Hacker News Reader

The most beautiful games are where in the top skill echelon, people who play to play can beat the players who would stop at nothing to win.

View on HN

This is an important idea in game design, even for games that aren't explicitly competitive.

What players enjoy doing (i.e. playing to play) should (mostly) converge with what players do to optimize for some goal (i.e. playing to win).

For DotA 2, Wings Gaming at the 2016 International is often highlighted as a favorite team, because they not only won, they did it in their own way, with style and flair.

I especially liked one of the qualifiers where one of the pro team did a pacifist strategy where they actively avoided killing any enemy heroes and pushed to win the game in 20 min

Reply on news.ycombinator.com