"Players that play to optimize will ruin the game for players that don't." As a long time player of EDH, D&D , and various other multiplayer video and tabletop games, I felt this quote IN NY BONES. I am a very casual player in all games, and I've been trying a long time to figure out how to enjoy playing casual games with people that max out the games potential. I've come to the conclusion after 10 years of trying that maybe it's just better to accept that some people want to play the game much different me, and rather than force them or myself to play it a certain way I should just strive to play those games with people that play it for the same reasons I do.
I'm in the same boat, and it's very hard to find Magic players that are not playing to win and only play Commander as a "casual" format. When FNM, which is a "Casual" REL environment has people who treat it like an RCQ it's not fun. These games come down to two things: Who has the biggest wallet, and who has put in the most reps. FNM should be for the 9-5er looking to jam games, and have fun, after a long week at work. At least in D&D you can set boundaries for how you wish to play. It's easier to be a DM than a player though which makes things difficult.
In most cases that is the right solution. Game systems can help keep a game casual, but often competitive minded players don’t enjoy playing games with systems that reduce their returns from skill too heavily.
This. But as a budget min/max-y optimizer, I have to ask, have tried playing mtg the way we do? No shade, I’m just genuinely curious. If you haven’t, I suggest giving it a try. (Though for D&D I think the adage is more applicable as there is no winner, and it is a cooperative game.)
I feel like the fun is the challenge to win. If I'm not trying to win then why am I playing. That said I want a challenge on winning. The issue is the ccgs are pay to win so people bring decks of wildly different power. This is why draft is such a good format.
@@scottcampbell9515if fnm is for the 9-5er looking to jam games and have fun... What's for the 9-5er looking to have "high powered" games for fun? Not Cedh, but what could be considered all 10s at the table? Honest question. It just feels like people don't believe that crowd is playing for fun too
There's this bell curve of understanding where games start fun, get unfun, then get way more fun. At first, games seem to exist miraculously and you accept them passively. Then you understand that they're designed by fallible humans who often leave gaps in design that can be exploited. Cynicism sets in. Then you recognize exactly how hard it is to *not* leave those gaps, so when you find something really smartly and tightly designed, it feels miraculous all over again. You appreciate it much much more than when you just played the game without thinking about it.
(disclaimer im like 5 mins in srry if this is addressed later) There are a lot of reasons why its silly to complain about "sweaty tryhards," but one that I think is particularly relevant to this video is that, when someone is invested in a game, aka theyre paying attention engaging with mechanics and doing all the things a game designer likely wants them to be doing, they can and will optimize the fun out of it *by accident.* If your game has one tactic that completely destroys its strategic viability, I cant help if I notice it or not; it will likely be discovered just through playing normally. And once its discovered, even if that player chooses to stay quiet or actively tries to avoid that play pattern, it can ruin the experience. A sword fight isnt going to be tense if I have a gun in my pocket.
btw idk if this was clear but im not saying you guys are complaining about sweaty tryhards, just people in general who do that are often choosing to ignore a lot of context
@@distractionmakers my issue is that 'playing in the best manner your rules allowed' shouldn't be inherently looked down on as 'sweaty' or 'tryhard'; if these play patterns are an issue it is up to the designers or rules bodies of those games (or formats) to correct that behavior through tools available to them: for example you have talked in the past about EDH being a 'mechanically' competitive format because the RC refused to ever impose 'casual' play standards in their banlists and rules, leading to the obvious outcome of 'combo is best'. As an inverse, the terms 'sweaty', 'tryhard', or as the brits call it 'beardy' the Warhammer community has an issue with players who SUBVERT the rules to gain advantage. There has long been two camps of players in that community who approach the rules differently: RAI and RAW, or 'rules as intended' vs 'rule as written', and you will find many arguments at tables between the different adherents over these approaches. I have long said that the issue with EDH is that Magic is inherently a very strict RAW (rules as written) game while EDH is a RAI (rules as intended) format, and when players are used to having the boundaries clearly drawn things like 'suggestions' don't work.
Absolutely true. *And* that moment of an invested player discovering the cheesy way to win can not only disinvest that player as the magic window falls apart, but also can make *them look like sweaty tryhards* to everyone else in the group because their protests that they didn't mean to do the optimizing thing can come off as disingenuous. I am an optimizing player in some instances, but there are other points where I want to pick something more flavorful. In Shadowrun 6e, I quite organically picked one of the most broken advantages a player can start with *because it made sense for my character* .
"It's inevitable and the game system needs to be what solves it" YES. My biggest jams are Warhammer Fantasy, Mordheim, and more The Old World. However I have often found myself struggling with a playgroup or a wider community that doesn't want to recognise that there's a need to introduce house rules or "composition systems" to patch over some flaws in the rules that make optimal (and inevitable) play quite degenerate and a non-game.
Devil's Advocate here, but some reasons why they'd be against it is that you're essentially playing a different game from the one you bought. If you were to go play with a different group or game shop and you're still operating under the house rules but everyone else isn't you're now at a disadvantage, either in list building or actual play. Other reasons is that some groups house rules may greatly benefit some armies/units than others and if you happen to be the guy who gets hit hardest with these inhouse nerfs it's not very fun for you now. I knew a guy we used to play with during 6-7th 40k who always asked to play Iron Hands Space Marines but with the custom chapter tactic rule for his army being 5+ instead of 6+. He insisted it was more accurate to their lore, and I always told him no when we played because that's a pretty big boost to his army that would be at a detriment to mine (I dabbled in Tyranids and IG at the time). House rules always come with their own bag of problems as what one group wants to change isn't the same and could lead to different kinds of friction and metas evolving from it as people get used to and understand how to manipulate those changes.
Doing a visual effects degree had a similar impact on my ability to watch movies, once you learn how to see what they’re doing you can never stop seeing it. I’m honestly not sure I agree with your conclusion at the end. You said something at 3:20 and Commander fits into that I think, one where factors lead to players choosing to not optimise for the win. Those factors though are _not_ entirely game design choices, some are (increased variance, not being 1v1 for examples). Many though are entirely social, “peer pressure” as you said if you want to frame it negatively. Yeah the players who want to optimise exist, but they either play other TCGs, other formats of Magic, or Competitive Commander with other players who want that same experience. You can’t fix “I met three random people and had a bad experience because we had mismatched expectations” by printing a new card or adjusting a rule. That’s not a game design problem and it doesn’t have a game design solution. You could design a ground up 1v1v1v1 TCG and you’ll either have the exact same problems, or it’ll be played exclusively like Competitive Commander instead of Casual Commander.
