For the competitive players (you know who you are)

18 replies [Last post]
Deleted-Knight's picture
Deleted-Knight

I came across this while wasting time online.

I loled so much when reading "More on Losing" section.

Edit:
He also has an interesting perspective on banning strategies/items. I won't say I completely agree, but it does make sense.

Sipsy's picture
Sipsy
Pshshshshshshshhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Jokes on you, I play to not lose.

Seiran's picture
Seiran
:;

Sirlin's writings are like, the bible of competitive gaming xD.

He comes from 2D fighting background (Street Fighter), but a lot of concepts can be adapted here.

Most of what he says really comes down to this:
If you're playing competitively, you should be doing everything you can to win as long as it's within the rules of competition.

If you're doing everything you can to win and your opponent is doing everything everything possible to win, there are no excuses and accept that the loser got out-played, even if just for that match. Really makes for good sportsmanship lol.

Unfortunately, most people play with self-imposed scrub rules in random lockdown, where there aren't any (" OMG NO AT THAT'S UNFAIR", "BOMB SPAM IS CHEAP", "CHEAP STATUS SPAM" ... lol)

;>

But really though, playing with the competitive mindset is what led me to develop the recon playstyle a couple of you know and love.

Holy-Nightmare's picture
Holy-Nightmare
A lot of the "Pro" players

A lot of the "Pro" players don't play to win LD matches they just try to rack up the biggest damage number.

If everyone on your team hits over 30,000 damage but doesn't cap you still lose.

@ Seiran

Victory is all the sweeter when a player who plays with self imposed rules consistently outplays someone who doesn't have self imposed rules.

Theirillusion's picture
Theirillusion

Holy-Nightmare, Think a bit further. What would a game look like if 4-6 players score 30k?

Krakob's picture
Krakob
@Theirillusion

Probably one where the scores are tied for approximately 20 minutes ;)

Deleted-Knight's picture
Deleted-Knight
+1 Seiran

@Holy-Nightmare
"Victory is all the sweeter when a player who plays with self imposed rules consistently outplays someone who doesn't have self imposed rules."

I agree completely. That problem is when you don't win, do you have to right to complain? Sirlin encourages people to not restrict themselves. If you do, then you have to deal with the consequences.

Holy-Nightmare's picture
Holy-Nightmare
@ Theirillusion Typically in

@ Theirillusion

Typically in that sort of situation they spawncamp but don't return to cap points, often it is up to me to cap the points before heading to the rest of the group.

@ Deleted

If you win you claim the upper hand in skill (much higher than battling on level ground as you are at a severe disadvantage), if you lose then the issue of skill is undecided since your enemy has an obvious statistical advantage you can still claim superiority in skill (especially if you hit them 5-6 times before dying in 2 hits) since if you both were on level ground you (supposedly more skilled) would win. Most players are not willing to give up their statistical advantage and thus the truth over who is the "Most Skilled" is often forever a mystery.

Deleted-Knight's picture
Deleted-Knight

"If you lose then the issue of skill is undecided since your enemy has an obvious statistical advantage you can still claim superiority in skill."

A valid conclusion, but someone who wants to claim superiority wouldn't limit themselves in the first place would they?
By choosing to limit yourself, you are basically saying "I don't care if someone has an advantage over me". So in the event that you lose, why should you care that they had an advantage?
It's like entering a marathon and deciding to run facing backwards instead of forwards. Then at the end say you would've beaten everyone if you ran forward, but you thought running forward is unfair.

Read the rest of Sirlin's stuff (like donkeyspace). Skill is relative.
Pretend LD is like Rock, paper, scissors. Someone always plays rock, you always play scissors. The general population tends to play paper more often than scissors. As a result you appear more "skilled" than than the guy who plays rock, even though rock will beat scissors in a straight out duel.

Bullpig's picture
Bullpig
hmmm

Jempire rules?
no rules
B)

Seiran's picture
Seiran
:;

Not that vanilla RLD qualifies as a good competitive situation IMO (too many random elements between team members and maps), but to entertain the idea...

In a competition (or at least in my experience, with tournaments), winning is binary - you either win and get the prize or you don't.

