Let's Talk about Mods in Competitive Games

It is unfair but your setting people up for a false dichotomy by phrasing the question this way.

Philoscience made an excellent post above that is worth reading a few times.

I think one of the main aspects that he brought up which is worth emphasizing is the interest level of the audience. As merely a spectator, there are some mods that I would enjoy being used more often IF they made things more interesting. One mod I would like to see more is the line formations made by Colin (may not be the exact name). This mod is an absolute hoot to see when it is actually used from a spectator's perspective. If a tournament is to be used as a spectating event, certain mods should certainly be used for the sake of the audience.

Imho the negative arguments mostly revolve around two things:

• "everyone should have the exact same UI": I disagree everyone should use the UI best for them, limited by the API limitations of PA.
• "there will be secret imba mods that make you play a dozen times better or allow you to do obvious cheats": The API limitations of PA are a pretty good line imho and secret mods certainly are not nice. All mods ought to be on PAMM and the exodus ruleset only does allow mods from PAMM afaik.

Nope. That's not the argument. Here it is. You ready?

• No player should have an inherent, quantifiable advantage over another due to UI mods.
• UberMap. Free Energy, and Auto Factory all give a player such an advantage.
• There may be secret mods we know nothing about and cannot prevent from being used in competitive play.

I've never used free energy, and I wouldn't defend it in competitive play, since it gives a player an advantage in terms of gameplay.
However, its existence shows that the way energy consumption works right now is abuse-able and ought to be fixed, but that's getting off topic.

As for the minimap mod, let me ask you this; if someone can run multiple PiP windows at once and look at the planet from multiple angles while someone else can only run one view for performance reasons, is that any more fair?
The minimap mod is only about displaying information in a useful way. The only thing questionable about it is the units 'ghosts', since that is a useful feature the base game could have, but doesn't. Even then I'd be willing to defend that, since the information is still available, just clumsy to get to for people without the mod.

That' exactly my first point. To further elaborate:
Why? Considering we're talking about a game that has a very substantial UI modding system just for this purpose I don't agree.
It's your fault if you do not research the best way to use the UI of the game. That starts with having a look at the settings and ends with having a look at community information about it. At that point you will find UI mods and it will be your choice wether or not to use them.

Magical secret mods (my 2nd point...) that make you the very best player are unlikely to exist and even if they do there is nothing to do against them, apart from hitting PA's APIs hard and reporting any hack-issues to Uber. They do fix them. Until a few month ago it was possible to maphack any enemy units you had radar on. I found that and now it is fixed.

I'll say in the context of the small scale E-Sports scene that is PA, there are many inherent differences between players and that is totally unavoidable at the level we are at (different hardware, different internet connections, different locations in the world all having subtle effects). It's a question of determining what level of difference is acceptable and coming up with a rule set to suit. Nothing is perfect (ever), we need to reach a sensible compromise.

With respect specifically to UI mods. Provided all players have access to the same mods (i.e. all mods are available on PAMM) then I personally think it's fair enough. For the record I use very few mods of any type and I am aware players I regularly play against (and beat) use more mods than me. More UI mods /= guaranteed better play. I'd like to think we're mature enough to make our own decisions on this without Exodus having to tie down every conceivable minute loop hole with a rule book longer than a law firms T's and C's.

In the scenario presented where the Realm would create a set of secret UI mods- that wouldn't be acceptable and already contravenes the rules laid out by exodus (as they require mods to be freely available on PAMM to anyone). Now the realm having a recommended set of Mods for their members (from the list available) is fair enough frankly, although the choice of if or not to use something must always be with the player (as I find many 'helper' mods actually make my game considerably worse).

Now we cannot police this as it isn't possible to view what UI mods are installed, which is why Exodus has taken the view that it's simpler to allow them rather than to 'criminalize' half the player base in the instance they used a UI mod (even a non competitive one like custom skybox) during a tournament.

The only 'solution' to this problem (if you believe it is a problem) is to do something drastic to outlaw UI mods and disable them somehow, which I think is to the detriment of a game that was built with modding as a first class citizen. If we go down that route and turn PA into something so draconian then I want no part of it.

