Why Instagib isn't rated?

[KiteX3]

Originally Posted by HunterPudgeCat

DUDE! You have to have crazy awesome relexes to do anything in Instagib!

Well, that is skill, but it's the shallowest possible skill pool you can have in an FPS.

I recently compiled a list of what I feel are all the skills that play in Quake Live requires. Any skill that Instagib FFA does not allow or encourage is in red. Any skill that is very rarely used or is otherwise significantly less important than in other gametypes is in yellow.

•Weapon Mastery

•Intelligent Weapon Selection

•Predictive Aim

•Rocket Launcher

•Grenade Launcher

•Plasma Gun

•Raw Aim

•Railgun

•Shotgun

•Lightning Gun

•Movement

•Strafe Jumping

•Rocket Jumping

•Trick Jumps

•Control

•Area Control

•Item Control

•Timing

•Item Denial

•Teamwork

In other words, Instagib carves down the depth of the game to a fraction of what it previously was.

Instagib's fun, but I wouldn't exactly call it skill.

[sekt]

Well. Try iCTF then. strafing, teamwork, area control and aiming suddenly becomes important. And as said many times here, it's a matter of personal taste. So what if its "noobish/easy/whatever" to play insta. A great deal of player likes it, and its fun

And the colour scale you did is not really any secret, ofc the weapon and item mastery is not needed in insta..

[Stanith]

Originally Posted by KiteX3

Well, that is skill, but it's the shallowest possible skill pool you can have in an FPS.

I recently compiled a list of what I feel are all the skills that play in Quake Live requires. Any skill that Instagib FFA does not allow or encourage is in red. Any skill that is very rarely used or is otherwise significantly less important than in other gametypes is in yellow.

•Weapon Mastery

•Intelligent Weapon Selection

•Predictive Aim

•Rocket Launcher

•Grenade Launcher

•Plasma Gun

•Raw Aim

•Railgun

•Shotgun

•Lightning Gun

•Movement

•Strafe Jumping

•Rocket Jumping

•Trick Jumps

•Control

•Area Control

•Item Control

•Timing

•Item Denial

•Teamwork

In other words, Instagib carves down the depth of the game to a fraction of what it previously was.

Instagib's fun, but I wouldn't exactly call it skill.

Your argument is flawed. Making a game more complicated does not mean it requires more skill. It just makes it more complicated, and in fact increases the impact of luck (read: probability) instead. If a game gets too complicated, then it's almost entirely down to luck.

When comparing Chess to Checkers/Draughts, would you say the latter is unskilled, or even easy to master because it only has one type of piece to play? Let me tell you that Checkers is incredibly difficult to master, and takes a lot of skill. They have yet to program a computer that can play it flawlessly (funny eh, such a "simple" game).

The same principle applies to instagib, it in fact takes a very long time and a lot of practice to master, despite it being easier to pick up and play when compared to other game modes (of course that will be the case, it's simpler). This has in fact been proven through its enormous popularity over the years in all the Quake games since Quake II and in Unreal Tournament, and the many very competitive clanbase cups dominated only by the most skilled of clans.

[KiteX3]

Originally Posted by Stanith

Your argument is flawed. Making a game more complicated does not mean it requires more skill. It just makes it more complicated, and in fact increases the impact of luck (read: probability) instead. If a game gets too complicated, then it's almost entirely down to luck.

When comparing Chess to Checkers/Draughts, would you say the latter is unskilled, or even easy to master because it only has one type of piece to play? Let me tell you that Checkers is incredibly difficult to master, and takes a lot of skill. They have yet to program a computer that can play it flawlessly (funny eh, such a "simple" game).

The same principle applies to instagib, it in fact takes a very long time and a lot of practice to master, despite it being easier to pick up and play when compared to other game modes (of course that will be the case, it's simpler). This has in fact been proven through its enormous popularity over the years in all the Quake games since Quake II and in Unreal Tournament, and the many very competitive clanbase cups dominated only by the most skilled of clans.