Commander is in a very unique position with being built using cards designed for another game. If it was built from the ground up you could ensure that different styles of win are equally as viable.
Casual commanders are steadily complaining that the game is less and less optimized. Which suggests to me even the "casuals" want their deck to do the thing and do it well, and they actually like winning games (that don't take 2 hours each) I think your average person doesn't like playing intentionally bad cards or worse in slot cards just to preserve the vibe of not min maxing. It doesn't make sense to most people to intentionally do the worse thing to intentionally perform worse than you can. And the general argument against it is "our experience needs to matter to you, but yours doesn't matter to us"
@@andrewbrock3675 This was an inevitability. Players are going to naturally get better at the game, identifying value pieces, and deck building. The format’s casual nature had a shelf life that dwindled greatly when EDH became Commander. I hope the current definition of casual commander gets updated to “not caring how you lose” because to me “not playing to win” always sounded like something a sore loser would say because the game does in fact have a winner.
@@distractionmakers right, as in control and burn don’t work properly in Commander the way they do in 1v1, sure, but there’s plenty of archetypes unique to Commander that don’t work in 1v1 either. Like I’m really not sure it’s unbalanced, or at least less balanced than any other trading card game?
@@andrewbrock3675 I think your average commander player actually does do that, like they’ll cut a better card to stay on theme, often… ‘more optimised’ as in each deck is more cohesive, sure, but I’m not sure that’s a problem at all, actually, because the social side is what balances everything out.
As someone with 300 hours into balatro, flush is the best beginner early build. However, straights scale the fastest and many more jokers benefit more. Once you get to gold, every dollar counts, so if by chance you think you can make straight flush, that's always better extra money etc.
On the note of Balatro, I haven't played in a while so I am now aware of updates in the past 6 months, but for a long time, Flushes were only dominant on lower stakes. The higher stakes added a lot of pressures on your hand space, largely by limiting discards and limiting your hand capacity. This made flushes much weaker, since the main weakness of a flush is you need 5 cards to make it work. As such, if you were aiming to maximize probability of winning on gold stake (which is not the only way to play Balatro but is a prominent way of playing), you were generally better off augmenting hands that didn't require as many cards in hand like high card pair, or two pair. You'd do this by scaling chips, since the weakness of lower card hands is less in the multiplier and more in the low chip count.
They did allude to that in the video that flushes are a good starting strategy. And frankly, that may be intentional: They may have realized either during design or testing that the game basically has this early strategy that puts you into a position to transition. Tons of eurogames are about finding the point at which the transition occurs when you shift some engine-building to victory, or from one strategy that has a potential win to another one that you can most easily transition out of, or from the interactive strategy the game allows into a victory-building strategy.
@@fredericchristie3472 Yeah I played a lot of Balatro before it was released and I think a lot of the adjustment to flushes came from feedback during that time. I also think it isn't bad to have a slightly dominant beginner strategy that is still subject to variance. People can latch onto something that can give them some consistency but the game is variable enough to push people out of their comfort zone eventually.
This has become one of my favorite channels. A lot of the things I’ve picked up on while playing Magic have been covered and elaborated on here in great detail and I always recommend the channel to those who have a little bit more awareness of what’s going on and show interest in the design of what’s happening
I ruined games for myself years ago, when I got into Skyrim modding and started thinking about how games could be better, and therefore what I would do to make them better. I only really enjoy most games the second time I play them, a few years after I play them the first time, when I've come to terms with the ways the game is worse than it could have been and can accept it for what it is. There is a silver lining though, which is that when I do enjoy a game the first time I play it, I have a solid metric for knowing I've found something very special. Looking at you Nier Automata.
For the comments below that are taking from this discussion that players that optimize will ruin the game for player's that don't. The player's that optimize are playing the game correctly. The game is ruined by the designers who failed to see any exploits or paths to winning that take away the fun from the less optimized players. This is why game designers need to have their game tested and broken by the best players. Spikes methods are what make sure a game is fair, balanced and ultimately fun for a majority of its players.
Great addition. This is also why the designer/player relationship is somewhat adversarial. Designers are trying to create systems that can’t be broken, players are trying to break them.
@@distractionmakers I think designers should always bear in mind that, if the game after being broken is still fun, they've still succeeded. Fighting games as a genre literally exist because companies like Capcom realized that some glitches created new levels of technical depth and just turned them into design elements. Not everything is going to be as brilliant once discovered as the cancel, but speedrunning still teaches that you can not only have a game that's fun with broken elements of interaction but can even have ones that are *more fun* than the base game (e.g. Spongebob is probably not a top-level game but it's a really interesting speedrun). And, frankly, D&D 3.5e, as broken as it is, created an entire metagame of figuring out interesting ways to break it that was in and of itself fun. All that matters is that the systems are robust enough to break in interesting ways.
@@fredericchristie3472 I missed this since we're talking about card games here. But that's very good point indeed. As long as how the game is broken is still fun, the game ultimately still delivers what it's meant to do, for the players to have fun. Speedruns are just prime example of this. From my limited knowledge of it, I don't think I can name a game where there exist no glitched speedruns for that game. Moving to similar subject, I think there can't be no meta (most effective tactic available) for all games. I mean, I know that such a thing exist even for Monopoly. So, I believe it is unavoidable for designers. But, it can be managed in some ways.
On that note, I don't think you guys have talked about attacking mechanics yet. That was a major design consideration I was pondering earlier in the year; it'd be interesting to hear your takes on the different styles of card game combat, which I guess mainly comes down to MtG style blocking, YGO monster walls, and Pokemon's duels/backline.
Do you think that an entirely different game system would support a "commander" style game better? Perhaps a game with mechanics that would be foreign or unplayable in magic's system. Or maybe the 1v1v1v1 style of game is just inherently flawed.
