Let me tell you a little bit about GunZ: The Duel.
It is February 2004. It's been six years since MAIET was founded in South Korea. The name stands for "Team Innovation." It's also been jokingly referred to as "putting the I back in TEAM." As you can see MAIET is team spelled backwards, with the "I" added. MAIET originally started as a team of five researches that wanted to create innovate games.
For the past year, the company has been working very hard on what will later turn out to be MAIET's breakthrough into international fame. The team members are excited. The Project GunZ: The Duel is about to go into beta testing.
GunZ: The Duel is a first person shooter game. MAIET's wanted to give gamers a chance to do the same stylish moves that you can also see in movies. Gun-wielders can shoot while rolling around, run on walls, and perform wall-jumps.
However, true freedom of movement is achieved when you are holding a sword. With a sword, you can dash out of the way with lightning speed like a ninja. You can launch your opponents into the air, where they are sitting ducks. And you can even block bullets with your sword.
The game was rapidly growing in popularity. And then, during beta-test, a critical flaw in the game engine was discovered. MAIET started getting emails. The forums were being flooded with protests.
What had happened? Somebody had discovered that you can switch to your gun instantly during the "slashing" animation of a sword. This led to the development of new moves not in the original game, for example, the aptly named "slash shot." Hit somebody with your sword, then switch to your shotgun and hit them at point blank range while they are stunned by sword hit.
The game had been balanced for sword vs gunfights. Sword-wielders need to get in range to hit, but they also move around much faster than gun-wielders. Now, it had become possible to move around like a sword-wielder and then switch to your gun instantly whenever you need to shoot.
People developed moves like the "half-step:" You jump up into the air holding your sword. Then you do a "dash" to move at lightning speed. During your dash, you slash, switch to your gun, shoot, and switch back to your sword. Here the sword slash is not even intended to hit anyone, you just use it to exploit the game-engine bug.
Now people who did these new moves were practically invincible. They moved around much faster than allowed by the game engine, and they were able to shoot from a distance too. They were impossible to hit and their shotguns and revolvers took your hp off fast.
These moves were very difficult to perform. You need a lot of keypresses in a short amout of time (high apm) and your timing needs to be very good. Most starcraft players would be able to do it, but among the newcomers to GunZ, the beta testers, there were not many that could do it.
The game's playerbase was still expanding fast, but so were the amount of complaints on the forums and in MAIET's email box. MAIET realized that, with such a steep learning curve, the existence of the exploit could potentially turn off new people trying GunZ. They were getting destroyed by the more experienced players that exploited the game engine. And besides, the programmers felt embarrassed that their engine allowed such an exploit.
After enough criticism from the players, MAIET finally decided to listen to the community. MAIET patched GunZ to fix the exploit. And so, they made the biggest mistake of their career. Almost instantly, hundreds of players left GunZ never to come back. And hundreds more were leaving every day. Far from making the game more appealing to new players, GunZ: The Duel almost vanished off the radar.
MAIET hadn't realized that the exploit was what had allowed the game to grow so fast. The exploit turned an otherwise ordinary and boring game into an action-packed, frantic shooting game, where you need to have lightning quick aim in your right hand and very good consistency in your left. One slip-up and you don't complete the move you intended, and you are taking the full damage of a shotgun hit for sure. And with the people moving around so fast, you BETTER have fast and accurate aim.
To their credit, MAIET realized their mistake and immediately published a letter of apology to the community. They promised that the "Korean style," as it was called, was to have a place in the game forever and they'd written code to ensure it would never accidentally be broken in later releases. Their open-mindedness is what allowed MAIET to grow from a small South Korean no-name into a game development company with international fame.
The moral of the story? Game producers don't know what it takes to produce a good, competitive game. An e-sport game. To complicate the matter, they get inaccurate feedback from the community. It seems very, very hard to make a good game "on purpose." It only happens by accident. With exploits. Like strafe-jumping in Quake, Korean style in GunZ, and all the things we've learned about the StarCraft engine over the years.
