Control Freak

“Been playing HL2 as I fancy going through it again. I’m enjoying it, but still find it weird on the XBOX controller. Things which are piss easy on the mouse can be a real bugger on the controller” – Navan Daughn

Valve need to get their heads screwed on for console conversions

When does a controller become part of the game? Pretty much always! However the degree to which it affects the game experience really varies wildly from case to case. I think Navan now understands some of my complaints with regards to The Orange Box much better, having tried it on a twin stick pad. And having played through Half Life 1 myself on a mouse, I already wish I’d got The Orange Box on the PC rather than for the 360. I’m having the same problem with Left 4 Dead as well. Apart from the small concession of a quick-turn button the game is completely designed for mouse & keyboard control rather than for twin stick on a gamepad, and I felt the game really suffered. Now with the Left 4 Dead 2 demo out, I’ve been able to directly compare it on the 360 vs the PC; and there was no contest at all, the game handled far more easily on a mouse, and due to the design of the game this made it actually much more fun to play in many ways. It leaves me frustrated with both versions because many more of my friends are on 360, and I’d much rather play over XBox Live, in the comfort of my front room, with my preferred twin sticks; yet the game feels so much nicer to control on the PC with a mouse and keyboard. So basically I won’t be 100% satisfied with either version. I realised what I really want is a proper “Left 4 Dead 360″ version that changes the game control mechanics enough so that control on a twin stick pad becomes viable & fun and doesn’t feel like you’re stuggling to replicate a mouse. Halo, Gears and many other titles all do this fine, so it can be done.

Some people may say it’s a simple case of “always play a game on it’s default intended controller”, which held more weight with arcade conversions, but it’s still not exactly clear cut. Should Street Fighter 2 HD Remix be played on an 360 or PS3 pad since those are the systems it was released for? Ok, it’s clearly a update of an original joystick game though – so fine, use a joystick. But what about the differences between different joysticks? Isn’t it a bit of an unfair advantage in the game to be using a high quality controller vs someone that isn’t? For Street Fighter IV, shouldn’t I always be using button bindings and turbo auto fire? These things are built into the game options and the official controller! On the PC it gets even more murky, with WoW Macro keyboards, gaming mice with extra button bindings and on and on. Where do you draw the line between cheating and ‘playing to win’ when it comes to your choice of controller? Should you even be allowed to reconfigure your button layout on Halo on the 360? That sounds ridiculous I know, but it shows how difficult it is to draw the line without some kind of organisation of the metagame rules around the video game itself. For Street Fighter, I play to the standard I’ll be held to at whatever offline tournament I want to enter, but if I wasn’t competing in organised offline events, what then?

Auto-fire is probably the biggest controller issue on competitive 360 games, and it affects everything from Street Fighter to FPS titles. There are some quite simple solutions to either designing the game so it won’t be an issue, or detecting it as cheating online. But sadly games developers don’t appear to care, putting in pistols that ‘fire as fast as you can press the button’ which is foolishly naive in an online competitive game, and making the aforementioned official controllers with auto-fire built in. It’s there so you can test combos out in training mode? Yeh right. And the line just gets blurrier all the time – it is already possible to use a keyboard and mouse on a 360 if you are willing to go to enough trouble with things like this XPFS 4.0 Speed.

Another game I love, Virtual On was recently re-released in an upgraded version on the 360 on XBLA, and I was initally overjoyed. But it requires such a specialised controller to play properly I’ve completely avoided it until one comes available. My friend Ollie Barder covered the history of Virtua Ron (as I affectionately refer to it sometimes) and it’s controller issues on the 360 here. However, luckily, fan pressure has meant that a twin-stick controller for the 360 was eventually announced. It’s still not out at the time of writing, but is imminent, and can be previewed at Hori’s site. Of course the problem is whether I’ll ever be able to get hold of one in the UK, and at what price, and then will the game’s netcode make it worthwhile to even play, let alone shell out for another controller.

I don’t really have any answers here, with the current state of play, other than to raise this point as yet another murky area of gaming that developers of competitive games, and conversions of games, really ought to pay much more attention to. However especially on platforms like the PC, it might be a case that there’s very little they can do to control the issue however. All this, and I haven’t even touched on WiiMotes or Natal yet!

Confessions of a Whore

“If you have something to confess, do it now. Give yourself some peace“.

Last night I Achievement Whored.

