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The Best Videogame Player In The World

The Best Videogame Player In The World

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The Best Videogame Player In The World

Unread postby icycalm » 19 Jun 2017 13:59

Time to start a new tradition.

Some of you may have read my essay, "On Why I Am The Best Videogame Player In The World", from VGCULTURE1. Those who haven't will soon be able to read it on the site. Also, some of you may have heard of the LTC challenge, which I recently mentioned on Discord. For those who haven't, I'll copy-paste it here for you:

I wrote:Surth: "Community war
Hey icy,

Since you made your discord private again, I'll just shoot you a mail. You mentioned (I think in "why I am the best video game player in the world"?) the idea of a decathlon across genres. In that spirit, how about a community war between the Cult and LTC (also known as the Sect)? You choose five games, we choose five games, we predetermine rules for each game (i.e. number of players for any given game, game mode to be played etc.), and then, across a few weeks, we mop the floor with you!

Cheers,
Surth"

I am not even going to answer him
He has contributed a couple of articles to Insomnia, and he makes fun of Lowell all the time, and comes to Insomnia every time I open up a free section, but he has yet, after 6 years of Insomnia 3.0, to subscribe and support the site
I despise this dude
I wouldn't even trust them to show up and not waste my time
And if I want opponents, Steam has millions of them for me across all games
Merely their whining and whimpering and sneering would make me lose all appetite for playing and all joy in the games involved
And they continue their absurd aping even in their "clan's" name
I've dropped by their Discord a couple times and it's an ugly wasteland
No one plays anything and I don't even know how they could scrounge up people for PA or Siege 5v5 or For Honor 4v4 or whatever
Nobody buys new games there anyway
How would Surth even afford this stuff?
They play Red Alert 2 because they haven't bought a new computer since 2005 or something
So let them spend all their time trying to catch a glimpse of what I am doing on my frontpage, and let us spend our time playing and enjoying cool games together
I'll have JC copy-paste the above to him
Funny thing is, we would even win by default because we could afford their games and show up, but they would neither be able to afford ours, nor show up (edited)
Or like, some of them might show up but they wouldn't be able to field a full team for our games
I could say, "Okay, private Rust server 12v12", and we would win automatically


So I declined his challenge, or rather didn't even bother responding to it, but it has since got me thinking of establishing this as an individual annual contest, both for the sake of having fun -- as I think it will be a riot -- and to help raise my essays' and the site's profile, as with the proper nurturing this has the potential to turn into one of the world's premier competitive gaming events.

So let's get it started!

All we need is a list of genres and games, a set of rules, an entry fee and prize idea, and a date for the 2017 contest. I'll start throwing ideas, and we should soon have it all set up and ready to go.

So here is a list of genres off the top of my head, with the games that will be used for 2017 (which may change from year to year). My aim is to try to use VGART and/or GOTY games as much as possible, for obvious reasons. We want to use the best games available, both because they are the most fun, and to accord with Insomnia's spirit of promoting excellence.

Genres:

Shooting (Mushihime-sama)
2D Fighting (Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late)
3D Fighting (For Honor)
Turn-based Strategy (Sid Meier's Civilization IV)
Real-time Strategy (Sins of a Solar Empire or Europa Universalis IV)
Real-time Tactics (Planetary Annihilation)
Racing (DriveClub)
Survival (Ark: Survival Evolved)
First-person Shooting (Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege)
Flight/Space Sim (No idea)

For FTG I would have preferred GG +R, but the game has to be playable online, and +R, at least on Steam, isn't. Under Night on the other hand has excellent netcode, so unless we find a version of +R with good netcode, or determine a superior FTG with good netcode (perhaps Arcana Heart 3 or Xrd on Steam)

For racing I chose DriveClub since apparently it is the best racing game of recent times. If there are better ones, let me know.

I am including Ark in the understanding that we'll be able to make a custom server and throw the contestants in there, either all of them together, or perhaps a few at a time.

With Siege what we'll do is start a 5v5 lobby populated by contestants, and four people from each "team" will die immediately and let the two real contestants battle it out, since that game really is the pinnacle of first-person action at the moment.

PA is included as RTT because at 1v1 that's what it is: the most complex RTT ever. And for RTS we have either Sins or EU4, which I can't choose between right now because I haven't tried them, though I will soon.

For Honor is the best 3D FTG ever, so it was an easy choice, and as far as I know Civ4 is still the best TBS game ever.

I am still thinking on how to incorporate adventure and puzzle games and CRPGS and so on.