"A lot of the "Pro" players don't play to win LD matches they just try to rack up the biggest damage number.
If everyone on your team hits over 30,000 damage but doesn't cap you still lose."

And this is correct. As far as the given objective goes (most points at the end of match), they aren't playing to win. Of course, if you're playing for fun, you have different objectives - just not the one that's not necessarily labeled a win.

"Victory is all the sweeter when a player who plays with self imposed rules consistently outplays someone who doesn't have self imposed rules."

"If you win you claim the upper hand in skill (much higher than battling on level ground as you are at a severe disadvantage), if you lose then the issue of skill is undecided since your enemy has an obvious statistical advantage you can still claim superiority in skill (especially if you hit them 5-6 times before dying in 2 hits) since if you both were on level ground you (supposedly more skilled) would win.

That's all just personal feeling, really.

If you want to talk about vague concepts like 'skill', you can end up just talking around the subject for hours. A common way to to determine it is through tournaments with well-defined rulesets:

1) Set up rules that reflect your values for 'skill' and all participants agree to them.
2) Fight by those rules.
3) Winner is the most skilled (in that ruleset).

It's up to those rules to level the playing field and try to create a good setting for skill-based competition.
The better a game is designed for competition, the less artificial rules you have to make, and vice-versa. Spiral Knights isn't designed for skill-based competition (randomness being the antithesis to it), so people come up with rules like no-AT, no-status, 1v1, best out of 3, etc.

Also, emphasis on being most skilled 'in that ruleset'. You're gonna have a hard time if you try to create the-one-true-way-of-determining-who-is-the-most-skilled-everywhere.

Turn-Me-On's picture
Turn-Me-On
I would actually love to see

I would actually love to see a game where one side gets 30k (Team: Polyphobia, Civax, Glocca, Otsdalva) and the other team has people who cap but have 30 sparks and are all strikers.

Striker health: ROUNDED to 1000
30k dmg x4 is 120k dmg -> 120 kills

4 players, 120 killz, 30 kills per player.

Noob team spark revs, since they would die every 16 seconds assuming full 8 mins are used.

Every player on the noob team would have to die in 10 seconds and revive in 6, and the OP team would have to single out players to kill.

Would be epic

Holy-Nightmare's picture
Holy-Nightmare
I'm not saying that many of

I'm not saying that many of the LD players aren't skilled.

If you can hit over 40k as well as snag caps and defends you are a good player in my book but to forego the objective for a number that doesn't guarantee victory seems foolish. The article is about competitive play, you compete to win, in order to win LD you have to hold your cap points longer than theirs, ergo if you (and your team) don't cap you all are losers.

Most of the LD players are on level field, both having trinkets and item slots as well as UVs (etc). On this field there may be some slight difference of power but most are at such a comparable level that no one has a massive advantage. It is merely about landing more hits than you take since most can take about the same amount of hits.

However if one of these "pro" LD players come across a knight who isn't using any buffing armors, HP trinkets, or even UVs and still takes numerous hits (more than what would kill them in a fight with someone on their level) and still win by getting a lucky 2 hit combo they really can't claim the superiority in skill, getting hit 10 times doesn't make you a pro and deep in your heart you know that if this guy had what you had you would be dead.

Not all players use trinkets or have massive ASI UVs, some don't have the CR for it, some don't spend much time in LD (even if they are excellent at it) and see little value in HP trinkets for PVE, lots of players are young upcoming knights and for them to land 10 hits and die in 2 will certainly dissuade them from playing LD seeing as it isn't enjoyable.

Turn-Me-On's picture
Turn-Me-On
@Holy Believe me, more ASI

@Holy

Believe me, more ASI isn't always better. It is good for marketing though. Also highly dependent on weapon choice.

Other then that you have a good argument, which really brings out why new LD players dont really appear. Yet another reason why noobs with less than 20 hrs of LD experience should be allowed AT and pros who still need to grow a pair should not. Only issue is, how would you let a noob with no experience get a somewhat fair fight against a pro with years of experience? Put the pro in proto armor, and put the noob in BKC snarb, the pro will still win. Perhaps a tutorial could be made....idk

What is your opinion on defensive UVs? I havent really come across anyone who complains about status or defense UVs, only ASI and CTR for weapons. Do you think defensive UVs are fair?

