cheap VS Efficient

[Bouncing Ferret FIlm]

In my opinion, "efficient" is something you can technically counter without completely going out of your way of doing so, such as 4-pool/zerg rush in Starcraft or an annoying spy in Team Fortress 2. "Cheap" is when there is little to no counter to it, or the counter is highly inefficient in comparison to the ease of the "cheap" strategy/whatever-the-hell-it-is.

well said.

 

[UnwishedGunz]

i dont...all i know is that people who hack suck at video games

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Sirlin Parroting Snipped

Quoting Sirlin? Are you serious? The dude's philosophy may as well be "how to be a complete jackass at multiplayer games." The whole thing is based on winning being the only way to have fun with a game, and implies that in winning, it is okay to piss on everyone else's fun. That's the real reason things like camping and, in the case of MW2, noob tubing are considered cheap. They render other playstyles useless, even if they were intended by the developers to be equally useful. Even if they don't do that, they make it so other players cannot have fun, which is the biggest crime a gamer can commit.

Of course, I've never liked the example of camping, because in a well designed game, campers are easy to deal with. Generally speaking, its better to keep moving constantly. The reason I really don't like campers is because, if everybody camps, there's nothing to kill, because there's no moving targets. It quickly gets boring.

Overpowered weapons, on the other hand, are really freaking annoying. I can't really comment on noob tubing, because I don't play MW2, but I've played against some overpowered weapons in my day. If the gun is cheap and plentiful, then it's really not that big of a deal. But if there's only one on the map, it respawns really slowly, and it basically gives you free kills on everyone in the server, using it is a cheap tactic. I'm looking at you, BFG and Red Riot. At any rate, most communities don't take well to people using these guns, which were generally aimed at single player or, you know, giving unskilled players an occasional kill. Using something that is broken -- which you admit can exist, even if you call it "degenerate" instead -- is cheap. I seem to remember Sirlin himself saying that if the game is degenerate, it's not worth playing to win -- meaning people who agree with him shouldn't play those games, and should leave them to the people who actually like to have fun.

To conclude, there is such a thing as a cheap tactic; calling the game "degenerate" doesn't change the fact that doing something that breaks the game is, in fact, cheap. That's why, for example, trading card games have banned/restricted lists, sports have sportsmanship rules, and even fighting game tournaments occasionally have banned characters. Your example of fighting game characters with infinites is perfect for the other side, actually. As an example, there was a character in KOF 2003 that had an infinite, and he was actually banned from tournament use because of it. Online games often don't get the kind of continued improvement that sports and tabletop games get, nor do they generally have a rule making committee of the sort used at fighting game tournaments. But they do usually have rules of etiquette agreed upon by the community. If you don't follow them, you are being cheap, a poor sport, and the admin is well within their rights to kick you.

In other words, playground rules apply; play nice with the other children, don't kick sand in their faces, and for Pete's sake, don't act like you're the victim if they get mad at you for breaking their toys.

 

[milskidasith]

Sirlin Parroting Snipped

Quoting Sirlin? Are you serious? The dude's philosophy may as well be "how to be a complete jackass at multiplayer games." The whole thing is based on winning being the only way to have fun with a game, and implies that in winning, it is okay to piss on everyone else's fun. That's the real reason things like camping and, in the case of MW2, noob tubing are considered cheap. They render other playstyles useless, even if they were intended by the developers to be equally useful. Even if they don't do that, they make it so other players cannot have fun, which is the biggest crime a gamer can commit.

Of course, I've never liked the example of camping, because in a well designed game, campers are easy to deal with. Generally speaking, its better to keep moving constantly. The reason I really don't like campers is because, if everybody camps, there's nothing to kill, because there's no moving targets. It quickly gets boring.

Overpowered weapons, on the other hand, are really freaking annoying. I can't really comment on noob tubing, because I don't play MW2, but I've played against some overpowered weapons in my day. If the gun is cheap and plentiful, then it's really not that big of a deal. But if there's only one on the map, it respawns really slowly, and it basically gives you free kills on everyone in the server, using it is a cheap tactic. I'm looking at you, BFG and Red Riot. At any rate, most communities don't take well to people using these guns, which were generally aimed at single player or, you know, giving unskilled players an occasional kill. Using something that is broken -- which you admit can exist, even if you call it "degenerate" instead -- is cheap. I seem to remember Sirlin himself saying that if the game is degenerate, it's not worth playing to win -- meaning people who agree with him shouldn't play those games, and should leave them to the people who actually like to have fun.

To conclude, there is such a thing as a cheap tactic; calling the game "degenerate" doesn't change the fact that doing something that breaks the game is, in fact, cheap. That's why, for example, trading card games have banned/restricted lists, sports have sportsmanship rules, and even fighting game tournaments occasionally have banned characters. Your example of fighting game characters with infinites is perfect for the other side, actually. As an example, there was a character in KOF 2003 that had an infinite, and he was actually banned from tournament use because of it. Online games often don't get the kind of continued improvement that sports and tabletop games get, nor do they generally have a rule making committee of the sort used at fighting game tournaments. But they do usually have rules of etiquette agreed upon by the community. If you don't follow them, you are being cheap, a poor sport, and the admin is well within their rights to kick you.