Post any ideas and suggestions and objections here. I'll keep thinking and keep posting updates until everything has been hammered out in great detail and I can announce the whole thing on the frontpage with a start date.
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Unread postby icycalm » 19 Jun 2017 14:08

The beauty of this contest is that, if it's set up properly, it should really weed out autists like a charm.

Think about it for a moment. Let's say an autist has decided to play our fighting game of choice for hundreds of hours before the contest, so that he knows all the moves and tier lists and frame data. He will then come number 1 in this game, but bomb in all the rest. He will of course bomb in all the genres that he is genetically unsuited to playing, such as let's say the strategy and tactics ones, but he will also bomb in the genres that he CAN play but in which he will still bomb because he hasn't had time to practice in the specific games we picked for them.

Sperg out in one game, and lose in all the rest. Most autists won't even bother entering, under these conditions, and so the rest of us won't have to worry about competing with people who have no life. The way to win in this contest will simply be:

1) Being genetically superior, and thus enjoying and being good at in more genres than the genetically inferior

2) Enjoy yourself playing all these games and genres as you normally would

This thing has the potential to be a ton of fun for us and a great practical demonstration of some of my theories.
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Unread postby icycalm » 19 Jun 2017 14:10

Let's add some card game in there too. People tell me Hearthstone is dumbed down, so what game is the best/most complex? I have never played anything like that on computer so I have no idea.
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Unread postby icycalm » 19 Jun 2017 14:13

Another policy to help weed out the autists is to change ALL games EVERY year, so that time sperging out on one of them does not fully carry over to subsequent years (though of course some of it always will, since if you become good at one FTG you have simultaneously become at least decent in most of them).

At the bottom of all this is my desire to evaluate the player as a HUMAN BEING, in his TOTALITY, as opposed to his monomaniacal commitment to winning by sacrificing his life to play a single game for years.
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Unread postby icycalm » 19 Jun 2017 14:21

Note that it is acceptable to forfeit a game, or several of them, and I expect many people will do it.

A player can still achieve a good overall rank if he dominates in 3-4 games and bombs in all the rest. I certainly don't expect more than a handful of people to genuinely enjoy all the games. Besides me I only know recoil and Macaw who seem to play everything. Maybe Rory and infernovia too.

It could turn out to be a very small contest, at least at first, but no less fun because of it. I am sure tons of people will be turned off by the fact I am running the contest, not to mention the announcement calling most people genetically inferior -- but this is the truth, which is what this site is all about, and what the contest will be about, and whoever doesn't like it can go watch a MOBA contest.
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Unread postby icycalm » 19 Jun 2017 14:27

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_wreath

Wikipedia wrote:In the ancient Olympic Games there were no gold, silver, or bronze medals. There was only one winner per event, crowned with an olive wreath made of wild-olive leaves from a sacred tree near the temple of Zeus at Olympia. Olive wreaths were given out during the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens in honor of the ancient tradition, because the games were being held in Greece.

Herodotus describes the following story which is relevant to the olive wreath. Xerxes was interrogating some Arcadians after the Battle of Thermopylae. He inquired why there were so few Greek men defending the Thermopylae. The answer was "All other men are participating in the Olympic Games". And when asked "What is the prize for the winner?", "An olive-wreath" came the answer. Then Tigranes, one of his generals uttered: "Good heavens! Mardonius, what kind of men are these against whom you have brought us to fight? Men who do not compete for possessions, but for virtue."'


I have decided that the prize will be a link on the frontpage to the winner's Steam profile, declaring him The Best Videogame Player In The World, until the next year's contest.
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Unread postby icycalm » 19 Jun 2017 14:59

Decided to restrict games to Steam to minimize cheating, so that people don't give their STG-expert friend's PSN or XBL profile, for example. Also, 5 euro entry fee for Insomnia subscribers and 10 for everyone else, which also gives me people's real names, again for insurance on cheating. Also, everyone has to be in our Discord while performing their runs and streaming on the Cult channel. People could still cheat by passing their Steam profile around a bunch of people, but then they'd put their Steam account in danger, both from the people to whom they'll be giving out their passwords, and Steam's security measures. Add to that the Discord and Twitch requirements, plus the fact that I will take a look at the winner's Steam library, and it should be pretty easy to figure that a dude who won the event but only plays 2-3 genres has cheated.

