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)
Thanks JustOwnin. Yes I remember meeting you, watching you play DOA, and playing cards with you. You always had a champion's attitude.
Loved the article, though I don't think you built enough on what Akuma is when compared to other games. He isn't some off-screen character that the player can select. Akuma is the equivalent of navigating through a developer menu to enable an otherwise locked out tool like fullbright or godmode. The player has to access him through a debug function that was foolishly left open. In that way, he isn't so much a character as he is an "
I WIN!No wait, I was actually just testing to make sure this boss' sprites show up correctly" function. One could argue that the use of such developer tools removes the ability to "play" the game, and likens the scenario to someone labeling Hammer editing as playing CS:S.So basically what your saying is akuma is kinda like the people who used god mode in the original quake?
I know akuma has been talked to death about whether or not he is similar to scrub rules banning glitches and other tactics that seem to permeate all high level play, but I want to know on what level is he similar to metaknight in ssbb. I have played smash since ssb64 and know a lot about the game, i have never played tournament, or even for bets, but i understand exactly how game breaking kirby's armoured cousin is, the common consensus at high levels is that he is a black hole that warps the metagame around him, it is well known that noone is a counter to metaknight, except another metaknight.
MK happens to have the single best recovery in the game, along with extremely fast attacks that ALL have magic priority to break through anything else, along with his infinite cape teleport (which is technically banned but its impossible to tell if someone just boosted the teleport a tiny bit, making it difficult to enforce) and being able to duck under most attacks make him clearly the best character.
me and my best friend are scrubs by your definition, we have unspoken consent to never play the same character twice in a row, and never play metaknight unless its for laughs, we both do this because him and I happen to be good with every character, and having to dig within each characters unique bags of tricks makes the game more fun for us. is this wrong? I would admit that if any money is on the line i would definately choose MK and use all the cheap tricks i could to win. am i a scrub?
i understand that akuma bends every fight to his will with his COMPLETELY UNCOUNTERABLE cheap tactics. so i would like to hear another example on UNCOUNTERABLY CHEAP tactics.
To compare, imagine if Metaknight, in addition to his current abilities, could rolldodge half of Hyrule Temple in a single movement, his the entire stage, unblockably, with his final smash, and had disjointed hitboxes the size of two beam swords on either sides of him when during his down-B. That may be a pretty close estimate.
I found this to be a very enlightening read when I first read it a few years ago, and now, it's just as interesting as ever. Thanks for all the great insight, Sirlin.
Now if people on HD Remix would stop calling my Honda cheap, that would be great.
^^ thats pretty extreme, would you say if his infinite cape wasn't banned would he be similar?
Hm, after doing some research, I would say, if the infinite cape was the default behavior of Metaknight's down+b, it would be quite similar.
If I go online on Star Wars Empire at Wars I will go on the Forces of Corruption expansion and use the Zann Consortium. Because of this I will win.
In Space Battles I have two choices, I can either spam Fighters and destroy the enemy Space Station at the beginning, or I can build up to a Level 4 Station, build a full fleet of Vengeance Frigates and use the all powerful Mass Drivers to win.
In Land Battles I'll have a few Soldier Units to capture Build Points and Mines to get Turrets and money, then I'll build some Canderous Assault Tanks so their Mass Drivers can destroy everything in their path, the only Turret type I'll build will be Mass Driver Turrets. Are you seeing a theme here?
Mass Drivers are rapid firing, cause high damage and ignore shields, in Space Battles they can tear through an entire unit of Fighters in a single volley, while disabling a larger ship's Shields so the Laser Cannons start doing their work. In Land Battles Mass Drivers fire at the same rate, but the damage is even higher, also they can hit both Land and Air units just as easily.
The weaknesses to the Mass Driver are the low damage against Capital Ships, being available to two ship types and the Space Station in Space, being available to one unit and as a Turret on land, one of the Space units has no shields, the tanks can be easily destroyed by anything specifically designed to destroy heavy vehicles if they don't get the first shot, Build Points must be captured by Infantry before Turrets can be built and any unit with a Mass Driver is pretty expensive to build.