Well, sort of, as we’ll see… however more accurately I helped out a friend by setting up his attempt to ‘glitch’ Left 4 Dead to allow him to get an Achievement that is very difficult to unlock under normal play conditions. I actually only agreed to do this, because this particular glitch would only affect him – only he’d get the Achievement, and I wouldn’t. Which was exactly what I wanted, because if I unlocked this Achievement I would only find any satisfaction in it by doing it under proper play conditions – so I actively want to leave it locked as a potential goal for another time.

As I discussed the Achievements of L4D more with him, it was obvious there was quite a few “workaround” ways to get many of the Achievements on this game. Glitches like this were pretty complicated, but there were the far more obvious ones like putting it on the easiest difficulty setting, specifically playing solo, or with a group of 4, or the classic the ‘2nd controller’ offline ‘multiplayer’ mode. My friend was quite willing to use any or all of these techniques in The Quest for the Holy Unlock.

However, to defend my friend, as he’s not exactly an iWin controller-using baboon, he specifically didn’t ruin anyone else’s play session in his self-admitted Achievement Whoring, in fact, he explained he doesn’t like playing online competitive or even co-operative  games at all in general – due the the problem of most ‘pick up group’ players being total dickshits – a problem I do sympathise with entirely. So he actually chooses to get even the “Versus” mode Achievements via ‘exploits’ in only offline play where he can.

I came to the firmer conclusion that as I’d already suspected, and like so many games, L4D has some very poorly conceived Achievements.  So it won’t really interest me to try and get some of them at all because of this failure in the game’s design. However, it got me thinking further; why does my “Whoring” friend do it? Whereas I see this gamerscore meta-game as one not worth playing, except in particular circumstances, for the reasons explained in my previous take on Achievements (and also covered in an excellent post on Not Rocket Science too), my friend here was actively engaged in this meta-game and clearly deriving fun from it. I got the sense that he enjoyed for the feeling of completeness he got from getting the Achievements – even via any ‘unintended’ means necessary. Regardless of the method it still made him feel like he’d ‘finished’ the game (or finished a greater portion of). When I asked him about it more, this seemed to fit. He’s the type of player, of which I know many, that generally just plays any game through once, just to ’see the story’ and finish the game, and won’t care if he does it on easy mode or whatever as he doesn’t really necessary want the challenge or the potential frustration along with it. As for collecting achievements he said he mostly did it on a whim, as if it was almost an unconcious decision – and that he doesn’t do it for most games. But for certain games, like L4D, he’d decided he wanted to try to get as many Achievements as he possibly could – and any he was frustrated by not being able to get via ‘normal play’ he was happy to try and unlock via any other method, not for the gamerscore but just because he wanted to and he could. To me this was more the stance of a “collector”, and although surely not mutually exclusive, it does seem to be somewhat different than the ‘badge of honour’ (or skill or knowledge if you like) motivation that is more typical of the Achievement ‘hunter’. Which, when it results in ‘boosting’ play, I see as merely a cheaters perversion of  my own attitude to Achievements. Ie: potentially fun sub-goals and also records of what I consider real fun accomplishments in a game – hence why I refuse to take any measures to shortcut the fun I find in working towards those records.

Hmm, wrong image search...

Once the L4D unlock glitch had been ‘acheived’ though, I started having a quick play on the free demo of Ikaruga. It is on offer to Gold members this week for the paltry sum of 400 MSP, which is only about 3 pounds. I commented at the time in XBL chat that it seems almost rude not to buy it for such a cheap price as it’s a pretty good game that once-upon-a-time I had been totally hyped about… however that’s exactly the issue with it for me. I had it on the Dreamcast, I played it on the Dreamcast, and I still have a Dreamcast hooked up, right there next to my XBox 360 (albeit on an SD-TV as the DC’s lower resolution tends to look better). So really, why was I even  seriously considering spending extra cash on this game, that I could play for no additional cost, and could’ve played ‘for free’ at any point before now too?

Was it just for the higher fidelity graphics? Was it just for the online multiplayer, or the convenience of having it on my “main” console (& TV).. ? Perhaps… but when I found myself actually opening up the Achievements list to decide whether to buy the game or not it hit me. Had I unwittingly turned into some lesser varient of an Achievement Whore myself.. ? Was I really considering spending money just to get some gamerscore? With some relief as I analysed myself, I realised this wasn’t the case.

