The Ethics Of Mods In Competitive Play

There's a difference between expecting people to be intelligent and expecting them to be psychic.

How do they even know ui mods exist and can be used in the first place?

If the player isn't involved in the community to the point where they know of the existence of mods, then I don't think they are a very dedicated player anyway and in turn would likely not get very far in ranked.

Mods are all over these forums and I don't see a super serious player not visiting these forums at least a few times.

EDIT:
My point being is that if you're dedicated to be able to get the plat or uber you have most likely visited these forums a few times and learned of the existence of ui mods.

While in ranked there is little you can do, community hosted competitions need to sate what mods people should or should not be using in their games simply for the sake of a level playing field.

Doesn't matter who what when where why or how.

A level playing field should be the base for any competition.

There are dedicated and good players who have made it to gold, plat, and even uber without using mods though some are no longer with us. And not because they chose not to, but because they didn't care to ever find out, nor did it ever cross their minds. They were dedicated to improving their ability to perform within the game given the obvious at hand tools that were officially given to them.

Modding knowledge and skill does not necessarily follow in-game practice and competency the more and more dedicated a player becomes. Some players are very dedicated to modding but not ingame practice, and they score high on the 1v1 ranked ladder vice versa. Tying all types of competencies together like they come part in parcel is a disingenuous arguement

Unless you provide some polling data showing otherwise, your arguments also discriminate against the large majority of the player base who by your definition is deemed unworthy of fair evaluation.

There are millions of individuals who bought and own PA, yet only <600 individuals have downloaded Ubermap over the past 4 whole months. Over the same timeframe, hotbuild 2 has seen 5,000 hits pro-rata. 90% of seemingly 'dedicated' individuals who downloaded hotbuild 2 did not in turn download uber map. This picture of assumed knowledge is just unfeasible.

If you are basing the health of a competitive scene only on who is dedicated, and define dedicated and worthy people as those who researched and used mods, then i'd say the community is in even worse shape than it otherwise should or could be.

The small community of modders should have no right to impose additional hoops for the average player to access the 1v1 ranked ladder on a competitive and fair basis. And that's without even touching on the issue of hidden hoops that are kept in secret.

The system is broken, and it can be shown undeniably through simply rationality and logic. It's ever clearer that those who defend prolific use of ui mods on the 1v1 ranked ladder are doing so because they are already part of a small niche community culture that is highly desensitized to and accepting of modding impacts.

I don't use Ubermap (never downloaded it even) so I'm part of your *shock horror* statistic there @elodea.

Despite this I'm fully aware of it's existence. Not using a tool isn't the same as not knowing.

As I've said many times now, the solution to the 'problem' of mods on the ladder is to make the best tools available and known to people rather than trying to force restrictions down our throats. You are correct, it's a good tool for those that want it. Uber aren't likely to enable it either- so lets help people know about it as it's the best we're likely to get rather than impose a ban in the name of fairness.

That's because hotbuild2 exists longer then ubermap and also has had more updates that inflated the downloads offcourse. But the real reason is that it's made by this awesome guy

I agree with you here. Mods are in no way admitted to have even existed by Uber in PA. it need to be said in the client in the main menu. there needs to be a link to pamm.

The rules page on exodusesports states that ui mods are allowed. If someone enters one of their tournaments (which are >90% of all tournaments) will then find out there are indeed ui mods.

I played a lot of ranked total annihilation and when I found out after a few months that everyone used ta demo recorder, markings and macro building mods and also watched games between the top players, I didn't feel hard done by. I was like " sweet this is really cool".

Over 4 months hotbuild 2 has seen 5000 hits out of a total of 26000. ubermap over 4 months has seen 600.

The fact that hotbuild 2 has existed for longer is not lost on me. I have already provided the time corrected numbers.

No-one seemed to know for a fact that the exodus rules stated that all ui mods on pamm were allowed. Not untill i mentioned it in the thread. I'm also very certain that previous rules for previous tournaments did not mention this (yes i read rules, i'm a boring person like that).

It was merely assumed by experienced players because no-one had told them otherwise and/or they were 'getting away with it'. That, and the fact that there were no powerful ui mods at the time besides autofactory.

New players weren't even installing pa-stats half the time for most of those tournaments.

Now if only all players would read the rules! That would make my day.

So it seems that maybe the rules have changed to cater for this. Went back some tournament and it's in every exodus tournament I checked. Maybe the rule part is the same for each tournament or maybe we never noticed cause as you said hasn't been an issue. Still isn't imo. If person reads the rules they would be aware of mods? And players must have pastats installed to enter the tournament which is on PAMM with a section called ui mods. There is nothing to argue about here.

UI mods good, automation mods bad.

I agree with your points elobea. Mods can give an advantage BUT:

How many people are currently active on the uber ladder or participate in Exodus tournaments? I have a feeling most gold, plat, and uber players are at least aware of mods.

The fact that UI mods are not prohibited by uber and somewhat encouraged makes elobea position a tough one. The uber ladder is for fun. I don't believe the ladder was meant to be cutthroat competitive. The goal seems to be to foster competitive 1v1 games between evenly matched opponents. Mods don't matter much in this regard because the matchmaker should already consider mods used in your past results.

Yeah you should totally pre warn people they should turn on PASTATS before the tournament. Always telling us after the first round

It's s less that I feel we shouldn't be using UI mods.

It's more making sure that in any given event that any allowed mods be made mandatory, and that only allowed mods be used.

Possibly by creating event specifies packs that include all of the events UI stuff in one easy to go package.

If we are using UI mods, then lets do it and make sure that every one has them before stating. Make them a prerequisite to have every UI mod allowed so that no one has a unbalanced UI.

Now if people would read what I say in the patournaments channel that would make it even better.

The biggest problem is that people can't read.

Yeah I agree with this idea but giving someone a lot of work because people are too lazy isn't ideal. The mention all ui mods are allowed. Up to the player in my opinion to choose what he prefers or likes. The mod scene is so that there are quite a lot of ui mods and I'd prefer have my own choice than have to use the hello kitty commander icon or what not.

Can we not just try find out what the biggest problem is and try out an end to all these shenanigans

I think you're overestimating that a bit while you're overlooking the fact that the whole online community is tiny compared to that. There's hundreds of players only who really play 1v1 if you look at the ladder.
Also the download counter isn't a good metric even if you look at the time in it, as it goes +1 for every download, even updates. So you'd need to clear out the number of updates the mod had as well.

Also psychic? Any quick google about stuff PA will lead you to modding...

How do you judge if the competitive scene is healthy? Is this based on the percentage of players in ranked divided by the number of overall players? IDK and I am generally curious .

If you deem the uber ladder is broken, where is the causation between mods and the ladder being broken? The correlation that a small number of players play ranked and a small number of players use mods doesn't create causation. If mods cause an unfair advantage for certain players, then matchmaker should match them with better players. If your saying its affecting the nonmodded players ranking... well your losing sight of what is important about the game (having fun competitive games).

Will eliminating mods help make the 1v1 ladder more healthy? I doubt it, most of the complaints about the ladder range from matchmaker, hidden rankings, to players take it too seriously and it frustrates me.

Last item, the ladder is for fun? Its goal is to create competitive even 1v1 matches based on past results. The use of mods should already be taken into account by uber's matchmaker. You can say the matchmaker is broken because there are quite a few mismatched games out there. This isn't the fault of the modders.

If your looking at the rules for 3rd party tournaments that offer prizes. Well... that is up to the host.