Deliberately programmed in stuff like "blink" simply isn't as amazing as discovered tricks like "muta stack."
And the bad thing about the new, consistent 3D engine of SC2, is that there aren't many glitches possible. They units will behave the way the programmers wanted to.
Completely agreed. Things that make or break a game is not something that is purposefully put in to make the learning curve steep. Half step, slash shot are all techniques that evolved through the exploit of the bug and made the game much more fun and enjoyable
I completely agree and I think this combined with that one article that was written about Broodwar having many "overpowered" things in it to make it dynamic and exciting but still balanced is what SC2 needs. It seems that Blizzard thinks they can make an exciting and compelling game simply by tweaking numbers back and forth until everything is perfectly "balanced", but that's not what is going to make an exciting game. It's going to make an incredibly balanced, bland, boring game. If they continue on the path they are right now with making sure to take care with every single unit and number in the game and tweaking numbers and ONLY numbers, they are going to end up with a game that isn't going to last because it won't be exciting to play or watch at all. It isn't the fact that marauders do 10/20/30 damage, or the fact that broodlords have 150 or 130 or whatever health that is going to make a competitive game. It's tweaking the actual characteristics of units to make them not so boring and push the boundaries of what is considered "overpowered" while still keeping a balance between the three races that is going to turn SC2 into an esport.
Agreed, but if sc1:bw had dozens of units in one control group, muta stacking would be OP, so for the game to be competitive, Blizzard should have fixed this glitch, like they fixed many others.
So now, with this 3d engine, MBS, dozens of units in 1 group, things are pretty much different. I am not sure exploits would be beneficial , but i may be wrong
I started playing GunZ when it first came out. The first time I saw someone slash canceling i was like WTF YOU HACKER!!! But then when I learned how to do it I rocked all the nubs. It really felt awesome because it was something that not a lot of people could do at that point, and it just made you such a strong player. Doing it perfectly was hard, but when you did it you were seen as either a Hacker or a Pro.
Dangit, GunZ was so good. Did the game ever officially come out?
damn, i used to be soo good at that game. but i agree with your point fully. what made gunz and BW popular was its personality. watching a terran army move over your 4-5 lurkers just waiting to pounce on them is just unmatched in SC2.
On May 09 2010 23:14 karebear wrote: damn, i used to be soo good at that game. but i agree with your point fully. what made gunz and BW popular was its personality. watching a terran army move over your 4-5 lurkers just waiting to pounce on them is just unmatched in SC2.
Not only that, but the fact that with superior micro the terran player could then possibly still beat those lurkers that initially seem "overpowered" to the casual observer. What made games like Broodwar and I'm assuming Gunz (never played it) so amazing was the fact that while they had so many seemingly overpowered things in them (dark swarm, lurkers, reavers, spider mines, siege tanks, etc etc) you could overcome them by having superior control and micro and being a better player in general. Now all there is left is completely straightforward units in SC2 that can't be overcome by superior control or microing, and can only be overcome by superior macro and just having more units than your opponent. Big blob armies clashing isn't exciting gameplay and it's what is going to kill SC2 in the long run as a competitive game.
This isn't as useful as you might think. How are you supposed to know, as a game developer, which glitch is helpful and which is truly destructive? As you say, community feedback is almost useless; it's all reactionary 'oh no oh no a bug we are doomed'. So how does Blizzard distinguish between an unstoppable 6-pool rush and mutalisk stacking? Between a larva bug and hold lurkers? We see here on TL constant complaints of imbalance here and there; how could Blizzard tell, if a bug truly walked the line? It would need the star sense of the BW pros. It may be that glitches give a sense of character to a game, but to rely on them is to rely on luck. I would much rather let my own game design decide whether my game sinks or swims.
Yay a game company fucked up, lets make an induction; every game company fucks up when it comes to esports!
You even mentioned strafe jumping, MAIET may have been incompetent idiots by taking out something that made the game great. Now theres ID software which actually made strafe jumping a centerpiece in their future games, in Quake Live you actually have to use this "glitch" to finish the practice halls.
