Monday, March 19, 2012

Saving Kreedz: Preserving the Movement that defined CS1.6

This is a special post of an article I have written regarding the treatment of movement in CS:GO.  This article is my own writing and I may link to it or offer it in discussions in other places on the web, but for now I've included it here as well for ease of access.

Aim and movement, movement and aim – with our keyboards we have always navigated the corridors of virtual worlds and with our mice we have always directed our crosshairs. From the earliest days of first person shooters, movement and aim have been the method of exploration, combat, and control in the virtual arenas of violence and victory. Indeed, practically every method of interaction with the environment in a 3D shooter uses movement, aim, or some combination of both – even in today's modern shooters. These two pillars of the first person shooter are also the foundational skill sets of first person shooter mastery.  Movement is like a language.  It has vocabulary, grammar, and is a means to an end.  It is a means of expressing your power to control and shape the world you inhabit, virtual or otherwise.

In modern shooters that I have recently played, I have often felt as if something were missing. It almost feels as if I am playing half of the game that I used to play.  When I pause to think of what I am comparing the experience with, I think of games like CS, Quake, or Unreal.  It seems that the movement of modern shooters starting with Source based games has been greatly simplified in recent years to create a more accessible and, in some sense, more logical gameplay for players. In Team Fortress 2, for example, your player can do nothing but run at a constant speed while going either forwards, backwards, or strafing side to side, with an incredibly weak jump (subsequent jumps after are better called hop-scotch skips). Thankfully, rocket jumping for the Soldier, pipe jumping for the Demolition class, and double jumping for the Scout class are present – these abilities allow some mid-air maneuvers for these three classes. Thankfully is a bit of an understatement – I think the game would fail spectacularly if they weren't there, because the movement is so completely one-dimensional otherwise. Unfortunately, other Source games without fantastical classes don't include these elements and suffer greatly.  The Modern Warfare games have very quick movement which is a nice feature, but there is little to learn for one player to gain advantage over another. Most maneuvers around terrain are accomplished simply by pressing space (for example, as to climb up a small ledge.) The guns are relatively accurate jumping so Modern Warfare has some of the most interesting movement possibilities of shooters available today – but it still cannot compare to the movement of older shooters.

We now stand at a cross-roads. On the one hand, it is easy to understand the motivation of game developers of today compared with those of 10 or 15 years ago. The audiences are much larger. The appeal of the games is much broader. The skill sets of the clientele vary widely between veterans who have been playing shooters for years, to very young players who weren't born yet when Quake was released. To make things even more complicated, there are two very popular platforms for 3D shooters – consoles and PCs, with varying control schemes and software / hardware limitations. Game developers have to work within these limitations, carefully weighing all of the considerations, so a certain amount of patient understanding is called for with all of the veterans of hardcore shooters who complain about today's games. Making a game that pleases everyone is not easy – it may not even be possible. On the other hand, half of the soul of what makes a 3D shooter a 3D shooter is at stake, and we are seeing the gradual erosion of one of two core elements of the satisfying gameplay that paragons like CS1.6 and Quake Live represent. It would be a tragedy if modern developers get locked into the current movement tropes or even worse, forget paying attention to movement in their games. Fighting and combat cannot be satisfying if it is just a shooting gallery on rails. In the path to mastering a shooting game, movement, aim, and the endless combinations of the two are what combine to create depth and breadth to the learning curve for a game.

The goal of this article is to bring this truth to the forefront of discussions about how to improve CS:Global Offensive. I think it's obvious that any game with the CS brand that doesn't include complicated movement is an imposter – no one who has played any CS game would accept such a game as genuine. From boosting on boxes, to bunny-hopping, to evading AWP shots when peeking corners, the movement of CS1.6 made it what it is just as much as the recoil, the bullet spread, the weapons and their accuracy – in other words, elements of shooting. I think that it takes just a moment of reflection before everyone who has played CS will agree with me how crucial movement is, even though it often feels invisible until it's gone.

In CS1.6, the movement is incredibly complex – enough to almost give you goosebumps considering how much of it was unintentional on the part of the developers. It's so involved that it actually spawned a sub-game called KZ, which comes from a player with the alias Kreedz who created the first climbing maps. Most CS1.6 players have heard of KZ but not as many play it or pursue it actively. I have personally played CS since 1999, and I played on my last serious team in 2009. In 2008 while playing for this team, a teammate showed me KZ and now I continue to play CS solely to explore it's movement. I am astonished at how deep this sub-game is, which is only matched by my frustration to see it disappear in CS:GO. Having played both CS1.6 and KZ, and having achieved a high level of competition in CS1.6 (CEVO-P, CEVO-m, ESEA-m, CAL-i, CAL-m) I can safely say that KZ is just as hard, if not harder, than CS1.6. You heard me correctly. Most of the players in KZ have been playing KZ just as long as the top players in CS1.6 'shooting' have been perfecting their craft. The feats of movement are just as impressive and difficult to perform as any feats of aim in it's big brother game. I wish more people in the CS1.6 community participated and promoted KZ – it is not only intense competitively, but the motion of a skilled KZ player in CS1.6 is almost an art form and a wonder to behold.

The thrill, fear, and rush of adrenaline coming from climbing a difficult map, where a single slip up takes you to the bottom. The obsessive quest for mastery, where you spend hours meticulously honing the tools in your arsenal, improving jump by jump at an enormous range of techniques and tricks, some of which are unintended consequences of player creativity. The art of your craft - the map that you break down and analyze, work on section by section, and put together like a piano piece. The ecstasy of reaching the top and hitting the timer to beat your personal best, or if you are an expert, a national best or world best. Anyone who plays regular CS1.6 can relate to experiences like this one. Currently at this time, in CS:GO you can only move forward, backward, side to side, and jump a very small number of times in a row.

I'm here to advocate that we save KZ, and save CS1.6's incredible movement. It would be in the interest of everyone who wants to preserve the games core elements, and it would be in the interest of future players who would experience these joys as well. I challenge game developers to be creative and think carefully about how movement can be improved in modern shooters and how it can return to it's rightful place as the second pillar of the 3D shooter. If you are with me in this, I encourage you to participate in this debate. The specifics of what to keep and what to drop are certainly a gray area, and perhaps not every movement aspect that was in reality a glitch should be kept.

If you are still reading this, thank you for taking the time to do so. I do appreciate it, and remember:

TL:DR CS w/o KZ is not CS, it's FAIL CS! SAVE KREEDZ!
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