In case I haven't made it clear in my previous post or two, I am a huge fan of strategy. This is not to say that I am well-versed in RTS games such as Starcraft, but rather that I enjoy breaking down the inner workings of whatever game I happen to be playing and seeing what makes it tick. And there are, unsurprisingly, a few consistencies throughout pretty much the whole of gaming. Most notably, there's a human element. If a group of human beings is given a win condition, a lose condition, and the freedom to make choices, you can bet that there will be vast differences in how they go about things. The preferences can be see in a game as basic as Mario Bros. Do you go for the terrain-generating goodness of the Ice Flower, or the coin-spawning kill power of the Fire Flower, or do you alternate consistently? Do you use powerups before every stage, or do you jealously hoard them? Do you stick to the ground or attempt to find a high road? The list goes on. In general, these are called play styles, and I wanted to break them down as far as competitive games are concerned. This is talking about gaming in broad strokes, so I'll also describe broadly. Please note that not all terms here are industry standard.
Wondering what the deuce I'm talking about? When people compete, there is always more than one way to the goal. The choosing of more than one option is what lends a dynamic feel to competitive play. Understanding how we can break these down is pretty important. In a nutshell, we'll be talking in the broad categories of offense, stall, balance, and control. These are elements that come together to make a style, and styles are generally categorized by what is favored or ignored here. It is worth noting that in an ideal game, all of these elements could be used viably. Ease of play is always a factor, but two players of equal skill should be able to play however they want.
And to clear up any misconceptions about what it is, control, simply put, is the ability to make decisions in a game. When control play is not a factor, each player has about equal decision making power in how the match goes. Control play is the spending of resources to be able to gain more decision-making power, either by attempting to restrict your opponent's choices or to make your own choices more absolute. Many people will complain about it, say it's frustrating or cheap, that it's the only effective way to play, and other such nonsense. Fact is, control is part of games and it is just as dealable as any other thing. One must always bear in mind that control uses resources just like anything else. When resources are spent on control play, there should be a shortage in another area.
So, to start things off, let's talk offense. Offense, I've noticed, is a hilarious thing. It's often called a n00b tactic due its near omnipresence among inexperienced players, so it fades out after a while of play, but it generally suddenly comes highly praised by the veteran players. The premise is simple: aggressively pursue the win condition. In many games, that means trying to kill everything on the wrong end of you.
Offensive play manifests in many different ways. Perhaps the most notable is hyper offense (also called beatdown), a high-risk/high-reward style that forsakes almost every other game element to generate offensive pressure. The philosophy here is that the best defense is a good offense, and the best offense is still more offense. "Glass cannon" is a term generally associated with hyper offense, and the style favors very low-maintenance pieces with a fast and favorable output. Hyper offense works by trying to keep the opponent from having time to respond and trying to do as much damage as possible as quickly as possible, often resorting to damage tactics that may have a downside to capitalize on the greater up-front. In general, the style is foiled by being able to consistently weather its onslaught and prey on its lack of defense. (Note that having a lose condition doesn't make the style bad; it's just what a player needs to bear in mind.)
Bulky offense, or offensive tanking is a rather different approach. Instead of favoring glass cannon tactics, a bulky offensive style will rely on much less flimsy sources of power. Downside attacks are used much more sparingly here, as your damage dealers are presumably in for a long haul. As opposed to hyper offense, bulky offense generally loses speed, damage, or both to be able to deal its damage more often. As such, the onslaught can be easier to weather in the short term, but it has an easier time functioning over long periods of time. Setup is a much more viable trick in bulky offense.
In some games, there's a thing I like to call reverse beatdown. Where as hyper offense tends to take a "mine's bigger" approach, the thought here is more along the lines of "yours is smaller". Reverse beatdown relies on trying to weaken or mitigate the stats of your opponent's pieces to plow through them. It's just as aggressive as other offense styles, but it tends to be much harder to maintain and is very appreciative of control elements. The general weakness here is that the components of a reverse beatdown strategy may not be able to stand up to the opposition's full strength, so plan accordingly.
What's that? You don't want to just sit there and hit things? There's a style for that. Whereas offense aggressively pursues the win, stall tries to make your opponent lose. This is not just semantics; this a vast difference of approach. Whereas offense just tries to make the best of the time it has and pursue its own victory in that time frame, defensive play tries to run out the clock (sometimes making one is necessary, depending on what you play).
Pure stall, or walling is the legendary prolonger of all things. It's like hyper offense put on backwards; it tries to do a whole lot of sitting there until the opponent rolls over and perishes. Whether this is by decking out, residual damage, or other means is up to the game and the player. Pure stall attempts to weather any and all assaults without batting an eyelash, either by reducing damage to nothing or healing it off. This does come at a price, though. Pure stall is often loath to attack, if it's even able to. Much like beatdown has glass cannons, stall has components completely bereft of the ability to deal direct damage, and pure stall will probably favor the improved durability of these things. Like all stall, pure stall is dealt with by breaking through its defenses and attempting to leave it with things that cannot wall what you have remaining effectively.
