Abusing spectator (/team s)

[SirDude]

Sir|riS?

L0L i love it!

Excellent way to parody a clan!

[SlackerLinux]

https://bugzilla.icculus.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4879

looks fine to me should solve this issue

lavas alias isnt what this thread is about if you want to talk about that why not make a nice new thread

[WoGoMo]

Sir|riS?

L0L i love it!

Excellent way to parody a clan!

Glad you can see it. Which only proves my point.

[WoGoMo]

By using common sense. There isn't a possibility to devolve in the game is there? The /team <a/h/s> binds are not supposed to be a part of gameplay, just means of getting into a team, or do you disagree?

I may disagree with that being regarded as a cheat. If I am guilty of anything, it is lazyness, not bad intent. However, I will abide by whatever the powers that be decide. In any case it seems like the matter will be resolved soon with a patch to the server code. So there really isn't more to discuss is there?

[F50]

I'm afraid I cannot possibly see how someone could fail to understand that /team s was not meant to be a gameplay mechanic. Are people really this determined to use every available loophole in the game they can find? Why is lava (and others like him) so insistent on having a particular, special character delimited string in their name? Of course, I can't understand crouch-spam, the widespread (ab)use of the bbox-over-entity glitch for the same reason, but please, why?

[WoGoMo]

I'm afraid I cannot possibly see how someone could fail to understand that /team s was not meant to be a gameplay mechanic. Are people really this determined to use every available loophole in the game they can find? Why is lava (and others like him) so insistent on having a particular, special character delimited string in their name? Of course, I can't understand crouch-spam, the widespread (ab)use of the bbox-over-entity glitch for the same reason, but please, why?

You're right in the sense that /team s isnt a gameplay mechanic. But at the time I was not aiming to change gameplay in any way. I could have just easily gone to die on a ret or jump in front of a luci splash which would have been instantaneous anyway.

But yeah, common sense tells me that if it was wrong, admins would have at least warned me (as well as others) about it ages ago. Why then is this "common sense" among the admins only materializing now?

Anyway, I have after all agreed to abide by the ruling of the admins. It is fine by me.

[Anonymoose]

Sir|riS?

L0L i love it!

Excellent way to parody a clan!

CUNT!!!

[WoGoMo]

CUNT!!!

Relax. He's just a misguided kid who has taken it upon himself to launch a crusade against us every single little chance he gets.

Let him. The only thing he achieves is making himself look more ridiculous.

[mooseberry]

i cant see the problem with using it to come back as granger, simply because it was the easiest option at the time, i am sure if he was near one of those "wrong places" he would have used that way, either method would have had little effect on the outcome of that 'oh so serious' public game.
using it to escape from dying or escaping basilisks, well that is just low.

The people who make this game are not clueless. The fact that you can not devolve from dretch to granger is a purposeful game design. Using a bind to rapidly switch teams could not by any means be considered not circumventing game mechanics, since that, is by definition, what you are doing, and thus by definition it is a cheat. This is aimed at anyone who reads this.

And @ F50, while it is nice to imagine, I would consider it naive for an admin or dev not to imagine some players will do everything they can to advantage themselves.

[SirDude]

Sir|riS?

L0L i love it!

Excellent way to parody a clan!

CUNT!!!

realize that parodies are all fun and games.

CUNT!!!

Relax. He's just a misguided kid who has taken it upon himself to launch a crusade against us every single little chance he gets.

Let him. The only thing he achieves is making himself look more ridiculous.

Crusade?

I AM THE WAY

i cant see the problem with using it to come back as granger, simply because it was the easiest option at the time, i am sure if he was near one of those "wrong places" he would have used that way, either method would have had little effect on the outcome of that 'oh so serious' public game.
using it to escape from dying or escaping basilisks, well that is just low.

The people who make this game are not clueless. The fact that you can not devolve from dretch to granger is a purposeful game design. Using a bind to rapidly switch teams could not by any means be considered not circumventing game mechanics, since that, is by definition, what you are doing, and thus by definition it is a cheat. This is aimed at anyone who reads this.

And @ F50, while it is nice to imagine, I would consider it naive for an admin or dev not to imagine some players will do everything they can to advantage themselves.

This

[WoGoMo]

Geez. Cant believe this. A full day and people are still debating this.

Ok then if it means that much to you, go ahead and think of me as some evil cheater.

There, happy now? Move on and get a life. Oh.... and harden the fuck up.

[SirDude]

did i say thing about you? no.

[WoGoMo]

did i say thing about you? no.

Wasnt replying to you. Get over yourself.

[Lava_Croft]

https://bugzilla.icculus.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4879

Thank you very much!

[Anonymoose]

THE SYSTEM WORKS!

[SirDude]

Wasnt replying to you. Get over yourself.

how was i suppose to tell? it didn't have quotes and came right after mine.
that makes me full of myself?

[WoGoMo]

how was i suppose to tell? it didn't have quotes and came right after mine.
that makes me full of myself?

Well, the fact that you didn't say anything about me should have tipped you off.

[Tremulant]

Well, the fact that you didn't say anything about me should have tipped you off.

indeed.

[F50]

And @ F50, while it is nice to imagine, I would consider it naive for an admin or dev not to imagine some players will do everything they can to advantage themselves.

Its not that I cannot imagine it, I just can't understand it. I understand that people do this, but not why.

[Tremulant]

For the same reason that they bot.

[WoGoMo]

For the same reason that they bot.

I cannot speak on behalf of others who have done this, but if it occured to me that /team s had any other advantages than any other quick way of dying such as from a ret or wrong place, I would not even have done this. This is why I've never used /team s if I've already evolved into anything other than a dretch. I'd just rather go kill someone/something and die there.

