Too Much Information

I played the World of Warcraft board game earlier this week. I was a little hesitant. It took forever, I heard. I also heard it was pretty complicated. I played it anyway, though, and I enjoyed it. It definitely took a while, but most of us were learning – had we known the rules, it could’ve gone much quicker. As for complicated – well, most of it wasn’t very complicated, but the combat… the combat.

There are three types of dice – red, green, and blue. Green dice are for defense – your shield and armor type of stuff. They prevent damage. Blue is for ranged damage – arrows and guns and magic, that type of thing. Blue damage can’t be prevented. Red is for melee damage, like swords and maces. Red deals damage, but only after ranged damage. Red also prevents other melee damage. On top of all that, there’s attrition – that’s stuff like poisons and curses. Attrition happens after red damage (so after blue damage, as well), and it can’t be prevented, either. So green can only stop red damage… but so can red damage.

Combat goes like this: monsters have a ‘threat’ level. At the start of combat, you add up all your dice and roll them. Any dice that rolled the monster’s threat level or above are considered ‘successes’, which lead you to put damage or defense tokens into one of three zones (it’s part of the board, a bunch of circles). Blue successes put a damage token in the ‘damage’ zone, red successes put a damage token in the ‘melee’ zone, and green successes put a defense token in the ‘damage’ zone as well. Each point of attrition you have puts a damage token in the attrition zone, no rolls required.

Ranged damage happens first. If the damage dealt is greater than or equal to the monster’s health, it dies and combat is over. If not, it gets to deal damage, equal to a specified value on the monster sheet. Subtract the total attack and defense tokens in the melee zone from the monster’s attack – you take damage if the resulting number is still above zero, or none otherwise. Then all the damage tokens from the melee zone go into the damage zone. Now if you’ve dealt damage equal to the monster’s health, it dies. If not, add your attrition in there. Is it dead yet? If not, combat starts over, but all the damage tokens in the damage zone stay there – the fight’s still happening, and it’s not like it magically healed all of its wounds (unless it does, some do that).

Holy crap, how complicated is that? I mean, once you try it a few times it makes sense, but man oh man is it overwhelming at first. The game tries so hard to be like World of Warcraft (that’s what it says on the box, after all) that it tries to replicate its combat, and it gets really complex because of it. Here’s the thing – World of Warcraft is a computer game, where a machine takes care of all the rules and calculations for you. World of Warcraft: The Board Game is a board game (that’s what it says on the box, after all) and has to offload all the calculations and rules management to the players, and it approaches a point where it’s so complex that it’s impossible to follow. It’s not there yet, but it’s important to remember that at some point human beings will have to play your game, and there’s only so much complexity they can keep track of. World of Warcraft: The Board Game: The Computer Game would be able to handle all the math and rules itself, making it a lot easier to play, but at that point you might as well play World of Warcraft.

Wait, no. Don’t do that to yourself.

When designing new game systems, Peter and I often come up with a set of rules that looks fine to us. Everything seems dandy – different pieces have vastly different functions, there’s clear strategy, so on and so forth. And then we actually try to play it, and it’s a mess. We made a game, the board for which was one of those shifting-piece puzzles. You’re trying to capture enemy pieces (which are on top of the moving board), and you get to spend points (generated every turn according to the number of pawns you still controlled) to shift the board around. When we originally made it, you got extra points for having pawns on blue tiles, and even more points for every blue tile next to the blue tile it was on. The point was to try and make it kind of like a puzzle – you want to move the board around to get your pieces in good positions, but you would also want to “complete” the puzzle in a way, because it would earn you even more points to shift the board around. It ended up being a mess, because of the layout of colors of tiles, and because getting points to move the board around was too hard to set up. Now, you get three points every turn – no exceptions. Maybe there’ll be a type of tile that gives you a point when something moves on it, or something. If we decide to add that back to the game – it wasn’t a terrible idea – it will be much, much simpler.

There’s a board game called Rail Baron, and on the box there’s this dude who looks stoned out of his mind in an old-timey coat and hat. That guy’s the only reason I even know about the game. The box art is hilarious. I wish it was on another game, though, because I will never play it. I opened it up, to look at the rules, but I found a chart. This chart was a table – distances, prices, locations, something like that – and it was in size five font. No joke. There was so much information they needed to cram into this table, that they used an entire sheet of paper and STILL had to print it in miniscule letters. I don’t want to learn all of that information. I don’t want to play the game, and then have to reference it at some point. There’s just too much raw information to parse.

