Player Behavior

## Utility Maximization

A player will try to maximize the utility gained from their actions, by avoiding costs and gaining benefits. This utility depends on the goals of the players, which varies from game mode to game mode. In most game modes, players tend to focus broadly on winning points and being at the top of the leaderboard or helping their team get the most amount of points in capture the gems. To attain this goal, they'll engage in smaller sub-goals or behaviours such as upgrading weapons, fortifying, getting away from the deadly mist in battle royale, or making health and shield potions.

### Foraging

*See Optimal Foraging Theory*

In trying to maximize utility, players will adopt different foraging strategies to gain utility from getting gems, killing others and obtaining useful resources from mining and cutting trees.

#### Currency

*See Points System*

In the various game modes, there are different kinds of point systems which determine the points gained, a currency, that players try to maximize.

#### Constraints and the Principle of Least Effort

To avoid costs, players choose a foraging strategy based on the constraints imposed by the environment. One of the fundamental constraints placed on the choice of strategy is time, since often sessions are limited in time and taking too much time to do something induces boredom, a player will try to avoid events that will make them lose time, such as dying, since re-spawning takes 10 seconds, taking damage as this could lead to eventual problems, mining with a common shovel instead of a legendary shovel, or getting griefed by other players, etc. Other fundamental constraints depend largely on the logic of the system itself and the amount of resources in the world, especially in the case of endangered resources such as cactuses, mythic weapons or special blocks. The rest of constraints would be constraints derived from the fundamental constraints, such as going around a fortification, which takes time. As a result of the aforementioned constraints, a player tries to optimize utility, in part, through the principle of least effort. This is especially true when a player is feeling tired or lazy, or has done something many times already in the past and the novelty has worn out.

#### Patch Selection

Players will often choose locations with higher ground, for these give a broader scope of visibility, such that, all patches around these locations can be foraged for, with a weapon that inflicts enough damage given the distance constraint. Additionally, players will choose locations based on previous positive reinforcement, if they're aware that other players are frequently visiting certain patches, or that they spawn at certain patches, then it's more likely that they'll try foraging those patches in particular. As time goes by and a player stays in the same patch, by the law of diminishing returns, it will be harder to find players to kill, so that players often find it reasonable to move to another patch. Since this game in particular tends to be fast-paced, such that in some cases, opponents are depleted pretty quickly from a given patch, it makes sense to keep moving between different locations that are known to be commonly frequented by players (such as the higher floors in Free for All) or perhaps staying in a sufficiently high ground, when moving between patches is not being that profitable.

### Open-ended motivations

*See Building*

In survival mode, in particular, players might not merely focus on trying to maximize their score, but some might focus merely on trying to get the most kills, the kill to death ratio, or building a base with other teammates for its own sake, exploring the world and the various ruins that other players have left in search for loot and for its own sake, or a variety of other possible motivations.

## Conditioning

*See Conditioning*

Since exploratory behaviour is often not imminently rewarding and time is required for an innovative behaviour to be learned or discovered, most players will use mostly already learned behaviours, and in doing so, they become predictable, and as a result, this predictability can be learned by opponent players.

### Classical Conditioning

#### Expectation Acquisition

As the same or various players take the same path or repeat the same action for a given situation, the opponent player or players learn to predict by forming expectations about what will happen whenever they encounter that same situation. For example, if all players try to go through the second floor of the temple in Oasis Map taking a direct route from their side, the opposing team, will learn to predict that players will pass through that place.

#### Expectation Generalization

If the player or players behave in more than one way, but such that the various ways are related, the opponent player or players will generalize to a whole set of different possible behaviours. Taking the example above, the players might try not to just go through a single path to the second floor of the temple (the direct route) but might also try from the opposite side, from left and right, from the roof, and from below, so the opponent player or players will expect that a player might come from any of the possible places, so that, robustness becomes necessary to deal with all such possibilities.

### Operant Conditioning

*See Operant Conditioning*

As a result of learning what to expect from the different situations, and that exploratory behaviour is not imminently rewarding, players will develop conditioned responses (i.e., stable) to maximize the utility gained, through approach and avoidance behaviours.

## Personality

*See Big Five personality traits*

Players with differing personalities will adopt different strategies and motivations.

### Plasticity

One metatraits that is relevant to behaviour is plasticity which depends mostly on dopamine and which determines a player's tendency to explore the unknown. Based on the unknowns personality can be categorized as either behavioural or cognitive exploration, which correspond to extraversion and openness, respectively. Players high in plasticity will be good at surprising others.

#### Extraversion

Players who are high in extraversion might seek excitement from killing others or destroying structures, and will enjoy positive social attention.

#### Openness

Players who are high in openness will tend to explore how things work, come up with strategic innovations, and in survival mode in particular, they might explore ruins, build aesthetic structures or roleplay.

### Stability

The other metarait is called stability that is related to a player's internal tendency towards restraint and order so as to keep themselves away from psychological entropy which in the brain is, in part, achieved through serotonin. The kinds of stabilities are: emotional stability, agreeableness and conscientiousness. A player high in restraint might be more capable in achieving security and cooperation.

#### Conscientiousness

Players high in conscientiousness are better capable at adhering to learned methods, at being cautious, to strategise, and to persevere in spite of distractions or boredom; this, however, can also lead to inflexibility.

#### Agreeableness

Players high in agreeableness are more readily willing to comply and cooperate with others' strategies and more likely to become part of a team and help their teammates by giving them potions or upgraded weapons or in the concentration of force (see below).

