Let's Talk about Mods in Competitive Games

You're arguing against a map mechanic that every RTS I can think of, to date, has had. Since the early 1990s. In a game that I would argue it's most important to have, considering you have to be aware of multiple planets.

Frankly I think it was a colossal mistake not to be implemented into the base game, but I imagine it wasn't done because it looks janky with sphere maps.

If you don't like to pay much attention and just want to make super strategically decisions.. Why not just remove Fog of War?? I mean I want all information and the more we get the better. well NO. attention is something players practice. What needs attention time more than something else? that is incredibly important. There are some points in Top level games where one player thinks.. screw this massive attack which is comming to my base I send my army to HIS base and Ill figure out a way to defeat his army along the way. That are mayor game reversing decisions that I have had multiple times against some of the best players.

The more I read this thread the more and more I get the feeling people want mods so bad so that they can have a chance at being the best without hundreds upon hundreds of hours of practice by getting rid of all the attention required for various tasks.

lol I can't believe people are dumb enough to believe that.

do run the scenario through your head. does it make any sense? no? then why even bring it up?

how about actually trying to find out the real reason people are saying all this?

Oh I dunno. maybe they think there's improvement to be had in the player's experience and interfacing with the game?

maybe the current way things are isn't the be all and end all just because it's there and you can't see past the tip of your nose?

even with free energy you don't make the 100% ive been testing the mod lately on how it performs

even easier.. Check PAstats after the match.. People must have PAstats to do tourneys ,and with free energy your APM average is between 600 and 2500 depending on how good you managed your eco.

Crippling the mod capabilities to artificially force a higher apm requirement to suit fast players is as bad as you accuse the people who argue for mods wanting to reduce the apm requirement.

High speed isn't high skill in my book, and before you accuse me of anything I don't use any of the mods in question, but I'd rather people had the choice.

An rts game should be about decision making, posturing, expansion and map control. It shouldn't be about fighting the interface imo.

As for players with less time beating players with more, I have about 10% the play time of other uber ranked players, due to life commitments. Are you saying I should be artificially handicapped against someone more practiced because they somehow deserve to be better due to playing more? Play time isn't skill. There's probably a minimum play time required to learn the basics but after that experience in other rts games and so on is as important as pure play time in PA. The reason I'm ok is the huge amount of time I played ota, sup com and spring rts.

er, i've never argued that minimap mod is exploitative. Please read everything i've said about this mod which you can find in this thread.

Your arguments come over as you think it shouldn't be used on the ladder or in tourney games?

This mod should be implemented into the main game in some form. However, because it currently isn't, using it gives you an unfair advantage against players who do not have it on the 1v1 ranked ladder. Simple as that.

You guys are starting to make the mistake as if we are totally against that stuff. If ubermap was in the base game than there was'nt a problem. It the fact it is a mod that many people don't know about it and thus are at a disatvantage. Same goes for Free Energy, it should be in the base game but it iss'nt and thus it gives an unfair advantage to people who dont'use it. And with Ubers new API So many more mods can be made which are 100 times worse than these mods (auto kiting, auto splitting, auto dodging, etc) that when these mods are'nt very publicly known or even hidden from other users it causes very unfair advantages.

Ok, so don't use it on the ladder then. In tournaments (by virtue of the fact everyone has access to PAMM and have to have at least installed PA:Stats), I'd say it's fair game.

Maybe the solution is simply to increase exposure then? I mean learning about mods is something I think all serious players should be doing in PA. We need to make people aware of their existence and allow them to pick and choose what they want (I personally probably wouldn't bother about most of these- I find things that interfere with the game a hindrance usually, however that's *my* choice).

If you read what i said about this mod in the titans tournament, you would know i said the same. I repeated many times already, certain mods are only questionable depending on the context in which they are used.

Frankly, ladder is the one place where it really doesn't make that much of a difference due to the fact the maps are so small.

It's more about attention span than about APM. You know my apm iss'nt high its more about where do you focus your attention. And if there are mods out there that are or are not known by other that greatly reduce required attention then i would almost say that it's as bad as giving 1 player +50 metal and the other not.

I'm still not even convinced on the ladder issue though. I guess it comes from my gaming background- I played TA competitively online for years.

That *required* the community built TA Demo recorder (which added a ton of UI stuff), the 'no emg sounds' fix and a couple of other tweaks I forget as a foundation for competitive gaming. All competitive players used these tools, but they weren't official things from Cavedog, nor were they available through the game itself.

It was a given that you let newer players know about these things.

I've also played a lot of Spring RTS. Again, in Spring there are a ton of UI tweaks available and they are permitted because like in PA they don't alter the underlying rules of the game.

The point is who exactly get's hurt by the use of UI mods in the ladder? Once a player gets high enough on the ladder to compete with higher tier players, you'd hope they'd know enough about the game and community to know of PAMM surely?

I get that the sentiment behind this is a good one, but I'm not sure who the real 'victim' is? Please find me a player in Gold, Plat or Uber who *doesn't* know about PAMM, the uber map and so on?

then people can easily reduce the mod's APM output to stay under the radar and people with actual 600 APM will be unjustly flogged.

Once again you guys are proving to be a bunch of backwards savages. there's such a thing as modern scociety and diplomatic solutions you know.

It's that there is 300 dollar on the line but if it was a smaller Tournament i would let Quitch's Queller AI on Uber difficulty and 2x eco play my opponents for me (I think that were the settings to replicate a Uber player).

Nice offensive post man.. Really mature of you. got any morre offesive things to say just because we don't agree with you?

Except that UI mods don't allow you to modify the underlying game- so yes you could in theory set up Queller to play for you, but you couldn't give it a 2x eco boost. A standard queller (or Sorian) AI isn't going to get you very far. Even with the eco boost there are many situations which the AI doesn't adapt to very well.