Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)

[Foodstamp]

triqui said:

Roleplaying has nothing to do with playing to win or not. You can play to win and roleplay/play thematic, and you can play thematic/roleplay and be a complete moron strategically.

The two camps are not roleplayers vs non-roleplayers. The 2 factions are min-maxers vs non-minmaxers. A mix-maxer is happy to play with Mists of Deceipt, for example, even if he knows it is bugged and broken, just becouse it is a good adventage. A non-mixmaxer is not willing to do so, and preffer that spell to be fixed, or removing it from game. A min-maxer ussually acept that everything that is in the game, is allowed (like MoD, or copying Bogus orders, or moving 3 provinces with move+patrol), and that the game is balanced becouse everybody can (or should) know what those bugs (or features) are, so everybody can use them. Those who dont know that twiceborn on a demon will grant them inmortality are not of their business.

The guys who carry that a step further are cheaters. Which mean they hack the 2h file and whatever (things that are not inside the game, intended or not). I havent read no one here saying that part is right. Although i beleieve that some people would consider it "fun", just that they wont admit they'll do. Heck, there are THOUSANDS of people who use aim-bots in counterstrike and what not... cheating is part of the nature of the gaming community.

So you are not roleplayers?

I don't know what to say. It sounds like you guys have created your own rules for the game, and you expect other people to have the manners to play by those rules, even if it means losing. I am guessing you guys would eat a loss or quit a game if it came down to doing that or finding a counter to something that is not a part of your personal ruleset.

[Sombre]

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don't.

You can find a counter to just about anything. For example the counter to Norfleet was having score graphs turned on.

[Edi]

Foodstamp, it's time for you to quit baiting the newer people, because that's mainly what your last few posts have been. Or it at least looks that way at a casual glance.

This whole RP/non-RP division is completely ridiculous and a red herring for the purposes of this discussion and making unsupported claims and statements about people being such, therefore having to conform to some sort of arbitrary ruleset or whatever is pure bull droppings.

From where I stand, both the "anything but hacking 2h files goes" crowd and the "house rules" side have points in their favor with regard to specific arguments, but neither side can claim being 100% correct.

Most of the stuff in the buglist is not something that can be turned around and used to wring an unintended advantage. Some things can be and those can be divided into categories according to just how they act.

• One example being the reverse communion issue, which acts like a feature and gives more options for all players who can access it (meaning anyone with astral magic).
• Another one is the army movement bug set, where stratmove 1 units can be made to march 10 provinces in one turn with the right commander (e.g. a horror) or more commonly 2 or 3. This is not intended and never has been or else the units would have greater stratmove. The sneaking out of siege bug is another one where Johan has gone on record saying it is a bug that should not be there.
• Then there's the Mists of Deception + BF Enchantment combo, which again has been confirmed to not work as it should.
• Demons with Twiceborn is another unintended consequence of something in the code, something that should work differently than it currently does

Out of that above list of examples, the first one is an equal opportunity exploit that does not give any kind of overwhelming instakill advantage and is widely available to various nations. The last one is basically specific to Lanka and can be used on a few unique blood summons and some Mictlan specific summons, so while it's still playing a crooked game to avoid losing units that would otherwise die (at least the second time around), but has its drawbacks and is limited.

MoD+DBFE is an instakill advantage when used by defender and should not work as it does, which at least in my mind places it in the category of being a dishonest tactic and playing a crooked game, therefore cheating. The same can be said of the movement bugs and I suppose on some level that I should have just sent those reports to Johan by PM and just put them in the list as "Movement 1 and Movement 2, reported by PM". Doesn't matter that the movement bugs are available to everyone equally, using them is playing a dishonest, crooked game in my book at least. I'd qualify that as cheating straight out, despite some of the rather torturous and hairsplitting definitions of cheating I've seen in this thread.

With that said, if somebody wants to play a game with house rules, fine, put as much restrictions as you like and use an honor system. Fine. If you enter a general game with few (if any) house rules, it's generally pointless to whine about some tactic being used (like he Wrathful Skies/AQ combo mentioned earlier) and in such games the only such complaints I'd take seriously are the MoD+DBFE and movement bug issues for the reasons given above.

