Sorry for not writing last night, I'll try to make it up today though.
In an unusual turn of events, I'm going to talk about related topics back-to-back. In this case, I'm going to talk about the same thing! Simple versus Complex, in living color.
Devil May Cry 4 was my favorite game of 2008 as I mentioned before. There were lots of good games that year, but DMC4 was the winner for me. The DMC series is a decent example of emergent design, especially the first game. The heroes in DMC have a wide variety of moves and attacks. Many of these moves have hidden properties or things to exploit. In DMC1 for instance, the grenade launcher was mostly cancellable into other moves. This property let it be exploited both as a devil meter building tool and a damage tool, since you could fire the grenade launcher for almost no risk. In DMC3 you could do similar things using the fast weapon switch to cancel normal attacks into other normal attacks.
DMC4 shook things up a little bit by introducing Nero. DMC3's version of Dante had numerous different moves and abilities and was a little bit daunting to play. Nero was a big break from this. He has far fewer moves than DMC3's Dante and the moves he does have are for the most part easier to execute. He has small amounts of complexity, but most of the complexity in Nero's game comes from the emergent nature of his various 'special' abilities. This complexity is deeply hidden in Nero's design - a novice player can feel very strong without ever needing to explore this complexity, while an advanced player will quickly find it and have new things to learn.
Nero's core design is pretty simple. He has sword moves, a grab attack, and jumping moves. He also has a gun that can be charged up for bonus effects. His sword moves are the most complex thing about him - he has like several dozen different sword attacks, but you only need about ten or so to play him and have fun. The basic sword moves are very easy to do and intuitive (towards and sword, away and sword, jumping towards and sword...) which makes it much easier to learn those moves. There are only 3 grab moves (lock on and grab, no lock and grab, hold grab) but the no lock grab is very visually impressive and has a unique animation depending on which enemy you grab. It's the one novice players use most often anyway. The lock on grab is really nice too because it lets Nero get close to his enemy with less trouble, which means more time in the action (and even if a novice never really learns to use it well, there are other moves to get close too).
The main character of the previous games, Dante, is also playable. He is not a simple character at all. He feels very weak and shallow until you are adept at using the many different style moves he has. Novice players will tend to stick with one style, but you are hugely penalized for doing this. The game expects Dante to switch between his styles frequently to adapt to different scenarios, because his powers are not as versatile as Nero's charged shot/sword and Nero's grabs. This means Dante must switch between styles to deal damage and styles to defend. This type of gameplay is really unituitive to a novice. Even though Dante has some very overpowered things that he can do with rapid stance changing, these things are not simple and novice players will never really use them.
What is the point of this example? Well, game critics said DMC4 was a great game overall. They were skeptical about Nero at first, but he turned out to be more fun than Dante. These feelings were pretty much universal in the gaming media. Game Informer said something reminiscent of "Dante feels outdated" (not an exact quote) and that Nero felt a lot stronger. When I first read these things, I thought the GI reviewers were retarded. I don't actually think Dante is less powerful than Nero - he has a glitchy power attack that does even more damage than Nero's grabs, and he is extremely mobile and often invulnerable during his moves. But game reviewers were right - in the hands of beginners, Nero is definitely stronger and easier to use. Furthermore, Nero is fairly deep at the pro level, but all of his complexity is hidden and unneeded to actually play him as a beginner. Dante, on the other hand, has all of his complexity up front where you have to use it in order to play at all.
Before I go, I'll put a few things out there: The top fighting game in terms of tournament attendance was, for a long time, Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Every time I see a Brawl tournament it has over 100 people attending. The second most popular tournaments I see are Soul Calibur tournaments with full 64-man brackets. Street Fighter 4 (touted as being more simple than 3s or CvS2) gets similar numbers to SC. Guilty Gear (one of the hardest fighting games to play) gets very small numbers, typically a dozen or so.
SC and Brawl especially are super simple to learn the basics for. When I ask noobs what their favorite fighting game is, it's almost always one of those two games. Gameplay depth or balance aside, the simpler games are more popular and easier for people to get into.
I think complex fighting games are a dying breed. SF4 is pretty complex, but I think it sold mostly on brand recognition.
Simple is better! Really!
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Simple sugars and complex carbohydrates
I AM BACK and I have internet now. So mostly daily updates again! Most likely, I won't be updating on Sundays, but I should be writing something pretty much every other day!
I've been reading many things on GMing, but nothing to do a good article on yet. So stay tuned for that.
I also have some things to say about interacting with people but I have been way too preachy lately. I feel like if I preach too much, I'll sound like a religious zealot or something. Maybe I already do?
So, today I'm going to talk about simple things. Simple things are good. Complexity is not so good.
Did I just say that?
Complexity is not actually a good thing. Let's say we have a MMORPG system where it is a pretty big opportunity cost to change your build. Let's further say that this system is highly complex and has many different possible choices for your build. A good number to suggest is thousands. I realize that many complex games these days have millions of possible builds, so thousands is actually sort of less complex.
In any game where there are numerous different build options, there are bound to be several best options, and that number is often a tiny fraction of the thousands or millions of possible options. If you chose a poor option, either because you were trying something you thought might be good or because you just liked the cosmetics of the option you chose, you may be stuck with that option or at least be forced to spend in-game money or resources to change it. This is a frustrating and bad outcome.
As an example of an 'almost balanced' complex system, let's look at the fighting game Arcana Heart. The original Arcana Heart has 11 different playable characters, and 11 different magic types. Each character can use all 11 magic types, but you can only pick one magic when you go into a battle. This gives us 121 different options, which is a lot. It is not thousands, but it is a lot - enough that our brains cannot quantify easily all 121 choices.
Some characters are strictly better with certain magics. The plant magic, for instance, only works with a certain few characters because it gives them some interesting mixups. Other characters can't really use the plant magic very well. Some characters benefit a lot from the wind magic for escape. Some characters get some crazy combos with time or fire magic. If you pick a sub-optimal choice of magic for your character, you will be at a fairly significant disadvantage. The characters themselves are reasonably balanced with each other, and the magics are for the most part very balanced. But because each character and magic interact differently, some choices are intrinsically bad.
Because there are only 121 choices, probably around half the choices are at least somewhat viable but even a 50% batting average is kind of bad. Considering there are probably only 2-3 good magics per character gives us around 30 or less high level options in a game with 121. What if Arcana Heart was an MMO, and you were locked into your choice of character and Arcana at the start of the game? People that chose Kamui/Dieu Mort would be out of luck.
Notably, City of Heroes uses a game system similar to this. There is no 'fix' for bad powerset selections, except to make a new character. Most other MMORPGs use some form of respecialization - you can't pick a new class, but the classes are more or less balanced around the 'top' builds, and that is a lot easier to balance than trying to balance every possible build selection.
So the reason why complexity by itself is bad is because it leads to bad choices. In a game like Street Fighter for instance, you can only choose one character from a very small list. Typically, these characters are balanced against each other for competitive play, so if you play Vega or Fuerte in SF4 (some of the worst) you have a pretty good chance if you understand your weaknesses. In a more complex game like Marvel vs. Capcom 2, picking a bad team is pretty much giving the match away (unless your opponent does too), even if you are significantly more skilled than your opponent.
The other reason why complexity is a bad thing is because complex systems are harder to learn. This can be a good thing, because learning is fun. However, if learning is too hard, we give up. Take WoW for instance - it has a very complex talent tree system and a very large list of equipment to wear. However, we don't really need to learn all of that right away, and by the time we realize our talent build sucks, we probably have enough gold to fix it a few times. Also, if our build sucks, the base class is still fairly good all on its own.
