand that jugernaut glitch is a bug and iceman's cancel trick is also a bug. And if a game has serious bugs that may have unintended effects, enough to influence a supposedly balanced match then either the bugs get fixed or choose another game to play.
In any case, like I said, a tournament is basically some guy setting arbitrarily defined rules and the contestants accepting to compete under those rules. Period.
Again, I'm not discussing Akuma here or any other OP character. Just questioning the notion that some bugs are OK and other are not. And both the examples you provide are easily enforced bans are they not?
In any case the only issue with allowing the character is that it would force everybody to use it and would break the diversity of the tournament and soon after the tournaments itselves. This is the main reason not some arbitrary sliding scale. Who would want to participate or watch or sponsor an Akuma Tournament? It's in that sense that I totally agree.
It's hard to respond to you Wrym because you seem to just not know what you're talking about. The CC example is not enforceable. So you CC and you can't sweep right away, but you can wait a moment then sweep? What. Iceman combo same thing. You do the chain combo into special, then immediately cancel the special before it comes out so you fall slightly slower during your super. Yeah it's a bug and probably 99% of players do not even realize it's a bug. And it's hard to tell if you're even doing it or not sometimes. Would be absurd to ban. Not warranted anyway.
Of COURSE there is a sliding scale. A thing that barely matters like iceman glitch should not be banned. A thing 1000x too strong should be like Akuma. That is what a scale means, that things are different magnitude and there's such a thing that is so far over the line that it's ok to ban. By the same token, most things are not over the line. This is so basic, I don't know what else to tell you here. Try posting on the forums instead of responding here, and dozens of people will respond to you.
"It's hard to respond to you Wrym because you seem to just not know what you're talking about."
That's why I asked if both the examples were enforceable.
Banning Akuma has nothing to do with the game but with the tournaments. I don't know Street Fighter but I know tournaments and the main reason that someone would organize a tournament is profit. Sure, they love the game but someone has forked the money and he/she wants his/her due.
Akuma only tournaments wouldn't work and that is why it's banned. Not for some supposedly sense of sportsmanship or fairness. You are still thinking that I want Akuma in tournaments. I do not. I only challenge the said sliding scale for it becomes subjective.
If one day you want to see gaming as a true e-sport there can be none of this bugs-as-features crap. If a game is supposed to be a competition then it must be free of bugs and extraneous factors that might influence the outcomes. Until then tournaments will just be some glorified local competition held in smelly arcades.
Sirlin, you seem to be a big shot in the tournament scene and a influential game designer. I had not the faintest idea that you existed until 2 days ago. So that tells us a bit of the relevance on Street Fighter tournaments in the gaming world. On the other hand I know a few names of Starcraft leading players and I haven't touch the game as well.....
Now, i don't know the first thing about tennis but I've heard of federer. That's the difference
Wyrm, not even bothering to point out everything wrong with your posts but someone mentioned this to me in chat so I glanced at it. If Starcraft is the shining example of what an esport looks like then unintended bugs that matter at high-level play are definitely fine:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=66532
Some of you idiots talking about Akouma just dont get it, I dont even play that game and I understand that ban is warranted based upon the information given. I have played games for over 20 years since serial connection between PC's and never in my life have I seen such stupid aweful behaviour over something so blatently obvious.
Akouma is banned because he does things all the other characters have no access too. Permament Stun on a character in an game where you have no way of getting out, on a charachter you have to manually unlock as the character is a cheat coded avatar is totally right to be banned.
The analogy is very simple:
Mike Tyson vs You
You have a blind fold on and you are being given instructions as to where Mike is so you can hit him.
Go!
He is THAT overpowered.
I don't understand why people (I've heard this from lots of people) are so determined to ban every little bug in a game. The question is not whether or not it is a bug or whether or not it was intended, but whether or not it ruins the game. It it doesn't ruin the game, then by all means, use it. Who cares if it's a bug or not?
