[ Posted by Janka
Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:37:20 GMT ]
I had the most interesting rapier private class this morning. I mentioned to The Guy that I lately find it difficult to remember drills in class, and that this seems to be specific to rapier - I have no memory trouble elsewhere. I can remember fencing sequences if I can remember the logic of my part ("he does something and then I do the thing that makes sense and has a disengage in it"), but I cannot recite an exercise that was just given or even one that I just did and if my partner does something unexpected (for example, when parrying opens the line so far that the change of line I am supposed to do does not make sense anymore) I just completely lose track. I have not had this problem before. I actually consider myself fairly good at remembering choreography.
The Guy says that this is because so far, I have managed to "fake" remembering fencing by remembering it as choreography, but what you need to remember for fencing is not so much a sequence but a decision tree, or a particular path down one. In tech talk (which he did not use that exactly, though he said the same thing) I can execute each node of the tree if it is presented to me, and I can bias my natural reactions to something the instructor wants from each node, but I am memoryless as to previous or upcoming states.
Apparently to fence well you do not need the memory, as such. You just need to have a good tree, and to execute the nodes very well. Unfortunately, to really get better at fencing freeplay, you need the ability to analyze a fight after it happens, and to figure out where exactly your tree and/or a specific node is screwed up, and fix that by training. (Or have a coach do that for you. Which in this context is not the complete solution. And would be more boring anyway.)
The funny thing, especially coming after the previous entry about parallels of adrenaline between EVE and fencing, is that in the computer game, I have also spent the past couple of years as a great promoter of "AARs", after action reports, as in, people explicating after losses to themselves and to others 1) what did they do, 2) what did the opponent do, 3) what lead to the loss, and 4) how could that be changed.
It is not an easy thing to analyze afterwards what happened in an adrenaline filled 90 seconds or so. One of my least favourite parts of the game probably is digging into the adrenaline-covered mush of half-recollections of a humiliating loss to figure out what exactly was I doing right before that Taranis appeared from apparently nothing to 5 km from my position and proceeded to transform my pretty ship into pretty splinters. But since interceptors generally do not appear from nothing to next to jammers at range, whatever I was doing was what kept my attention away from the overview that would have showed me the interceptor closing in. And so, to fix the problem, I need to remember that.
Luckily, one of my most favorite things is when something happens where I can immediately afterwards "see" the fight as it happened, see what lead to what, see how I was tricked, and see how to fix that next time. Traps and tactics are beautiful, and it does not really matter which party executes them. When that happens, AARs are actually fun to do: "I tried this, it sucked because of that. Note to self: in a jammer ship in a non-critical situation, align before engaging." And I love reading other people's notes like that - it's quite useful not to have to do every mistake yourself.
With practice, I have found that the proportion of AARs that seem clear sequences of actions to me instead of a muddle of confusion has gone vastly up. By trying to describe the undescribable you build awareness, understanding, and, slowly, a "vocabulary" with which to really describe actions and counteractions. When you start to have "Your Own Battleplan" in your head with some clarity, remembering which nodes in it actually activated in this or that fight becomes much easier.
Let that be a comfort to me when I struggle to change my answer to "What did he do that made you come forward and attack?" from "The... uh... the blade contact... you know how it changes?" to "His step forward gave me his debole and the time to take it."
In other fencing news, past week I have found myself actually eager to freeplay, instead of slightly dreading the inevitable day of getting back to it. I'm holding myself back a bit still, but not for long.
Posted in Plain English | Tags EVE online, training | 1 comment
[ Posted by Janka
Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:56:00 GMT ]
And now for something completely different.
We often talk about a "fight or flight" reaction, but the truth is that instead of either, most people freeze when something sudden and threatening happens. There are a lot of reasons for why they freeze, and a lot of theories about what exactly goes on and why did evolution lead us to something that seems so borked a reaction, too, in case you are interested. This post is about my experiences in teaching people how to stop doing so in a particular situation.