Given the sheer difficulty of playing pure stall (a pretty universal constant), some players like to be a little more proactive in their defense. Defensive tanking comes in here. Offensive tanking and defensive tanking may favor the exact same resources, just applied differently. The difference is most notable in a game where a tank can set up to deal damage while taking hits versus digging in and eventually striking back. Conversely to offensive tanking, your primary job is still to weather blows without being offensively impotent. Similarly to how bulky offense eats it out of speed or damage, defensive tanking eats it out of speed or defense, but generally has vastly superior damage to its pure stalling counterpart.
Defense can do a very different schtick by integrating control elements and speed. Quickstalling, also known as annoyance (not a judgement call; "annoyer" is an actual designation), is the bizarre art of trying to outpace foes and render their win attempt moot. Quickstall runs out the timer by not letting your opponent establish a solid presence in the first place. Annoyers tend to rely more on their ability to move faster than sheer bulk, and can usually be dealt with easier if you can actually establish momentum against them.
Now, if I made it sound like offense must oppose defense and vice versa, don't take it that way. Offense and defense are generally crafted with opposition to the other in mind, but would be remiss to not offer answers to their own strategy. The fun bit is that if all playstyles are equal, then any match defers to whoever applies theirs better. Offensive styles will try "wallbreaking" defensive ones, while defensive ones will try to stall out offense, but stall wars and the "who can beat the other to death first?" game do happen. The rules of engagement don't change any when both players try to accomplish the same end goal, but the general dynamic of the match does.
And on the topic of preparing for all strategies, we can discuss balanced playstyles. While a good offensive or defensive style is able to respond to a wide range of threats, nothing says versatility like balance. Balanced play combines elements of other playstyles with some of its own to attempt to respond to a wider threat range or have more victory conditions. Since balance is not widely discussed and labeled in my experience (they just call it "balance"), I'm gonna make up some terms as I go. You have been warned.
Balanced play comes in many forms. At its most rudimentary, one can literally combine pieces of other playstyles to make a new playstyle. Polarized balance, or chimera play is where the elements of both offense and defense make a resurgence trying to work together. This form of balance is relatively easy to play, but it's very hard to master. The offensive things hit things like they would normally, and the defensive things just soak damage as always. The hard part is knowing when to use them. The downside to a chimera strategy is that it tends to develop a "lynchpin" piece that the entire strategy is leaning on at any moment. This piece can change as the match progresses, but losing it could make everything else topple with it.
As for the incorporation of its own unique elements, balance may call on things whose versatility is intrinsic. Inherent balanced, or jack-of-all-trades style aims to combine things with a wide range of talents. The old phrase does tend to ring true, though. The jack-of-all-trades style is generally the master of none. Much like tanks lost potency in exchange for being less one-sided, a good game will not have something that does everything exceptionally well. The hard part of inherent balanced play is learning to make do with things that don't excel at anything. The upside is that the inherent lack of focused excellence tends to be the only weakness, but working around that is the true difficulty of this style.
Balanced offensive and balanced defensive are basically the use of the respective playstyle with thought given to threat management. Alternatively, it's the use of a balanced style with a distinct offensive or defensive preference, respectively. Not much to say here; it's the tank factor on a broader level.
I would be remiss not to mention the "ultimate n00b strategy" here, also known as trash can style. Trash can play is simply a combination of anything that's on hand, not necessarily falling under polarized or inherent balanced styles. This is called a n00b strategy due to "combine it and see if it works" phase most players go through, or even the "if I put all my best stuff together, I'm sure to win" mindset. There is a mastery to be had here, though. Trash can play can utilize less obvious synergies, turning a ragtag bunch into something effective. The general lack of cohesion will generally be there, though, and that can be exploited.
Now, for all the other bits I hadn't gotten to yet. I touched very briefly on control play as a style, and the reverse beatdown and quickstall strategies are facets of offensive control and defensive control. The idea here is to apply control strategy to generate offensive pressure with more ease, or to help run out the clock. What's the difference, you ask? It's how you go about it. Reducing or healing off incoming damage is stall, but making the attack not happen in the first place is control. Hitting so hard their defense can't take it is offense, but removing the ability for something to defend itself is control. It's not any kind of ultimate style; it's just a methodology.
Balanced control deserves a mention here. This is my playstyle of choice, but I don't have much to gush about here. Balanced control mandates that you not forsake your ability to actually respond to threats in your quest to make them not be there in the first place, and I find this works best as a variant on trash can play. Sounds easier than it is, but the upside is the sheer difficulty opponents have countering. Of course, balanced control tends to have the lynchpin problem of chimera play, only worse. The trick is to attempt to keep disabling you from being an option.
