In Machinam

Winding the Gears: Multiple Building Selection in Starcraft 2

James — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 04:37:00 +0000

Multiple Building Selection (or MBS) is a rather simple UI feature that exists in almost every recent RTS game. In many old RTSes, the player can only select one building at a time – so, in a game with a lot of production buildings, the player must either devote all his hotkeys to building selection (leaving none for his army) or all his time to jumping back to his base and quickly selecting his buildings and tapping unit production hotkeys. At high levels of play in Starcraft, most players play a careful balancing game with time – at some points during large battles, one must jump back to their base and produce units, or else one will fall behind in army production and simply be overwhelmed, no matter how well one can dance his units. However, one must also pay attention to micromanagement of his units during crucial battles, or else the opponent will be able to skirt around his army and decimate a much larger force with several well-managed units. This conflict – how much time one can spend on macromanagement and how much time one can spend on micromanagement without falling behind in one or the other – is the fundamental principle of modern competitive Starcraft. Because it is physically impossible to accomplish both perfectly, i.e. to macro with 100% efficiency and micro your army quickly and cleverly at the same time, players are constantly striving to improve at both and find a balance between the two that allows them to gain an edge.

Because this balance is a delicate and crucial one, MBS is pretty controversial in any serious discussion about competitive Starcraft and its sequel. The ultimate question is: will MBS affect this balance so much that competitive Starcraft 2 will suffer, or is it ultimately a largely inconsequential change that will really only show a significant effect in low-level play?

Streamlining the UI is not Always Good.

When discussing MBS, a lot of different arguments get tossed around. Some people say that MBS is simply streamlines the UI, and therefore allows the game to be more accessible and less frustrating. These people usually go on to say that the UI is really just an artificial barrier between what we want to happen and what we can tell a computer to do using a keyboard.

Firstly, making the UI easier is not always good by any means. Part of any game is the way we interact with it, and what commands it will understand. It’s quite obvious that changing the UI in an FPS will affect how people play that FPS – if Counter-Strike had an auto-aim feature that always got headshots, it would clearly be a different game. Moreover, adding an auto-aim feature is clearly a UI change – the mouse is simply the tool we use to aim, as the keyboard is the tool we use to select buildings, and just like we would always like to select all our buildings in an RTS, we would also always like to get headshots in Counter-Strike. Take, for a more concrete example, the Decursive controversy in World of Warcraft. Decursive was a simply UI modification that allowed the Priest to quickly and efficiently de-curse allies during a hectic encounter. Because the ability to remove curses was crucial, this UI mod changed Priest gameplay significantly, and made raid instances much easier. Decursive didn’t just make the game easier for new players; it changed World of Warcraft’s gameplay on a fundamental level, and made it a good deal easier to play.

Starcraft is an RTS!

Some people say: well, yes, changing the UI will affect Starcraft 2’s gameplay. But Starcraft 2 is an RTS, not an FPS, so strategy should be the thing that determines who wins and who loses, not how many times you can click every minute!

Well, no. Yes, RTS has the word strategy in it, but there is one key difference between a TBS and an RTS: an RTS is real-time. In a turn-based game like Civilization and Dominions, streamlining the UI is almost uniformly welcome, as those games truly are meant to be about strategy and very little else. However, an RTS is about clicking speed, in the same way that an FPS is about how well you can aim; that’s what makes Starcraft different from Civilization. In both RTSes and FPSes, strategy and tactics are important, but so is one’s ability to move the mouse, and moving the mouse is an important and interesting skill. Guitar Hero is a game purely about skill, there is no strategy, yet Guitar Hero is interesting and difficult to learn and master, not simply an object of rote memorization. The same is true with DDR, Beatmania, or even the act of playing a song on the guitar. All of those things are skills, in the same way that being able to use the mouse quickly and efficiently is a skill, yet none of them are trivial or any less impressive for being “just a skill.”

Starcraft is an RTS, not a TBS. It is truly difficult and interesting to gain APM (actions per minute) and increase one’s speed, and that has, as a whole, helped the conflict between micromanagement and macromanagement shape Starcraft as a competitive game. Clearly, strategy matters – but it’s not the only thing that matters, nor should it be.