Situation is this. In the computer game EVE Online, players often participate in player-vs-player combat against other players. While obviously not a real threat in the sense of someone actually risking getting injured or killed, it is nevertheless a fairly intense simulation of a threat -- enough to absolutely give you an adrenaline rush. (To be honest, most people who do that combat probably do it for the rush.) Part of that reality is that combat in EVE is far from consensual: you can be attacked without you signing up for player-versus-player action. Part of it is that losses actually hurt and set you back in the game. Part of it is that you more often than not function as a part of the group, and failing to perform is failing your team mates. Part of it is that in EVE, reputation is everything, and so every engagement threatens your status and your very identity as a player.
A lot of people who try player-vs-player combat freeze in their first fights. They learn all the wrong things from the experience: that they "cannot do pvp", "do not like the adrenaline", and "cannot think fast enough under pressure". The last one is true, but it is not a problem - no one can. The first two practically always turn out to be untrue.
For about a year, I ran a "combat rookie class" for players in my in-game organization, aimed at people who had done no or very little combat in the game. My hunch from those classes is that about 9 in 10 people freeze under a new, threatening situation even when the situation is not about life and death. In any case, about 90 percent of people freeze in EVE when shooting starts, and talking to the 1 in 10 that don't, they seemed to have similar experiences from real life. (In a situation actually about life and death, the percentage is probably higher, if not 100 percent.)
However, with very short amount of instruction, 8 out of those 9 perform perfectly adequately in a game fight. With just a couple of engagements behind them they actually start to clearly outperform the hotheads without the tendency to freeze. They also report loving "the rush". (Only about 2 out of 10 will become absolutely brilliant combatants -- but that's a matter for another post.)
How does this happen?
The first bit of instruction is to tell people that with only rare exceptions, everybody freezes. Freezing under threat is not a sign that you cannot deal with adrenaline, it is a sign that you belong to the human race. Some people freeze easier than others, but my guess is that any sane person freezes if the threat is real and sudden enough. Adrenaline is a double-edged sword. It can help you to execute a plan in a clearer, faster, more effective way. It can also completely stop your brain from working and completely remove that plan from your mind. One thing that makes all the difference in which it does for you is breathing.
When surprised and scared, the natural reaction for most people is to draw a sudden breath -- and then hold it. When you hold your breath, your brains get less oxygen, and your heart rate keeps on climbing, and your ability to act sensibly goes down fast. The first thing to do when about to panic is to take a deep breath, and then keep on breathing. Get that oxygen into your brain and muscles, and the adrenaline is much likelier to be your friend instead of your enemy. In games or sports, and in a real life situation where you can do so without anyone dying, it is a good idea to spend some time getting your breathing right before trying to do more. To begin with, count it if you have to: in-2-3-4, hold-2-3-4, out-2-3-4. With experience, the first deep breath will trigger the correct breathing.
The second crucial bit of instruction is that the human mind is simply not able to make up new plans for fast-evolving situations when the adrenaline is already pumping and the damage is coming in. (Not even when the damage is to an interweb spaceship - much less, I assume, when the damage is to your physical body.) We think too slow for that, and adrenaline tends to slower that sort of thinking even further. The people who look like they are thinking fast in a situation are actually simply executing an elaborate set of conditioned reflexes and premeditated rules of thumb.
You cannot take that elaborate set and hope to start executing it yourself without experience. Even if the people would be able to explicate it, which they in the vast majority of cases are not, and you would be able to memorize it, without experience you would not be able to recall it in the situation. You would simply freeze, having too many options.
The way to overcome this is something I call "Your Own Battleplan". I advice people to make a very, very simple plan before a combat operation for to execute in case of an engagement. Maximum three steps, each step consisting of one basic action. (For those in the know, I suggest something like "1) orbit the primary, 2) target the primary, 3) engage scrambler" for rookies in frigates.) When shooting starts, your job is to, first, remember to breath, and second, perform the first step of your battleplan. That's all. Don't even try and think further, to begin with.
Once you get that down, add the second step. Once you get that down, add the third. Once you manage all that in an actual engagament, revise your battleplan. At some point, add an "if this happens, I'll do this, otherwise I'll do that" condition there, see if you can pull that off. Add a get-the-fuck-out maneuver that you execute if you need to GTFO, and then see if you can switch plans from "fight" to "flee" with an adequate trigger. After each engagement, go through what happened, what you did, did it work, could you have been more efficient. Keep on adding rules of thumb and more complications (for those in the know: for example, guns, drones, e-war, transversal, switching ammo, etc -- these are all "complications"). Very soon you will be one of those guys the rookies believe can actually plan in a situation.
