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How to win in computer games [3]: now the complete book



We finally put the book “Play to Win” a well-known cybersportsman and game designer David Sirlin. Below is a squeeze of the most interesting of the third part and links to full chapters (a lot of letters).

In this part: about players' styles (find yourself), about optimal behavior in tournaments, and about what skills are needed to become number 1 in the game. Plus what to do in the unlikely event that you are already a world champion.
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Branches of choice and instant prediction


Player skill is the ability to predict the opponent's moves. For example, distinguish between bluffs and truths like in poker; present the direction of the development of the strategy of the enemy in Starcraft; feel the situation when the enemy is going to use a particular technique in a fighting game. From the point of view of the game designer, it looks like the need to put in the game the possibility of the emergence of "development directions" so that players contribute their styles to the game. And sometimes the prediction of the actions of the enemy gives an advantage to the newcomer against the professional.

Why? Because a professional gets used to that all players of his level make a certain counterattack on some situation - and a beginner will not do it simply out of ignorance, which may give him an unexpected advantage. In the excellent book “The Killer's Diary,” the main character carried with him three combat grenades and one dummy. The dummy he was throwing last and just went into the room while everyone was pressing in the closets. But one gangster was so untrained that instead of throwing himself into a shelter, he started shooting back ...

So the game has critical points - moments when the outcome of the game is determined. For example, in Starcraft there is an accurate psi-storm over a large army, when the enemy’s attention is diverted to the incident in another part of the map. Or the point of choice in MTG, when the main combination is played. Or a chess move, which gives a good advantage for further implementation. In general, I think you yourself perfectly feel such moments.

The good news is that even in fast fighting games, the reaction is not the main thing . The main thing is the ability to recognize such moments and make decisions in advance. And system registration, when you are looking for some pattern in the actions of the enemy. For example, in poker, someone can characteristically take their eyes off the cards for a second at the moment of collecting a strong combination.

Again, for example, in the same real fencing system registration is very important. The roughest example is that a newcomer after a bunch of two horizontal strokes can almost always make a stabbing move. Knowing this fact allows you not to catch the “piercing” moment with a subsequent counterattack “on the reaction”, but to “cache” the block with a counterstrike even at the moment of the start of the second horizontal strike of the enemy. The essence of fencing trainings is the development to the automatism of the basic patterns of movements. At the same time, attempts are made to get rid of any spurious patterns arising from such automation.

Here is what David writes about the reaction in 1/60 to a series of punches after a player’s training:
These are the only two cases in which I can perform a hit from above ... If I attack you and make several blows, you, in fact, do not need to peer at them. But you know that usually after that I perform a firestrike. You are fully prepared for it, and it is clear to you in advance that you will soon have to make a decision about blocking the upper or lower blow. Yeah, that's a firestart, right on schedule. Now you know that now I got the first chance to hit the top. To fulfill all my goals there are only two possibilities. Your thoughts do not wander among the thousands of options that will be faced. You are fully focused on the only upcoming moment. You are waiting for him. You screen out all the extra information from the screen. ... The only thing you need to see is how the strike from above starts. ... This is how an experienced player sees this sixtieth of a second when he is fully focused on the moment and is able to drop everything except the only necessary hint.

One more thing. If you are not doing what would be best in the current situation, and the enemy sees it, he begins to think. And at that moment, while he thinks, you can hold a standard reception, which in a normal situation - if he had not been discouraged - would not have worked.

Types of players


The most "tasty" for me in the experience of David is the description of metagame features. The fact is that all the meta-community of players are very similar, and, having learned to win in one, you can safely transfer the experience with minor changes to the other. Let's start with the types of players.

The first type is a turtle , focusing on protection.

During tournament battles, I am famous for my patience and tendency to annoy rivals, Ortiz raised these techniques to a whole new height. He plays a virtually risk-free game, and is content to somehow achieve a small advantage in points of life compared to his opponent. Then he, without any constraint, "runs away" until the end of the match. (What does not allow the opponent to hit him, and when the time is over, according to the rules of the game, victory is awarded to someone who has more life points). His infinite patience derails even the most serious rivals, as they despair more and more to even the score, time comes to an end.

“They say my chess games should be more interesting. I could play more interesting - and lose at the same time. "
Tigran Petrosyan

In GameDev, it is necessary to take into account that if protection gives an advantage, then the game will be positional - that is, not very spectacular. At major chess tournaments, both players of the final often do not take risky moves, but wait until the second one makes a mistake - this leads to a huge number of draws, which dramatically reduces the interest of the audience.

