Does Online Multiplayer Always Make Sense?
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
I'm confused as to why you don't think fighting games are strategic. I've read;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy
And as far as I can see, the uncertainty element is covered in that.
"The task of strategy is an efficient use of the available resources for the achievement of the main goal."
A fighting game player uses their resources to achieve the goal of knocking an opponent out. In SFIV, this is health bar, super bar and ultra bar, and obviously there are different resources in different games (X-Factor in UMvC3, KOF XIII has a guard bar, hyperdrive bar and power bar, etc.).
But there are other strategic elements in these games, such as spacing. It is usually advantageous to put your opponent in the corner, so the proximity of both characters to either side of the screen, and whether that's the very edge of the stage is very important. This goes back to resource spending. Sometimes you will spend super bar and/or some of your health bar, to put your opponent in the corner at the expense of immediate damage. Once you have them in the corner, you have the strategic advantage because you limit their number of options, and with certain characters, can do higher damage combos in the future. So, you sacrifice damage for position, and in doing so gain a position where it's easier for you to land a hit that can be converted into a combo, and that combo can potentially do more damage. Landing that hit is mainly to do with the footsie game!
Footsies is where you are trying to bait your opponent to make a move that you want them to make, make it whiff, and then punish this outstretched limb (vast oversimplification here, but you get the point). You do this by walking in and out of the space where that move for them is useful, while at the same time trying to push them into the corner to limit how easy it is for them to manoeuvre, and do something more risky to try and escape that situation, and punish them for doing that.
No matter what definition of the word "strategy" I read, I fail to understand how fighting games are not strategic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy
And as far as I can see, the uncertainty element is covered in that.
"The task of strategy is an efficient use of the available resources for the achievement of the main goal."
A fighting game player uses their resources to achieve the goal of knocking an opponent out. In SFIV, this is health bar, super bar and ultra bar, and obviously there are different resources in different games (X-Factor in UMvC3, KOF XIII has a guard bar, hyperdrive bar and power bar, etc.).
But there are other strategic elements in these games, such as spacing. It is usually advantageous to put your opponent in the corner, so the proximity of both characters to either side of the screen, and whether that's the very edge of the stage is very important. This goes back to resource spending. Sometimes you will spend super bar and/or some of your health bar, to put your opponent in the corner at the expense of immediate damage. Once you have them in the corner, you have the strategic advantage because you limit their number of options, and with certain characters, can do higher damage combos in the future. So, you sacrifice damage for position, and in doing so gain a position where it's easier for you to land a hit that can be converted into a combo, and that combo can potentially do more damage. Landing that hit is mainly to do with the footsie game!
Footsies is where you are trying to bait your opponent to make a move that you want them to make, make it whiff, and then punish this outstretched limb (vast oversimplification here, but you get the point). You do this by walking in and out of the space where that move for them is useful, while at the same time trying to push them into the corner to limit how easy it is for them to manoeuvre, and do something more risky to try and escape that situation, and punish them for doing that.
No matter what definition of the word "strategy" I read, I fail to understand how fighting games are not strategic.
Well I am glad to see Yahtzee give his OPINION of multiplayer. I agree with a decent amount of it but other things I do not.
Great thing about opinions everyone can have their own and if it does not agree with yours then it does not make it wrong. So to all the people who started raging about how he feels, so what? The man can think things that you do not agree with and the world will not catch on fire.
Great thing about opinions everyone can have their own and if it does not agree with yours then it does not make it wrong. So to all the people who started raging about how he feels, so what? The man can think things that you do not agree with and the world will not catch on fire.
The strategic choice one is asked to make occurs at the character selection screen. That choice asks you to pick from a pool of resources towards the end goal of winning the fight, and, importantly, that choice is what determines the options available.Thujal said:
The distinction is predicated upon the common use of the words "tactics" and "strategy" as military terms. Strategy involves the grand maneuver of large units, positioning forces such that one has maximized offensive power along the weakest line of the enemy. By contrast, tactics refers to the smaller maneuvers used inside a battle to achieve local dominion. In other words, strategy determines what force is available in a conflict while tactics determines how the available forces are used.
If you choose to define the sub actions of a fighting game as being strategic or tactical, it all becomes incredibly confusing very quickly. For example, if you consider the fighter under your control as a collection if parts - the various combos, supers, health bars and the like, then the fundamental maneuver of your character on screen becomes the strategic end wherein resources such as position and health are used to best place the combo and super.Thujal said:
Precisely because the fundamental function of any particular action changes from moment to moment is why it is best to make the distinction that the conduct within the fight itself is comprised of tactical choices as each element can unambiguously be considered a tactical resource.
To use a somewhat different game as an example, League of Legends offers similar levels of distinction. All choices related to the larger meta-game, champion selection, spell and mastery selection, leveling path, and item purchase all represent strategic choices as these determine, fundamentally, the strengths and weaknesses of your end maneuver element (that is, your character). But these choices alone are largely insufficient to win the field; instead, the player must regularly make tactical elements that best capitalize upon their strengths while minimizing the faults offered by their weakness.
What you refer to is, in more common parlance, a feint - an action designed to elicit a particular response rather than the obvious end goal. In fencing, the most common example is the simple direct attack. Since this is unlikely to land given how trivial it is to defend against, most fencers instead choose to use this to draw that defensive action (the parry). The feint thus draws an expected response and, if thus drawn, puts you in the advantageous position assuming you correctly foresaw the response.Thujal said:
The larger use of the feint in the context of a single exchange renders it incontrovertibly in the realm of the tactical choice. The choice to make regular use of the feint even remains a tactical decision as it represents an attempt to exploit the presumed weakness of the opponent in close maneuver as you fundamentally hope to capitalize upon a flaw of distance judgement, attack selection, or timing. This only becomes a strategic consideration if you choose a character particularly well suited to the counter-attack.