That's all there is to it, really. Remember to breath. Make plans beforehand, execute them on reflex. Teach people those two things, and they won't freeze anymore -- that is, until they end up in a new, surprising situation. Or take up a new role. Then, unfortunately, it all starts again. In my experience, the "when frozen, breath" reflex tends to transfer over - from EVE to swordsmanship, say. The battleplan, obviously, needs to be different for each context, and you pretty much need to start from the three-step trivial plan for each new one. (My current EVE one has at least a couple of tens of rules of thumb and if/elses. My fencing one is "when confused, attack". I am working up to "when confused, close the line and attack". Yay for complicated...)
So, why do these folks outperform the 1 in 10 who does not freeze? Because the people who freeze know on a very profound gut level that they have to think beforehand, or it will all be screwed. The people who do not freeze often believe that they can think in the situation, so they do not make simple plans. Instead they either execute the first thing that pops into their mind in a situation, or try to memorize complex battleplans and in the adrenaline rush get them wrong. Often they do this repeatedly, without accepting the fact that what they are doing is simply not working. They feel it "should have worked" and that "next time, they'll try something else". But when next time comes, the adrenaline again kicks in, and they cannot figure out what the "something else" should be, and either repeat the same stupid thing, or do another stupid thing.
How much of this would transfer to a situation of real life physical violence? I have no idea, and I hope I will never find out.
Posted in Plain English | Tags EVE online, training | 14 comments
[ Posted by Janka
Sat, 30 May 2009 14:54:09 GMT ]
EVE Online is a massively multiplayer online game about spaceships, and if that sentence made your eyes glaze over you might want to skip this post, unless “sportsmanship” is interesting to you in general (in which case I recommend you read it anyway). If EVE is familiar for you, you can skip the next four paragraphs.
EVE differs from most (all?) other MMOGs in some crucial respects, most of which belong to another post (or ‘con speech) completely. For this post, what is important to understand is that EVE is not a level- or score-based game where you can measure your achievement against filling some objectives set by the game, such as reaching a particular level or completing a particular quest or raid. There is no “end game”. You cannot win the game, you cannot finish it. Instead, it is a sandbox game where you measure yourself only against other players – you fight for regions, resources, glory and fame, but the game itself rewards none of these. You get no points, no levels, no nothing. The only reward is the fame and glory themselves, and the resources you can control to produce more of those.
In EVE, you set your goals yourself, and you can go about achieving them in different ways. You can change your goals at any point (though if you have made them known first, people will spot this, and you might lose glory in their eyes). Skills and equipment help, but in the end what scores you a kill or wins you a solar system and gives you the upper hand on a regional market is player skill and dedication. While you can play this game solo or with a small band of friends, in the end, if you really want to be one of the “big players”, you have to do it by banding together with others. The biggest powerblocks in the game consist of thousands of players. Co-ordinating that is no little feat and requires real commitment. Even the tiniest alliances, in serious conflict only for the control of some small local area of space, require co-operation with tens of other players, against similar bands.
While “dying” in the game hurts (more than in most games), it does not obviously really kill you off or exclude you from the game. You can push someone out of a particular solar system, you can kill their structures there, you can make them die in horrible ways when they enter the regions you control, you can make it pretty damn close impossible for them to win that control from you, but you cannot make it completely impossible, and you cannot stop them from coming at you and being a bloody nuisance at least. The only thing that can break any player alliance in EVE is the loss of morale, the loss of interest in the fight. Competition is fierce, and the human emotional drama involved is as high as or higher than most of the players probably ever experience in their work places or other such “real life”.
If you think this a little insane, compare to competition sports and their following. Just saying.
