Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary

From: desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)

Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1993 20:13:49 +0000

Graham Matthews <gym@dcs.ed.ac.uk> writes:
> I never said that knowledge of the formulas didn't give you a
> serious advantage. Obviously it does. I just said that I think it
> screws the game up. If people know the formulas they tend to :-

> a) write scripts/programs etc to find optimal settings for the
> formulas.
> b) spend hours maximising formulas, adjusting tiny details etc.

> Now my complaint with a) is that it turns the game into a game of
> who can write the best programs, who knows awk, mathematica etc.
> Thats particularly fair on players who are not computer gurus
> isn't it! In short the problem that a) causes is that it allows
> people to bring in far too many skills from *outside* of the
> game-world *into* the game-world if you see what I mean.

I don't understand why so many people seem to be ignoring what I think
is the fundamental issue here.  If people don't know the formulas, they
do _exactly_ the same things that you have described above.  They read
and analyse their turns, they discover the formulas and algorithms that
the program is using, they then analyse the hell out of the formulas,
and find super strategies.

Anyone who questions that this happens in real life should read some of
the posts in this very group.  The very last posting I read before this
one discussed how to defeat a monster in Legends by various tricks
involving getting the monster to repeatedly use its colossal attack
against single soldiers.  (Read it yourself, I don't care to repeat the
sordid details.)

This is what happens in every game of this type that I have ever seen,
played, or heard about.  Those who argue that Oly will be so much better
designed than Legends that this won't happen are _missing the entire
point_.  There are always nonobvious things that a player can take
advantage of by knowing the formulas and mechanisms of the game.  If you
don't prevent it somehow, it is _guaranteed_ that "super players" will
emerge with this design information and use it to amass an extreme power
advantage.  It's just silly to say, "Yes, that's what happened in the
last 100 games of this type, but this one will be different."

> Firstly it is very easy to not exploit the bugs. Just remember that
> if you win by exploiting the bugs then its something of a Pyric (sp?)
> victory. That should stop you exploiting the bugs. Secondly you
> are not gaining an advantage over "other players who are not so
> analytical". You are gaining an advantage over the people who are
> not prepared to stoop to bug exploiting to win.

I think this is rather fatuous and condescending as long as you are not
willing to explain to me how to identify a "bug."  I already gave an
example of what I am talking about: determining that certain types of
units are not very useful in certain situations, so not building them.
Are you seriously proposing that I should be ethically required to build
units that I know won't be very effective, because not doing so is
"stooping to bug exploiting to win"?

>> Also, there is not an obvious line between "bugs" and "features." One
>> might well learn from the formulas that certain plausible-looking
>> strategies are in fact always inferior.

> To my mind this is a game fault. If the strategy is "plausible
> looking" then it also should be plausible.

A strategy can be plausible but inferior.  Someone used a World War II
analogy recently.  It is plausible to believe that tanks are used to
their best advantage by mixing them on a very small scale with infantry.
Many people believed this before the war, so it's not stupid.  It turned
out not to be the case.  It was much more effective to use massed tank
power to create large breakthroughs, without foot soldiers to slow down
the advance.

In a game with tanks and infantry, it in general will _either_ be better
in most situations to have a combined arms strategy, or better in most
situations to use massed tank power.  (This depends on lots of factors,
including the scale of the simulation, and just generally on how the
game designer set things up.)  Once you find out what works best, that's
what you are going to do.  How can you do otherwise?  I can't tell if
you are seriously saying that you should do something that you know
doesn't work as well, just to compensate for the fact that other people
might not have figured out that it's not a good idea.  I don't think I
know a single person who plays games this way.

This "problem" is guaranteed to exist in every game.  It's simply not
reasonable to expect all strategies to work equally well, or even
approximately equally well.  If some strategies aren't significantly
better than others, then you might as well choose randomly between them,
and the game isn't a strategy game at all.

David desJardins

References

Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary
desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)
Tue, 29 Jun 1993 21:24:09 +0000
Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary
gym@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Graham Matthews)
Wed, 30 Jun 1993 10:33:28 +0000
Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary
gym@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Graham Matthews)
Tue, 29 Jun 1993 11:55:07 +0000

Referenced By

Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary
desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)
Tue, 29 Jun 1993 21:24:09 +0000
Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary
gym@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Graham Matthews)
Wed, 30 Jun 1993 10:33:28 +0000
Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary
gym@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Graham Matthews)
Tue, 29 Jun 1993 11:55:07 +0000