Depth in Competitive Starcraft and Starcraft 2

So far, two things have been established. One, streamlining the UI does affect the gameplay of an RTS. Two, the skill of managing the UI and one’s ability to use the mouse is an important thing that has helped to shape the unprecedented success of competitive Starcraft. Therefore, the issue of MBS must be taken into consideration – does it actually trivialize the skill of APM and the divide in attention, or does it simply redirect its focus? One of the skills that Starcraft’s current pro scene rests on is the division of attention between micromanagement and macromanagement. However, the fact that the division is between micromanagement and macromanagement is less important than the simple fact that there is a division at all. There is a basic idea that drives competitive Starcraft forward: in order to play perfectly, a player should really be doing five separate actions at once – however, that is physically impossible, so the player is always trying to react more quickly and weigh the tasks so he spends less time on tasks that are less important. In this way, competitive Starcraft has evolved from its early micromanagement-heavy stages, through its middle macromangement-heavy stages, and now to its current state, in which the two are weighed somewhat equally.

However, it’s not really important that the division is between macromanagement and micromanagement. What’s important is that there are always several actions which the player wants to do at once, but he can only focus on one. These decisions, as long as they are interesting and important, could be all about micromanagement or all about macromanagement.

In recent demos of Starcraft 2, Teamliquid.net fielded two good players, who, although nowhere near pro-level, reported to be able to macromanage almost perfectly in Starcraft 2, i.e. there was never a time when they wanted to build units and had the money but weren’t able to because of micromanagement in a large battle or paying attention to the timing of an expansion, and they attributed this largely to MBS. During these debates over MBS, many people tend to use Warcraft 3 as an example of a game with trivialized macromangement that still worked on a competitive level. However, Starcraft 2 is shaping up to be more like Starcraft and less like Warcraft 3. Competitive Warcraft 3 is interesting because the decisions in micromanagement are interesting, because there are so few units and every one of them counts. However, in Starcraft (and therefore probably Starcraft 2) units are more expendable, are produced more quickly, and die more quickly – therefore, micromanagement is less crucial than it is in Warcraft 3. Will the micromanagement decisions in Starcraft 2 really be interesting enough to balance out the relative removal of macromanagement through MBS? It’s hard to say without a physical copy of the game, but if Starcraft 2 wants to be anywhere near as deep (and, therefore, as competitively successful) as its predecessor, it’s going to have to make up lost ground. MBS can only narrow the focus of the game; it can only remove important decisions and conflicts, and Starcraft 2 is going to have to struggle to find a conflict in attention and interests as important as the one that gave Starcraft such incredible depth.

The Mechanics: Persona 3

James — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 07:07:00 +0000

Persona 3 is the latest and possibly last big Japanese RPG (JRPG) for the dying PS2 and has been very well received both in Japan and in the States. It's half about saving the world and half about high school relationships, and it's a hell of a lot better than that makes it sound.

The reasons Persona 3 is a great game, while most other JRPGS are merely medicore games with the occasional disctinction of great storytelling, are numerous - but there is one key gameplay distinction that sets it apart from the pack - its startling lack of grinding.

Almost all other JRPGs are fairly trivial. Their experience based design makes skill no object; the only obstacle that stands between the player and ultimate victory is the player's time. There are no interesting decisions to make outside of combat, and the combat itself is trivial. When the player loses a battle all he has to do is go back to his last save and grind his heart out. It's not hard, it's just time consuming. In fact, there are certain JRPGs where one can breeze through the rest of the game by leaving the console on one night and taping down the X button (and come back in the morning level ninety-nine).

However, Persona 3 has managed to create a system where mindless grinding is not only ineffective, but impossible. To explain this system, one must first understand the details of the game. Persona 3 is broken up into days, and each day is broken up into several periods of time (e.g. late night, afternoon, early morning). Occasionally, you will have choices during the early hours of the day, but most important gameplay choices fall into two periods of time: After School and Evening.