#### Emotional Stability

Players who are low in emotional stability will have a tendency to be more sensitive to punishment and as such, more risk averse, and will often engage in negative reinforcement such as escaping from a difficult situation from worry, or alternatively, by getting angry with others, which could lead to direct confrontation which would lack an element of surprise.

## Principles of War

*See Principles of War*

In order to gain tactical and strategic advantage over the enemy, one can follow one or some of the following principles.

### Tactical Surprise

As a result of conditioning, there will be expectations about what opponents will expect and how they'll act as a result. As such, acting in novel ways can cause the opponents to be unprepared, in such a state, the opponents are less likely to kill and more likely to get killed.

For example, if you're playing capture the gems, and go to the opponent team's side mine, not many will anticipate, to die in such a place that's considered rather safe since it's risky in the first place to get inside the opponent's mine. Then, if you stay in the mine, the opponent players will anticipate that you'll be inside, and might even call other players to fight against you, so that you'll end up being outnumbered, so that, in order to gain advantage, you'll have to use surprise, by for example, making a narrow hiding place at the bottom of the stairs and waiting for more players to arrive and kill them from there. But as soon as you make that hiding place, some players will learn to anticipate you, so you can now do a hiding place at the other side of the same stairs, but players will then generalize and anticipate that you must be below the stairs regardless of wherefrom you attack. After that, you might for example, decide to instead make a hole at the side of the mine and attack from there, instead of attacking from below the stairs.

Another example might happen when you're going through a tunnel with your teammates to other mine and the enemy is spotted at the distance going from the other side of the tunnel, in most cases, the teammates will attack frontally while moving forwards directly, since that behaviour though risky is still rewarding. However, a much better approach might be to make a hiding place at the side of the tunnel, that has just a small amount of visibility to see who moves through the tunnel, but not too much that it would just take a small turn of the enemy to realize you're hiding there, such that, when you realize that the enemy has already moved past the hiding place, you exit the hiding place and attack from behind.

### Security

In order to be able to deal with opponent's surprise, one must be sufficiently robust to deal with whatever perchance, from knowing all the things that one could expect and conscientiously adhering to responses that match each situation.

For example, when fortifying a gem tower, it's useful to take into account the possibility that the opponent might make an exit by simply removing a few blocks from the fortification and get the gem, which a more robust design would use a thicker fortification, though even this can lead to opponents hiding within the walls of the fortification, so one might in turn decide to have some units patrolling inside the fortification, though all this takes time and resources that could be used contrarily. Another example might happen when one is moving through the terrain, a way to keep security is by looking at each of the sides and backwards to anticipate any attack from the flanks or from behind. Surprise itself can also be used as a form of security.

Most players don't give too much importance to security, since it in most cases, death just means some amount of time lost before respawning, and additionally, it might give points if you get revenge thereafter, and since most people act with recklessness, it might be rather insecure too act too cautiously.

### Cooperation

In teams, it is convenient to be able to share the various dangers, risks, goals, and opportunities, partly as a result of the concentration of force and also because some things often require luck and a greater amount of people lead to greater chances of attaining some goal, besides, different teammates will approach the problem differently depending on their experience and personality. Additionally, by sharing goals, the objectives take a lot less time to attain than doing it all alone, however, the relationship is not linear and it will still be the case that few people will do most of the work, so it makes sense then to let or make different subunits for different specialized tasks. It's easy to attain cooperation for sufficiently common objectives, for less common objectives, one might have to give a good justification to other teammates that the idea is worth pursuing.

### Concentration of Force

If forces are prepared and sufficiently dispersed to be able to attack from distinct angles (so as to not be kill-streaked) but not dispersed to the extent that one could be defeated in detail (i.e. through divide and conquer), one will have a tactical advantage over less concentrated groups of enemies, for an enemy might be able to surprise a single soldier but it's hard to surprise every soldier in short succession.

### Economy of Effort

A lot of the cooperation and coordination that happens is mostly a result of herd behaviour, that is, by players that follow other players that take the initiative in trying to attain some goal. It might also be possible through democratic agreement between players or with an adequate number of sufficiently compliant players, to organize subunits by specialization, if the different teammates or oneself have a clarity of purpose and can communicate this easily. In such a case, one would try to accommodate a reasonable number of players for different tasks, such as obtaining resources, defending, tunnelling, different offensive strategies, etc., in order to maximize the utility gained from the team as a whole. However, this generally does not happen, and if it does, it's usually in a small scale rather than involving the whole team.

## List of Behaviours

*See Techniques, Strategies, Tactics, Exclusive Techniques, and Building*

More common behaviours often involve less effort, skill, risk or time than the less common ones as a result of the constraints discussed above in the Foraging section. The exact frequency of the following behaviours is unknown, so instead they are classified by a qualitative description of their rarity.

### Common behaviours

* Building stairs
* Going up with block towers
* Sniping
* Shooting at enemy
* Cutting Trees
* Mining to upgrade
* Fortifying structures
* Escaping by Running and Jumping

### Slightly uncommon behaviours

* Tunnelling in a direct line
* Mining to get shields and health
* Cheesing by making holes and firing through them
* Bomb-Mining
* Evading death by crouching
* Hiding, waiting for enemy
* Escaping by Covering Self with Walls

### Moderately uncommon behaviours

* Blocking access to resources and strategic points
* Destroying structures
* Building Foxholes
* Trapping
* Suicide
* Shooting while going around a player
* Escaping by Mining Downwards

#### Rare behaviors

* suicide bomb enemy mine

1. ↑ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264050796\_Cybernetic\_Big\_Five\_Theory
2. ↑ https://quanticfoundry.com/2016/01/05/personality-correlates/