"Pro" play: Boon or bane?

[Andrew_Fireborn]

Admittedly, I've never been part of a league for any game I've played online. Not even a clan. (Though I have access to a completely unserious one's ventrillo server.)

But I've been thinking recently, especially given the eternal flame wars that are TF2's O-boards... Does competitive level play sustain a game's commercial viability, or actually hurt it?

As I see it, a game tends only to be viable as long as it maintains a sizable 'pub' pool to allow people to ease into it. Especially since this allows the company to sell more copies, and gain more word of mouth advertising.

On the flip side, the competitive scene gives the people who play something to stick around for. Due to it's nature, it can also expose balance issues more readily than any amount of "pick up gaming" can, due to the generally closer skill levels and higher amount of teamwork.

However, I've seen a large number of competitive level players try to sway the developers into buffing their favorite tactics, or try to continue the legacy of old engine bugs by claiming they're a skill. To cite an example, the Natural Selection Mod for HL1 eventually became very exploit-skill heavy for the Alien team. (Something I fear likely for NS2...)


This Ranty-question is mostly applicable to FPS games, but I'm sure RTS and a few other genres could also fall into the same discussion.

[Vendetta]

I think the enduring popularity of Starcraft shows that competitive play can extend the lifespan of a game significantly.

I don't think it's always appropriate though. For example, take Super Smash Bros. Competitive play in Melee is based on something pretty far removed from the normal gameplay experience (removing all of the randomness, which competitive players will always claim eliminates the possibility of skill winning the day over luck, though I've never heard a pro poker player make the same excuse), and seems to exist only to highlight how woeful the character balance is, with the roster of competitive characters in high level play cut down to about four from thirty.

[TheFeniX]

It's funny that you bring up NS because the devs have had to deal with Hell trying to balance the game for pub play and competitive play. Since 1.0, the game has been a never ending battle of balance issues.

Competitive play isn't as big an issue as pros would like to think it is. They liken themselves to NFL players and that their showing of skill and commitment keeps the devs working on the game and makes others pick the game up for themselves. In practice, it just doesn't work that way.

"Pub" (or casual) players will always be the market of choice for developers (unless you're valve and you can get away with it). If anything, unbalance in a game would force casual players away more than pro gamers. Unless there's some form of game destroying bug, pro players will bitch about it and keep going on with the same game.

[Exonerate]

However, I've seen a large number of competitive level players try to sway the developers into buffing their favorite tactics, or try to continue the legacy of old engine bugs by claiming they're a skill. To cite an example, the Natural Selection Mod for HL1 eventually became very exploit-skill heavy for the Alien team. (Something I fear likely for NS2...)

I hate to break this to you, but the Dev team intentionally kept bunnyhopping for the Aliens in. And how is it not a skill? Even if it were unintentional, I'd argue that it's a good bug, because it makes for more interesting gameplay.

[KlavoHunter]

I like the state that TF2 is in right now - "Pro" players can use any variety of server tools and mods to turn off crits and do whatever they want to achieve a more "Pro" gaming environment as they wish.

Everyone else, including myself, can enjoy themselves with the game that Valve is putting out. I can't wait for the next patch and the addition of unlockable alternative weapons for yet another class.

[Stark]

The 'pro' scene extends game lifespans... and kills genres. Starcraft is still hell popular in the RTS world, and that's why the RTS genre sucks, that's why it's so conservative as a playerbase, and why new games are intentionally retro like Red Alert. When the best-selling RTS of 2008 is a piece of shit 1992-throwback that looks like shit, this tells developers DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING.

Frankly, I don't care about so-called 'pro' players, until they try to ruin everyone's shit. The sorts of people who push through 'balance' issues, force out player aids, demand everything fit their narrow vision instead of something more fun or marketable, etc. These people kill individual games - name one game where listening to 'pro' players made it better. OMG SHOTGUNS IMBA!!!!