In Japan, they have school on Saturdays. Who knew?

All the non-combat related choices you make during these times fall into three categories: choosing to improve your character's social skills, choosing to strengthen your character's relationship with another character, or choosing to enter the dungeon (the only way to fight). Now, you can go to the dungeon every night and grind on low level floors; however, you won't get very far. First, your characters grow tired quickly in the dungeon, and start to deal less damage and take more of it, rendering your party ineffective. Second, the rate at which your party tires is independent of the strength of the enemies you're fighting - that is, they'll be just as tired after a hundred boss fights as they will be after a hundred regular fights. Since harder enemies give more experience, grinding will leave you with exhausted, low level characters, while progressing in the dungeon will allow you to fight harder enemies and at least you'll end up with exhausted, higher level characters.

However, going to the dungeon every night in and of itself is inefficient. It's much better to hit the town and sing some kareoke when you're tired, as it's less exhausting. Improving your social skills (by singing, apparently) will help you find more social links, and choosing to strengthen those social links will allow you to summon stronger persona of a certain type (persona are a physical extension of one's psyche, the game explains).

Thus, one who goes to the dungeon every night will end up with inefficent, high level characters with weak personas, and one who goes out every night will end up with many weak personas (as they will have many social links) and weak characters. Similarily, one who chooses to have one or two very strong social links will find themselves with a few strong personas but a crippling lack of flexibility. In addition, Persona 3 makes you battle bosses every month or so, regardless of the actions you take, forcing you to weigh long term profitability (social links which will help you throughout the game) against short term profit (dungeon crawling for quick cash before the next boss). The key is to balance these activities, which is no easy task, and it is here that Persona 3 finds a sweet spot of game design - in decisions that most other JRPGS brush off as trvialities.

The Basics: Getting Good Part Two

James — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:06:00 +0000

Part Two
Getting Good.

Before we discuss how to actually get good, it's important to understand that there are many games that are too shallow to support high level play. These are imbalanced or just ill-designed games that fall apart when their mechanics are given any sort of push. That's not to say that you should avoid these games altogether, but recognize when you are playing one and don't be afraid to abuse obvious imbalances.

Getting good is complicated, and there's no way to skirt around the fact that you're going to have to bang your head against the game for awhile before you get any better. However, there are ways to make it easier. The most important thing to do in a game is to overachieve. Constantly.

Overachieving

The concept of overachieving is pretty simple to understand, but when you're actually in the thick of the game it seems counter-intuitive. The most easily illustrated example of overachieving is Guitar Hero. Most people pick up Guitar Hero for the first time and play it on Easy, then Normal, where they have to learn to use their pinky and panic a bit, then Hard, where they have to learn to use the orange button (thus relearning everything they thought they knew about finger placement) and panic a lot, then Expert, where they're in pretty much a perpetual state of panic.

However, if you really want to get good at Guitar Hero, the first time you pick up the guitar, start on Expert. Play the first songs a couple times each, get used to the speed. Then bang your head against the hardest first tier song over and over again until you can play the entire tier. Repeat this with the hardest song on each tier. If you absolutely can't play any songs on Expert (make sure you at least try a few times) go back to Hard.

Starting out on Expert will help in a couple of ways. First of all, you'll already be used to the game being really fast from the word go, which is one of the huge transitions players have trouble with when they go up a difficulty level. Second, you'll immediately be used to moving your hands back and forth on the guitar, the other transition players sruggle with. In an hour or two, you'll be as good as the other player, who's been slowly working his way up the difficulty tree for days, even if you haven't beaten a single song. If you ever go to Normal, it'll seem pitifully slow.

And those are the very important things that overachieving does. It prevents players from learning the bad habits (not being able to move your hand up and down the fretboard, being used to the slower speeds) that they have to unlearn as they get better at the game. It also allows you to get used to the game at its most competetive level, instead of having to relearn all the techniques and strategies that you thought were viable but are really entirely useless at higher levels of play.

It gets easier. Seriously.

