He means that general lack of statefullness. Which I agree with even though I still enjoy the game intensely.
Probably just a typo or an errant thought, but I believe you mean the introduction of statefulness, not the lack thereof. Rym and Scott are opposed to statefulness in competitive online games.
However, for one, I don't think this is enough to make a suitable or useable game into a bad one, and secondly I'd think Rym would make that statement more clear unless he was sarcastic.
Here's the problem with statefulness in a competitive game of any kind.
Let's play Monpoly! OK. Everyone starts with $1100.
Scott wins! Let's play again! Except this time, Scott starts with $2000 because he won the last game. That's bullshit! Oh well. Scott wins again...
*three weeks later*
Let's play Monopoly! OK. Everyone gets $1100. No, I played this last week at my other friends house. You guys weren't there, but I won twice in a row, so I get to start with $3000. Fuck this bullshit.
$1000 is an extreme bonus, but even $1 is bullshit. I lost a game of Modern Art last week by $1. It matters.
The cosmetic features and the focus put on them caused the community to shift, so many its members were people who actually cared about hats, and would run popular servers that were primarily set up so people could get hats. Team-based gameplay took a huge hit. For a game that only works playing multiplayer, having a shitty playerbase is an objective failure.
Uh, what? Have you actually played that game as of recently? Because as far as my play experience goes I have not seen hats compromise gameplay.
Yes, there are achievement and trade servers, but those run special maps and are clearly designated as servers on which players do not play competitively.
The cosmetic features and the focus put on them caused the community to shift, so many its members were people who actually cared about hats, and would run popular servers that were primarily set up so people could get hats. Team-based gameplay took a huge hit. For a game that only works playing multiplayer, having a shitty playerbase is an objective failure.
Uh, what? Have you actually played that game as of recently? Because as far as my play experience goes I have not scene hats compromise gameplay.
Yes, there are achievement and trade servers, but those run special maps and are clearly designated as servers on which players do not play competitively.
I have played recently, and I found that a majority of servers I played on were full of 12-year-olds talking about this hat and that weapon and this achievement server, etc. A handful of games, in fact, had kids who were outwardly ignoring the team play in favor of grinding an achievement.
Also just FYI I'm shooting the shit here. I also don't like TF2 much as a game, hats/achievements aside.
Here's the problem with statefulness in a competitive game of any kind.
Let's play Monpoly! OK. Everyone starts with $1100.
Scott wins! Let's play again! Except this time, Scott starts with $2000 because he won the last game. That's bullshit! Oh well. Scott wins again...
*three weeks later*
Let's play Monopoly! OK. Everyone gets $1100. No, I played this last week at my other friends house. You guys weren't there, but I won twice in a row, so I get to start with $3000. Fuck this bullshit.
$1000 is an extreme bonus, but even $1 is bullshit. I lost a game of Modern Art last week by $1. It matters.
Yes, indeed. However, that is a matter of implementation and degree. Pretty much all the weapons in TF2 are sidegrades, with only a couple being straight improvements, and even those are only that in specific situations. Additionally, this "advantage" is capped, and is trivial to catch up to.
The unlockable weapons in TF2 rarely actually give any straight advantage to any player. The only thing they do is provide different, but not necessarily better, ways to play the game for various classes.
Here's the problem with statefulness in a competitive game of any kind.
Let's play Monpoly! OK. Everyone starts with $1100.
Scott wins! Let's play again! Except this time, Scott starts with $2000 because he won the last game. That's bullshit! Oh well. Scott wins again...
*three weeks later*
Let's play Monopoly! OK. Everyone gets $1100. No, I played this last week at my other friends house. You guys weren't there, but I won twice in a row, so I get to start with $3000. Fuck this bullshit.
$1000 is an extreme bonus, but even $1 is bullshit. I lost a game of Modern Art last week by $1. It matters.
Yes, indeed. However, that is a matter of implementation and degree. Pretty much all the weapons in TF2 are sidegrades, with only a couple being straight improvements, and even those are only that in specific situations. Additionally, this "advantage" is capped, and is trivial to catch up to.