Views regularly surface in the game that when it comes to spaceships actually shooting at each other it is not “sportsmanlike” to crush the opponent using superior numbers or otherwise superior force, such as ships specifically designed against their attack. There are several pejorative names for people who are “cowardly” enough to use superior force to crush someone “brave” enough to put up a fight in a fleet that will most likely lose. I totally disagree with these views. Fights in EVE, when they happen, are not “fair”. They are not supposed to be fair. When the shooting starts, the fight is over—the guy with best numbers, ships/modules, and discipline wins. The game is not about who can actually shoot the best. The game is not about spaceships and pretty explosions. The real game is about who can scheme, plan, co-ordinate and maneuver themselves into a position where the unfairness is on their side. It is about forcing or tricking your opponent to commit to a fight they cannot win.
I do believe there is room for sportsmanship in EVE, however. It is just not about the tricks you use in a fight. As far as I am concerned, once you are in the game and the game is on, any trick you can pull (apart from abusing bugs that the game devs say not to abuse) goes. Some tricks are more stylish than others, granted, but still, if you score a kill you score a kill and your enemy calling you lame because they do not like your style is just them being—unsportsmanlike.
Sportsmanship is about attitude. It is not about what you do to win or lose within the game, it is about how you behave once you have.
If you pull a particularly neat trick and win, it is ok to rejoice and gloat a little. It is fine to feel good about yourself if your game is at the level where you are clearly on the top of most of the people you meet in your region. It is great to take pride in your achievements—even if this is just a game, it is a game that takes very real intelligence, dedication, and co-operation to be good at. It is, however, not sportsmanlike to jeer at your opponent who just lost, to put them down, to call them names, to question their worth as human beings and to wish they go to bed sobbing over how mean you are. It is not sportsmanlike to tell someone you just made explode how they are useless and will never amount to anything. It is sportsmanlike to offer the customary “good fight” salute on the local chat, and (where you can safely do so) to offer them advice on how to get better.
If you get royally screwed, or royally screw up, or a trick is pulled on you, and you lose, it is ok to feel pissed off and to kick and throw your toys a bit—as long as you do this in the privacy of your own home. It is, however, not sportsmanlike to kick and scream where others hear. It is not sportsmanlike to make excuses or to blame your opponent of “cheating” or “cowardly tricks” (or “blobbing”, to give an example of an in-game pejorative). While I do believe in PR and publicity as parts of warfare in EVE, I still think it is not sportsmanlike to engage in a smear campaign against your opponents simply because you are upset that you cannot win them on the field. It is sportsmanlike to offer the customary “good fight”, and to congratulate your opponent on a trap nicely sprung, and to express a wish to meet them on the field again another day. Be gracious – and then lick your wounds, analyze why you lost, learn from it, plot and scheme and gather allies, and then go spring a trap on them and watch those towers burn.
Sportsmanship is about the wish and ability to respect your opponent regardless of whether you win or lose, even when you pull a crazy trick at them, even when you have an inside man working on their morale or stealing their assets, even when you are doing your best to make the game not-fun for them in order to force them out of some plan they are trying to execute. There are ways of making things not-fun for the opponent and more fun for your guys that rely on disrespecting, dehumanizing, demeaning and humiliating the other guys, on robbing them of their value as a respected opponent and as a human being, and those ways are used in EVE, both in the hearing of those opponents and in internal pep talks and propaganda.
Personally, I just think those ways are lame. Not sure about “wrong”, and definitely not “against the letter of the rules”—but certainly lame. If I cannot win with sportsmanship, with respect to those who play with me, I’ll rather not win at all.
Not sure what is respectful? Here’s a rule of thumb: if you would not talk that way to/about the 12-year-old sister of your best friend, don’t talk like it to or about another player in the game, unless you know for a certain fact that the player is a friend and does not mind. (For all you know that stranger is the 12-yo little sister of your buddy – or your own grandfather, or you professor at college, or the next-door neighbor. Not that it should matter; all other players are humans and deserve courtesy, regardless of whether you personally know them or not.)
(This post is for Queneva, who first asked me the question “Do you think there is a place for sportsmanship in EVE?” in a discussion following her post about a rather disturbing subculture in the game.)
Posted in Plain English | Tags EVE online, MMOG, sportsmanship | no comments