I will admit, you've got a point -- having more skills doesn't necessarily mean that the skill pool has any less depth, just that it's less wide/varied.

I would say that Chess is significantly more skilled than Checkers, I suppose. But I find your analogy is does not fit Instagib FFA. In checkers, you do not have a variety of pieces, but you have many of them; that is where the strategic depth comes into the game. The teamwork between these simple pieces is what makes the game deep. It's more analogous to Instagib CTF, which I do believe is potentially a skillful gametype. Instead, I would compare Instagib FFA to an 8-player game of checkers where each player gets one king. Fun? Maybe. Interesting? Sure. Skillful and strategic? I highly doubt it.

I notice you say "clans" -- keep in mind that the skill list I posted earlier is only applicable to Instagib FFA, and not team games. In Instagib CTF, Teamwork is very important to maintain Area Control, which is in turn critical to success. Additionally, speed is very important as the flag carrier to get to base while your team can hold off the enemy, so Strafe Jumping is extremely important too.

[enykey]

No brain, only rail (c)

[Stanith]

Originally Posted by KiteX3

I will admit, you've got a point -- having more skills doesn't necessarily mean that the skill pool has any less depth, just that it's less wide/varied.

I would say that Chess is significantly more skilled than Checkers, I suppose. But I find your analogy is does not fit Instagib FFA. In checkers, you do not have a variety of pieces, but you have many of them; that is where the strategic depth comes into the game. The teamwork between these simple pieces is what makes the game deep. It's more analogous to Instagib CTF, which I do believe is potentially a skillful gametype. Instead, I would compare Instagib FFA to an 8-player game of checkers where each player gets one king. Fun? Maybe. Interesting? Sure. Skillful and strategic? I highly doubt it.

I notice you say "clans" -- keep in mind that the skill list I posted earlier is only applicable to Instagib FFA, and not team games. In Instagib CTF, Teamwork is very important to maintain Area Control, which is in turn critical to success. Additionally, speed is very important as the flag carrier to get to base while your team can hold off the enemy, so Strafe Jumping is extremely important too.

To be honest, I've more or less been commenting on instagib as a whole (FFA, iTDM, iCTF). We can agree that there is even more depth in iCTF, I think there's more in iTDM too. In any case, I actually think the analogy does fit FFA instagib too, as the aiming and movement skill needed alone seperates the good players from the poor ones (and map knowledge still plays a big enough part in succeeding). In addition to this, if you claim the analogy doesn't fit FFA instagib, then you must also concede that it doesn't fit FFA with all weapons (your argument fits both more or less). Though lets focus explicitly on FFA for a moment then (in regards to it being worthy of a rating):

FFA with all weapons can just be one big frag-fest sometimes too (therefore introducing spam tactics and luck), yet in FFA instagib and FFA all-weapons the better players still seem to very consistently win. The empirical evidence from just observing the servers points to there being a fair amount of skill involved in FFA instagib (and FFA all-weapons) despite these properties, or the winner would be almost entirely random each game for any group of people that have reasonable Quake experience. There are players that are almost always 1st or 2nd in instagib, and there are players that are exactly the same in FFA all-weapons. Therefore there is definitely something worth rating there, and the game cannot possibly be down to luck (despite the lesser variety when compared to regular FFA). If FFA with all weapons is worth rating, then so is FFA instagib.

Instagib just amplifies the effect of an individuals aiming and movement skill being proportional to their winning chance. This skill isn't a descrete scale, it's a continuous one and is therefore valid for rating. Each person has their own personal accuracy average, that with practice can raise or lower with time. They will also have their own frags per hour (very interesting statistic for FFA instagib that doesn't apply to the team variations) and efficiency. I think it would be very cool to track these, and it's definitely what people here are asking for. Unfortunately this can't be modelled by the Checkers/Chess analogy you presented, as it's not turn based! But this is precisely why it is worth rating, where in your example it might not have been.