Is creeping treasures cheating?

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Bavaria Gichtenlord
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by Gichtenlord »

Implying that aoe3de will happen :lol:
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by momuuu »

_H2O wrote:It ruins a lot. Even an explorer with 45 hp can steal a treasure. And not having any idea where your opponents explorer is after killing it is a huge difference.

Then you talk about games where you killed their explorer and their tc. Seems unfair they can get their explorer back without much effort.

If I were allowed to do it I would do busted things with it :). But then again I usually don’t lose my explorer in age 1.

Or you lose your explorer but still get a transition tp without vils. Also dumb. People would seriously consider sitting on a dead explorer with their own due to the risk of the alt d. Which then means killing someone’s explorer doesn’t leave you free to get tres or walk away.

Or you lose your explorer in your colonial RI ball and you get to fortress and alt-d it to build a tc. Your opponent never gets notified you got your explorer back and that you may be trying to take tps or build a tc.

"Ruins" is extremely subjective here. It's a sum of things that can subjectively be considered good or bad, and that's the case that should be made. I think there's scenarios where I like alt-d as a feature and scenarios where I think I dislike it. That's the nuanced reality. The truth is not black or white, alt-d isn't 100% shitty or 100% good, and saying it's cheating because it's a bug is simply stupid. I only challenged alt-d because it's relatively easy to give strong arguments as to why it's bad for the game. Even when this community is pushed to give good reasoning for something everyone thinks, they struggle. If a guy responsible for tournament rules is challenged to defend his views, he still doesn't manage to find the nuances. It might just be me, but I like to have a solid and sound reasoning behind the things I believe and I prefer that decisions are made based on this - rather than based on sentiment or based on a group of people repeating the same thing after eachother.

Your posts includes some reasonable points, but in my opinion you miss the nuances. It's definitely true that there are cases where alt-d is a seriously beneficial thing for gameplay. It's definitely not impossible to lose your explorer due to poor luck and sometimes losing your explorer is gamelosing. I would say that it's punished too much, especially when it's the cause of poor luck or being slightly slow to react. In the case where the other guy needs to get a TP still, I do think it's not unreasonable to consider the effect of alt-d beneficial to gameplay. He lost his explorer, fed 45 xp, can't really get treasures anymore, can't scout and can't get a TP without spending a lot of extra resources on it (and even then you still are likely to miss an extra pass). Alt-d just allows you to get that TP. Below 100 health its pretty hard to safely get treasures and it's hard to even find stuff when you have no LOS, also you still can't scout. Alt-d slightly reduces the punishment of something that can definitely be considered overly punishing (I think there are plenty of people that don't really enjoy losing the game in age 1 due to a misclick. You yourself commonly resign after such an event occurs and when that happens it doesn't seem like you enjoyed the game). So then this would be a plus for alt-d.

On the other hand, someone reviving his explorer to then snag away a treasure is something I think I'd dislike. It's not objectively terrible, but I would think most people do not perceive this positively. It feels a bit silly that you can simply revive your explorer to steal a treasure. Maybe in this case I think losing your explorer is not punished enough, and I'd feel like the majority of people would agree with this.

I personally feel like reviving a backline explorer to suddenly get a snare in or something can be pretty lame. It's just too hard to play around that and it does indeed mean that for example as india losing your elephants early game is not actually punished. In that sense I lean towards disliking alt-d. Although, surely one can consider it nifty to revive the explorers at the right time and it can definitely be considered as something strategical that can be kept in mind. So that's a different side to it.

And then there are Japans explorer. I really do think the counterplay against Japan of killing their explorers is a fun mechanic, and alt-d completely nullifies this aspect of the game. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if some Japan players find it extremely annoying and unfun to continuously lose their explorers, and losing those explorers is at least partially luck based. So in that sense, maybe alt-d isn't strictly terrible. It's again subjective if you like or dislike it in this case.

