May 7, 2012
Competitiveness.
CJ and I played Dungeon Twister. It had been awhile since I played, but I swept him pretty completely. It’s… an interesting game.
Being a game of basically complete information, where you know everything your opponent could do at any time, really, it’s so very, very unfriendly to new players. I obviously had figured out the game more than CJ had in his like one play of it, and it was really easy to sweep in and sneak through the gaps in his defense, because I knew what to look for and what I could do. I mean, I’m sure there are plenty of people more skilled that could beat me, but even with that slight experience gap, it was really no contest.
How do you overcome that? I mean, it’s the same sorts of problems you have in games like, say, a DotA, where you jump in to try to figure out the complicated rules and just get utterly destroyed. Or a Street Fighter or other fighting game, where you need to learn many characters patterns to be successful, but are often given nowhere to start, really. Or even something like Team Fortress 2 or some other very team-based shooter, where you need to build up a skillset in order to even be vaguely useful to your team. It’s such an amazing problem. It’s something that keeps people who could enjoy a strong, interesting multiplayer environment away.
When even a little bit of knowledge can basically knock you out of the “fun” bracket for playing with your friends, that shit is tough. I mean, I always play to win. I feel it would be an insult not to play any game I am playing to the best of my ability. But when I’m just crushing people, why would who I am destroying keep playing? And why would I want to play? I don’t really get much joy out of winning most of the time. It’s the game that’s fun. If my opponent is not having a good time, I don’t really want to be involved.
At the same time, something completely random and stupid like Mario Party is absolutely no fun, because you really have 0 control over what happens, and victories are completely and utterly empty. There’s nothing to really find there.
It’s a tough line to walk, I guess… I don’t know. TF2’s Coach program is a good idea in that direction, but also just doesn’t seem like it would work. I’d love to be coached by a friend (the little bit of time where Morbid Coffee coached me in Super Street Fighter IV was pretty awesome, and though I’m not GOOD, perse, I learned a lot about how to play Abel, even in that little session), but even among nice people volunteering for that job, I just wouldn’t be comfortable with that. A strong tutorial can help, but that sort of thing just can’t really teach a metagame. It’s hard to learn that stuff via anything but constant loss, and that’s the problem.
I don’t know. I’d like to feel like I can pull these sorts of games out, especially when I think they’re pretty neat like Dungeon Twister. But I am unsure how to do that, really.
I guess that’s what I’m trying to say.