2021 Category discussion and process to get community feedback

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Flo
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Re: 2021 Category discussion and process to get community feedback

Post by Flo »

Sylars wrote:
Sat Apr 10, 2021 1:27 pm
There are plenty objective measures that could be used without a need to re-evaluate every new feature addition.
Example 1: No memory write. All and any externally drawn info is allowed, anything that writes to main thread memory isn't.
Example 2: Anything achievable (outcome based) in the game without tool assistance is allowed. Ok: Hotkey to swap armour out of fight. Not ok: target minipet.
Example 3: Single-action single-outcome restriction. Ok: Hotkey to swap 1 armour piece, move-to hotkey. Not ok: Hotkey to use rezz scroll and skeleton trap in the same press. Auto pcons.
Example 4: no retexturing. Ok: any kind of overlay drawn info. Not ok: changing health bar colour, texmod.

Or anything else the community could decide on. What this has as an advantage is automatic classification and unambiguity about new tool usage. The rules stay simple and easy to enforce. Special cases may or may not be handled with a blacklist (e.g. no sblj to skip 30 star door in 16 star due to historical reasons).
So first of, this is a better answer than expected, so good job on that. These guidelines are mostly what is currently implemented in the standard ruleset (1&2: no "hard cheating" by for example targetting minipets or dialogs), no automation (3: for example /useskill) while texture modification is allowed (4: texmod). As this ruleset is derived from the last vote, it seems that people mostly followed this same or a similar train of thought for voting.

The problem is, that there are always edge cases, I will name a couple (and YES, these are extremely nitpicky):
-Movement macros: Is a movement macro the same thing as moving via toolbox minimap? If yes, are both of these a "memory write"? What if I write a script that moves my camera to a specific position and clicks on the ground, which is basically the same thing as the player clicking himself? Would this be considered 1 action per button press?
-Target macros: Can I use a target hotkey to target the closest enemy of a specific kind? Is this "overlay drawn info"? Technically if I can see enemy names on my screen, I can infer which enemy is which and could target them. What if I am looking to a different way though? The distance around a spirit can be infered from it's position, but can we infer which direction an enemy is facing? Can I click on the minimap to target something? If yes, am I allowed to incorporate additional conditions like current enemy health in % into my targeting? What if the enemy has abilities that change their absolute maximum health which changes FH/EoE thresholds, is that allowed? Can I add all allies in my range to my party list and target them thereby?
-Ruptbots: Can I setup a script that rupts the next ability an enemy uses? Technically it is just "1 action per button press". But then my programm is kinda monitoring my environment and acting reactively. What if I write the script that tracks every skill usage by every enemy and while targeting them it shows me their cooldown, allowing me to make a prediction when they are gonna use their next skill? Is this info you can usally infer?

Which of the mentioned categories do each of these discussion points comply with?

This is a rethoric question, I do not expect an answer. But I can gurantee that some people would answer this differently than you and I would. So what you are effectively doing is replace the discussion about whether a individual tool should be allowed with the discussion which set of tools this new tools should be assigned to. Which I guess... has some advantages, but some disadvantages as well because arguably some aspects of such a category are more problematic than others or are more or less gamebreaking. (By the way, just saying: This is very close to what we are already doing. When a new tool is introduced, the first step is to compare it against the existing rools that are allowed and forbidden. If it is very similar to other allowed tools it is likely being allowed, whereas when it is similar to tools that are forbidden it is likely being forbidden itself. If it is completely new or somewhere in between, the moderation team (aka me) had to make a decision based on comparability to already existing tools, which was extensively criticized.). To summarize: "What this has as an advantage is automatic classification and unambiguity about new tool usage. The rules stay simple and easy to enforce." is not a statement that will hold, it is just slightly moving the discussion. Then we would need a vote to figure out which category something belongs to, which means we would have gone full circle.

My own voting strategy for the standard category could be pretty much simplified to a couple of things: I will be voting to forbid any "hard cheating" and things where I feel like a normal human does not have the ability (movement macros, targeting, ruptbots) or attention (enemy counters, auto rezzscrolls), while at the same time considering whether the convenience factor outweights the competitive advantage (autopcons, hotkeys for individual items). These are of course my personal opinions and I am sure you have your own. I am confident the community as a whole will come to a reasonable solution, while still allowing the flexibility voting on individual tools provides to remove especially toxic things and allow especially convenient things, even though they by your personal definition might belong to a different "set of tools".