If someone is very determined to cheat, they will be able to, but that will still not negate all the fun the rest of us will have in this contest, and once the event moves to a real location it will be the end of even the possibility of cheating.
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Unread postby icycalm » 19 Jun 2017 15:11

Basically, by using all genres in the contest you get rid of autists. By having no prize money you get rid of those who are trying to turn gaming into a job. What you are left with, on average (because of course there will be exceptions), is really cool people who love games and have great taste in them -- i.e. perfect gaming friends and team buddies.

So you have a contest designed to:

1. Showcase some of the power of the best art theory ever

2. Showcase some of the best games ever

3. Expose people to a wider variety of games than they have been exposed to before

4. Facilitate the meeting of the world's coolest gamers

It's a huge win-win-win for everyone involved, and for videogames as a whole, as an artform.
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Unread postby icycalm » 19 Jun 2017 15:33

I've been thinking about the tagline. "Gaming's Premier Competitive Event" is my choice for now.

The contest will start September 1, by which time all contestants will have accounts on Discord (guest accounts if they are not Cult members). And then we will simply play stuff with a combination of pick-up games when the involved parties happen to be online, or with pre-arranged ones, as in the case of games that take longer such as Civ or say Sins or EU.

The aim will be to finish all events before New Year's, so that the winner can be crowned on the Insomnia Awards [ > ] as player of the year.

I am also thinking of an equivalent competition for clans, in which only team-based games will be tested, but I think I will start that in 2018 because launching two contests at the same time would be more work than I can handle.
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Unread postby icycalm » 19 Jun 2017 15:43

I am lmaoing at the thought of a shmups aspie or some retard from SRK trying to learn Sins of a Solar Empire for this contest.

Or a Civilization aspie confronted with the first stage of Mushi Ultra.
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Unread postby icycalm » 19 Jun 2017 16:01

A second tagline: "For The Most Hardcore Of The Hardcore". Or something in that vein.

Or, "Because Everyone Else Is Casual".

The aim is to taunt aspies and get a reaction out of them, thus fuelling the contest's popularity.
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Unread postby icycalm » 19 Jun 2017 16:04

I will also make sure to point out that performance-enhancing substances are allowed. They would have been allowed in ancient Greece too, if they existed. It is ridiculous to try to restrict human potential and our cybernetic future with arbitrary rules about what should and should not go into your mouth or your veins. If you want to see the best performance possible, let people eat whatever the fuck they like.
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Unread postby icycalm » 23 Jun 2017 14:02

Seeing Robo play ADOM gave me the idea that for a CRPG we should use a roguelike because they are the most appropriate in the context of a competition. They test more or less the same exact skillset that a Baldur's Gate does, just more efficiently.

Gotta pick a title that's at the top of the genre, and also allows for easy comparison of results. And since I've never played any of these games, I have my work cut out for me here (though if I don't get the time to explore the genre properly I'll just fall back on ADOM for 2017).

Problem with ADOM is that the art is kinda crappy. I am okay with ASCII art, but not with crappy art.

I wonder if Darkest Dungeon could fit the bill. That would be awesome because that game is off the scale even aesthetically. Gotta look into it soon.
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Unread postby icycalm » 23 Jun 2017 14:31

For simulation I am thinking of something like Cold Waters, if I can find a way to compare skill:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/541210/Cold_Waters/

The sim part does not have to be flight, it has to be something complex enough to test the sim skillset, and it can be flight one year, naval the next, tank the next and so on.

I kinda like the idea of a sub to start with because they are the least popular, and will weed out a lot of fags and aspies merely by its presence in the contest.

Note that Cold Waters is not autistic levels of sim, like e.g. MS Flight Simulator. Autistic levels of sim will never be included in the contest because they are anti-artistic. The whole point in a game like Cold Waters is to make you feel like Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October, which itself was not a documentary. Documentaries and autism-level simulators are anti-artistic because they aim for realism instead of for The Lie. Cold Waters is art because it uses its complexity to reinforce The Lie; to trick you into thinking you are Sean Connery, just as Ace Combat tries to trick you into thinking that you are Maverick. These games are art, and therefore qualify for the competition, while a piece of software designed to train a pilot is a real simulator that has no place here. When we use the word "simulator" in the context of videogames we don't mean REAL simulators, we mean "sim-light with tons of cool cinematic shit added on top of it to make you feel like a badass". A real simulator does NOT aim to make you feel like a badass: it aims to teach you down-to-earth skills that you will need in order to perform an activity.