[Ford Prefect]

A game having a 'pro' gamers is fine. A game which then caters to pro gamers is undoubtedly going to be shit. Look at the aforementioned Super Smash Bros. Melee; can you imagine what Brawl would be like if it was designed to appeal to the 'pros' of that game? It would be the worst fighting game ever, as opposed to a fun multiplayer romp. This is basically the entire reason why I am not particularly interested in Starcraft 2, because it seems clear that it's just going to be Starcraft all over again, and that they are trying to appeal to the actions per minute crowd which made Starcraft so popular for ninety billion years. The only* reason why I retain any interest in Diablo 3 is because basically everything Blizzard does with it makes the pro gamers of Diablo 2 angry.

*Not really.

[TheFeniX]

I hate to break this to you, but the Dev team intentionally kept bunnyhopping for the Aliens in. And how is it not a skill? Even if it were unintentional, I'd argue that it's a good bug, because it makes for more interesting gameplay.

They kept it in for aliens, but finally removed it for marines. And this in no small part had to do with a number of extremely loud and adamant play-testers, who just so happened to be in CAL as well. I was there for a lot of the bullshit and I don't really feel like opening that bag of cats again, so I'll leave it at that.

I've run into something similar with Dystopia. The devs themselves were pretty cool, but the "pro" gamers who were also play testers felt that their opinion's held more weight than server admin's hosting the game. I may give devs some credit, but if I want to run a Natural Selection server for the sole purpose of ready room rave parties, that's my call.

[Praxis]

It certainly helps it- look at the Smash Bros Melee competitive scene, which certainly helped increase Brawl's day one sales significantly and has resulted in numerous people I know buying multiple copies- even though Brawl is inherently an inferior competitive game, the scene's existance keeps the game going.

I don't think it's always appropriate though. For example, take Super Smash Bros. Competitive play in Melee is based on something pretty far removed from the normal gameplay experience (removing all of the randomness, which competitive players will always claim eliminates the possibility of skill winning the day over luck, though I've never heard a pro poker player make the same excuse), and seems to exist only to highlight how woeful the character balance is, with the roster of competitive characters in high level play cut down to about four from thirty.

Wait, what?

Tiers exist in every fighting game. Fox and Marth in Melee are the same thing as Yun and Chun-Li in Street Fighter III Alpha. There's a set of five characters that are the best in the game (Fox, Marth, Sheik, Falco, Peach, in that order), but you can still do significantly well by taking Captain Falcon or any of the mid-tier characters and being better. Just look at Link players like Deva, or heck, Gimpyfish and Bowser (I know both players IRL). Melee is actually a well balanced competitive game with items removed and random stages banned. The sad part is that Nintendo did it on accident.

I understand people who don't enjoy playing like that, because it's a different experience. The wonderful thing about Smash Bros is that you can play it as a party game OR as a competitive fighter and it plays well as EITHER. Even a Street Fighter competitive gamer can enjoy it- it's an EXCELLENT competitive fighter, one of the best ever made.

Brawl, however- Nintendo went out of their way to mess it up as much as possible. Still wonderfully fun, and I play it competitively (one of the top five Peaches in the country at the moment, despite the fact that Peach is terrible compared to her Melee counterpart ), but the balancing is horrid. Metaknight is just...retarded. I don't know what the developers were thinking when they designed Metaknight, Dedede, and Snake. It's really ridiculous. I beat most players with these characters, but some of the design choices a child could see the flaws with. Dedede's down throw...just wow.

Regardless, anyone who thinks competitive play detrimented Smash Bros is, IMO, a moron.

can you imagine what Brawl would be like if it was designed to appeal to the 'pros' of that game? It would be the worst fighting game ever, as opposed to a fun multiplayer romp.

What?

I mean, seriously, what?

Melee is one of the best and most technical fighting games released to date. If Brawl had been designed to appeal to the pros, it would have been Melee, except with better balance so that all characters would have been playable, plus more stages and characters. Instead, we got Brawl, where they removed shield lag to make the game overly defensive since it's now more efficient to shield everything and punish than to approach your opponent, and removed hitstun so that you can airdodge after any attack to completely eliminate the concept of combos because it's not possible to land two consecutive hits if your opponent isn't stupid.