The main reason I cared about the Achievements was to see if they would give me a new viable “goal” that would make me want to re-play the game again, but the other more surprising reason to me, was that the Achievements, and the online nature of my XBL account itself, were also providing a means for me to to potentially be able to show my respect for the game & it’s developers in a very tangible fashion. If I bought & played the game it would show on my gamercard online on things like this blog and social networks. XBL Friends would see me playing the game. Ikaruga! It’s friggin’ hardcore Treasure shmup! Or if I unlocked an Achievement, I would be able to post it to my facebook newsfeed, and friends would see I was playing this game. I could easily display my liking for Treasure, others might see it and comment, ask what it is, or choose to play the game co-operatively with me or challenge my scores and the like…. I realised it was all of this that was actually the deciding factor in getting the game and playing it again. I don’t know what this says about my style of play – I suspect nothing really. The fact that such non-game features feature into my buying & playing decisions probably says more about me as a person than a gamer really – and just how much I like games in general!

Ultimate Achievement Unlocked: MACROSS Gamerscore

I WIN!!!11! olol

Far more fun than racking up a huge pointless gamerscore…

This historic moment deserves to be captured for posterity:

It doesn’t get much better than this in Gamerscore land.

MA
KU
RO
SU

Special thanks go to an unlikely set of games that made this possible: Sonic the Hedgehog (original XBLA), Doritos Dash of Destruction – both of which I got free, and Senko No Ronde (Wartech) which I’m actually rather enjoying at my utter newbie level of play on it.

The only trouble is, I  really don’t want to get any more Achievements ever now, which is why I wanted to get this done before Street Fighter 4, as that will hopefully make me forget about this enough to ignore ruining my score. And once I do.. see you again in 70,000 points time. (I hope my score carries onto the XBox 720 then )

The Tiers of Time

I’m guessing that most readers of this blog will be familiar with a tier listing for a game with matchups and a choice of characters or races with different ability sets. Admittedly this is mainly only fighting games where I’ve seen this kind of thing happen, but it could be doable for other games too, for example, you could theoretically try to ‘tier’ the various different Civs for games of Civilization Revolutions, or tier the different characters in Sega Superstars Tennis or many other sports games.

But in case you aren’t familiar at all, the basic idea is to take the very best player(s) with that given character & game, and have them rate their chances against each other character in the game in a theoretical matchup of ‘players of equal skill’ – in this case, meaning the very best player(s) with that other character also. This rating is generally given as a score out of 10, which is also sometimes seen as a rough guide to the number of wins out of 10 matches that would demonstrate the players are of equal skills were they to win that amount. The “points scores” are then added up, to give the theoretical ‘best characters’ in the game, and the weaker ones, and these are often clumped together into groups of characters that are at a similar points score, and these groups are called names like Top/Average/Low etc; hence the use of the name tiers. Please note there is usually plenty of disagreement about the definitions of how to do these points scores, and naturally, even if that can be agreed, things are argued often and tier listings can change over time as new techniques and information come to light about a game. Where the two top players disagree, eg: the top Ryu thinks Ryu is a 6-4 over Guile, but the top Guile player thinks Guile is a 5-5 even match with Ryu, the scores are usually then averaged, so the score will be shown as a 5.5 advantage to Ryu in the table, or +0.5 for Ryu, -0.5 for Guile.

 

No-one has really tried to put together a SSF2T HDR tier listing yet, partly due to there being no major tournaments with it yet, and also due to the unfortunate bugs in the game, but the latest one for Super Turbo can be found here:

http://curryallergy.blogspot.com/2008/11/super-turbo-new-arcadia-diagram.html

Or pop over to Eventhubs (linked on our side bar) and you can find a lot of decent reasonably up-to-date tier lists, eg. Super Turbo, SF4 Arcade, and SF3 3S.

 

Now one thing people tend to forget is that even the tier score listing can give a very poor idea of who’s the ‘best character’ to pick, as the final score is unweighted, and thus assumes all characters are played equally, which is of course not the case. In a tournament setting, how the character fairs against the other (at least perceived) top-tier characters is going to matter more, or for XBL or online play in general, how the character deals with the more popular online characters (such as the shotokan scrubs) or the more lag-friendly characters (such as Dic, Claw and Blanka) may also matter more. So you have to take all of that into account depending on the situation as much as, or even more than the raw number. Again, as I am sure most readers are familiar with, this is what’s known as a metagame.

In a relatively unknown metagame, or in a knock-out type of situation, such as some tournament formats, then a characters ‘worst’ matchup can matter as much as, if not more than their overall scoring. As also commented very accurately on the New Arcadia link above by NH2, this is what makes Dictator a much better character than his raw numbers, as his worst matchup is still only a ‘3′, meaning you have  at least a reasonable chance against an unknown field in all matchups. 

For a personal example, both of these factors contribute to why I am now maining, and doing better with Deejay than Guile these days, as I find he is better ‘vs the field’ in the XBL metagame, and especially, has fewer nightmare matchups for me. It’s really only vs Brouki (& maybe Dhalsim) when I feel I have very little chance to win with Deejay.