There are by the way lots of bugs in for example CS, which is a popular e-sport game. Did you know for example that one can run at very close to full speed and make about 1/10 of the sound of normal running (recently patched, but still possible to some degree)? Every top player uses this, but it doesn't ruin the game. Saying it should be banned because it's a bug is brain-dead. Maybe it should be banned (and was at some tournaments when it was first found, but it was hard to enforce) but it has nothing to do with it being a bug.
There are also lots of bugs that are banned in CS: Boosting through the floor/ceiling, flashing through walls, plating the bomb inside walls to make it silent.
Oh an another bug that is not banned: At some special places one can throw explosive grenades so that when they go off, they don't make sounds. And because the grenade doesn't make a sound it's very easy to hear people being hit by it. So if you hit someone, you hear exactly where they are. Not banned, because it's not game-breaking. Another one is lighting your flashlight right when you are about to defuse, and the defuse sound disappears (although the flashlight sound is audible, but it can confuse players sometimes).
Look at Magic: the Gathering. (a trading card game for those of you who dont know). Its considered one of the most balanced games out there.
The developers sometimes feel the need to ban a single card to alter the way the game is played. This happens when a deck becomes most played and has no efficient counters against it to get the matchup at least even (on short). When 3/4 of the players were using a certain deck, they just banned a small thing and boom: A variety of decks emerged and the tournament field broadened up.
If Akuma even wins everytime (or 90%, feels like all the time, too :P), using the Play-to-win arguments Sirlin brought would result in everyone playing Akuma, since this is the way to maximize the winning potential. So the game would become a farce of its usual gameplay. Instead of a real fighting game, it should be called a whokills theotherAkumafirst-Game.
If there were just one Character who had a trick to kill Akumas, Akuma would be a fair choice. But since there isnt, he is not.
I never played the game though...
I love stumbling upon hidden internet gems. Sirlin, after reading this for the past hour... I want to thank you for taking my argumentative writings skills to a new plateau. Good shit.
Sephier got it right. A bug that causes something to be done that breaks the inherent flow and balancing attempts of the game, or a character that was, by design, beyond all other characters. They fall in the same category. Bugs and glitches that cause characters to behave, and let me put it clearly, ABNORMALLY to an advantage, even a severe one, are considered okay while a character that by all rights is behaving normally by the coding is not? this is a joke. a very bad one.
Lets take DOA4. THere's a reason ninjas top the charts of tournaments every time, while all the down to earth and realistic characters, and I use that more loosely than not, are always on bottom. its because the ninjas, particularly the ninja gaiden character, have moves that can be done over and over, and the beginning move is something that can chain into throws, kicks, punches, or offensive holds (like a throw but it counters attacks, and can be used when people aren't attacking). said ninjas usually disappear from the screen during this, and there is about 1/60th of a second where you as the opposing side have to determine what they're going to do and counter it. anything but the right counter gets you creamed. so its a game of russian roulette instead of skill. and its done over and over.
You're saying that if there's a big move like that, but people can find other moves to bring their own, then the supposed imbalances balance each other out which makes it all fine, right?
Most people like a balanced and fair game, not necessarily one where everything is exactly equal, but where everything has a counter. CC is uncounterable, therefor its proof of a poor design element. There's playing to win, and then there's playing to compete. the best competitors want their competition at their best.
let me analogize. you beat up babies in boxing to win. you're good at it. your moves are so overpowered and cheap because you can give a baby a black eye instantly, meanwhile babies have little to no muscle at all and a ~120 lb weight disadvantage. but you wont give it up, because you play to win. Does that win feel as good as having an equal advantaged opponent? Id daresay not. After all, what good is winning if you win because you use something that is obviously unfair and outclassing? How does that win exactly equate to you having superior skill and tactics?
Look at chess. People play to win there, and there's only 1 exact same setup for both sides. therefor, everyone has equal access to any imbalance. Contrast to games where people pick characters. If a character is inherently stronger or weaker, people will pick the former and avoid the latter. Fine, but that defeats the point of the game.