Vampires of the eternal struggle was a really good approach to multiplayer CCG. Unfortunately the rules are cluttered and unapproachable. A cleaned up version would probably be very popular
TFT recently had its optimization schism happen for the 2nd time because Riot decided to obscure the winrate of augments(3 choices you make throughout the course of a game that gives you money, power, items, or intangibles). Before this, the game was turning into "pick the augment with lowest number on your add-on" simulator and it's been really interesting to see the community reactions to it
20:00 Shoutout to Standard lovers! Gotta respect how Magic has been so many different games over the years and remains as multiple games in a trench coat. Almost 29K "unique" game pieces over 30 years and no game has ever been the exact same as another. No round, no match, every time Magic cards are shuffled it's an unique experience, yet it seems the most consistent commentary will always be: "Magic is ruined! Magic is dead!" It's just lovely.
Players that try to win will always look for "dominant strategies", a good game design makes it so they depend on each game and they're not the same for each situation. Once you find the dominant strategy, the game is over. That's what most people learn through Tic-Tac-Toe and 4-on-a-row. Chess most likely has a dominant strategy too, but hasn't been found yet
I think the key point here is that, from the designer's perspective, checking the critical pathway to success is important for several reasons. 1) Finding the critical pathway to success should be fun in and of itself. Figuring out a cool rules interaction in Magic or a clever maneuver in chess is itself an exciting thing, and also makes you better. 2) Your critical pathway to success should be something that you anticipated as being the core mechanic. Oftentimes games have ancillary mechanics that can eclipse the core: Using alchemy in Skyrim to bootstrap your stats up, for example. That one would have been relatively easy to solve: No ability in the game that the player can control the timing of can increase any stat that can then be used to bootstrap some other stat. Failing to do that means that, once you have that exploit, the game rapidly becomes "Click menus" rather than what they wanted, and then the actual interactions are largely trivial. The same is actually true of the stealth/archery builds in Skyrim and many games like it: The games aren't actually designed for meaty stealth and/or FPS elements so there's no fun left if that's the only axis that matters. All that means that, when a designer encounters a mechanic that can be used to circumvent the intended critical pathway, they need to think about either eliminating or nerfing that mechanic or changing their game (in the latter case if the new mechanism of interaction with the game is itself fun). 3) You need to know your critical pathway to success so that you can teach players how to play. I've never actually been convinced by the "Magic needs bad cards" argument from a pedagogical (or several other) perspectives, but it is true that a big lifegain mythic that isn't very good teaches you quickly a) don't always expect cards of rarity to necessarily be what you need, which *is* a valuable lesson even for very good draft environments and b) that lifegain is purely defensive and doesn't win you the game on its own. So your materials need to be good enough to get players to the point that they can organically figure out how to advance the board state. 4) The critical pathway should have enough uncertainty, or risk, or social dynamics, or something into it that the game is not *trivially* solvable. 5) Knowing your critical pathway to success means you know where the exciting moments of the game are going to be (e.g. the moment everyone is waiting for a big roll in a team game) and therefore know how to maximize the drama of those moments.
I think the opposite can also be true. "Players that don't play the game optimally will ruin the game for players that do." But, the thing is, the reason that problem exist both ways (not just one way) is simply the mismatch of the definition of fun for the players. In games where the players (in a game) all agree what "fun" is for them, there won't be any problem, everyone will have fun. That is why watching tournaments is more or less always fun (at least for those that enjoy watching such events). In the games we're watching there, all players agree that "playing the game as competitive as possible" is the definition of fun for them (at least during the event, might be untrue to the truest sense of "having fun"). I guess this is also the reason why most people (myself, at least) somehow also get the fun that the players are having despite being only their spectators. The more apparent the players show that they're having fun, the happier we get. It's crazy that I just realized this now. xD
i always optimize my decks to have the most powerful cards/synergy. why would i play a watered down version of a deck that i made and cherish? i want to make that deck into my identity and i can't do that if i'm playing crap
One reason is if watering it down means that your deck's theme is better represented. This is why making sure that archetype support is balanced is so critical. Any time there's a tier 3 or lower archetype that your game keeps supporting, you are having some people have less fun.
That’s a good question. It used to be because of 3 set blocks. Now sets are stand alone. My guess would be it having something to do with the tournament schedule.
This comes at the right time, after I had an argument on Facebook's BGG page today, where I claimed that 7 Wonders Duel-without any expansions-is borderline unplayable. I said that the number of times the game ends in a Zugzwang situation where the winner is determined after revealing the 3rd age's cards is pretty high and that there are - even before - not many, even if any, significant decisions to make. The game is a bit like chess but on a significant lower level. You try to get an advantage in the midgame, so you don't have to play the late game because it's simply the conclusion of the situation you put yourself in. And I mean a significantly lower level. If that is the game experience you like, go for it, but I think there are a lot of people who don't like not having any decisions in a lot of games. Ofc. the other person claimed that he played over a thousand games of the base game and doesn't feel the same way. Well, he's entitled to have his opinion.
hahaha the spooky episode this ominous should've been saved for halloween xD but yeah I think this was a fitting name for the topic as this is the same attitude I have when watching a movie. The movie 'magic' has to be working like turbo overdrive to get me to not be thinking of each reason a camera was shot from this angle, what the writing is trying to convey, how consistent is the characters, whats the plot pushing forward, are moments contrived, what is the theme of the story etc etc etc. My wife put it to me beautifully, "You overthink things." And she's correct, the best way to ruin anything pretty much is to overthink things in the wrong way, if you're looking at what could be vs what is in front of you and not cherishing the thoughts, actions, purpose and intent yes you can 'optimize' or 'suggest' out the creative vision of the product and the event you are being presented. So if you want games to be ruined, when you hold a card don't look at the art, the flavor the vision, look at what this resource can do for me, how easy is it to obtain, what systems does this allow circumvention or cheating, what does this action allow me to do to defeat my opponents at all cost, is it the best thing to be doing? Is it worth while to chase, is this luck? Can this be exploited, etc etc. You'll find enjoyment in solving a puzzle once, but you'll enjoy a game with deep systems forever.
i didn't knew that designers would consider that optimizing would make it less fun. when i started playing commander I would certainly agree, but now i would say that a great part of the most fun i ever had playing commander was with cedh, and also trying to optimize a deck. i think in the channel fireball case it is really just not a game anymore if everyone is playing mirror matches, its just coin flipping. but in a diverse cenario with lots of interaction it can be amazing i guess.
