Agatha's Thoughts on High-Level Gameplay
Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2020 10:32 pm
Somewhat inspired by chickenfarmer's tips, I thought I would lay down a list of my own. Like CF's list, mine will also end up being mostly reflections on my own strengths and weaknesses—which happens to be actionable for improving tactics and strategy, if you read carefully. However, since CF has already covered much of the basics, and my play style and situation is, I think, unique, I'll instead be talking about advanced, abstract techniques, and about combat philosophy.
---
First, you should understand where I am coming from.
My internet connection's terrible, because despite being on a major US telecom (yay monopolies...), my jitter especially is very high. That's (1) not my fault and (2) there's nothing I can do. I've tried everything.
Players complain bitterly about my jitter, and lately I've even, like, been actually kicked for it. Yet jitter and lag cut both ways: literally everyone jitters and lags from my perspective. But even worse, I perceive their response actions jittering/lagging by twice that amount, because of round-trip.
So, when playing, consider my world—where absolutely everyone jumps about by multiple tank lengths, shooting impossible directions, and appearing out of thin air.
Regardless, I regularly am top score—not because of my tactical skill (which is indeed, middling), but because of empathy. War is stupid, and like everything stupid, brings out dumb behaviors within otherwise intelligent individuals. That's why 95% of The Art of War comprises brick-dumb obvious advice like "if you pillage the townsfolk, don't expect them to like you".
But the other 5%? That's the empathy part. Empathy is the know-your-enemy truism—a truism that, just so happens, also comes from that book. You anticipate your enemy's emotions, and subsequently, actions. Then you take an appropriate counter.
That might seem abstract, but it's very very literal for me, since because of network issues, I actually cannot see my enemies' actions at all. When I am playing, I am living 10 seconds in everyone's future. I am predicting exactly each move every tank near me will take, and honing that prediction by watching every shifting, jittering phantom surrounding me. I observe past moves they actually did make that I actually can reconstruct. I mean, what choice do I have instead? Lose?
Bringing me to my first point:
You must THINK while you play. At least a little bit. Please.
The 95% hack-and-slash brawling doesn't win wars. The 5% empathy does. Understanding your opponent allows intercepting their goals, ambushing them near choke points, anticipating flags they'll choose next time, and predicting routes enemy ST will take toward your base. Emotional understanding allows reading your opponent's composure from their tank's hesitation before dropping, from the number of shots they fire, and precision of their jumps. Empathy allows your weaponization of that knowledge into anticipatory shots that experienced players will jump into through force of habit, makes your SB shots hit amateurs from across the map, because you know they'll ignore their radar.
I've already shown one example—how I predict everyone, always, for multiple seconds into the future, out of necessity—as an example, but the preceding shoutouts should illustrate how general I am really being.
In short, you must think. About your opponents. About your allies. About flags. Maps. Everything.
On general presence of mind and map awareness
I would think such considerations would be obvious. BZFlag has infinite routes, dozens of flags, and arbitrary enemies. Stealth! Surprise! And concentration of force. Yes, there exists physical skill shooting and dodging too, but those tactics seem worthless when you're not positioned right and doing the wrong thing.
Yet too often, I see not just deficient strategy, but actually its complete absence. For typical team games, especially on Apocalypse, maybe 9/10 players will completely ignore important flags, like team/geno flags and L/GM/F/etc.
Indeed, often countering such flags falls on me personally. Fortunately, especially on Apoc, assuming you spawn near them, you can usually just walk right up and blat them point-blank, because situational awareness is apparently not a thing. Power-flag users should be aware of their surroundings, and victimized opposing players should consider superflag users existential threats, and act accordingly.
On predicting and being predicted
Trivial example: once, on Apoc, someone got the green flag and was trying to capture it. I was green myself, so I got ST and waited on their base. He jumped up, and I scragged him. So, I was where I should have been during a critical moment, because I correctly predicted my opponent (not advanced strategy here!).
But my example isn't just about me. The green flag fell back onto the ground, and the same player picked it up again and tried to jump again. I scragged him again! He then picked up the flag again and jumped again! He actually died three more times trying to jump, because he had not stopped to think about his death just seconds before. He had zoned out, and with that he had stopped thinking. And so he lost repeatedly.
Throughout our battle, one should note, no one from my team helped me, and no one from red team helped him—itself another failure of thought.
