Widgets vs Cheating

dyth68

quote: I see the only purpose of rewards (in the context of a game) to be increasing fun. So I don't see a reason to reward one skill (rapidly flitting about the map) when there are plenty of other skills (such as grand strategy, careful unit choices, clever manoeuvrers or just splitting attention between the *non*-trivial things) to reward. I think rewards should concentrate on the skills that are fun to practice and think flitting about and keeping track of a huge number of trivial things is less fun to practice than the other aspects of the game. I also think ladder positioning is only a substantial reward for a few people who are concentrated near the top.

There's far more going on than APM that should be given credit. You listed some of them yourself. Like Randy, I'm getting old and laugh at how slow I'm becoming. You'd think that would make me FOR micro reducing widgets but honestly I'm not sold. So whilst you say you don't enjoy practising those aspects, I still do. For me there's a lot of fun to be had executing a three pronged attack, or a bait into some nasty cloak and paralyze trap whilst a scythe hits those winds. I DO enjoy those things going well and put a lot of effort into making sure they're set up and executed well, even if doing so requires me to experience a sloppy blurred mess of activity most times. I'd never trade my personal ability to do it for a bot, because it's no longer skillful or cool then. It's the norm.

UI stuff like better indicators I can get behind. Auto-jump away from danger, artillery revealing, bots etc... Nah. It's the equivalent of PEDs and Steroids in sports. Fine for casual stuff, banned in official games like the Olympics. What makes our competitive / ranked play any more official or serious than casual if it's not held to some sort of additional standard?

quote: A game that plays itself, and I think you're suggesting that you can take control of any unit(s).

It's more than that: i want the army to be able to fight on its own while i am free to fractally interfere on any level of its operation.

I want to sometimes personally take the Glaive's body and from inside of it, in first person to shoot its machine gun while looking the enemy in the whites of their robot eyes;

To then tell the whole squad that their job is to raid undefended enemy assets within a specific backwater range;

And then, i want to address the whole robot host under my command and tell them we're beginning a global liberation offensive and that they should make obscene gestures at the enemy to demotivate them.

Only the less janky ones. The janky ones are often the most useful/briefly OP.

Lynx: What does "ranked" mean? Would lobsterpots count? That passworded game with some friends you didn't bother to noElo?

Also, GoogleFrog has already said he sees little difference between widgets included in the game but disabled-by-default and people's custom widgets.


Dregs: You give examples of "executing a three pronged attack" and "bait into some nasty cloak and paralyze trap whilst a scythe hits those winds." and I can agree those are good, but they also not something that widgets are going to be getting rid of any time soon. Consider the case that started the discussion of idle Scythes not moving out of the way of a random enemy glaive coming near.
That is something that, to be avoided, can require you checking up on all your idle scythes every two seconds. THAT I think is not a skill that's worth practising. Similarly, I don't think getting really good at quickly moving your camera to backtrack ballistic trajectories is a worthwhile skill to learn.


Anarchid: Have you seen PRO_rANDY's thread? He doesn't seem to be switching between keeping track of a large number of things at once.

quote: Have you seen PRO_rANDY's thread? He doesn't seem to be switching between keeping track of a large number of things at once.

I have seen the thread but have not consumed the video materials, as i no longer commute on public transit where i used to be able to suffer through doing that.

Randy preferring to manifest in few larger attentions is useful knowledge. I shall endeavour to manifest as many smaller low-risk attentions next time i encounter him.

quote: Also, I strongly disagree that games are supposed to be a competitive test of skill. Playing vs. an AI or someone who has a way better UI than you will still be a test of skill.

We have a competitive ladder. Of course that section of the game is supposed to be a competitive test of skill. What was the original purpose of making that ladder? To measure players skill against eachother, or something else to do with who was packing the most PEWs (Performance Enhancing Widgets yo, what a term)?

If people have widgets that are genuinely about UI improvements, they are prime candidates for integration and as such would be allowed in a theoretically locked down ranked competitive ladder environment - so no harm there.

If anything, by formalizing this, you get a better pipeline for widget submission and pressure to get them out of the dark and into players hands.

"I strongly disagree that games are supposed to be a competitive test of skill."






clearly those are both examples of games. there is no difference between them, right? Everyone knows that chess has nothing to do with reading-skill and the outcome is surely purely random.

Stellaris is grand strategy and roleplaying :D
Its "real-time" but plays far too slowly for the need to actually be split on where to micro at a time.

Unless this auto-expand of which you speak is really sophisticated, you can replicate its behavior with a few large, chained automex orders. And if you put on repeat, mexes will be rebuilt automatically until all involved builders are dead.

Likewise you can give long energy construction chains to builders, leave them on low priority, and switch to normal when you want to invest on energy.

That being said, if an auto-build-energy widget ramps up your energy in pace with your current metal production/overdrive, that is something hard to automate with just interface commands atm. Priorities are often useful but are also too binary, being able to get more fractional with who gets how much metal would be nice.

quote: I disagree with the above post in a complicated way that I may figure out later.

Dregs I think I am honing in on my disagreement with what you are writing. Or perhaps how you are writing it.