There are some extremely uncommon scenarios that are a bit silly. For example if magically both explorers die at the same time trying to pick up a treasure. In that case it'd indeed be reasonable to try to continuously revive the explorers to get the treasure - although actually bringing a vill over and just countering the one reviving first is probably the better play. That seems strictly silly, but it also actually never happens. Maybe one in a few thousand games this scenario occurs.

I do agree that a lost town center + dead explorer scenario is ruined a bit by alt-d. Yet again some people may think it's silly that you can still have villagers and resources but then aren't able to build a town center as a european civ (while asian and native civs can actually do that), so maybe one would say this fixes the game in a positive sense.

All in all everything should be considered in a nuanced fashion. Things like this are never black and white. I'd say the cons outweigh the pros of alt-d slightly, although I wouldn't really mind it either way - it's not really a huge deal, it tends to have a small impact and I can definitely see some of the positive sides. I'd say that most people would consider the cons to outweigh the pros, and thus banning it would be a sensible move. Yet in our community people are simply parrots that repeat after another that alt-d is simply cheating because it is cheating, without ever considering it thoughtfully, and that is sad.

It's especially sad because it has led to people not giving this new bug proper consideration. That's why I brought alt-d up, to show that even in cases where it might seem obvious, it's actually not obvious and quite nuanced. The community should not blindly treat the explorer crackshot bug similairly to the alt-d bug on the basis of empty statements. If it changes the game that doesn't mean it's bad. If it is an unintended bug, that doesn't mean its bad for the game. Both the example in this thread, with the really buggy behaviour of treasure guardians, or the numerous examples I have provided of bugs in different games, make it clear that a bug is not necessarily a cheat. We, as a community, should have a mature discussion about the upsides and downsides of this bug. We shouldn't simply conclude that it is cheating based on empty statements. At least one of the leading figures in the community should be willing to thoroughly consider such a bug before jumping to the conclusion that it's bad for the game. After all, if you are convinced that banning it is the right decision, you should be able to properly defend that with good arguments and logic. There is then no reason to actually back away from coming up with a mature discussion - one in which people defending the usages of a bug aren't ridiculed.
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Yes. I'm quite sure that if alt-d was accepted as a mechanic by the top players/tournament staff, 99% of the community wouldn't complain about it.
Imo it's just that people have been brainwashed for so long that they can't even think of alt-d as a mechanics as this thread shows.
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by Garja »

But it is not because top players are not idiots and because alt-d is cheating.
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by BrookG »

@momuuu the conclusion in your essay is different from what you are arguing in the main text. I cannot see how with such a number of disadvantages in fair play, one would accept it, especially since there is little effort in making this bug work. You seem to be overanalysing. Even though the arguments weren't in an essay form, they appeared in this discussion. As for other types of bugs, they might be more open to debate, like crackshot trick or pull trick.
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

BrookG wrote:@momuuu the conclusion in your essay is different from what you are arguing in the main text. I cannot see how with such a number of disadvantages in fair play, one would accept it, especially since there is little effort in making this bug work. You seem to be overanalysing. Even though the arguments weren't in an essay form, they appeared in this discussion. As for other types of bugs, they might be more open to debate, like crackshot trick or pull trick.

Well crackshot trick is not open to debate at all lol.
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by momuuu »

BrookG wrote:@momuuu the conclusion in your essay is different from what you are arguing in the main text. I cannot see how with such a number of disadvantages in fair play, one would accept it, especially since there is little effort in making this bug work. You seem to be overanalysing. Even though the arguments weren't in an essay form, they appeared in this discussion. As for other types of bugs, they might be more open to debate, like crackshot trick or pull trick.

If with main text you meant to refer to this thread, I think my post has been in line with this thread. Ive tried to be careful to actually not state that I think alt-d should be allowed anywhere because I do not believe that. I just tried to challenge people hoping to make them actually truly think about these bugs, so that they would realize its not black and white.