I'm currently enjoying a Galactic Conquest Campaign on Hard and other than the early losses (systems I lost because I sold all their defences) I'm doing quite well, in fact I have more planets under my control than either of the other factions. It is a Strategy game and an advisor keeps telling me to use tactics, but my winning Strategy of "Throw Mass Drivers at Everything" has got me most of the Trade Routes and I'm beginning to sweep in toward the centre of the Galaxy with a fleet of Vengeance.
Why don't you get the game Sirlin? Then we'll see who's the better tactician, you with whatever you can rustle up in the 10 minutes before I check if I've won vs my Mass Driver technique. Unless you can see some sort of balance issue with the game in my post, perhaps a weapon in an RTS that is accidentally too powerful? Oh right, they're perfectly okay, it's not like theyre more powerful than they should be.
With regards to the Akuma/glitch argument, we see both a logical fallacy within the sphere of immediate time, and a difficult truth in the sphere of broad time.
When I say "immediate time", what I mean is that based on an immediate decision in a strictly controlled environment, let us say, during a single match in an online tournament, there is no game balance argument that allows the player to use a programming glitch to his advantage, but bans access to the Akuma code. Within that small slice of "game time experience", taking advantage of one element is the same as taking advantage ofany other. The match has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and the win statistic is purely binary Win = 1, Loss = 0. This represents one key anchor point in game theory, one that Sirlin does not want to see lost in the discussion of what represents good game play, that is, the kind of game play that should generate respect, and to go even further, what represents a good game TO play. The title of the article is "Play to win", and Sirlin's argument is that you can't talk about playing the game without understanding how to win that game
The differentiation that Sirlin is trying to make is based on the experience of the game in broad time, over the course of many, many games, where statistics gather. What is the ratio of wins to losses through the broad sphere of time? Sirlin's point is that many game glitches are 60-40 advantage rates, but the Akuma code offers a 99:1 advantage. I might be willing to play a certain game 10 times if I can expect to win 4 games. I might not be willing to play 100 matches in order to earn a single win. That's just human nature.
How many matches will you have to play in order to gather that data? A whole heaping lot, probably so many matches that you will inevitably acquire enough experience to earn the respect of your fellow gamers. At a certain point, you will be expected to know things about the game that casual players have yet to notice. Some of those key things are going to be so perfectly obvious that you have forgotten why you even know them and cannot give a clear response. This happened with Sirlin and the Akuma problem.
Playing to win is not "win at any cost." With mastery comes a responsibility to keep the game interesting for all players. Man who wins every game soon runs out of opponents. Thus, simply because you use a "cheap" tactic to win a tournament does not mean you should employ that tactic at every opportunity. When a master plays a student (what Sirlin calls a scrub), the master needs to play to win for the student to learn anything valuable about the game. But for most students to remain engaged, there must be finite chance for the master to lose. Therefore the master must employ an array of handicaps in order to keep the game interesting for both sides. For example, a master of the game of Go will give a student an advantage at the start of the game by granting him anywhere between 1 and 9 stones on the board. In a fighting video game, the master may choose a character with a specific liability against the student's chosen character. I know that while I was teaching my teenage son how to play the board game "Railroad Tycoon", I would give him extra cash at the start of the game to off set my knowledge of on-board tactics. On the other hand, I can't defeat my son at the card game "Dominion" (it's not 99:1, but it's close to 19:1). He has worked out his own system of handicaps so that we can still play the game together (he substitutes Curse cards for Estates).
Zedros: Actually there is no contradiction to begin with. "Only ban things that are warranted, but almost nothing is warranted" is not a contradiction, so there is no deep issue to explore. Giving an example of a thing that is over the line is a straightforward non-contradiction. There is no need to muse for long paragraphs over exactly why a cheat code that allows you to win automatically should be banned, or to think deeply about exactly why it should be banned. It's so obvious, that really no discussion is needed. In the actual real world, there was no discussion to ban Akuma either. It was so obvious to everyone involved that everyone knew a ban was warranted. It's very strange why people even NOW (who have certainly never played the game or seen Akuma) are still hung up on this and trying analyze the "contradiction" when there is none.