I'd like to revisit this line:
After all, what good is winning if you win because you use something that is obviously unfair and outclassing? How does that win exactly equate to you having superior skill and tactics? If someone chooses christie, and someone else chooses ninja gaiden to counter them, there is immediately a disparity, a lack of flawed game mechanics, bugs, and overpowered moves to use on christie's side, and a surfeit of these things on the ninja gaiden fanboy side. that match immediately starts off with one player having unfair advantages, just like your description of a bug that can only happen on one player side or another.
Again, if playing to win means finding stuff that cant be beaten, and using that endlessly to win, is that really skill or good playing? There's a reason "Cheap" as an idea exists.
Holy crap you guys are still bickering about akuma? Jesus I never even played the game before and I understand what he is saying with that example, how would you feel if you jumped on modern warfare 2 one night and somebody found that if you hit a series of buttons aka a chat code then you get the rpd but every bullet is a tactical nuke or an ac130 round same stuff it's not a bug per se but t exploit it regardless of programmer intent is beyond a skillful comparison this truly is cheap by any standard
A Cheatcode, the classic kind which you need to press buttons in a certain order within a certain amount of time to do, hich usualy brings up a special menu or statement that the developers put in the game intending for players to use them, wether they abuse them or not.
A Glitch, a flaw in the game that the designers never intended to be there, something that could ruin a game completely and sometimes requires luck to experience or avoid, or is some code in the game that the developers mostly took out and wrecks the game if it's abused.
So Cheatcodes like Akuma that the developers made for the game are banned? They're supposed to be in the game, so as your article says, deal with it. :P
Glitches which aren't supposed to be in the game, which are a complete accident and weren't patched in the Super Street Fighter Turbo era due to technology at the time, are allowed because they're there? If it was released today, all those glitches you abuse so badly would've been patched when you next tried to go online.
The picture you showed of a sprinter who appears to have pushed another sprinter over, your caption for that picture is that you're unsure wether that is truly unfair and should be banned, let's see it's against the "official" rules, but let's see, say this is allowed, let's play the metagame of sprinting, instead of winning by being the fastest runner, hire someone to stalk your competitors and spike everything they eat/drink so that they will fail any drugs test, make sure you only eat/drink stuff that is certain never to have been spiked with performance enhancing drugs and when you go onto the track carry a gun so if there are any other competitors left, you can kill them guaranteeing victory.
I'm sorry, is the gun just like Akuma? What if someone planted pins on the track so everyone else would be handicapped? Or someone is carrying a knife? Or someone bribed the officials? Or someone has a sniper somewhere in the stadium?
These things are to Sprinting as Glitches are to gaming, it's possible to use them but they're not intended to be in the "sport" (I don't really know any other definition) and they offer an unfair advantage to people who don't simply, RUN THE FASTEST.
I am currently playing Bioshock on Hard, I'm mostly going to use the Pistol and Shotgun, but when the situation demands it, I will use other weapons, Grenade Launcher to plant the Proximity Mines and Crossbow to fire Trap Bolts to more easily kill the Big Daddies, which for the early sections of the game will be avoided in order to make getting Brass Balls easier, Shotgun and Pistol are very comfortable weapons for me.
In Brawl I have had the misfortune to go up against several players using Pikachu and spamming Thunder, an attack that cannot be interrupted, there are a few characters who can counter it, but they're specialised, as well as this they'd spam Thundershock which has ridiculous knockback so a move so heavely spammed, I've also experienced Falco's downward throw being chained so just before I could recover from the move, I'm locked in yet another grab, similer to the Ice Climber's wobbling tactic, except you get pushed forward, so if you get pushed off a ledge you may survive to attempt to dodge, I've also been on the recieving end of people working as teams using these tactics, targeting me and only me, these are all in Random Online Matches.