Another reason why I did this (EDIT: as opposed to /kill) was only so that tremstats wouldn't report my favourite target as myself since so many idiots with extremely bad building skills love to join aliens.

That being said, to ask a teammate to kill you (such as what I see many human players doing a lot when there is no arm) so that you can respawn as a builder is EXACTLY THE SAME. Dretches can't do this because of dretch punt. I've personally never done this but I've been asked to kill a teammate on just too many occasions. (EDIT: If you're going to ban someone for using /team s, to be fair this should be banned as well.)

[SlackerLinux]

...
That being said, to ask a teammate to kill you (such as what I see many human players doing a lot when there is no arm) so that you can respawn as a builder is EXACTLY THE SAME. Dretches can't do this because of dretch punt. I've personally never done this but I've been asked to kill a teammate on just too many occasions. (EDIT: If you're going to ban someone for using /team s, to be fair this should be banned as well.)

teamkilling is a part of the gameplay asking your teammate to kill you is valid "/team" is for changing teams not devolving

[WoGoMo]

teamkilling is a part of the gameplay asking your teammate to kill you is valid "/team" is for changing teams not devolving

Thus asking a teammate to kill you is abusing gameplay mechanism loopholes.

[Tremulant]

teamkilling is a part of the gameplay asking your teammate to kill you is valid "/team" is for changing teams not devolving

Thus (EDIT: asking a teammate to kill you is) abusing gameplay mechanism loopholes.

No one in a basi grab has time to ask a teammate to kill them before the basi's already done enough damage that they still receive the kill, it's a gameplay mechanic and results in the death of the player, are you bright enough to "get" this now or do you need some more reasons why it's not the same as /team s?

[WoGoMo]

No one in a basi grab has time to ask a teammate to kill them before the basi's already done enough damage that they still receive the kill, it's a gameplay mechanic and results in the death of the player, are you bright enough to "get" this now or do you need some more reasons why it's not the same as /team s?

We're not talking about basi grab here if you're bright enough to "get" that. We're talking about people in base when there's no enemy near enough to get to them. As for using /team s for escaping basi grab, I totally agree it is wrong and I've never ever done (nor would I ever do) that.

[WoGoMo]

Ok since a lot of people dont seem to understand, let me explain:

The only valid reasons I can think of that /team s in THIS situation (again, if you are unclear about what situation I am talking about, go read from a few replies above this one) should be considered illegal, is by denying the other team of credits or evos from killing you, OR denying the other team an extra 20 seconds to kill your base while you wait for the suicide countdown to get to zero.

In this instance suicide by TK is EXACTLY the same. If using /team s is considered abuse in THIS case, suicide by TK is equally a case of ABUSE.

[F50]

Suicide by tk is a game mechanic, suicide by /team s is not. Utilitarians...Only concerned with the consequences...

In all seriousness though:

Its about what is playing the game, and what is not. It is part of the gameplay rules, part of the lore of tremulous if I may say so, that people who die are respawned battlestar galatica style. It is also part of game lore that aliens cannot devolve. Thus, I could totally imagine aliens (and humans!) actually tking each other were tremulous real life. TKing is part of the game. /team s is part of the metagame. There is no need to confuse the two.

[WoGoMo]

Suicide by tk is a game mechanic, suicide by /team s is not. Utilitarians...Only concerned with the consequences...

Doesn't make it any less a form of abuse now does it.

Aliens are meant to kill humans are they not? Humans are meant to kill aliens are they not?
Intentional TK is an offence is it not?

Stop making loopholes legal only when it suits your own needs.

[F50]

Aliens are meant to kill humans are they not? Humans are meant to kill aliens are they not?
Intentional TK is an offence is it not?

Stop making loopholes legal only when it suits your own needs.

Humans are able to, by using their in-game weapon, kill other humans. Yes, TKing is an offense insofar as TKing is a form of griefing, since it is listed as a subset of griefing according to the sticky. However, in the semi-rare case in which TKing is not griefing, then I think it would be natural to say that TKing is not an offense.

Furthermore, aliens are meant to help each other, and humans are meant to help each other. In-game, since killing your teammates is not lethal, as evidenced in the story (humans are clones, aliens have the overmind), it makes perfect sense (to me, anyways) that helping each other can in fact including tearing your teammate's body to shreds.

To be honest, speed-building does feel a bit "cheap" to me from a gameplay perspective (but not from a story perspective) due to the fact that it can go around the build timer given a clear spawn queue. However, there are some, admittedly small, penalties to doing so (but great enough to prevent people from doing this in scrims in most situations, apparently) and there are not a great many situations that it even can be used in, thanks to the BP queue. More importantly (and the reason I bring this up) is that even this is different from the metagame (such as /team s) however, because it is part of the implicit rules of gameplay, part of the in-game, and makes sense apart from the concepts of computer and player.

Its not about how the pieces sit in the end, or whether you win or loose, but how the game was played.

EDIT:

Also,

But yeah, common sense tells me that if it was wrong, admins would have at least warned me (as well as others) about it ages ago. Why then is this "common sense" among the admins only materializing now?

I think its mostly because it wasn't noticed, since a big yellow !specme isn't printed across the screen. For some reason this didn't happen when people had to use the !specme command, I wonder why this practice is only materializing now...

Stop making loopholes legal only when it suits your own needs.

These are merely my preconceptions, desires, and ideas that I'm forming language to give voice to, keep it straight  .

Disclaimer: my opinions are my own

[WoGoMo]

Stop making loopholes legal only when it suits your own needs.

These are merely my preconceptions, desires, and ideas that I'm forming language to give voice to, keep it straight  .

I stand corrected.