What would have been bad about taking Melee, balancing the characters better, and adding new features? I don't see how it would have been "the worst fighting game ever".

[DPDarkPrimus]

All you have to do is look at the MLG forums bitch about how Bungie "ruined" Halo 3 when they removed glitches from Halo 2 in the new game, and how they continue to bitch and moan about how the Battle Rifle needs to be "fixed" when Bungie has said time and again that it is working just as intended.

[Praxis]

All you have to do is look at the MLG forums bitch about how Bungie "ruined" Halo 3 when they removed glitches from Halo 2 in the new game, and how they continue to bitch and moan about how the Battle Rifle needs to be "fixed" when Bungie has said time and again that it is working just as intended.

I don't know the situation. This can go both ways.

For example, people who complain about Nintendo removing Wavedashing from Smash Bros are dumb. It was a Melee specific physics exploit.

This that complain about Nintendo's removal of Hitstun in Brawl, effictively removing combos from the game, are completely right. It takes something away from the game, and hitstun has been a feature since Smash 64.

I don't play Halo competitively, so I can't say if the Halo people are in the right or wrong. But consider that all those people complaining actually BOUGHT Halo 3- thus, the competitive community resulted in more sales, and helped the game.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

What exactly do the complainers want the battle rifle to do that it doesn't already?

The only complaint I have with it is the same one I had for Halo 2, I thought it was going to fire three round bursts open sighted and semi-auto when scoped, that would have been cool.

[Nephtys]

'Pro' just means how much useless inane crap you can memorize. Watching pro players play an RTS for example is the worst thing ever. They don't even play it. Someone showed me some big grand championship starcraft video on the Korean league and it was so boring. One player conceeded after encountering the enemy ONCE in a moderate skirmish, because they both knew the exact moves to make, and that one was 'behind' somehow.

Any game that can be made that mechanical that there are literally optimum moves, and the only way to play is following them is... pretty useless. And to make it worse, games like that don't at all promote unusual strategies to offset optimum moves. You still get crushed.

'Balance' of this sort made DoW, an alright game, into pretty much boring, droll nonsense after it's first expansion anyway.

[Uraniun235]

If Starcraft is really that optimized, I wonder if someone could program an AI routine to "solve" Starcraft.

[Qwerty 42]

I think that competitive play, while it definitely has its place, can sometimes go above and beyond what would be helpfult o the title. When developers fear changing the software, then it's gone too far. Look at the stinks surrounding the CS mod and the jump from Melee to Brawl. Admittedly, the CS mod was poorly designed but if you think that the complaints about the mod were to do with its design, you'd be wrong: people complained about changing the sacred structure of Counter-Strike. It serves to inhibit change and enforce the metagaming nonsense that serves as the very negative stereotype that gamers claim to dislike.

[Covenant]

Qwerty is right, and it also inhibits growth by making the games too hard to access for a casual consumer, and most consumers are more casual than the "Pro" crowd by a very wide margin. In competitive games the competition is usually at the level of the player, you don't do a lot of mixing Professional Football players with Highschool and Junior High players. To say that there shouldn't be accomidations for the average consumer is just foolish--the average consumer is what builds interest in the games and drives the financing. This is why big-idea companies will go under but companies that treat their games as a product, like Stardock, survive and thrive even without making fancy products, or ones that are even all that good.

At the heart of it, I believe this: Some of the strategems used by self-styled 'Pro' players aren't ones that would be tournament legal in Professional games anyway, and most are those that deny the other player an ability to play. In some way, they nearly always get down to special avoidance strategies that disrupt the normal give-and-take, or ways of stacking the deck in such a way that normal gameplay is avoided at all costs. Hitting an enemy before he can make units, or dodging so fast that nothing can touch you, or using a character which is too short to be shot. Fucking Oddjob. Most 'Pro' players and 'Hardcore' gamers are simply overly competitive to the point they'll do anything to win rather than do everything and have fun. Playing to win is fun, but I strongly disagree that seeking victory is always better for games and gamers than seeking fairness and enjoyment. You should be able to have fun win or lose, and ideally have enough "High" and "Low" moments to make the entire experience enjoyable. TF2's developer diaries get into this a lot, for those who have the Orange Box. That's what we should have, not exploit-using 'Pro' gamers.