In other words, playground rules apply; play nice with the other children, don't kick sand in their faces, and for Pete's sake, don't act like you're the victim if they get mad at you for breaking their toys.

First off: If you don't know Sirlin, don't complain about him. He's explicitly said there are times when you don't have to play to win, and can try new things. I don't run around only using the noob tube or camping or whatever example people ***** about in the game. I just get annoyed when people blame other people for winning.

If it's in the game, don't ***** at the player for using it. Blame the developer for making a bad game. There are no playground rules, especially when you're playing random people you don't know. Sure, if you're playing with friends, and it's annoying them, you can stop, but online against random people, there's no point to "playing nice."

I don't play so other people can have a great time, I play because I want to have fun. If I only cared about what other people thought, I would just intentionally feed kills, because that would let everybody else have a good time. I have fun winning. I use what I want to win. Bitching about that doesn't change the fact I can still do it, so its pointless and only limiting your own play.

EDIT: As for your overpowered weapons example, you clearly don't understand the concept of map control. If there's one big, slowly respawning weapon, such as the BFG, the game revolves around controlling it, to some degree. If you don't control the spawn of the BFG, and somebody picks it up, that's your fault, not their fault for using the damn thing. If it was the fact that the weapons were just chooseable by anybody, it would be a sign the game is badly designed, but in this case, it's not even that the game is degenerate, it's just that the game is designed around controlling the big powerups/weapons.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

First off: If you don't know Sirlin, don't complain about him. He's explicitly said there are times when you don't have to play to win, and can try new things. I don't run around only using the noob tube or camping or whatever example people ***** about in the game. I just get annoyed when people blame other people for winning.

If it's in the game, don't ***** at the player for using it. Blame the developer for making a bad game. There are no playground rules, especially when you're playing random people you don't know. Sure, if you're playing with friends, and it's annoying them, you can stop, but online against random people, there's no point to "playing nice."

I don't play so other people can have a great time, I play because I want to have fun. If I only cared about what other people thought, I would just intentionally feed kills, because that would let everybody else have a good time. I have fun winning. I use what I want to win. Bitching about that doesn't change the fact I can still do it, so its pointless and only limiting your own play.

That last paragraph pretty much shows why playground rules have to apply. What are playground rules there for if not to keep random people from acting like spoiled children and keeping others from having fun? It's pretty much a given that a child isn't going to know most of the other children at a playground. What you're describing is a very anti-social way to go about something social, and it is and should be frowned upon.

Also, you don't have to feed people kills to let other people have a good time, but you shouldn't go around spawn camping and pulling other completely uncounterable tactics just because it's possible. There is a huge difference between blaming people for winning -- which is whining and, frankly, a compliment -- and blaming people for being cheap. You're argument about blaming the developer for making a bad game goes both ways. As I said in the previous post, Sirlin says if a game is degenerate, people who play to win should probably leave it alone. All I'm saying is that kind of player should leave it alone, and leave it to the people who want to play fairly. One broken gun does not a broken game make, unless you have someone with the social skills of a five year old exploiting it just because they can. This is why I love dedicated servers: a good admin keeps the griefers out.

As for not complaining about Sirlin if you don't know him: I haven't read his entire book, but I have read several of the sections. I know he says that there are times to try new things, and that playing to win all the time is a bad idea. That said, the main thrust of his argument is if a game has anything unbalanced, it's fair play, and there should be no complaining if a person uses it, regardless of the impact that has on everybody else's fun. If I remember correctly, the main reason he says it's okay to not play to win sometimes is that if you're always playing with the tactics you know work, you won't ever find better tactics. It doesn't have much to do with fun, unless you're the Videogame equivalent of a Spike. Again , playground rules. Basically, your right to enjoy the game ends where my right to enjoy the game begins. That doesn't mean you can't dominate me at the game, it just means you should do it fairly. Raping someone with skill? That's efficient. Raping someone because you used a degenerate tactic? I'd say that it takes a degenerate player to do that.

Edit: I'll admit that the BFG was a bad example, but the Red Riot from Shogo was not. One gun, spawns every three minutes at the shortest, and kills pretty much everyone on the field from across the map with one shot. It comes with several rounds. The game was balanced as long as nobody used the RR, but if anybody got it, it was very difficult if not impossible to counter. Map control really didn't play into it, because the respawn rate was too long for anybody to time it, and a good player could get just as many kills in the meantime running around with a medium weight weapon. It was rebalanced later with a community patch that reduced the blast radius significantly, but up until then it was horribly broken. But as I said, that one weapon was the only truly broken thing about the game. The game as a whole was not degenerate, and the community basically kept people from using it until it was rebalanced. After that, it was possible to counter it, and people had fun fighting over who got the big gun next.

I guess what I'm saying with all this is that there's a difference between winning because of skill, and winning because you found a broken tactic. If people complain about the first, it's fine to laugh at them. But if they complain about the second, don't labor under the delusion that you're really winning due to skill. Remember: Degenerate players use degenerate tactics.