Hah! Joke's on you. I'm a programmer by trade so I've been taking apart games for years! In fact it was what led me to clicking on your vids in the first place. (Though like a program, I find I can rernjoy something even once I understand it because there is beauty in watching the engine work.) Far as possibly best design ever? Have you guys played decrypto? Favorite party game where the entire challenge is the other players. It has a bit of a learning curve to it, but as soon as the players make it over that "hump" they love it.
An interesting wrinkle is that many games have different layers of what it means to 'win'/different Essential Games. For example, in games with a competitive ladder system, there may be one strategy that you have a 55% winrate with, and another strategy that you have a 54% winrate, but if you use the second strategy each game takes half the time. The first strategy is better at winning individual games, but the second will climb the ladder faster (it's better at winning the metagame of getting the highest ladder placement). Similarly, if you're playing a multiplayer free for all game, the FOOS for a player with a "first place or bust" mindset might be different from the FOOS for a player who wants to place as high as possible on average; if it's a point scoring game the FOOS for scoring the highest average number of points might be different from both of these. Ideally, all these different interpretations promote different strategies that mutually support each other, giving another layer of protection against strategic collapse. On the other hand, sometimes they can interfere with each other, or even lead to strategic collapse despite the fact that in theory your game has a variety of viable strategies.
And this is likely why "Red Deck Wins" is such a thing on Magic Arena. I know I have decks that I can play better, or go into better matchups against the field... But slamming a mountain down sideways means that win or lose the game is over by turn 4, and that's *if* the opponent doesn't simply concede on the spot. I'm happy to get in 3-4 games with my mono red deck vs a black control deck, even if I know I'll trade a few percentage points. There's no incentive for winning a higher percentage of my games, but I am rewarded for winning more games.
They want the clicks. If the content doesn’t get them clicks the titles will. They all do it. I see distraction makers I click. Not because of the title, but because it’s them and I enjoy their discussions whether I agree with what they say or not.
@@HWHYironic given the subject of this video is optimization of a system destined by nature to undermine and ultimately destroy the quality of an experience
I mean, I don't think this really qualifies as a clickbait thumbnail at all? The title maybe. At the time I'm viewing the thumbnail just reads "The Essential Game" which doesn't read to me as clickbait at all. It is indeed the concept they talk about and there isn't anything particularly sensational about it or anything. The title, "This Will Ruin Games for You", reads as exaggerated and maybe a bit sensational, being aware of essential games won't necessarily make games worse for you like the title would suggest, depending on what you mean by "ruin", but as far as clickbait goes, it's extremely tame.
Tw9 examples, one on each end of this spectrum. I dislike the game Exploding Kittens, it has a very simple game loop and every hand has a perfect play. By the end of my first game i was actively searching for any way i could even make a gambut that wasn't the optimal play and every time it was detrimental. If there are no decisions, there is no game. On the other hand recently I have been loving Lorcana, the Ravensberg trading card game using Disney IP. It was built from the ground up to be for any number of players, so most of its interactions state they affect all players.
That point about the Internet turbocharging the optimization issue is A LOT bigger than most think and probably worth talking about in a full lenght video, because it completely removes a core aspect of games: exploration. For example: in Magic, you dont need hours of gameplay to find the best deck anymore, you look on the internet and find it, alongside every other good deck and how to beat them. It cuts the time required for a game to be "solved", after which it becomes repetitive, by a factor of 10. This is true for every other game: shooters, fighting games, even single player games that focus on map exploration or getting a certain build going. It forces devs to either make changes much faster, which makes it harder to keep up and might also stifle excitement if done too often; or make the game insanely complex, which is hostile to new players; or make the skill ceiling insanely high, furthering the divide between casual and competitive players.
Chutes and ladders is a good example of a game with essentially 0 skill. There is no meaningful decision to be made and I would argue that makes it not a game. If we add one meaningful decision, say roll 2 dice and pick 1, the essential game reveals itself.
As someone who is that guy and who's play group is just a group of those people I find this perspective fairly odd. Trying to win is how you play a game, no? So having an efficient method for determining optimum strategies is almost categorically how you should approach all games from a player perspective. If you're at least attempting to do that are you playing the game or are you just doing an activity within the game space? I know we're mostly talking about tabletop games but to illustrate my point I will use a video game example. If we're playing Mario Kart and I am trying to win the race, and you're trying to see how many times you can hit things with a shell regardless of if it wins the game I don't know that you're playing Mario Kart - you're just shooting things.
This gets at the heart of the game designer vs player dynamic. The goal is to create an experience that is enjoyable by a wide number of players regardless of their preference of optimization. Mario cart (and most Nintendo games) is a great example of how a game system helps to balance the field and allow different types of players to have meaningful games. Items are random, but weighted for those who are further behind.
24 дня назад
Woah, you missed the entire point of the video didn’t you? Went right over you.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
"Players that play to optimize will ruin the game for players that don't."
As a long time player of EDH, D&D , and various other multiplayer video and tabletop games, I felt this quote IN NY BONES.
I am a very casual player in all games, and I've been trying a long time to figure out how to enjoy playing casual games with people that max out the games potential. I've come to the conclusion after 10 years of trying that maybe it's just better to accept that some people want to play the game much different me, and rather than force them or myself to play it a certain way I should just strive to play those games with people that play it for the same reasons I do.
I'm in the same boat, and it's very hard to find Magic players that are not playing to win and only play Commander as a "casual" format. When FNM, which is a "Casual" REL environment has people who treat it like an RCQ it's not fun. These games come down to two things: Who has the biggest wallet, and who has put in the most reps. FNM should be for the 9-5er looking to jam games, and have fun, after a long week at work.
At least in D&D you can set boundaries for how you wish to play. It's easier to be a DM than a player though which makes things difficult.
In most cases that is the right solution. Game systems can help keep a game casual, but often competitive minded players don’t enjoy playing games with systems that reduce their returns from skill too heavily.
This. But as a budget min/max-y optimizer, I have to ask, have tried playing mtg the way we do? No shade, I’m just genuinely curious. If you haven’t, I suggest giving it a try. (Though for D&D I think the adage is more applicable as there is no winner, and it is a cooperative game.)