You might think my example's exceptional. It's not. I actually can't even count all the players I've done variants of exactly this example with. And we should see it applies to other cases too: again and again, players make avoidable blunders because they don't think about their play, and so they act predictably. It's not even that they don't have the capability. They're just zoned out.
My lesson's simple. Don't jump into bullets. When a tactic fails, don't try it again. Don't take the shortest path between two points. Don't be predictable. When you do such things anyway, don't complain about precognitive battle maidens in public chat. We don't have to predict the future. We just have to predict you.
Prediction as a weapon
But you should also be proactive when using your powers of prediction. Like everything so far, this also seems obvious, and yet most players have not thought to actually do it.
It's not even hard, with practice. Tactically, maybe someone's moving toward the tower on Apocalypse? The rail on Lasermania or Urban? The platform on Hix? The catapult on Missile Wars? You should be able to predict exactly what they'll do, and when they'll do it, right? You can even fire preemptively, and otherwise-experienced players will actually jump into your bullets. Strategically, you should try anticipating the overall strategies people will take, and counter them long before they happen. Sound difficult? Most people don't even have any strategy, so prettymuch anything you come up with should be superior.
The next level, of course, is adapting your tactics and strategies against individual players—and moreover, adapting them further, with knowledge of how your methods worked when you tried them last time. The only other current or semi-current players I have reliably seen doing that are Moroni and chickenfarmer—and so you should not be surprised when you learn that they're both extremely strong players and I respect them immensely.
For example, maybe you see such-and-such an allied player. They could dodge the bullets incoming from an enemy behind them—and they could actually defeat that enemy, because they have L and that enemy is far away. However, you should also know your ally's abilities, and maybe you know that, because they are currently engaged with a second enemy, they will be distracted sufficiently so that the bullets will hit. Therefore, your ally will die, and since they will be dead, they will not be protecting that region. So, the region's unsafe, and you ought not jump down into danger.
If all that sounds interesting, you should start with tactics. Chickenfarmer himself noted players all have different playstyles, and you should exploit that, knowing exactly how your opponents will fight, when they do. Like, do they dodge preferentially forward or backward, for example? Where do they jump? Maybe they're bad at jumping? Maybe there's particular flags you should deny them? Do they even rate strong enough to matter at all?
More fundamentally, each player has different network characteristics. I can recognize players by their lag, and my firing solutions actually lead players by different amounts depending on which country they're from. I keep track with every player (including allied tanks; they matter too, for the sake of prediction). This is a big "bang for your buck" improvement you can get started with!
Always improve
Finally, an overwhelming majority of players (by which I mean every regular player, with perhaps about ten exceptions, counting myself) achieve a certain level of skill and then decide that they're competent enough. They do not practice things they can't do until they can do them. They do not try honing their strengths and compensating for their weaknesses. They just . . . coast.
Such players spawnkill 5 : 2 on Apoc, with their precious WG or L or F flag, simply because they already have it and so they know fighting will be easier. This is not any way to play! Besides being unsporting, playing like that is not challenging. One has no chance for improvement! That's why, you will often see me with U or TP or nothing, while I've had plenty of opportunity to get a strong flag. And, I'll actually switch sides so that I am on the losing team, too. I pick weak flags because that forces me to become stronger. I fight on smaller teams because I want to be outnumbered. And yes, I am inclined to slaughter the opposing team with L because it's fun to normalize the playing field once in a while.
When you see me do "impossible" or "inhuman" or "absurd" shots, that has been proceeded by hours of practice on just that one thing. When I scrag WGs from across the map with vertical-velocity laser, that's because I've learned exactly when I should fire, at exactly which height will hit. That's practice, and it's technique you can learn too. It's technique I've taught people how to do! One just has to be willing to actually try, and not automatically take the easy route of executing that same tired tactic you've done for years, just because sometimes that works and you have already practiced it. You can't grow that way.
Having A Wide Variety of Skills and Being Adaptable to Choose Among Them
This leads into my second main point: most players' competence extends to only one or two things. Sometimes that's one or two particular flags. Sometimes that's being particularly adept when dodging, or even when thinking strategically.
Those're great things to be great at—and to improve, you actually should be . . . but almost all players instead substitute one or two individual skills for broad, general, powerful toolsets. Those players are at a complete loss in new situations.