What it comes down to is this – elegance is a good thing to have in any design. Don’t have any unneeded parts, don’t have anything that’s not pulling its weight, don’t make anything more complicated than it needs to be. If you want players to manage points they spend on stuff, that’s fine. There’s no problem with that. At least make it easy to know how many points you should be getting. Trying to simulate something is fine – there’s nothing wrong with making a World of Warcraft board game, or a board game about being a railroad tycoon (that may or may not be tripping balls), or a board game about Robo-Kraken Versus Dawn of the Dead. Real people will have to play these eventually though, and they will get bogged down with too much information. Do you really need fighting monsters to have so many steps to it, or multiple full-sheet tiny charts, or a realistic portrayal of the stomach size and appetite of the typical robotic kraken?

The devil’s in the details.

-Jacob

Please, don't make math a core mechanic of gameplay.

We've established a few things in the past few weeks... like, one a week.  Number one most important, though: meaningful choices in games are important.  But choices aren't necessarily meaningful if you don't understand what you've decided to do.  Sure, games require a certain amount of mystery over how things will turn out--that's a matter of future meaningful choices playing out meaningfully--but players have to understand how the immediate factors about their current choice are different from the immediate factors of another choice.  You can't make meaningful choices without having all of the information presented in a human-friendly way.  

Yep, human-friendly.  Video games are inherently more math-based than board games, because computers are excellent at doing computations--so smart designers take advantage of that strength and allow for a large quantity of complicated equations to take place simultaneously, giving players high-speed action.  While the computer handles the math, the (human) player still needs to know what math is taking place--for example, in real-time strategy games, you clash huge armies against each other.  The computer can tell you who wins, but players want to know which troop types are going to beat each other so that they can create deadlier armies.  All troops are good at killing some opposing troops, and not so good at killing other opposing troops.  Players can realize these strengths and weaknesses through play, but they can also look at the armor and damage of given troops to get a sense of what works best.

Much of my RTS experience comes from Blizzard's games, so we'll look at them for some examples.  We'll start with Starcraft: a dragoon shoots a high-powered ball of energy at opponents, meaning it's very effective against armored troops.  However, a zergling swings its claws rapidly, butchering troops with little armor in seconds.  The weapon damage and armor of a troop is given when the player clicks on it--the dragoon deals 20 damage, and the zergling deals 5 damage.  Dragoons have 180 hit points, and zerglings have 35 hit points--so two dragoon shots will kill a zergling, and 36 zergling attacks will kill the dragoon.  

...right?  

Oh, we forgot about armor!  Every point of armor your target has decreases damage dealt by 1.  So, 20 - 1 = 19, and 5 - 1 = 4.  That means 1 armor reduces a dragoon's damage by 5%, and a zergling's by 20%.  That's such a huge difference!  And dragoons have 1 armor, and zerglings have none, so you'll need a whole bunch of zerglings to take down each dragoon, right?  

HAHAHAHAHA no.  

Starcraft featured three damage types (concussive, normal, and explosive), and three troop sizes (small, medium, and large), which all modify how much damage is actually dealt to your target.  

Did the game mention this ever?  Anywhere?  

Hell no!   You just had to play the game to realize that dragoons, which by all appearances should roast zerglings... got sploded hardcore instead.  Dragoons deal explosive damage, and small troops (including zerglings) take 50% damage from explosive attacks.  So, it's not two hits from a dragoon--it's four.  Add to this the fact that zerglings attack significantly faster than dragoons, and your math on how many zerglings will outmatch a dragoon gets turned entirely on its head.  

While Starcraft's designers did a great job of giving players easy numbers to crunch, they hid other numbers from players (damage types and sizes), so players had to do research, and still had to do some math to realize how effective their troops would actually be.  

The next Blizzard RTS was Warcraft III, which had more features--there were four playable races (vs. Starcraft's three), and utilized hero troops that players could level up to cast powerful spells--and it ramped up the un-friendly math by many whole a lots.  

