cutter
Smash Champion
Link to original post: [drupal=1845]Combos and Interactivity in Gaming[/drupal]
This blog post was inspired from Pikachu's new pending discovery of a death combo on most of the cast (the Uair to footstool to QAC reset one).
I'm a person who probably plays MTG more than Smash and I have dabbled around in a lot of other competitive games as well trying to understand a lot of what makes them tick.
One of the things I feel that people want the most in a game is interactivity. In other words, all the players are able to interact with each other to do stuff to each other.
I'm not trying to start a Melee/Brawl debate either, but here are my two cents on Brawl's discoveries with these new combos/chaingrabs/etc.
Most of Melee's combos involved the person being comboed to have at least some control over their character; usually this is something like DIing in a direction and teching into a platform to try and trick the opponent and escape the combo.
In other words, you have interactivity in the game. People like games that are interactive; it's simply natural because both people are having fun.
A lot of the stuff that has been discovered in Brawl like DDD's true infinite on DK, ICs infinite throws, and footstool combos are for the most part non-interactive, which means the victim has little or no control over what their opponent does.
These types of non-interactive combos instill a sense of complete hopelessness in the victim knowing they can never get out and have no options of escape. This is also why Wobbling in Melee was (and still is by many people) shunned by the community when it came out because it is a non-interactive infinite. Even though Wobbling has shown it didn't break Melee and it didn't make ICs god tier, people still banned Wobbling simply because of its non-interactivity.
It's the exact same thing that I see when I play MTG. Strategies like land destruction, discard, counterspells, and combo decks are considered non-interactive because of their effects on the opponent. Land destruction and discard prevent the opponent from playing their stuff in the first place. Counterspells prevent your spells from resolving and thus are useless. Fast combo decks don't care about what you do; they just race to assemble their combo in a few turns and you die.
These types of tactics are naturally some of the most hated aspects of the game because it feels like "only one player is really playing" kind of a thing. They keep you from playing what you wanted to play and thus are forced to sit through a de facto game of solitare because your opponent systematically destroyed your resources to make your deck actually run.
The exact same thing can apply to Smash as well.
Non-interactivity does suck in gaming, but it does open up new strategies and tactics. Even though it's not fun to get infinited by DDD and ICs or get your lands and cards blown up/countered, they're far from unbeatable strategies. As I said concerning how these new strategies open up new ones in the game, counterstrategies and tactics are then created as well.
Disclaimer: I am against banning DDD's infinites, ICs, infinites, footstool infinites, or infinites and/or chaingrabs of any kind unless they have proven they degenerate, overcentralize, and break the game. Even though they might not be fun to play against because of their non-interactiveness, but they still have to break the game to the point where it becomes like the only viable tactic.
And that's my 2 cents on interactivity in gaming.
This blog post was inspired from Pikachu's new pending discovery of a death combo on most of the cast (the Uair to footstool to QAC reset one).
I'm a person who probably plays MTG more than Smash and I have dabbled around in a lot of other competitive games as well trying to understand a lot of what makes them tick.
One of the things I feel that people want the most in a game is interactivity. In other words, all the players are able to interact with each other to do stuff to each other.
I'm not trying to start a Melee/Brawl debate either, but here are my two cents on Brawl's discoveries with these new combos/chaingrabs/etc.
Most of Melee's combos involved the person being comboed to have at least some control over their character; usually this is something like DIing in a direction and teching into a platform to try and trick the opponent and escape the combo.
In other words, you have interactivity in the game. People like games that are interactive; it's simply natural because both people are having fun.
A lot of the stuff that has been discovered in Brawl like DDD's true infinite on DK, ICs infinite throws, and footstool combos are for the most part non-interactive, which means the victim has little or no control over what their opponent does.
These types of non-interactive combos instill a sense of complete hopelessness in the victim knowing they can never get out and have no options of escape. This is also why Wobbling in Melee was (and still is by many people) shunned by the community when it came out because it is a non-interactive infinite. Even though Wobbling has shown it didn't break Melee and it didn't make ICs god tier, people still banned Wobbling simply because of its non-interactivity.
It's the exact same thing that I see when I play MTG. Strategies like land destruction, discard, counterspells, and combo decks are considered non-interactive because of their effects on the opponent. Land destruction and discard prevent the opponent from playing their stuff in the first place. Counterspells prevent your spells from resolving and thus are useless. Fast combo decks don't care about what you do; they just race to assemble their combo in a few turns and you die.
These types of tactics are naturally some of the most hated aspects of the game because it feels like "only one player is really playing" kind of a thing. They keep you from playing what you wanted to play and thus are forced to sit through a de facto game of solitare because your opponent systematically destroyed your resources to make your deck actually run.
The exact same thing can apply to Smash as well.
Non-interactivity does suck in gaming, but it does open up new strategies and tactics. Even though it's not fun to get infinited by DDD and ICs or get your lands and cards blown up/countered, they're far from unbeatable strategies. As I said concerning how these new strategies open up new ones in the game, counterstrategies and tactics are then created as well.
Disclaimer: I am against banning DDD's infinites, ICs, infinites, footstool infinites, or infinites and/or chaingrabs of any kind unless they have proven they degenerate, overcentralize, and break the game. Even though they might not be fun to play against because of their non-interactiveness, but they still have to break the game to the point where it becomes like the only viable tactic.
And that's my 2 cents on interactivity in gaming.