By comparison, take a look at Arcana Heart again. AH is a complex game all on its own. When we have to select a character and magic though, we probably have no idea what we're doing at first. Even worse is that it takes typically a lot of playing the game before we even understand what things like the plant or poison arcana are even good for. My circle of friends would not have even thought the dark arcana (probably the most flexible in the game) was good unless I had shown them how to use it properly.
So when we suggest that complexity is good, what do we actually mean?
Obviously complexity is not entirely bad. I really like complex systems (I play Guild Wars, lol) and think that dissecting complex systems is fun. What we're really looking for in complex systems is 'depth.'
Depth is a property of games that occurs when there are a large variety of interesting things to do in that game. If the game uses its system to create interesting and meaningful challenges for us to overcome, we tend to enjoy these challenges more than things that are 'just hard.'
A good example of depth is StarCraft, although I bet you guys never saw that coming. SC has only three races and a few core mechanics, but those mechanics interact deeply with each other in the form of numerous units and buildings that were meticulously balanced over a number of years. Even though SC has a lot of bugs/undocumented features in it, these bugs actually enhance gameplay at the high level and have been left in. SC has so many different types of interaction that it is pretty much impossible to memorize them all. Players such as Boxer, who are not as technically skilled as some of the younger prodigies today, still perform amazingly well because they are flexible and adaptive to many unusual interactions that occur in the match.
SC is a good example of how to use complexity to achieve depth. SC is very complex. It has a number of core mechanics, but these mechanics are put to use in dozens of different units. Each unit has a different purpose, and there is a lot of strangeness into how they interact. This strangeness is good and leads to many deep and interesting strategies.
A good game that is not very complex, but is pretty deep is checkers. Checkers has been solved by computers, but playing a game of checkers against a human usually leads to a lot of interesting plays with both players thinking very long on which move to make. Checkers only has a very small number of moves with only 2 different types of piece. However, it is very deep.
The reason for this depth is because of 'emergent gameplay' or the idea that certain mechanics working together cause an end result that is "greater than the sum of its parts."
However, I do not have a lot of time to write about this concept, so you are left with why we should not make things we do or say overly complex.
Until next time!
I've been reading many things on GMing, but nothing to do a good article on yet. So stay tuned for that.
I also have some things to say about interacting with people but I have been way too preachy lately. I feel like if I preach too much, I'll sound like a religious zealot or something. Maybe I already do?
So, today I'm going to talk about simple things. Simple things are good. Complexity is not so good.
Did I just say that?
Complexity is not actually a good thing. Let's say we have a MMORPG system where it is a pretty big opportunity cost to change your build. Let's further say that this system is highly complex and has many different possible choices for your build. A good number to suggest is thousands. I realize that many complex games these days have millions of possible builds, so thousands is actually sort of less complex.
In any game where there are numerous different build options, there are bound to be several best options, and that number is often a tiny fraction of the thousands or millions of possible options. If you chose a poor option, either because you were trying something you thought might be good or because you just liked the cosmetics of the option you chose, you may be stuck with that option or at least be forced to spend in-game money or resources to change it. This is a frustrating and bad outcome.
As an example of an 'almost balanced' complex system, let's look at the fighting game Arcana Heart. The original Arcana Heart has 11 different playable characters, and 11 different magic types. Each character can use all 11 magic types, but you can only pick one magic when you go into a battle. This gives us 121 different options, which is a lot. It is not thousands, but it is a lot - enough that our brains cannot quantify easily all 121 choices.
Some characters are strictly better with certain magics. The plant magic, for instance, only works with a certain few characters because it gives them some interesting mixups. Other characters can't really use the plant magic very well. Some characters benefit a lot from the wind magic for escape. Some characters get some crazy combos with time or fire magic. If you pick a sub-optimal choice of magic for your character, you will be at a fairly significant disadvantage. The characters themselves are reasonably balanced with each other, and the magics are for the most part very balanced. But because each character and magic interact differently, some choices are intrinsically bad.
Because there are only 121 choices, probably around half the choices are at least somewhat viable but even a 50% batting average is kind of bad. Considering there are probably only 2-3 good magics per character gives us around 30 or less high level options in a game with 121. What if Arcana Heart was an MMO, and you were locked into your choice of character and Arcana at the start of the game? People that chose Kamui/Dieu Mort would be out of luck.
Notably, City of Heroes uses a game system similar to this. There is no 'fix' for bad powerset selections, except to make a new character. Most other MMORPGs use some form of respecialization - you can't pick a new class, but the classes are more or less balanced around the 'top' builds, and that is a lot easier to balance than trying to balance every possible build selection.
So the reason why complexity by itself is bad is because it leads to bad choices. In a game like Street Fighter for instance, you can only choose one character from a very small list. Typically, these characters are balanced against each other for competitive play, so if you play Vega or Fuerte in SF4 (some of the worst) you have a pretty good chance if you understand your weaknesses. In a more complex game like Marvel vs. Capcom 2, picking a bad team is pretty much giving the match away (unless your opponent does too), even if you are significantly more skilled than your opponent.
The other reason why complexity is a bad thing is because complex systems are harder to learn. This can be a good thing, because learning is fun. However, if learning is too hard, we give up. Take WoW for instance - it has a very complex talent tree system and a very large list of equipment to wear. However, we don't really need to learn all of that right away, and by the time we realize our talent build sucks, we probably have enough gold to fix it a few times. Also, if our build sucks, the base class is still fairly good all on its own.
By comparison, take a look at Arcana Heart again. AH is a complex game all on its own. When we have to select a character and magic though, we probably have no idea what we're doing at first. Even worse is that it takes typically a lot of playing the game before we even understand what things like the plant or poison arcana are even good for. My circle of friends would not have even thought the dark arcana (probably the most flexible in the game) was good unless I had shown them how to use it properly.
So when we suggest that complexity is good, what do we actually mean?
Obviously complexity is not entirely bad. I really like complex systems (I play Guild Wars, lol) and think that dissecting complex systems is fun. What we're really looking for in complex systems is 'depth.'
Depth is a property of games that occurs when there are a large variety of interesting things to do in that game. If the game uses its system to create interesting and meaningful challenges for us to overcome, we tend to enjoy these challenges more than things that are 'just hard.'
A good example of depth is StarCraft, although I bet you guys never saw that coming. SC has only three races and a few core mechanics, but those mechanics interact deeply with each other in the form of numerous units and buildings that were meticulously balanced over a number of years. Even though SC has a lot of bugs/undocumented features in it, these bugs actually enhance gameplay at the high level and have been left in. SC has so many different types of interaction that it is pretty much impossible to memorize them all. Players such as Boxer, who are not as technically skilled as some of the younger prodigies today, still perform amazingly well because they are flexible and adaptive to many unusual interactions that occur in the match.
SC is a good example of how to use complexity to achieve depth. SC is very complex. It has a number of core mechanics, but these mechanics are put to use in dozens of different units. Each unit has a different purpose, and there is a lot of strangeness into how they interact. This strangeness is good and leads to many deep and interesting strategies.
A good game that is not very complex, but is pretty deep is checkers. Checkers has been solved by computers, but playing a game of checkers against a human usually leads to a lot of interesting plays with both players thinking very long on which move to make. Checkers only has a very small number of moves with only 2 different types of piece. However, it is very deep.
The reason for this depth is because of 'emergent gameplay' or the idea that certain mechanics working together cause an end result that is "greater than the sum of its parts."
However, I do not have a lot of time to write about this concept, so you are left with why we should not make things we do or say overly complex.
Until next time!
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Timing and Singing the Blues
Back from Sakura-con, I'm ready to write some more. I still don't have net at my house, though, so I am stealing my parents' internet.
