Semifinal DOTA 2 HSL 2018: Pertaruhan Gengsi Kota Jakarta & Bandung
Persaingan dua daerah kiblat utama Esports Indonesia, yakni Jakarta dan Bandung, kembali memanas. Jika dulu kita mengenal sengitnya duel RRQ - Zero Latitude (kini EVOS) di DOTA 2, atau NXL vs DropZone Counter-Strike, maka sekarang giliran generasi muda kedua daerah tersebut yang kembali harus bertempur di ajang High School League (HSL) 2018, cabang game DOTA 2.
SMK Bhakti Anindya harus berhadapan dengan dua sekolah asal Bandung, yakni SMAN 7 dan SMAN 23. Sedangkan satu sekolah lainnya adalah SMA Marsudirini asal Bekasi, yang meski memiliki kedekatan dengan Jakarta, namun notabenenya termasuk ke dalam daerah Jawa Barat.
SMK Bhakti Anindya tentu harus menampilkan kemampuan terbaiknya untuk keluar sebagai juara di tengah kepungan 3 sekolah asal Jawa Barat. Nama besar Jakarta tentu dipertaruhkan setelah satu per satu wakilnya berguguran pada babak-babak awal kompetisi HSL 2018. Sedangkan Jawa Barat sendiri cukup mendominasi ajang ini dengan tampil meyakinkan sepanjang turnamen.
Performa carry andalannya, Zeero, tentu sudah diwaspadai oleh SMAN 7, sang lawan di semifinal. Memiliki kelebihan menggunakan hero-hero “licin”, Zeero bisa menjadi momok menakutkan dan sulit ditangkap kala menggunakan Timbersaw, Ember Spirit, Storm Spirit, atau Windranger.
Trio late hero SMAN 7 patut diwaspadai oleh anak-anak SMK Bhakti Anindya jika tak ingin tersingkir di semifinal. SMAN 1 Bandar Lampung (perempat final) dan SMAN 1 Surakarta (16 besar) sudah merasakan ketangguhan Reins, Rizkivoker, serta Syauqihaikal kala pertandingan sudah memasuki mid hingga late game. Bermain cepat dan terus menekan sejak awal tentu bisa menjadi strategi pilihan yang baik untuk SMKN Bhakti Anindya agar dapat melaju ke babak grand final.
Meski berasal dari wilayah yang sama (Jawa Barat), tentu saja SMAN 23 juga berambisi menciptakan “all-Bandung-Final” dan memastikan gelar HSL 2018 berlabuh di kota Kembang. Meski secara geografis termasuk dalam satu wilayah, namun seringkali Bekasi dianggap lebih memiliki kedekatan dengan kota Jakarta. Secara kualitas.
kedua sekolah memiliki kemampuan yang berimbang, namun SMAN 23 harus mewaspadai SMKN Marsudirini yang bisa disebut sebagai “Bandung Slayer” dengan menumbangkan 3 tim asal Bandung (SMKN 5, SMAN 2, dan BPK Penabur), ditambah SMAN 6 Cimahi, sepanjang turnamen HSL 2018 berlangsung. Lengah sedikit, bukan tidak mungkin kota Bandung tanpa wakilnya di grand final HSL 2018.
Semifinal HSL 2018 sendiri akan berlangsung di High Grounds, Jakarta, 12 Desember 2018 mendatang. Sedangkan grand final akan digelar keesokan harinya (13/12) bertempat di Britama Arena, Kelapa Gading. Selain DOTA 2, satu game lainnya yang dipertandingkan adalah Mobile Legends, di mana empat sekolah yang berhasil lolos, yakni SMAN 1 Purwodadi, SMAN 6 Pontianak, SMAN Istiqamah Bandung, dan SMK Telkom Makassar.
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#Kabab then #Highgrounds with this #hotmama and this little #British #piglet baby Nicole! I love you baby! 😘 @martina.sim @happy_pingu See you on our next date! https://www.instagram.com/p/BnvasphFMQA/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=4bwgfs6xivvg
From a creator of my beloved -- and sometimes behated -- Highgrounds comes Hero Generations. It looks phenomenal.