The unlockable weapons in TF2 rarely actually give any straight advantage to any player. The only thing they do is provide different, but not necessarily better, ways to play the game for various classes.
Here's the problem with statefulness in a competitive game of any kind.
Let's play Monpoly! OK. Everyone starts with $1100.
Scott wins! Let's play again! Except this time, Scott starts with $2000 because he won the last game. That's bullshit! Oh well. Scott wins again...
The game state only matters in the context of what the length of the "game" is though. A poker tournament, for example, consists of just such stateful progression if you were to imagine each hand or table as a separate game. But the whole tournament, everyone bought in at the same level. The states are really just current positions in a larger game, in that context.
Similarly, while I agree with you on how this effects Team Fortress 2, Tribes: Ascend, and to a lesser extent League of Legends, you have to also weight in that not everyone is looking at each individual match as a "game" in itself. To use the language from "the book", they may very well be treating each of those rounds as a single atom in a much longer campaign of that particular game.
Risk Legacy is full of stateful bullshit and secret information, but it uses it kinda beautifully if you play it consistently with the same group for all fifteen games in a "Campaign" of it. It changes the game into a series of separate atom/games that each play into the larger more interesting game. You may start with more missiles on round five, because you've won more than me, but that's really just one step in the entire process. It does end up suffering, however, when some players are mathematically eliminated from winning the meta-game.
Case in point; I have unlocked every single sniper rifle for the Sniper, and I still use the default one almost all the time because even though the others are more powerful in certain circumstances, the default one is the most flexible. The only time I use anything else is when I'm just playing shooting gallery on 2fort because I want to unwind, because the Hitman's Heatmaker rewards shooting gallery style play but has seriously reduced utility on any map where you might have to be on the move because the reduced body damage heavily interferes with shots from the hip.
If I were super serious about TF2, I'd probably get pissed off. But I don't play TF2 in a super competitive way. RTS games are my highly competitive games. TF2 is the same category as Just Cause 2 for me; it's not a game, its an amusement. That I greatly enjoy TF2 and probably play it more than games I treat more competitively is simply a reflection of the fact that I have more concrete things to spend my self-improvement points on these days. Weirdly it has made me better at TF2 proportional to other players than I ever was at Generals.
Uhhh, I think we are misunderstanding each other because I wasn't drawing that conclusion. I was extending your point in the first post then disagreeing with you that most games have worse stories than any other medium in the second post.
You also need to read the thread. Sail was arguing (wrongly) the point I just mentioned in the quoted post.
Case in point; I have unlocked every single sniper rifle for the Sniper, and I still use the default one almost all the time because even though the others are more powerful in certain circumstances, the default one is the most flexible. The only time I use anything else is when I'm just playing shooting gallery on 2fort because I want to unwind, because the Hitman's Heatmaker rewards shooting gallery style play but has seriously reduced utility on any map where you might have to be on the move because the reduced body damage heavily interferes with shots from the hip.
Even if all the possible weapon choices are on the pareto frontier, making them effectively equal, they are still different. You may, for example, get into a game where a particular opponent is behaving a certain way, and a particular unlocked weapon may be temporarily more advantageous to counter this particular behavior. If it is unavailable to you, then that is the $1 that made me lose at Modern Art.
That is a very snobbish and small-minded thing to say. By insisting that there should be no games with statefulnes in it you are closing of design space for games as a whole, and that is just objectively bad. You are also tossing out the baby with the bathwater, insisting that something is bad on principle because it could be a problem, rather than evaluating whether it actually is a problem.
That is a very snobbish and small-minded thing to say. By insisting that there are no games with statefulnes in it you are closing of design space for games as a whole, and that is just objectively bad. You are also tossing out the baby with the bathwater, insisting that something is bad on principle rather than evaluating whether it is actually a problem.
Statefulness that goes across the border of a single game instance is contradictory to fair competitive play.
Case in point; I have unlocked every single sniper rifle for the Sniper, and I still use the default one almost all the time because even though the others are more powerful in certain circumstances, the default one is the most flexible. The only time I use anything else is when I'm just playing shooting gallery on 2fort because I want to unwind, because the Hitman's Heatmaker rewards shooting gallery style play but has seriously reduced utility on any map where you might have to be on the move because the reduced body damage heavily interferes with shots from the hip.