 

[milskidasith]

First off: If you don't know Sirlin, don't complain about him. He's explicitly said there are times when you don't have to play to win, and can try new things. I don't run around only using the noob tube or camping or whatever example people ***** about in the game. I just get annoyed when people blame other people for winning.

If it's in the game, don't ***** at the player for using it. Blame the developer for making a bad game. There are no playground rules, especially when you're playing random people you don't know. Sure, if you're playing with friends, and it's annoying them, you can stop, but online against random people, there's no point to "playing nice."

I don't play so other people can have a great time, I play because I want to have fun. If I only cared about what other people thought, I would just intentionally feed kills, because that would let everybody else have a good time. I have fun winning. I use what I want to win. Bitching about that doesn't change the fact I can still do it, so its pointless and only limiting your own play.

That last paragraph pretty much shows why playground rules have to apply. What are playground rules there for if not to keep random people from acting like spoiled children and keeping others from having fun? It's pretty much a given that a child isn't going to know most of the other children at a playground. What you're describing is a very anti-social way to go about something social, and it is and should be frowned upon.

Also, you don't have to feed people kills to let other people have a good time, but you shouldn't go around spawn camping and pulling other completely uncounterable tactics just because it's possible. There is a huge difference between blaming people for winning -- which is whining and, frankly, a compliment -- and blaming people for being cheap. You're argument about blaming the developer for making a bad game goes both ways. As I said in the previous post, Sirlin says if a game is degenerate, people who play to win should probably leave it alone. All I'm saying is that kind of player should leave it alone, and leave it to the people who want to play fairly. One broken gun does not a broken game make, unless you have someone with the social skills of a five year old exploiting it just because they can. This is why I love dedicated servers: a good admin keeps the griefers out.

As for not complaining about Sirlin if you don't know him: I haven't read his entire book, but I have read several of the sections. I know he says that there are times to try new things, and that playing to win all the time is a bad idea. That said, the main thrust of his argument is if a game has anything unbalanced, it's fair play, and there should be no complaining if a person uses it, regardless of the impact that has on everybody else's fun. If I remember correctly, the main reason he says it's okay to not play to win sometimes is that if you're always playing with the tactics you know work, you won't ever find better tactics. It doesn't have much to do with fun, unless you're the Videogame equivalent of a Spike. Again , playground rules. Basically, your right to enjoy the game ends where my right to enjoy the game begins. That doesn't mean you can't dominate me at the game, it just means you should do it fairly. Raping someone with skill? That's efficient. Raping someone because you used a degenerate tactic? I'd say that it takes a degenerate player to do that.

Edit: I'll admit that the BFG was a bad example, but the Red Riot from Shogo was not. One gun, spawns every three minutes at the shortest, and kills pretty much everyone on the field from across the map with one shot. It comes with several rounds. The game was balanced as long as nobody used the RR, but if anybody got it, it was very difficult if not impossible to counter. Map control really didn't play into it, because the respawn rate was too long for anybody to time it, and a good player could get just as many kills in the meantime running around with a medium weight weapon. It was rebalanced later with a community patch that reduced the blast radius significantly, but up until then it was horribly broken. But as I said, that one weapon was the only truly broken thing about the game. The game as a whole was not degenerate, and the community basically kept people from using it until it was rebalanced. After that, it was possible to counter it, and people had fun fighting over who got the big gun next.

I guess what I'm saying with all this is that there's a difference between winning because of skill, and winning because you found a broken tactic. If people complain about the first, it's fine to laugh at them. But if they complain about the second, don't labor under the delusion that you're really winning due to skill. Remember: Degenerate players use degenerate tactics.

Nope. Smart players use degenerate tactics. Bad games have degenerate tactics.

Anyway, who's acting like a spoiled child in a game: The guy who's playing by the rules of the game, or the one who's bitching because he doesn't like how other people are playing? Hint: It's not the guy playing by the rules. There are no playground rules. There are just what the game does and doesn't allow. As for a social experience: Are you kidding me? Online games aren't social unless you are playing with people you know. About one in ten people have mics, and about one in ten of those people are anything but people bitching about how other people are cheap. The only reason I even follow playground rules with friends is because that's playing to lose friends; if my friends weren't, to put it bluntly, scrubs about certain tactics (oddly enough, not so much the noob tube as the semi auto sniper rifle and using stealth classes in free for all), I'd do whatever it took to come out on top.

As for skill: What is skill? How can you determine skill except by who wins? Valuation is a skill. Picking the right strategy is due to skill. The game isn't a test of "who can get headshots only with their pistols" or even "who can aim the best" it's a test of "who gets the most kills?" The person with the most kills played the most skillfully that match. To use Sirlin's example, which I know you're going to say is somehow wrong and a good way to lose friends (which it may be, but when I'm playing with random people online, there aren't friends out there to lose), the game isn't a match of "who can use the flashy moves the most" it's a game of who can knock the other guy out first. You can have the greatest dragon punching, LMG aiming, base building, or whatever ability in the world, and if you lose, you're still the less skilled player.

