A Battle Lost Before It Has Begun

Still plugging away at the Guild Wars 2, so if you are on the fence or looking for something fun to play on your PC, pick up the game and play with me! I started playing with a few friends this fall, all of whom now appear to have dropped the game entirely, so for the past couple of months, as I have been logging in to complete my daily quests and get some alt-characters up to level 80, it's just been me running about by myself.

This past week I also tried out the free PvP tournaments for the first time. These are 5v5 matches where you can either form a team in advance or solo queue and be thrown into a PUG (pick-up-group) and then you compete in either 1 or Best-of-3 rounds for big cash and prizes (note: the big cash and prizes are a lie). This mode taught me a few things: First, I am apparently a total scrub at PvP. Like many players, I can often score top of the charts in the hot join, regular PvP matches (talking about SPvP here, in case this was not clear). But the tournament matches are another beast entirely. I am blown up easily, frequently, and often with little clue as to how. I get stunned, rooted, and downed in a brilliant shower of particle effects from who-knows-where.  My PvP level is only 12, and from what I've seen, I am often up against level 50+ players or teams, so I do expect to improve over time, but still. Not so fun to be shouting "WTF!?" at my screen.

Second--and really the point I want to write about--is that I notice that after the match starts, I am restricted from changing out my weapon sets (and maybe my slot skills too, I will have to check this). For those who may not know, in Guild Wars 2, half of your character abilities are tied to the equipped weapons. In regular, non-tournament PvP, these can be changed anytime you are not in combat, so that you can dynamically adjust your skills, either in response to what other players are doing or for any other reason.

Removing this functionality from the high-level PvP play is, I think, a mistake, for very similar reasons as I've written about before. I don't want to rehearse that entire argument again here, but locking players into pre-game decisions or strategies seems like a generally bad approach to competitive game design.  To draw on the basketball analogy again, it would be like forcing a team to stick with a man-to-man defense (which they had practiced all week, say) despite an obvious advantage of switching to zone after the game is underway.

I suspect this functionality is removed to place greater emphasis on the pre-match strategy and coordination. Indeed, this was the bread-and-butter of the original Guild Wars' guild-versus-guild (GvG) system: You had 8 players on your team, none of whose skills could be swapped after the match had begun, so you needed to construct a slick team build that balanced specificity--that is, the ability to execute a particular victory strategy--with adaptability--the ability to respond to a variety of possible opponent strategies. Although I cannot speak to the ultra-competitive, top-tier GvG matches, my experience with this locked-in system was mixed: Some matches you had simply out-built your opponent and so you would steam roll them. Some matches just the reverse. But the most fun and exciting, were, of course, those games where the two teams had appropriately balanced builds and the victory was due to dynamic decisions and execution, rather than pre-game strategic decisions.

In other words, good matches were those when the pre-game strategy became largely irrelevant. And this brings me to the material point: A good game emphasizes the decisions made while playing, not the decisions made before the game begins. As a rule, it is simply less fun to have lost a match before it has really even begun; far better to have teams start on equal footing (or close to it) and structure the game such that victory flows to the team that actually plays the game better.

Reviews, reviewers, and meta-scores

Some friends and I were recently discussing music reviews in general, and how they are all but useless.  I believe Pitchfork was mentioned by name as a place for particularly terrible and useless reviews. But the point I made then, and will make here, is that rather than focusing on the content of the review, I focus on the reviewer. If I am familiar with the reviewer's perspective, and enjoy reading their writing, then I typically enjoy the review. But that's not to say that I necessarily accept their opinion as indicative of what my own will be, but rather that I can use their opinion to help me think about how I am likely to respond.

For example, I no longer read any of the TV reviews over at the AV Club. I just never really found a reviewer whose experiences seemed to align with my own--with one exception: Nathan Rabin. In particular, his series "My World of Flops," which is somewhere between a review and a story about all sorts of different pop-culture entities (not just TV), hits all the right notes for me. If you have not already read it, I highly recommend his latest, on Paula Abdul's short lived reality show. Funny, sad, and glorious all at once.

