3 ms·

All good points, but additionally: sometimes it's good to wait and see where a glitch takes a game, rather than banning it straight away because it 'breaks' the

All good points, but additionally: sometimes it's good to wait and see where a glitch takes a game, rather than banning it straight away because it 'breaks' the version of the game that everyone has been playing so far. A classic example is the Quake series, where the movement mechanics that gave the games lasting appeal were all originally accidental. (And Carmack even briefly patched strafe-jumping out of Q3, before quickly reverting -- but only because his fix caused other problems: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/02/quake-3-john-carmack-strafejumping/ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/02/quake-3-john-car...) David Sirlin also writes well about this sort of thing (with more of a focus on 'cheap' use of intended mechanics), though his tone could be offputting to people who think hyper-competitive videogaming is a bit silly: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win

leetcrew 7y ago
I totally agree. "skiing" in tribes is another classic example. fun mechanics take priority over everything. after all, it's a game! as an aside, strafe jumping is pretty similar to bunnyhopping in cs, probably because the source/goldsrc engine had its roots in quake code. I brought it up as a grey area. it's a fun mechanic, but timing is really important on cs maps, and it definitely breaks the balance on some of them. personally I think it was a mistake for valve to patch it out of the vanilla game (leagues, 3rd party servers, and matchmaking could have just disabled it through the svar), but that's all history now. my main point is that the mere fact that games take place in virtual environments doesn't make whatever the client/server permits the ultimate law of the land. just like in real life, the rules of the game are the intersection of what's possible and what's fun.

leetcrew 7y ago

I totally agree. "skiing" in tribes is another classic example. fun mechanics take priority over everything. after all, it's a game! as an aside, strafe jumping is pretty similar to bunnyhopping in cs, probably because the source/goldsrc engine had its roots in quake code. I brought it up as a grey area. it's a fun mechanic, but timing is really important on cs maps, and it definitely breaks the balance on some of them. personally I think it was a mistake for valve to patch it out of the vanilla game (leagues, 3rd party servers, and matchmaking could have just disabled it through the svar), but that's all history now. my main point is that the mere fact that games take place in virtual environments doesn't make whatever the client/server permits the ultimate law of the land. just like in real life, the rules of the game are the intersection of what's possible and what's fun.