Even if all the possible weapon choices are on the pareto frontier, making them effectively equal, they are still different. You may, for example, get into a game where a particular opponent is behaving a certain way, and a particular unlocked weapon may be temporarily more advantageous to counter this particular behavior. If it is unavailable to you, then that is the $1 that made me lose at Modern Art.
I don't disagree. It just isn't something that I care about in TF2 because I'm not playing it for the competitive test of skill. I'm playing it because it is amusing to race to the top of the scoreboard above a bunch of pubbies. I think that at this point I could probably hold my own among competitive TF2 players, but that's not what I want from the game.
Statefulness that goes across the border of a single game instance is contradictory to fair competitive play.
While that is true in principle, you are still not considering whether it is an actual, tangible problem. TF2 is largely played for fun, not for competition. The impact of the statefulness in TF2 is miniscule and are not a problem for this type of game play. If you really go to any publicly accessible servers and start bitching that you lost because you don't have this or that weapon, all you will earn is funny looks.
If you want an actual competitive environment, you can find that too. Join a highlander league. They usually play without random crits and everybody has every weapon for the class they play, and if you don't have one specific weapon there will be people on your team that will trade you the weapon you need and want to have because they want you to be able to play to the best of your ability.
Risk Legacy is full of stateful bullshit and secret information, but it uses it kinda beautifully if you play it consistently with the same group for all fifteen games in a "Campaign" of it. It changes the game into a series of separate atom/games that each play into the larger more interesting game. You may start with more missiles on round five, because you've won more than me, but that's really just one step in the entire process. It does end up suffering, however, when some players are mathematically eliminated from winning the meta-game.
I like Risk Legacy, though I have not yet actually played it. ;^)
Statefulness that goes across the border of a single game instance is contradictory to fair competitive play.
While that is true in principle, you are still not considering whether it is an actual, tangible problem. TF2 is largely played for fun, not for competition. The impact of the statefulness in TF2 is miniscule and are not a problem for this type of game play. If you really go to any publicly accessible servers and start bitching that you lost because you don't have this or that weapon, all you will earn is funny looks.
If you want an actual competitive environment, you can find that too. Join a highlander league. They usually play without random crits and everybody has every weapon for the class they play, and if you don't have one specific weapon there will be people on your team that will trade you the weapon you need and want to have because they want you to be able to play to the best of your ability.
This is a thing that happens in games of all kinds. There is some game with some flaw. Someone points out the flaw. Another person will admit the flaw, an then suggest a social or technical workaround for the flaw to make the game playable and/or tolerable.
Yeah, you can't read ASCII in Dwarf Fortress? Just use these addons and tile sets!
TF2 really crappy? Just join a clan and only play on weird servers!
Tabletop RPG has no role playing? Add all these hacks and house rules I came up with!
None of these things are ever the right answer. There are so many games in this world. More than one person can ever hope to play in their lifetime. If a game has a flaw that makes it unplayable for you, the only right answer is to play another game.
My point with the above bit about viewing the individual "game length" in the context of a single campaign "game" was to take a tangent into how you might view TF2 or more often MMORPGs and such as larger persisting "games" with many different little atoms/sessions within them. Hard resets in MMO's only really come in big expansions, with more minor soft resets in content patches and such that even the playing field. That's one reason I can begrudgingly deal with some of the bullshit in MMOs without getting too aggravated that someone has a +1 better weapon than me and won a single fight because of it - but it's also why I really only enjoy the games heavily when they're brand new or just after big patches that even out the playing field.
Thinking about it, there are some instances where statefulness in certain games are not only not detrimental to fair competitive play, but in fact essential for fair competitive play.
Take a Go handicap for example. Amateurs of different skill levels who play against each other on semi regular or regular basis also make use of the handicap system, using a handicap the two players agreed upon. If the handicapped player consistently loses with that handicap, his handicap can be increased if the two players agree. If the handicapped player consistently wins, the handicap can be reduced. A prime example of a stateful value based on previous games enhancing the ability of a game to feature fair, competitive play.