It featured six armor types and SEVEN weapon types.  There are as many armor types alone as damage and size modifiers in Starcraft!  This makes understanding counters significantly more difficult for players; however, Blizzard created a unique icon for each weapon and armor type, which made recognizing patterns slightly easier.  That's about all they did to improve understanding choices, however, because they used the worst numbers EVER:

	Light	Medium	Heavy	Fort	Hero	Unarmored
Normal	150%	100%	100%	50%	100%	100%
Pierce	75%	100%	150%	35%	50%	150%
Siege	50%	100%	100%	150%	50%	150%
Magic	100%	200%	100%	50%	50%	75%
Chaos	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
Spells	100%	100%	100%	100%	70%	100%
Hero	100%	100%	100%	50%	100%	100%

Mmmkay, they're not quite as bad as I remember--but Starcraft utilized multiples of 25%.  Four options total, and nothing ever dealt more damage than was listed in the tool tip.  Here, we have 35%, 50%, 70%, 75%, 100%, 150%, and 200%.  Seven different values, without any common denominator, with each type modifying damage in a seemingly arbitrary fashion across armor types.  And did I mention that units did a range of damage?  An archer might do 13-17 damage, or a ballista might do 23-117.  So players also need to find the average damage dealt before they can do any other calculations... and they need to do a lot of calculations.  

Because here's Blizzard's explanation for how armor affects damage:

"For positive Armor, damage reduction =((armor)*0.06)/(1+0.06*(armor))
For negative Armor, it is damage increase = 2-0.94^(-armor) since you take more damage for negative armor scores." 

Uh-huh.  Totally friendly.  

Fortunately, Blizzard took a huge step forward with Starcraft II.  All troops deal the damage listed in the tool tip, no matter what they are attacking*.  It's that simple.  

Asterisk?  What?  

All right, fine.  It's not utterly simple--but it's still easy to understand.  Troops do have modified damage, but those are limited strictly to bonuses against one type of target.  For example, an Ultralisk deals 15 damage with every swing against anything, except that it deals 20 damage to armored troops.  There's not even any addition involved; it deals 15 damage to everything that isn't armored, and 20 damage to armored targets.  No 15 (+5 vs. armored).  Just 15, or 20 vs. armored.  Nice, straightforward, pre-mathed integers.  Treating numbers in this way makes it easier for players to understand the variables in a game, and allows them to make better-informed decisions.  Sure, it has some setbacks--Warcraft 3 used such a convoluted system because that system allowed it to fine-tune how effective troops were against a wide array of opposing forces, and that isn't possible with Starcraft 2's system--but I played Warcraft 3 for longer than Starcraft 2, and I definitely never knew the War 3 system by heart.  Not even close.  I would feel much more comfortable stepping back into SC2 today than I would War3, largely because I could re-learn the game more easily.  

All of this boils down to each game's barrier to entry.  When a game has a low barrier to entry, players understand the basics of the game more easily, and actually know how to win or why they lost.  Easy numbers makes the barrier to entry lower, which is important in a genre like real-time strategies, which generally have a high barrier to entry due to their complexity.

The Metagame - What Happens Before You Do Anything, and How That Changes What You Will Do

So Peter touched on a subject near the end of his last article which I thought that I could expand on further - the Metagame. It seems really weird at first, but it’s important to consider for games, and it’s not actually all that complicated, though the word sounds foreign.

Peter put the metagame in pretty good terms by saying that it “is all of the out-of-game information players consider while playing the game.” The metagame is, in a nutshell, a collection of information about how players have played the game in the past, which informs players how it will be played in the present and in the future. By understanding what has or hasn’t worked in the past, players can figure out why the game is being played the way it is right now. Understanding how the game is played now lets players develop strategies to succeed in the future.

If there’s strategy, there’s a metagame. The metagame shifts and evolves - someone will discover a new strategy which performs well against the old strategies. These new strategies will shake up how the game is played. Maybe they’ll trump the old strategies, replacing them as the new norm of the game. With enough time, even newer strategies can form to counter this new normal of the game.