This is not an argument of "If it makes money it is better," since that's false, but you get more realistic and satisfying competitive gameplay from having a wider audience, which has a higher chance of removing the obsession with difficult-to-find bugs and exploits and encouraging actual strategies to be thought up and shared. Small 'Pro' gamer circles lead to behavior that is somewhat neurotic. It reminds of me a behavior that's been in-bred over generations producing a sort of mutant culture, like the idiotic wavedashing of Smash or the Korean's mechanical starcraft playing. Having a wider play base means that the game will make more money, stay around longer, and that any alterations will be done from as wide a sample size as possible. It also means that bugs and exploits are less likely to be popular overall, more likely to be patched out, and that gameplay will trend towards skill and not nitpicky manipulations.

Fair and balanced gameplay can be much deeper than exploit-riddled stupidity. Very rarely do exploits add to the game, most of the time you see it only being beneficial in a fighting game, where such exploits usually take the form of bizzare ways to stop doing one thing, start doing another, break through certain defenses, and so forth. But in a game genre that's already about doing those things, exploits are very similar to legitimate techniques, so it's much less different than the imbalances evident in an RTS or FPS. Plus, fighting games are already fairly hostile to newcomers, Smash excepted. Given all this, I'd say that Pro gamers are--on the balance--a negative for both your average consumer and your average producer. Eventually I'd like to see one company make niche games to satisfy the hardcore 'Pro' market and leave the rest of us playing games that are both fun AND deeply competitive.

[Stark]

'Hardcore' players are attractive to devs and marketers, however. Marketing for 'pro' players (to the extent of the branded hardware industry), support for 'hardcore' playstyles or demands are big bullet points. So long as they are seen as the 'top' of the community, they will be pandered to as if their money is worth more than everyone else's, simply due to their higher (or louder) profile.

[Companion Cube]

If Starcraft is really that optimized, I wonder if someone could program an AI routine to "solve" Starcraft.

Then you could pit it against the South Korean Gary Kasparov.

[TheFeniX]

The whole "Pro gamers being pandered to" angle really doesn't cut it though when you look at the former and current best selling games of all time: The Sims and GTA IV. Two games which would lack any kind of dedicated competition. GTA IV has MP, but it's not Counter-Strike or Unreal Tournament.

The pro players aren't like celebrities, at least not in the major areas where the money is spent (America, Europe, and Japan). I've never even heard of the phenomenon reminiscent of pro-sports hitting gaming in America. No one buys a game or sticks with it because some guy won the CAL championship or something. Why would game devs and publishers pander to them if they can make a hundred times the money by making a more casual environment for the average player? Shit, actual celebrities playing games has more of an effect on sales than any actual gamer could.

The whole industry has generally been shifting to something more casual because the stigma against video games is weakening. The same jerk-offs who made fun of me for reading a Nintendo Power in 5th grade are now talking shit (and going 3-15) in Call of Duty. These guys buy games, play them for a while, then move on. That's why there's always the push to get the next game going. Some devs resist this trend (valve), but they're in the minority. Nintendo is basing it's entire market off casual gaming and they're making a killing doing it.

Then you have a game like Gears of War which is pretty much built around the concept of co-op. And almost every big interview with Mr. "I have to have to be recorded 6 inches from my face so everyone can revel in my image" Blesinski went on more about Horde (the co-op only aspect) of GoW2 than anything else besides maybe the story-line.

Now, PC gaming is where the "pro" gamer crowd has the most "success," but it's being marginalized lately (the platform, not the "pros"). Even then, the popular games are popular based on their own merits. Portal is a good example. I just don't see how "pro" gamers are really affecting the communities all that much. Maybe I'm playing the wrong games, but it always seemed to me that these guy bitch the most and loudest, so when changes are actually made (for whatever reason) either they or other gamers crow about how they affected that change. Larger companies tend to have their own playtesters anyways, so worrying about internet drama is most likely just one guy named "Steve" who moderates a forum.