I personally dont think the arguments for alt-d force an obvious conclusion. The conclusion is based on personal preferences. Im not really intruiged by the early game and rather love the standard strategies in this game. So its not weird that I do think alt-d is reasonable in some situations, as winning/losing the game in age 1 is just boring to me. Its funny that diarouga thinks the same thing, as Id say he is of the same opinion. You for example do enjoy early game much more I believe, and thus naturally you're more inclined to prefer the game without alt-d. Maybe even to the point where it seems obvious to you that alt-d is bad for the game, but with a different set of believes as I outlined one might think alt-d is obviously beneficial to the game.

The ultimate point I made is that it is entirely subjective, depending on how you weigh the effects of a bug. Even with alt-d, which is widely considered to be bad for gameplay, its not obvious and quite nuanced. With this bug it is even more nuanced, and thus we need to have a serious discussion about it and not the garjuing that can be seen two posts above.

At any rate, all bug discussion is open to debate as they are not by definition bad. In the end its a cheat if people consider it so. I just hope to make people truly consider the explorer crackshot trick, and truly consider if they enjoy or dislike its effect on gameplay, and then decide if they think its a cheat or not. That has been my entire point all along. It'd be sad if some potentially extremely fun bug is banned because people decided its a cheat for no good reason. That is all.

And this crusade has been specifically because of what diarouga just said: the crackshot bug has not been open for debate at all, while potentially being an improvement to the game.
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by HUMMAN »

ok, my last serious message:
Definetly people would be ok with alt-d and crack shot mechanic if they were implemented. Guess what? They are changing game unneccessarily which players are not used to do. Age 1 has a playstle and alt-d changes it, not discussing balance etc. I know you will say ah that doesnt mean its bad, oh it can be really fun to have new things etc, since you can be biased but it's just a bad choice if implemented right now. You dont fix if it ain't broke.

It's like adding a new mechanic with a bad design. Imagine villagers hit more when they have less hp, hımm ok a new game feature that can be balanced. But... why the hell you would want such a new feature? Or from now on gunpowder units will hit more but will miss some shots. Lel they were shooting before and it was OK, why change the mechanics of it. If there was a short cut, lets say ctrl+alt+x, which would implement the features in the game for you, then say oh it's in the game, much deeper strat, skill... Also say "both can do it so its fair" and do it without your oppenent not knowing your CHEAT.

And cheat means lying in my book. If someone in tourney uses fast-shooting and then says " im pro shooter didnt read rules" i would say thats cheating. If somebody would alt-d in qs without saying "I play with alt-d, you?" that is lying cause very few plays like that and expects oppenent to do the same. And mostly alt-d'ers knows that and try to abuse that oppenent wont play in same conditions, thus they dont even consider mentioning it. Hell most players event dont know what alt-d does.
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by momuuu »

But dont garja's maps change the game more than any amount of alt-d and crackshot trick ever could? So then actually we shouldnt have gotten those maps, or EP for that matter, or any future EP changes (looking at you, cheaper fishing boats)? By your logic the answer to that is yes, we shouldnt have gotten those changes, the game was OK before right?

And obviously if consensus is that something is a cheat then its indeed cheating to use it, but using that as an argument to label something a cheat is just a circular way to reason.
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

HUMMAN wrote:ok, my last serious message:
Definetly people would be ok with alt-d and crack shot mechanic if they were implemented.

Exactly, that's my point, people aren't fine with these because they were told that it's not fine.

Guess what? They are changing game unneccessarily which players are not used to do. Age 1 has a playstle and alt-d changes it, not discussing balance etc. I know you will say ah that doesnt mean its bad, oh it can be really fun to have new things etc, since you can be biased but it's just a bad choice if implemented right now. You dont fix if it ain't broke.

Well, creeping is 100% a bug and wasn't intended, and even if pull trick was intended, it was to increase the game fluency, and not to escape with skirms lol. Also in any other game, bugs aren't banned because they are bugs, they are banned if the mechanic is bad.
You should really stop with the "it's a bug" argument because it's not a relevant one.