Victor Lucas of Reviews on the Run is another example of a reviewer whose opinions I do not share, but feel as though I understand him well enough that I can adjust for what is likely to be my own opinion. Victor is a notoriously generous critic, so I do not put much stock behind his 9's or 9.5's. But the flip side is that when he says a game is awful, you can be sure that it is really awful. Or pretty much any time he gives a game less than an 8, I interpret that as a fail.

What's nice about his reviews for Reviews on the Run is that he is balanced by the curmudgeonly Scott C. Jones, who holds games to, if not a higher standard than Victor's, then certainly a stricter standard. Happily, this pairing works, by and large--with Victor's scorn and Scott's praise carrying the most weight--and when they both give high marks to a game, it typically means that we can be confident that the game is good and worth a purchase--adjusting for personal taste in game genres, of course.

An interesting consequence of shifting the focus from review to reviewer (one that hadn't actually occurred to me until just this moment) is that it undermines the supposed value of meta-critic or other kinds of review-aggregating scores. If what matters is the reviewer and whether their opinions usefully intersect with mine, then averaging their score with a bunch of other reviewers'--whose opinions do not intersect with mine or of whose tastes I have no understanding--only diminishes the value of the review.

Guild Wars 2 Expansion and Story

While I hesitate to send anyone to Forbes, some time ago Erik Kain posted some thoughts on what a Guild Wars 2 expansion should contain, almost all of which I wholeheartedly endorse. In brief, these are: (1) More weapon types; (2) playable Tengu [this one very much please!!]; (3) new ways to gain experience points and level up; (4) more movement boosts; and (5) more storylines.

In general, I would agree with his fifth recommendation--how could more story be bad?--but in this case, it hits on what is by far the worst aspect of Guild Wars 2: The story and writing.  I have now leveled three characters to 80 (the current level cap) and have not yet bothered to play through the main story missions for any of them. The only time I do play these missions is for the huge chunk of experience I get at the end and I always skip the cut-scenes. For a while, I had the vocals in French (since I am trying to learn), but even this was too painful.

The abysmal writing and scripting is particularly surprising given (a) the polish apparent in so much of the game's design, and (b) the number of promotional videos or blog posts that ArenaNet has put out hyping their story and writers. The latter was definitely a case of the lady protesting too much. When your story is actually good, it speaks for itself. But now, because of this sad campaign to try and convince us that their work is good (when it obviously isn't) I know the names "Jeff Grubb" and "Ree Soesbee," and know to avoid any of their work.

Complete Fail.

Happily, the main story is entirely avoidable (except for that nagging green star on my HUD) and the ambient dialogue and dynamic events are all pretty fun and entertaining.  The designers have definitely succeeded (I think) in creating a virtual world that is just fun to play around in.  Particularly once a zone's repetitive "quest hearts" (or whatever they are called) are either completed or eliminated (as in the higher level zones) there is a great feeling of open exploration and the power to make this game be what you want it to be.

It is sort of unclear if ArenaNet is really planning to do expansions, or just micro-transact new stuff on a rolling basis. But however they roll out new content, I definitely want to see more weapons and more skills, some playable Tengu, and also re-work the elite skills. These were the centerpiece of player builds in GW1 but are practically irrelevant in GW2. Be nice to bring these back in a meaningful way.

Leveling and Lame Ducks in Competitive Video Games

A lame duck in a competitive game is a player (or team) that cannot possibly win, but nevertheless remains in the game. Being the lame duck is usually not fun. Yet, the frequency of lame ducks and the experience of being the lame duck in a game can differ dramatically. In this piece, I will argue that the mechanic of leveling in a competitive game amplifies the negative experience of a lame duck, using League of Legends (LoL) and Team Fortress 2 (TF2) as two contrasting examples. I should begin by acknowledging that in a strict sense, there are no lame ducks in either LoL or TF2. Until the game ends, there always remains the possibility of player drops, disconnects, or some other deus ex machina. That said, anyone who has played these games will know that there are plenty of times when the chance of victory has shrunk close to zero long before the game or round is over. Your team is just feeding or fodder for the enemy, and if there no penalties for doing so, you would rather quit the game than keep playing.