Baseball has a metagame. There’s no set position for any of the outfielders except the pitcher and catcher - the others could all pile deep into the outfield if they wanted, but that’s terrible and it’d never work. Outfielders space themselves out to cover more ground because that has shown positive results. Coaches will call in pinch hitters because they think they could really use the hit - that started because someone thought that it might get that one hit, they tried it, and it was at least successful enough to keep going. Pitchers will intentionally walk a hitter every so often, the idea being that sometimes it’s better to definitely let someone get a base than to maybe get a run. It works often enough that it gets repeated.

Innovation happens all the time, and sometimes it comes from unexpected sources. In the last few years, baseball has experienced huge changes due to, of all things, the iPad. With the rising levels of information in this day and age, it’s been easier for players to analyze trends than ever before. There are iPad apps which let you see how often a player will hit a certain pitch; if they do hit it, it’ll show you where their hits are most likely to land. You can see every curveball a pitcher has thrown this entire season. This huge wealth of knowledge is really starting to make waves in baseball because the iPad is more portable than a laptop, while bigger and easier to use than an iPod, giving players constant access to easy-to-view information. It lets players tap into baseball’s metagame - figuring out when to apply certain strategies, based on when they’ve been successful - in a much more accessible way than ever before. (There’s an entire article about it, found  here, if you’d like to read more in-depth than I could ever explain. It's pretty fascinating.)

Chess has a metagame. Over the centuries the game has been played, people have collectively figured out the most successful ways to start a game, sequences of moves called “openings”. A quick google search indicates that there are over a thousand openings, most of which I’d imagine are viable. Good chess players stick to these openings, because they’ve been shown to work. Chess is another game where technology is forcing the game to evolve - there are chess-playing programs which trailblaze new viable strategies that would probably take humans decades to figure out.

Super Mario Bros. and other single player games have metagames associated with them. As you play a single player game, you take note of what does or does not work when presented with certain challenges, and you use that information to tackle challenges like it in the future. It might not evolve as fast as other metagames, but it’s certainly there. If you happen to look up strategy guides or videos of the game, you’re likely to take the information from there into your own play, evolving it and keeping the metagame shifting.

Magic: the Gathering is practically defined by its metagame. Every few months new cards are released, which shake up what decks are successful. Popular deck types will get boosted or weakened, sometimes fringe decks will get that fighting edge they really needed, and sometimes new decks will appear out of nowhere, as a strategy which didn’t exist is pulled together by the existence of a single new card. One style of play removes the oldest cards from legality, forcing large metagame shifts each year when sudden absences allow different decks to fill the competitive void. Some strategies will get too dominant, and will have some cards banned in order to keep them in check; this promotes new growth. Since the game is fairly focused on how different decks work against one another, each tournament informs players what the new “good” is, and this can shift each week.

The metagame isn’t something you can escape, no matter what game you’re playing. The metagame is a reflection of players seeking any edge they can get against others, and it will stagnate over time as existing strategies are explored more deeply, and executed more tightly. Magic essentially changes its rules every few months to keep everything fresh, to keep a sense of discovery. Even something like Tic-Tac-Toe has a metagame, though it’s simple enough that an unbeatable strategy is easily memorized. That’s a rare case of a game which can’t experience a metagame shift - there is no play space to be explored anymore, as every possible round of play has been explored.

It’s a weird thing that is always changing with every single game that gets played, which changes how the game is played in a continuous feedback loop. It’s pretty neat that game players are able to draw from such an ephemeral, shifting idea.

-Jacob

When fighting fair doesn't mean being equals: asymmetry in game design.

Well, Jacob got me thinking about meaningful choices in games, and then I asked him about weapon placement within a level--and wouldn't ya know it, but then I got to thinking about other things! 

Amazing world we live in, where things make us think about things. 

Namely, I started to think about meaningful choices before you start playing a game.  As Jacob explained, meaningful choices make games more fun--but sometimes, the choices you want to give to players don't work well together.  Say that in UT99 having both a rocket launcher and a flak cannon at the same time is too powerful--do you remove the rocket launcher?  Maybe the flak cannon?  But they're both so friggin' awesome--what do you do? 

This is where asymmetry comes in.  In asymmetrical games, players are not given the same choices during the game because of a choice they make before the game begins.  For example, I might choose to play as the Protoss in Starcraft II, which will give me access to the most powerful, armored, and costly troops in the game--but I'm trading those advantages for the sheer numbers of the Zerg Swarm and the long-range artillery and highly defensible positions of the Terran Dominion.  Or consider Magic: The Gathering.  Because players are allowed to create their decks before playing, there are a near-infinite number of decks available, which means no two MTG games are likely to ever play out the same way. 