So here's what I have to say to you, in short: If you lose, you played less skillfully than the winner. It doesn't matter what he did, as long as you had the identical ability to choose that option (that includes picking before the actual match starts), he won based on skill.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Nope. Smart players use degenerate tactics. Bad games have degenerate tactics.

Anyway, who's acting like a spoiled child in a game: The guy who's playing by the rules of the game, or the one who's bitching because he doesn't like how other people are playing? Hint: It's not the guy playing by the rules. There are no playground rules. There are just what the game does and doesn't allow. As for a social experience: Are you kidding me? Online games aren't social unless you are playing with people you know. About one in ten people have mics, and about one in ten of those people are anything but people bitching about how other people are cheap. The only reason I even follow playground rules with friends is because that's playing to lose friends; if my friends weren't, to put it bluntly, scrubs about certain tactics (oddly enough, not so much the noob tube as the semi auto sniper rifle and using stealth classes in free for all), I'd do whatever it took to come out on top.

As for skill: What is skill? How can you determine skill except by who wins? Valuation is a skill. Picking the right strategy is due to skill. The game isn't a test of "who can get headshots only with their pistols" or even "who can aim the best" it's a test of "who gets the most kills?" The person with the most kills played the most skillfully that match. To use Sirlin's example, which I know you're going to say is somehow wrong and a good way to lose friends (which it may be, but when I'm playing with random people online, there aren't friends out there to lose), the game isn't a match of "who can use the flashy moves the most" it's a game of who can knock the other guy out first. You can have the greatest dragon punching, LMG aiming, base building, or whatever ability in the world, and if you lose, you're still the less skilled player.

So here's what I have to say to you, in short: If you lose, you played less skillfully than the winner. It doesn't matter what he did, as long as you had the identical ability to choose that option (that includes picking before the actual match starts), he won based on skill.

I find it fascinating that you have enough knowledge of Quake to use the standard argument as to why the BFG is actually balanced, yet you are ignorant enough to ask the question "What community?" I wonder, did Sirlin also provide that argument? Because anyone who has gone online with an old school dedicated server based PC shooter can tell you exactly what I mean by community. Between the ignorance represented by that statement, and that of the comment about only a fraction of players having mics -- in a PC game, everyone has a keyboard, even if nobody has a mic -- I can see you have never spent any real amount of time with an online game that was not populated by degenerate players. There's no point in arguing this further, because we are coming from different worlds of experience. As wrong as you are in this, you have the mindset of an Xbox Live player, and there's no changing that without putting you into a community heavy PC game. I weep for you, and all who have had such a terrible online experience. They will never know the joys that come from meeting a fun group of strangers that play at the same time they do, making friends with them, and meeting up regularly on their favorite server. They will never know just how social online gaming can be, and I weep for them, though they may never know why.

 

[milskidasith]

Nope. Smart players use degenerate tactics. Bad games have degenerate tactics.

Anyway, who's acting like a spoiled child in a game: The guy who's playing by the rules of the game, or the one who's bitching because he doesn't like how other people are playing? Hint: It's not the guy playing by the rules. There are no playground rules. There are just what the game does and doesn't allow. As for a social experience: Are you kidding me? Online games aren't social unless you are playing with people you know. About one in ten people have mics, and about one in ten of those people are anything but people bitching about how other people are cheap. The only reason I even follow playground rules with friends is because that's playing to lose friends; if my friends weren't, to put it bluntly, scrubs about certain tactics (oddly enough, not so much the noob tube as the semi auto sniper rifle and using stealth classes in free for all), I'd do whatever it took to come out on top.

As for skill: What is skill? How can you determine skill except by who wins? Valuation is a skill. Picking the right strategy is due to skill. The game isn't a test of "who can get headshots only with their pistols" or even "who can aim the best" it's a test of "who gets the most kills?" The person with the most kills played the most skillfully that match. To use Sirlin's example, which I know you're going to say is somehow wrong and a good way to lose friends (which it may be, but when I'm playing with random people online, there aren't friends out there to lose), the game isn't a match of "who can use the flashy moves the most" it's a game of who can knock the other guy out first. You can have the greatest dragon punching, LMG aiming, base building, or whatever ability in the world, and if you lose, you're still the less skilled player.

So here's what I have to say to you, in short: If you lose, you played less skillfully than the winner. It doesn't matter what he did, as long as you had the identical ability to choose that option (that includes picking before the actual match starts), he won based on skill.

I find it fascinating that you have enough knowledge of Quake to use the standard argument as to why the BFG is actually balanced, yet you are ignorant enough to ask the question "What community?" I wonder, did Sirlin also provide that argument? Because anyone who has gone online with an old school dedicated server based PC shooter can tell you exactly what I mean by community. Between the ignorance represented by that statement, and that of the comment about only a fraction of players having mics -- in a PC game, everyone has a keyboard, even if nobody has a mic -- I can see you have never spent any real amount of time with an online game that was not populated by degenerate players. There's no point in arguing this further, because we are coming from different worlds of experience. As wrong as you are in this, you have the mindset of an Xbox Live player, and there's no changing that without putting you into a community heavy PC game. I weep for you, and all who have had such a terrible online experience. They will never know the joys that come from meeting a fun group of strangers that play at the same time they do, making friends with them, and meeting up regularly on their favorite server. They will never know just how social online gaming can be, and I weep for them, though they may never know why.

