Yet another thread about ProGUI and how to attract more players

[Atrik]

Funny @real_tabasco_sauce denies his behavior now . Not even sure he ever spectated a game with someone using the mod and him not making sarcastic comments. Anyway he won now, he successfully created the illusion of a divide that must fight each others, fueled by his comments in game chat and provocations on the forum. Every single time someone will react to his stupid, uninformative comment and it ends up with a endless back and forth.

[chrstgtr]

8 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Anyway he won now, he successfully created the illusion of a divide that must fight each others, fueled by his comments in game chat and provocations on the forum.

Be honest. You posted your mod. I immediately said I considered it cheating. Many others said they agreed. Several people said they did not want to play with anyone who used the mod or any other mod like it. Your response, more or less, was "I don't care, I will continue to use it against the wishes of those that expressed dislike for it." 

You are the one that disrupted the status quo. 

A feature very similar to your mod's autotrain was considered for the vanilla version of the game and as rejected. 

If you want to use your mod in SP games, great. But if you want to play with anyone else, you that no one has to accept you or your mod. 

[TheCJ]

Compared to you guys, Im just a humble newbie, but I'd like to add my thoughts as a fairly new player of 0ad.

For someone like me, it is impossible to tell (during the game) whether someone is using ProGUI. That implies, that the advantage you get by using the mod is small in comparison to the advantages you get through random map generation, timing, fluctuation in player performance etc. According to @Mentula in this Thread, ProGUI averages out to a 24s advantage in booming. That's fairly irrelevant (and likely the standard deviation is larger ).

I feel in no way discouraged from playing 0ad just because there are people using a mod that gives them a slight advantage (although I obviously can't speak for all new players and understand if someone feels differently). 
Honestly, I didn't even know @Atrik uses ProGUI before reading forum posts, but it doesn't matter, since I know how good he plays, and balance accordingly. It's actually a lot of fun to play with him, because there is always something happening and the games aren't just booming.

That being said, hosts have every right to refuse to play with any player, for whatever reason. No host has to play with anyone if they don't want to. It'd be different if there were game-sided servers, but as long as I'm hosting, I decide who gets to connect to my pc and who doesn't.

Maybe it would be helpful to add a way for the host to see if players use ProGUI? Then people that really dislike playing with others that use ProGUI, can just tell them and put them spec. And people like me, that don't see the game as competitive can just ignore that information?

 

Anyway, no matter if you believe ProGUI is a cheat or not (it is ), you should never insult someone for using it (I'm not saying anyone here did insult someone, by the way :3). That obviously also applies to other people, you should never insult someone for how bad they play in your opinion.

After all, we surely won't get any more players for this amazing game by fostering toxic behaviour towards newer players or players that want to try some of the great mods that exist for 0ad.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

6 hours ago, Atrik said:

Anyway he won now, he successfully created the illusion of a divide that must fight each others, fueled by his comments in game chat and provocations on the forum.

1. You blame me for the controversy when the mod is what is controversial. 

2. My arguments and reasoning against progui are "provocations" now? Do they provoke you because they are good arguments? i'm sorry about that. The only real provocations I see here are you insulting my intelligence:

6 hours ago, Atrik said:

stupid, uninformative comment

[ChronA]

I'm morbidly fascinated by this dust up because of the contrast to another open source RTS project: Zero-K.

In the competitive scene for Zero-K, I believe that the consensus rules say that everything about how you control the game is fair game for modification. You can use you own custom GUI and endlessly elaborate control bindings, with all sorts of automation to facilitate optimal macro and micro. I think they even let players customize the AI scripts used by units and buildings for things like target prioritization and fight moving. The philosophy is that if you have the coding skill to automate any task that other players do manually and remain competitive, you deserve to reap the benefits.

I'm sure in practice there would have to be limits to this approach. Entering a full AI with 10,000 APM multitasking to play for you in a tournament wouldn't fly I imagine, but I doubt they would bat an eye at any of the features in ProGUI. It just goes to show that while a line must be drawn, where it is drawn seems kind of arbitrary.

...Or maybe not so arbitrary. GoogleFrog, Zero-K's main dev, has a series of essays ("Cold Takes") about the design of the game that I think are quite illuminating (and well worth reading). It shows that Zero-K is a game with a very clear vision of itself. It's confident that its appeal lies in the challenge of solving its fiendishly elaborate system of unit interactions, encapsulated in the unit stats and simulation systems. Everything else is treated as peripheral and left up to the whims of the players.

