Let's Talk about Mods in Competitive Games

It's only fair if the players use the same mods or no mods at all.

yes the ui should help the player as much as neccesary ... thing is however a player should not allowed to alter it when another doesn't because it is not originaly part of the ui ... hotbuild and ubermap f.e. are not part of the original ui no matter how good you are with it or what advantage they "may" provide if there is even one player that doesn't use those for the simple reason of not being used to where others might be than those shouldn't use it either because both players simply are not playing on equal ui terms ... if that makes sense ...

what about a player however that has no experience with those mods ...
this to me feels unfair aswell .. or what about the situaton where one choses to not use a mod but another does and gets a potential advantage?

So if there is one player who doesn't use a keyboard nobody else should be allowed to use a keyboard?
I totally understand where you are coming from, but that, to me, is a concept that is alien to TA like RTS. It is a Starcraft concept.

Imho in TA-land the reasoning more is like this:
Your choice to not play with a keyboard or not with some UI mod. Both are your responsibility and if you decide to play without them fine. But don't force your preferences onto others.

than this however makes tournaments being based on different experiences .. not better or worse/ more or less .. but players have differing experiencebases ... ... which rather would make the competitiveness of tournaments or even ranked games moot ...

on the flipside you may enforce players to learn to use mods in order to have that same experience basis ...

Based on different experiences?
It's simple in the end: Knowing which mods actually help your play and how to use them is part of the skill you need to be a top notch players. Simple as that.

so meaning i can't be a top notch player when i don't use a helpfull mod .. meaning i would be SOL against someone that does ...

So, you're saying that the players skill to mod the game is considered like using a keyboard? Depending on the mod i would agree with you, but there is a line that UI mods do cross. What if i was to mod the commander to have a planet wide disco effect with changing colour based on distance so that i could wallhack to accurately estimate it's vector and distance in the fog of war. That is clearly not legit, yet is a UI mod. Or tbh, add that same effect to all units.

*Last i checked, this was possible.

I also don't agree with what you said earlier about 'ease of use' being a considering factor. While your minimap mod is incredible and should be part of the base game functionality, unfortunately it isn't, and the utility it provides for a player to be able to see instantly when he should go to his units on the other side of the planet etc. to micro them is a very clear advantage over someone who doesn't have this. Whether or not a player is good or bad at taking advantage of it is not really a point in favour or not.

There should be a list of allowed mods and it will be up to the player to use or not use the mods in said list.

gg

Since the server does not tell your client the location of enemy units you seriously cant maphack. Ive gone as far as reversing the client on binary level before for my ubermap work. I found one radar related hack, that Uber fixed. Based on my report.
You cant maphack at all. I invite you to try really. UI mods can do a lot,but they are limited to your vision.

Sure ease of use is not the main argument here. Just trying to make clear that there are no real easy win mods out there.

The list is called PAMM

You can only see effects if their origin falls within your view distance. Even radar isn't sufficient to view them.

Best hack possible thing there: Show last known position of units you saw. Ubermap kind of does that via the ghost icons.

What happens if you enable the ghosting property that's on structures for units?

Answers for both client side and server side please.

in that case i shall play with none in a ranked match or if i ever take part in a tournament ..

I dunno what property that is.
I know the client has an asm line that can be modified to make it show unit models of units in fog of war, but they wont move. Just the last known location of things you already scouted.
Using the new API that would also be possible via a normal UI mod.

Inside of the observable array (inside of the recon array)

"show_ghost": true

I am not very knowledgable about those unit jsons. Maybe that would have asimilar effect to what I described above in a really simple wway.

Edit: In general I dont think there is any clear cheat you can mod in client site.
PAs client-server is pretty good to prevent it.
You cannot get any information you should not have.
You cannot modify any gameplay data.

So since this is a really interesting topic I thought I would throw my two cents in and walk away never to respond again.

My thoughts are this, if there is money on the line and there is something that YOU think will help you win $600 then why not. I understand it's "low" or "shameful" but I'm in college and those bills will not go away. If I can run a mod on my comp that will help me beat legitimately good player without any in-game eco boots or honest hacks, where do I sign up.

Here is my follow up though.

In starcraft some players have issues when they are preforming on a stage. This can be a multitude of IRL pressures or just never leaving home to play in front of an audience. Personally I think the biggest thing is every computer is running pure vanilla SC. So their settings are different, hotkeys are changed and nothing is the same. Also there are no mods or anything there to help them, it's the game in it's out-of-the-box settings which can be a real hurtle to get over.

This ties in with PA players as when they would get on stage (hopefully soon) there are no mods,no safety nets.

TLDR: Do whatever you have to do to win a tournament but be careful because mods are a crutch and the more you use them the harder it is to get off them.

So the whole, lets have a normal competition vs lets have the mega-ultra-uber-steroids olympics where we let people go ham for our amusement?

Why not made a compound mod that includes the needed stuff and some of these UI mods as wanted or needed, and then just let people get that.

A competitive mod, that includes the crazy stuff that could be unfair otherwise?

And then have a parallel competition, where it's like, no mods at all?

Because saying that it's ok for some people to have these mods because it 'could' screw you it a load of bollocks to anyone who has had more then a day of using it.

This might be because I play TF2, where custom huds + scripts are the norm and people will hide, disable, or alter their viemodels and huds, and change their HUDs in a variety of ways even between classes and loadouts, but I have absolutely no problem with UI mods.

This is basically how I see it. The rules are governed by what information you get and what signals you can send. Everything else (except for exploits) is fair game, including automation mods, which are only useful for automating decisions you would make regardless, and only in processes for which absolute control isn't worth the time invested in it. I don't use any automation mods, but I have no problems with them, in the same way I have no problem with the Ubermap.

The way I see it, if a mod allows you to accomplish what you intended more easily on a command-by-command basis, or allows to interpret the information you receive more easily, then the only 'advantage' that mod is giving you is allowing you to fight less with the UI or the game's controls and to focus instead on the actual strategy and tactics (which I consider the crux of the gameplay). Ubermap, in my opinion, is perfectly fair so long as we can agree that fighting the UI is not meant to be part of the challenge. I know people will disagree with me on that, but I think it's a fair guideline.

As a side note, I also think that Ubermap ought to be a feature in the base game since it's far more effective than PiP, is less intrusive, is better for performance, and having that little projection in the corner really drives home the sense of planetary scale.