It also seems that most MP games can eliminate at least one of these points of contention by just using a mod that removes Mists of Deception from the game entirely. That'll leave only its abusers as the complainers.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Edi, I agree what you wrote in your last post. Do you have a handy list of major bugs, that cause the game to behave in ways unintended by the devs. Then in the games that I admin i can simply provide a link to it, and say not to take advantange of any of the bugs in the list. Every game admin should do the same, but of course it is up to them.

I want to play games of Dominions, which involves troops. summons, magic, and forging, to out strat your opponent. I do not want to play games of, "take advantage of the current implementation of the dominion program".

- If that move and patrol bug was allowed to be used, people could simple make certain that all their castles are three spaces apart.Then by using the right commander they can move all their troops that distance regardless of the units stats. This would make map move stats, and the various survival skills almost obsolete.
-If the item spamming was allowed, it would have the potential of destroying the item forging part of the game, which for me is the funnest part.
-If the Mists Of Deception was allowed to be used it would make most of the other spells obsolete, and make only a small set of tactics viable in the game.

Strategies like Arcane Nexus, and clamming are game unbalancing (to a lesser extent), but they are also clearly in the dominion rules. Those three items that I mentioned earlier are clearly against the dominion rules. I would like a handy list of these game breaking bugs, so that i can reference them in the games that I admin. Its up to other admins if they want to do the same thing or not, but it is my opinion that most admins should.

[triqui]

Foodstamp said:
you expect other people to have the manners

Yep, bassically is that. I expect other people to have manners.

And yes, i would rather quit the game than needing to resort to move 3 province my heavy infantry through a bug or whatever any other thing that it is not working as intended.

In case you didnt notice, i already said that my grief with VotD has completelly dissappeared since Jonathan O has said that it is working as intended. I no longer see it as exploiting something that is buggy (becouse it is not, it works as the devs want it to work), therefore i dont care if you min-max it and use 20x per turn. I would not play with you if you keep using strat move 3 through move+patrol or Mist of Deception or any other of the tactics that do not work as intended.

[Foodstamp]

I no longer see it as exploiting

See, I can pull things out of context too.

I apologize if it seemed like baiting. But I wanted to make a point that "roleplayer" is not a synonym for someone who does not min/max.

With their replies they have agreed that playing by house rules does not make someone a roleplayer.

That's all I am going to add to this, and with a little bit of reading, you will see the baiting went both ways.

[DonCorazon]

Foodstamp, for my part in this discussion, I see your point re: role-playing.

If you have played Neverwinter Nights or similar games, people sometimes use the term as the opposite of min/maxing when they make characters. So you have the people who come up with awesome min/maxed characters that might not make sense from a "role-playing point of view" like the Paladin / Sorceress. Less powerful characters like the traditional Halfling Thief or quirky ones like the Gnome Barbarian are considered "role-playing" characters. In that case, it doesn't even refer to how well you act out the part of your character but more about trying to make characters that you think are fun without regard to having a maxed out character.


Anyway, that was how I used the term in this thread (e.g. role playing as the opposite of min/max), but I agree its not accurate as the term should just refer to people who get into acting out the role of the faction they are playing. Role-playing is a separate issue and people can certainly role-play while they min/max with a MoD combo.

I am not sure what the best term is for non-min/maxing but I guess its like pornography - you just know it when you see it.

[Foodstamp]

DonCorazon,

No biggy. I see the term thrown around quite a bit to explain why people won't use certain features, bugs etc. That is why I pushed the conversation a bit. I think it is interesting that people identify the game style as roleplaying.

Personally I would term it "casual play". By casual play I mean the player plays the game his way. If things do not jive with his way of playing, he is not engaged enough with the game to play outside his playstyle, which means he will quit, or choose to play with people who are willing to play by his rules.

Basically a mindset where the player says "I know this can be countered, but through a lot of tedious work on my part, and I am not in this game for tedious work."