Hope that clears things up. I will be copy-pasting the above in some essay at some point.
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Unread postby recoil » 04 Jul 2017 19:28

http://culture.vg/forum/topic?p=29190#p29190

recoil wrote:Rebellion contains everything in Trinity, so it seemed a bit redundant to get it. I was planning to get the 3 DLCs for Rebellion later down the line if I wanted to play single player, which I might just do in the next two months. Considering the gaming decathlon you have planned, I would like to try out a multiplayer match at some point before that.


icycalm wrote:Well, at least now I know I will have one contestant besides me lol. It would have been disappointing to win by default. Help me nail down all the games in the other thread, will ya. We got to play Darkest Dungeon, and a couple other games, and make sure we have all the genres covered. I am a little stumped with what racing game on Steam to pick. Haven't played a racing game in ages.


icycalm wrote:Maybe The Crew has a good challenge mode we could use.
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Unread postby recoil » 04 Jul 2017 19:54

I think you can make your own races in the Crew and there's some neat looking races that take you coast to coast that look like a long version of Outrun. I wouldn't mind checking it out.

I would want to do Dirt Rally, it looks fucking intense in a first person view and it looks like a challenging racing simulator. We wouldn't have to be online at the same time either if we do time trials and stream our runs.
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Unread postby icycalm » 04 Jul 2017 20:02

Okay, gotta try both and make a decision.

As for time trialing... you know it's not the same thing as racing. We should think about that.

Also, I am wondering whether it's worth trying to get the number of games to exactly ten, so as to be able to use the term decathlon. They would probably end up being around that number anyway.

Another genre I thought of is sports. A Tony Hawk/skating game would be a great example.

For 2D fighting we need something 1. Complex, 2. On Steam, 3. With great netcode, so we should think about Under Night vs. Xrd vs. Arcana Heart.
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Unread postby recoil » 04 Jul 2017 20:40

There is a racing mode for Dirt Rally, but we'll have to try it out. Project CARS doesn't look too bad either. I'll check all three soon while the Steam sale is still up.

I like the sports genre idea, just another genre for me to dominate, lol, especially if it's going to be Tony Hawk. Are you also including games like NBA Jam, Kick Off, Power Smash, etc? Only other game like Tony Hawk I could find on Steam is Steep.

As for 2D fighting, Under Night is at the top just because of the netcode. We might be able to do Xrd, but that needs testing across continents. Arcana Heart is out since it can't seem to handle games across continents. In terms of complexity, Arcana Heart and Xrd are neck and neck with Under Night below them.
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Unread postby icycalm » 04 Jul 2017 20:43

Yep, I am including everything in the sports category. We'll pick a different game each year, all of them at the top of the genre, as long as they are on Steam and have solid netcode across continents. So yeah, we have some testing to do here too.
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Unread postby icycalm » 04 Jul 2017 21:02

Here's a tentative list, with the maybes in red, so we know where to do further research:

01. Shooting (Mushihime-sama Ultra)
02. 2D Fighting (Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late)
03. 3D Fighting (For Honor)
04. CRPG/Roguelike (Darkest Dungeon)
05. Turn-based Strategy (Sid Meier's Civilization IV)
06. Real-time Strategy (Sins of a Solar Empire)
07. Real-time Tactics (Planetary Annihilation: Titans)
08. Racing (The Crew)
09. Survival (Rust)
10. First-person Shooting (Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege)
11. Simulation (Cold Waters)
12. Sports (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD)

I ditched the decathlon idea because we are already up to 12 and I am not willing to abandon anything. In fact, I am all ears for proposals for more genres.
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Unread postby icycalm » 04 Jul 2017 21:04

We could add turn-based tactics with a wargame like Panzer General. I haven't looked into that genre in decades. I'd be interested to know what the latest and greatest is these days.
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Unread postby icycalm » 04 Jul 2017 21:08

I wonder if we should use PUBG for FPS instead. The opponents drop as a team, but at different points in the map, and they keep playing the game as if they are playing Solo. Whoever gets the highest rank wins. It certainly sounds easier to set up than a Siege 1v1... though Siege's shooting mechanics are superior, so I would prefer that if we found a way to easily set up the 1v1.
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Unread postby icycalm » 04 Jul 2017 21:12

All games will be on PC-Steam-Windows. Whoever is not on PC-Steam-Windows is a casual gamer anyway, so he loses the contest before even entering it.
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Unread postby recoil » 04 Jul 2017 21:51

There's custom games on Siege and lots of nice settings to make a more hardcore experience. Less HUD, realistic ammo management, spectators, change prep times, etc. You can check it out when you pick multiplayer, the option is beneath Ranked.
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