I play PC games. Yeah, not everybody has a mic, but people who actually chat are still rare. They aren't as rare, and the sense of community is there a bit more, but you know what? There's still no problem with doing stuff that works.

As for your whole "I pity you" bullshit: Don't. I have fun. You clearly don't, seeing as you are intent on arguing how you hate cheap players. Yeah, I've been on plenty of great community servers. You know what? None of them ever got mad when you played to win. Used the BFG? The other players should have controlled the area. Abused the spy's pistol when the hitbox for everybody's head was huge? Not a big deal, it's just how the game was.

I weep for you, where you have to create tons of arbitrary rules to have fun and can have your game ruined by one player who's doing something you don't like. Me, I'll go back to playing, whether TF2 on the PC, MW2 on the Xbox or PC, Red Dead on the Xbox, all the games I play, play to win, and have fun. Yeah, there are some communities that are sticks in the mud and ***** when you do certain things. I just don't play with them. There are more than enough communities where you can have fun with other players and do what you want, and if you're just server hopping, why bother limiting yourself?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

why bother limiting yourself?

It's only limiting myself in the way that not spitting in the eye of my opponent in an actual sport is limiting myself, or in the way that following the banned/restricted list in a trading card game tournament is limiting myself. What really saddens me is that you can't see that. This is the kind of hubris that, on a larger scale, leads to disasters like the oil spill in the Gulf. It's petty, it's arrogant, and personally, I have no use for it.

By the way: I have plenty of fun, but when I see someone using a truly cheap tactic, I have no pity on him for getting kicked from the server, or otherwise ostracized by the community. I don't generally gripe about cheap tactics, but I do believe they exist, and it bugs me when people claim they don't. The only thing I really pity them for is their apparent lack of social skills, and their tendency to piss off people for no good reason.

 

[Georgie_Leech]

In a shooter, spawns are off limits. With everything, no hacking. Beyond that, I celebrate creativity whenever I find it. I will then usually add it to my repitoire of tricks up my sleeve.

 

[milskidasith]

why bother limiting yourself?

It's only limiting myself in the way that not spitting in the eye of my opponent in an actual sport is limiting myself, or in the way that following the banned/restricted list in a trading card game tournament is limiting myself. What really saddens me is that you can't see that. This is the kind of hubris that, on a larger scale, leads to disasters like the oil spill in the Gulf. It's petty, it's arrogant, and personally, I have no use for it.

By the way: I have plenty of fun, but when I see someone using a truly cheap tactic, I have no pity on him for getting kicked from the server, or otherwise ostracized by the community. I don't generally gripe about cheap tactics, but I do believe they exist, and it bugs me when people claim they don't. The only thing I really pity them for is their apparent lack of social skills, and their tendency to piss off people for no good reason.

Yeah, no, it's not like your first paragraph at all. Guess what: The rules in a limited set are the rules. Breaking them is going out of the bounds of a game. In a shooter, there are no rules. There's just what is in the game. The objective isn't "kill using only these weapons and not going through these areas" it's "kill the guy."

As for attributing me to the oil spill, all I can really say to that is "What the ****?" I literally said that when I read that. Seriously, that's twice in this thread I've been attributed to real world issues; first I get attributed to Hitler, and now I'm somehow as bad as BP? I suppose I should also start acting like Big Brother, Stalin, Dubya/Obama (your choice on who you hate), and President Buchanan, right?

You're griping about cheap tactics now, and you've mentioned how they ruin your fun, yet you now complain you don't gripe about cheap tactics and they don't hinder your fun. They don't exist. People using tactics you deem cheap aren't pissing you off for no reason. They're not even pissing you off at all. You're pissing yourself off by making up rules that don't exist and then having them broken by people who don't care about your rules. It's not my fault if you don't like fireball spam, or zerg rushes, or grenade launchers, or camping, or whatever the complaint is. It's your own fault.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

As for attributing me to the oil spill, all I can really say to that is "What the ****?" I literally said that when I read that. Seriously, that's twice in this thread I've been attributed to real world issues; first I get attributed to Hitler, and now I'm somehow as bad as BP? I suppose I should also start acting like Big Brother, Stalin, Dubya/Obama (your choice on who you hate), and President Buchanan, right?

Okay, I'm going to stop arguing after this, as there's no point. I can't comment on the guy who compared you to Hitler, but let me explain what I meant with the oil spill comment. There were no laws (rules) against BP drilling so far off shore that there would be no way to stop a leak if it happened. There was also nothing to make sure the safety measures on the rig actually worked. So what happened? They drilled too far off the coast to do anything if the rig sprung a leak, and guess what? We're now looking down the barrel of a dead Gulf of Mexico. My point with that comment was, just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. Basically, it wasn't a reductio ad Hitlerium so much as a reductio ad Ayn Randium; given the basically selfish tenets of Sirlin's philosophy, I'd say it's a fair comparison.