Because the strategic elements are relegated to the larger metagame of fighter and stage selection. The primary conduct of the fight is a series of tactical decisions. In contrast, a game like Starcraft places most decisions clearly in the realm of strategic rather than tactical as it is only elements that fall under the auspices of "micro" that clearly act purely within the sphere of the tactical.Thujal said:
To slightly rephrase the argument, tactics are a simply subset of strategy used to define specific instances of the application of strategy. My complaint is rooted in the precision of terminology. The basis of Yahtzee's argument is that he finds little of Strategic worth within the Fighting genre. Pointing out that this is because the elements of strategy present are of the very small scale of maneuver, timing and move selection is most efficiently achieved by referring to such things precisely. The argument of strategy is difficult to make for the fighting game while the argument for tactical depth is trivial.
As many of us have said already, most good fighting games require plenty of mindwork in more advanced play. One of Yatzee's misconceptions is that expert players instantly react to what they see. Instead, a plan is usually required in advance, and a plan cannot be formulated until you have an understanding of how your opponent thinks and functions. There may be an exception, but I'm pretty sure few players out there have the reflexes to just react to everything they see without predicting that it will happen beforehand.
The Dead or Alive counter system provides an excellent example of a clear difference between human and AI combat. In Dead or Alive, you can respond to any attack by entering a counterattack stance and ju-jitsuing the opponent if you do it right. However, the buttons you press vary, depending on what attack you're countering, and only a robot would have the reflexes to press the right buttons. Everyone else just has to guess, based on the opponent's behavior thus far.
Against a human opponent, you can avoid being countered by using a variety of different attacks throughout the fight so that your attacks cannot be predicted. However, since the AI is fast enough to counter all of your attacks, it is programmed to only counter some of them for fairness. As a result, probability replaces strategy.
The Dead or Alive counter system provides an excellent example of a clear difference between human and AI combat. In Dead or Alive, you can respond to any attack by entering a counterattack stance and ju-jitsuing the opponent if you do it right. However, the buttons you press vary, depending on what attack you're countering, and only a robot would have the reflexes to press the right buttons. Everyone else just has to guess, based on the opponent's behavior thus far.
Against a human opponent, you can avoid being countered by using a variety of different attacks throughout the fight so that your attacks cannot be predicted. However, since the AI is fast enough to counter all of your attacks, it is programmed to only counter some of them for fairness. As a result, probability replaces strategy.
Can Mr.Croshaw get over the fact he doesn't like multiplayer, so we can move on?
And a giant EWWWW on that kissing part. I know Croshaw is gay, but that still gross me out.
And a giant EWWWW on that kissing part. I know Croshaw is gay, but that still gross me out.
The flaw in your posit is the assumption that I don't know and/or can't communicate with the people I am playing with. I have a bevy of good friends who over the years have spread themselves across the far flung shores of the US. Once or twice a week we all call into a conference bridge and play CoOp/Multiplayer games together. When I played Resident Evil I had a good friend as a partner with complete full-duplex communication (not the shitty PS3 stuff, real telco-grade VoIP) whom I've known for years and have developed a gaming "partnership" in our strategy, the very sort of partnership you lament could not possibly occur unless the person is in the same room with you. If games were set to Offline Multiplayer only then I would simultaneously lose contact with many lifelong friends (who with our busy lives the twice a week gaming session is our only real chance to keep in touch) and retire from gaming as I am a grown man with a family and children and can't reasonably expect that my local friends (also with families and children) will regularly travel to my house late in the evening after the kids are asleep just to play some video games.
I hear you regarding online multiplayer. Giant kill fests against swarms of (hopefully) silent faceless 14yr old snipers on the same boring maps over and over and over don't interest me. And I don't dispute that having multiple people can render cut scenes pointless as we inevitably chat through them (but since the quality of dialog in most cutscenes generally causes my ears to bleed, I consider this a blessing). But please recognize that some people DO play online multiplayer CoOp so that they can experience the game with their friends, even if their friends are across the country. And it is possible to do so that the experience is not different than if they were sitting next to you on the couch, except you don't have to share TV screen real estate. Many games such as Borderlands and Operation Flashpoint and Resident Evil would be a terminable slog if it were not for the opportunity to work and talk with friends and maybe go on a good romp through the game in a manner that the developer never intended and would be hallow and empty if not shared with others in the same manner that a weekend trip to Vegas is not really the same when your mates don't come with you.
I hear you regarding online multiplayer. Giant kill fests against swarms of (hopefully) silent faceless 14yr old snipers on the same boring maps over and over and over don't interest me. And I don't dispute that having multiple people can render cut scenes pointless as we inevitably chat through them (but since the quality of dialog in most cutscenes generally causes my ears to bleed, I consider this a blessing). But please recognize that some people DO play online multiplayer CoOp so that they can experience the game with their friends, even if their friends are across the country. And it is possible to do so that the experience is not different than if they were sitting next to you on the couch, except you don't have to share TV screen real estate. Many games such as Borderlands and Operation Flashpoint and Resident Evil would be a terminable slog if it were not for the opportunity to work and talk with friends and maybe go on a good romp through the game in a manner that the developer never intended and would be hallow and empty if not shared with others in the same manner that a weekend trip to Vegas is not really the same when your mates don't come with you.