Status of "Cheat" Mods

[Atrik]

Sorry @strat0spheric, I guess i confused you someone else. For the "hidding" accusations I just never heard of anyone smurfing using auto-train, maybe someone did? This despite @BreakfastBurrito_007 constantly spectating game and making comments to discredit any users. Anyways, this is one more reason, I, at least don't believe you are right about saying that any users is attempting to hide it.

[chrstgtr]

18 minutes ago, Dunedan said:

If everybody in a match explicitly agrees to the usage of cheats, I wouldn't consider using them an unfair advantage

Note, it’s more than just who hosts the game  

Also, @Atrik not everyone knows who uses ProGUI. It may be the case for you. But not for other users. I have seen people lie about their use of it, which is culpable behavior. It’s also very dumb because it is very easy to determine by observing a player play

Edited Tuesday at 15:42 by chrstgtr

[strat0spheric]

np, @Atrik for sure you are not hiding it because everyone who read the forum knows it I didn't mean that. But i mean it is absolutely not clear who in the community else uses it. To exaggerate a bit: At the end i might be the only one who doesn't use it and doesn'T even know

[Atrik]

12 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

I have seen people lie about their use of it

Alright, well I never saw that for myself. I only already saw wrong accusations about Matias using it while he never did but that doesn't count.

[chrstgtr]

17 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Alright, well I never saw that for myself. I only already saw wrong accusations about Matias using it while he never did but that doesn't count.

Which also underscores the need for better viability. No one wants to be falsely accused either 

[TheCJ]

58 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Note, it’s more than just who hosts the game

Well, yes.
But I think it's enough if the host clarifies his preference (I will just start to call my games "teamgame, proGUI users welcome") and if you don't wan't to play with someone that uses proGUI, you don't join those games? Then the agreement would be implicit by joining such games?

But of course, that won't solve the problem entirely.

[chrstgtr]

8 minutes ago, TheCJ said:

Well, yes.
But I think it's enough if the host clarifies his preference (I will just start to call my games "teamgame, proGUI users welcome") and if you don't wan't to play with someone that uses proGUI, you don't join those games? Then the agreement would be implicit by joining such games?

But of course, that won't solve the problem entirely.

Go for it. No one cares if the mod exits or is used with other consenting players. 

But many, many players consider it cheating and do not want to play with users that use it. If a player insists on still using it in those conditions then I don’t know how you don’t consider it cheating. 

And, that’s really what this whole thread is about—whether users can unilaterally decide that they can use the game with other non-consenting players. 

Edited Tuesday at 16:45 by chrstgtr

[seeh]

7 minutes ago, TheCJ said:

call my games "teamgame, proGUI users welcome")

That's definitely helpful and I'm sure nobody will mind if you do it that way.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@TheCJ I'm not sure if you've closely watched progui in effect, but the key difference is that autociv building selections still require a 1:1 action ratio for the each task. In progui 0 cumulative production building idle time can be achieved without so much as a thought let alone an action. Progui basically manages all of the unit production for you, so that your economy automatically grows at the optimal rate while you focus on rushing someone. In this situation the rushed player is overwhelmed with required actions, having to manage economy and micro at the same time while his opponent can simply focus on the fight. To compare autociv and progui as equals is nonsense. 

1 hour ago, strat0spheric said:

That is true, but i still don't know who uses it and i don't want to ask everybody.

Fortunately its very easy to detect. But if you know someone who uses it and would like them to stop, you'll find it very hard to even get a response out of them. Meanwhile hosts simply don't want to deal with drama and would rather start the next game. When I bring attention to cheating its not me that is making the drama its people getting away with cheating. 

 

[TheCJ]

6 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

many, many players consider it cheating and do not want to play with users that use it

Like Atrik, who overestimates how many players know that he's using proGUI, I believe you overestimate how many players have a problem with it.

Most 0ad players I know aren't that competitive, we just want to have some fun and play some games. And even if Atrik would be a little "overrated" since he's using proGUI, when the host knows how well he plays (with it), the game will still be balanced. 
If someone always uses proGUI, his skill will be estimated accordingly, so it will not affect balance. That's not an opinion, that's a fact.
Only when somebody suddenly starts using proGUI, he will be underestimated (as he "suddenly got stronger"), until the other players learn how good he plays with the mod.

Thus, I believe most players really do not care that much, even if you might disagree.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

1 hour ago, Atrik said:

comments to discredit any users

How else is anyone to learn that you're using this cheat? you certainly don't discuss it during game setup.

Also, if a policy is made for tagging hosts that allow progui, I support that. For hosts that don't allow progui no tag should be required as in games its implied that cheating is not allowed, and that also prevents hosts who don't know about progui from being preyed upon.