 

[milskidasith]

As for attributing me to the oil spill, all I can really say to that is "What the ****?" I literally said that when I read that. Seriously, that's twice in this thread I've been attributed to real world issues; first I get attributed to Hitler, and now I'm somehow as bad as BP? I suppose I should also start acting like Big Brother, Stalin, Dubya/Obama (your choice on who you hate), and President Buchanan, right?

Okay, I'm going to stop arguing after this, as there's no point. I can't comment on the guy who compared you to Hitler, but let me explain what I meant with the oil spill comment. There were no laws (rules) against BP drilling so far off shore that there would be no way to stop a leak if it happened. There was also nothing to make sure the safety measures on the rig actually worked. So what happened? They drilled too far off the coast to do anything if the rig sprung a leak, and guess what? We're now looking down the barrel of a dead Gulf of Mexico. My point with that comment was, just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. Basically, it wasn't a reductio ad Hitlerium so much as a reductio ad Ayn Randium; given the basically selfish tenets of Sirlin's philosophy, I'd say it's a fair comparison.

My comment stands: What the ****? You have neither any idea about how the oil spill happened, nor have you actually made any link to the fact that I use what's allowed by the rules. It seems as if you are implying if I don't obey your rules of cheapness I'll cause some kind of massive disaster which will ruin the entire gaming community, which makes no sense. I actively avoid (or just mute) the people who complain about cheapness.

As for selfishness: It is a game, where the objective is set in stone. There's nothing selfish about doing what allows you to win. There is something selfish about trying to force your way of playing on others.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

My comment stands: What the ****? You have neither any idea about how the oil spill happened, nor have you actually made any link to the fact that I use what's allowed by the rules. It seems as if you are implying if I don't obey your rules of cheapness I'll cause some kind of massive disaster which will ruin the entire gaming community, which makes no sense. I actively avoid (or just mute) the people who complain about cheapness.

As for selfishness: It is a game, where the objective is set in stone. There's nothing selfish about doing what allows you to win. There is something selfish about trying to force your way of playing on others.

Okay, how do I not have any idea about how the oils spill happened? I live in Florida. I'm bombarded with images of my home being destroyed because the water is too deep for the oil company to plug up the hole. (Okay, granted it's closer to Louisiana, but I'm saying the Gulf as a whole is my home. Not to mention, by the time they have the leak completely stopped up, the slick will be a whole lot closer to my state's shoreline. Besides, they've already found tarballs in the Keys.) At any rate, the people over at BP knew ahead of time that if they wound up with a leaking pipe on the sea floor, they wouldn't be able to do anything about it at that depth, but in the absence of a law banning it, they went ahead with it -- and in their arrogance, they are now killing the Gulf.

When I compared the law to a rule, I meant the written in stone rules like gravity and gun damage, not the community rules. Unless I'm completely misunderstanding you, your entire argument hinges on not breaking those. I also said nothing about what actually caused the rig to blow up. It was a natural gas leak, by the way. My point was that on a larger scale your attitudes about "There's no rule against it, so that makes it okay" lead to problems.

As for your last sentence, what the heck do you think telling the other players, who are happily playing by their agreed upon rules, that they're wrong for agreeing to lock off cheap tactics? Because I'd say it's trying to force your way of playing on others. However, the specific instance of selfishness I was referring to was the idea that your fun trumps everyone else's in a multiplayer game, and your insistence that there's no reason to play nice with the proverbial other children. If that's not selfish, I don't know what is.

 

[Shimmyshake]

snip

I think the main reason people are getting so worked up about your argument is that you sound like you're talking down to us. You've got a slightly annoying tone of superiority.

 

[kajinking]

Anybody who complains about cheapness is a scrub. They can be good at the game, but they will never improve by putting mental limitations on certain aspects of the game. If it works, use it.

I say the same thing about "cheaters".

Since when is using stuff that is in the game cheating? The only thing that is cheating is doing something beyond the normal parameters of the game. Read the book Playing To Win, by David Sirlin, it explains the view I have better than I can, though I'll certainly be forced into an argument in this topic anyway.

Let me be clear, Hacking a sight to where you can place a turret in an area your not suppose to be in so that it can shoot people but they can't shoot it is cheating. This is my definition of cheating,

Dropping a Teleporter exit right at the enemies intelligence is smart and innovative.

Dropping a turret right outside the spawn barracks to when the enemy opens their main door they are immediately killed is cheap.

Playing a full team of one particular type is STUPID!

I get annoyed when people complain snipers of camping... their snipers! they're SUPPOSE TO! Someone with a twelve gage hiding in a corner in the blind spot of a hallway, waiting for someone to run by is being innovative and using the weapon correctly. This is not camping. Learn where they are and apply the appropriate strategy to take them down. I had a spy hiding in a dark corner, he stabbed everyone in the back who ran by and ranked up quite a score. When he did it to me, i saw in the kill cam where he was hiding. WHen i respawned, i took my rocket and shot him from across the room. BOYA *****.

