Asymmetric games, evolving metas, designing for teamwork vs individualism

[JustinPierce]

Continuing the discussion from Evilagram's Feedback, Questions, Suggestions:

I really enjoy these types of discussions so I've splintered it off into a new thread in General so more people can take part

When you have different players (or teams) playing the game differently,
you encourage the cyclical meta that EC describes in the second half of
this video:

Oh my god, lol. You should never try to use EC to back up a point about game design. Sirlin resoundingly debunked the video in question as a whole a long time ago: http://sirlingames.squarespace.com/blog/2012/7/18/a-discussion-of-balance.html And the point you're citing specifically about cyclical imbalance doesn't actually exist. This isn't an actual trend in the behaviors of players.

I have mad respect for Sirlin (his podcast is my favorite gamedev podcast and I recently became a patreon supporter to get access to his raw podcast), but I think he's getting tripped up in his own semantics. Sirlin likes to define things -- it really helps him conceptualize the problems he's trying to solve (and it works great) -- but wires can get crossed when he is discussing these concepts with other people who don't share his definitions. For example, I think Sirlin is getting tripped up with EC's use of the term "imbalance."

Let's move on the Extra Credits kind of "imbalance is good" though, which is not about local imbalance. It's about global imbalance, meaning as soon as you sit down at the table or console or whatever, before the first moment of play, you are disadvantaged. Yeah, that's not good and it violates a basic concept of fairness. Keep in mind that I personally think asymmetric games are much more interesting than symmetric ones, so starting a game with an advantage or disadvantage is common to me (because the characters aren't exactly equal in power). But that is a drawback of asymmetric games that in my opinion is outweighed by rich complexities you get from having so many different possible matchups. It's not something you actually strive to do, like make some character terrible or too strong. If there is some matchup that is unfair, then the developer fixing it is great. Likewise if there's some matchup that is close (like if Protoss vs Zerg were 5-5) it would be terrible if the developer intentionally changed it to make it 7-3 unfair or something.

The "imbalance" EC is talking about is actually the same "asymmetry" Sirlin is talking about (or something very close to it). You can tell this is the case because in EC's hypothetical example, Champion B is only able to rise because it was able to exploit a specific weakness of Champion A rather than a generic more/less powerful comparison. In the last sentence, Sirlin is accusing EC of suggesting that you should basically have two equal characters and just crank up the values on one to make them intentionally unfair, but that's not what EC is suggesting. Before Champion B rose, Champion A was only "little better than average" because the knowledge of Player B's counter hadn't propagated the community yet (there wasn't enough demand for that counter until Champion A was dominating) -- it wasn't due to the designers purposefully making things unfair, as Sirlin thinks EC suggests.

[edit: in the comments, Claytus/Sirlin basically come to the same conclusion]

I also think it's important to give EC some leeway and benefit of the doubt considering it's just a 3 minute video segment. It's not going to be all-encompassing and they don't spend the time clarifying all the possible counter-arguments (meaning, you can poke some superficial holes in it, but it might not be very productive to do so because it still has a very valid point).

EC’s point is simple.

• When one choice becomes dominant in the meta, there’s an increased level of effort going into finding counters
• If the game allows a counter (either intentionally or unintentionally), that increased effort has a better likelihood of finding it
• The newly discovered knowledge will affect the behavior of the playerbase as a whole

You can't debunk that, can you? EC isn't claiming a game will always allow a counter to be found -- EC is describing an ideal to strive for, that they admit is hard to accomplish. A static game with a forever-evolving meta would essentially be a perfect game with infinite depth, but no game is perfect, so the meta will naturally settle over time for static games.

You essentially validate EC's point right after saying the concept doesn't exist. The bolded is basically what EC was describing:

In games that don't patch so ham handedly or which aren't patched at all, the meta doesn't change in the manner described either. In games that enjoy mostly steady states, the meta tends to change based on the discovery of different ways to use the mechanics that were not clear originally because they are low-affordance. These changes in the meta are precipitated by low affordance ways to use mechanics actually existing somewhere in the game's possibility space. In short, if it ain't there, it ain't coming.

Low-affordance is one reason something might have been underutilized, but another reason could be that there was just less demand for it (there might not be a lot of demand for a counter to Champion A until Champion A starts winning a lot), which is what EC chose to focus on.

And the anecdote EC uses to validate the concept

When you see people on forums asking to have things nerfed, wait a few weeks and see what happened.