Check out the Kickstarter here.
It's a kind of "generational roguelike" in which your actions determine, in part, the future of your city. It looks great and I'm sure it will feel great.
$10 gets you the game. Planned to retail at $15. Simple as that.
Highgrounds is a fairly strong casual flash game by developers Spry Fox and Heart Shaped Games. Essentially a trading card game, it’s free-to-play with microtransactions in the form of booster packs and random card buys. It’s definitely worth a play, and this analysis won’t be worth much to those who haven’t checked it out, so take a minute: http://www.highgroundsgame.com/
I chose to focus in on this game because it seemed rich and interesting enough to hold my attention, but small enough in scope for me to be able to write a pretty hi-fi analysis of it. Prepare for a lengthier post than some of my others. First I’ll break the game down into some key components (M), then discuss how these components interact dynamically during gameplay (D), then walk through a play narrative and discuss how playing the game actually feels (A). I’ll move on to highlight what I see as some pros and cons of the design, and, finally, attempt to make some general value judgements about the game as a whole.
Kinds of stats:
Attack, Defense, Rampage, Squire, Bolt: Investments towards combat
Gold, Recruit: Investments towards economy, future plays (high rate of positive feedback)
Wound, Arrow, Fireball: Nullify enemy investments
Healing: Provide security for your investments
Kinds of investments:
Towards Combat: Combat investments are the most direct investment a player can make towards victory, as having an edge in combat is the only way to win. Maintaining an edge in combat will guarantee a win, so the capability to do so is crucial. Still, combat is a second-order investment, since the goal of the game is not “have high combat stats,” but “do a certain amount of damage by winning combats.”
Towards Economy: Although less direct, economic investments are necessary for victory because they grant access to more powerful combat investments. If a player ignores economic investments in favor of combat, they will quickly lose their edge to any intelligent opponent. In addition, these plays are made sexy by their high rate of positive feedback: econ investments grant access to more powerful econ investments. These investments are a third-order investment: an investment on future investments.
All investments cap out at a certain point. This is guaranteed by limiting the number of troops that can be on a team (10) and in a row (7) at a time. Balanced investment is encouraged by the fact that combat investments almost always require troops in the front row and econ in the back. It's also encouraged by the increased security given when a player has both kinds of investments: a player doesn't want to lose their combat edge now, and they certainly don’t want to lose it in the future.
Balancing Kinds of Investment
Because winning combat means taking no damage, econ investments can be very rewarding later in the game—although using them might mean more damage taken now, it could also lead to a heavy edge on combat in the future, which would guarantee a win, regardless of how much damage the opponent racked up previously. In addition, the health pool is high enough that it cannot be reasonably eaten up with early attacks alone.
However, since combat investments are not direct attacks, but instead investments for all future combat turns (disregarding wounds, that is), early combat investments can lead to relatively long lasting advantages. They also grant a buffer period while the other player attempts to catch up.
Small combat investments are valuable enough in the early game, but early econ investments give the player much more, and lead more regularly to victory through later, more powerful combat plays.
Moving Investments
Central to Highgrounds’ play is the ability to move these investments between different states: their back row state, which generally speaking means an econ investment, and their front row state, which usually means a combat investment. Choosing a unit to play means not only choosing what kind of investment you want now, but also what kind of investment you might want later on.
Compare units 'Harden' (2 cost, 2 gold in back, 2 defense in front) and 'Johnn' (2 cost, 2 gold in back, 1 attack in front). Both units would likely be played initially in the back row for their gold bonus, but they allow different sorts of benefits when that gold isn’t a priority anymore. Harden is situationally more useful than Johnn in the front row, granting twice as much bonus in any combat where he is taking at least two damage directly. Johnn is less of a gamble, and easier to play with in front, but also half as powerful. These sorts of secondary decisions allow players to customize their games in small but meaningful ways.