I actually don't really have something I want to talk about right now, but interestingly enough I have a continuation of a topic about competition I'd like to revisit.
Before, we talked about space control. Controlling space is sort of the basics of any game and without threatening the enemy, we can't win the game. But tempo is almost as important, because controlling time keeps our enemy from fighting back, and knowing the times when he can counter and when he can not.
Some games are more about time than others. StarCraft is sort of limited in tempo because a player can do many many things simultaneously. There is still the issue of controlling the flow of the match, but it is usually through resource control or space control, which are still very cool things. Chess is a game largely about space control too, but tempo can be very important since sometimes you are threatened so much that you can't really attack without hurting yourself, and that lets your opponent attack more.
The games that are most about tempo are games where making one action precludes you from doing another, and actions take varying lengths of time. Even more about tempo is games with knockdowns or other ways to put your opponent at lots of time disadvantage. And lastly, mobility hurts tempo somewhat - the more a game allows you to escape and reset a situation, the worse controlling time is.
Remember when I talked about doing nothing? That is a lot of the basis of tempo. As soon as you make a choice to do something, you put yourself at some form of time disadvantage. If you attack, you must wait for that attack to end before you can defend yourself. If you choose to move around with some kind of dash or jump, you are committed to doing that jump or dash until it ends. Not all games have that kind of movement, but most have the concept of "I attack, then you can punish me for attacking."
If you attack, then you have to get something for it, or you must lose nothing or very little. I think I talked about that in my nothing article. However, I'm specifically referring to making a real attack, and not a 'nothing' attack that isn't really meant to attack. When you go to attack, you have to put your opponent in danger. If you hit the enemy, then they lose health or some other resource. But the other thing they often lose is time, too!
When you get hit by an attack, you can't do anything for a while. If the enemy's attack ends before your hit stun ends, they can use that time to attack again. If you attack, they will probably beat your attack, unless your attack is invulnerable. In many cases you'll just want to defend in order to wait until they leave themselves open...
If your attack hits or gets blocked, there may be another situation though. If the opponent recovers from getting hit or blocking before you do, they can attack and you are now in the dangerous spot!
In a first-person shooter or similar game, losing a team member is often a form of tempo loss (in CS or other elimination games it's a resource loss, but in respawn games it's time). While that person is waiting to respawn and get into position, your team is weaker until that person can reassert their threat on the battlefield. In games like Gears of War, having a team member who is hurt and needs to be revived is a tempo loss too. If the enemy kills him, he becomes a permanent resource loss. However, in some cases it may be even worse to lose more tempo by reviving your friend who is bleeding out, instead of completing an objective.
I spent a lot of time defining tempo (and time advantage, same thing), but how do we use it?
If we are at time disadvantage, we must know this. If our opponent knows we are at time advantage it is better for him to play safely/defensively (do nothing?!) until they regain the tempo. It might also mean that they do riskier things, like do dragon punches or super moves that are invincible (or parries, etc.)
This means that we have a good idea of what they might do. If we think they will do a dragon punch or other invincible move, we should do nothing and punish them for it. If we think they will do nothing, we should attack and press the advantage in whatever way we can, perhaps by throwing, or by taking objectives that they can't defend with fewer people.
This is of course another reason why you should have as much knowlege about your game as you can, so that you know when you are at advantage.
Protip: if a grenade is at your feet and you have to jump away, you're probably at time disadvantage
I actually don't really have something I want to talk about right now, but interestingly enough I have a continuation of a topic about competition I'd like to revisit.
Before, we talked about space control. Controlling space is sort of the basics of any game and without threatening the enemy, we can't win the game. But tempo is almost as important, because controlling time keeps our enemy from fighting back, and knowing the times when he can counter and when he can not.
Some games are more about time than others. StarCraft is sort of limited in tempo because a player can do many many things simultaneously. There is still the issue of controlling the flow of the match, but it is usually through resource control or space control, which are still very cool things. Chess is a game largely about space control too, but tempo can be very important since sometimes you are threatened so much that you can't really attack without hurting yourself, and that lets your opponent attack more.
The games that are most about tempo are games where making one action precludes you from doing another, and actions take varying lengths of time. Even more about tempo is games with knockdowns or other ways to put your opponent at lots of time disadvantage. And lastly, mobility hurts tempo somewhat - the more a game allows you to escape and reset a situation, the worse controlling time is.
Remember when I talked about doing nothing? That is a lot of the basis of tempo. As soon as you make a choice to do something, you put yourself at some form of time disadvantage. If you attack, you must wait for that attack to end before you can defend yourself. If you choose to move around with some kind of dash or jump, you are committed to doing that jump or dash until it ends. Not all games have that kind of movement, but most have the concept of "I attack, then you can punish me for attacking."
If you attack, then you have to get something for it, or you must lose nothing or very little. I think I talked about that in my nothing article. However, I'm specifically referring to making a real attack, and not a 'nothing' attack that isn't really meant to attack. When you go to attack, you have to put your opponent in danger. If you hit the enemy, then they lose health or some other resource. But the other thing they often lose is time, too!
When you get hit by an attack, you can't do anything for a while. If the enemy's attack ends before your hit stun ends, they can use that time to attack again. If you attack, they will probably beat your attack, unless your attack is invulnerable. In many cases you'll just want to defend in order to wait until they leave themselves open...
If your attack hits or gets blocked, there may be another situation though. If the opponent recovers from getting hit or blocking before you do, they can attack and you are now in the dangerous spot!
In a first-person shooter or similar game, losing a team member is often a form of tempo loss (in CS or other elimination games it's a resource loss, but in respawn games it's time). While that person is waiting to respawn and get into position, your team is weaker until that person can reassert their threat on the battlefield. In games like Gears of War, having a team member who is hurt and needs to be revived is a tempo loss too. If the enemy kills him, he becomes a permanent resource loss. However, in some cases it may be even worse to lose more tempo by reviving your friend who is bleeding out, instead of completing an objective.
I spent a lot of time defining tempo (and time advantage, same thing), but how do we use it?
If we are at time disadvantage, we must know this. If our opponent knows we are at time advantage it is better for him to play safely/defensively (do nothing?!) until they regain the tempo. It might also mean that they do riskier things, like do dragon punches or super moves that are invincible (or parries, etc.)
This means that we have a good idea of what they might do. If we think they will do a dragon punch or other invincible move, we should do nothing and punish them for it. If we think they will do nothing, we should attack and press the advantage in whatever way we can, perhaps by throwing, or by taking objectives that they can't defend with fewer people.
This is of course another reason why you should have as much knowlege about your game as you can, so that you know when you are at advantage.
Protip: if a grenade is at your feet and you have to jump away, you're probably at time disadvantage
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Anime is Healthy For You
I'm at Sakura-con right now. If you are reading this, chances are that you've seen me IRL, as this is the first live day for the blog and the con is my first forms of advertisement! So welcome to everyone at the con and any friends.
Today, I'm going to talk about anime culture. I'm gonna keep things short-ish for brevity, but if you want to hear me go into more detail about it, feel free to leave comments.
Before I begin, I'd like to explain my perspective on this subject. I am not an anime nerd. I am a gamer, and I haven't watched a full anime series in probably over a year. I cannot name my favorite anime or favorite characters. I used to be somewhat an anime nerd, but we ('hardcore') gamers and anime nerds do not mesh properly. I'll explain that in a bit too. So before someone claims that I am biased, be assured that I am not.
Anime culture is one of the best/nicest cultures I have ever been exposed to. It is probably second only to gay and lesbian communities (or rather LGBT communities) and accordingly there is a fair bit of overlap. The anime societies of America (and probably elsewhere in the world) are very accepting and open to all types of people.
