Thoughts of Rondo

Tools developer for Epic Games by trade, I write here about things I may find interesting or thoughts I have. Probably undercooked here and there.

[rondo-dev]

Welcome to my braindump!

Hey! My name's Randy, I'm a tools developer in the games industry.

I like to write braindumps about things I find interesting, so expect unedited and undercooked ideas at times. Still, I hope it makes you think or learn something new every once in a while.

You'll find the dumps are either about game design, psychology related to games, and game development!

[rondo-dev]

Introducing Friends to Difficult Games

There are some notoriously difficult games out there. Not just mechanically, but also visually. How is someone inexperienced with, for example, League of Legends or Dota able to even comprehend what is going on when there’s flashes of color all over the screen? To make a consommé Consommé is a type of clear, cold broth. It is free of visible particles, bland looking, but powerful. But don’t be…

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[rondo-dev]

Getting Good - Part 2: The Blame Game

We’ve all been there. You’re playing like a god — nobody can stop you. Absolute beast. But man, your team?! Trash. Dumpster fire. They’re dragging you down from godhood to their level. Then you lose the game. “Trash team gg”, you type. Or you’re playing a game with a mechanic that is just bullshit. Why is it even in the game? It keeps you from dominating the game: so dumb — it should be…

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[rondo-dev]

Attack Patterns: Rhythm of the Fight

All games where you fight against opponents that are not defeated in a few hits have attack patterns. They define which attacks are used and when in a manner where you can learn them and react accordingly if you keep on your toes. Perhaps the most famous use of this design is in Soulsborne games, though it was obviously used in the past with most prevalently bosses. You know that if a healthbar…

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[rondo-dev]

Hidden Mechanics: A Double Edged Sword

Did you ever play a game and you figured out you can do something that neither the game or anyone else has told you you can do? And I mean not mechanics that have been hinted at in some way, not shown full detail such as exact % proc chance, or worse not explained properly through obfuscation. I mean mechanics they did not hint at in any way. It can be an absolutely wonderful feeling to figure…

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[rondo-dev]

Getting Good - Part 1: Fundamentals are king

Welcome to Getting Good, a series of posts about, well, getting good at any game you want. I will aim to give guidance on what you need to achieve a high(-ish) skill. I do not have credentials of a pro player or some such, but I’ve read and heard a lot from them. This is a compilation of my own application of what I know. In this post, we’ll cover three key aspects: the importance of…

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[rondo-dev]

Stories that emerge from the sandbox

In almost all games, writers and developers alike want to tell you a story. One they have meticulously crafted and refined to hit you right in the feels when it would be most powerful. Like a rollercoaster, they attempt to take you for a ride through all the well planned out highs and lows. We call these linear stories. Most games you play will have storytelling of this type. Then you have your…

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[rondo-dev]

Elevated toxicity in the middle bracket

Typically, player’s MMR tend to settle in a bell-shape curve if you would put them in a graph. A small amount of players at the bottom, a large amount of players in the middle, and a small amount of players at the top.

There’s a good chance that you too are among the masses in the middle bracket. And that means there’s a good chance you have also experienced a good amount of toxicity.

Let me be clear, competitive games always have the potential to become highly toxic because of their fundamental nature. In most games, you rely on your team to do play a certain way according to the rank they have. It is annoying and frustrating when you see players don’t do what you think they should do, I mean, they are at the same rank as you. They should know what to do. Or do they?

Specialists among specialists

The perception that you have on playing a game is just that: a perception. You think you and your team must do this or that. You think they did something wrong. But what about what they think?

That is where the issue lies for these mid-level games. I believe players in this bracket have a very incomplete skill set. If we think about each skill you can have a game with a 5 star rating, players who have just started: they have 0 stars in all ratings (and that is fine). Players who are at the top have an extremely balanced and refined skill set, likely 4 stars in everything and 5 stars in a good majority. Then the question remains, what do you think the mid level players look like?

I believe they have an extremely unbalanced skill set. 1 or 2 stars in most skills, and a 4 in a select few skills they focused on. That is the source of a very high amount of toxicity, especially on the precipice of achieving the higher ranks, taking Platinum IV (top 15%) as an example in the graph above.

To attack or to defend

To paint the image a bit more clearly, let’s use Rocket League as an example. We’ve got 3 core skills which players can focus on: shooting, defending, and passing.

Each of these skills have the potential to carry you to this precipice of higher ranks. But what one player specialized in does not mean another did the same, this is what skews the individual’s perspective to their own specialty.

Player 1 is a specialist in shooting. They can dribble through the air, can maybe pull off a flip reset, and consistently shoot on target. Player 2 is a specialist in defending. They will rotate back quickly and efficiently to stop potential goals, preferring to let others shoot when possible.

The scenario appears where player 1, in their aggressive playstyle, tried for a goal but ultimately missed. Player 2, with their good rotation, is in position to shoot on a fairly open goal. They miss.

“What a shot! What a shot! What a shot!”, appears in chat, sent by player 1.

Yikes. The mood is ruined, player 1 doesn’t trust player 2 anymore and will play even more aggressively, taking the ball from player 2 because they will miss anyway. Chat is spammed with sarcastic and petty messages, communication broke down and the game is lost.

