Zooooom

[torus]

uhm no i think the zoom is useful for the nexgun and the machinegun secondary fire mode and also on some huge maps just to have a better look at some spots. If find it useful on greatwall to have a better look at the 'great' wall to see if if snipers are there.

The zoom is also usefull with the Machine Gun, which is also very accurate.

[Dokujisan]

I do not consider this cheating, its just using knowledge.

But it's not knowledge that everybody knows. It may seem fair to those who already have the knowledge, but to those who don't have that knowledge, it seems like an unfair advantage. Fair means equal. I wrote a bit about this on that "unfair advantages" thread. As I've learned more about Nexuiz over the past months, all of these special tricks seem both exciting and lame at the same time. Exciting because they are cool moves. Lame because it causes the game to be unequal.

I remember when I learned that right-clicking rockets made them explode in mid air. I was playing on public DM servers and I didn't see anyone else do that (these were mostly new players). It became so easy to kill them, because I didn't have to be accurate any longer. It didn't feel right. It felt like cheating. Multiple times, I stopped and tried to explain to other players that they can right click their rockets.

[Dokujisan]

I don't understand how people can get enjoyment out of unfair advantages. That seems like the opposite of true gaming to me. You're only truly testing your ability against competition if they have the same options and same functional knowledge that you do.

[esteel]

I really do not think your argument is very valid..

You said you played against others that did not know about making rockets explode.. Back when i started playing with friends i was 'the first' to not just run around but pickup health and armor when ever i saw one so for a few days i was better then them as i was harder to kill. Guess its basically the same. Bottom line is that an experienced player is just better then a beginner. Just as an advanced sport is faster, leaner, better then joe-six-pack at running.. Its already simple things like 'feeling/knowing' were to fire at to hit with a rocket, were to fire prediction shots, were to move to have an advantage in position, were to laserjump best, how to evade enemy fire. You just can't level the whole playing fiield.

If we take your idea a bit further we get to the point were FOV is in the menu but beginners do not know about, have no clue what it does and do not care for it. Higher FOV can help to see more of whats happening around you. If you turn brightness up you can also see more. Again Joe-Sixpack will not care and just play. Should we remove those feature just because its 'unfair' because some players do not know about it? There is a certain learning curve to each game. I can help others to learn what i know but i can't unlearn what i know.
That last paragraph was just because i'm no longer sure what you think IS unfair? Using an zoom alias? It just helps a bit feeling non-dizzy but everyone can zoom. Making rocketsexplode? Everyone can do it after having learned how to do it (and if people have two mouse buttons) OMG ALL THOSE MAC PLAYERS!!!! Do I cheat because i have a 3 button mouse? SCNR

I think there is a certain point were cheating begins but that point is only very hard to reach. All the rest is just a better player vs a not-yet-so-good player. Most of the stuff we discussed here are only small advantages that are not the reason a better player wins vs a worse player BUT they can HELP a good player wins vs a equally good player and THEN its still experiance, training and wit that will determine the winner.

[Xeno]

Unfair advantages would entail things that other players don't have access to. If you needed a special password to change certain settings and that password was only given to a few select people, then voila, you have unfair advantages. Making use of what's available is not an unfair advantage just because no one else does.

I've played Nexuiz since November. When I started, having not played any of the quake games (or any other FPS games at all, really), I had no idea about binds or anything else. I was typing "good game" / "gg" for the first two weeks after matches. Eventually I started looking for info on keybinds after I realized that they exist, along with the fonts etc.... and within a few days of discovering keybinds I had already made my own zoom alias (which is probably more complicated than most of the ones the regulars use due to the multi-level zoom that I included). This was within the first month of playing so it hardly seems to be an "unfair advantage" that only the regulars know of. Since then I've added quite a few aliases that have practical consequences for game play but all of these can be recreated by anyone with a mind to do so. The documentation is sufficient (and I have contributed to it)... you just have to look.

At the end of the day, better players will consistently win. The guy with perfect aim will rail you before you can even get your crosshair over him. Do his 16 years of FPS experience give him an "unfair advantage" over my six months? (this is an actual example of someone who nails me every time) No. Should we all get autoaim to level the playing field? No. I doubt that I will ever be able to win consistently in Nex fights with certain people because they are just better than me due to more experience and natural skill. Both skill and knowledge are built up through playing and paying attention. Some will acquire them faster than others and some will never manage to progress beyond a certain point. That's just the way it is and to try to change that is misguided imo.

Along your line of reasoning, it sounds as though you would consider laserjumping on Egg&Bacon an "unfair advantage" over the guys who know no other way to get up than the jumppad. Considering that all they have to do is look at the other players to realize that there is another way and then ask (someone will almost always answer), I would say that it isn't.

[divVerent]

Actually, we are trying to make tricks as visible to others as possible... like, you can find out about laser jumping and how to stay fast by spectating.