Think about me. I am great with laser. But I am also great with GM and F and WG and ST. I am not half bad with V and A and AS and G and SW and prettymuch any flag. I've used SH for surprise (walk through bullet storms for surprise attacks, anyone?) and I can lead perfectly with IB. I counter L with CL or ST, camp map corners with BU, slip through openings with N or T or TH. And, I can dodge effectively, jump adequately, and strategize fluidly.
I am not the best at any of these, except possibly the first one. But I am reasonably competent at all of them. I am a generalist, whereas most people specialize. I might not be able to contest an expert on their own speciality, but because I have broad skillsets, I don't actually have to fight people when they have the advantage.
Say my enemy has L and he is camping on one of the treads on Two Tanks. Do I jump onto the tread and try sniping him with my own L? Of course not! Most players (and contrary to popular misconception) are actually better than I am at laser camping. Plus, by being already in place, he has tactical advantage. I would lose because I am pitting my personal weakness against his personal strengths. Instead, perhaps I take my laser over to the pyramid next to the GM tower. He has no way to hit me if he's still on the tread. But, there's a (difficult) shot where I can kill him by reflecting off my pyramid. So, I make that shot, and I kill him, and hooray I've won! I pit precision marksmanship and positioning (my personal and tactical strengths, respectively) against his lack of imagination, exposure, and stationary position while camping (his personal and tactical weaknesses).
Of course, that's only possible when you have a broad skillset. Should you not be able to imagine making difficult shots, or if you never practice them, or you can't melee your way through ST attrition when you're trying for the pyramid, then your countering laser camping that way isn't possible. You don't have that option. But I have practiced that, and so I do have that option. That's why I have an overall advantage.
More options actually means more control over how the battle progresses. Like, if you'll only consider only one option, then you have conceded control, completely, to your enemy. If you plan on laser camping until you die, then you do know that you will die, eventually, while laser camping. Your enemy knows you will die, while laser camping. They then have full latitude when deciding the manner, timing, priority, and significance of your death, up to the options they themselves have at their disposal.
If you were that laser camper and that thought doesn't terrify you, then frankly you haven't thought about it enough. You should be flexible! Expand your horizons if you're not comfortable pushing them! Do not concede initiative, and do not artificially limit your own options just because they're familiar!
Map Variety
Part and parcel of being able to adapt to new situations is just having lots of different situations to draw from—and that means you should be playing multiple maps.
Unfortunately, people only play Apocalypse, Urban Jungle, and Hix today—and that's actually by largely disjoint sets of players, too. Sure, maybe Hix people will play Ducati sometimes. Maybe I can coerce Urban Jungle folks to join Missile Wars or explore. Maybe I can GM or L spam on Apocalypse until people leave. But Apoc, Urban, and Hix are the maps people come back to.
I actually do like those maps. They're not bad. But, they all teach different things. Our community can currently be divided into Hix/Ducati players, Apoc players, and Urban players. There's a little crossover, but not very much. And that's really terrible for those players' skillsets because it means they're only proficient at their preferred map's toolboxes.
For example, if you only play Hix, then you're only learning dodging, jumping, short-range ricos, and flag teamwork. You're only learning with one shot speed, one jump height, with angles on one map, with one group of players. Hix players like to get high and mighty about that being an elite form of skill—and they're actually kindof right. Hix players really are genuinely skilled—but in depth, rather than breadth. I am not much better than an average Hix player. But that isn't surprising, since typical Hix players do not play anything else.
Indeed, you take a Hix player off of Hix, and you give him L, and you tell him to hit an target across the map . . . and he just can't. Half of them will shoot themselves trying, and the other half will refuse to even try, out of sheer holier-than-thou snobbery. That is not elite play. Elite play would be being ready for anything, and also minimal competence when trying new things. One should also be self-confident enough to like trying.
Similarly, you place an Apocalypse player on any map without superflags, and not only will he not have enough patience to stick it out for literally just one minute of focused, tactical gameplay, but he will actually die to shots aimed only vaguely toward him, because dodging and jumping and basically everything that's a tactical skill is almost nonexistent on Apoc. On no-jump maps, Apoc players die to ordinary bullets fired from across the map, even when they see them coming, which they of course usually will not, because they have no idea the radar panel even exists.