Now, let's clear up a misconception--asymmetry is not the same thing as chance.  In Scrabble, when players first fill their letter racks, they will likely draw different letter tiles from the pile, which will give them different options for which words they can make.  However, the player did not choose these tiles; it was chance that they drew these specific tiles.  In asymmetrical games, players choose to have certain options available to them, which also means some options will be made unavailable to them.  Let's imagine a Scrabble variation in which players can choose to have sole access to a handful of consonants.  For example, I might choose to have access to the R, L, and N tiles, but that would keep me from ever getting an S or T tile.  Makes Scrabble a little more fun, doesn't it? 

Well, maybe.  It'll be different, and probably interesting--but fun?  "Fun" competitive games are balanced.  I chose those letters because Wheel of Fortune told me to, but I'm not sure that having access to R, L, and N, but never getting an S or T is balanced.  This is one of the major problems with asymmetrical games; balancing the advantages and disadvantages can be immensely difficult.  By their asymmetrical nature, we're comparing apples and oranges.  We need to determine how much winning potential each fruit has, and then add an apple to the scale, or make the oranges sweeter, or put the apples up on higher branches so they're harder to get.  Supposing we get R, L, and N tiles, and our opponent gets S and T tiles (remember: we can't get our opponent's "claimed" tiles), and all other tiles are otherwise available, we might try to balance the game by determining how many words use R, L, or N in English, and then compare that to how many words use S or T.  This would give us a sense of how many options each player gets, and if the number of words is equal, then the game should be balanced.  Right? 

Well, maybe maybe.  In our list of R, L, and N words, we should probably exclude any words that use an S or a T, because our player cannot make those words. 

Well, maybe maybe maybe.  They can make those words supposing our opponent has already played an S or T on the board.  However, most asymmetrical games do not allow a player to ever get the options they chose to remove from their arsenal, so Scrabble's a bit wonky in this regard.  Instead, let's say you can never even use a letter that's been removed from your options, so I can't ever draw an S or a T, nor can I play any word with an S or a T in it, even if my opponent's played one on the board already.  Lain, yes.  Slain?  STFU.   

So, now that we squashed that loophole, the sides are each unique and balanced, right? 

Well, maybe maybe ah hell--they might be, except for point values.  Yes, all 5 letters that players have special access to are worth only 1 point, but this may actually hurt the RLN player.  That player is now more likely to draw low-scoring tiles than his opponent, which is a small detail--but it could end up consistently giving the advantage to the ST player.  Of course, letter distribution is also varied in Scrabble, so maybe they're already even (R+L+N tile total = S+T tile total).  Unfortunately, nope--looks like it's (6+4+6 /= 4+6).  Sad!  The first player has 90 tiles available, and the ST player has 84 tiles available.  To get the average tile value for each player, we can do a little harmless math.  Let's take the total number of points of all tiles in the Scrabble set (187) minus the values each player does not get:

RLN: 187-10 = 177
ST: 187-16 = 171

Then divide those point totals by the total tiles available to that player:

177 / 90 = 1.96667

171 / 84 = 2.03571

Look at them decimal points!  It's not a huge difference, but it is a difference.  I don't know if it's a statistically significant difference, and so would have to either ask someone who's better at math to work on it, or simply play a few hundred games and see if there's a noticeable difference in point totals for ST players vs. RLN players. 

And then we can even toss in another variable: the ST player will be able to add an S to the end of some of his higher-scoring words, allowing him to pick up some essentially freebie points.  It's much less likely that the RLN player will be able to do that.  Again, it may not break the game by itself--but combined with the 0.06904 difference in tile value, we could see the advantage sway to the ST player. 

That, frankly, is the tip of the asymmetrical iceberg--there are many more variables to consider, and the game could use some added flair (one player gets double and triple letter spaces, but the other gets double and triple word spaces, for example)--and then we have to tweak all of those values and likelihoods.  It's daunting, and you're probably still amazed by how those decimals could matter at all, so why bother? 