Spawning into a game only to have the enemy waiting for you and shooting you IS camping and is cheap because your not giving the other person any chance what so ever.

Hope that makes things a bit clear.

I dont cheap out and cry when someone better than me whoops my ass. I learn form the experience and grow.

I have to agree with your argument. I had a similar problem with one blue spy on the first leg of dustbowl at the second point. I was on pryo duty since we where using mainly sentries supported by heavy medic combo's to defend the cap point and I knew sooner or later we where going to swimming in spies. Sure enough I start burning one or two spies to death about 1-2 minutes into the second defense at which point I hear "Incoming!" and see a ubered heavy making a beeline for our SG's down the stairs on the right. I get into postion and prepare to airblast him away only to have a spy backstab me. We survive, rebuild, and keep fighting. One minute later I start guarding the one way gate where the Blu's have a tele base set up so I can stop or delay any more ubers. Again backstab from that spy hiding out on the top of the stairs before going on to stab the heavy next to me. I respawn, warn my team, and head back to the stairs where I have a nice little spy BBQ. You would think that he would have learned his lession and moved or even helped his team by going after our nice little sentry farm but no, he keeps getting back into postion and I keep burning. It ended up getting to the point where I had to tell him "You may want to move to a diffrent spot". The point is that all campers are only as effective as the team they are camping. Todays lesson: Learn, Adapt, Get revenge...

 

[zehydra]

Efficient implies that this it is the best way (with time and energy spent) taken into account, and reduces some kind of cost in the end. Cheap sort of means now that you're making it so there's nothing the enemy can do against your method, or there's no way to retaliate.

 

[milskidasith]

My comment stands: What the ****? You have neither any idea about how the oil spill happened, nor have you actually made any link to the fact that I use what's allowed by the rules. It seems as if you are implying if I don't obey your rules of cheapness I'll cause some kind of massive disaster which will ruin the entire gaming community, which makes no sense. I actively avoid (or just mute) the people who complain about cheapness.

As for selfishness: It is a game, where the objective is set in stone. There's nothing selfish about doing what allows you to win. There is something selfish about trying to force your way of playing on others.

Okay, how do I not have any idea about how the oils spill happened? I live in Florida. I'm bombarded with images of my home being destroyed because the water is too deep for the oil company to plug up the hole. (Okay, granted it's closer to Louisiana, but I'm saying the Gulf as a whole is my home. Not to mention, by the time they have the leak completely stopped up, the slick will be a whole lot closer to my state's shoreline. Besides, they've already found tarballs in the Keys.) At any rate, the people over at BP knew ahead of time that if they wound up with a leaking pipe on the sea floor, they wouldn't be able to do anything about it at that depth, but in the absence of a law banning it, they went ahead with it -- and in their arrogance, they are now killing the Gulf.

When I compared the law to a rule, I meant the written in stone rules like gravity and gun damage, not the community rules. Unless I'm completely misunderstanding you, your entire argument hinges on not breaking those. I also said nothing about what actually caused the rig to blow up. It was a natural gas leak, by the way. My point was that on a larger scale your attitudes about "There's no rule against it, so that makes it okay" lead to problems.

As for your last sentence, what the heck do you think telling the other players, who are happily playing by their agreed upon rules, that they're wrong for agreeing to lock off cheap tactics? Because I'd say it's trying to force your way of playing on others. However, the specific instance of selfishness I was referring to was the idea that your fun trumps everyone else's in a multiplayer game, and your insistence that there's no reason to play nice with the proverbial other children. If that's not selfish, I don't know what is.

Still wrong about the Gulf. For one thing, there were safety measures in place that would prevent it, but they failed. For another thing, their first plan (Top Hat) only failed due to a buildup of undersea gas, which was unforeseeable. Furthermore, the entire issue of whether it was BP or a contracted group is cloudy and a tangled mess; acting as if it is as simple as greed is grossly oversimplifying a major issue. It wasn't just "them being greedy" it was also the fact that security procedures failed, certain things were damaged and not reported by other companies that were contracted out, and unforseeable circumstances.

In a larger scale, sure, doing whatever might be problematic. But what does that have to do with a game, at all? The game has set rules and a set objective. Real life isn't a game, and making it out to be is grossly oversimplifying life in order to somehow make a point about video games. You can't define life with rules; it's far, far too complex. Video games *are* defined by their rules. There's no point to making up rules for them.

With your last paragraph: Have you not read what I said? I don't go around complaining when people make up stupid rules. I avoid the server. I don't play on servers where they cloud the game up with annoying rules, especially since many of them create tons of fuzzy rules such as "no spawn camping" (How long after spawning are they legal to shoot?), or just no camping in general, and those servers tend to have admins that ban for just winning in any way since they call it cheap.

My problem is with people who, whether in random matches or another server, whine about something being cheap. I see *far* more of the people who go on to servers where anything is fine and complain about cheapness than people who go to a server with rules just to break them. If you want to play on your own server with your own rules, fine, just don't complain about how I'm being cheap when you join a server where the rules aren't hard coded in and I do something you don't like.

snip

I think the main reason people are getting so worked up about your argument is that you sound like you're talking down to us. You've got a slightly annoying tone of superiority.