You put an Urban player into Apoc, and they will get genoed again and again. You put them into Ducati, they won't understand what the red and green flags do or why they have colors. When you put Hix players into Urban, they'll wind up reminiscing about old times on observer chat, or walking headlong into mines they actually watched get placed. And when you put Hix players into Apoc, they'll elegantly jump their way straight into an airstrike.
And Apoc, Urban, and Hix do not feature, say, vertical-velocity shots—so when you take such players into WHAMMO's World or another occasionally played map, since they only play Apoc/Urban/Hix, they will not even think of shooting down flag captures from the ground, for example.
So these players have systematic weaknesses that they're too ignorant (or too proud) to acknowledge, let alone address. Lots of players even do not see any redeeming qualities in other maps—their map must be the best, and no other map can teach them anything! So arrogant! So wrong!
And, if that paragraph made you angry and defensive, then you should definitely read it again—and, when you do, actually think it through.
But it does not have to be like this! I play Apoc, Urban, and Hix. Of course, I am bored to tears of all three by now, so I am always down for any other map I can get games going on. It's hard, though—no sooner than I finally get a game going on Missile Wars, someone will come and ask if we want to do a "Fun Match" on Hix. Or people will tell me they "gtg", and I'll find them 30 seconds later on Apoc. I'll wait for actual hours on Wings Wizardry, and my only company will be noobs and odd friends checking in—neither staying long. For the record, when I am online, I am always down for games on any other map. I am ready to demonstrate and teach! Just ask!
My (actually serious) proposal would be take down all three maps for, say, one year. Oh no, you say! Not my beloved Hix! Not Apocalypse! Where will I play??? And yet that's exactly the point! We're too attached to Apoc, Urban, and Hix—and it shows. We play the same map every day for a decade. That's what stagnation looks like. That attachment makes you a weaker player. You should instead be willing to broaden your skillset and improve!
Conclusion
So really, those're two things I think we should all work on: playing with more awareness—that is, recognizing that bz is both a physical dexterity game and a mental game—and also having a broad skillset, the versatility to use it, and the willingness to learn.
I also want to talk about my bag of tactics sometime, because I think that sharing that will help everyone improve (including myself, when my own methods get turned against me. You should do that, please; it will be fun), but I've rambled on for long enough here, so I think I should save that for later.
If anything's unclear, please ask me and I'll clarify.
Best wishes,
-A
---
First, you should understand where I am coming from.
My internet connection's terrible, because despite being on a major US telecom (yay monopolies...), my jitter especially is very high. That's (1) not my fault and (2) there's nothing I can do. I've tried everything.
Players complain bitterly about my jitter, and lately I've even, like, been actually kicked for it. Yet jitter and lag cut both ways: literally everyone jitters and lags from my perspective. But even worse, I perceive their response actions jittering/lagging by twice that amount, because of round-trip.
So, when playing, consider my world—where absolutely everyone jumps about by multiple tank lengths, shooting impossible directions, and appearing out of thin air.
Regardless, I regularly am top score—not because of my tactical skill (which is indeed, middling), but because of empathy. War is stupid, and like everything stupid, brings out dumb behaviors within otherwise intelligent individuals. That's why 95% of The Art of War comprises brick-dumb obvious advice like "if you pillage the townsfolk, don't expect them to like you".
But the other 5%? That's the empathy part. Empathy is the know-your-enemy truism—a truism that, just so happens, also comes from that book. You anticipate your enemy's emotions, and subsequently, actions. Then you take an appropriate counter.
That might seem abstract, but it's very very literal for me, since because of network issues, I actually cannot see my enemies' actions at all. When I am playing, I am living 10 seconds in everyone's future. I am predicting exactly each move every tank near me will take, and honing that prediction by watching every shifting, jittering phantom surrounding me. I observe past moves they actually did make that I actually can reconstruct. I mean, what choice do I have instead? Lose?
Bringing me to my first point:
You must THINK while you play. At least a little bit. Please.
The 95% hack-and-slash brawling doesn't win wars. The 5% empathy does. Understanding your opponent allows intercepting their goals, ambushing them near choke points, anticipating flags they'll choose next time, and predicting routes enemy ST will take toward your base. Emotional understanding allows reading your opponent's composure from their tank's hesitation before dropping, from the number of shots they fire, and precision of their jumps. Empathy allows your weaponization of that knowledge into anticipatory shots that experienced players will jump into through force of habit, makes your SB shots hit amateurs from across the map, because you know they'll ignore their radar.