It's like adding a new mechanic with a bad design.

Cool, now you try to bring arguments other than "it's a bug so we should ban it". Though, it's a bad design in your opinion. I honestly think that fast shooting is a great mechanics and a good design.

Imagine villagers hit more when they have less hp, hımm ok a new game feature that can be balanced. But... why the hell you would want such a new feature? Or from now on gunpowder units will hit more but will miss some shots. Lel they were shooting before and it was OK, why change the mechanics of it. If there was a short cut, lets say ctrl+alt+x, which would implement the features in the game for you, then say oh it's in the game, much deeper strat, skill... Also say "both can do it so its fair" and do it without your oppenent not knowing your CHEAT.

Except there's no bug which allows you to do so. Also some argue that the sioux teepee change is just that: adding a new cool mechanic to the game.

And cheat means lying in my book. If someone in tourney uses fast-shooting and then says " im pro shooter didnt read rules" i would say thats cheating. If somebody would alt-d in qs without saying "I play with alt-d, you?" that is lying cause very few plays like that and expects oppenent to do the same. And mostly alt-d'ers knows that and try to abuse that oppenent wont play in same conditions, thus they dont even consider mentioning it. Hell most players event dont know what alt-d does.
Yea lying sucks, but even if I say that I'm going to use fast shooting in my game people will consider that as cheating.
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by HUMMAN »

But dont garja's maps change the game more than any amount of alt-d and crackshot trick ever could? So then actually we shouldnt have gotten those maps, or EP for that matter, or any future EP changes (looking at you, cheaper fishing boats)? By your logic the answer to that is yes, we shouldnt have gotten those changes, the game was OK before right?


HUMMAN wrote: You dont fix if it ain't broke.


You should really stop with the "it's a bug" argument because it's not a relevant one.


HUMMAN wrote:They are changing game unneccessarily which players are not used to do. Age 1 has a playstle and alt-d changes it, not discussing balance etc.


Though, it's a bad design in your opinion. I honestly think that fast shooting is a great mechanics and a good design.


HUMMAN wrote: You dont fix if it ain't broke.


Also some argue that the sioux teepee change is just that: adding a new cool mechanic to the game.


HUMMAN wrote:It's like adding a new mechanic with a bad design.
They are changing game unneccessarily

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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by momuuu »

Just because dont fix if it isnt broken is a saying doesnt mean theres any trith to it. And yet, that is the entire core of your argument. If we could invent a new species of bananas that is tastier in every regard than the current one, would you tilurn it down because the old bananas werent broken and you believe we shouldnt improve things that arent broken?
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

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I can't believe the things that get discussed to such lengths.
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

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momuuu wrote:Just because dont fix if it isnt broken is a saying doesnt mean theres any trith to it. And yet, that is the entire core of your argument. If we could invent a new species of bananas that is tastier in every regard than the current one, would you tilurn it down because the old bananas werent broken and you believe we shouldnt improve things that arent broken?


yes because genetic engineered foods are cheats and bad and we shouldnt eat them. or make them.
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by supahons »

ice-cream parlor (developer)- we have this range of flavors (vanilla, chocolate, strawberry)
person 1: i only like vanilla, chocolate
person 2: but strawberry is there, aren't you able to see it? (oh rly?, maybe you have to make a decision sometimes)
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

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People are not fine with alt-d because they're not fine with cheating. Not because someone told em.
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by tabben »

Looks like @Mitoe found a new way of creeping treasures with the japanese explorers. It was all caught on stream: https://clips.twitch.tv/CrunchyThoughtfulCheetahNomNom

Is he now more of a cheater than us "normal" treasure creepers? Can we expect this way of creeping to become standard?
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by momuuu »

Its so fucking hypocrite that people accept that extremely buggy nonsense yet act as if something like the crackshot trick is obviously am unacceptable cheat. With all due respect, but how can one legitemately hold such an opinion?
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by momuuu »

Garja wrote:People are not fine with alt-d because they're not fine with cheating. Not because someone told em.