EC is talking about something you see in the real world alllllll the time. Butcher was added to Heroes of the Storm and everyone was calling for nerfs because he can potentially have insane DPS and just eat through just about any hero. Few weeks later, the community has learned how to counter him and the Butcher has settled into the middle of the tier list and the community went back to calling nerfs for other things.

Also, I think the fact that EC used LoL (and the point about it helping Riot's monetization) and MtG as examples demonstrates that game updates fit within their concept of cyclical imbalance, rather than debunk it (EC even mentions going in and fixing things with a patch or not). Since no game is perfect and it's basically impossible to create an endlessly evolving meta with a static game, the next best thing is to keep updating it with patches. Their 3 minute video segment didn't go into this in detail, but I think it's a pretty safe assumption. In 2015, I think the idea of a static competitive game is pretty much an anachronism anyway -- fighting games, with their roots in the arcades, are basically the last remaining examples and SFV is finally breaking away from that on a fundamental level.

In reality, good balance tends to depend more on good patches. MOBAs keep things fresh by changing the game up every patch and having shallow characters that are easy to pick up and nobody gets too invested in or worried over if they're nerfed.

And you seem to agree! You, me, Sirlin, EC all seem to agree -- we're just getting tripped up in semantics and framing.

Bonus from the marketing end, MOBAs haven't been doing well. DOTA and League of Legends have been doing well.

It's simpler to say "MOBAs" with the understanding that I'm referring to the successful ones, rather than specify which MOBAs in particular every time I want to refer to the successful ones, but you're right.

DMC is literally singleplayer.

I know that, I was trying to make a point with it. About how complex play can be when you have a ton of options available all at once versus being forced to lock in a couple option sets in advance.

Right, I was just pointing out that, unlike AoT, DMC cares 0% about facilitating teamwork -- to join my larger point about how limiting options of individuals can encourage more interesting teamwork by pushing them to combine their resources to form a complete strategy.

If players don't want to specialize, they can pick things like the Multicannon

This is a different type of specialization of course. If they have the multicannon, then they can't 2 other more specialized weapons.

This is a personal opinion, and doesn't have much basis in any sort of principle, so you're free to disregard it, but for mouselook shooter games, I find that the breaking point for when a game can feasibly have specialized weapons is 3 weapons, and below that, the weapons need to be at least partially generalized in function or they will never be used by players except in spots where they can fire it and switch back easily. At 2 or 1 weapon, they'll always have a general function weapon on hand I feel and won't use more specialized ones. I dunno. I felt fine carrying a weapon I didn't use often in Vanquish in the third slot, but not nearly as much in Bioshock Infinite or others like it. Might be something to keep in mind as more weapons are implemented, I might be totally off the mark.

Multicannon and similar weapons/equip is essentially specializing in having no specialty, which makes the term kind of useless because you could describe everything as a specialization with that model -- eg, "I'm specializing in being a little specialized in X, but otherwise well rounded" really just means "not very specialized."

Your second point is very valid, but also has to do with teamwork. In pubs, players will naturally specialize less because they won't be able to rely on teammates as heavily to fill in the gaps. Different options will become viable when you're playing with teammates you've practiced with. Regardless, you're right that it's something I'll have to keep in mind.

The thing to watch out for is the day everyone is carrying a multi-cannon, and the thing you may have to worry about is it being impossible to make the multi-cannon bad enough that it's not the weapon everyone carries, while still being good enough that people actually use it. In other words, the matchup between someone carrying a multi-cannon and someone not might never be better than 5:5.

(I wrote this before reading later when you basically acknowledge the same thing) I'm more concerned with the matchups of team compositions, rather than the matchups with individual loadouts. If one loadout is 9:1 vs a different loadout, that's not necessarily a problem at all because it's a 5v5 game. The goal for balancing AoT will basically be to make sure that each weapon/equipment can find a niche in a viable team composition. Maybe a team only needs one instance of that weapon/equipment (like Speed Gates) -- that's fine.

When you look at a chart like this for AoT, my goal is to have a lot of variety in the top entries of that list.

In Quake, as you say, you can have an answer for anything -- you rely on teammates only in the most basic sense (additional firepower/zoning).

http://www.sirlin.net/posts/episode-2-cooperative-games
Check this at 24:44 roughly, where Sirlin talks about "Part of the Machine" design.