I've already shown one example—how I predict everyone, always, for multiple seconds into the future, out of necessity—as an example, but the preceding shoutouts should illustrate how general I am really being.
In short, you must think. About your opponents. About your allies. About flags. Maps. Everything.
On general presence of mind and map awareness
I would think such considerations would be obvious. BZFlag has infinite routes, dozens of flags, and arbitrary enemies. Stealth! Surprise! And concentration of force. Yes, there exists physical skill shooting and dodging too, but those tactics seem worthless when you're not positioned right and doing the wrong thing.
Yet too often, I see not just deficient strategy, but actually its complete absence. For typical team games, especially on Apocalypse, maybe 9/10 players will completely ignore important flags, like team/geno flags and L/GM/F/etc.
Indeed, often countering such flags falls on me personally. Fortunately, especially on Apoc, assuming you spawn near them, you can usually just walk right up and blat them point-blank, because situational awareness is apparently not a thing. Power-flag users should be aware of their surroundings, and victimized opposing players should consider superflag users existential threats, and act accordingly.
On predicting and being predicted
Trivial example: once, on Apoc, someone got the green flag and was trying to capture it. I was green myself, so I got ST and waited on their base. He jumped up, and I scragged him. So, I was where I should have been during a critical moment, because I correctly predicted my opponent (not advanced strategy here!).
But my example isn't just about me. The green flag fell back onto the ground, and the same player picked it up again and tried to jump again. I scragged him again! He then picked up the flag again and jumped again! He actually died three more times trying to jump, because he had not stopped to think about his death just seconds before. He had zoned out, and with that he had stopped thinking. And so he lost repeatedly.
Throughout our battle, one should note, no one from my team helped me, and no one from red team helped him—itself another failure of thought.
You might think my example's exceptional. It's not. I actually can't even count all the players I've done variants of exactly this example with. And we should see it applies to other cases too: again and again, players make avoidable blunders because they don't think about their play, and so they act predictably. It's not even that they don't have the capability. They're just zoned out.
My lesson's simple. Don't jump into bullets. When a tactic fails, don't try it again. Don't take the shortest path between two points. Don't be predictable. When you do such things anyway, don't complain about precognitive battle maidens in public chat. We don't have to predict the future. We just have to predict you.
Prediction as a weapon
But you should also be proactive when using your powers of prediction. Like everything so far, this also seems obvious, and yet most players have not thought to actually do it.
It's not even hard, with practice. Tactically, maybe someone's moving toward the tower on Apocalypse? The rail on Lasermania or Urban? The platform on Hix? The catapult on Missile Wars? You should be able to predict exactly what they'll do, and when they'll do it, right? You can even fire preemptively, and otherwise-experienced players will actually jump into your bullets. Strategically, you should try anticipating the overall strategies people will take, and counter them long before they happen. Sound difficult? Most people don't even have any strategy, so prettymuch anything you come up with should be superior.
The next level, of course, is adapting your tactics and strategies against individual players—and moreover, adapting them further, with knowledge of how your methods worked when you tried them last time. The only other current or semi-current players I have reliably seen doing that are Moroni and chickenfarmer—and so you should not be surprised when you learn that they're both extremely strong players and I respect them immensely.
For example, maybe you see such-and-such an allied player. They could dodge the bullets incoming from an enemy behind them—and they could actually defeat that enemy, because they have L and that enemy is far away. However, you should also know your ally's abilities, and maybe you know that, because they are currently engaged with a second enemy, they will be distracted sufficiently so that the bullets will hit. Therefore, your ally will die, and since they will be dead, they will not be protecting that region. So, the region's unsafe, and you ought not jump down into danger.
If all that sounds interesting, you should start with tactics. Chickenfarmer himself noted players all have different playstyles, and you should exploit that, knowing exactly how your opponents will fight, when they do. Like, do they dodge preferentially forward or backward, for example? Where do they jump? Maybe they're bad at jumping? Maybe there's particular flags you should deny them? Do they even rate strong enough to matter at all?