This is most obvious in games like Guitar Hero, but is true for any competetive game. Take, for example, Starcraft, our stock RTS. If you have a choice between playing someone your level in Starcraft, and someone above your level in Starcraft, then you will always benefit more from picking the person above your level. Similarily, if you have the choice between playing someone your level, and the best Starcraft player in the entire world, you should always play against the best Starcraft player in the world. It seems counter-intuitive, but overachievement has no boundaries. Always play the best you can.

In playing the best player Starcraft player in the world, you will learn the ins and outs of the best strategies, and understand their counters. You will be immediately flung into a fast paced game, where your opponent is clicking ten times a second. So, after you free yourself from the chokehold of fear, you'll be forced to stay on your toes and always play your very best. Go back into that game with that guy who was better than you a few days ago and it'll feel like you're playing in slow motion. Because you are so used to fast paced games where one mistake will lose it, you'll absolutely crush the man who, in comparison to your previous opponent, seems slow and careless.

And that's overachievement. It's hard - you'll have to lose before you win - but it's incredibly rewarding, and you'll be good sooner than you think.

The Mechanics: Diablo 2 and Its Doppelgangers.

James — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 08:12:00 +0000

You've heard of Diablo 2. At some point in your life, you've probably played it, or at least something that is exactly like it in almost every superficial respect. Titan Quest, Fate, Dungeon Runners - we've seen countless lookalikes trying to cling on Diablo 2's coattails. Some are recieved well, some not so well, but they're all pretty similar; you're running around, left clicking on monsters a lot and holding alt to pick up little magic objects that are color coordinated according to the amount of unicorn rainbow magic contained within.

But why is it that all these clones are all but ghost towns, while Diablo 2 still has a thriving online community after seven years? It's not the graphics, Titan Quest is prettier. It's not the accessibility, Dungeon Runners is easier. It's most certainly not the interface, as any of these new clones hardly changed that at all. So, it must be the gameplay. Which brings us to the real question: why is Diablo 2's gameplay so damn good?

The reason is the same, suprisingly enough, as the reason many of the great fighting games stick around to be competetive, while all the others die off in crusty arcades: it looks superficial, but it's got depth. It's easy to beat Diablo 2, that is, defeat the last boss in the single player game. However, to make a truly powerful character requires a knowledge of the mechanics that is far more demanding and far more rewarding than anything you will find in Titan Quest or any other Diablo lookalike.

To prove my point, I'm going to show you something beautiful:

Holy Christ.

This is merely a small segment of Diabloii.net's massive mechanics compendium. The mechanics are so deep, there are pages upon pages simply devoted to the manipulation of your chance to get a high level rune, or a great item. Hell, there are about three or four pages devoted to your chance to block an attack with a shield, and not even that many characters use shields.

Of course, only the very hardcorest of the hardcore figure out these numbers by themselves, and make these posts. But, as I mentioned in my last article, gameplay at the expert level trickles down; bad gameplay and good gameplay. Only a handful of people will actually do the tests to understand these mechanics, but most of the serious players will understand the results they come back with and everyone will benefit from the strategies those results produce, as even the most casual player will want to know the best build for their level thirty-three barbarian.

Finishing Diablo 2's story is easy. But not only is Diablo 2 not harmed by this, its deep gameplay almost rests upon it. Without the ability to powerlevel newbie characters from levels 5-80 in about half an hour (literally), the work involved in testing new builds and new numbers would be terrifying, and Diablo 2 would likely lose most of its playerbase. As most of Diablo 2's long term draw comes from the mechanics of building a character and not beating the same story over and over again, the ability to powerlevel is crucial.

Ultimately, its deep mechanics, aided and abetted by powerlevelling, are the reason why Diablo 2 is still afloat; while its prettier, shallower clones are all going under.

The Basics: Getting Good Part One

James — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 06:44:00 +0000

Part One
Why would I want to be good?

When you're talking about the mechanics of a game, you're talking about those mechanics being pushed to their limits. Gameplay does not refer to the play of the average player, but rather the play of the professional, the game at its top level. This is most obvious in Massively Multiplayer games (even if only a handful of top tier players understand a certain powerful exploit, that exploit will affect the entire server) but is true for any multiplayer game.

