Greibach said:
So what about a more grey example? In League of Legends...It was completely unbalanced though, and was patched somewhat quickly. Again, I say that you should not use such a thing.
I'd fall back on the same thing we said in the show, and I'll elaborate more on why in the next show. If it's not something that is banned in respectable tournaments or announced by the devs as a mistake that will be fixed, it's fair game. Why? Because you cannot control other people's behavior. You cannot enforce your concept of "sportsmanship" on them. So you have to assume that a good opponent will be using such an exploit to gain the edge. If he's using it, the only thing you can do to keep the game fair is to also use the exploit. This argument falls apart if the exploit can only be used by one side (as in the gangplank example). In that case, if I wound up on the side with the exploit, it's more likely that I might just not use it.
It's also a bit of common sense. If something is clearly wrong and so overpowered that it will absolutely get fixed, it's probably a bad idea to start relying on it. It's those exploits that are not quite so cut and dry where you have to just assume they will be part of the game unless told otherwise (by tournament bans or by the devs).
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So where do you draw the line on someone just playing to their fullest and someone "exploiting" the game? You guys basically ended with "don't hate the player, hate the game". You also said that you have to keep your reputation intact. To me, and I know this is not universal, I believe in sportsmanship. I feel that it is respectable to win because you have more skill, not because you have an artificial advantage.
What makes the advantage artificial? For example: shooting a rocket at the feet of your opponent drastically increases your chance of hitting them because of the splash damage. What makes this game rule less artificial than exploiting a trick to run 10% faster by strafing against a wall? In both cases you are using the game rules to your advantage, which is the proper definition of skill. The only difference is that one was not intended, but just because something was not intended doesn't mean it breaks the game experience.
As I said above, anything that clearly does break the game experience (exploiting a bug that forces your opponent to disconnect, or something that insta-kills him, for example) is a very different matter from the "grey area" that we were talking about on the show. My only point is that sportsmanship doesn't win you a tournament, knowing the game and using everything to your advantage does. If you refuse to use some small exploit because it's "beneath you" than you are playing a different game from the other players in the tournament. You're playing a game of chess where you consider the queen to be "too powerful" and therefore don't want to use it, and instead play with "real skill."
The comparison is not perfect, as exploits are unintended, and often change the game experience for the worse. And if you *can* make a gentlemen's agreement not to use powerful exploit X in order to enjoy the game more, that's completely acceptable. But I wouldn't expect or demand that tournament contenders conform to my way of playing unless it was specified in the tournament rules.
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While something may be allowed, if it is clearly vastly more powerful than any other option, I feel that the company behind the game should do their utmost to fix it ASAP, and I feel that if players want my respect they should win with a "balanced" character/setup/whatever. I don't rage at a player that is using something clearly OP, but neither do I respect them. I don't respect someone using something that is clearly OP to win in place of skill. That isn't to say that they don't have any skill, but it would be like if a team could start a soccer game with 2 goals up through a technicality. Sure, they would probably win, but they don't deserve my respect.
Now this does fall directly within the queen example. Just because you judge something to be overpowered (let's say the warrior's got some leap-stun thing that is very hard to dodge and gives him ample time to kill you), doesn't mean you get to rewrite the rules of the game. The leap-stun is still there, it's part of the rules. Hopefully if it is a big problem the devs will address it, but until they do, who are you to say that people should follow different rules? If everyone had their own set of rules for what things are "acceptable" to use and then raged at people who didn't follow their personal set of rules, the game would be chaos. We need to all play by the same rules, and in an electronic game those rules are the ones hard-coded into the game itself.
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Where do you draw THAT line though? The simple answer is you can't do so very clearly. Mostly I am not quick to claim that OP label on something. As you bring up with the rushing strategy, there is usually a counter to something, and often the more OP it seems, the bigger the risk if it fails. 6-pools are a great example. 6-pooling is an all in strategy. If you don't win with it right off the bat, you should lose to a skilled player. I do agree with the definition you guys used in which you take the general consensus among the top skilled community as the best guideline. I definitely agree with the idea of "try it yourself to see if it has a weakness". That usually works perfectly. The "easy" strategy usually is not all that easy against good players. When you try it yourself though and realize that the game is just much much easier and you really do win pretty much all the time... well that just isn't very fun to me.
I completely agree here. It sucks when one OP thing can basically turn an otherwise deep game into a shallow mess. In this case you have only a few options. Play with a disadvantage, find a way to enforce house rules that deepen the experience (own your own server, for example), get the devs to fix it, or stop playing.
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Why don't I respect players that just use the OP thing, or more so, why don't I just play that? On the meta level, I think it is harmful to the game and makes it very uninteresting if everyone just plays the exact same character with the exact same items using the exact same moves/exploits/whatever. That just plain isn't an interesting game to me. If there is one specific thing that is so optimal that the only way to beat it is to use it, that isn't interesting or fun.
What you've just described is a shallow game. There's no depth because there's only one viable option to use. Sometimes, you can find some way to ban the one thing that's preventing the game from being a deep, challenging experience, but often it's difficult to impossible to enforce such a ban. Hope for a patch!
LastDay said:
Hmmh to me griefing is all about the intent.
Much like trolling.
If somebody uses a huge exploit to completely crush the other team and win then it's exploiting, not griefing.
If an another guy is doing mostly the same but with the intent of having people rage then it's griefing.
Well that falls nicely into my definition. In the first example, the players are following the victory conditions of the game they are in. In the second, they have made up their own victory condition (force someone to rage-quit). I find that definition seems to fit every possible griefing scenario I can think of.
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