Basically, you write like you know the objective truth about the very nature of competition itself, and all you need to do is argue people into seeing this truth. You consistently denigrate abilities that don't fit in your definition of "skill", calling those advocating for a different type of competition (what you see as subverting the competition) as having "no business" winning, just wanting to hurt those with "real" skill, trying to win even though they lack talent, or just being envious. I seriously cannot tell how your view looks from the inside or what type of thing you think the views of others are. Do you think you are objectively correct? Do you think that everyone agrees with you on the fundamental nature of competition, but that some people just happen to be evil (like a strawman Christian that cannot conceive of people who aren't either Christains or Satanists)?

What I see is a particular opinion on the types of skills that should and not make you good at ZK. If you took a step back and considered your opinion as just one in a sea of many, then I expect you would find quite a bit of common ground with most of the people here. You don't need to argue people into your exact opinion and attempts to do so are often pointless. I don't think your view is as hard line as some of your posts make it out to be, but that might be a failure by me to put myself in your shoes. Perhaps you are mainly reacting to a perceived slippery slope.

There are many different types of skill. You barely mentioned Zero-K in your post so, although it was probably implicit, humor my generalisation of what you said to other games.

• "Being capable of multitasking is tantamount to good play" - What about in Olympic archery? (idk much about archery but it looks like they are focused on a single task)
• "Automation doesn't create gladiators, it creates an endless cycle of code adjustments." - Why not both, such as in Screeps or an AI challenge? http://ants.aichallenge.org/
• "They have put in the research and practise" - What if engineering is also required, such as in Battle Bots? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BattleBots
• "a place where people with talent should stand out" - But only a particular set of talents?

Now you might reply

quote: Sure PRO_rANDY doesn't have the strength to be an Olympic gymnast, but that isn't relevant to Zero-K.

and you would right (assuming Liquipedia is correct), but that highlights my point. You're not arguing against a bunch of evil people who know what "real work" is and are just too lazy to get the "rewards" without any "talent". You're arguing against a bunch of people who don't share your exact view of what kind of talent or skill should be rewarded by Zero-K.

Imagine a space (a vector space) with axis (basis) corresponding to everything a human can be good or bad at. Everyone is somewhere in this space based on all their abilities. Every game is in this space to (assuming a bunch of unrealistic linearity) with its position (vector) based on what skills it requires. A game that cares nothing about memory has a very low value on that axis while a game that cares a lot about multitasking as a high value. The closer a human is to a game in this space (the higher the dot product of their vectors), the better they are at the game. Zero-K is a point in this space, but the opinions around where Zero-K should be are more like a cloud.

Take a look at Battle Bots again. There are people who think that Zero-K should be closer to Battle Bots than you do. You can't deny that Battle Bots is a competition (or at least its ideal is, I don't know the particulars). Battle Bots is testing the player's skill at designing and constructing a robot prior to fighting, as well as their reaction time and micromanagement when controlling the robot in battle. This is akin to people tinkering with the ZK UI prior to games, and then piloting it against other players with similar setups ingame. If their janky unit AI breaks and shoots themselves in the foot they are not annoyed at the UI, they have had their widget-writing skill tested and found wanting. Improving this skill is part of the competition for them. And I have just hit upon another reason that simply including player-widgets in the repository is a non-solution (a default widget has to work, it is not a learning experience when someone else's code breaks).

Finally on that post, maybe you would need to push your opinion that hard if one of the more hardcore cyborg players were at the wheel, but they are not so there is time for subtly and understanding. I think the number of players that actually want to play the implications of full-cyborg Zero-K is rather small. I don't know much about the details of Istrolid, but it sounds like a cautionary tale.

quote: To answer your final point, I think a particular play should be rewarded if it is a smart, strategical decision.

PRO_rANDY I don't think anyone could reasonably disagree with this. The disagreement comes when judging what should be a strategic option, and baiting enemy units into clearly bad actions often comes down on the side of something that shouldn't be in the strategy space. What if Glaives had a mechanic where they chased any unit they shot at automatically with Fire At Will for 10 seconds and were uncontrollable for that entire time? It would be a good strategy to bait Glaives, and removing this hindrance would remove options, but we think the game can handle the loss of such options. Part of the philosophy of ZK is that a player's simple desires for a unit should be communicable without requiring an upkeep in micromanagement to implement. "Don't fire at Fleas" is one such desire. This desire would have upkeep if implemented via Hold Fire and constant checking to see whether an appropriate target is in range.

To reiterate, this philosophy is not the same as that of "reducing micromanagement burden". Micromanagement will always be present largely because the fast pace of the game makes your overall goals change rapidly as new information and counter plays come to light. A simple AI could not react to all the ways your goals often change during a raid. Whenever set your Ronin to Attack Move and go do something else you are missing out the choice to clump up, dive in, move back, or do some other maneuver. Such choices should be frequent enough to make them worth making, instead of just leaving units on Attack Move. Sure, these choices could be made automatically be a global AI that has a valuation of your army, the enemy army, and each of the targets in range. That is why the philosophy is about simple desires like "stay at max range" or "don't fire 10 Scalpels at one Glaive". There shouldn't be a "go perform an optimal battle over here" command, even though it would certainly reduce micromanagement.