I feel like the fun is the challenge to win. If I'm not trying to win then why am I playing. That said I want a challenge on winning. The issue is the ccgs are pay to win so people bring decks of wildly different power. This is why draft is such a good format.
@@scottcampbell9515if fnm is for the 9-5er looking to jam games and have fun... What's for the 9-5er looking to have "high powered" games for fun? Not Cedh, but what could be considered all 10s at the table?
Honest question. It just feels like people don't believe that crowd is playing for fun too
There's this bell curve of understanding where games start fun, get unfun, then get way more fun. At first, games seem to exist miraculously and you accept them passively. Then you understand that they're designed by fallible humans who often leave gaps in design that can be exploited. Cynicism sets in. Then you recognize exactly how hard it is to *not* leave those gaps, so when you find something really smartly and tightly designed, it feels miraculous all over again. You appreciate it much much more than when you just played the game without thinking about it.
Not every game supports that swing up into way more fun, though. That's the strategic collapse valley.
(disclaimer im like 5 mins in srry if this is addressed later) There are a lot of reasons why its silly to complain about "sweaty tryhards," but one that I think is particularly relevant to this video is that, when someone is invested in a game, aka theyre paying attention engaging with mechanics and doing all the things a game designer likely wants them to be doing, they can and will optimize the fun out of it *by accident.* If your game has one tactic that completely destroys its strategic viability, I cant help if I notice it or not; it will likely be discovered just through playing normally. And once its discovered, even if that player chooses to stay quiet or actively tries to avoid that play pattern, it can ruin the experience. A sword fight isnt going to be tense if I have a gun in my pocket.
btw idk if this was clear but im not saying you guys are complaining about sweaty tryhards, just people in general who do that are often choosing to ignore a lot of context
Thanks for summing up the video perfectly 😄
Correct. We love sweaty tryhards. Which is why we try to design games they can’t break.
@@distractionmakers my issue is that 'playing in the best manner your rules allowed' shouldn't be inherently looked down on as 'sweaty' or 'tryhard'; if these play patterns are an issue it is up to the designers or rules bodies of those games (or formats) to correct that behavior through tools available to them: for example you have talked in the past about EDH being a 'mechanically' competitive format because the RC refused to ever impose 'casual' play standards in their banlists and rules, leading to the obvious outcome of 'combo is best'.
As an inverse, the terms 'sweaty', 'tryhard', or as the brits call it 'beardy' the Warhammer community has an issue with players who SUBVERT the rules to gain advantage. There has long been two camps of players in that community who approach the rules differently: RAI and RAW, or 'rules as intended' vs 'rule as written', and you will find many arguments at tables between the different adherents over these approaches. I have long said that the issue with EDH is that Magic is inherently a very strict RAW (rules as written) game while EDH is a RAI (rules as intended) format, and when players are used to having the boundaries clearly drawn things like 'suggestions' don't work.
Absolutely true. *And* that moment of an invested player discovering the cheesy way to win can not only disinvest that player as the magic window falls apart, but also can make *them look like sweaty tryhards* to everyone else in the group because their protests that they didn't mean to do the optimizing thing can come off as disingenuous. I am an optimizing player in some instances, but there are other points where I want to pick something more flavorful. In Shadowrun 6e, I quite organically picked one of the most broken advantages a player can start with *because it made sense for my character* .
"It's inevitable and the game system needs to be what solves it"
YES. My biggest jams are Warhammer Fantasy, Mordheim, and more The Old World.
However I have often found myself struggling with a playgroup or a wider community that doesn't want to recognise that there's a need to introduce house rules or "composition systems" to patch over some flaws in the rules that make optimal (and inevitable) play quite degenerate and a non-game.
Devil's Advocate here, but some reasons why they'd be against it is that you're essentially playing a different game from the one you bought. If you were to go play with a different group or game shop and you're still operating under the house rules but everyone else isn't you're now at a disadvantage, either in list building or actual play. Other reasons is that some groups house rules may greatly benefit some armies/units than others and if you happen to be the guy who gets hit hardest with these inhouse nerfs it's not very fun for you now. I knew a guy we used to play with during 6-7th 40k who always asked to play Iron Hands Space Marines but with the custom chapter tactic rule for his army being 5+ instead of 6+. He insisted it was more accurate to their lore, and I always told him no when we played because that's a pretty big boost to his army that would be at a detriment to mine (I dabbled in Tyranids and IG at the time).
House rules always come with their own bag of problems as what one group wants to change isn't the same and could lead to different kinds of friction and metas evolving from it as people get used to and understand how to manipulate those changes.
Doing a visual effects degree had a similar impact on my ability to watch movies, once you learn how to see what they’re doing you can never stop seeing it.
I’m honestly not sure I agree with your conclusion at the end. You said something at 3:20 and Commander fits into that I think, one where factors lead to players choosing to not optimise for the win. Those factors though are _not_ entirely game design choices, some are (increased variance, not being 1v1 for examples). Many though are entirely social, “peer pressure” as you said if you want to frame it negatively.
Yeah the players who want to optimise exist, but they either play other TCGs, other formats of Magic, or Competitive Commander with other players who want that same experience.
You can’t fix “I met three random people and had a bad experience because we had mismatched expectations” by printing a new card or adjusting a rule. That’s not a game design problem and it doesn’t have a game design solution.
You could design a ground up 1v1v1v1 TCG and you’ll either have the exact same problems, or it’ll be played exclusively like Competitive Commander instead of Casual Commander.
Commander is in a very unique position with being built using cards designed for another game. If it was built from the ground up you could ensure that different styles of win are equally as viable.
Casual commanders are steadily complaining that the game is less and less optimized. Which suggests to me even the "casuals" want their deck to do the thing and do it well, and they actually like winning games (that don't take 2 hours each)
I think your average person doesn't like playing intentionally bad cards or worse in slot cards just to preserve the vibe of not min maxing.
It doesn't make sense to most people to intentionally do the worse thing to intentionally perform worse than you can. And the general argument against it is "our experience needs to matter to you, but yours doesn't matter to us"
@@andrewbrock3675 This was an inevitability. Players are going to naturally get better at the game, identifying value pieces, and deck building. The format’s casual nature had a shelf life that dwindled greatly when EDH became Commander. I hope the current definition of casual commander gets updated to “not caring how you lose” because to me “not playing to win” always sounded like something a sore loser would say because the game does in fact have a winner.