These are even used in some tournaments in which amateurs and professionals play against each other, and the amateurs are afforded a handicap.
Thinking about it, there are some instances where statefulness in certain games are not only not detrimental to fair competitive play, but in fact essential for fair competitive play.
Take a Go handicap for example. Amateurs of different skill levels who play against each other on semi regular or regular basis also make use of the handicap system, using a handicap the two players agreed upon. If the handicapped player consistently loses with that handicap, his handicap can be increased if the two players agree. If the handicapped player consistently wins, the handicap can be reduced. A prime example of a stateful value based on previous games enhancing the ability of a game to feature fair, competitive play.
These are even used in some tournaments in which amateurs and professionals play against each other, and the amateurs are afforded a handicap.
A handicap is a thing that is useful for various reasons, but it is inherently unfair.
Let's say I play against someone who is very good at Go, and I get a large handicap. I barely scrape by a win. Am I better than them? NO! But I won. Did I deserve to win? NO, they are way better than I am. We allowed the handicap for meta-reasons. It is useful because we both want to play a meaningful and challenging game, but that would not be possible. Just like it would not be possible for me to play meaningful basketball with Michael Jordan. It is still unfair because the person who deserved to win did not win. In a perfectly fair game, the better player/team will emerge victorious 100% of the time.
Scott, just show me a perfect flawless video game. And not just perfect in your "objective" opinion, but a game where everyone in the world agrees it's perfect and flawless.
There isn't perfect, flawless games, and even if there was one, I'd eventually would get bored playing only one game. I perfectly fine playing flawed game as long as the flaws aren't so bad that they turn whole game bad, then it's bad game and I shall not play it. Also flaws and their severity is subjective. Some people enjoy TF2 as a casual pew-pew game and for them it's non competitive nature is not a flaw, because they don't care for that. That's also why those fixes exist.
Also personal fixes to the flaws is just the right way to go. Because I'm pretty sure that there isn't a game that's 100% identical of TF2, but without alternative weapons and hats. So if one wants to play TF2 in a competitive manner, only reasonable solution is to play on servers with custom rules.
A handicap is a thing that is useful for various reasons, but it is inherently unfair.
Let's say I play against someone who is very good at Go, and I get a large handicap. I barely scrape by a win. Am I better than them? NO! But I won. Did I deserve to win? NO, they are way better than I am. We allowed the handicap for meta-reasons. It is useful because we both want to play a meaningful and challenging game, but that would not be possible. Just like it would not be possible for me to play meaningful basketball with Michael Jordan. It is still unfair because the person who deserved to win did not win. In a perfectly fair game, the better player/team will emerge victorious 100% of the time.
I rather have good competition rather than a fair game.
Statefulness that goes across the border of a single game instance is contradictory to fair competitive play.
While that is true in principle, you are still not considering whether it is an actual, tangible problem. TF2 is largely played for fun, not for competition. The impact of the statefulness in TF2 is miniscule and are not a problem for this type of game play. If you really go to any publicly accessible servers and start bitching that you lost because you don't have this or that weapon, all you will earn is funny looks.
If you want an actual competitive environment, you can find that too. Join a highlander league. They usually play without random crits and everybody has every weapon for the class they play, and if you don't have one specific weapon there will be people on your team that will trade you the weapon you need and want to have because they want you to be able to play to the best of your ability.
This is a thing that happens in games of all kinds. There is some game with some flaw. Someone points out the flaw. Another person will admit the flaw, an then suggest a social or technical workaround for the flaw to make the game playable and/or tolerable.
Yeah, you can't read ASCII in Dwarf Fortress? Just use these addons and tile sets!
TF2 really crappy? Just join a clan and only play on weird servers!
Tabletop RPG has no role playing? Add all these hacks and house rules I came up with!
None of these things are ever the right answer. There are so many games in this world. More than one person can ever hope to play in their lifetime. If a game has a flaw that makes it unplayable for you, the only right answer is to play another game.