My Friends and I play with a few items that don't completely change the game as soon as they appear, such as an instant kill Bob-omb appearing right above one of our characters so there's absolutely no chance of avoiding it, Final Destination and Battlefield are the most chosen Stages, but we all have our favourite stages that are much more interesting, I also used to main Fox, Lucario and Sonic, now I main Lucario, Peach and ToonLink, oh but we don't play competetively so we'd be on the Scrub side of your little gaming world, that's not so bad, Scrubs have their positives, so do Munchkins, however there exists a type of gamer that is composed of the negatives of both Scrub and Munchkin and one that is the positives, me and my friends are closer to the positives, our rules are above, there aren't really any rules to ban certain stages except Hanenbow (spelling) because it's crap and lack of music makes it boring, there's a video on youtube showing me and one of my friends fighting, we experienced something very unusual in a previous fight and are testing to see if it happened again and it turns out that Peach really dos have a low % chance of picking up an item when using her down B wether they're turned on or not.
Thedreadnaught: I'm surprised you aren't able to grasp this simple concept of Akuma being banned. I'll explain for the hundred thousandth time. In every game, there are people calling to ban everything you can think of. 99% of that is not warranted. Sometimes even if it is warranted, it's not a discrete or enforcable thing to ban anyway. But back to warranted. Once in a while, a rare exception, it really is warranted. Instead of giving zero examples of this, I think it's more helpful to give one: a rock-solid that is super obvious and that literally zero people involved have ever debated for even 5 seconds.
If you think banning Akuma does not meet the (very) strict criteria of "warranted" then you are severely unaware of the situation. If you are aware that he meets that critiera, then I don't know why you are even posting about this.
You show more lack of understanding with your statement that "all those bugs would be patched these days." Ok first of all, no the wouldn't. Glitches like Iceman falling barely slower when cancelling kara cancelling into super (so he can do more damage) would not be fixed. Kara throws in Street Fighter 4 are not fixed. Tons of these would not be fixed. But the statement is pointless to begin with because even if ALL of them were fixed instantly every time, that does not change what we're talking about. You would play the game the best you can with whatever you have access to, so whey even bring this up?
Your example of sprinting glitches is also ridiculous. You seem more interested in arguing than in understanding any actual concepts. As stated in my articles, you should play using tournament-legal moves. Kicking people in the shins in allowed by the physics of our world, but is not legal in a tournament match of, say, Street Fighter. If your response is that the tournament you're attending doesn't have any written rules against kicking people in the shins, you're simply being a jerk. You know that kicking people in the shins is not legal in a tournament (maybe try it and see how that goes?), and nitpicking this is a waste of everyone's time.
Here it is boiled down even simpler: if a glitch in a game is tournament legal, use it if it helps you. (Obviously, how could any one argue the opposite, it would be ludicrous.) If it is not tournament legal (examples: glitches that crash the server or reset the game), then don't use it. Reason: you will be ejected from the event or disqualified. If's a practice match, you are not on your path of self-improvement because only what is allowed in a tournament counts. If you want to talk about what SHOULD be tournament legal or not, that is a completely separate issue from what a player should take advantage of. Glitches are extremely common in high level play of practically any game, including games out right now. You are probably simply unaware of their existence. Trying to glean whether the developer really meant some strange edge case to happen is a waste of all our time anyway, who cares. If it's there, glitch or not, it's there. If it's tournament legal, use it.
I don't see any relevance to your three paragraphs about BioShock and Smash Bros. Brawl.
I'm disappointed in the quality of your post and I don't think it's worthwhile to approve posts like this anymore. Please post further on the forums rather than here so that other people can pick apart bad logic such as this.
Oh yeah I'm also playing PoKéMoN SoulSilver and am dedicating myself to building an awesome team of Tanks, yeah they're all what I'd call Ubers, not what the rest of the community would though, there are moves hated by the community that kill instantly, they're banned in tournaments and lots of players wont battle somebody who uses these attacks, I don't use them because there are more useful attacks that can be used more often.