[strat0spheric]

24 minutes ago, TheCJ said:

"teamgame, proGUI users welcome"

...to be more precise: you should call it "autotrainer welcome" because this part of ProGUI is what is relevant. Not the GUI improvements

[TheCJ]

7 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I'm not sure if you've closely watched progui in effect, but the key difference is that autociv building selections still require a 1:1 action ratio for the each task. In progui 0 cumulative production building idle time can be achieved without so much as a thought let alone an action. Progui basically manages all of the unit production for you, so that your economy automatically grows at the optimal rate while you focus on rushing someone. In this situation the rushed player is overwhelmed with required actions, having to manage economy and micro at the same time while his opponent can simply focus on the fight. To compare autociv and progui as equals is nonsense. 

Well, I never played with proGUI, so I am by no means an expert. Your words directly contradict Atriks description of what the mod does, and I believe neither of you has an objective view on this topic.

But your example is only valid if the rushed player is significantly worse at the game then the proGUI user (when hes using proGUI), thus the fault lies with the host, who didn't do a good job with the balance.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

2 minutes ago, TheCJ said:

If someone always uses proGUI, his skill will be estimated accordingly, so it will not affect balance. That's not an opinion, that's a fact.

balanced does not mean fair. If I play a 1v1 against a better player, its fair but imbalanced. If I use progui to "balance" the game, then its balanced but unfair. 

Progui also offers strong enough advantages for particular playstyles that it actually alters the unit/strategy/civ balance.

@strat0spheric do u know about autostart? thats also in progui, the units path to the nearest resource automatically teleporting thru the cc when necessary.

1 minute ago, TheCJ said:

Well, I never played with proGUI, so I am by no means an expert. Your words directly contradict Atriks description of what the mod does, and I believe neither of you has an objective view on this topic.

Join a host with me later today and I can show you live.

[TheCJ]

3 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

balanced does not mean fair. If I play a 1v1 against a better player, its fair but imbalanced. If I use progui to "balance" the game, then its balanced but unfair. 

This is actually a brilliant observation! Now I'm a bit sad I didn't realize this and applied that distinction 

I still think many (if not most) players just want a balanced game and don't care too much about the fairness. 
 

5 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Join a host with me later today and I can show you live.

Thanks for the offer, though I must politely decline. I'll try to take a look at it when I have more time.

[strat0spheric]

7 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

@strat0spheric do u know about autostart?

yeah, true. This is also making a difference. But maybe not that much of an impact as the autotrainer.

[chrstgtr]

45 minutes ago, TheCJ said:

If someone always uses proGUI, his skill will be estimated accordingly, so it will not affect balance.

You miss the point with this talk. We don’t care how much advantage it gives. We don’t care if we know you’ll be getting this advantage. I, and others, don’t like playing with people who use it. It is our choice. Telling us we have to accept it is no better than us telling you that you can never use in your SP games or games where all players accept its use. 

Anyways, I’m out on this thread again. I only popped in to clarify what I said a post or two above. 

[Meister]

As someone who uses ProGUI Trainer from time to time, but not in 1v1s and also not when im asked to,
i can definitely tell it gives me an advantage, it makes me a better player. It makes my boom 30s faster on average, but really helps me in micro-intensive situations where normally i would just forget to queue units.

My number 1 issue about playing 0ad is the sole impact of the "boom" on the gameplay. If you are a 20% faster boomer, probably every strategy you choose will work (at somehow equal microing skills). For me an RTS should have less focus on queueing the right amount of troops but managing your economy and strategic warfare.
 

Then again i am unsure about my own use of ProGUI, sometimes it feels like I'm not really playing the game, and i agree with @BreakfastBurrito_007: "They're not playing the same game"...
I got used to using it so much that when i play without the trainer i always forget to click troops, so I feel almost forced to use it to fulfil my own expectations.
 

Yesterday i decided to not use it anymore (cuz i got beaten by @chrstgtr).
Yet i consider the GUI (now called ModernGUI) to be the best one available right now, with helpers like idle barrack display.

[strat0spheric]

@Meister thank you for this honest explanation of your experience !

[Seleucids]

As long as it doesn't affect balance and game mechanics, it's fine. Atrik always uses ProGUI so his level is consistent and we can balance him accordingly. We don't know his level if we take ProGUI away from him, but we can easily balance him as of now.

Similarly, if you take my cube trees away from me, you will see a 1350 player struggling to put down storehouses. 

[Atrik]

41 minutes ago, Seleucids said:

Atrik always uses ProGUI so his level is consistent and we can balance him accordingly. We don't know his level if we take ProGUI away from him

I played a lot of games where @BreakfastBurrito_007 was spec and had it off. That's also why he is obviously blatantly lying to fit his narration. My game-play is exactly the same, early 2 cav scouts, often followed by cav or inf rush, high female count in late game etc, often successfully. He will just recall the fails I have even it's a minority of games and that I fail big time all the time with autotrainer at a similar rate ~35%. Basically I know that I need only very short adaptation time to get my brain to make the very interesting part of training units manually then the difference with or without is imperceptible.