[tZork]

Perhaps im just old and tierd but.. How can an advantage ever be fair? Some players will be better. Beeing better can be aming faster, outsmarintg etc and it may ofc also be knowing more; like how to make your game enviroment work for you. How boring a game would be where everyone know everything from day1 and everyone had precicely the same chance and zero ability to advance in any way.

And nothign of the things the "advanced" nex player do is a secreat; most things are documented right here on thise forums and the rest im sure you can ask more or less anyone in-game howto.

[Dokujisan]

Sure, it's "available" to them... but it's not as readily available to them as it could be. I've been playing Nexuiz for about 6 months now, and I'm still learning stuff. Yesterday, I just learned a trick from Xeno about lasering up walls. After learning that, I had a distinct advantage over other players that had no clue how I was scaling the wall to get up to the enemy base. They had to get up the stairs...the slow way.

Is it an unfair advantage? That is a grey area...not black or white.

In an ideal gaming environment, everyone has the same knowledge as everyone else. The challenge is about executing that knowledge. That should be the skill that is tested.

I'm not saying that anyone is purposefully hiding this stuff. I see certain people (like esteel) making strides to bring this information forward in a more presentable way, and I appreciate it.

But it could improve vastly. People learn best by learning visually, not by reading tons of text. Why not have have video demos that specifically point out "advanced" techniques. I could be called "Nexuiz school". You could even have a level system. Level 1 talks about simple stuff... by the level 8, you're learning advanced map control strategies, and advanced key binds, etc. Maybe I'll make another thread about this concept. It could help create more advanced Nexuiz players.

You must realize that the majority of Nexuiz players are beginners. I'm sure many of them quit early because they get roasted by someone else to laser jumps over their head and frags them from above. Then they are sitting there wondering "how in the hell did they do that?" And, contrary to what divVerent suggests, you can't learn things very easily by spectating. Often, certain details have to be explained.

I dunno. It seems like all of the people who are disagreeing with me about these advantages are people who just so happen to have this advanced knowledge. Is that a coincidence?

It's like parents who forgot what it was like to be a teenager. They are not going to see things from a teenager's perspective.

[Dokujisan]

How boring a game would be where everyone know everything from day1 and everyone had precicely the same chance and zero ability to advance in any way.

I feel opposite of you. It would be a perfect gaming environment if everyone had the same knowledge about how the game worked. Then the challenge would be about executing that knowledge...and that is where the differences between players start to emerge. "Advanced" ability should be determined by reflexes, choosing strategy, aiming ability and timing.

Ya know...Skills.

That is essentially the case with the 1v1 tournament, isn't it? Don't all of those players in that tournament have basically the same knowledge about how the game works? Is the tournament boring? Not at all. It's fascinating, because it places focus on skills rather than knowledge.

Same with watching a black belt competition in martial arts. That's not boring at all.

[Xeno]

Sure, it's "available" to them... but it's not as readily available to them as it could be. I've been playing Nexuiz for about 6 months now, and I'm still learning stuff. Yesterday, I just learned a trick from Xeno about lasering up walls. After learning that, I had a distinct advantage over other players that had no clue how I was scaling the wall to get up to the enemy base. They had to get up the stairs...the slow way.

Is it an unfair advantage? That is a grey area...not black or white.

You've played longer than I have so this "advanced knowledge" obviously isn't hidden or difficult to obtain... you just have to look for it, ask others, and try stuff yourself.

I agree that there should be better documentation of some things and maybe some training maps (like obstacles that require laserjumps or bunny hops to navigate, etc), but I still wouldn't call any of the techniques unfair even in the absence of such documentation. Unfair signifies some type of selective application of the rules... which this isn't.

Maybe you think that the first day that someone steps onto a field they should be able to compete and win against athletes who have trained for years... I on the other hand would find it ludicrous if some fat guy got out of his recliner, went to the Olympics, and had the runners' feet bound so that he could compete with them and have a chance. Fair doesn't mean that every playing field is perfectly levelled for everyone without taking skill and knowledge into account. A violin soloist should be able to play better than someone who just started taking lessons a few years ago (although depending on skill, that person may exceed the other with more practice based on natural talent). The examples are endless but it all comes down to this: natural talent will be innately different for different people and the harnessing of that talent will depend on the time spent towards that goal.

I remember the first time I played about 6 months ago... I had no idea what was going on and I had a life expectancy of about 15 seconds at best. I got owned every single game for at least the first month and quite often for many games after that (depending on who's on, it happens often enough even now). I kept at it though and I think that I've improved a lot since then. I feel like I've got a good idea of how to laserjump and I feel like a demiguru half the time when it comes to aliases.

The ones who get owned and leave will take that approach with everything in life and probably won't get very far. They aren't the kind of people who develop skills and to just hand them a playing field that puts them on the same level as those who do is silly. You may as well just add a "rock, paper, scissors" game to decide who dies in a confrontation if you really want to level the playing field... with a random generator, of course. Where the fun in that would be though is beyond me.