 

Even if one understands a metagame though, people still get confused with tier lists and what they really mean. Often new players confuse it with characters they find are easy to play with and/or learn. I find a good example on HDR is Bwanka, especially online. He’s got a huge throw range, an un-techable throw, some really high priority jumping attacks, a fairly easy crossup, is generally good at aggressive rush-down style of play that’s more effective in lag, and super-fast specials that become almost impossible to react to in heavy lag; basically, overall he is a very easy character to play with to an average level, and generally gets better online, hence why he is known as Bwanka to me . I’d even like to use my own play as a good example! I really don’t have a clue what I am doing with Bwanka. I’m such a ‘n00b’ I don’t even know how to perform all his moves; the hop-about move is a mystery to me still, as I never really play him seriously ever, yet, using Street Fighter basics, I can get generally decent results with Bwanka despite my huge lack of skill & knowledge with him. I’m equally as weak a player with say, Boxer or Dhalsim, yet I don’t do nearly as well with them as I do with Bwanka. Sometimes this ease of play at a low or intermediate play level, is indicative of the same situations at high level play, but here in this example, it really isn’t true, as Blanka is generally low-tier overall, yet Boxer and Dhalsim are right at the top. They just have a much steeper learning curve, in my opinion. Blanka maybe relatively easy to play at an average level, but conversely he’s actually really difficult to master and win with at the very very top.

 

But this brings up another interesting point or ‘problem’ with tier listings like this. They only apply at the very top only. For example Guile is listed as a 6-4 advantage vs Blanka. If I remember correctly, Muteki Guile (probably the best Guile player in the world) actually rated it as an 8-2 advantage to Guile himself. Now at this ‘uber-top-pro level‘, having watched some of their games, I can actually easily believe this score is honestly reflective of what he experiences. 

The trouble is that tier listing won’t mean much for your regular or even perhaps a very very good player in some cases. For example, for me, an above-average Guile (well, perhaps not, but I was at least good enough for top 300 in the first few weeks of HDR, when I was maining Guile almost the whole time in ranked – before the ratings bug hit), playing against an equally skilled above average Blanka is a nightmare. Even though I don’t think I’m good enough to accurately rate it as a 10 point score, I’d certainly rate it as a ‘large disadvantage’ to Guile, so I’d put it as low as a 2-8 probably. Part of the ‘proof’ is when I switch to another character that I am generally weaker with, know less about, yet find I do better & win more easily against the very same Blanka player.  

What you’d really need to express this issue into figures, is multiple tier listings based on the skill level of the players involved. This would enable you to see how a character’s tier changes as your skill level progresses, effectively demonstrating a characters learning curve, rather than only showing how good that character is at the very peak of that learning curve, which very few people will attain. 

To do this you’d need an accurate measure of the players skill – the closest thing we have to this would be a players ranked skill score with a particular character. A game would  then need to collect all the stats of who won against who, along with that players ’skill rating’, and then only using results where players were of comparable skill to compare to create a matchup chart and thus the tiers. Put that data onto graphs and charts; and you’d be able to see actual learning curves, matchups vs skill rating, and ‘top end’ character ability displayed graphically. Perhaps it’s only me, but personally I’d find that kind of thing absolutely fascinating!  

 

About the current state of play (and data) with tiers in general though, I’ll leave you with this final thought which summarises parts of this article into a great post from Chaghatai, from Capcom Unity, (with corrections and emphasis added):

The difference between the people is likely* to be greater than the advantage or disadvantage imparted in a matchup. And in any case those listings assume both players know all the counters and counter counters inside out for that matchup.

Amateurs as a group and usually as individuals are more inconsistent than pros. So what for a pro makes a real difference, to an amature, they may not notice the difference at all.

It’s like expensive golf clubs – indespensible for a pro, but most amateurs wouldn’t notice the effect on their game.

People, don’t worry about your matchups too much, just have fun.

“But Otochun says this match is a disadvantage….”

Are you Otochun? Is your opponent Daigo?

No?

Then don’t worry about it.

Tiers are real in a sense and can be interesting tools to analyze a tournament or whatever, but on a day to day basis, they’re nothing to get overly hung up on.

* I’d personally note this depends a lot on the game itself! I find HDR to be pretty good, and certainly much better in this regard than Super Turbo, due to the rebalancing attempted.  

 

Of course, if you believe M’s infostation, you can pretty much disregard this article. An M-tier listing is very simple, since every character will either win or lose to each other character; it’d obviously be a 50/50 chance.