This openness extends to myself, as I am not very much of an anime fan and I feel somewhat distant when I talk with them. However, they are very nice to me, and I can almost always talk to anime fans and get points across without a ton of inflammatory disagreement. This is simply not the case with other gamers. Gamers are so elitist that we will even exclude people interested in the same game as us, on the merit that people don't like the way we play.
Anime fans however are amazingly accepting of everything. I could believe extremely contrary things to another anime fan's beliefs, and they would accept my beliefs as another, alternate truth that they personally do not hold.
This is sort of Buddhist in its approach, in that two beliefs can be exclusive and yet not conflict with each other, and we can talk to them without strife or spite. For example, Buddhists accept that Christians believe what they do, even though Christianity's core beliefs directly contradict with all other religions. I think the belief in Buddhism is that ideas or beliefs should not separate us as people. If I'm wrong on that, feel free to correct me, as I'm not a Buddhist (although most practicing Buddhists probably would not!)
While at Sakura-con, I have strived to have an accepting attitude with the people I meet, and although thus far they almost always had different beliefs (I'm a gamer, and we tend to have extreme views), we always got along. I let them know that I accepted their opinions, and they always gave me room to give mine. It has been very awesome thus far.
I have talked before about how exclusive cultures are dangerous, and anime fans are everything but. That's really encouraging.
I'm gonna take a stab at why - it's because watching anime is cooperative. Anime is something that we can all watch at and enjoy together, and talking about anime is more idea sharing and less fact checking. When we like something together, maybe we like different things, but the point is that we all have a good time.
If you compare that to a lot of other things, like competitive gaming, there are clear winners and losers. If the other guy is a real competitor, you give him respect, but it takes a lot to be viewed as a competitor. When you first show up in a scene, people don't know you and you have to sort of prove yourself. Otherwise, you're just some 'scrub' and they tend to treat you as such.
As an example, when I talk with non-gamers (well, non-hardcore gamers) when games are involved, people are generally very open and nice to me. When expert gaming friends speak with the very same people, they are generally shunned and disliked. I don't even feel like my gamer friends actually act unlikable, but they seem to radiate an aura of elitism. Maybe it's inflection or something. I don't know.
I was owning up in SF4 against some non-gamer people (I generally lose to gamers, heh!) and I was being very nice and conversational. I changed my gameplay 0%. I did not play easy on them at all. I did very 'mean' things like tick throws, baiting reversals, and generally dirty tactics that most non-gamers look down upon (please note that I think these tactics are wholesome and fair). However, I was called cheap 0 times, and had many people compliment me on my 'skilled' play (most good players would disagree). I complimented people first, though. Also, whenever someone missed an ultra or some other big opportunity, I always lamented their loss and proclaimed that the game was partially to blame.
The end result is that I felt like an anime fan to these people. It was kind of fun! I got to be a gamer and the anime fans had fun even though they were getting beat. It was interesting.
So back to what I was saying, is that we can learn a lot from anime fans. Yes, they're weird, but part of the nature of being inclusive is that you include people that are a bit strange. If, instead of being rude or looking down upon people who believe differently than us, we can treat them as peers and equals. If we do that, they are perhaps more likely to see things our way.
I think that if competitive gaming communities were truly inclusive, that we took people in and made them feel welcome, and respected them even when they were not as skilled, that competitive gaming would be mainstream. Anime is very mainstream in today's world, and I think the general acceptance, the mutual connection of anime is the reason.
If you're a gamer reading this - just imagine for a minute, if we taught that playing less than our best was disrespectful to our opponent. Imagine if, when we defeated our enemy, that we pointed them on the path up rather than smashing them down.
Some people might say that dilutes our skill, and this is perhaps true. I am not a very good player, after all. I am loathe to say this is the case, though. I think that having this attitude does nothing to your skill and perhaps even improves it, since open-mindedness lets you imagine new strategies better, maybe!
I think that my biggest regret in all this is that I did not realize these things sooner.
Today, I'm going to talk about anime culture. I'm gonna keep things short-ish for brevity, but if you want to hear me go into more detail about it, feel free to leave comments.
Before I begin, I'd like to explain my perspective on this subject. I am not an anime nerd. I am a gamer, and I haven't watched a full anime series in probably over a year. I cannot name my favorite anime or favorite characters. I used to be somewhat an anime nerd, but we ('hardcore') gamers and anime nerds do not mesh properly. I'll explain that in a bit too. So before someone claims that I am biased, be assured that I am not.
Anime culture is one of the best/nicest cultures I have ever been exposed to. It is probably second only to gay and lesbian communities (or rather LGBT communities) and accordingly there is a fair bit of overlap. The anime societies of America (and probably elsewhere in the world) are very accepting and open to all types of people.
This openness extends to myself, as I am not very much of an anime fan and I feel somewhat distant when I talk with them. However, they are very nice to me, and I can almost always talk to anime fans and get points across without a ton of inflammatory disagreement. This is simply not the case with other gamers. Gamers are so elitist that we will even exclude people interested in the same game as us, on the merit that people don't like the way we play.
Anime fans however are amazingly accepting of everything. I could believe extremely contrary things to another anime fan's beliefs, and they would accept my beliefs as another, alternate truth that they personally do not hold.
This is sort of Buddhist in its approach, in that two beliefs can be exclusive and yet not conflict with each other, and we can talk to them without strife or spite. For example, Buddhists accept that Christians believe what they do, even though Christianity's core beliefs directly contradict with all other religions. I think the belief in Buddhism is that ideas or beliefs should not separate us as people. If I'm wrong on that, feel free to correct me, as I'm not a Buddhist (although most practicing Buddhists probably would not!)
While at Sakura-con, I have strived to have an accepting attitude with the people I meet, and although thus far they almost always had different beliefs (I'm a gamer, and we tend to have extreme views), we always got along. I let them know that I accepted their opinions, and they always gave me room to give mine. It has been very awesome thus far.
I have talked before about how exclusive cultures are dangerous, and anime fans are everything but. That's really encouraging.
I'm gonna take a stab at why - it's because watching anime is cooperative. Anime is something that we can all watch at and enjoy together, and talking about anime is more idea sharing and less fact checking. When we like something together, maybe we like different things, but the point is that we all have a good time.
If you compare that to a lot of other things, like competitive gaming, there are clear winners and losers. If the other guy is a real competitor, you give him respect, but it takes a lot to be viewed as a competitor. When you first show up in a scene, people don't know you and you have to sort of prove yourself. Otherwise, you're just some 'scrub' and they tend to treat you as such.
As an example, when I talk with non-gamers (well, non-hardcore gamers) when games are involved, people are generally very open and nice to me. When expert gaming friends speak with the very same people, they are generally shunned and disliked. I don't even feel like my gamer friends actually act unlikable, but they seem to radiate an aura of elitism. Maybe it's inflection or something. I don't know.
I was owning up in SF4 against some non-gamer people (I generally lose to gamers, heh!) and I was being very nice and conversational. I changed my gameplay 0%. I did not play easy on them at all. I did very 'mean' things like tick throws, baiting reversals, and generally dirty tactics that most non-gamers look down upon (please note that I think these tactics are wholesome and fair). However, I was called cheap 0 times, and had many people compliment me on my 'skilled' play (most good players would disagree). I complimented people first, though. Also, whenever someone missed an ultra or some other big opportunity, I always lamented their loss and proclaimed that the game was partially to blame.
The end result is that I felt like an anime fan to these people. It was kind of fun! I got to be a gamer and the anime fans had fun even though they were getting beat. It was interesting.