Some attacks I do dislike are the fixed damage attacks like Sonic Boom and Draon Rage, say I have a Tank that is immune to OHKO moves, somebody uses the most powerful move of any element and can only deal out damage in th single digits, now let's say I have 200HP, they use Dragon Rage which deals 20% of my total HP in damage also mocking all the effort I took into makng my Tank into a Tank, but banning otherwise useless moves that do fixed damage or are level based is just silly and I'd rather show off my superiority by crushing their cheap attack using PoKéMoN.
In fact another self agreed upon set of rules, me and a personal friend both had a no limits Link Single Battle, the two rules we both agreed on were three PoKéoN, no Legendaries, so I head out with my three PoKéMoN non of them a Legendary and his second PoKéoN turns out to be non other than Raikou, I call him a cheater and am on my last mon, my level 42 Bronzong weak against Fire, beats his level 40 Raikou and weakened level 30 Gyarados only for him to send out a level 40 Entei, I call him a cheating asshole and beat him, his Super Effective Fire Spin only dealed a total of 26 damage (12 initial + 7 after each turn, I put him to Sleep so he couldn't do more damage) compared to when his Gyarados used Dragon Rage for 40 damage.
*I'm surprised you aren't able to grasp this simple concept of Akuma being banned. I'll explain for the hundred thousandth time. In every game, there are people calling to ban everything you can think of. 99% of that is not warranted. Sometimes even if it is warranted, it's not a discrete or enforcable thing to ban anyway. But back to warranted. Once in a while, a rare exception, it really is warranted. Instead of giving zero examples of this, I think it's more helpful to give one: a rock-solid that is super obvious and that literally zero people involved have ever debated for even 5 seconds.*
I did grasp the concept perfectly, after playing against Akuma for about ten matchs with each character and mostly losing, then playing the same amount of matches against each character as Akuma, you found Akuma to be one of the weapons/characters/techniques that the developers put into a game with the intention of it being the most powerful thing in the game, saw that it was far too powerful to lose against anything else and called for it to be banned.
Please don't try to reply to that last section saying it was more than ten matchs, I'm just going by your own 10-0 match ups, btw so called Scrubs do a lot of this testing that you do, in fact with Bioshock the example I mentioned, I know exactly how to bust through the whole thing without dying on the hardest dificulty, the Brawl example was to point out the merits of "Playing for Fun" something by the looks of it, you don't truly understand, oh my god, now you're going to say that winning and only winning is fun, that is so far away from the truth that if you even attempt to use it against me, I'll find you on every part of the internet you're part of just to block you.
*You show more lack of understanding with your statement that "all those bugs would be patched these days." Ok first of all, no the wouldn't. Glitches like Iceman falling barely slower when cancelling kara cancelling into super (so he can do more damage) would not be fixed. Kara throws in Street Fighter 4 are not fixed. Tons of these would not be fixed.*
Let's take a look at a few Glitches I've seen that were patched due to players abusing for an advantage, ghosting through walls in many FPS games, duplication glitches, techniques that grant invincibility frames.
I'll leave you with an example of something that was patched out of the game for being a glitch, when it's in the manual as an actual intended part of the game, in Star Wars Empire at War, I'm assuming enough people complained about how "n00bs who used that buggy ATAT" this is of course reffering to Colonel Veers and his ATAT the Blizzard 1, an ATAT that was immune to Snowspeeder Cable Attacks, yeah he used to be immune to them the instructions say he's immune to them and so dos the ingame description, but sadly the actual immunity has been removed and the only diference between him and a normal ATAT that matters in a PvP battle has been taken away, he's a Hero so is more expensive than normal ATATs in Skirmish matches, sure he has the ability to instantly destroy any structure or ground unit every few minutes, but then again isn't that powerful enough?
ATATs have the most HP out of any Planetary unit, they do the most damage and they're weak to three things, Artillery which need a spotter in order to attack, anti vehicular turrets/Turbo Laser Towers depends on the map/require ATAT to be attacking the enemy base and the instant kill Cable Attacks, the ATATs also have an ability to spawn Stormtroopers/Infantry to prevent Rocket Infantry from being one of the ATAT's weaknesses.