More fundamentally, each player has different network characteristics. I can recognize players by their lag, and my firing solutions actually lead players by different amounts depending on which country they're from. I keep track with every player (including allied tanks; they matter too, for the sake of prediction). This is a big "bang for your buck" improvement you can get started with!
Always improve
Finally, an overwhelming majority of players (by which I mean every regular player, with perhaps about ten exceptions, counting myself) achieve a certain level of skill and then decide that they're competent enough. They do not practice things they can't do until they can do them. They do not try honing their strengths and compensating for their weaknesses. They just . . . coast.
Such players spawnkill 5 : 2 on Apoc, with their precious WG or L or F flag, simply because they already have it and so they know fighting will be easier. This is not any way to play! Besides being unsporting, playing like that is not challenging. One has no chance for improvement! That's why, you will often see me with U or TP or nothing, while I've had plenty of opportunity to get a strong flag. And, I'll actually switch sides so that I am on the losing team, too. I pick weak flags because that forces me to become stronger. I fight on smaller teams because I want to be outnumbered. And yes, I am inclined to slaughter the opposing team with L because it's fun to normalize the playing field once in a while.
When you see me do "impossible" or "inhuman" or "absurd" shots, that has been proceeded by hours of practice on just that one thing. When I scrag WGs from across the map with vertical-velocity laser, that's because I've learned exactly when I should fire, at exactly which height will hit. That's practice, and it's technique you can learn too. It's technique I've taught people how to do! One just has to be willing to actually try, and not automatically take the easy route of executing that same tired tactic you've done for years, just because sometimes that works and you have already practiced it. You can't grow that way.
Having A Wide Variety of Skills and Being Adaptable to Choose Among Them
This leads into my second main point: most players' competence extends to only one or two things. Sometimes that's one or two particular flags. Sometimes that's being particularly adept when dodging, or even when thinking strategically.
Those're great things to be great at—and to improve, you actually should be . . . but almost all players instead substitute one or two individual skills for broad, general, powerful toolsets. Those players are at a complete loss in new situations.
Think about me. I am great with laser. But I am also great with GM and F and WG and ST. I am not half bad with V and A and AS and G and SW and prettymuch any flag. I've used SH for surprise (walk through bullet storms for surprise attacks, anyone?) and I can lead perfectly with IB. I counter L with CL or ST, camp map corners with BU, slip through openings with N or T or TH. And, I can dodge effectively, jump adequately, and strategize fluidly.
I am not the best at any of these, except possibly the first one. But I am reasonably competent at all of them. I am a generalist, whereas most people specialize. I might not be able to contest an expert on their own speciality, but because I have broad skillsets, I don't actually have to fight people when they have the advantage.
Say my enemy has L and he is camping on one of the treads on Two Tanks. Do I jump onto the tread and try sniping him with my own L? Of course not! Most players (and contrary to popular misconception) are actually better than I am at laser camping. Plus, by being already in place, he has tactical advantage. I would lose because I am pitting my personal weakness against his personal strengths. Instead, perhaps I take my laser over to the pyramid next to the GM tower. He has no way to hit me if he's still on the tread. But, there's a (difficult) shot where I can kill him by reflecting off my pyramid. So, I make that shot, and I kill him, and hooray I've won! I pit precision marksmanship and positioning (my personal and tactical strengths, respectively) against his lack of imagination, exposure, and stationary position while camping (his personal and tactical weaknesses).
Of course, that's only possible when you have a broad skillset. Should you not be able to imagine making difficult shots, or if you never practice them, or you can't melee your way through ST attrition when you're trying for the pyramid, then your countering laser camping that way isn't possible. You don't have that option. But I have practiced that, and so I do have that option. That's why I have an overall advantage.
More options actually means more control over how the battle progresses. Like, if you'll only consider only one option, then you have conceded control, completely, to your enemy. If you plan on laser camping until you die, then you do know that you will die, eventually, while laser camping. Your enemy knows you will die, while laser camping. They then have full latitude when deciding the manner, timing, priority, and significance of your death, up to the options they themselves have at their disposal.
If you were that laser camper and that thought doesn't terrify you, then frankly you haven't thought about it enough. You should be flexible! Expand your horizons if you're not comfortable pushing them! Do not concede initiative, and do not artificially limit your own options just because they're familiar!
Map Variety
Part and parcel of being able to adapt to new situations is just having lots of different situations to draw from—and that means you should be playing multiple maps.
