The Ethics Of Mods In Competitive Play

You will be able to find all the answers to your questions about a healthy competitive scene in the original write up posted on exodus esports.

Well, I said the system is broken. Which is distinctly different from making an evaluation and measurement of the actual current state of the ladder against some metric. We are talking about underlying principles and whether they are strengthened or weakened. These principles form the engine that drives the future of the ladder.

Like if you have a machine that is out of spec or beyond tolerances, it will end up not functioning properly.

To address the first part, it doesn't follow to say that modding on an official ladder is ok because the matchmaking system will implicitly end up only matching modded users with other evenly modded users.

There are two variables at work that add up to a players overall power/ranking - player skill, and player mods. All players have different amounts of skill as well as different amounts of mods. It is impossible for a matchmaker to distinguish between the two and perform as you describe, unless the power attributed to player skill is essentially zero relative to mods.

And you're absolutely right, it's not the fault of the modders. If a tool maker creates a hammer and someone uses it to wreck someone elses property, it doesn't make sense to say the tool maker is to blame. Besides, placing blame was never part of the arguement or solution.

Yea, i don't think anyone disagrees with this.

I agree with everything you have said on the forum and on Exodus. You are factually correct . The difference seems to be subjective. Your view the official ladder as a competitive ranking system. I think your idea is for setting a goal for yourself (ie make gold/plat/uber/top1 in your case) and then accomplishing it is rewarding. In this sense using a mod could be considered immoral as your receiving help. You have made a strong argument for this case.

I don't view the ladder in this sense. For the obvious reason like its not fair if some players use mods that could give them a competitive advantage. I think of the ladder as another game mode (custom, GW, and 1v1). The accuracy of the ladder is probably poor unless your ranked in the top 40-ish.

Edit.

Whole lotta heated, empty rhetoric being thrown around in here, not a lot of worthwhile debate.

The worthwhile discussion ended in the previous thread.

Situation as is:
Load of people don't like mods on ladder, equal number do. Uber aren't going to intervene, whole debate is hot air.

Im not sure starting to circle jerk really helps.

I think this topic is simply irrelevant.

I think the main concern everyone has is fairness and healthy competition, correct me if I'm wrong. I like to see things from a pragmatic point of view. Discussion for the sake of discussion is not something I like to spend my time on.

It doesn't matter if mods are fair or not. The highest competitive level, the one at which a game must be balanced, are the tournaments. More importantly, the LAN tournaments. PA is a niche title and hasn't achieved the size necessary to host LAN tournaments, which is a pity.

The tournaments have a ruleset, and that's what the players train and stand for. It doesn't matter if mods are allowed or not by design, it doesn't matter if Uber likes them or not. Even if they were prohibited in ranked 1v1s it wouldn't matter at all. What matters is the ruleset of the tournaments.

People that come from other competitive games know why the important tournaments are local. There are a lot of uneven and uncontrolable factors in online competitions: one oponent might have high ping, or a better computer that doesn't freeze and lets him install more and better mods or have a higher resolution and FOV. The game could have a poor hack detection that makes cheating an issue. It's impossible to make sure to have a leveled playing field without going LAN.

So the real question here is what exodusesports and the tournament organizers stand for. They seem to think that mods either give options and quality of life to players or aleviate design flaws that need fixing. And with that I agree. And even if I didn't agree, it is them that have the word here.

Pd: Sorry if anything comes unclear, I'm not native to english ^^

okay let's make the PA political parties

This isn't about politics or political parties

This is about unconscionable behaviour of using powerful ui mods on the 1v1 ranked ladder. How players never have full disclosure of important information surrounding the circumstances of their matchup to make informed decisions in their interest, and how the system allows all this to take place under what some posters have put forward as nothing more than a weak guise of 'buyer beware'

since the "require" tag exists. you could create a mod that signs you up to the tournament as well as allows you to play in tourney hosts at all as well as packing with it all the "tourney mods".

I've made mod compilations in the past.

theoretically this is all possible and easy.

then the instructions for participating would clearly state downloading and installing PAMM and that specific mod.
there would be no other way. nobody outside of that case figure could have even gotten in.

and noone outside of that case figure could even have any means at all to see the host in the list of games.

That sounds great!

After all I do love my mods!