The limiting factor of economic development is resource balancing and build order. Units can be autoqueued (vanilla) and the efficiency of batching doesn't matter that much (There was even some posts that argued that smaller batch are more efficient, theses posts are simplifying calculation too much but that's another topic). So in any cases, the important parts of what make you successful in a game will be tactics/micro (and build order) and strategy. The small tasks of having to scroll to optimal batch size and re-click production buildings every once in a while are just unimportant frustrations of a limiting UI. It's just my opinion ofc and I respect others as long as you're not dishonest like @BreakfastBurrito_007.

[guerringuerrin]

7 hours ago, Meister said:

but really helps me in micro-intensive situations where normally i would just forget to queue units.

From my POV this is the great advantage of the Smart train. @Atrik Do you remember the game we played the other day where Hakunamata constantly attacked my base with cavs? I had my barracks for a long time without producing xD. 
And even if I had remembered to produce in them, the vanilla production system is quite inefficient and instead of assigning units to free barracks it stacks units in the same barracks in a somewhat random way.
I believe that improving the production system should be a priority in the next version of the game, similar to how it’s done in AOE 2.
This way, the advantage of a macro that automatically assigns the batch size according to the available resources and instantly would be mitigated greatly.
The advantage of being able to freely maneuver your units instead of having to keep watching where the heck the barracks full of stacked units are is really quite obvious.
I have used the smart train several times and my production has improved a lot specially in situations like I mentioned before.
Unfortunately, you are also a bit dishonest in this regard. I have rarely heard you mention it as an argument, and instead you argue about your great skill as a player and how you can overcome this difficulty. Something that, while true, somewhat avoids the point in question that, at least I and other players have pointed out to you.

I don’t believe the solution is to enter a game as a spectator and start berating yourself. However, I understand the feeling of frustration.

Taking extreme positions on either side hasn’t proven to be effective. And it would be nice to reach some common ground. Something that also seems unlikely.

[Atrik]

11 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

I had my barracks for a long time without producing xD. 
And even if I had remembered to produce in them, the vanilla production system is quite inefficient and instead of assigning units to free barracks it stacks units in the same barracks in a somewhat random way.

15 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

Unfortunately, you are also a bit dishonest in this regard. I have rarely heard you mention it as an argument, and instead you argue about your great skill as a player and how you can overcome this difficulty.

I don't think I am being dishonest... Some of the issues you list, I just don't have them, even when turning off auto-train, because of the passive features of the mod. I often forget that others compare with vanilla UI, but it's true that I made the simplification of comparing with me playing with ModernGUI. The best example is that I never have stacked production in a barrack with none in others because I'll use idle barrack button. As well it notify me of the idle buildings so I'm less likely to forget too.

But even then what I say would still hold true, once you have training units as a automatism, which isn't that hard to get if you brain has still a bit of plasticity, exact batch sizes aren't very important on any scale, bigger batch aren't even always optimal because you are freezing more resources for long time, with a more distant return on investment. To avoid situations where overwhelm prevents you from training units, you need to turn on auto-queue.

Now, ModernGUI isn't just my work, it's bundling a lot of code and features that were brought by community members for years. Yet, I'm very happy with what I brought to it, a tones of details, options, improvements suggested by players, and it makes it the mod it is. So of course, I can't deny that there would always be something a bit personal when I'll defend this mod, and I have an attachment to it because it also because it sincerely improve the game experience.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

4 hours ago, Atrik said:

Units can be autoqueued (vanilla) and the efficiency of batching doesn't matter that much

That is not true. There is a reason you added the autoscaling batches, otherwise you would have left it at 1 by 1.

About batch sizes:

• 1 by 1: highest ROI per unit resource expenditure as is correctly calculated (but largely mischaracterized) by the thread you mentioned. ROI is not everything ofc.
• batch training: faster population growth, less unspent resources.

Progui makes an optimization between these two. Its the same optimization that players try to make in game with their own production, only without even looking at the barracks. Its hard to estimate the net advantage in a pure boom with autotrainer, but it is objectively not 0. There are statistics that could be measured that can help show how big the advantage is, some of them were worked on by @ffm2, and others were deemed to be performance heavy. As others have said recently and as I have said before, the advantage is maximized when a user is able to rush or at least harass clean players so that a clean player is overwhelmed all while a progui user has the minimum possible production building idle time. This manifests itself in gameplay and balance patterns that I've had the misfortune to observe for 2+ years.

@Seleucids balancing the game does not automatically make it fair, so balancing atrik including his unwarranted advantage does not solve any problems. Additionally your visibility mod(s) can't be considered cheats as they don't provide an advantage over players who can already see everything fine enough to suit themselves. 

[Atrik]

I've just discovered that you add ignored user on forum, that's great. I can add @BreakfastBurrito_007 so I don't feel the need to explain/debunk every bs claim he repeat in circles, after I already debunked them multiple times.