Oftentimes roleplayers fit into the "casual player" mode as well, and I think that is why sometimes people consider them synonymous.

For instance, in an MMORPG I play, when our group ran with 3 priests, we were near invincible. The average group consisted of 2 priests normally. We would get /tells telling us that we were lame because we had three priests in our group, and that it was boring fighting us because they could not do enough damage to get through all the heals. There was nothing in the game to stop us from having 3 priests in our group, but rather than countering an unorthodox group make up, they chose to quit, because the time/thinking investment was beyond what they were willing to commit to.

Fixing bugs is one thing. But in the past I have seen this go beyond fixing bugs. As people get more vocal, some of the more unique aspects of some of the games I have played have been brought in line with what is the norm for the rest of the game, to make the vocal players happy.

There was a pet class in DAOC called an "Animist". Originally the class could summon as many pets as it's mana bar allowed. I used to play one of these characters and I would die more often than I would kill. This class had stationary pets that could only damage an enemy if they were within a certain close range. Animists would hide their pets behind walls so when enemies came through openings, the pets would damage them. The damage was weak, and if the player ran back out the hole in the wall, they would live. But more often than not, the player would freak out and run around in circles and die. Seemed like good strategy to me. But to people who felt beguiled by such tactics, it was cheap and lame. Over the years they were able to persuade the developers to cap the number of pets the player could have, until finally that character went from having as many as he could muster, to 15, and now finally 5. The thing that made the class unique was taken away because people complained enough. Not people in the know, but people who had just started playing, or refused to change their charge forward playstyle.

[Cerlin]

The second part of foodstamps post has special meaning for me...What i am seeing here is making me afraid of too much "nerfing" (an mmo term especially.)

I also played Dark Age of Camelot back in the day, and the reason I stopped playing the game is because people who did not want to think to counter good tactics would go on the forums, and whine until the developers changed the game to their liking. I really hope that does not happen here. After watching that happen in DAOC i totally understand Foodstamps reaction and I would say I have a similar one. People, please do not just whine about a tactic you dont like. Of course hacking the game files, or using glichy mapmovie isnt intended. But things like spells you personally dont like, that is just preference, it doesnt mean the game should change.

I would also like to say that I do not consider myself a great player at this game, I am mediocre at best. But i am one of the masochistic players who enjoys playing for the experience and losing and discovering new things. Hell I was playing on Sloth as LA C'tis and managed to lose to Tien Chi in less that 7 turns! That was a hell of an experience.

In conclusion, I want to say I love this game because of all the options, units, and counters. and I especially enjoy the forums because you all are for the most part interesting, mature, and intelligent people from all over the world. So let us please keep it civil on both sides (it seems to be getting back there.) And for the dev's please consider the whining just that, and fix the problems you feel are best.

[Sombre]

Rebalancing and nerfing does NOT automatically equate to less variety or in any way ruin the gameplaying experience. Often the people saying they're worried about this happening are just trying to protect the way they play, doing exactly what they accuse others of by whining to try and get things their way.

Let's say random indy light infantry were an amazing unit. Basically better than any national recruitable, better than any other indy, widely available. So everyone's using them because they're great. All is fair. But effectively people who want to try and use varied strategies, make the most of different units and so on are being punished since it's always better to build these light infantry. So it is suggested they are overpowered and should be nerfed into line with the other units. I guarantee there would be a few people up in arms about how the game was in danger of being nerfed into oblivion and how X random online game was ruined by nerfs and people complaining and how nothing needed to be done because hey, everyone can build them, so they're fair.

I just don't get it. Is it that hard to understand that good balancing /increases/ variety? Ever heard of Rock Paper Scissors Mentok? It's like Rock Paper Scissors, but with the added variety of Mentok, which beats the other three and ties with itself. See where I'm going with this?

Honestly the only reason I can see for their behaviour is that they really like using the overpowered unit/tactic/spell/whatever being discussed, particularly if their opponent isn't using it and is trying to make use of the outclassed other options.