[Stark]

I guess you missed the part where the Sims and GTA4 aren't in genres locked down by 'pro' players? Red Alert 3 is the best selling RTS in AU at the moment, and it's an intentionally retro, disgustingly ugly conservative turn away from innovation.

Saying consoles don't have a 'pro' gamer issue is ludicrous given even a slight investigation of Halo forums.

[Qwerty 42]

At its most fundamental, the problem has to do with the limits of computing. There's a definite ceiling to the limits of what you can do with a given game controller or engine, and after a certain point competitive players start looking for bugs, exploits, or deriving formulas to gain any sort of competitive edge, which isn't exactly analogous to real life.

I think that the next step in competitive gaming involves the use of random generators and constant babysitting from the mother company. There's no reason for an attack to always do a set amount of damage, so random generators would be in order, to an extent. Generate a multiplier between .5 and 1.5, for instance. The Wii remote, especially with the MotionPlus, opens up interesting possibilities here, because it's impossible to do a manual task identically each time. Think of a pitcher, whose pitches are always in certain speed ranges rather than being the same speed every time. Or, better yet, you'll hear how dangerous a curveball is, because if its mechanics aren't perfect, it just hangs right where the hitter's power is. Having something like that, rather than a constant damage or constant motion mechanics, would make a competitive game better.

I say "babysitting" because, as far as I see it, weeding out things like WaveDashing before the competitive scene latches onto it and says its an integral part of the game also makes it more accessible.

The example of football was brought up earlier, and it applies here. The best football players aren't the ones who know tables or 'sploits, they're the ones who are faster, stronger, and smarter.

[defanatic]

I guess you missed the part where the Sims and GTA4 aren't in genres locked down by 'pro' players? Red Alert 3 is the best selling RTS in AU at the moment, and it's an intentionally retro, disgustingly ugly conservative turn away from innovation.

I blame nostalgia for this. While I like the game, I currently live with someone who claimed he wouldn't buy the game if it wasn't enough like Red Alert 2. So... Yeah...

[Praxis]

At its most fundamental, the problem has to do with the limits of computing. There's a definite ceiling to the limits of what you can do with a given game controller or engine, and after a certain point competitive players start looking for bugs, exploits, or deriving formulas to gain any sort of competitive edge, which isn't exactly analogous to real life.

I think that the next step in competitive gaming involves the use of random generators and constant babysitting from the mother company. There's no reason for an attack to always do a set amount of damage, so random generators would be in order, to an extent. Generate a multiplier between .5 and 1.5, for instance. The Wii remote, especially with the MotionPlus, opens up interesting possibilities here, because it's impossible to do a manual task identically each time. Think of a pitcher, whose pitches are always in certain speed ranges rather than being the same speed every time. Or, better yet, you'll hear how dangerous a curveball is, because if its mechanics aren't perfect, it just hangs right where the hitter's power is. Having something like that, rather than a constant damage or constant motion mechanics, would make a competitive game better.

I say "babysitting" because, as far as I see it, weeding out things like WaveDashing before the competitive scene latches onto it and says its an integral part of the game also makes it more accessible.

The example of football was brought up earlier, and it applies here. The best football players aren't the ones who know tables or 'sploits, they're the ones who are faster, stronger, and smarter.

The problem is, where do you draw the line on this? Sure, elminating wavedashing wouldn't have really damaged Smash Bros as a competitive game. But what happens when you try so hard to casualify the game that you remove COMBOS entirely?

Glitches are bad, but I actually argue that, to a degree, exploits are a GOOD thing if they don't overpower the game. For example, consider Glide Tossing in Brawl. Essentially, you can roll and throw an item and it cancels the roll animation and results in you sliding whole throwing the item. Characters like Diddy can use this to set up all kinds of absolutely insane banana combos, as they can throw a banana while sliding towards the other banana, catching it and glide tossing it at the opponent again before they finish the tripping animation from the first banana, and if you happen to have set yourself up right you might even be able to pick up the first banana again and keep doing it.