Top tier circle reasoning. Alt-d is cheating because people are not fine with it because someone told them its cheating. Good logix
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by Garja »

No. Alt-d is cheating because people are not fine with it. And because it is cheating they are not fine with it. None told em.
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by momuuu »

Its true that something is cheating when the majority considers it cheating, indeed! So that means that the crackshot bug is not yet necessarily cheating? If so, lets finally have a constructive discussion about all the upsides amd downsides of it.

If the macro generally doesnt work because of lag, I still think this trick is really cool. Its treasure creeping but more skill based even. Sounds fun to me. Theres even the tradeoff of actually never using crackshot because of it.

On the other hand, maybe treasures can be obtained too easily due to it. Maybe one would argue that maps like hudson bay aremt as fun anymore because one can reliable and safely collect multiple polar bear treasures to the point where getting good treasures impacts the game a lot more. One can like or dislike this. I think I personally would dislike it if it becomes too extreme.

This trick introduces more skill to the early game. I personally really like that, more skill means random shit matters less. Maybe random treasure stealing will be less of a thing, which I would personally love. Again, one might also prefer to have a random aspect to age 1 where the only skill is to play around all possibilities and maximize succes rate.
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by Kaiserklein »

tabben wrote:Looks like @Mitoe found a new way of creeping treasures with the japanese explorers. It was all caught on stream: https://clips.twitch.tv/CrunchyThoughtfulCheetahNomNom

Is he now more of a cheater than us "normal" treasure creepers? Can we expect this way of creeping to become standard?

Lol that's side stepping, a lot of people do that
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by Mitoe »

@Kaiserklein Wait does it work with other civs?
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by evilcheadar »

BrookG wrote:
momuuu wrote:
supahons wrote:personal opinion/sarcasm/anecdotes

creeping - ban it for nostalgia reasons and lose 75% health for a small treasure again? it's actually a nice gamefeature in age 1, what else would you do? 21
explorer-crackshot - gamebreaking especially on LOST-maps, triangle wall + assault rifle. it probably won't be good for teamgames too, 1 chinese monk + 2 assault rifles in age1 in a 3v3?
monitor-firerate - these warships are so bad, let's give them a free 20th century upgrade, the opponent won't mind
alt-d - you don't pay 100c, you don't lose walking time with another unit or scouting information. no you just get killed, stand up and steal a treasure when the other player isn't watching, great fun
unit pull - back to the conscript days, it reminds me a bit about a kiting complaint sb once gave me --> skirm vs musk - "that's cheating, fight like a man" :D

Alt-d - you kill your opponents explorer, he altd's and you just kill him again for a free 45 exp. Alt d has shitty scenarios, but its not always a bad gameplay mechanic. Id argue in some cases losing an explorer can just be bad luck, yet gamelosing. A TP dependant civ cant scout, get treasures, gave 45 xp to opponent and will need to build his tp with a villager. In those scenarios Id absolutely be fine with alt d, its a risky thing (you risk feeding exp and he will have a very small LOS) but otherwise I feel like the death of an explorer is punished way too hard.

Overall it used to be acceptable to do and never really felt that silly. There are probably a few silly scenarios like reviving japan's monks but I never considered it that bad.

Honestly getting a huge treasure stolen by the opponent using alt+d is barely acceptable. The fact that there is the ransom button, which costs 100c, makes alt+d a bug, end of story. All civs can somehow bring explorer back to live: TWC with dance or spend some coin to revive. Asian civs even spend tc time to revive the monk.

It doesn't bring back the explorer to full health like the ransom button. It brings him back at like no health so he can easily be shot again and that gives the enemy more xp. 45 or even 100xp
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Re: Is creeping treasures cheating?

Post by Garja »

It works wit all ranged explorers, but actually we are only in few doing that.
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