Another way of putting it is if I said "ban things that are stronger than power 10 on a certain scale" and then I gave an example of something of power 9000, and you set about to explore the "logical fallacy" of that.
For me it seems that Akuma is over hyped, sure he may be stronger than any other character in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, but he sounds like a Mugen character with nothing but screen wide, unblockable and unavoidable one hit kill moves in a balanced fighting game. Slightly worse than Tabuu's Off Waves in Brawl, at least they can be dodged.
Maybe if you gave an example of an Akuma in a FPS, RTS or PoKéMoN people would understand you better. Counter Strike Source is supposed to be the most balanced FPS ever and is the most played by competetive gamers, if you want an FPS example go research that game and see if you can find one. You've mentioned Starcraft as an RTS that can be played competetively and as for PoKéMoN there's the legendaries and Wobbuffet.
Perhaps one of the reasons the Elder Scrolls series dosn't have multiplayer is because of how unbalanced it'd be, my Oblivion character takes no damage from melee atacks instead it's all dealt back to the attacker with an extra 1% damage on top, he also absorbs all magic cast on him by target, or touch based spells, this includes Telekinesis when he cast's it, so even with Stunted Magicka my character can regenerate Magicka. Arrows can still damage but people can only carry so many arrows, Poisons would work if I didn't equip my character with a ring the neutralizes Poisons and Paralysis. Changing the series to cater for those who want multiplayer so they can have competetive battling would either tack on a multiplayer mode which outright sucks, one which is dominated by the overpowered items from the singleplayer mode, or ruin the single player mode by balancing everything to be on level with the multiplayer.
I think the contradiction everyone but you manages to see Sirlin is.
*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.*
Followed by these.
*But there is a limit. 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."*
If you're not using every possible advantage, you're not playing to win, but stay away from "You Win" buttons because they're cheap. That's what every one of us who debated Akuma saw, why can't you see it and concede the point, what's the point? The point is that you're not so different to those of us who don't lever every possible advantage in any given situation, we compromise and you mock us for "not knowing any better", but you're doing the same with Akuma, to compromise is to lose Sirlin, to be held back by "honour" and "fairness" is not playing to win.
Theadnaught: nope, you have it wrong again, even though this has been explained a million times. First, your premise statement is wrong that "everyone sees a contradiction but me." Actually, only people way out in left field who have no idea what's going in the first place see a contradiction. This is a dead-simple issue with no controversy at all amongst actual competitive players. How many SF players think ST Akuma shouldn't be banned? Answer: none. Only confused forum goers. Most aren't even actually confused, they are just wanting to argue for the sake of it, as no reasonable person could want Akuma unbanned.
You also still don't understand the actual core issue. You really, really should by now, so I don't know why you're still posting incoherent stuff here. Banning Akuma is about what a TOURNAMENT'S rules should be, not what a player should do. If Akuma was allowed in tournaments, you should play him and win. But he isn't allowed in tournaments, so playing him is anti-playing to win. A completely separate issue from playing to win is "what should tournament rules be" and it's very obvious that from that standpoint, Akuma should be banned. If you don't understand that yet, maybe we can't help you. It's clear to all involved in playing the games.
Hooray finally that's so much better. Thankyou for admitting this to us, it all comes down to tournament rules, which are outside of ingame limitations, yet affect how someone is allowed to play in that given situation. A home made version of the game if you would consider such a thing possible.
But one thing you haven't given me, another Akuma. It dosn't have to be a Death Star vs a Pacifist Planet everyone claim's Akuma to be, something on the level of Death Star vs X-Wings however and there you have the right idea. Oh and no the X-Wings don't automatically beat the Death Star, if I remember correctly (and being a Star Wars fan I know I do) the Rebels had a few advantages beyond their X-Wings and expert pilots alone.
"Admitted"? I just said the same thing for the millionth time. It's tiresome you are still posting about such obvious things such as why Akuma should be banned. "Playing to win" menas playing the tournament rules for a game that include things like "don't kick the guy in the shins" and "don't pick Akuma." You can have homemade rules that allow kicking people in shins and allow Akuma, but you're playing a game no one else is playing, and that's not exactly a playing-to-win thing to do. So yes OF COURSE playing to win involves respecting tournament rules for shin kicking and Akuma picking.