I agree in principle but not 100%, for two reasons. I agree that a game which is bad except for the inclusion of mods is a bad game in itself but I don't think that means that judgement can be automatically passed on those mods.
First, I am a modder of games, and I think that that attitude as a black-and-white sentiment ignores that a modification of a game can in essence be an entirely different game and it ceases to matter what the base game is like. To toot my own horn for a second, my Red Alert 3 mod is only like Red Alert 3 in that it shares an interface and art style at this point; the gameplay is worlds away from it. If somebody wanted the gameplay I'm providing, your attitude would be to berate them because the delivery platform isn't good enough. In a similar fashion, I dislike World of Darkness games, but I love Genius the Transgression, which is essential an extensive hack/addon. Is Genius bad because WoD is bad? If Half-Life had been bad, would Counter Strike be bad by association?
A good example is that I think Fallout New Vegas is kind of terrible. I enjoy the stories and quests, but loath the combat. However, there is a great mod out there that let me turn the combat of that game into something completely different which I enjoyed greatly. I even did some straight up modding of my own to make the gameplay exactly what I wanted to experience in that game. Is it wrong that I enjoyed this experience? Is seeking to make your own fun bad?
Second, I think this ignores the idea that a person might want a certain kind of experience that could be had but for some small modification to something not optimal. There is nothing like Dwarf Fortress. If that is an experience you want to have but you can't read the Matrix, there is a solution in tilesets. Heck, I can read the Matrix just fine and I use a tileset because I found one with really adorable art. If I want to play Dwarf Fortress but I find the Matrix unreadable, and I follow your advice, at the end of the day I still have a hankering for Dwarf Fortress that your advice has not satisfied.
I agree that a tweak cannot save a game that is bad. However, tweaks can make a good game more enjoyable or eliminate something that is frustrating in an otherwise great game. I play Just Cause 2 with a tweak that makes my grappling hook 2 kilometers long. It makes an already hilariously madcap game completely bonkers and I have a great time with it, but I don't think Just Cause 2 without it is bad and I wouldn't condemn anyone for playing it like that. I just personally derive a lot of enjoyment from making planes faceplant with a steel wire.
I miss getting worked up over these arguments. Ohh the pains of full-time employment (where I'm not high enough on the totem pole that I can dick around...)
I do want to say that video games are a still developing (aka fairly poor) medium that does not take full advantage of its provided features. It has its charms.
Otherwise, you guys seem to constantly be getting in a tizzy over the difference between "theoretically ideal" or "fair" and "best" or "funnest".
I think Scott works off of a different definition of "fair" than I, and probably a lot of people. It seems to me, and Scott is very welcome to correct me if I have the wrong impression of that, that Scott thinks fair is when every player has the same starting conditions in a symmetrical game.
To me, "fair" is when all players have an almost equal chance of winning (within certain margins, of course).
While Scott's definition of fair can overlap with mine if skill and other talents of the player are about equal to each other, not all of these factors can be accounted for in the game design, and thus things such as handicaps exist.
Anyway, this is why Scott thinks that handicaps are inherently unfair, and I would say that handicaps facilitate fairness.
Anyway, I would like to return to the "video games as story telling mediums" discussion from earlier.
I find the notion that "Video games are a fairly poor storytelling medium." to be blatantly ridiculous. Just because nobody has portrayed a story perfectly in it yet, doesn't mean that it can't be done or that the medium of video games is incapable of doing so.
What I will say video games are a very difficult medium to portray a story in, because it being an completely interactive medium requires additional resources and thought processes on how to portray the story. It is very difficult keeping a player engaged and following a story without making it obvious or trying to railroad them through it.
It also doesn't help that video games are a very young medium, and whose development was so far has been primarily focused on presentation and gameplay, rather than storytelling.
There are however stories for which video games are the only suitable medium. Play Spec Ops: The Line (20 bucks on steam) or The Stanley Parable (which is a free Source Mod), the story of both hinge on the fact that you as a player are actively making decisions and choosing how to interact with the game, both of which creating emotional experience which could not be created in film or literature.