Because units can change states arbitrarily between combats, players have the opportunity to be highly reactive, and so have more dynamic play over the course of a game. A player who has primarily put units in the back row but is now in danger of losing the game next combat can instantaneously turn their strong (but now irrelevant) econ investments into weak (but now critical) combat investments. This helps wins feel less inevitable. However, the limit on army and row size makes flooding the enemy with weak units an untenable strategy in the late game, so decisive wins do remain decisive even in spite of this arbitrary state changing.
Not only can units change states, but they can also rearrange within a row. Most abilities, but especially combat abilities, are dependent on the relative positions of units in play. This keeps units active and strategically relevant even when they remain in the same state for their entire lifespan, creating a more dynamic, less stagnant game. It also makes units potentially relevant (if only slightly) even when their own abilities are not, since their position still may interact meaningfully with other units. This is especially important late in a game, when a player’s best units are already on the battlefield, and these little troop movements become the only important decisions to make.
The ability of the player to change the state and position of each of their units during each turn could easily become overwhelming, but it does not. This is partially because of the way the interface avoids making this option explicit to the player, and partially because of the design of most units as being more useful in one state than the other. The player chooses a unit for one task and rarely wants to reassign them unless they find themselves in dire straits.
Play Narrative
At the start of a game, the battlefield is empty, your resources are low, and a small handful of potential recruits is presented to you. Usually only a couple of these are playable at all with the resources at hand, so your decisions are fairly easy. Within the first few turns you draw a cheap econ troop of some sort and play them in your back row, enabling you to play more of the units you draw in future turns. For this first section of the game, there is some squabbling over the combat grounds, but primarily you are attempting to grow your economy until you can play your big hitters. Combat feels less important than economy for now, since a strong enough combat force later will make it irrelevant. When possible, you put out units with wound, or especially arrow, in order to negate your opponent’s investments.
Once your econ is strong enough, you begin populating your combat ranks with the strongest units you draw. This soon fills your unit and row limits, and you begin discarding units to make room for better ones: first your weaker combat units, then your econ units, until you’ve cycled through your deck and your 7 best combat units are on the board. During this midgame phase, somewhat more attention is paid to unit arrangement than previously, especially when it comes to lining your wound units up with their strongest units, trying to cripple them as best as possible. Especially as the player with the weaker deck, wounding is very important. It is the only way to avoid a progression towards the endgame, where the player with the stronger deck will have a firm advantage.
If and when both sides get their strongest units out, that marks the beginning of the endgame. The stronger side repeatedly rearranges their units for maximum damage, while the weaker side tries to wound the enemy in order to gain an advantage. If this phase is reached, the game is likely not long until the end. It feels fairly inevitable, but the losing player can flail for a couple of turns, trying to cripple their opponent and turn the tides.
Things Highgrounds Does Well
High interdependence of parts leads to relatively rich, interesting play.
Limited but meaningful decisions reduce mental overhead while maintaining depth. (Only a small draw of units to possibly play.) Quantity of decisions escalates over a game, matching drama/investment curve, but are emphasized lightly enough not to be overwhelming.
Specialized, multistate units encourage investing in a strategy, allow for highly reactive strategy-swaps, but don’t make long-term planning wishy-washy. (Econ investments can quickly become combat investments, but it’s not gonna make up for much.)
Blind, simultaneous play encourages bluffing, makes for a softer game for players with less powerful decks.
Problems with Highgrounds
Endgame often results in one army being simply stronger, regardless of strategic play. Makes early strategies less relevant, emphasizes having a powerful deck over playing each game well. (General problem with CCGs like this.)
Too much information is presented all at once when the deck-building element is first shown to the player. It’s a huge data overload compared to the relatively low information-processing requirements of play. A more gradual tutorial would be a big improvement.
Small deck size and recycling of old cards leads to fairly consistent (predictable, unexciting) play, emphasizes the power of the deck over play strategies.