My Christmas wish is for no further posts from you, thanks.
Another Akuma Sirlin, ANOTHER AKUMA. Give me something in a non fighting game that's banned.
There are several choices I can make when I play games against other people which are all to make sure, there's no way I could possibly lose right from the start. By improving my own chances and sabotaging every chance I think they'll ever have I dominate the game, whenever I play with the goal of winning, tournament rules don't matter to me, my own strategy is the only thing that's important, I refine it and try to get around it's weaknesses however I can, but my only goal is to win at all costs. Of course that's when I'm feeling competetive, I take my early advantage, force an increase and watch my opponent make a futile attempt to claw their way across the void between our scores.
Now you remember when I asked you for something in a non fighting game that warrents a ban? Of course not you're too busy trying to argue the point that anyone who disagrees with you at any point is a mere scrub and all scrubs are stupid.
Okay, let's pretend...
..Not all games..
..Are Fighty games..
..And you've played..
..At least one..
..Now please name..
..Something that should..
..Be banned, Sirlin.
DON'T USE AKUMA
Give me an example I may have used some time in my life, like say in an FPS or RTS and maybe it'll stop looking like such a contradiction through my eyes, but in talking down to me and trying to convince me I'm an idiot. You're provoking me, Christmas gift Sirlin, you give me an alternate example, if I understand I'll respond saying so and never bother you again, if I don't I'll respond saying so and never bother you again. A win win situation for us all, especially me for not having to put up with the contradiction you refuse to properly explain and condecending remarks.
I already said it but I'll say it again:
ST Akuma is like Sturm (from AW2) with infinite money and the ability to buy from towns all the time.
He is like an instant hitting 1 hit kill sniper rifle with a wallhack scope (he's not quite as good as a gun that hits everything in the stage at once and instantly wins)
He's like playing an RTS with infinite resources, where your melee units move faster than other melee units, are invulnerable while attacking, and instantly kill the enemy if they hit, while your ranged units can shoot farther than other ranged units and push enemy units back when they hit.
Imagine a game, except in that game you have infinite resources, win instantly if you score any "damage" on your opponent, and your attacks deny the opponent the chance to ever attack. That's ST Akuma.
Might I suggest that the occasional (but inevitable) troll who tries to wax lyrical about Akuma be relegated to the forums? It really adds nothing to the regular reader of this website, to read another obtuse idiot's sermon, then to have David repeat the same retort again... and again....
Some don't want to understand, they just want the spotlight.
So in an HDR tournament, Akuma wouldn't be banned, because he's been rebalanced along with all the other characters, correct? When fighting against him on PSN, he certainly no longer feels broken.
HD Remix Akuma is banned in all tournaments as well. He's worse than ST Akuma, but he still turned out too good. It's a better game without him, as he stands. (This would be easy to fix with a balance patch, but tough luck on that.)
I think Sirlin's point was entirely missed by people stressing his mention of Akuma. I'm a medic Army National Guard, and in my training I was told that all of my patients would fall into 1 of 3 categories: The kind that will die no matter what I do, the kind that will live no matter what I do, and the kind where my interventions will make the difference between life and death. At the time, I will never know which kind of patient I have. In most cases, I will never find out.
Analogously, in gaming there are elements that are fine, elements that are broken and need to be fixed, and elements that seem broken but really aren't. At the time you will never know. In most cases you will never find out. I believe Sirlin is saying that when playing a game, it is pointless to consider something broken. You might be able to convince your friends not to use the questionable element, but the fact is that if it remains in the game, sooner or later as a competitor you will have to deal with it. You should never assume something will be removed/banned as broken until it actually is removed/banned. Back to my medical analogy, that would be like me letting someone die because an injury appears unsurvivable (omitting triage situations). Akuma was his example of something that was determined to be broken and banned/removed, while he used Marvel vs Capcom 2 as an example of something that seems broken, but was not determined to be broken.