So back to what I was saying, is that we can learn a lot from anime fans. Yes, they're weird, but part of the nature of being inclusive is that you include people that are a bit strange. If, instead of being rude or looking down upon people who believe differently than us, we can treat them as peers and equals. If we do that, they are perhaps more likely to see things our way.
I think that if competitive gaming communities were truly inclusive, that we took people in and made them feel welcome, and respected them even when they were not as skilled, that competitive gaming would be mainstream. Anime is very mainstream in today's world, and I think the general acceptance, the mutual connection of anime is the reason.
If you're a gamer reading this - just imagine for a minute, if we taught that playing less than our best was disrespectful to our opponent. Imagine if, when we defeated our enemy, that we pointed them on the path up rather than smashing them down.
Some people might say that dilutes our skill, and this is perhaps true. I am not a very good player, after all. I am loathe to say this is the case, though. I think that having this attitude does nothing to your skill and perhaps even improves it, since open-mindedness lets you imagine new strategies better, maybe!
I think that my biggest regret in all this is that I did not realize these things sooner.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
It's Not Easy Being Nerdy
Very, very late update from my last post. I recently moved into a new house (yes, a house!) so I don't have internet there yet. Most of my last two weeks has been very busy moving things, packing, unpacking, and so on.
This update is going to be about the media, and specifically about how they don't get along with us nerds. It is a rant. It will not be full of very much useful information.
It seems like every time I hear a news story about the Internet, gaming, or anything nerdy (eg. furries), it's portrayed in a distinctly negative light. It seems like anyone who surfs the internet is a hacker, software pirate, or child molester. Most older people I know who have never touched a computer claim that they're afraid that someone will hack them and steal everything they have.
As we all know already, video games teach our games to kill, and modern video games are indistinguishable from real life. It seems like every time a kid picks up a gun, a first-person shooter or Rockstar game is at fault. If video games actually teach something or promote something, it is pretty much always overlooked in favor of the violence they seem to create. I think the fiasco surrounding Mass Effect (where a person who had never played the game accused it of being sexually explicit) was particularly indicative of how the media is willing to jump at anything in order to portray games in a bad light.
Perhaps more hilarious is the whole idea that 4chan or other imageboards are 'hacker havens' or homes to child molesters. I think 4chan is bad too, but not to the same degree that the news portrays it. What is even more annoying is the misconception that there are numerous malicious hackers ready and waiting to get inside your computer and steal your personal information or destroy your computer. Most good hackers get well-paying government jobs and the bad hackers can be stopped with easy to install security software. Even then, the internet is mostly a safe place. Malicious hackers number a tiny fraction of the internet's denizens. Most non-nerds will never meet one, and many nerds won't either.
On the other hand, child predators on the internet are an issue, but the issue is not as clear-cut or easy as one might think. Not everyone talking to your kids on the internet is a child predator. If your 15 year old daughter is flirty on the internet and picks up attention from guys because of it, she is partly to blame for anything that does happen (this doesn't absolve the criminal but it does put some blame on the girl). What puts the girl more at blame is the fact that they will often arrange RL meetings and lie about their age! Is it the guy's fault that he tried to hook up with a girl on the internet? (answer: still yes, but girl is very much to blame too)
When I was going through college I had to deal with this stereotype a lot. Both left-wing and right-wing groups tend to dislike video games for some reason. Left-wing people tend to ignore that restrictions on video game publishing pretty much strictly violates the rights to free speech, which I find somewhat hypocritical. When I stood up to defend gamer rights and absolve developers of liability in a very liberal education society, it seemed like everyone would rather blame games rather than their parents. Maybe in another 20 years things will be different.
Or will it? The world looks brighter, or so a billion other blogs tell me. Barack Obama is in office, and he's the first nerd in office, ever. He told the Secret Service that they could pry his BlackBerry from his fingers, and now he's the first president to have email at his fingertips all the time. He's got a Twitter account. He reads Spider-Man. Hell, Marvel gave him a Spider-Man cover.
Hopefully the world will change its view of us a little sooner.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Morality is not subjective
This is an angry-ish rant. I am actually in a very good mood right now, but I have had this issue in my head for a little while.
It seems like, generally people think they're in the right. In this case, I don't mean correct, I mean morally right. This is really, really irritating. For some reason people bend morals to their whims. I hate it.
The first case I'm going to present is fairly obvious. I think most people who read this will be familiar with this stance. This idea is that 'anything that causes me to lose is not morally right.' This can be further justified in many different ways, but we'll just explain it as people who think that certain things, especially within the scope of a competitive event, are not morally right. This allows a person to view themselves as 'a winner' even when they fail.
I'm gonna use basketball as an example. Let's say your favorite team has a really big, powerful center who is really good at shooting in the paint. He is very strong, but he is bad at free throws. The opposing team decides to foul him anytime he gets the ball so that he goes to the free throw line, probably misses at least one shot, and they have a chance to get the ball back and score. This lets the opposing team come out in the end. This strategy is 100% legal within the rules of basketball. When I heard it happen (years and years ago) I thought it was totally awesome and cool that someone would think of this strategy. Most people thought it was unfair and that it was somehow against the rules, or that it was exploiting the rules. Actually, I should clarify - people that liked the team with the powerful center thought it was unfair. People that liked the opposing team obviously thought it was okay. I didn't like either team, but I thought it was okay too.
This attitude is not good. This attitude will cause you to treat all sorts of situations that are obviously legal as fair too. A good example might be blocking a shot or getting a rebound. You might claim that it is unfair that the enemy team has a guy so tall that he can easily get rebounds or block shots. You might claim that player salaries are unfair, and that bigger teams can spend more money on good players.
In StarCraft (did you guys expect it?) there's a pretty cool glitch where you can clip a worker unit through a mineral patch due to the way the game allows miners to walk through anything while they are pathing to a resource. It's kind of weird. This is a 100% universally accepted tactic. It is not used very much at high level play, but it comes into play every now and then and sometimes gives someone a pretty big edge. If you lost a game because of this glitch, you might think that it was unfair. But you might also lose to a dark templar rush, which sends stealth attacking units into your base which are hard to defend against. You might also call that unfair. You might call attacking workers unfair, or building a bunker right outside your base unfair. There are many reasons why you might assume the 'moral high ground' in StarCraft. In fact, I've heard people assume the moral high ground with stances like "well at least I haven't spent all my life on a video game."
This argument is wrong. Morality is not subjective. You do not get to define what is morally correct. It is not right to judge others on how they spend their time, especially if what they are doing is legal. I do not judge people by how much time they spend in front of a TV, or gambling, or doing whatever it is people do with their free time. It is also not right to randomly determine that someone is morally wrong for doing the best possible strategy. If you cannot beat that best possible strategy, then you lost. There is no moral victory to be had. If they had done something actually illegal, then they would not have beaten you.
But really, I didn't bring this up because I wanted to argue about silly playing to win things.
I brought this up because people take the moral high ground at any time. I used the gaming examples because they show just how ridiculous people can be about claiming moral high ground, even when they are in something as objective as a video game.
In a certain board I frequent, there was a poster who was quite disruptive. He posted highly inflammatory remarks that I will honestly not repeat. They were probably the most hostile, destructive insults I have ever seen, even on the internet. This person was obviously very smart. He was someone who was good enough at writing that he was able to craft very potent, eloquent insults that it was impossible to not be offended by them just by reading them.
When people brought it to his attention that he was being offensive, he took offense! He took the moral high ground, claiming that there was no rule specifically forbidding his conduct, and therefore he was completely in the right. His violations were so clear and obvious that people mentioned that it should not have to be said what he did that was wrong. He claimed that all he did was be more critical of 'stupid people' but also that when he did it, it was funnier.
