Near Impossible: Reduce Skill in Competitive Games - Page 3

On August 18 2014 03:46 Tephus wrote:
And now, from the guy who brought you 'Riki and Ursa are op' after becoming an expert after 1 month of play, the guy who literally comes from a not-so-parallel universe, comes another awful argument that wont convince anyone!

I wonder what's next for our hero!

On August 18 2014 03:46 Tephus wrote:
And now, from the guy who brought you 'Riki and Ursa are op' after becoming an expert after 1 month of play, the guy who literally comes from a not-so-parallel universe, comes another awful argument that wont convince anyone!

I wonder what's next for our hero!

On August 18 2014 16:51 paralleluniverse wrote:

What's this? Another Dota 2 fanboy that can't admit that he's wrong. Even back when they had a win rate of around 60% (worse than essentially the greatest imbalances in SC2), you still couldn't admit any fault with Dota 2. Let me address those awful counter-arguments you've given to debunk the OP. Oh wait, there's no counterarguments at all. No substance. Because I'm right, you're not, and you've provided nothing at all.

On August 18 2014 08:15 Krohm wrote:

This is really apparent when I compared SC:BW to SC2. I absolutely destroyed most of my friends at BW. However in SC2 I actually struggled to beat them, and I couldn't beat some of them at all it was a complete reversal of how BW was. Removing and/or streamlining mechanics allows poorer players to compete with better players. I call this the casual curse.

On August 18 2014 08:47 amazingxkcd wrote:
This entire OP is basically flamebait, otherwise rock paper sisscors is the toughest game in the world

Law of Dumbing Down Games
The only way to reduce skill in a competitive game is to change the rules so that there is an optimal strategy satisfying the following 3 conditions:
1. The optimal strategy is implementable by players/teams.
2. When implemented by one player/team, but not the opposing player/team, the player/team that implements the optimal strategy wins.
3. When implemented by both players/teams, the game either results in a draw or is completely determined by luck.

On August 18 2014 12:44 ninazerg wrote:
Let me propose another model called "Some people are more capable than others". This is the general theory that sometimes, one person has the ability to do something that another person cannot. For example, let's say you played Basketball with LeBron James and it was srs business. In oversimplified math:

LeBron = 1
You = 1

1/1 = 1

SO U ARE EQUAL!!!!!! HOLY SHIT U CAN TOTALLY KICK HIS ASS

BUT WAIT I HAVE THIS GRAFF THAT SHOWS THIS:

+ Show Spoiler +

On August 18 2014 04:10 Nimix wrote:


Yeah, the more you remove complexity from a game, the easier it is to focus on what remains, so lesser players will be able to catch up to better players easier. So even if the remaining aspect is complex in itself, it will be easier to master it as you don't have to split your attention/knowledge, it reduces the general practice time necessary to improve at the game as a whole, etc.

On August 18 2014 08:36 Velocirapture wrote:
The BIG thing i will say is that removing mechanics reduces clarity in the quality of a player. If a game requires you to do 200 things then a player who can reasonably manage 150 is clearly better than somebody who can only manage 100 and this is how we experience Broodwar. If there are only 3 things to do then everybody will manage to do all of those things at every level and we are forced to subjectively determine skill qualitatively rather than quantitatively.

On August 17 2014 14:16 paralleluniverse wrote:

You have not understood the argument. Games with many complex mechanics can have a very high theoretical skill ceiling, and removing those mechanics can lower the skill ceiling. But lowering the theoretical skill ceiling generally does not dumb down nor make the game require less skill to play, because, as I explained, players are constrained by the finite number of things humans can do, so they can't hit that skill ceiling. It is obvious that lowering a skill ceiling that cannot be hit changes nothing about the skill required to play a game by a human, because they can't hit it anyway.

In a competitive game, if the game is made easier (e.g. multiple unit selection is added), you can still change your play to 1-up your opponent, by focusing more on strategy and less on selecting units, one at a time. If not, then why can't you win 100% of the time? If another mechanic is changed to make it easier (e.g. multiple building selection is added), again you can still change your play to 1-up your opponent, by focusing less on macro and more on micro. This can be repeated indefinitely as long as the skill ceiling doesn't fall below what humans can do. If it does, that's when the Law of Dumbing Down Games applies, and both players can't do anything more to improve their game and increase their chance of winning because they are using the optimal strategy. Only in that case is the game truly dumbed down.

You claim that BW requires both more macro skill and positioning skill than SC2, so that the loss of macro skill in SC2 is not compensated and my argument is wrong. No. Even if BW requires more skill in both, my argument is still correct, because it's not about how each mechanic adds to the "aggregate skill cap", that's irrelevant, it's about whether the aggregate skill cap remains above what is humanly possible. And it is. Thus, the game is no easier because you can't always win as more skilled humans will still beat you.

You also mention some skills, like positioning, cannot be improved any more. If a game was dumbed down so much that it's 100% about positioning (e.g. CS:GO with auto-aim and auto-fire) and positioning really can't be improved by humans (i.e. there is an optimal strategy that satisfies the 3 conditions), then by applying the Law of Dumbing Down Games, it can be concluded that in this case the game is dumbed down and skill has been reduced. But SC2 is not 100% about positioning, and positioning can virtually always be improved, if only slightly. In a game like CS:GO with auto-aim and auto-fire, a slight improvement in skill in positioning can be the difference between winning and losing. But I don't see anyone using this argument that "the game has been reduced to a skill with an optimal strategy, implementable by humans, that cannot be improved", which would be a logical valid argument.