Using this for Blizzard is also a bit flawed, we've seen numerous times that they listen to the community and know that the competitive gaming community is very different from the casual community. The whole phoenix moving shot thing appeared in the game like a week after there was huge discussion about the moving shot here, sure the mechanic wasn't exactly what we wanted but they might even fix that. They do listen and aren't going to fuck up like MAIET.
this is how it is on any video game u play competitively whether it be console or pc. games that were made to be played just for fun will turn into a heavily competivie game because of unintentional flaws the game has that can be exploited. those flaws being so small/complicated only a few ppl will be a ble to pull off and thus earn the name of being "pro" at that game because it sets a huge gap between the normal players and the pro players who exploit these things.
i used this example before but i still believe super smash bros is the biggest example. the game was never meant to be played on at a competitive level and infact the head designer hated the fact that it was. SSBM became huge at the competitive level despite the fact that it never was meant to be played competitively. when brawl came out they tried to erase what made melee so competitive (the wave dashing just as one of many examples) so the game can be enjoyed equally among all player types. yet it still failed, brawl still became competitive and alot of "new" tricks were found to distinguish the pro players from the normal players.
its like this in all games. basically all the devs have to do is worry about balance and once thats out the way the game will evolve in the competitive scene on its own.
Fantastic post, but SC2 isn't gunz. SC2 being easier will only bring in more sales for blizzard. I completely agree that all the non intetional micro bugs are what made SC1 a truly amazing e-sports game, but I still 100% believe SC2 will be a good e-sports game and also a fantastic game for the casual player, unlike SC1, where to be even D+ level (without cheesing every game) it required a ton more skill than just about any other RTS on the market save WC3.
Games can be competitive and glitchless. Look at Counter Strike, one of the first huge team games that really doesn't have any glitches that brought it to where it is. It is good because of solid gameplay that reinforces skill, teamwork and decision making. The better player will win.
Fizban140: Counter-strike has many bugs that makes 1.6 the superior game to Source.
First of all, spammable walls are a side effect from the engine of GldSrc - you can't get unspammable walls in 1.6. In source, spammable walls are removed, dumbing down gameplay.
Secondly, AWP quickswitch in 1.5 was basically a bug which was popularised by Ksharp. This bug involved animation cancelling of the AWP-afterfire. Swapping to a deagle and back to hte AWP would allow a quicker firing rate for the AWP rather than not switching.
Thirdly, and most important of all.. Duckrunning. Duckrunning is a technique used to run without making sound, it also screws up hitboxes, increasing the skill ceiling. Valve fixed Duckrunning in 2008, causing it to make sound when duckrunning, but prior to that it was super abused, and a very big part of Counter-strike - it still is, players regularly use duckrunning to muck up their own hitboxes, making it hard for the enemy to hit them.
Fourth.. HE grenade EXPLOSIONS pass through walls.
Fifth... Dropping guns or throwing nades at doors will open them - this bug is removed in Source, making it less viable to rush through doors such as nuke squeeky.
Sixth ... Bunnyhopping, no need to say anything about this.
Seventh - on de_nuke you can boost through nest roof by stacking two players and you go up through the roof.
Eighth.. Throwing grenades THROUGH walls.
Nineth ... There are many rooftop, skybox routes abused by top teams that make it part of the game.. Banana on inferno has one, Yard on nuke has one, you can defend dust2 short by boosting up to the roof that was NEVER intended to be a spot. 3 out of the 4 majorly played maps on Counter-strike have bugs that define and refine them.
All the bugs i've mentioned might not mean much to you, but Counter-strike is a game that is also built on bugs.
Now having said all that, I do disagree with the point being made that there has to be bugs for a great game to be made. WC3 didn't have any NOTEWORTHY bugs, and it was still the most internationally played RTS. (I said internationally, dont' rage at me)
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.maiet.co.kr/images/company/maiet_3.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.maiet.co.kr/images/gunz_image.jpg)