Is this horribly broken? No, because Diddy's such a poor character (no KO power whatsoever, average priority on attacks) that this makes him tournament-viable. Further, these advance techs add a learning curve, allowing the game to evolve as players become better. It has absolutely NO effect on casual players, and if they're playing a character that doesn't use items (basically, anyone but Peach and Diddy), they don't even need to know how to use the technique.

Would taking it out improve the game? Not in the slightest. Would it reduce the technicality and skill threshhold required to play the characters that can exploit it well (both of which happen to be otherwise very poor characters)? Yes. Thus, I consider it a good thing.

Nintendo tried TOO hard to attack the tournament scene with Brawl. Taking out the accidental exploits (wavedashing) was fine, but they even took out game features (Hitstun, L-cancelling) that have been present since the original Smash 64 in order to casualify it. They further worsened the game by adding so many defensive options that the attacker is always in the worst position and camping is usually the best strategy. Hence why many people are upset- the skill threshhold is very poor compared to Melee, and matches are slower and harder to watch (relatively speaking of course).

Nintendo could easily have left hitstun in and had a much better competitive game without effecting the casual crowd. What would have been lost by this?

[Exonerate]

I think that the next step in competitive gaming involves the use of random generators and constant babysitting from the mother company. There's no reason for an attack to always do a set amount of damage, so random generators would be in order, to an extent. Generate a multiplier between .5 and 1.5, for instance. The Wii remote, especially with the MotionPlus, opens up interesting possibilities here, because it's impossible to do a manual task identically each time. Think of a pitcher, whose pitches are always in certain speed ranges rather than being the same speed every time. Or, better yet, you'll hear how dangerous a curveball is, because if its mechanics aren't perfect, it just hangs right where the hitter's power is. Having something like that, rather than a constant damage or constant motion mechanics, would make a competitive game better.

Er. No. Pretty much every competitive gamer would adamantly oppose this, because all you're doing is introducing a random element to potentially change the outcome of a game. If you're playing a game to determine who is the better player/team, why add in something that may potentially allow the weaker player/team to win because they were blessed by the random number gods? Predictable games aren't fun to watch or play, but randomness is a poor substitute for depth.

[Covenant]

Nintendo could easily have left hitstun in and had a much better competitive game without effecting the casual crowd. What would have been lost by this?

I'm not sure anyone can come up with any reason why hitstun and shield lag should have been removed, these are pretty basic elements of strategy that encourage players to time their attacks to exploit openings the same way a boxer times his, while also not allowing defensive players to camp against someone who is playing aggressively.

However, I'd say it's a slippery slope to give the OK to some glitches just because the character sucks otherwise. What they should have done with Diddy and other cruddy characters, or even just mid-level characters like fatass Bowser, is make them better. It seems like the Nintendo teams are just not capable of understanding the concept of balance, as they build a game that favors certain features (speed, and in the previous games, high KO moves that hit up) and then seem to lump all these features on the same handful of characters. Buffing some and nerfing others a little bit would have made more sense, since I honestly believe the most skillful play comes from overcoming a weakness and not from exploiting a strength. Seeing that aforementioned fatass Bowser tear up a match really is satisfying when it happens, but I usually get my streak ended by one of the same rogue's gallery of poor matchups. Being a permanent fan of the slow and heavy characters in every game though, I've simply gotten used to sucking compared to the speed freaks.

Many games don't have the obvious wide disparity between characters or factions or weapons or whatever that Smash does, and few game companies are so antagonistic towards the playbase as Nintendo is towards their very popular tournament crowd. By comparison, few games with as much exploit-riddled gameplay, idiotic lameness and dedicated pro-players are as open and welcoming in a tournament atmosphere as Smash tournies tend to be. In that one sense, I feel that Smash is where tournament games should head. A fun game that everyone can play, but only a few play well. I don't like playing it all that much, but I never regret playing a round or two the way you regret playing Starcraft.