Take, for example, a game like starcraft. Even though you may not be trying to be the best player in the world, the moment you enter the game you are trying to win; that is the very definition of a game. Although you may not be aiming to be the best, you are trying to win and therefore are, in order to win, trying to become a better player, even if only in the short term. Everyone playing in your game is trying to become at least a little bit better.

Now, imagine there is some critical race imbalance at the very highest level of play. No one but the highest level players are affected by this imbalance, because it only rears its ugly head when both players are very skilled. This imbalance essentially ruins the game for the high level players, restricting them to playing mirror matches tirelessly, until they turn their interest to a different game.

I can't do this, but there's someone who can.

Now the competition has left the game. The game has been deemed unplayable at a very competitive level, and all that remains are the players in levels below that. As the competition dies out, most players who were nearing competitive levels will lose their drive. If they are going to have to stop playing when they get better, there's no point in getting better at all. If there's no point in getting better, there's no point in trying to win. If there's no point in trying to win, there's hardly any point in playing the game at all, is there?

As these near-competitives start to file out, everyone else will realise that the game cannot be a competetive game, and only those who play occasionally and casually will remain. No serious multiplayer game can survive solely on the interest of a small casual base, and so the game dies.

Thus, the most important kind of gameplay is play amongst high level players, and the most important game mechanics are those which are implemented at high level play.

If you truly want to explore a game's mechanics, or appreciate the gameplay of a game, you'll see the value in getting good. As you get better at a game, you'll see the game's mechanics in a whole new light and, as you discover what mechanics are important and which are superficial, you will rediscover the game entirely.

The Machinery: Space Cowboy Online

James — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 23:58:00 +0000

Free MMOs are dangerous ground to tread. They are numerous, briefly exhilarating, and almost all entirely the same. You might've heard of Space Cowboy - for a free game, it's fairly polished. However, like most free MMOs, it's fun for a while, has an interesting take on combat, and ultimately its grind is too steep and too repetitive to enjoy.

A plane performs a barrel roll, one of the basic flying maneuvers.

The main draw of Space Cowboy is its flying; it’s well implemented and lag free, and it's really the first thing you'll notice about the game. However, flying is not only very easy to master, but also relatively inconsequential in combat past a certain level of familiarity. That is, without a basic mastery of flying, you’re going to die pretty fast. However, mastering the basics only takes an hour or so, and there's not much to learn afterwards. The divide between an expert player and a competent player is very small when compared to, say, that divide in Counter Strike, or Street Fighter. This is one of Space Cowboy’s more conspicuous flaws.

So what does being good at Space Cowboy mean, if being a skilled pilot is only a small part of it? If you’ve ever played an MMO before you probably know the answer: being good at Space Cowboy means being a higher level than your opponent, and having nicer items than your opponent. Essentially, being better than someone at Space Cowboy means playing Space Cowboy more than that person, and very little else.

This is especially true with respect to Space Cowboy’s grind. Almost all of the enemies have very generic habits and patterns, making your fighting tactics for each enemy almost exactly the same. There is only one quest per level, and sometimes not even that. Also, for a good four to five levels, you’re cordoned into a small area, and essentially forced to fight the same mobs over and over again for a good six hours before you level out of the area, and the levels only get longer the stronger you become.

Because the game is almost entirely level based instead of skill based, it takes a while to even get up to the point where you can viably engage other players. But even when you get up to there, the is also almost entirely about your items and your stats.

So many stats, so little actual skill

Even though the flying is fun and new, Space Cowboy cannot let go of the familiar grind, and that is its major flaw. Even amazing flying talent will only get you so far, as you’ll be shot down time and time again by people far higher level than you, because they’ve sunk more time into the dry grind. This is not incredibly surprising; after all, Space Cowboy is an MMO. However, after a few hours of learning to fly, it’s disappointing to realize that you’ve only just mastered the skills you need to start another long, boring, familiar grind.