"Another Akuma Sirlin, ANOTHER AKUMA. Give me something in a non fighting game that's banned." - Threadnaught
Magic the gathering has a list of examples that should appear at this link:
www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=judge/resources/banned
I've never played street fighter, but if Akuma is as they describe, most other games by design would not have such a thing. I say again, most other games by design would not have such a thing. Akuma goes beyond simply having a more powerful version of what is already there. He does things that no one else can and defy the design of the game.
Let's say Akuma appeared in the following games:
COD Modern Warfare game: He would have an M4 shoots through all surfaces for full damage, grants xray vision of the entire level while highlighting the enemies, and makes him immune to enemy kill-streak rewards.
Starcraft 2: Akuma's base would have an ability costing 30 energy that reduced the hp of all enemy units not within a proximity of it's controllers nexus to have 1 hp only, granting Akuma map control the entire game, no matter what.
Mariokart: Every time he got an item, it would be lightning unless he was in first place, then it's the star every time to save him from leader shells. He would have no collision detection with anything on the track, only the walls on the edge.
I've never played tournament level ST, but I've played other games at tournament level. Anyone stupid enough to disagree with Sirlin should honestly just stop writing on the internet and think about why they are cowards resorting to trolling when it's obvious they have lost the argument.
I can imagine what goes on in their minds:
Unconscious mind: "Oh shit, this guy is smarter than me"
Conscious mind: "Wa... LALALALALALA!"
Unconscious mind: "Oh well, if I go anal mode and keep on talking I can at least pretend to myself I'm right and he's wrong"
His first 50 examples didn't make you understand shit, and another 100 won't make a difference. When you're a scrub you try ignoring the results as much as possible, as previously stated. Although it won't help, here's another example:
You don't bring a shotgun to a swordfight just because you can and because the shotgun exists. Don't tell me it's the same thing, because both things would be cheating. It's called cheating/cheat-codes for a reason, because it's not meant to be part of the game. If you can't see the difference between something that can be countered 40% of the time and something that has a 0.1% chance of being countered I'm amazed you even managed to tell the difference between the computer and the dish-washer. I'm guessing you're one of those people who never completed a single game in your entire lives without using a large amount of cheats, claiming it's more fun that way.
Awesome article, Sirlin. It has really helped me understand the mentality behind competitive play in MvC 2. Time to quit being a scrub!
My only problem with fighting games is that you cant really play with the character you like. usually because the over powered character is that much better (Ninja Storm 2 for example). As soon as the other player has picked their overpowered character it either forces you to choose one to counter it or choose the one youd like to fight as, but most likely face a hard pounding against rediculious dodges, blocking, and easy to pull off super moves. It kinda makes choosing a character you`d like to play as impossible. I have characters who i`m really good with, and not so good with. But i end up hitting a brick wall trying to counter the other players tactics as the stand blocking forever leaving the match dull. or they never stop running. and if i run from them, or attack them either seems to be a disadvantage.
Perhaps I should hold till I read all the parts to this article, but I feel I must voice an opinion. The only thing I find fault with in this is the biased belief that "playing to win" is the superior philosophy. This isn't just about video gaming because we seen it in many other competitive sports. The ambition to "be the best" becomes so obsessive to competitive people that it becomes harmful. They become slaves to their ambition, sacrificing other aspects of their lives in it's pursuit. I have been that person. I have come to understand there is a vast difference between "playing" and fighting.
Playing by definition is a form of entertainment or exercise. It should be a healthy past time either physically or mentally, and hopefully socially. When playing it's important to realize that the competition isn't your enemy. It's a challenge to help you improve yourself through adversity. The person you're playing against could easily become a valued friend, or maybe they already are.
Fighting, combat, and war on the other hand are different. In a real fight chances are the winner survives, and the loser dies. While although there are "rules of war" it isn't a secret that you're better off being chastised and alive, than dead and buried. Such a system promotes an absolute devotion to victory because the alternative is unacceptable. In short, there is nothing "sporting" about war. Using this "go to war" mentality in a sporting or gaming situation is a clue to a possible unhealthy obsession with winning.