@@distractionmakers right, as in control and burn don’t work properly in Commander the way they do in 1v1, sure, but there’s plenty of archetypes unique to Commander that don’t work in 1v1 either. Like I’m really not sure it’s unbalanced, or at least less balanced than any other trading card game?
@@andrewbrock3675 I think your average commander player actually does do that, like they’ll cut a better card to stay on theme, often…
‘more optimised’ as in each deck is more cohesive, sure, but I’m not sure that’s a problem at all, actually, because the social side is what balances everything out.
As someone with 300 hours into balatro, flush is the best beginner early build. However, straights scale the fastest and many more jokers benefit more. Once you get to gold, every dollar counts, so if by chance you think you can make straight flush, that's always better extra money etc.
On the note of Balatro, I haven't played in a while so I am now aware of updates in the past 6 months, but for a long time, Flushes were only dominant on lower stakes. The higher stakes added a lot of pressures on your hand space, largely by limiting discards and limiting your hand capacity. This made flushes much weaker, since the main weakness of a flush is you need 5 cards to make it work. As such, if you were aiming to maximize probability of winning on gold stake (which is not the only way to play Balatro but is a prominent way of playing), you were generally better off augmenting hands that didn't require as many cards in hand like high card pair, or two pair. You'd do this by scaling chips, since the weakness of lower card hands is less in the multiplier and more in the low chip count.
They did allude to that in the video that flushes are a good starting strategy. And frankly, that may be intentional: They may have realized either during design or testing that the game basically has this early strategy that puts you into a position to transition. Tons of eurogames are about finding the point at which the transition occurs when you shift some engine-building to victory, or from one strategy that has a potential win to another one that you can most easily transition out of, or from the interactive strategy the game allows into a victory-building strategy.
@@fredericchristie3472 Yeah I played a lot of Balatro before it was released and I think a lot of the adjustment to flushes came from feedback during that time. I also think it isn't bad to have a slightly dominant beginner strategy that is still subject to variance. People can latch onto something that can give them some consistency but the game is variable enough to push people out of their comfort zone eventually.
This has become one of my favorite channels. A lot of the things I’ve picked up on while playing Magic have been covered and elaborated on here in great detail and I always recommend the channel to those who have a little bit more awareness of what’s going on and show interest in the design of what’s happening
Thanks! Glad our videos have been helpful.
I ruined games for myself years ago, when I got into Skyrim modding and started thinking about how games could be better, and therefore what I would do to make them better. I only really enjoy most games the second time I play them, a few years after I play them the first time, when I've come to terms with the ways the game is worse than it could have been and can accept it for what it is.
There is a silver lining though, which is that when I do enjoy a game the first time I play it, I have a solid metric for knowing I've found something very special. Looking at you Nier Automata.
For the comments below that are taking from this discussion that players that optimize will ruin the game for player's that don't. The player's that optimize are playing the game correctly. The game is ruined by the designers who failed to see any exploits or paths to winning that take away the fun from the less optimized players. This is why game designers need to have their game tested and broken by the best players. Spikes methods are what make sure a game is fair, balanced and ultimately fun for a majority of its players.
Great addition. This is also why the designer/player relationship is somewhat adversarial. Designers are trying to create systems that can’t be broken, players are trying to break them.
@@distractionmakers I think designers should always bear in mind that, if the game after being broken is still fun, they've still succeeded.
Fighting games as a genre literally exist because companies like Capcom realized that some glitches created new levels of technical depth and just turned them into design elements. Not everything is going to be as brilliant once discovered as the cancel, but speedrunning still teaches that you can not only have a game that's fun with broken elements of interaction but can even have ones that are *more fun* than the base game (e.g. Spongebob is probably not a top-level game but it's a really interesting speedrun). And, frankly, D&D 3.5e, as broken as it is, created an entire metagame of figuring out interesting ways to break it that was in and of itself fun.
All that matters is that the systems are robust enough to break in interesting ways.
@@fredericchristie3472 I missed this since we're talking about card games here. But that's very good point indeed. As long as how the game is broken is still fun, the game ultimately still delivers what it's meant to do, for the players to have fun.
Speedruns are just prime example of this. From my limited knowledge of it, I don't think I can name a game where there exist no glitched speedruns for that game.
Moving to similar subject, I think there can't be no meta (most effective tactic available) for all games. I mean, I know that such a thing exist even for Monopoly. So, I believe it is unavoidable for designers. But, it can be managed in some ways.
I am thankful we have so many games to optimize the fun out of. I am also thankful for you two sharing your thoughts. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
On that note, I don't think you guys have talked about attacking mechanics yet. That was a major design consideration I was pondering earlier in the year; it'd be interesting to hear your takes on the different styles of card game combat, which I guess mainly comes down to MtG style blocking, YGO monster walls, and Pokemon's duels/backline.
Good idea!
Do you think that an entirely different game system would support a "commander" style game better? Perhaps a game with mechanics that would be foreign or unplayable in magic's system. Or maybe the 1v1v1v1 style of game is just inherently flawed.
A different system would work much better. Free for all has some difficult problems to solve, but not impossible.
Vampires of the eternal struggle was a really good approach to multiplayer CCG. Unfortunately the rules are cluttered and unapproachable. A cleaned up version would probably be very popular
I do. It’s shocking to me that every new card game that comes out is another 1v1 game that plays similar to magic.
@@thebigsquig I'm working on it! Just give me time to cook!
TFT recently had its optimization schism happen for the 2nd time because Riot decided to obscure the winrate of augments(3 choices you make throughout the course of a game that gives you money, power, items, or intangibles). Before this, the game was turning into "pick the augment with lowest number on your add-on" simulator and it's been really interesting to see the community reactions to it
That is interesting! We’ll have to do a deep dive into TFT. We haven’t played it much.
20:00 Shoutout to Standard lovers! Gotta respect how Magic has been so many different games over the years and remains as multiple games in a trench coat. Almost 29K "unique" game pieces over 30 years and no game has ever been the exact same as another. No round, no match, every time Magic cards are shuffled it's an unique experience, yet it seems the most consistent commentary will always be: "Magic is ruined! Magic is dead!" It's just lovely.