A game doesn't have to be symmetrical to be fair. For example, Street Fighter 2 is not symmetrical. If I pick Guile, and you pick Ryu, we are not on perfectly even footing. However, it is still fair because I could have picked Ryu, and you could have picked Guile. If there was some bullshit where you could pick Akuma because you unlocked him, but I couldn't, then that is unfair.
If you are having a competition and you want to be able to respect the results of that competition, then everyone has to play under the exact same rules, and the rules can not give preferential treatment to one or more participants based on factors other than game play.
Tennis is the fairest sport I have ever seen. More money can't help you. Cheating is incredibly difficult. Maybe you could bribe the judge? Random factors are averaged out due to playing multiple sets, which has the side benefit of adding endurance to the list of skills being tested. The only thing they could really do to make it better is to use the technological in/out system on every call, instead of only for the limited number of challenges awarded to each player.
Comments
Let's play Monpoly! OK. Everyone starts with $1100.
Scott wins! Let's play again! Except this time, Scott starts with $2000 because he won the last game. That's bullshit! Oh well. Scott wins again...
*three weeks later*
Let's play Monopoly! OK. Everyone gets $1100. No, I played this last week at my other friends house. You guys weren't there, but I won twice in a row, so I get to start with $3000. Fuck this bullshit.
$1000 is an extreme bonus, but even $1 is bullshit. I lost a game of Modern Art last week by $1. It matters.
Yes, there are achievement and trade servers, but those run special maps and are clearly designated as servers on which players do not play competitively.
Also just FYI I'm shooting the shit here. I also don't like TF2 much as a game, hats/achievements aside.
The unlockable weapons in TF2 rarely actually give any straight advantage to any player. The only thing they do is provide different, but not necessarily better, ways to play the game for various classes.
Similarly, while I agree with you on how this effects Team Fortress 2, Tribes: Ascend, and to a lesser extent League of Legends, you have to also weight in that not everyone is looking at each individual match as a "game" in itself. To use the language from "the book", they may very well be treating each of those rounds as a single atom in a much longer campaign of that particular game.
Risk Legacy is full of stateful bullshit and secret information, but it uses it kinda beautifully if you play it consistently with the same group for all fifteen games in a "Campaign" of it. It changes the game into a series of separate atom/games that each play into the larger more interesting game. You may start with more missiles on round five, because you've won more than me, but that's really just one step in the entire process. It does end up suffering, however, when some players are mathematically eliminated from winning the meta-game.
If I were super serious about TF2, I'd probably get pissed off. But I don't play TF2 in a super competitive way. RTS games are my highly competitive games. TF2 is the same category as Just Cause 2 for me; it's not a game, its an amusement. That I greatly enjoy TF2 and probably play it more than games I treat more competitively is simply a reflection of the fact that I have more concrete things to spend my self-improvement points on these days. Weirdly it has made me better at TF2 proportional to other players than I ever was at Generals.
If you want an actual competitive environment, you can find that too. Join a highlander league. They usually play without random crits and everybody has every weapon for the class they play, and if you don't have one specific weapon there will be people on your team that will trade you the weapon you need and want to have because they want you to be able to play to the best of your ability.
Yeah, you can't read ASCII in Dwarf Fortress? Just use these addons and tile sets!
TF2 really crappy? Just join a clan and only play on weird servers!
Tabletop RPG has no role playing? Add all these hacks and house rules I came up with!
None of these things are ever the right answer. There are so many games in this world. More than one person can ever hope to play in their lifetime. If a game has a flaw that makes it unplayable for you, the only right answer is to play another game.
Take a Go handicap for example. Amateurs of different skill levels who play against each other on semi regular or regular basis also make use of the handicap system, using a handicap the two players agreed upon. If the handicapped player consistently loses with that handicap, his handicap can be increased if the two players agree. If the handicapped player consistently wins, the handicap can be reduced. A prime example of a stateful value based on previous games enhancing the ability of a game to feature fair, competitive play.
These are even used in some tournaments in which amateurs and professionals play against each other, and the amateurs are afforded a handicap.