How can you claim the moral high ground there? How is that even possible? When you claim that someone is good for nothing except being a receptacle for (expletive), you have crossed the line. There may not be hard and fast societal rules forbidding behavior like this, but it should be blatantly obvious that this behavior is NOT OKAY.
That's the more extreme example. On another board I visit, a poster tried to get forum members to behave in a manner that he wanted them to behave. More accurately, he expected everyone to be "in character" all the time. Obviously, this was not what most of the people he interacted with wanted, and naturally he was upset. He took the moral high ground in this argument, claiming that 'any sane person would want to separate IC and OOC' and that everyone was a jerk in the topic. I think he also mentioned that having rich character backstories was a value that everyone should have, and that people were wrong if they did not.
Forcing your beliefs on people is not morally correct. Sure, you can even play some stupid devil's advocate card here and say something like "but you're forcing your beliefs on people." These are not my beliefs. They are commonly accepted societal truths. Morality is not subjective. Treating other people's beliefs like they do not matter is absolutely worthy of condemnation.
If you want to say that I'm forcing my belief system on you, that's fine, but you're missing the point. Even beyond a set of values or beliefs, the things I am talking about are sure-fire ways to upset other people.
In the case of the competition example, if you are not prepared to face all techniques in a given competition, you should not participate. Your opponent cannot be expected to know what is 'okay' in your rule book. Your opponent only knows that he should do everything he can to win. You should know that too.
In the case of blatant insults and rude behavior, there might not be specific rules against it. However, we can easily say that "yes, those things are bad." If you make someone feel bad deliberately, you are wrong.
In the case of forcing your own beliefs on people, I think that, with a few exceptions - and those exceptions being common decency - we should not, because it is wrong. It is not wrong to say that stealing is wrong. It is wrong to say that listening to mixed tracks on a burned CD is wrong (you think I am making this up, but I swear I am not).
Angry rant mode disengaged.
Yay, tons of good stuff happened today! (technically yesterday)
It seems like, generally people think they're in the right. In this case, I don't mean correct, I mean morally right. This is really, really irritating. For some reason people bend morals to their whims. I hate it.
The first case I'm going to present is fairly obvious. I think most people who read this will be familiar with this stance. This idea is that 'anything that causes me to lose is not morally right.' This can be further justified in many different ways, but we'll just explain it as people who think that certain things, especially within the scope of a competitive event, are not morally right. This allows a person to view themselves as 'a winner' even when they fail.
I'm gonna use basketball as an example. Let's say your favorite team has a really big, powerful center who is really good at shooting in the paint. He is very strong, but he is bad at free throws. The opposing team decides to foul him anytime he gets the ball so that he goes to the free throw line, probably misses at least one shot, and they have a chance to get the ball back and score. This lets the opposing team come out in the end. This strategy is 100% legal within the rules of basketball. When I heard it happen (years and years ago) I thought it was totally awesome and cool that someone would think of this strategy. Most people thought it was unfair and that it was somehow against the rules, or that it was exploiting the rules. Actually, I should clarify - people that liked the team with the powerful center thought it was unfair. People that liked the opposing team obviously thought it was okay. I didn't like either team, but I thought it was okay too.
This attitude is not good. This attitude will cause you to treat all sorts of situations that are obviously legal as fair too. A good example might be blocking a shot or getting a rebound. You might claim that it is unfair that the enemy team has a guy so tall that he can easily get rebounds or block shots. You might claim that player salaries are unfair, and that bigger teams can spend more money on good players.
In StarCraft (did you guys expect it?) there's a pretty cool glitch where you can clip a worker unit through a mineral patch due to the way the game allows miners to walk through anything while they are pathing to a resource. It's kind of weird. This is a 100% universally accepted tactic. It is not used very much at high level play, but it comes into play every now and then and sometimes gives someone a pretty big edge. If you lost a game because of this glitch, you might think that it was unfair. But you might also lose to a dark templar rush, which sends stealth attacking units into your base which are hard to defend against. You might also call that unfair. You might call attacking workers unfair, or building a bunker right outside your base unfair. There are many reasons why you might assume the 'moral high ground' in StarCraft. In fact, I've heard people assume the moral high ground with stances like "well at least I haven't spent all my life on a video game."
This argument is wrong. Morality is not subjective. You do not get to define what is morally correct. It is not right to judge others on how they spend their time, especially if what they are doing is legal. I do not judge people by how much time they spend in front of a TV, or gambling, or doing whatever it is people do with their free time. It is also not right to randomly determine that someone is morally wrong for doing the best possible strategy. If you cannot beat that best possible strategy, then you lost. There is no moral victory to be had. If they had done something actually illegal, then they would not have beaten you.
But really, I didn't bring this up because I wanted to argue about silly playing to win things.
I brought this up because people take the moral high ground at any time. I used the gaming examples because they show just how ridiculous people can be about claiming moral high ground, even when they are in something as objective as a video game.
In a certain board I frequent, there was a poster who was quite disruptive. He posted highly inflammatory remarks that I will honestly not repeat. They were probably the most hostile, destructive insults I have ever seen, even on the internet. This person was obviously very smart. He was someone who was good enough at writing that he was able to craft very potent, eloquent insults that it was impossible to not be offended by them just by reading them.
When people brought it to his attention that he was being offensive, he took offense! He took the moral high ground, claiming that there was no rule specifically forbidding his conduct, and therefore he was completely in the right. His violations were so clear and obvious that people mentioned that it should not have to be said what he did that was wrong. He claimed that all he did was be more critical of 'stupid people' but also that when he did it, it was funnier.
How can you claim the moral high ground there? How is that even possible? When you claim that someone is good for nothing except being a receptacle for (expletive), you have crossed the line. There may not be hard and fast societal rules forbidding behavior like this, but it should be blatantly obvious that this behavior is NOT OKAY.
That's the more extreme example. On another board I visit, a poster tried to get forum members to behave in a manner that he wanted them to behave. More accurately, he expected everyone to be "in character" all the time. Obviously, this was not what most of the people he interacted with wanted, and naturally he was upset. He took the moral high ground in this argument, claiming that 'any sane person would want to separate IC and OOC' and that everyone was a jerk in the topic. I think he also mentioned that having rich character backstories was a value that everyone should have, and that people were wrong if they did not.
Forcing your beliefs on people is not morally correct. Sure, you can even play some stupid devil's advocate card here and say something like "but you're forcing your beliefs on people." These are not my beliefs. They are commonly accepted societal truths. Morality is not subjective. Treating other people's beliefs like they do not matter is absolutely worthy of condemnation.
If you want to say that I'm forcing my belief system on you, that's fine, but you're missing the point. Even beyond a set of values or beliefs, the things I am talking about are sure-fire ways to upset other people.
In the case of the competition example, if you are not prepared to face all techniques in a given competition, you should not participate. Your opponent cannot be expected to know what is 'okay' in your rule book. Your opponent only knows that he should do everything he can to win. You should know that too.
In the case of blatant insults and rude behavior, there might not be specific rules against it. However, we can easily say that "yes, those things are bad." If you make someone feel bad deliberately, you are wrong.
In the case of forcing your own beliefs on people, I think that, with a few exceptions - and those exceptions being common decency - we should not, because it is wrong. It is not wrong to say that stealing is wrong. It is wrong to say that listening to mixed tracks on a burned CD is wrong (you think I am making this up, but I swear I am not).
Angry rant mode disengaged.
Yay, tons of good stuff happened today! (technically yesterday)
Monday, March 30, 2009
Can I have a heal, please?
This article is the result of random musing at 2am. No, not all of my articles are random 2am musings, even if that's when they often get posted. This one is, though.