Final Word
Highgrounds is relatively rich for its low information-processing requirements, and will remain very interesting for quite a few games, somewhat interesting for many more. Unfortunately, a pattern does eventually emerge, and it’s one that greatly de-emphasizes the value of active play, placing importance instead on the very slow (or else expensive) process of deck-building. Because of the consistency of decks and of play narratives, the game is both harsher on those with poor decks than it needs to be, and less beautiful and satisfying for everyone than it could be.
That said, certain elements in the game already work to combat these problems to some degree, such as simultaneous play and the ability to wound enemies. (A weaker player can, if lucky enough, cripple a stronger player long enough to win before the endgame is reached.) In addition, the game is still in continuous development at the time of writing, and these problems may be better addressed over the course of time.
Parts 1 and 2 there, this is part 3 where I talk about how the game Highgrounds is monetized.
So first lets talk price, $5.00 US gets you 500 gems and boosters come in prices of 100, 250, 600. Now the increased price doesn't get you increased numbers of units, all 3 of these tiers get you 6 units, rather it gets you a greater chance of rare and ultra-rare units. For comparison Magic's booster packs cost $3.95 US which come with 16 cards: 3 uncommon and 1 rare with 12.5% chance of a mythic rare card.
Now there are a number of complicating factors that work for and against Highgrounds in this comparison, the first being that Highgrounds gives you a deck at the start of the game and then some more units to flesh it out. It is a free to play game and while you can buy gems you can also win them by playing which isn't strictly an option in Magic. The rate at which you can win them is fairly slow, after the tutorials were over I was winning gems at about a rate of 1 or 2 per win but still there is something to be said for the fact that you can unlock everything in the game through sheer determination even if it would take a really long while.
The mitigating factor that really isn't in Highground's favor is that the price of Magic cards includes the manufacture and shipping of actual physical cards. I'm not saying that the cost of development for the units in Highgrounds is nothing but it includes less by virtue of the fact that there is no physical part to it and I'm not sure their prices reflect that. If Wizards of the Coast went belly up tomorrow I would still have all the cards I bought and I could totally keep playing the game, yet for Highgrounds I'm paying for data on their servers and if they went belly up tomorrow I would have nothing and couldn't ever see the tings I paid for ever again. I'm not saying they are likely to pull their servers anytime soon, or the implicit need of storing the data on their servers is a bad thing as the game model demands it and yet they could because of bankruptcy or what have you and you are left with nothing.
I'd be more fine with the pricing if what they gave you to start with was, well more. I'm not asking for a bunch of rare cards or even any at all, not even uncommon cards one of the best parts of Magic is deck building and while they give you units in Highgrounds they don't give you enough to create a deck that is you expressing yourself via gameplay. I paid 10 dollars for gems but I still only have cards to make 1 army, and while I could make two armies without having different units in them they wouldn't both be viable or just have basically the same strategy.
Additionally because you can't trade units each unit you get is going to be even more hit or miss, which can leave you feeling unsatisfied with your purchase or with all that effort you exerted to get it. In Magic if you got a really good green card but wanted a blue card (because blue is the best) you could trade with someone else, or if you really wanted one card you can just buy that one card. You could also just buy a pre-made deck with a whole bunch of cards and strategies ready made for you, there are tons of options. The current buying options for Highgrounds are: the 3 booster packs, buying a single random unit for 20 gems, or buying a crystal themed starter deck for 550 gems. Now I'm glad they have the buy a deck option but the fact that there is only one for you to buy says a lot about the current state of the game, as I think there is only one is because they could only come up with one deck completely distinct from the base deck it gives you. So in that context the problem isn't that they don't have a model I like as much as it is that they just don't have enough content to flesh out both the categories of give away for enticement/tutorial purposes and selling so they can keep making games.
I think Highgrounds is a game with a lot of clever ideas and ton of potential but that it is currently more potential than kinetic, and I'm not sure it's pricing model is enticing to get it to where it would be a really great game. But like I said it is free to play and you don't even have to sign up or give your email to get going so here is another link to the game so you can decide for yourself.