The next type is the aggressor . These are fast, impulsive players who play very spectacularly. In this case, aggression does not mean attack. It means a lot of action that captures the attention of the enemy. Most often, aggression is a challenge for a counterattack, which the player is waiting for.

Some of Marshall's most brilliant moves at first glance resembled typos.

The aggressor is the best type for the entertainment of the game: many actions, many results. According to my feelings, the younger the audience - the more this style affects the subjective feelings of the game. If aggressive play optimally - like the game.

The third type is obsessed . These are the ones who achieve perfection in the same style of the game, and try to stick to it. Here is an excellent description of this type:

Janowski tended to elephants, and his rivals knew about it. He confidently developed numerous directions of the game and positions on the board, which used the strengths of his favorite figures. The fate of a player obsessed with a certain edge of the game is to know this aspect better than the rest, even better than the strongest players in the world - but to lose something else, being outside his element. Rivals Janowski learned to offer him situations that allowed him to save his precious elephants in exchange for the loss of other important figures. For many years, American chess players called two elephants "two Yana".

A good idea would be to enable players to deeply develop certain branches either within the game (RPG) or at the level of the learning curve. This is used in time-based racing games — Asian perfectionists show class.

The fourth type is snakes . These are those who use a lot of out-of-game techniques to act on game states. Remember how Ostap Bender in Vasyuki complained that the grandmaster had the bad habit of smoking cheap, foul-smelling tobacco? This is from the same opera.

Snakes are very good for forums around the game, they give birth to flame and motion.

The fifth style of play is analytical or balanced . This lack of affection in style, when each decision is dictated by a specific situation. From the side it looks like a fairly simple game.

And the last one is the style of the beast . These are very risky moves that always work, because the player knows what the enemy will answer them. The basis of the style is the ability to “read” an opponent and predict his actions, that is, an appeal to the very deep variation in the directions of the game. Let me remind you that there is a way to balance the game, when the loser has the opportunity to use more risky moves or strategies (since he still loses) with a chance to achieve a big result. In this case, the player has the opportunity to minimize the "bad" probability, knowing what the opponent will do - which immediately increases the effectiveness of his game several times. This is not a bluff and not a random, it is a psychology and calculation. Remember the software that teaches the neural network to look for patterns in your game of stone-scissors-paper? After 100 games, software plays noticeably better than you, because you have found patterns that you don’t even realize. Returning the probability back to the classical 1/3 to win can only be done by entering the true random into your actions.

Tournaments


What is important to know:

One more thing. David advises to stop playing for winning in general . You have to have time for research and development - and for this you need to do very different strange (and often crazy looking) things. Winning game means minimum risk, working according to your best tactics. The game for the study - the variability of approaches, but at the same time - very high risks.

Professional player skills


Here's what David thinks you need to download:

Pay attention to the latter.
This means that there are a large number of players ... who share common beliefs about what is good and effective and what is not. They represent "worldly wisdom" in the game. But at the very edge of the distribution curve there are several players who have different views on what is correct. In their understanding, some well-known tactics do not cost anything, because they do not work on high-class players.

In the end, you win and become a famous player. What's next?
And then the most interesting:


What david does


As you read the book attentively, you can pay attention to David’s characteristic modus operandi:
  1. First, he looks at the game and assesses how varied it is enough to give an opportunity to win a prepared player. David is unlikely to be interested in games that require grinding real skill for years to advance by 1%, games where reaction or agility remains an important part (that is, the player’s initial properties, not something that can be downloaded by strategy and tactics), games where to achieve the result you need to pay a lot.
  2. Then he plays this game "for fun" with average rivals, in order not to get a lot of bad luck right away with strong players. He masters, feels the taste of victory, sees characteristic tactics.
  3. Transition to the best players is the rejection of most novice mistakes, completely different behaviors, a different understanding of the pace and what you should fight for.
  4. Then he “swings” the game to a deep understanding of mechanics, deals with a kind of debugging. Found non-obvious features used as an addition to the strategy. This debug was especially valuable in the era of arcade machines, when the games were released ready and did not receive patches.
  5. After that, David works at the metagame level - investigates who plays what, what to oppose, what are the features, etc. He meets his opponents, learns their styles, learns to read the signs of such players, watches their games and analyzes patterns of behavior.
  6. And, of course, after that goes to the tournament, trying not to worry too much.

Links


Two previous posts with squeeze and a list of translated chapters:

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/252325/

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