You may also hear of gimmick strategies. A gimmick is just a cute trick that you can do in game context, but they can be devastatingly effective. Gimmicks fall into many categories, such as the one-trick pony, the one-off strategies, surprise factor, and lots o' setup. The term gimmick does not mean "non-viable", but they tend to be the most high-risk/high-reward strategies; if left unchecked, their effects can range from wacky to devastating. In other words, a gimmick will attempt to change the rules of engagement in a unique and difficult to handle way. In general, though, they are easier to counter than "consistent" strategies. Don't forsake them because they're trouble; stop and enjoy them. Even if they don't have consistent payout, you are playing to have fun, so try something you enjoy every once in a while.
Sadly, no game is perfectly balanced. Most try, and many can come close, but, especially in collectables games, mistakes are made. Insinuations of things being overpowered or underpowered are thrown around all the time. They're nebulous; understanding what's bad and what's cheap requires a base understanding of what is intrinsically good.
In general, when a game element can perform up to par with most comparable game elements, it is intrinsically good. Determining this is harder than it sounds, but you get a feel eventually. That feel helps define other game elements. Cheese is what performs better than comparable pieces with no or too little downside. Cheesed things are also called cheap or broken. When something is just better with no help at all from the player, it's intrinsically broken. When fair components are exploited by a player to create a no-win scenario, that is cheesing out or munchkining. For example, a character in a fighting game who is better than every other character at everything is intrinsically broken, but taking a character whose entire moveset pans out ok when it's all used and just spamming a single, hard to counter move because it can create an infinite loop is munchkining. Now, this is not to be confused with synergy effect, when things are combined to be more effective together than they were apart. The general test here is whether something can be beaten by a fair sampling of things, but it's hard (synergy), or whether it must be specifically countered or cannot be countered at all (cheese).
So, what makes something bad as opposed to everything else being cheap? Simply put, percentages. When the large majority of a game is at a specific power level, things that simply cannot perform to that standard are intrinsically bad or outclassed, whereas things that are overall weak, but still outshine every other game element at something particular are gimmicky. But, this is relative to a percentage. If something cheap comes up, and everything else is dragged UP to its power level, then it's no longer comparatively cheap, right? This effect is called power creep. It also occurs in collectables games when strictly better things are released to deliberately outclass what came before, thus "forcing" sales.
All of this being said about play style and balance, let's talk about this "metagame" thing you may have heard discussed before. A game is an environment in which players use resources to attempt to achieve a goal for fun. A metagame is the study of how people are playing the game on any scale. Metagame analysis dictates what's good and bad based on a combination of intrinsic worth and how other people play. While this doesn't sound like a bad idea, it has a darker side.
Advocating a metagame generally means the popularization of certain game elements. This can cause other elements to have trouble performing, not because of being inherently bad, but because of the omnipresence of a specific thing. (And let me just say that in games with literally hundreds of options open, a singular thing should not be in every match ever.) This leads to an effect called metagame distortion, in which the viability curve (the sampling of usable elements in a game) is thrown off and diminished because the environment no longer permits some things.
It's hard to explain this without being specific, so let's look at Yu-Gi-Oh! for a moment. And I mean old YGO, back before even GX. Trap cards are one of three big card types in the game. The idea is for them to be delayed, but potent and usable out of turn. Traps started off with some pretty powerful ones, but they had to keep getting better. Why? It's not like the traps getting outclassed were bad per se. But, the competitive scene advocated the need for Jinzo in every deck. Jinzo is a monster who made Trap cards literally not work. As such, decks would only include the one or two Trap cards in the entire game that could possibly stop Jinzo from hitting the field in the first place, and those so ludicrous in power level that you'd be remiss not to include them. The answer to make people use traps again was to keep printing better ones. Again, it's not like traps were ever bad. But the competitive metagame created an artificial need for these cards to be better.
Now, you may point out that the need was not artificial, and that the omnipresence of Jinzo made it real. And that may technically be true, except for 2 things. First is that there is never a requirement in the first place for Jinzo to be in a deck, or even owned by every player (it was Super Rare, after all), just the expectation that he'd be present in EVERY GAME. Again, this should not be an expectation in a game with thousands of cards out there. The other problem is that the creation of better traps meant more decks would need an answer to them. Like Jinzo. The problem is exacerbated by caving to the distorted metagame, because trying to rationalize Traps like that makes Jinzo a bigger fixture in the metagame than before, except power creep happened along the way, too.
Story time aside, the answer is to play games in a way that works for you and is enjoyable, not the way everyone else says you should be playing them. Creating a restrictive metagame is just bad for the gaming experience as a whole, I think, especially in options-rich games. I also encourage gamers to experiment with different play styles; a break from your norm can be both fun and informative, and being able to adopt a new style effectively is a very useful skill.
That's all from me for now. Happy gaming!