If the majority of people share your opinion, we will see this be reflected in the rules either way, because we would see some set of tools get a huge amount of yes votes while another set of tools would get no votes.

Sylars
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Re: 2021 Category discussion and process to get community feedback

Post by Sylars »

You could objectively classify the vast majority however. Each of your examples could be very clearly categorised with each of the four examples I've listed, removing the need for "moderator discretion" or a following vote. Just from a technical standpoint, if anyone had different opinions, they'd unfortunately simply be wrong.

If you want me to list which of your examples violates or complies with which of the example categories, let me know.
My own voting strategy for the standard category could be pretty much simplified to a couple of things: I will be voting to forbid any "hard cheating" and things where I feel like a normal human does not have the ability (movement macros, targeting, ruptbots) or attention (enemy counters, auto rezzscrolls), while at the same time considering whether the convenience factor outweights the competitive advantage (autopcons, hotkeys for individual items). These are of course my personal opinions and I am sure you have your own. I am confident the community as a whole will come to a reasonable solution, while still allowing the flexibility voting on individual tools provides to remove especially toxic things and allow especially convenient things, even though they by your personal definition might belong to a different "set of tools".
This is the exact opposite of my approach.
The very definition of tool assistance is having tools assist you. Cheating (targeting minipets/dialog id's/etc.) is not assistance. But how is it upon us to decide which tool assistance qualifies as "standard" and which doesn't? People running in half a year will have different views. Who are we to deem where convenience outweighs competitive advantage? In my opinion auto pcons are probably the single most massive competitive advantage at our hands, far more so than movement macros.

Either way, following such an approach will just lead to arbitrary decisions and a category best summarized as "well I want to use this and you'll somehow have to compete in a less restrictive category if you want to use other things just because I made the rules to tailor exactly what I want".

The issue of people complaining about arbitrary rules that make no sense won't go away by just voting for new arbitrary rules. So my suggestion is getting rid of as much arbitrariness as possible.

Standard/Pure = no tools. Pure game client.
TAS = tool *assisted* speedrun - a tool helps you doing something you can "reliably" do in the game
restrictionless = no restrictions

or an absence of restrictionless with tas simply having no restrictions.

Flo
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Re: 2021 Category discussion and process to get community feedback

Post by Flo »

Okay, I fundamentally disagree with most of this but I see your point. I have changed the question in section 2.1 to reflect the option of having groups of tools. It now looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/ej4W5oD.png

Link to the updated draft survey: https://forms.gle/cuZhUCPUSJsbSKXS8

I also moved the question about mechanics that do not require 3rd party tools to section 4 and renamed that section to "4. Additional Questions About Glitches That Do Not Require a 3rd Party Tool"

This should reflect your concerns. I will once again wait 1 day before proceeding so people have to review and comment again.

Sylars
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Re: 2021 Category discussion and process to get community feedback

Post by Sylars »

Looks good to me now. Thank you.

Misty
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Re: 2021 Category discussion and process to get community feedback

Post by Misty »

BayTwoBaySix3 wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 1:20 pm
1) A standard record is considered better than a TAS record, as it has a more limiting ruleset. As an example, the new 6-man DOA record would on paper be considered more impressive as the same time was achieved under a stricter ruleset. So, people opt to play standard to prevent this from happening.
What you're saying is basically true, but it's more like the other way round. People play standard to knock slower standard records off the table and to prevent faster TAS records knocking theirs off.
BayTwoBaySix3 wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 1:20 pm
Their preference is to play in a category which closely matches the default guild wars experience, with some basic quality of life features. (Boomers crowd)
There is nothing stopping them from doing that and still entering in the TAS category. Why should GWSCR offer an official recognition of their subjective selection of TB features (or rather, a compromised selection decided by "democracy")?
Flo wrote:
Wed Apr 20, 2016 10:56 am
Sadly, Misty is right.