Players that try to win will always look for "dominant strategies", a good game design makes it so they depend on each game and they're not the same for each situation.
Once you find the dominant strategy, the game is over. That's what most people learn through Tic-Tac-Toe and 4-on-a-row.
Chess most likely has a dominant strategy too, but hasn't been found yet
I think the key point here is that, from the designer's perspective, checking the critical pathway to success is important for several reasons.
1) Finding the critical pathway to success should be fun in and of itself. Figuring out a cool rules interaction in Magic or a clever maneuver in chess is itself an exciting thing, and also makes you better.
2) Your critical pathway to success should be something that you anticipated as being the core mechanic. Oftentimes games have ancillary mechanics that can eclipse the core: Using alchemy in Skyrim to bootstrap your stats up, for example. That one would have been relatively easy to solve: No ability in the game that the player can control the timing of can increase any stat that can then be used to bootstrap some other stat. Failing to do that means that, once you have that exploit, the game rapidly becomes "Click menus" rather than what they wanted, and then the actual interactions are largely trivial. The same is actually true of the stealth/archery builds in Skyrim and many games like it: The games aren't actually designed for meaty stealth and/or FPS elements so there's no fun left if that's the only axis that matters.
All that means that, when a designer encounters a mechanic that can be used to circumvent the intended critical pathway, they need to think about either eliminating or nerfing that mechanic or changing their game (in the latter case if the new mechanism of interaction with the game is itself fun).
3) You need to know your critical pathway to success so that you can teach players how to play. I've never actually been convinced by the "Magic needs bad cards" argument from a pedagogical (or several other) perspectives, but it is true that a big lifegain mythic that isn't very good teaches you quickly a) don't always expect cards of rarity to necessarily be what you need, which *is* a valuable lesson even for very good draft environments and b) that lifegain is purely defensive and doesn't win you the game on its own.
So your materials need to be good enough to get players to the point that they can organically figure out how to advance the board state.
4) The critical pathway should have enough uncertainty, or risk, or social dynamics, or something into it that the game is not *trivially* solvable.
5) Knowing your critical pathway to success means you know where the exciting moments of the game are going to be (e.g. the moment everyone is waiting for a big roll in a team game) and therefore know how to maximize the drama of those moments.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Great addition to the discussion.
13:52 Poison counters: "Are we a joke to you?"
Poison isn’t real. 😆
I think the opposite can also be true. "Players that don't play the game optimally will ruin the game for players that do."
But, the thing is, the reason that problem exist both ways (not just one way) is simply the mismatch of the definition of fun for the players. In games where the players (in a game) all agree what "fun" is for them, there won't be any problem, everyone will have fun.
That is why watching tournaments is more or less always fun (at least for those that enjoy watching such events). In the games we're watching there, all players agree that "playing the game as competitive as possible" is the definition of fun for them (at least during the event, might be untrue to the truest sense of "having fun"). I guess this is also the reason why most people (myself, at least) somehow also get the fun that the players are having despite being only their spectators. The more apparent the players show that they're having fun, the happier we get. It's crazy that I just realized this now. xD
i always optimize my decks to have the most powerful cards/synergy. why would i play a watered down version of a deck that i made and cherish? i want to make that deck into my identity and i can't do that if i'm playing crap
WotC's favorite type of player
One reason is if watering it down means that your deck's theme is better represented.
This is why making sure that archetype support is balanced is so critical. Any time there's a tier 3 or lower archetype that your game keeps supporting, you are having some people have less fun.
In Altered, you need 7 "points" to win.
Thanks for the correction
Why isn't rotation set up to keep X sets in rotation and every set released bumps the oldest legal set, keeping the same number of sets always legal?
That’s a good question. It used to be because of 3 set blocks. Now sets are stand alone. My guess would be it having something to do with the tournament schedule.
Great vid! Keep it up 🎉
i dont belive that making an essential game is doomed to be a bad game. the path of optimisation can be the core of the game itself.
This comes at the right time, after I had an argument on Facebook's BGG page today, where I claimed that 7 Wonders Duel-without any expansions-is borderline unplayable. I said that the number of times the game ends in a Zugzwang situation where the winner is determined after revealing the 3rd age's cards is pretty high and that there are - even before - not many, even if any, significant decisions to make.
The game is a bit like chess but on a significant lower level. You try to get an advantage in the midgame, so you don't have to play the late game because it's simply the conclusion of the situation you put yourself in. And I mean a significantly lower level. If that is the game experience you like, go for it, but I think there are a lot of people who don't like not having any decisions in a lot of games.
Ofc. the other person claimed that he played over a thousand games of the base game and doesn't feel the same way.
Well, he's entitled to have his opinion.
I would be absolutely fine with standard rotating every year if boxes were cheaper. ie if Wizards supported that rotation in a better way.
Agreed. Cards being too expensive is a huge contributor to the negative view of rotating formats.
i need this kind of content injected directly into my veins every day please and thank you
hahaha the spooky episode this ominous should've been saved for halloween xD but yeah I think this was a fitting name for the topic as this is the same attitude I have when watching a movie. The movie 'magic' has to be working like turbo overdrive to get me to not be thinking of each reason a camera was shot from this angle, what the writing is trying to convey, how consistent is the characters, whats the plot pushing forward, are moments contrived, what is the theme of the story etc etc etc.
My wife put it to me beautifully, "You overthink things." And she's correct, the best way to ruin anything pretty much is to overthink things in the wrong way, if you're looking at what could be vs what is in front of you and not cherishing the thoughts, actions, purpose and intent yes you can 'optimize' or 'suggest' out the creative vision of the product and the event you are being presented. So if you want games to be ruined, when you hold a card don't look at the art, the flavor the vision, look at what this resource can do for me, how easy is it to obtain, what systems does this allow circumvention or cheating, what does this action allow me to do to defeat my opponents at all cost, is it the best thing to be doing? Is it worth while to chase, is this luck? Can this be exploited, etc etc.
You'll find enjoyment in solving a puzzle once, but you'll enjoy a game with deep systems forever.
Great points.