Let's say I play against someone who is very good at Go, and I get a large handicap. I barely scrape by a win. Am I better than them? NO! But I won. Did I deserve to win? NO, they are way better than I am. We allowed the handicap for meta-reasons. It is useful because we both want to play a meaningful and challenging game, but that would not be possible. Just like it would not be possible for me to play meaningful basketball with Michael Jordan. It is still unfair because the person who deserved to win did not win. In a perfectly fair game, the better player/team will emerge victorious 100% of the time.
There isn't perfect, flawless games, and even if there was one, I'd eventually would get bored playing only one game. I perfectly fine playing flawed game as long as the flaws aren't so bad that they turn whole game bad, then it's bad game and I shall not play it. Also flaws and their severity is subjective. Some people enjoy TF2 as a casual pew-pew game and for them it's non competitive nature is not a flaw, because they don't care for that. That's also why those fixes exist.
Also personal fixes to the flaws is just the right way to go. Because I'm pretty sure that there isn't a game that's 100% identical of TF2, but without alternative weapons and hats. So if one wants to play TF2 in a competitive manner, only reasonable solution is to play on servers with custom rules. I rather have good competition rather than a fair game.
First, I am a modder of games, and I think that that attitude as a black-and-white sentiment ignores that a modification of a game can in essence be an entirely different game and it ceases to matter what the base game is like. To toot my own horn for a second, my Red Alert 3 mod is only like Red Alert 3 in that it shares an interface and art style at this point; the gameplay is worlds away from it. If somebody wanted the gameplay I'm providing, your attitude would be to berate them because the delivery platform isn't good enough. In a similar fashion, I dislike World of Darkness games, but I love Genius the Transgression, which is essential an extensive hack/addon. Is Genius bad because WoD is bad? If Half-Life had been bad, would Counter Strike be bad by association?
A good example is that I think Fallout New Vegas is kind of terrible. I enjoy the stories and quests, but loath the combat. However, there is a great mod out there that let me turn the combat of that game into something completely different which I enjoyed greatly. I even did some straight up modding of my own to make the gameplay exactly what I wanted to experience in that game. Is it wrong that I enjoyed this experience? Is seeking to make your own fun bad?
Second, I think this ignores the idea that a person might want a certain kind of experience that could be had but for some small modification to something not optimal. There is nothing like Dwarf Fortress. If that is an experience you want to have but you can't read the Matrix, there is a solution in tilesets. Heck, I can read the Matrix just fine and I use a tileset because I found one with really adorable art. If I want to play Dwarf Fortress but I find the Matrix unreadable, and I follow your advice, at the end of the day I still have a hankering for Dwarf Fortress that your advice has not satisfied.
I agree that a tweak cannot save a game that is bad. However, tweaks can make a good game more enjoyable or eliminate something that is frustrating in an otherwise great game. I play Just Cause 2 with a tweak that makes my grappling hook 2 kilometers long. It makes an already hilariously madcap game completely bonkers and I have a great time with it, but I don't think Just Cause 2 without it is bad and I wouldn't condemn anyone for playing it like that. I just personally derive a lot of enjoyment from making planes faceplant with a steel wire.
I do want to say that video games are a still developing (aka fairly poor) medium that does not take full advantage of its provided features. It has its charms.
Otherwise, you guys seem to constantly be getting in a tizzy over the difference between "theoretically ideal" or "fair" and "best" or "funnest".
To me, "fair" is when all players have an almost equal chance of winning (within certain margins, of course).
While Scott's definition of fair can overlap with mine if skill and other talents of the player are about equal to each other, not all of these factors can be accounted for in the game design, and thus things such as handicaps exist.
Anyway, this is why Scott thinks that handicaps are inherently unfair, and I would say that handicaps facilitate fairness.
If you are having a competition and you want to be able to respect the results of that competition, then everyone has to play under the exact same rules, and the rules can not give preferential treatment to one or more participants based on factors other than game play.
Tennis is the fairest sport I have ever seen. More money can't help you. Cheating is incredibly difficult. Maybe you could bribe the judge? Random factors are averaged out due to playing multiple sets, which has the side benefit of adding endurance to the list of skills being tested. The only thing they could really do to make it better is to use the technological in/out system on every call, instead of only for the limited number of challenges awarded to each player.