So if Game A has an unintentional bug B, which gives an overwhelming advantage to one side, it's ok to ban people from abusing bug B.
But if game C, has an unintentional bug D, which gives a significant but surmountable advantage to one side, the community shouldn't ban people from exploiting this bug, and anyone who refuses it exploit it is a scrub.
Confirm/Deny?
wc: It would be nice if you stated your name and if you posted in the forums instead of along with this trash series of comments.
Your statement is wrong as I understand it. We can throw out uninentional for starters, who cares about that part. If bug B is truly overwhelming, yeah it could be banned on the basis of it being warranted. That is, the game without the bug is worth saving (often not the case) and the game with the bug is not even a game anymore. Example: Akuma in ST. This part of what you said is not wrong.
Bug D could easily be banned even if it's NOT warranted for power reasons. Even if it had a minor effect, it could still be banned because not all players have equal access to it. For example, if a move was only possible on the player2 side of a fighting game (yes, there are such examples). Or if a move was only possible when your gamecube controller is plugged into port 1 (this is a real example also). Even a minor advantage from such a thing is so troubling that a ban is ok and even common over such things.
I guess by "to one side" you might have meant some bug that makes Blanka slightly better or something. Anyone can pick Blanka, and games with Blanka all have bugs. Not because they are bad games but because video games all have bugs and these bugs are standard parts of gameplay not even known by many players as bugs. So if some nuance gave Blanka some advantage, yes of course you should use it, you would be a fool not to. I'm pretty sure you do NOT mean this though, and by "to one side" you mean to one player, as in a thing not everyone in the game session has access to, merely based on whether they are player 1 or 2.
It's also quite possible that a thing can only be done by player 2, gives a minor advantage, and should be banned based on that alone...but it can't because the ban is not enforceable or there is no way to discretely define the thing to be banned. In that case, you have no choice but to allow the thing or abandon the game. Usually you would allow flipping a coin for side and ability to switch sides after each game, but it's a bad situation.
There has to be some kind of fundamental difference between setting up serious tournament rules, such as not using cheat codes or the bug that drops out the other player, and on the other hand n00bs calling things they feel beat them in a slightly offensive way "cheap". If your setting up tournaments with prizes and a strong community backing that follow your rules, it's similar to the actual game developers do except your rules are enforced by different means, so it's legit in my opinion. I mean in things liek chess the rules are socially enforced too, it doesn't make them lesser, it's not like the wooden pieces would refuse you to move them incorrectly.
I do think this could be done in a "scrubby way" like what the AOE guys were talking about not attacking the other guys pigs and so on, compared to "don't use infinite $ cheat code".
What I'm saying is it's not just the power scale of what you ban, it's also who bans it. Ideally game devs took care of everything, but sometimes the players might need to step in to salvage the game.
I remember that the Korean professional starcraft playing organisation actually has a pair of bugs banned, one being observer on top of a missile tower making the missiles bugged. Also I think you are not allowed to ally your opponent (can be used in conjunction with spider mines), and I don't think they would like if you pause the game to throw off your opponent. While lots of other "glitches" are perfectly fine. I wouldn't call these guys scrubs.
anon: how about posting under an actual identity? Anyway, your point is that tournament floor rules do not make the organizers of a tournament "scrubs." Yes, this is obvious and disputed by no one. Magic: the Gathering's extensive floor rules are a good example, covering all sorts of possible ways you could cheat that are unrelated to "glitches" in the game mechanics of the game.
Floor rules are a given in any game, sure. At the very least they are needed to specify what mode of a game is allowed (and things like "you can't ally your opponent in starcraft" etc). They can ban things like Akuma in ST. They can specify that when you shuffle cards, you can't shuffle like one time and claim that's ok. They can require that you don't use a controller with the turbo function turned on. They can require you to wear sound proofing earphones at an RTS event. These things are fine, and I don't think anyone is saying otherwise.