Can you guys cover Narrative Based Games? How designing that is different than, say, a TCG?
i didn't knew that designers would consider that optimizing would make it less fun. when i started playing commander I would certainly agree, but now i would say that a great part of the most fun i ever had playing commander was with cedh, and also trying to optimize a deck. i think in the channel fireball case it is really just not a game anymore if everyone is playing mirror matches, its just coin flipping. but in a diverse cenario with lots of interaction it can be amazing i guess.
Magic has a lot of systems that keep things from being 100% solved. Random draws, mana, card limits, etc.
Sick giant growth shirt Forrest!
Hah! Joke's on you. I'm a programmer by trade so I've been taking apart games for years!
In fact it was what led me to clicking on your vids in the first place.
(Though like a program, I find I can rernjoy something even once I understand it because there is beauty in watching the engine work.)
Far as possibly best design ever? Have you guys played decrypto? Favorite party game where the entire challenge is the other players. It has a bit of a learning curve to it, but as soon as the players make it over that "hump" they love it.
An interesting wrinkle is that many games have different layers of what it means to 'win'/different Essential Games. For example, in games with a competitive ladder system, there may be one strategy that you have a 55% winrate with, and another strategy that you have a 54% winrate, but if you use the second strategy each game takes half the time. The first strategy is better at winning individual games, but the second will climb the ladder faster (it's better at winning the metagame of getting the highest ladder placement). Similarly, if you're playing a multiplayer free for all game, the FOOS for a player with a "first place or bust" mindset might be different from the FOOS for a player who wants to place as high as possible on average; if it's a point scoring game the FOOS for scoring the highest average number of points might be different from both of these.
Ideally, all these different interpretations promote different strategies that mutually support each other, giving another layer of protection against strategic collapse. On the other hand, sometimes they can interfere with each other, or even lead to strategic collapse despite the fact that in theory your game has a variety of viable strategies.
Good insight. Definitely will optimize differently for most wins vs most wins per hour.
And this is likely why "Red Deck Wins" is such a thing on Magic Arena. I know I have decks that I can play better, or go into better matchups against the field... But slamming a mountain down sideways means that win or lose the game is over by turn 4, and that's *if* the opponent doesn't simply concede on the spot.
I'm happy to get in 3-4 games with my mono red deck vs a black control deck, even if I know I'll trade a few percentage points. There's no incentive for winning a higher percentage of my games, but I am rewarded for winning more games.
You forgot the most important type of game, Player vs The All-Powerful RUclips Algorithm
Let's relax with the ridiculous clickbait titles and thumbnails
Let's get over ourselves and accept the realities of the algorithmic recommendation system.
They want the clicks. If the content doesn’t get them clicks the titles will. They all do it. I see distraction makers I click. Not because of the title, but because it’s them and I enjoy their discussions whether I agree with what they say or not.
@@HWHYironic given the subject of this video is optimization of a system destined by nature to undermine and ultimately destroy the quality of an experience
😅🎉@@rustykeyes
I mean, I don't think this really qualifies as a clickbait thumbnail at all? The title maybe.
At the time I'm viewing the thumbnail just reads "The Essential Game" which doesn't read to me as clickbait at all. It is indeed the concept they talk about and there isn't anything particularly sensational about it or anything.
The title, "This Will Ruin Games for You", reads as exaggerated and maybe a bit sensational, being aware of essential games won't necessarily make games worse for you like the title would suggest, depending on what you mean by "ruin", but as far as clickbait goes, it's extremely tame.
Insructions unclear: Didn't say what foo means regarding games. Ended up learning calculus.
W?
I'm down to enjoy some glizzies
Tw9 examples, one on each end of this spectrum. I dislike the game Exploding Kittens, it has a very simple game loop and every hand has a perfect play. By the end of my first game i was actively searching for any way i could even make a gambut that wasn't the optimal play and every time it was detrimental. If there are no decisions, there is no game.
On the other hand recently I have been loving Lorcana, the Ravensberg trading card game using Disney IP. It was built from the ground up to be for any number of players, so most of its interactions state they affect all players.
Standard is the best way to play Magic! Preach it brother!
I never come this early
Thats what she said
So what’s going to ruin games for me? I’m 11 minutes and still have no idea what y’all are talking about.
this
We’re discussing how to min/max in the most extreme way possible. If you’re already doing that, then it doesn’t change anything for you.
edgelord. nice
They say the topic near the beginning. You're not listening.
@ I guess not
That point about the Internet turbocharging the optimization issue is A LOT bigger than most think and probably worth talking about in a full lenght video, because it completely removes a core aspect of games: exploration.
For example: in Magic, you dont need hours of gameplay to find the best deck anymore, you look on the internet and find it, alongside every other good deck and how to beat them. It cuts the time required for a game to be "solved", after which it becomes repetitive, by a factor of 10. This is true for every other game: shooters, fighting games, even single player games that focus on map exploration or getting a certain build going.
It forces devs to either make changes much faster, which makes it harder to keep up and might also stifle excitement if done too often; or make the game insanely complex, which is hostile to new players; or make the skill ceiling insanely high, furthering the divide between casual and competitive players.
With enough variance you could hinder the optimal game.
Chutes and ladders is a good example of a game with essentially 0 skill. There is no meaningful decision to be made and I would argue that makes it not a game. If we add one meaningful decision, say roll 2 dice and pick 1, the essential game reveals itself.
Hi, a comment
9 minutes and one 2 comments. Must be Turkey Day.
As someone who is that guy and who's play group is just a group of those people I find this perspective fairly odd. Trying to win is how you play a game, no? So having an efficient method for determining optimum strategies is almost categorically how you should approach all games from a player perspective. If you're at least attempting to do that are you playing the game or are you just doing an activity within the game space? I know we're mostly talking about tabletop games but to illustrate my point I will use a video game example. If we're playing Mario Kart and I am trying to win the race, and you're trying to see how many times you can hit things with a shell regardless of if it wins the game I don't know that you're playing Mario Kart - you're just shooting things.
This gets at the heart of the game designer vs player dynamic. The goal is to create an experience that is enjoyable by a wide number of players regardless of their preference of optimization.
Mario cart (and most Nintendo games) is a great example of how a game system helps to balance the field and allow different types of players to have meaningful games. Items are random, but weighted for those who are further behind.
Woah, you missed the entire point of the video didn’t you? Went right over you.
Literally first?