Let's Talk about Mods in Competitive Games

Ubermap doesn't really help focus your attention though. Generally you're going to get an alert before seeing an attack on Ubermap, or see the enemies on radar (which I don't believe it shows). I honestly don't find it useful for keeping track of units that much, and almost exclusively use it to hop my camera around, rather than zooming out, and panning around, which can be tedious and waste time.

While I don't agree with the insult, the term you're after is luddite.

I'm going to quote myself here (bad form I know) because I think it got lost at the end of a page.

Like I said, I think IF we limit UI mods in some way, these are the two best criteria-

1.) A UI mod should never make outcome relevant decisions for the player.
2.) A UI mod should never issue orders or directly control units in a way that is impossible or impractical for a human player to do.

Or, if you wanted to be a little more broad and restrictive,

A UI mod should never independently alter the game state in any way.

That pretty much limits any mod to either presenting information to the player, or simply streamlining commands that the player already decided on. Only when the UI mod both takes information about the game AND independently acts on that information in some way do I think that the gameplay can be compromised.

That bit of sarcasm certainly comes across that way.

I assume that was in response to me when (since I was the one who mentioned exploitative).
What I meant was in contrast to the other mods. Free Energy exploits the energy system's quirks in an unintended way to give you a gameplay advantage, for instance. And yes, I would absolutely call it an exploit because of that.
My point was that UberMap does not work against the intended 'restrictions' on how mods should impact gameplay, which is why I don't see it as problematic.

If you don't find it useful personally, then don't use it. Nothing else to discuss.

!? What are you smoking?

1) I never said that you said it was exploitative. 2) I said I didn't find it useful for keeping track of units that much.

I find it useful, else I wouldn't have it installed. My point was that his argument that it makes you not have to pay as much attention isn't really accurate or true. Especially on 1v1 maps, which seems to be the whole point of contention here.

My apologies Aevs, after rereading it is was indeed inappropriate to say it that way and should have said it differently. I was getting a bit frustrated the people don't want to see our side of the argument and that in fact we don't have anything against mods in general except when it is giving players unfair advantages over another.

simple question other than pastats .. why should be pamm a neccesity to anyone ? .. because you basicaly say high tier players "should" know pamm .. but why should they ? why should proplayers .. players with skill and experience require pamm other from a statistics tracking and rating tool?

Why should I have to use aa keyboard?

Why should I have to know how to play the game?

Why should I have to have an internet connection?

answer the question please

So much discussion. Reality is that there will be UI mods. PA was build for them. They have always been a part of the game. There will be more powerful ones in the not to distant future most likely.
They will make the UI easier to use and allow players to play a better game.
Nothing will really stop that and so far I had thought that is a good thing. I still think so. It is one of the things that defines PA as PA and makes it different from other RTS: Striving for a really great UI. Any player who tries to play really good simply has to look them up. If you don't want to do that it is the same like not wanting to look up stats on units to better understand how to use them. Your fault if you lose because of it.

Do we want a good UI? Or do we want to be stuck on a crippling basic UI?
All the stuff is public. If you feel disadvantaged then read through what mods do and get them yourself. Just like you look for the best build order. It is a part of the game. Quite litteraly in fact with all the client side APIs made specifically for the purpose of creating mods. This includes APIs that allow you to give orders to units with a few hundred APM.
If there should be a mod that breaks the game via an "I win" button THEN is the time to do this discussion. Because that mod would need to be defused somehow. Or maybe it actually points at a gameplay problem in that game that should be fixed instead, like free energy certainly does.
So far we're only scratching the surface really and are far away from that problem.

A few facts about the ubermap tech btw: If Uber were to implement such a mod performance would be better by a few orders of magnitude. Simply because they were to write it in native code and do a lot of things a lot more efficient because they can just make exactly the APIs they may need. Rendering the map image in native code could likely be done in real time even.

Like true europeans.. Something first needs to happen before taking measure against it.

Actually I seem to remember that in the TTIP talks one of the problems is that the US laws often are reactive. They protect customers from bad products once the bad products happened. The EU laws instead have a ton of regulations and approval processes to prevent bad products from happening in the first place.

...

And yeah since we're only talking about a "fairness" in a computer game here: Let it happen. Nobody will get hurt.

Just like the last thread of this kind this thread certainly gave me a few new ideas for mods I'll try. Maybe one of those will make it happen. Though mods that really would have made it happen in the past that I made were never released. Instead I reported them to Uber and they fixed the game.

No clue how americans do it as I am from the netherlands. I do know that still many problems get fixed after it happend, not before.

tbh.. I really couldnt care less any more. if people want to watch AI vs AI at some point be my guest as I and I will most likely not be alone am not interesting in letting AI play for me. And you know damn well that it is possible with Ubers new API.

Making an AI that could beat top performing humans in PA is hard. Ask sorian about it. He has a lot of experience with doing AIs, he is working in the server environment directly in C++. Still you can easily beat his AI

Be careful, there is a fine line between valiantly protecting people from a potential problem, and censoring / restricting people out of fear that *something* could happen.

In the UK, our entire law is based around the fact that 'it's legal until we ban it'- a culture that has lead to many great innovations coming from this country. In many other parts of Europe, the law is the opposite way around following the principal of 'it's banned unless we say it's ok'. What your asking for is for PA to turn it's mod friendly approach on it's head and ban everything *before* it becomes a problem, just in case.

The old saying "if you've got nothing to hide" comes to mind... monitor everything and everyone to make sure they're safe (just in case someone does something they shouldn't).

That doesn't sound healthy for building upon PA imo.

We are only talking about competitions, not all of PA.

Competitions are always very restrictive in their rules.

Look I'm talking about UI, User Interface. Automatic management of units issn't an interface. Ubermap is all good for me as it requires extensive practice to fully control and use. Auto kiting, air staying out of range of AA, Auto splitting when near a comm. That's the stuff I fear and I do NOT want to see that in PA as it results in players having to put less attention to something very important.

I LOVE mods, it's amazing what can be done and I do not wish that anything stops mods from being made or hampers the production of mods.

The problem is the fact that these mods WILL be made. It's just a matter of WHEN and I personally think it's better to find a solution to that very problem now than when someone wins a $1000 dollar tournament with those mods which he/she coded him/herself and never released for the public.

All tournaments should only allow public mods. That much I agree on.

HAVE UIMODS BE PART OF VANILLA !!! THAT is it ... ....
and i disagree ... PA is made by its gameplay and content .. has PA been influenced by mods ? sure but the thing is that content is now a corepart of it ...
mods that can be installed and used at peoples lesure are not ..

if you want them allowed in a tournament then fine go for it ..

if you use them however in ranked against people who don't use or know them you basicaly are bluring the competitive nature of it ...
and as such i dare say you (as in everyone that does so) do not deserve the rank you got that way ...

mods should be for fun not for winning .. pure skill shall win competitive games ..

i mean what shall the general gaming community think? oh competitive PA players need mods to be "better" and can't be without ... that sure raises peoples interest in playing competitively ...

My only feelings on this is that if mods are permitted and you don't use them it's your fault. However if there is a mod that's not been placed on PAMM it is deemed illegal. (Or at least we make a new list specifically for the esports crowd)

That way if someone does not use these mods the disadvantage is put on them by their own fault, however anyone can use the already accepted mods during tournaments.