Metal Gear Online: Adapting the Aguilar System for Medium Range Sniping, and other news on the crackpot gaming front

I’ve recently become quite taken by Metal Gear Online, the multiplayer online shooter that came as a supplement to MGS4. In fact, though this is likely true of me alone, I’m enjoying it more than I am the actual single player game. Perhaps it’s the tourneyfag in me, or perhaps it’s the crackpot in me. I deny neither charge. If Mazo represents the face of destitute gaming, then I surely represent the face of crackpot gaming, and I have no shame in that. Eccentricity is a form of novelty and everything novel has a chance, however small, of being innovative. This is something all gamers should understand instinctively.

Anyways, I’ve taken to rolling Sniper in the game, on most occasions. There are some maps which do not seem conducive to sniping, so I don’t apply these tactics there. For full disclosure, no I am not very good at this game. However what I am trying to document here is not what I am calling optimal strategy, although it might be, and it might just be the case that I’m relatively worse than others at employing it. I am trying to show the sort of background assumptions I took with me when I started playing the game because although I didn’t realize it at first, my actions as a sniper were largely shaped by a single online document I read.

I am talking about the tactics page of the Aguilar System for Medium Range Sniping. So without further ado, let me jump into my breakdown of the system as I see it to pertain to the game. If I’m dead wrong on every count, then it will become apparent quickly enough, but at least a discussion will have been started and I guess that counts for something. I will include only what I think is most important, if you want additional insights from the system you should read about it in the link.

Timing

The Aguilar system states that psychologically, soldiers are weakest immediately after a win. When soldiers are fleeing, you can kill them as fast as you can fire. This seems both self-explanatory and perfectly applicable to the game. In fact, something can even be learned by inverting this. If you are using the SVD and are confronted by an enemy soldier directly, it is generally better to face them down than to try and escape. MGO offers tricks for escape that can make it prudent. For instance, the cardboard box trick leftover from the original PS2 Metal Gear Online, flash grenades, other soldiers providing cover fire, and general terrain benefits can all be taken advantage of. However, purely in the open with none of these available to you or plausible, it is better to face down your opponent. It takes about 3 SVD shots to the torso to bring a soldier down in this game, as opposed to quite a bit more using a machine gun. If you are accurate and they aren’t, you can walk away from the encounter. Even if you don’t, it is better to have at least tried to do damage and died, than to have been shot in the back of the head as you ran away.

Another aspect of timing stated is that victorious soldiers are focused only on raping, looting and sleeping. Now, applying this to MGO is a bit of a stretch, and is certainly more selective than in a real life battle. However two immediate traditions spring to mind; teabagging and saluting, both a form of post-victory taunt. The immediate problem with this, however, is that it is only taken advantage of when a person thinks they can get away with it, and the presence of a sniper is felt pretty quickly even if their location is never determined in this game. So a sniper is less likely to take advantage of these things than another form of player.

The last part of the timing game is this. Let invaders pass by, then attack them from behind after the battle. This is dramatically more applicable, and equivalently requires no secondary explanation, except perhaps to remove the “after battle” bit.

There are additional aspects of this game involving timing that arise situationally. The Catapult is a grand example. Ladders and ledges, basically anything that requires a brief period where the action has to be performed and to the exclusion of other actions, offers you easy pickings. I trust the reader will be able to see these opportunities for themselves. One aspect of timing I think that seems obvious but should actually be avoided, is camping respawn points. I am not sure, but it seems like there are balance mechanics built into the game to prevent shutting down another team using this method. Could I get confirmation of this from someone?