This whole argument stems back to my old thread about 'sportsmanship' and why I disliked smurfing. I don't want a few childish 'I winz above all else' idiots to prevent everyone else having 'nice things' because they feel they cannot be trusted.

Just because the outcome is unchanged in a matchup does not rationalise the use of certain mods on the 1v1 ranked ladder. That's like saying if you play cs:go against the number 1 clan in the world for money prize, it's ok for them to use bright pink models, aimbots, scripts. yea.. no. Both players should start on functionally even ground to ensure integrity of gameplay irregardless of skill level.

With equal skill matches, it's obvious the player who uses mods will be significantly advantaged over the player who doesn't. The sheer ability of some people to rationalise this away into a hidden box continually astounds me. That static advantage doesn't fade with unequal skill matches either, with lower skilled players who uses mods having advantage against higher skilled players who don't.

You also need to consider player retention. Take 2 chess players, one a GM, the other a total noob. Put them into a competitive environment that not only ranks their skill but rewards them with monetary prizes for wins. Give the GM a chess super computer that provides the best solutions as well as extra time on his clock. Then don't notify the newbie about this. Gee, sounds like a fun and conducive environment alright. Man, those new players will be totally motivated to continue playing such a fair game KappaHD. If only they had invested time into learning how to use a chess super computer too, then the game would be really fair and even more fun right?. Wait a second...

Some of the mods that add to automation creep put me off. I'd rather battle human players with human weaknesses, not scripts, bots, and ai's. That's what singleplayer ai battle is for. As mot and battlebear have said, it looks like in short time this game will become so modded and automated that it will be required to stay remotely 'competitive'.

From a game design point of view, the aim of good RTS design is to increase the number of channels through which players can interact and compete with each other in interesting ways. An overabundance of automation eats into these channels and narrows the scope in which players can prove supremacy in various skills like economic management, decision making, knowledge, and attention manipulation.

What is more interesting to watch? A player who is so good at microing scouts that he is always on the ball preventing them from dying, or a script that automates this behaviour? A player who pressures the opponent at just the right times to distract him from controlling something else, or two robot players who have 100% uptimes and automatic production and micro. When a player wins, how much of it was the player, and how much was it the script?

You cannot use internet, hardware, and software variances as an excuse to mod a game to provide advantages. These are not comparable and the arguement is bunk.

Vanilla implementation without any mods is baseline and is the intended environment ruleset that the developers want the players to work in. Software and hardware only take the player up to this. They cannot give the player an environment anymore favourable than this baseline.

Certain mods increase the environment to be advantageous beyond the baseline, sometimes significantly. There is a very clear difference here.

@MrTBSC In essence Titans is just a compilation of community made-mods....

You used UberMap before it was released for a SIGNIFICANT amount of time. That wasn't really a secret, but you were the only one with this advantage.

We are utilizing the UI modding system quite well without breaking the line between fair play and cheating.

And yes, we understand there are no maphacks. You've mentioned that so many times in this thread it is really starting to grind on me. It's a worthless gesture at this point.

Again:

UberMap, Free Energy, and Auto Factory, as examples, give players a quantifiable edge over others in a 1v1. Thus, they shouldn't be allowed in tourney play. That's it. Thats the only metric that matters. *skill* with the modding system is not relevant, because the tourney is about vanilla PA, not the modding system.

My point is there are differences no matter what you do. The developers created the modding tools very specifically to allow people to mod the game (PA has a very complicated and well designed mod architecture built especially for modders to use and to allow easy use for players). That would suggest that mods are part of the developers vision.

You still have failed to give me an answer of *how* this should be dealt with if you feel it's a problem? The *only* outcome I can see from this is we ban *all* UI mods off the ladder and in tournament play. Which means you can't use them while practicing, which in turn kills modding in PA. No. THIS IS STUPID.

The end of the day- ladder aside, tournament organizers have the right to decide what is and is not acceptable. If you enter an event run by Exodus, and they allow UI mods, you don't have the right to say otherwise- it's not your event.