Healing is one of those hilarious concepts that persist between MMORPGs. The healer is sort of an icon in any MMORPG community. When a party fails for any reason, it is almost always blamed on the healer. When asked about how to fix the problem, most parties will chime in with "we just needed more healing." This contrasts with my view of most wipes, where I believe any problem can be solved with more DPS*.
*DPS = damage per second, or summarized as kill speed - If you're wondering why I'm defining this, it's because really guys, there are people who don't know what it means.
In most games, the healer is sort of the embodiment of the party. Being a 'good healer' is sort of a mark of prestige. Interestingly, most healers think they are good at it, whether they are or not. Even more interestingly, possibly due to the lack of people that like playing healers, most people think their friends who play healers are good, even if they suck.
Playing a healer is really dependent on the game, though. Some games don't have healers, like EVE (no, logistics ships don't count). Some games are really, really easy to heal in, like City of Heroes, and some games are harder to heal in, like World of Warcraft or EQ2.
I'm pretty sure any EVE-playing readers are throwing a hissy fit. There are no healers in EVE, imo, because there is minimal reaction involved in 'remote repair.' When fighting NPCs in that game, you have one guy fly in and everyone turns reps on him, and the reps do their job. There's never any 'catching spikes' or anything of that nature. Even in PVP where you have to actually pick which target to rep, ships take so long to kill in EVE that it's a matter of seeing "oh his life is sorta going down" and clicking on your reps on that person. If the opponent switches, you have plenty of time in most cases to react. Furthermore, if there is enough burst to take down one of your ships that you actually would have to react quickly, it would have taken a ton of ships all reacting to even make a difference. This is in stark contrast to World of Warcraft where a single priest can heal off the damage from multiple foes until he runs out of mana or gets pressured.
So in summary I don't think that non-reactive healing, such as slow, long-duration regenerative buffs, are actually healing. I also think that skills that don't heal at all, like Power Word: Shield (which prevents damage up to a certain amount) are more 'healing' than a regen buff that lasts for a minute and heals a few hit points each second. Sure, you're restoring lost hit points, but you're not actually actively playing - you're just clicking on your party members each once a minute. If you're really lazy you're probably only clicking on the tank.
I like healing that takes skill. If it's a function of the healer's reaction time to make sure a teammate lives or dies, that is interesting to me. It is really cool to see "spikes" that take a foe down in 2-3 seconds, and watch an adept healer deliver a fast heal or protective skill in between the spike hits just in time to save the teammate, who can be then healed up the rest of the way.
The reason why I think that is cool is because even though that sounds like I think healers should be a little overpowered, I actually don't think that at all. I definitely think that there should be strategies to defeat even expert healing. A good example might be spreading debuffs or damage among lots of teammates, so that the healer has to spend lots of attention or mana or both to heal it off. And even better is that the attackers that spread their damage can -then- choose to deliver a powerful spike, and the healer has his attention on many different things.
Other ways that are cool to mess with 'overpowered' healing is to incapacitate the healer. Control effects like fears, stuns, knockdowns, and so on can be used to ensure that your attacks hit home while the healer can't do his job. Pressuring the healer to force him to run away can also work. And of course, draining the healer's mana so that he can't heal also works.
As you can see, there are lots of cool dynamics to 'real' reactive healing. I really like holy paladins (holy specialization, I mean) in WoW for instance, because they have this really awesome gigantic heal that casts instantly but has a very long cooldown, like minutes long. Paladins can use that heal for offense too (it does damage if it targets foes, and lots of damage), so it's sort of an interesting skill to employ that ability at the right time. The paladin has to be thinking about the situation at hand, and whether he should use his big heal to smite a damaged foe who might get healed by the enemy, or save it to catch an incoming spike later on.
I'm pretty sure someone will ask, "who runs a holy paladin in PvP" but I have no idea about the WoW meta. I assume that someone will play it. It is actually pretty interesting, at least to me.
When healing is reduced to the intelligence of medics in StarCraft or priests in WarCraft 3, it isn't really healing. It's like having extra hit points without any of the thought process that goes into actually restoring them.
In short, I really like smart play in general. I like it when games reward me for playing well and punish me for sucking. If someone is more skilled than me, then they deserve to be rewarded for that. Obviously there are degrees involved, like everything else. A player who is very skilled should not be rewarded infinitely for skill - there should be a limit to how well one can heal or do anything else.
Imagine, for instance, if the only limitation was how fast you could click life bars? Certainly there would be a lot of skill because you would have to catch spikes and whatnot, but then healing would be too powerful, and beyond that, the game would be all about how good your healer is. If they can respond in 1/5th of a second, that might not be fast enough so you should time your spike to hit all in that 1/5th of a second. If they can respond in 1/8th, then you have to time your spike even faster, and so on. That's not so good because the skill barrier to be good is too high. If your response time is only 1/2 of a second you would be no good. So there needs to be a good balance between player skill, team strategy, and so on. So healer mana, cast times, skill cooldowns, and stuff like that are pretty important so that normal people have a chance to hone their skills and become good.
I think it's an interesting point of social dynamics to study the types of people that play healers. Most people that do tend to be introverted, very extroverted, or females.
The introverted people are very weird. Playing a defensive support character pretty much requires that you party, but introverted people are more likely to solo. But there is some interesting practicality in that a healer never has to look for one, and in a game where healers might be essential, playing one ensures you are always needed, and that people will come to you. This helps the introvert team, because otherwise he would probably not seek out groups much. Obviously most introverts play other things I think, but I also think there's a pretty large number of them in the healer professions.
The other main group is the extreme extroverts. When I say very extroverted, I mean more than a normal extroverted person. Most healers of this type talk all the time. A lot of them chat even while healing, which is extremely odd because one would think that chatting takes up a lot of mental energy, and thus it would be hard to concentrate on healing while doing so. However, these people somehow manage to heal very well, and often better than the 'average' healer. Most normal extroverts play a wide range of things, but extreme extroverts often play party classes because they party pretty much all the time.
As a side note, I'm an extreme extrovert, and when I type, I usually have the whole sentence chunked when I start typing it. This allows me to play a healer pretty effectively since most of my mental energy from typing is spent at the very beginning, when I am not worried about restoring lost health. From studying myself play, I clearly play better while I'm chatting. I have theories, but they are all crackpot and unscientific.
Anyway, the third group that plays healers are women. I have no idea if that sentence is grammatically correct. My grammar radar says it isn't, but I don't know how to fix it. Anyway, girls love playing healers. I know many girl gamers and almost all of them play some form of defensive support. Some people may think this is stereotyping and I am claiming that healing is the party's version of housekeeping or something. I am probably stereotyping but it what I am actually saying is hopefully not insulting to women.
Women like healing because it is the game equivalent of their internal cooperative prime directive. Women like working together to achieve some common end. They really like being a part of something important with other people. This is, from what I understand, basically hardcoded into the female psyche. Basically what I mean by this is that girls are a lot better at working together than guys are. Guys are naturally bad at cooperation. We tend to want to do things better than other people, and while healing is definitely something that takes a lot of skill, we tend to want to be better at manly things like making guys fall down or taking lots of damage. When someone tells us how we can do damage better, we tend to get pissy, even if they are right.
No, I'm really not kissing up to women, because of course there are advantages to chest-beating that they don't naturally have, but we do. It just means that we should only have one guy and a full party of girls in every party, and each team should compete against each other. Then when one team inevitably wins, the girls in the losing teams will be better at consoling the guy who had his ego hurt.
And the guys will never have to worry about not having enough healing!
*dodges thrown objects*
PS: Yes, it really takes me 3+ hours to write a post.