I mean, really.  Why?  Most of the games we've played for generations aren't asymmetrical--chess, checkers, Monopoly--and sports are never asymmetrical.  (I'm fat, so I may be unaware of a weird one somewhere--but even when the offense and defense have different numbers of players on the field, the entire game becomes symmetrical when they flip roles.)  Not only do you have to create more content for your game, and you need to make sure that each starting option works and is fun to play, but you need to make sure it's balanced against the other three, five, nine options your opponent might pick. 

Which, in fact, is your first reason for making your game asymmetrical: players have more choice when playing your game.  Team Fortress 2 features 9 unique classes, ranging from a guy who only shoots explosives to a medic to a teleporter-building engineer to a sniper.  And a pyromaniac.  Plus a scout who runs wicked fast and can double-jump.  There's something for everyone, which gives your game a wider appeal than a game where everyone's an explosive-throwing medic.  Hey...

No.  That diversity is still more interesting. 

And of course, in the same way that it's much more difficult for the game designers to balance an asymmetrical game, it's also more difficult for players to break an asymmetric game.  Players will always look for a dominant strategy, but with the variety of options available, it becomes less clear which option or strategy is the absolute best.  Brand-new concept time: the metagame is all of the out-of-game information players consider while playing the game.  Sounds weird, right--what out-of-game information could be important in the game?  In Starcraft, the Zerg race has a lot of cheap, but fast and expendable troops.  This means they can make a small but deadly force very early in the game, which they can use to attack opponents before they have defenses up.  This strategy is commonly known as rushing, but there's nothing in the rules of Starcraft that say the Zerg have to rush or the other races can't rush--players have determined that rushing as Zerg is effective, so it's common knowledge that you should be on the lookout for a rush if you're playing against a Zerg opponent.  That's the metagame--you understand how other players play the game, which affects how you decide to play the game. 

The metagame for asymmetric games, in general, is much deeper than symmetrical games.  Because players have so many options, and players all value these options differently (and can use them to different extents because of their particular skills), there are more choices to be made in a particular game--not only are you making choices, but your opponent is making choices, which you must respond to (by making choices), and then they make choices...

You get it.  It all goes back to meaningful choices--pack more of those into a game, and it will remain more interesting (also known as "fun") for players for much longer.  Asymmetric games, for all of the challenge they present to designers, are great at providing players with meaningful choices. 

Now, as to whether or not we should make an asymmetric game... well, I'll remain mum on that. 

Why the Unreal Tournament '99 Rocket Launcher is Goddamn Awesome

In designing competitive games, it’s incredibly important to make sure that there are always distinct choices for players to make. Distinct choices are what make a game interesting, and their presence or absence can make or break a game. For example, let’s say you can choose between two weapons, A and B. A does half the damage that B does, but the two are otherwise exactly the same - same range, same speed, same everything. Which would you choose? Of course you choose B, the weapon that does more damage. Why would you sacrifice half your damage for no type of measurable difference, no advantage?

Choices being strictly better or worse than one another is something to always be avoided. In the example above, B is the superior weapon because it does more damage with no downside. If the other weapon had, say, twice the range, which is better? Now you can’t say for certain. Weapon A having twice the range but half the damage of Weapon B is a distinct choice. Chances are that each weapon would excel in different circumstances; neither is strictly superior to the other.

So choices shouldn’t be strictly better/worse than one another. Got it. What about Rock Paper Scissors? Any gesture you can play loses to one gesture, meaning it also beats one gesture. There is no choice in Rock Paper Scissors that is strictly better than any other, so it’s an interesting choice, right? Not really. In any given situation, each gesture has a ⅓ chance of winning, losing, or tieing, and every situation (my gesture versus yours) is equally likely to occur. While Rock Paper Scissors lacks choices which are strictly superior to one another, it also completely lacks distinct choices. It doesn’t matter what you pick, it’s just as likely to win a given round as any other choice you could make. The lack of distinct choices keeps it from being interesting.

With that background information out of the way, let’s talk about the Rocket Launcher from Unreal Tournament ‘99. Why talk about a game from 1999? Because shut it, that’s why.

I’m kidding. You’re great. (Really!)

I’m going with Unreal Tournament ‘99 (UT99 from now on) because I’ve spent more time playing it than any other first person shooter game, I haven’t played later games in the series, there’s plenty to be learned from studying something regardless of its age, and UT99’s Rocket Launcher is an incredible weapon in a game of great weapons.