Despite the fact that LoL lets you surrender anytime after 20 minutes, there are a couple of reasons that the lame duck situation is much better in TF2. When your team is far enough behind in LoL, there is almost nothing that can be done to recover---and this is by design. The “snowballing” effect of a team or player that gets ahead in gold, equipment, and experience is intended to translate directly into team superiority and eventual victory. This is great fun if you have the advantage, but not fun at all if you fall behind. Once the team is behind, even a skilled will have a difficult time contributing anything positive.

In TF2 there are a few snowballing mechanics---e.g., shorter re-spawn times, nearer spawn points, or control of key defensive points---but players or teams in the lead are no less killable then they were at the start of the game. This makes it much more likely that a trailing team can still rally and mount a comeback (or at least a counter-push). So while it is still good to have the advantage in TF2, the punishment for a trailing team is less severe. A skilled player on a losing team will still get kills, capture points, and feel that they are contributing.

TF2 is also designed to foster “last stand” scenarios, where the lame duck team has an opportunity to fortify their final control point and really make the dominant team work for their victory. Most TF2 players will have played a thrilling finish to what may have otherwise been a one-sided match: The final point is under assault, turrets are firing like crazy, sticky bombs and rockets are exploding everywhere, as you rush from the spawn to try and stand on the point before the capture bar is completed. These are some of the game's greatest moments!

This kind of furious last stand can happen in LoL, but it is rare. It is possible for one team to destroy their opponents’ nexus turrets, but nevertheless fail to take down the nexus. The other team then respawns, wins a team fight at their nexus, pushes back, kills Baron, etc. However, the plausibility of this scenario in LoL actually assumes that it was not a lame duck to begin with. Any team that can successfully repel a nexus assault must still be close in gold and experience. Indeed, the end of a long LoL game---after all the players are at max level and have purchased their final items---is no longer about leveling and snowballing. It becomes a lot more like TF2. So long as a LoL team can (with sufficient strategy and teamwork) hold their nexus and kill the enemy champions, there is still an incentive to keep playing---not simply to troll the enemy team and prolong the inevitable, but because playing and winning a team fight is one of the most fun parts about LoL.

Which brings me to the material point: Leveling in a competitive game amplifies the negative experiences of being the lame duck. Or to put it another way: When your attacks or abilities or whatever choices you might make to try and improve your position in a game lose consequence, because you are underleveled and underpowered, the fun and incentive to play is severely reduced. Eliminating the entire possibility of a lame duck scenario would require some extreme rubber-banding. Therefore, the preferable design strategy for promoting and maintaining fun player experiences in a competitive game---for the losing side as much as the winning side---is to eliminate (or at least mitigate) the effects of leveling and snowballing. This places the emphasis for a team’s superiority on their consistent skillful and coordinated play, not simply their ability to get the early lead and then roll downhill, so to speak.

I’ll close with a funny analogy: Imagine a game of basketball where every time you scored, the other team’s basket was lowered by four inches and your basket was raised by four inches (we can also stipulate a minimum height of 8’ and a maximum of 16’). As long as you trade points and the game is close, this approximates a normal game of basketball. But if the other team builds up a lead, you can no longer dunk or layup. Now your only way to score is rainbow shots of decreasing probability. You are now more likely to fall further behind. This is great fun for the winning team, who can relax and laugh as you throw up wild airballs. But this is not fun at all for the losing team, who may just as well resign.

The fundamental assumption underlying these ideas is that a competitive game should still be fun for the losing side. It should not be as much fun as it is for the winning side, but still fun enough that even when you are the lame duck (or something close to it), you would much rather finish the game than simply quit.