Highgrounds Review: Part 1 - How the game is played
So I go on a bit (surprise) in this review so I broke it into three parts: How the game is played, how it tries to achieve strategic depth, and lastly how the the game is monetized.
The biggest difference is that Highgrounds instead of using a great deal of different types of activatables to archive complex strategies the way Magic does (creatures, instants, enchantments, lands, and so on) it puts all that functionality into units. This streamlines the way the game plays and as I'll go into the ways they replicate the effects those card types bring as to not reduce depth of the game.
Now when you place a unit there are two rows(front, back) you can place that unit in and where you place the unit will cause that unit to do different things. For example a Knight put in the front row could produce attack which you use to hurt your opponent but when put in the back row that same unit might produce gold (more on gold later). Where you place that unit is not permanent though as you can change the units row and the order in which units activate their abilities every turn. The fact that every unit can be used in two distinct ways and can be switched between these options every turn means that the player is given more choices and allows the player to change their strategy more drastically on a turn by turn basis as their strategies develop.
It is turn based but rather than alternating turns players take their turns simultaneously. Both players lay out their units for a fight then these units perform their duties a prescribed in the order the player told them to. This simultaneous turn system allows it to retain much of the mind games that it Magic brought to the table via instants. Because the order in which your units execute their abilities and who they execute them on depends on the ordering of them in comparison to the enemy players will have to constantly try to out think the other in order to achieve the result they want.
When both players are satisfied with their configuration the fight proceeds and the side that does the most damage gets to deal a portion of the damage they have over the enemy players damage to the enemy player, with the first to deal 15 damage winning.
Games can be played live where you get about a minute and a half per turn or by email with you having up to three days to plot out what you want to do. You can only play one live game at a time but can have a multitude of the 'unlimited' game type going at the same time. It sends you an email when it is your turn which is both convenient and annoying as I have like 30 emails from them telling me it is my turn, I would like it if I could set it so it emails be at most once an hour or as I don't need to be alerted to each game individually but rather be only sometimes updated that it is my turn for various games.
Okay, so I'm going to end part 1 here and put a link to part 2 here when it goes up tomorrow. Though spoiler alert my praise gets less glowing and I start to get into areas where I feel the game is lacking or just hasn't developed enough yet.
How barriers to entry skew the industry and consumer base against innovation
So yesterday I talked about barriers to play outside of someone just not being interested in a game. Things like cost, time, trust and access. The reason I think mitigating them or out right removing them is important is that these barriers don't just limit the number of people who get to play games but they also skew what games are bought and made in that it makes them more conservative. I don't me conservative in a political sense but in a less likely to innovate sense.
Here is why: imagine you are trying to decide between buying two games, and you can only afford to buy one this month. One is a sequel to a game you liked, the other promises to be unlike any other game you have ever played. The sequel you will like, maybe not love but at the very least like. The other game you have no idea if you will like or not, how could you if it is a completely new experience as promised?
Barriers to entry make it so that buying/getting a game is a risk, and we all understandably wish to mitigate that risk by relying on things like series or genres we already know we like. So while some amount of innovation is incentivised as everyone does want a little bit of new it becomes a balancing act for developers of how much new has to be provided to so that people will want it over the what they already have against how much change can you put in a game before people stop recognizing it as something they already know they will enjoy?
But what if games didn't have that huge up front cost that made people wary of new? What if you could play a game and then later pay for extra skins in the game if you turn out enjoying it a lot? Or what if instead of having to choose between two 60$ games you started to be able to choose 3 20$ game or 6 10$ games? True, you likely wouldn't enjoy every one of the 10$ games, but you would also likely enjoy one of them as much if not more then the 60$ one.
These barriers falling don't just open the doors to for hobbying developers to make games, but open the doors to consumers that let them take greater risks as the cost of failure is lessened. So you can try out a game like Highgrounds and if you don't like it who cares it isn't like you paid any money for it, or even had to give them any information about you. So consumers can start taking chances on extremely innovative games which means developers have an incentive to start making more truly innovative game.