The other thing is that honestly, Quake 3 is kind of simple compared to your average fighting game character or RTS army. You have like 9 "moves". The weapons are codified almost entirely by what range they work at. The thing I fear is that in team-based games like TF2, when you have characters reduced down to only a few functions, the way the players play the game tends to get more simple and less interesting. Quake is complex in part because the players have do use different weapons based on range, so players have flexibility in how they can approach their opponent, attempting to catch their opponent in different ways from different angles within a single load-out. In TF2, you have two weapons, you usually stick to 1 of them based on the encounter, you usually fall into the place that you're most needed for your job on the team. In Team Fortress Classic, or the free mod, Fortress Forever, you have more flexibility to approach the current situation because each class has more individual options.

You're completely right and one of the big goals in AoT is to make the weapons/equipment more involved than in other FPS games. Instead of breaking up the Multicannon into 3 different weapons, they're all combined into one. The Teleport Blade not only does great damage up close, but it has its own utility to make getting close more viable (that utility is also useful for flag capping and other things). Again, I'm not at all satisfied with the current meta -- I'm mostly just outlining my goals and pointing out where the current meta may hint at those goals. Right now I also have to keep new player onboarding in mind, so I'm also worried about making these initial weapons too complex -- for example, the Rocket Launcher is supposed to be relatively simple so new players can feel more comfortable with it while they get used to the movement and the rest of the game. Later, when I have the onboarding at a better place, I can continue to explore more high end meta additions that are less limiting.

Comparing it to a MOBA hero, each weapon/equipment should be 2-3 skills/traits -- you combine your weapons/equipment to create a custom hero with a lot of capabilities. These capabilities may compliment each other for specific roles that are meant to synergize with your teammates (specialization) or round out the loadout as a whole (non-specialization), similar to how some heroes are more specialized than others in MOBAs. Part of why I prefer loadouts over classes is that players can choose how flexible they want their characters to be.

First, it creates interesting dependencies with teammates.

Right now, you don't have weapons that have significant synergies with other team mates using different weapons. That might be something to consider in the design of future weapons. Especially cool if you can figure out how to have team synergy between weapons without specifically changing their properties based on whether it's your team mate helping you or not, but don't break your back over this.

Agree , except I do want to break my back over this because it's the sort of thing I find extremely interesting. And yeah, I like the more open ended synergies that aren't so rigidly defined.

Second, specialization creates more opportunities for unique play styles.

More accurate might be that it forces a division between elements, thereby preventing aspects of some elements from being overshadowed by others. Fighting someone at long range when you don't have weapons that are particularly effective at that range forces you to either move in, or use the weapons you have on hand at something they're not very good at, where you might just switch weapons if you had the same long range weapon. Though, players can still express unique play styles in the way they use individual characters in fighting games, Quake, and even Dante in DMC4, even though they all have the same option sets. Players naturally get good at different ways specific options can be used, creating a style as they attempt to focus on those uses. FPS games tend to have less options, so player styles tend to be more uniform unfortunately.

Isn't the bolded a play style, though? Dhalsim stays back. Teleport Blade stays close. True, you can still have play styles in something like Quake where you have all the options, but you'd agree that it's to a lesser degree, right? Because you have options for every situation, it behooves you to learn how to use them properly so you can play without sacrifice. Ignoring one of those options to focus on another will generally put you at a disadvantage because you're wasting your resources and your opponent will still be able to respond to you anyway because they have all the options. Ryu is a more well rounded character -- a Ryu that tries to play like Dhalsim (or any other more specialized character) is probably not an optimal Ryu. You can have viable playstyles within Ryu, but the uniqueness of "Ryu Style A" vs "Ryu Style B" will generally be smaller than the uniqueness of different characters.

Try thinking of every set of 2 weapons as a character. and imagine its matchup versus the other "characters" How can you make each of these more interesting? How can you make them more balanced? Not all of these have to be balanced because it's a team game, it's alright to have some loadouts get countered by others. This can be something you plan for also, as long as you consider how the team can collectively right the imbalance, or how the person who is working with the bad matchup makes up for it by creating value for his team in other ways.

To finish up, alright, having it limited to 2 slots might be interesting. Lets see where it goes in the future.

Don't forget the equipment!

Again, the meta is far from perfect right now, but the Shield and Light of Apollo can already impact a fight to similar degrees as the weapons themselves. Speed Gates can impact the match significantly. Game-changing equipment is another example where I think I can make AoT stand out from other FPS.