Position

Positions with a wide view are easily identified and targeted early, and are elevated and thus easily encircled. One of the distinguishing characteristics of noobish sniper use is the immediate run to the “Sniper’s Positions”, particularly on Midtown Maelstrom. When the notification shows up that Player A -> Player B SVD, the first thing any competent player is going to do is use whatever tools they have to check the generic snipers positions, which on many maps means that you’re dead, period. Midtown Maelstrom is the best example of this. A sniper can be flanked from 2 different directions, or taken out by a sniper themselves at either of the obvious sniping positions. If it is an obvious sniping position to you, then it is to everyone else as well. Worse yet, as was already stated, these positions offer no terrain benefits on this map.

Now, there is a caveat (which should properly be informed by a modified version of the C. Teamwork section of the link. It would remove 1 and 4 and modify 3). An elevated position is more tenable when movement is plausible, such as along the roof in Grozny Grad, and when it can be easily fortified. The chief method of fortification is the placement of Claymores or Dirty Magazines at the top of ladders, where they cannot be easily avoided. Yes, you can hear a soldier climbing a ladder, but sometimes even if you are paying attention you will miss this, and you don’t want to divide your attention anyways. A player with Sixth Sense will notice your traps. If you noticed them then you can wait until they climb back down the ladder or try to flank you from another position and then kill them.

The last exception is when conditions of battle make it hard for a soldier to kill you given your position. The best example of this is in free for all death matches where you are reasonably protected by the physical properties of your position, but there is no cover for an opponent interested in killing you. If there are enough players in the match, then they will form your protection out of self interest by killing your would be attackers when they present themselves.

The last two important things worth mentioning. Since players respawn, after you have shot someone you have effectively given away your position. If your position is not easily defensible, you need to move. Movement is very important in this game in general. The less defensible your position is, the more you need to move to avoid death. However there are other reasons to move. If an opponent is the type that you expect to chase you down after you have killed them, and the map is conducive to it, then you can find a position that gives you a good shot at the path a soldier would use to flank you.

The Aguilar system for Medium Range sniping suggests assigning numbers to 6 locations you expect to snipe from, and choosing which one to go to based on a dice roll. I don’t think people will play MGO that way, or even that they should. Real life sniping is a game of imperfect information. MGO largely is as well.  Like in IRL sniping, surviving in MGO is often tied to choosing your positions in a way that makes them less obvious, such as by choosing positions of a variety that is exceedingly common. However unlike in real life, information is given away about your position every time you land a successful kill. Ultimately I think that mind games are going to be more effective than choosing positions randomly in this game, but only if people can get them working. I look forward to discussing all this with players who are better than me, and hopefully as my skills improve at this game, this method will yield greater results.

That concludes my article on MGO sniping. In other news, on the market speculation front (read: gambling) I am still in preperation. The principle thing of importance is having money to throw away in this endeavor, however I recently tried to purchase a computer that was a few dollars over my limit and I was declined. All my money is also held up, in some mysterious other dimension from whence I assume it will teleport to the computer maker once a bit more money has been placed there by my bank. It is a laptop, and is crucial to my plans, which in my minds eye involve me playing the game I’m preparing for removed from the burdens of home, but also distinctly involve me not sitting in a crowded computer lab with someone staring over my shoulder trying to get me to leave, or at the library with a time limit just long enough for me to stop appreciating the company of all the homeless people who live there. So my job is to wait for my next paycheck. It gives me more time to read and prepare, anyways.

Every book I’m reading on the subject tells me that I’m stupid, and that what I’m doing is stupid, and that I shouldn’t be stupid, so I’m pretty sure I’m on the right track. As the lietmotif goes, if the market was highly predictable and hence speculative profit was easy to make then everyone would be billionaires. I like a challenge. The idea of being good at a game that definitionally has a 50% loss rate remains intensely aesthetically pleasing to me, especially given the nature of the house, staggeringly represented by the some of the most viciously cunning individuals on earth, as well as by multi-million dollar firms who have the power to single handedly create the sort of obscene price fluctuations the market periodically shows in its short term. I expect to lose, and I expect that I am throwing my money away. So at least I know what I’m getting myself into. The game itself just excites me, though.

-Kilroy