Healing is one of those hilarious concepts that persist between MMORPGs. The healer is sort of an icon in any MMORPG community. When a party fails for any reason, it is almost always blamed on the healer. When asked about how to fix the problem, most parties will chime in with "we just needed more healing." This contrasts with my view of most wipes, where I believe any problem can be solved with more DPS*.
*DPS = damage per second, or summarized as kill speed - If you're wondering why I'm defining this, it's because really guys, there are people who don't know what it means.
In most games, the healer is sort of the embodiment of the party. Being a 'good healer' is sort of a mark of prestige. Interestingly, most healers think they are good at it, whether they are or not. Even more interestingly, possibly due to the lack of people that like playing healers, most people think their friends who play healers are good, even if they suck.
Playing a healer is really dependent on the game, though. Some games don't have healers, like EVE (no, logistics ships don't count). Some games are really, really easy to heal in, like City of Heroes, and some games are harder to heal in, like World of Warcraft or EQ2.
I'm pretty sure any EVE-playing readers are throwing a hissy fit. There are no healers in EVE, imo, because there is minimal reaction involved in 'remote repair.' When fighting NPCs in that game, you have one guy fly in and everyone turns reps on him, and the reps do their job. There's never any 'catching spikes' or anything of that nature. Even in PVP where you have to actually pick which target to rep, ships take so long to kill in EVE that it's a matter of seeing "oh his life is sorta going down" and clicking on your reps on that person. If the opponent switches, you have plenty of time in most cases to react. Furthermore, if there is enough burst to take down one of your ships that you actually would have to react quickly, it would have taken a ton of ships all reacting to even make a difference. This is in stark contrast to World of Warcraft where a single priest can heal off the damage from multiple foes until he runs out of mana or gets pressured.
So in summary I don't think that non-reactive healing, such as slow, long-duration regenerative buffs, are actually healing. I also think that skills that don't heal at all, like Power Word: Shield (which prevents damage up to a certain amount) are more 'healing' than a regen buff that lasts for a minute and heals a few hit points each second. Sure, you're restoring lost hit points, but you're not actually actively playing - you're just clicking on your party members each once a minute. If you're really lazy you're probably only clicking on the tank.
I like healing that takes skill. If it's a function of the healer's reaction time to make sure a teammate lives or dies, that is interesting to me. It is really cool to see "spikes" that take a foe down in 2-3 seconds, and watch an adept healer deliver a fast heal or protective skill in between the spike hits just in time to save the teammate, who can be then healed up the rest of the way.
The reason why I think that is cool is because even though that sounds like I think healers should be a little overpowered, I actually don't think that at all. I definitely think that there should be strategies to defeat even expert healing. A good example might be spreading debuffs or damage among lots of teammates, so that the healer has to spend lots of attention or mana or both to heal it off. And even better is that the attackers that spread their damage can -then- choose to deliver a powerful spike, and the healer has his attention on many different things.
Other ways that are cool to mess with 'overpowered' healing is to incapacitate the healer. Control effects like fears, stuns, knockdowns, and so on can be used to ensure that your attacks hit home while the healer can't do his job. Pressuring the healer to force him to run away can also work. And of course, draining the healer's mana so that he can't heal also works.
As you can see, there are lots of cool dynamics to 'real' reactive healing. I really like holy paladins (holy specialization, I mean) in WoW for instance, because they have this really awesome gigantic heal that casts instantly but has a very long cooldown, like minutes long. Paladins can use that heal for offense too (it does damage if it targets foes, and lots of damage), so it's sort of an interesting skill to employ that ability at the right time. The paladin has to be thinking about the situation at hand, and whether he should use his big heal to smite a damaged foe who might get healed by the enemy, or save it to catch an incoming spike later on.
I'm pretty sure someone will ask, "who runs a holy paladin in PvP" but I have no idea about the WoW meta. I assume that someone will play it. It is actually pretty interesting, at least to me.
When healing is reduced to the intelligence of medics in StarCraft or priests in WarCraft 3, it isn't really healing. It's like having extra hit points without any of the thought process that goes into actually restoring them.
In short, I really like smart play in general. I like it when games reward me for playing well and punish me for sucking. If someone is more skilled than me, then they deserve to be rewarded for that. Obviously there are degrees involved, like everything else. A player who is very skilled should not be rewarded infinitely for skill - there should be a limit to how well one can heal or do anything else.
Imagine, for instance, if the only limitation was how fast you could click life bars? Certainly there would be a lot of skill because you would have to catch spikes and whatnot, but then healing would be too powerful, and beyond that, the game would be all about how good your healer is. If they can respond in 1/5th of a second, that might not be fast enough so you should time your spike to hit all in that 1/5th of a second. If they can respond in 1/8th, then you have to time your spike even faster, and so on. That's not so good because the skill barrier to be good is too high. If your response time is only 1/2 of a second you would be no good. So there needs to be a good balance between player skill, team strategy, and so on. So healer mana, cast times, skill cooldowns, and stuff like that are pretty important so that normal people have a chance to hone their skills and become good.
I think it's an interesting point of social dynamics to study the types of people that play healers. Most people that do tend to be introverted, very extroverted, or females.
The introverted people are very weird. Playing a defensive support character pretty much requires that you party, but introverted people are more likely to solo. But there is some interesting practicality in that a healer never has to look for one, and in a game where healers might be essential, playing one ensures you are always needed, and that people will come to you. This helps the introvert team, because otherwise he would probably not seek out groups much. Obviously most introverts play other things I think, but I also think there's a pretty large number of them in the healer professions.
The other main group is the extreme extroverts. When I say very extroverted, I mean more than a normal extroverted person. Most healers of this type talk all the time. A lot of them chat even while healing, which is extremely odd because one would think that chatting takes up a lot of mental energy, and thus it would be hard to concentrate on healing while doing so. However, these people somehow manage to heal very well, and often better than the 'average' healer. Most normal extroverts play a wide range of things, but extreme extroverts often play party classes because they party pretty much all the time.
As a side note, I'm an extreme extrovert, and when I type, I usually have the whole sentence chunked when I start typing it. This allows me to play a healer pretty effectively since most of my mental energy from typing is spent at the very beginning, when I am not worried about restoring lost health. From studying myself play, I clearly play better while I'm chatting. I have theories, but they are all crackpot and unscientific.
Anyway, the third group that plays healers are women. I have no idea if that sentence is grammatically correct. My grammar radar says it isn't, but I don't know how to fix it. Anyway, girls love playing healers. I know many girl gamers and almost all of them play some form of defensive support. Some people may think this is stereotyping and I am claiming that healing is the party's version of housekeeping or something. I am probably stereotyping but it what I am actually saying is hopefully not insulting to women.
Women like healing because it is the game equivalent of their internal cooperative prime directive. Women like working together to achieve some common end. They really like being a part of something important with other people. This is, from what I understand, basically hardcoded into the female psyche. Basically what I mean by this is that girls are a lot better at working together than guys are. Guys are naturally bad at cooperation. We tend to want to do things better than other people, and while healing is definitely something that takes a lot of skill, we tend to want to be better at manly things like making guys fall down or taking lots of damage. When someone tells us how we can do damage better, we tend to get pissy, even if they are right.
No, I'm really not kissing up to women, because of course there are advantages to chest-beating that they don't naturally have, but we do. It just means that we should only have one guy and a full party of girls in every party, and each team should compete against each other. Then when one team inevitably wins, the girls in the losing teams will be better at consoling the guy who had his ego hurt.
And the guys will never have to worry about not having enough healing!
*dodges thrown objects*
PS: Yes, it really takes me 3+ hours to write a post.
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