The Machinery: EVE Online

James — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 23:41:00 +0000

EVE Online is one of the more innovative and interesting MMs out there right now, mostly for its death penalties (they actually exist), its player-run market and dynamic corporation wars.

But, like most MMOs, the true heart and soul of EVE is its combat. When you're talking about EVE, one can't avoid combat - the economy exists solely for combat, be it player against player or player against hordes of AI ships. But for being the focus of the game, EVE's combat is largely disappointing - most of combat is decided in the shipyard, when you're fitting your weapons. Ultimately, this is EVE's large failing.

The most important part of the EVE UI: the ship status panel.

Here is the ever present EVE UI panel that dominates the bottom of the screen. For now, the only thing you should be paying attention to are the large orange circles, called a "capacitor". It's pretty much just space mana, there's not much difference from WoW's familiar blue bar. It takes mana to use weapons and abilities, and it slowly replenishes over time. Basic MMO stuff.

The capacitor also has a second use besides space mana. Each item requires a certain slot but they also require you to have a certain amount of free capacitor load. As you use this up, you lose your ability to equip more energy-intensive items. This is EVE's balancing act.

Generally, weapons deal damage types in pairs. For example, a laser may deal primarily thermal damage with some kinetic, a missile may deal primarily kinetic damage with some energy, etc.

Resistances come in singles, though. To tank damage, look at your ship and think "what type of damage am I going to be facing?" Then fit some active resistors of that type. This is “tanking” that type of damage.

In EVE, your goal is to fit enough damage to break the tank of an enemy ship, or tank enough damage to stay alive while you're being shot. Even in AI combat, WoW barely explores the idea of resists, and focuses mainly on tanking through healing taken damage at a constant rate, while EVE focuses on resisting damage to make it minimal. That is, when that ten thousand damage thermal laser hits you in EVE, your 99% thermal resist is going to make it deal ten damage instead.

And then EVE throws something else into the mix: velocity. A large ship can't hit a small ship if it's going faster than its turrets turn. Stop moving for a second though, and you're dead. and that's the way EVE balances huge vs small ship combat.

Even with all of this, though, EVE PvP is ultimately sort of underwhelming. 99% of it is in the fitting of ships, just like 99% of WoW is in the gear and level. There's no practical fitting in battle, so you can't switch out guns or resistors. When you get out on the battlefield, you camp your gate, select your ship, set your orbit velocity and click your weapons. And then you wait while they die.

Even the velocity mentioned above becomes a decision you make before battle. The way you fit your ship decides your maximum velocity, and there’s no reason to ever go slower than that. Setting your velocity becomes simple clicking.

EVE holds a lot of promise: the corporation wars, the severity of player death, the economy - all of those are clearly well thought out and well implemented. However, in a game that ultimately boils down to combat, the combat is just sort of boring. There's a lot of positioning, a lot of waiting for the correct moment to strike - the fun part is the waiting. But ultimately, in the end, the entire game is about bucking for position. Combat could be run by an auto-resolve button and it'd be the same.

Eve's bigger battles are all played with as much UI information crammed in as the game will allow.

As you can see above, this becomes truer, unfortunately, the bigger the battles become. At fifty or a hundred players, the game is played zoomed out fully. Each player is a tiny square, and there's UI information everywhere. Maybe you're clicking frantically, maybe not, but the clicking is essentially just busywork. A ship leader calls out an enemy ship to attack, you click orbit, you click your weapons, sometimes you get selected yourself and you hit your tanks. There's barely any deciding or thinking.

Finally, because of the way money and relations work, attacking a player controlled mining operation in the game is the most satisfying thing you'll feel. However, that's not because of the core mechanics of combat, those mechanics which will become 90% of your playtime, it's because the guy takes real losses, and you make real gains. It's fun despite the combat.

The context of EVE is great. The game world, the corporations, the economy; all those are brilliantly done. Unfortunately, the core mechanics of EVE are dearly lacking. There's popular mantra for the game: "It's like playing an Excel spreadsheet". Sadly, it holds some truth.