My argument is simple:
If a competitive game is dumbed down to require less skill, then why can't you always win? If you can play an optimal strategy that makes it so that you always win or always draw or reduce the game to 100% luck, by the Law of Dumbing Down Games, the game's skill has been reduced. But if you can't, then you don't have an optimal strategy and so there's more you can do to improve your skill further.

On August 18 2014 17:15 adwodon wrote:
The OP just seems confused as the difference in depth and complexity by talking about only complexity when depth actually matters a lot when you talk about skill required for games.

A small number of mechanics with depth can lead to a game requiring significant skill, like Tetris for example. This doesn't mean that complexity isn't important though, the difference between checkers and chess is the addition of slightly more complex mechanics but the results are striking.

There is a nice balance, Dwarf Fortress for example is something highly complex with a lot of depth, the problem there is the complexity is so vast its difficult to see the depth.

My point is simply that you can't really have this discussion of skill and complexity without discussing depth which is why the OP has missed the mark on this one. It's entirely possible to reduce complexity without reducing depth, and this would retain a skill ceiling like the OP suggests, however the removal of complexity may also significantly harm the depth of the game and that would affect the skill required.

On August 18 2014 17:25 Shaella wrote:

tic tac toe when played by two equally skilled played will always end in a cats game

So skill can be reduced.

Law of Dumbing Down Games
The only way to reduce skill in a competitive game is to change the rules so that there is an optimal strategy satisfying the following 3 conditions:
1. The optimal strategy is implementable by players/teams.
2. When implemented by one player/team, but not the opposing player/team, the player/team that implements the optimal strategy wins.
3. When implemented by both players/teams, the game either results in a draw or is completely determined by luck.

Examples include SCV Wars where both players have only 1 SCV (the optimal stratgy is attack) or Tic-tac-toe.

On August 18 2014 11:24 SwatRaven wrote:
Just for curiosity's sake did you get any information about this topic from something similar to an academic paper or was this all your own creation?

On August 18 2014 17:59 Shaella wrote:
>language of game theory

haha

You think there's a science to game design.

On August 18 2014 18:00 paralleluniverse wrote:

There's a science of the analyzing how to win games: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory

On August 17 2014 13:04 paralleluniverse wrote:

The origin of this false belief is simple: people argue that because a mechanic was removed, it is easier to play the game and win. But this is wrong, because in a competitive game, removing a mechanic also makes it easier for your opponent to play the game and win. These two forces exactly cancel out, so in fact, the game is not any easier. The skill required is the same.

In symbols:
Your skill: X. Your opponent's skill: Y.
If X > Y, then you win.
If a complex mechanic is removed, you (incorrectly) think you're better as a result of the game being made easier:
Your skill: X+c. Your opponent’s skill: Y,
where c>0. But in fact, what's really happened is that:
Your skill: X+c. Your opponent’s skill: Y+c,
and so the game isn't easier, the skill required to win is completely unchanged.

On August 18 2014 18:05 writer22816 wrote:
You must either be a troll (weren't you the one who made an argument that Ursa was imba?) or you are just really dense. Assuming the latter, here is why your entire argument is wrong.



The fallacy here is that you assume skill levels can grow arbitrarily high. In reality every game has a skill ceiling P where any player whose skill >= P plays a perfect game. So the actual logic goes like this:

Your skill = X. Opponent's skill = Y, where X and Y <= P.
Game becomes easier.
Your skill becomes min(X+c, P). Opponent's skill becomes min(Y+c, P).
Hence there exists values of c (c >= P - min(X, Y)) where, after the change, X and Y will play the same level even if they were originally possessed different skill levels. Which is why people may become worried if competitive games are dumbed down without a good reason.

Try to think about it for a while, it's not that hard.

And in fact, if you would read the OP, the actual skill ceiling is irrelevant to the discussion. The actual skill ceiling does not determine how much skill is required to succeed at the game as long as no one can reach the actual skill ceiling (Law of Dumbing Down Games).

As long as everyone can do something more to improve their play, to increase their wins, then the skill required to play the game hasn't been reduced, because everyone can do more to play better. Thus, what it means to reduce the skill to play a competitive game, must be a situation where some people cannot possibly do anything more to improve their play as they've found an optimal strategy to play the game. Thus we have the Law of Dumbing Down Games:
The only way to reduce skill in a competitive game is to change the rules so that there is an optimal strategy satisfying the following 3 conditions:
1. The optimal strategy is implementable by players/teams.
2. When implemented by one player/team, but not the opposing player/team, the player/team that implements the optimal strategy wins.
3. When implemented by both players/teams, the game either results in a draw or is completely determined by luck.

If a competitive game is dumbed down to require less skill, then why can't you always win? If you can play an optimal strategy that makes it so that you always win or always draw or reduce the game to 100% luck, by the Law of Dumbing Down Games, the game's skill has been reduced. But if you can't, then you don't have an optimal strategy and so there's more you can do to improve your skill further.