Unfortunately, people only play Apocalypse, Urban Jungle, and Hix today—and that's actually by largely disjoint sets of players, too. Sure, maybe Hix people will play Ducati sometimes. Maybe I can coerce Urban Jungle folks to join Missile Wars or explore. Maybe I can GM or L spam on Apocalypse until people leave. But Apoc, Urban, and Hix are the maps people come back to.
I actually do like those maps. They're not bad. But, they all teach different things. Our community can currently be divided into Hix/Ducati players, Apoc players, and Urban players. There's a little crossover, but not very much. And that's really terrible for those players' skillsets because it means they're only proficient at their preferred map's toolboxes.
For example, if you only play Hix, then you're only learning dodging, jumping, short-range ricos, and flag teamwork. You're only learning with one shot speed, one jump height, with angles on one map, with one group of players. Hix players like to get high and mighty about that being an elite form of skill—and they're actually kindof right. Hix players really are genuinely skilled—but in depth, rather than breadth. I am not much better than an average Hix player. But that isn't surprising, since typical Hix players do not play anything else.
Indeed, you take a Hix player off of Hix, and you give him L, and you tell him to hit an target across the map . . . and he just can't. Half of them will shoot themselves trying, and the other half will refuse to even try, out of sheer holier-than-thou snobbery. That is not elite play. Elite play would be being ready for anything, and also minimal competence when trying new things. One should also be self-confident enough to like trying.
Similarly, you place an Apocalypse player on any map without superflags, and not only will he not have enough patience to stick it out for literally just one minute of focused, tactical gameplay, but he will actually die to shots aimed only vaguely toward him, because dodging and jumping and basically everything that's a tactical skill is almost nonexistent on Apoc. On no-jump maps, Apoc players die to ordinary bullets fired from across the map, even when they see them coming, which they of course usually will not, because they have no idea the radar panel even exists.
You put an Urban player into Apoc, and they will get genoed again and again. You put them into Ducati, they won't understand what the red and green flags do or why they have colors. When you put Hix players into Urban, they'll wind up reminiscing about old times on observer chat, or walking headlong into mines they actually watched get placed. And when you put Hix players into Apoc, they'll elegantly jump their way straight into an airstrike.
And Apoc, Urban, and Hix do not feature, say, vertical-velocity shots—so when you take such players into WHAMMO's World or another occasionally played map, since they only play Apoc/Urban/Hix, they will not even think of shooting down flag captures from the ground, for example.
So these players have systematic weaknesses that they're too ignorant (or too proud) to acknowledge, let alone address. Lots of players even do not see any redeeming qualities in other maps—their map must be the best, and no other map can teach them anything! So arrogant! So wrong!
And, if that paragraph made you angry and defensive, then you should definitely read it again—and, when you do, actually think it through.
But it does not have to be like this! I play Apoc, Urban, and Hix. Of course, I am bored to tears of all three by now, so I am always down for any other map I can get games going on. It's hard, though—no sooner than I finally get a game going on Missile Wars, someone will come and ask if we want to do a "Fun Match" on Hix. Or people will tell me they "gtg", and I'll find them 30 seconds later on Apoc. I'll wait for actual hours on Wings Wizardry, and my only company will be noobs and odd friends checking in—neither staying long. For the record, when I am online, I am always down for games on any other map. I am ready to demonstrate and teach! Just ask!
My (actually serious) proposal would be take down all three maps for, say, one year. Oh no, you say! Not my beloved Hix! Not Apocalypse! Where will I play??? And yet that's exactly the point! We're too attached to Apoc, Urban, and Hix—and it shows. We play the same map every day for a decade. That's what stagnation looks like. That attachment makes you a weaker player. You should instead be willing to broaden your skillset and improve!
Conclusion
So really, those're two things I think we should all work on: playing with more awareness—that is, recognizing that bz is both a physical dexterity game and a mental game—and also having a broad skillset, the versatility to use it, and the willingness to learn.
I also want to talk about my bag of tactics sometime, because I think that sharing that will help everyone improve (including myself, when my own methods get turned against me. You should do that, please; it will be fun), but I've rambled on for long enough here, so I think I should save that for later.
If anything's unclear, please ask me and I'll clarify.
Best wishes,
-A