A matter of perspective

Ultimately, the issue is that when someone is only good at one or a few things, they will see exactly what someone else does wrong in their specialty, but fails to realise that other players have their own specialty also.

Player 1 from the example probably didn’t think at all about some amazing saves player 2 pulled off, or how player 2 always seems to be in position to tap the ball away from any potential attackers. But it’s so easy to see player 2 missing, what they think, an easy goal. And the same happens vice versa.

Once players reach a level where their skill is once again averaging out towards the higher level, common toxicity takes over.

[rondo-dev]

The Mindgame Meta - when high skill meets low skill

You're at home with a friend wondering which game you want to play. "You up for some Street Fighter 6? It's pretty sick!", you say. Your friend looks at you a bit scared. "Never played it, but sure."

You boot up the game, give your friend a cheap knock-off PS5 controller, and get into the character select screen. "You can play Marisa, she's pretty easy.", you tell your friend. They hover over her and decide to go with your suggestion.

You know you're going to absolutely wipe the floor with them, but you'll hold back a bit. Keep it interesting.

The characters face-off against each other in the loading screen, you make your character pull a funny face, because you know you can do it. Your friend doesn't, but is probably too focused on their own character and all the unfamiliar sequences.

FIGHT. You move in, ready to play footsies and dominate the neutral game. Get a hit confirm and follow-up with a 6 hit combo. Meaty them when they get up. Cross-over into a super. Wiped. Your plan falls into perfect place in your mind palace.

And yet, as soon as you walk close, your friend runs in like a total baboon and hits your character. Okay, fine. Beginner luck.

They do it again.

And again.

And again.

The sound of what is button mashing eminating from the crappy controller next to you. What the hell is going on?!

MARISA WINS appears on the screen while your friend laughs like a maniac. Stunned, you rematch and go in with absolute concentration.

A repeat of the previous set. Hundreds of hours down the drain and this is the result. You're done with this game. Your friend can go play story mode or something, it's fine. Play something else, even.

Hard and soft skills

Almost all multiplayer games where you play against another player have some amount of depth and skill expression that you learn over time. As you play against, understand, and apply these mechanics, you will become a better player and thus climb the eternal ladder of elo/mmr/other arbitrary number based ranking system.

This number then, in theory, matches you with players of an equal skill level. They may be better at some mechanics you're not well versed in, but perhaps you're better and other mechanics. You didn't get to that rank with sheer luck.

This loop ensures that you will always be exposed to challenges, forcing you to improve if you want to climb and meet more difficult opponents.

I'd consider most of the above "hard skills", where the game tells you "you can do this". However, when you reach higher and higher ranks, "soft skills" become more and more important. What I mean with that is both strategy and getting in your opponent's heads (the mental game).

The Art of the Macro Game

To use mobas as an example for strategy, there's a lot of guides talking about the right way to play the macro game (aka map movements). Do x and y and you will win games. And yes, it probably is the most optimal way to the play the game, you'll get the most amount of gold and apply pressure around the map, forcing your opponent to do things they don't want to do. Perfect!

But what if they just don't have a concept of what the right way to play is? What if they suddenly, at a really bad moment, decide to group up and walk to your location to kill you?

It makes no sense!! They could've done so many other things that were more optimal to try and get you, the high skill player, out of the game! And yet, they did exactly that.

High skill players have an expectation of how the game should be played, and when the reality of a low skill player's strategy (or lack thereof) meets expectation is when the high skill players may ironically be beaten.

Pressure mounting

"gg ez". You feel your anger boiling. They worked 50 minutes for that win filled with insults and questionable comments, damn it! How can they even say it was easy?! You let your emotions get the better of it and write a novel of text in the post-game chat to verbally humiliate your opponent (and make yourself feel better). It doesn't work. You took the bait. You're done.

That's one type of mental game, though not the one exclusive to high skill players. But it is one that anyone can use. Wittling away at someone's mental game is, I think, a big part of how OG won the biggest tournament in Dota twice in a row. Not by typing things in games, of course, but by taunting on Twitter and by making very unconventional moves to target the "star player" of the opponents team. I mean, how would you feel if you already have a lot of pressure on you to win the mid-game for your team, and then you also get ganked and killed before the 10 minute mark? You'll start making mistakes and being predictable by sticking to what you know. Creativity goes out the window.

You may think these are underhanded strategies, but for any competitive game and sport, not tilting is always part of the game. I think it is simply another layer of competitiveness. Keeping your cool is an art on its own.

A dependency on the opponent

There will always be things higher skill players will be better at. Last hitting in lane, knowing when to go in for a kill, higher situational awareness, keeping better track of resources, and much more. These foundational concepts are the things they will always rely on to try and pull a win out of the bag.

What differenciates these things, in a vacuum, is that they don't necessarily rely on the opponent to do something. You know that you can get more last hits. You know by instinct that you have 4 bars of resources to pop into the next combo. You know you can do your super move after certain moves.

The difference comes from where you need to interact with the opponent directly. So when you're ever in the situation where you need to play against a lower skill player, do not overthink things and try to punish the "dumb" moves they are making or find gameplay patterns you yourself can exploit.

"If I don't know what the hell I am doing, how the hell are they supposed to know what I am doing?"