The Rocket Launcher fires a slow-moving missile that explodes on impact, damaging anything in a small radius. This property means that directly hitting the opponent is unnecessary, which is good since the rocket can be avoided by sidestepping it. If I were to fire at your chest, you could simply avoid it as it passes by and explodes in the distance. However, I can instead shoot at your feet - it’ll explode when it hits the ground near you, dealing damage. This is much harder to avoid, since you’re trying to avoid the blast radius (large) rather than the rocket itself (small). This leads to the Rocket Launcher being highly effective in two different core scenarios - when you have the height advantage, shooting down on your opponent, or in enclosed spaces, both of which make it difficult to avoid the explosion.

The Rocket Launcher  has more tricks up its sleeve, though. Instead of shooting rockets, the weapon also allows you to use its ammunition as grenades, lobbing them a good distance where they explode if an enemy touches them or after a couple of seconds. This opens up the Rocket Launcher, giving it a ton of new functionality. You can toss them behind you while running away, making chasing you a very dangerous proposition. Is someone on the other side of a wall? You can’t shoot a rocket through the wall, so lob a grenade over it! Is someone around a corner? You can’t shoot a grenade through the corner, so lob a grenade around it! Is someone else with a Rocket Launcher shooting down at you over a ledge? Who cares that they’ve got the high ground advantage - lob a grenade up at them! The grenade functionality very cleverly shores up the weaknesses of the traditional Rocket Launcher.

UT99’s Rocket Launcher doesn’t stop there, though. If you hold the fire button, it loads multiple rockets (or grenades, depending on the firing mode) to fire all at once. It can hold up to six in its barrel at any given time, and once it has six it automatically fires them all - rockets spread out in a fan, and grenades fire in a cluster. This isn’t so useful in tight hallways, where the Rocket Launcher already shines, but further makes up for its weak points. You can drop multiple grenades behind you, making it harder to avoid the cluster of them and increasing your chances of escaping a pursuer. In wide, open spaces, you can load multiple rockets and fire them in a fanning-out formation - a singular grenade would be easy to avoid in a large space, but avoiding 4 or 5 at the same time is much harder.

UT99’s Rocket Launcher also has a feature where, after aiming at a target for a few seconds, a rocket fired at the target will home in on it. This again, is useful in open spaces; dodging a rocket isn’t too difficult given enough space, but homing rockets, well, home in, making dodging ineffective. It’s another mechanic to strengthen its weaknesses, but the Rocket Launcher already has a way of increasing effectiveness in open spaces by being able to fire multiple rockets at a time. Lock-on is kind of superfluous. Not everything can be perfect!

The Rocket Launcher is one of the strongest weapons in the game if you’re on the high ground or in a narrow area, where its missiles are difficult to avoid. In wide open spaces where avoiding the rockets is easy, you can load and fire multiple rockets at once to make avoiding the attack more difficult. This isn’t a perfect solution, since it requires setup time and additional rockets. It can also use grenades to reach areas that the rockets can’t really hit, including over ledges, which makes fighting another Rocket Launcher that has the high ground not impossible.

There are other weapons for these situations, though, and those weaponsperform better in their niche than the Rocket Launcher does when it barges into their territory. The Flak Cannon and Biorifle, for example, shoot projectiles in an arc, easily sailing over walls and ledges from farther away than the Rocket Launcher can. The Ripper fires discs that bounce off of surfaces multiple times, making it great at shooting around a corner. The Minigun deals consistent, hard-to-avoid damage as long as you can keep the opponent in your sight, which is easy to do in open spaces.

The Rocket Launcher does a few things extremely well, while providing more options to do things that it normally can’t do so well. These secondary options require setup time or extra ammunition, though, and the Rocket Launcher is a passable, but not ideal, choice in these situations. It isn’t strictly better than any other weapon in the game, since it’s mediocre in certain situations where other weapons shine. And in turn, those weapons are often nowhere near as good as the Rocket Launcher in its primary areas of effectiveness. Which weapon you want to use in a situation is a distinct choice because each weapon is different enough from the others where the choice matters, and is always an interesting one.

In short - it’s goddamn awesome.

-Jacob