Funny, I thought the exact same thing about the people who are comparing me to Hitler and grossly oversimplifying oil spills in order to paint me as some kind of cartoonish villain out only to ruin other peoples fun.

My point is simple: You want to make up rules? Fine, I don't give a shit. Make your own server, ban the people who break your rules, program it so you can't pick grenade launchers, whatever, I don't care. Just don't complain when you go to a server where such things aren't banned and people do use those tactics.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Still wrong about the Gulf. For one thing, there were safety measures in place that would prevent it, but they failed. For another thing, their first plan (Top Hat) only failed due to a buildup of undersea gas, which was unforeseeable. Furthermore, the entire issue of whether it was BP or a contracted group is cloudy and a tangled mess; acting as if it is as simple as greed is grossly oversimplifying a major issue. It wasn't just "them being greedy" it was also the fact that security procedures failed, certain things were damaged and not reported by other companies that were contracted out, and unforseeable circumstances.

In a larger scale, sure, doing whatever might be problematic. But what does that have to do with a game, at all? The game has set rules and a set objective. Real life isn't a game, and making it out to be is grossly oversimplifying life in order to somehow make a point about video games. You can't define life with rules; it's far, far too complex. Video games *are* defined by their rules. There's no point to making up rules for them.

Alright, I'm done arguing with you about games, because there's no getting through to you. However, you have no room to call me ignorant about the Gulf when A.)I can be at the Florida shore of it in an hour, and have spent a significant portion of my life on that shore, B.) you said the top kill procedure was the first failed attempt -- it was the third -- and c.) You made the mistake of calling the top kill procedure a top hat procedure for crying out loud. By the way, there was nothing unforseeable about there being enough pressure in an oil well for a little bit of mud and rocks to be pushed out. They've been trying hail Mary plays since their real first attempt to fix it, wherein they put a giant box with a pipe to siphon off the oil over the leak that, surprise surprise, wound up frozen up in a way that pretty much any engineer could have told them would happen. They tried it a second time before going to the top kill, and the same thing happened then, too.

What's more, they knew when they built the rig that if they wound up with an honest to God leak, none of the procedures they had for stopping one would work at that depth. BP may not be the only company involved, but they bear the brunt of the burden simply for building wells so far off shore. Further, why do you think those nebulous other companies weren't properly maintaining the safety measures, and why they didn't report it? it was cheaper. Corporate greed, corporate selfishness, corporate "it's not against the rules, so I'm going to do it."

 

[milskidasith]

Still wrong about the Gulf. For one thing, there were safety measures in place that would prevent it, but they failed. For another thing, their first plan (Top Hat) only failed due to a buildup of undersea gas, which was unforeseeable. Furthermore, the entire issue of whether it was BP or a contracted group is cloudy and a tangled mess; acting as if it is as simple as greed is grossly oversimplifying a major issue. It wasn't just "them being greedy" it was also the fact that security procedures failed, certain things were damaged and not reported by other companies that were contracted out, and unforseeable circumstances.

In a larger scale, sure, doing whatever might be problematic. But what does that have to do with a game, at all? The game has set rules and a set objective. Real life isn't a game, and making it out to be is grossly oversimplifying life in order to somehow make a point about video games. You can't define life with rules; it's far, far too complex. Video games *are* defined by their rules. There's no point to making up rules for them.

Alright, I'm done arguing with you about games, because there's no getting through to you. However, you have no room to call me ignorant about the Gulf when A.)I can be at the Florida shore of it in an hour, and have spent a significant portion of my life on that shore, B.) you said the top kill procedure was the first failed attempt -- it was the third -- and c.) You made the mistake of calling the top kill procedure a top hat procedure for crying out loud. By the way, there was nothing unforseeable about there being enough pressure in an oil well for a little bit of mud and rocks to be pushed out. They've been trying hail Mary plays since their real first attempt to fix it, wherein they put a giant box with a pipe to siphon off the oil over the leak that, surprise surprise, wound up frozen up in a way that pretty much any engineer could have told them would happen. They tried it a second time before going to the top kill, and the same thing happened then, too.

What's more, they knew when they built the rig that if they wound up with an honest to God leak, none of the procedures they had for stopping one would work at that depth. BP may not be the only company involved, but they bear the brunt of the burden simply for building wells so far off shore. Further, why do you think those nebulous other companies weren't properly maintaining the safety measures, and why they didn't report it? it was cheaper. Corporate greed, corporate selfishness, corporate "it's not against the rules, so I'm going to do it."

First off, I live in Louisiana, so stop giving me all the bullshit about how you're so knowledgeable because you live close to the gulf. Second off: There is, in fact, a top hat procedure. Are you really that ignorant? The top hat procedure was when they attempted to put a giant cap on it, blocked by undersea gasses, not because it froze. Top kill was when they sprayed "mud" (not really mud, but something similar) and then cement to fill it up.

Anyway, you're ignored; this is off topic and you're being willfully ignorant and strawmanning me out almost as bad as the guy who compared me to Hitler.