Simply note that certain UI mods are not allowed in Tourney play, and request players use the mod that announces what UI mods you are using in chat. Done. Next question.

So now who decides what mods are acceptable or not? What about a new mod? And *how can you tell* which mods someone has installed? You can't.... we're back to the 'sportsmanship' problem again...

Who decides? The tourney officials. Are you daft?
A new mod? Just test it. It's not hard to tell what breaks this simple criteria.
How can I tell? The honor system and that mod announcer that I think Stuart made.
Simple. Next.

are we to take that in any way represents the end of the problem?

you're fooling noone.

how do you even identify people are indeed using mods?

Well that's all fine- as the end result is guess what- where we started!

Exodus have already decided their rules for mod and they say UI mods are ok, including the ones you've decided are outlawed. Thanks for clearing that up

/thread.

PAMM should be included in PA so everybody has absolute access to mods.

#justanotherreasontoinlcludepamminbasepa

you're the one who's daft.

you can edit the announcer mod (if you were to have it be obligatory) to say what you want.

I remember when we had this same discussion back in pre-steam alpha. Both sides had and have legitimate arguments, but it comes down to 3 things I think, in order of importance.

1.) The UI is first and foremost designed by Uber to be as powerful as possible.

2.) The UI is designed to be not only 'moddable', but actively modded in practice.

3.) It is prohibitively difficult to consistently prevent people from using UI mods due to #2.

I think in this situation the responsibility falls on the competitive player to make sure they are using the best tools available to them. It takes hundreds of hours of playtime to become truly good at PA at the level of matiz, elodea, mered, xankar, etc. How long, in comparison, does it take to find and use the most effective UI mods?

If a mod provides a quantifiable advantage, then I think choosing to not use it is similar to choosing a sub-optimal build order or the like. As long as the attitude towards UI mods is one of, "Hey, these are tools I use that are good, you should use them too so you can be more competitive and we can have better games" and not "I will never tell you my secret set of UI mods that give me the edge" UI mods are healthy I think.

The fact that a UI mod can provide a real advantage should not be a sufficient reason to dismiss them, I think.



On the flip side, elodea I think provides the best argument against UI mods. What type of advantage can they provide? Do they remove annoying 'grunt work' that most people agree everyone should do but requires a level of mechanical dexterity like starcraft queen larva spawning? Thats fine, IMO, as well as mods that simply provide information.


UI mods that make outcome relevant decisions are the ones I think could have a negative impact. The essence of a strategy game is the decisions that the player makes based on the information they get. What units to build, where to send them, etc. If a UI mod takes those away, then it's taking away part of the game itself.


If we draw a line for UI mods, then I think the best place to draw them is whether or not the UI mods issue unprompted orders. If a UI mod will automatically detect a raid and scramble bombers to intercept it, that might be a bad thing. If a UI mod gives you better information about raids (ie, minimap) but leaves dealing with them up to you, that's fine.

Yes, and those 'differences' fall into the two different camps on either side of the vanilla baseline. There is absolutely no relationship you can draw between them at all. Anything below the baseline is of the players responsibility tough luck. Anything in the latter is potential cheating. Just because race car teams differ in their funds and equipment does not excuse them from going beyond hard specifications to gain advantages beyond the baseline.

I've also said previously that what matters is the ruleset implemented by the rule maker or developer, not the imperfect code system that is used to execute this. No dev is an omnipotent god that can see all possible gameplay consequences of what they create. It's why we've had constant patches to the game for over a year.

As for your question, there are two parts. The first is my arguement against those who think it's moral and ethical to use certain mods on the 1v1 ranked ladder. The second part of concrete enforceability having no current community solution has been made clear in this thread, and not just by me. Either Uber implements functionality like colin's ubermap and fixes bugs with regard to energy consumption, or they close off these mods from working on the ladder. And for the record, i would prefer they did the former in regard to these two specific mods.

Automation mods however should be hard banned. Uber has made it clear in the past they are against things like auto skirmish and the like.