Sorry I dropped the ball on this for a while. My computer needed reformatting and it took me a while to get the disks to make it work again. Anyway, I'm back.
I've read that article on "Playing to Win" that ksaz posted a page or three back. I'd read it once before, too, and it makes sense in some ways, especially for fighting games like the author uses in his examples. Let's discuss that for a little while.
I have a preferred playstyle. I love solo PKing, and I love playing a tank mage, even though I know neither of those things optimizes my chance to win. I think the best template on the shard is the alchy/stun mage, and I know that the bigger my group gets, the better able we'll be to take and hold ground and beat anybody out there by attrition. If I were playing to win, that's exactly what I'd do - I'd put together a giant group of alchy dexers and stun/alchy mages and just roll across the map in a flurry of purple potions.
Later on, the PvP discussion forum would be spammed with near-identical threads about why my group/guild sucks, none of us can 1v1, etc. And they'd be right. I wouldn't be selective about who could join my group, since the best way to get bigger is just to add everyone, and with purple potions the way they are I wouldn't have to worry about friendly fire from morons either.
Unfortunately, I do care about how I win just as much as that I win. If my opponent loses connection in the middle of a duel, and it's obvious that that's happened, I'll stop and wait until he gets back on and restart the fight. That probably makes me a scrub, because I care about more than winning.
As Ksaz said though, this is somewhat off-topic, because it doesn't matter if I'm a scrub, or if Melvin sucks or if Raserei and Heavy Smoker are the two greatest players ever to play UO.
I'm not suggesting that the best players are successful because they use alchemy. I'm saying that the best players use alchemy because it's the best skill.
I am not the best PvPer on this shard, or anywhere near it, but I'm decent. I don't expect I could beat any of the top 100 duelists on the shard 1v1, regardless of template. Still, I can hold my own. I win a lot more fights than I lose. Also, because I play a tank mage almost exclusively, I'm certainly a lot better at controlling a tank mage than any other template.
That said, I can say with 100% certainty that if it were possible for me playing a tank mage to fight myself playing a stun/alchy, the stun/alchy would win every time. Here's how it would go down:
The alchy casts reactive armor and archprotection, and puts on his vet robe and cloak. He keeps the tank poisoned (to force disarm), and continues to lob purple potions from a safe distance whenever possible. Once the tank has taken some damage and is preferably poisoned, the alchy loads explode, stuns him, and sets up a big combo. If the tank survives, a little harm spam with some exp pots mixed in will do the trick. Meanwhile, the tank hopes for a concussion blow to delay that big offense, but his hits are basically nullified by the alchy's defenses so he can only really set up a purely magery-based offense.
The only way the tank is going to win is by chance. If the alchy continuously fails to stun, or if a lucky concussion blow gets in there, or if the alchemist runs out of purple potions, only then does the tank gain any sort of advantage. All these parameters are beyond the tank's control, and as such fall strictly under the category of luck.
Luck aside, the tank will not win. I say that's true of me as a player who knows tanks much better than alchies. I'm willing to bet it's true of everyone.
Is there anyone here who honestly thinks you on a tank mage could beat you on an alchy/stun mage at least half the time?
I submit that there is not. And therein lies the problem.
"Playing to Win" also talks about good games and bad ones. As you play at higher levels, does UO become deeper or shallower? Do you eventually figure out counters to the "cheap" moves, and counters to those counters? Or do you find that there really are moves with no legitimate counters?
The interesting thing about UO is that it's dynamic. It's not Street Fighter, released as it was and unchanged for years, which both allowed and forced players to master it as is. It's dynamic, and ever-changing with patches and publishes. You can never stay a master of this game for long, because the game can change and force you to learn it all over again.
Right now, I feel that the game needs to change if it's to be great, because there are moves that you will never find good counters to. There are moves that are designed to have no counters, and that's piss-poor design.