I think fights like the debate over ProGUI in Zero-AD are a symptom of a project that does not have confidence in its own systems and faction design. That's why some players are so invested in turning fighting the UI into a competition. When the strategy space is flat and homogeneous, execution is the only way for players to differentiate themselves.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, ChronA said:

The philosophy is that if you have the coding skill to automate any task that other players do manually and remain competitive, you deserve to reap the benefits.

Now I don't know much about that game at all, but this sounds like a bad idea. It doesn't sound very beginner friendly.

1 hour ago, ChronA said:

I think fights like the debate over ProGUI in Zero-AD are a symptom of a project that does not have confidence in its own systems and faction design.

Eh, I wouldn't say that: in this case its a handful of players that want to use this mod. I am perfectly confident in 0ad's design and I think very, very few see fit to automate the economy to that degree.

I see what the author said about "fighting the UI." In this case, we have stuff like freehand which adds functionality to make the game less click-heavy. However, progui reduces clicks by eliminating the need for those tasks to be taken by the player.

Edited July 7 by real_tabasco_sauce

[Norse_Harold]

15 hours ago, TheCJ said:

That being said, hosts have every right to refuse to play with any player, for whatever reason. No host has to play with anyone if they don't want to. It'd be different if there were game-sided servers, but as long as I'm hosting, I decide who gets to connect to my pc and who doesn't.

Maybe it would be helpful to add a way for the host to see if players use ProGUI? Then people that really dislike playing with others that use ProGUI, can just tell them and put them spec. And people like me, that don't see the game as competitive can just ignore that information?

Here, here! Yes, hosts have every right to refuse to play with any player, for whatever reason. However, they don't have a right to defame a player and tell others to not join that player based on lies.

It seems that ProGUI provides an empirical advantage. It's not unfair because it's freely available. However, currently, people don't have a clear indication of whether another player is using it. I like the Zero-K philosophy of allowing software development for automation of certain aspects of the game. But, some people have a strong opinion against using ProGUI or joining games where others are using it. I think that hosts, and ideally other players, should have a right to know when a modification that provides an advantage is being used by another player. That way a host can make an informed decision about whether the player is in compliance with the rules they have set for the game they're hosting. It's especially relevant in competitive games like rated matches, tournaments, and apparently the average game involving some of the more, shall we say, high strung players.

So, I would support adding a feature where the mods that a player has enabled that offer a potential objective advantage in the game, are disclosed to the host.

It would also be nice to have a feature where a host can deny users to connect when they have certain mods enabled.

This feature would be easily bypassed by anyone who decides to actually cheat by modifying the source code of the game or renaming their mod. The only counter is to make 0ad closed source and use an anti-cheat system like Easy Anti-Cheat. That won't be happening, so ultimately we rely on the honor system.

Yet, a mod that offers an advantage is potentially detectable by watching replays. So, if a player cheats a rule about which mods are allowed by a hoster in a match and uses a disallowed mod anyway then evidence of it will be evidence of actually cheating.

As far as timing for implementing such a feature, that depends on who supports its development. Calling all junior C++ and JavaScript developers: talk to me about software development plans.

Edited July 7 by Norse_Harold

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

3 hours ago, ChronA said:

In the competitive scene for Zero-K, I believe that the consensus rules say that everything about how you control the game is fair game for modification. You can use you own custom GUI and endlessly elaborate control bindings, with all sorts of automation to facilitate optimal macro and micro. I think they even let players customize the AI scripts used by units and buildings for things like target prioritization and fight moving. The philosophy is that if you have the coding skill to automate any task that other players do manually and remain competitive, you deserve to reap the benefits.

Thats an interesting concept, as long as everyone buys into the scripts arms race and agree on what can be modified. In Aoe2 they host a little tournament where players design AIs that play against each other, which is kind of the next step beyond what you mention. I would say that this philosophy does not apply to 0ad as its supposed to be a videogame, so just because a player can make a script for automatically managing production buildings doesn't mean he deserves to wield that advantage over his non computer-savvy opponents.

[leopard]

8 hours ago, Geriatrix said:

@leopard you seem to take such a delight in your lies in this 2 void threads.

what are the lies I told to community, you keep insulting people is very well know fact!

[leopard]

8 hours ago, Geriatrix said:

Please play 0ad!

says the person who ban me from games and pause until I get banned if I join a game

[leopard]

4 hours ago, Geriatrix said:

It's clear for everyone that this thread is a nobrain vendetta and you're basically sinking here.

ok