Let's Talk about Mods in Competitive Games

if you want to be good you should know about steroids .. if you don't use steroids and lose its your own fault ..

Whilst I think Steam Workshop is a no go, there's nothing to prevent someone posting a sticky about mods on the steam forum (and specifically what PAMM is and how to get it).

I think that information needs displaying here too. Ideally with a 'recommended mods' section. I think Exodus have already done an article like this however I think it needs more visibility.

Again comparing mods to cheats. In this case even real world cheats that hurt your health.

Are you honestly telling me that:

A: You never use *any* mods at all and
B: You would be happy to have the community chat, system sharing, and all the great vfx stuff banned?

this is the picture that is shown by this thread ...

we are speaking about mods that potentionaly lower your need of attention and apm ..

Our point is though that *most mods* don't fall into that catagory. People have gotten 'spooked' by a couple of mods, but banning everything 'just in case' isn't the solution imo.

I mean there are lots of very helpful, totally non game related tools, that would get caught in the ban as well. I'm dead against blanket statements like this. It's similar to some of the more 'knee jerk' balance changes made. People tend to go too far.

Well I'm not really arguing for a specific mod here, more that the general argument I'm getting from many is 'all UI mods should be banned for ranked play' which isn't a good idea.

You don't need a good APM in PA. Not remotely. Honestly most of the time APM is a load of bullcrud anyway, and something that the hype around severely annoys me.

One mod has been argued to lower your need for attention, and I don't agree with that assessment. It lowers the need to fight with camera controls, you still need to pay attention, and your attention is in fact split between the map and the game.

The map is probably the most contentious mod in question.

I think in this case we should be making players aware of it, as it is useful, rather than ban it.

The comment has been made 'uber should do it' but I can tell you now *they won't*. So that leaves us with the choice: Ban hammer, no one can have it *or* try to educate people on how to get it so they have the choice. I'd prefer the latter.

The other mod being questioned is 'Free Energy' which manages your energy economey in a way a human player probably couldn't. Even @cola_colin admits this one is probably a no no (and points to a problem with base PA), this probably should be in a section of 'not for competitive gameplay' as again I don't think Uber are going to fix the underlying cause any time soon.

you yourself are acting black and white .. i mean you surely can understand what mods i am talking about when i speak about competitive play ..
what has globalchat to do anything with competitive play? .. what does changing the color of mexxspots from green to blue or pink have to do anything with competive play?
or changing your commandermodel ...

Here's the issue- people (not you or me) are calling for a ban of UI mods in competitive games which includes tournaments *and* ladder games.

The problem is, you cannot selectively ban *some UI mods* and not the others. So you either *ban everything* or *allow everything* from a technical perspective. There isn't a way for the game to distinguish between a UI mod that changes the color of a metal spot, and another that manages your economy for you.

Now we can try and manage that somehow from our end (i.e. make it clear to people what they shouldn't be using somehow), however I don't think many are happy with that solution. As I say it's the conclusion that bans everything I want to avoid and sadly it's the most likely outcome if Uber is forced to get involved as it's the *only* cost effective thing they can reasonably do.

In an ideal world, PA would have an integrated, moderated and curated Mod manager that is accessible from the start for all players and then mods can be approved or blocked on a case by case basis as needed. That isn't going to happen though for a number of reasons (#1 being Uber have confirmed an integrated mod manager isn't going to happen due to possible legal ramifications for them).

It's possible that the team who manage PAMM could possible include a separate section of 'ranked approved UI mods' that would help- although it would still be possible to circumvent as you can install mods yourself without PAMM and they would be totally invisible to end users. I mean there is a point where we have to trust people to some extent.

The problem is, you cannot selectively ban *some UI mods* and not the others. So you either *ban everything* or *allow everything* from a technical perspective. There isn't a way for the game to distinguish between a UI mod that changes the color of a metal spot, and another that manages your economy for you.

This is just not true. It's not that hard to tell when someone is using a mod that alters their eco or allows them full map vision. Come on.

It isn't for the game in it's current form though is it? The game knows of *two* types of mods. Those that effect the client (UI mods) and those that effect the server (server mods).

PA doesn't have any automatic way to distinguish between different kinds of UI mods. Would it be possible to do so? Yes it would- however there would be tonnes of edge cases and it may even open up more exploits as people do things that blur the boundaries.

So the next question is, given that Uber doesn't have much resources or time to dedicate to all this, will they be prepared to either:
A: build a complicated system to filter out 'unacceptable' UI mods for ranked play or:
B: disable UI mods outright for ranked play.

It's pretty obvious what the outcome would be. I still can't see how else mods for ranked can be dealt with- it *has* to be done Uber's end if it's going to be done as we've already established we can't rely on new players knowing anything about mods or pamm.

again HOW do you propose this thing ACTUALLY work and people not fiddle with it?? Do you know anything about code?

this is why I've been telling devs the mod support is terrible : support also means moral as well as physical.

they're also still claiming they have integrated mod support to people who haven't purchased the game yet :
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/what-are-ubers-general-business-activities.65210/#post-1019681

I think the term 'can of worms' comes to mind.

I agree we should make mods more visible although we know (right or wrong) we're not going to get an integrated mod manager in PA itself, and to be honest PAMM does it's job very well so I don't feel it needs replacing. We just need to help people find it. I think an integrated 'community portal' that lead to lots of useful info (including how to get pamm) might be something Uber could considder without opening themselves up to sticky legal problems?

how do you know that? do you know that ?

EDIT: it has NOTHING to do with legal issues! in that case why don't they have a mod hub on steam ?

No I'm not a modder or coder, I would have thought that was painfully obviose by know lol. I'm only giving a suggestion of a possible way to solve the problem. Aka "trying to be helpful".

People will find way's around anything, doesn't mean you shouldn't try to do something. If someone hack's a game to cheat you can report them.

it does actually because then you're just providing people with a false sense of safety which is much worse.

no more "militia" solutions. let's grab the problem by the actual roots.