BackTwoBaySix
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Re: 2021 Category discussion and process to get community feedback

Post by BackTwoBaySix »

Misty wrote:
Wed Apr 14, 2021 6:31 am

Why should GWSCR offer an official recognition of their subjective selection of TB features (or rather, a compromised selection decided by "democracy")?
Although I'd personally like to see a standard category, I'm not saying GWSCR should do it. In my last post I said it would be helpful to understand why people are playing standard in the first place, and to expand on that; are people playing standard because they have to or because they want to? If a majority of people are playing standard because they like to play under the restriction of the subjective selection of TB features, it's time to decide between:
  1. Moving forward with only Pure/TAS which is easy to argue for, but does not necessarily represent how the community wants to play the game.
  2. Moving forward with a Pure/Standard/TAS which may better represent how the community actually wants to play.
It's true that the Pure/TAS crowd are vocal, but until we have the unanimous vote we aren't going to have a clear picture of what people want.

As for why I'd like to see a Standard category, I feel there is too much difference between PURE and TAS. It's like 2 different games.
Guild wars is an old ass game at this point, what I'd like to see in standard is what should (imo) have been implemented in the base game. Automatic pcons, /stuck hotkey, single item use hotkey (like seal/pstone), UI changes.
Misty wrote:
Wed Apr 14, 2021 6:31 am

There is nothing stopping them from doing that and still entering in the TAS category.
There is also nothing stopping a 150LB fighter stepping in the ring with a 200LB fighter, he would get put down, but he can enter the ring.

Nina 667 ekip
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Re: 2021 Category discussion and process to get community feedback

Post by Nina 667 ekip »

In my last post I said it would be helpful to understand why people are playing standard in the first place.
If you guys wanna know why people play standart its cause when toolbox been created there was only pcons and timer on it who was a confort and so we are used to it now i guess im talking for me but i guess for the majority of people thats play standart just watch all Tas players are doa people or newcomers thats pbly got reasons to play TAS so i guess im right standart are just pure people lazy to use pcons and to find or play without timer

Sylars
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Re: 2021 Category discussion and process to get community feedback

Post by Sylars »

We play tool assisted but submit it as "standard" as opposed to "tool assisted" because if we used such a thing as ghost circles on the minimap our record would unquestionably be worse than a record only using the most broken time saves of auto pcons and hotkeys!

Would we use cheating features once standard is abandoned? No. Do we think it's utterly r*tarded to deem some features as "worse" than others just because some dumb shits voted on stupid rules? Yes.

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Re: 2021 Category discussion and process to get community feedback

Post by BackTwoBaySix »

Sylars wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 11:13 am
Would we use cheating features once standard is abandoned? No.
Well if standard gets removed, people may be forced to play with the "cheating features". You might not be forced to in Underworld records because there is little competition, but GWSCR covers a lot more than just Underworld. There are areas where standard strats could not HOPE to compete with (unrestricted) TAS Strats .

Not playing with all the advantages of the category you are competing is dumb. There's a reason you don't see natural athletes on the olympia stage. It's only due to the size of the community and /age restrictions that the choice to purposefuly restrict your tactics is rarely, if ever, punished by a competitor that won't. Had there been a seconds based (unrestricted) TAS category (and no standard) from the conception of GWSCR, we would have seen a LOT of this.
Sylars wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 11:13 am
Do we think it's utterly r*tarded to deem some features as "worse" than others just because some dumb shits voted on stupid rules? Yes.
You just implied that you consider "cheating features" worse than others, it's widely accepted within the community - sure, but there is no commandment which states though shalt not write to main thread either. If you want some kind of moral purity from not cheating, play pure.

Sylars
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Re: 2021 Category discussion and process to get community feedback

Post by Sylars »

Because they objectively are. There is a clear cut difference between tool assistance and cheating features. The same can't be said for targeting using the minimap or using hotkeys to use a Resurrection Scroll.

If you think there isn't a massive difference between using Ghost in the Box jumps and not in The Underworld, you are sorely mistaken by the way. We just wouldn't use them because it goes past our comfort window. After all it's something you could very easily get banned for.

It's not about a moral purity. Maybe you'd be one to jerk yourself off to only using X selection of "assistance" features. I'm not, so I don't want a tier to accommodate my personal preferences. For a ban of features that allow you to do things that are otherwise impossible to accomplish there's a point to be made at least.

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