Status UVs seem fair, since they counter RNG advantages from spammers. Defense UVs seem fair as well, since one weapon change can render a double normal/shadow/elemental/piercing max set useless. But this is just my opinion.

Seiran's picture
Seiran
@skill

If you can hit over 40k as well as snag caps and defends you are a good player in my book but to forego the objective for a number that doesn't guarantee victory seems foolish. The article is about competitive play, you compete to win, in order to win LD you have to hold your cap points longer than theirs, ergo if you (and your team) don't cap you all are losers.

Well, in this case, it's a team effort. If your team has an exceptionally-good offense (ex: if 1 player can incapacitate 2+ of theirs, that's valuable), it's fine if they don't cap as long as someone else on your team caps.

I once played a 'perfect' game where we each got 1 cap (except for one guy), and we managed to kill the other team before they could cap any points (one of our points got decapped towards the end). Don't put too much importance on the printed stats because the real metric of capping is time spent on the points, and the real metric for defending is time enemies are kept away from points - none of those are recorded. You can keep enemies away from capping your points by killing them on the points (defends), killing them away from points ('damage' in general), bomb walls, or just kiting them around (unmeasured).

However if one of these "pro" LD players come across a knight who isn't using any buffing armors, HP trinkets, or even UVs and still takes numerous hits (more than what would kill them in a fight with someone on their level) and still win by getting a lucky 2 hit combo they really can't claim the superiority in skill, getting hit 10 times doesn't make you a pro and deep in your heart you know that if this guy had what you had you would be dead.

lol, it almost feels like there's a conflict of interest here.

If someone with inferior stats goes up against someone with superior stats (unlevel playing field), that's a handicap, imposed or not. In most competitive situations (ex: hardcore gvg), we're not talking about "level 50 vs level 20" but people who are fully prepared for competitive play, with no handicaps.

Nobody is claiming nor defending these imagined "pro" LD players' skills. In fact, here you switch from talking about playing to win the objective with combat prowess. Actually, if we go back to talking objective, if that combat-weak player can stall the combat-strong player (keeping them away from the rest of the team) or avoid them to control caps, they've done a great service for their team and are (in terms of objective) better at winning.

Define skill by how well you can meet an objective, and make sure you're talking about the same objective before trying to bring it up XD

Holy-Nightmare's picture
Holy-Nightmare
@ Seiran

In the end the culmination of each player's objective (whether it is to distract, defend, cap, uncap, or kill) should result in a victory for the team by holding down their caps the longest.

If everyone focuses on just one objective then they will probably lose to a more varied team.

I don't care how a person wins but if they aren't contributing to the victory of the team then that is bad. If everyone on your team focuses solely on damage and not capping to win you or somebody should at least cap a point. Your team has all the points? be the guy to check to see if a recon snuck through. ETC.

"Try to be that one guy that your team needs to win" most LD players that consider themselves "pro" only play the "Kill" class. It takes a different kind of pro to walk up to a point being covered by 3 enemies and plant a haze on the point (effectively declaring "GTFO my point"). Damage isn't everything but it is the most relevant number we have on determining skill.

If points weren't centered around damage but by assists, caps, and defends you might see more people playing the objective.

Fayeth's picture
Fayeth

Whoever said bomb spam is cheap, l glanced across and l saw the sentence, l am offended! Oh and Bullpig, jempire rules, period, because l'm here:D

Holy-Nightmare's picture
Holy-Nightmare
Bombers are Cap oriented

One player using a bomb isn't that bad, most of the time they actually fit into the group of players that are trying to fulfill the win conditions by holding down points, the problem with the typical LD player (the damage hunter) is that they don't think about the other points.

If a bomber is holding down a point below your base then go cap another point, in fact cap as many as you can, this forces the bomber to leave to go recap those points giving your team a chance to break out of the spawncamp.

Bombers play to win matches not damage charts. Just ignore them and go uncap some points.

Valtiros's picture
Valtiros
Holyyyy! Shhhh! it musn't be

Holyyyy! Shhhh! it musn't be known!