Petition to disallow aimbot widget in regular games

[modern bough]

Long reload should suffice id guess, creates a dynamic where you have to guard your skirmishers

[runic frost]

there is no such thing as "cheat widgets". Don't fall in cheap populism

[misty hollow]

yeah, paid populism is where its at!

[unborn heron]

^government stance towards general population explained lol
"so hard to find qualified personnel these days"

[tardy forge]

Did anyone mention that you can disable custom widgets in the advanced settings?

[lime geyser]

Yes and it also disables small convenient widgets that don't ruin the game

[tardy forge]

That is also true

What would be the other solution though - banning only this widget would rely on using the code of conduct, which means that people would have to read it again. Doing this just with code will make it easy to modify this widget just a little bit so that the engine doesn't recognize it.

[lime geyser]

That's what the thread is about

[cyan saffron]

I don't have time to read through this thread, but just wanted to add my 2 cents that while technically many widgets are allowed, any performance enhancing widget that isn't part of the base game and requires downloading is practically a cheat if used in multiplayer games and I'm likely to think less of anyone that uses them to gain an advantage, whether it be by adding commands or by seeing information that is otherwise not readily visible (like I saw on someone's stream a widget that was calculating and showing the net gain/loss metal from engagements, something that is not at all apparent otherwise) and anything that adds commands to gain an edge in targeting or controlling units is pretty bad.

[lime geyser]

Many times widgets are made default because they are popular and result in the game being more fun to play. They need to be available in multiplayer for them to become popular, and for people to bugtest them in real situations. Everyone has a different "line" for which widgets go "too far" with automation, which also is highly debated

[vestal ivy]

Could sorta integrate this into the game for all units. Have a little priority toggle, like NEAR : FAR : HIGHEST HEALTH : LOWEST HEALTH : HIGHEST METAL COST : LOWEST METAL COST, etc

Kinda like Bloons Tower Defense, lol

[dark turtle]

This is how the game improves

[vestal ivy]

NEAR : FAR : VALUE (highest cost)

To keep the convention of 3s.

This may actually help with the t1 spam issue, too.

If you can set your czars and arties and negotiators to FAR or VALUE, you'd prevent a lot of friendly-fire and overkill.

[plush girder]

What do you mean by T1 spam issue? Without aimbots, spamming Ticks or similar is a valid strategy. When allowing aimbot widgets () or having a priority toggle, T1 spam would be useless later in the game. Maye, not a big problem because the meta would adjust.
I still believe that disallowing aimbot widgets would be the best choice. Second best a priority toggle. However, if I had to search and download cheat widgets to stand a chance in multiplayer games, I'd rather play a different game.

[runic frost]

Just asking: are you aware that ticks will only be targeted by units like snipers if no better targets than ticks are available?

[left tapir]

FYI, t1 spam's best and most popular use is as a way to provide vision and screening from spybots

[plush girder]

OK, then I misunderstood why people do Tick spam.
Doesn't invalidate my opinion on aimbot widgets, though. Having the ability to search and download a widget which improves the chance of winning only for players who did that is a no-go.

[runic frost]

No problem. Calling other people cheaters even if proven they aren't, seems to be accepted behavior nowadays

[unborn heron]

Honestly, i have an issue with that last statement of yours, because to me that implies, that a player that puts in less effort (e.g. not searching, downloading and installing a widget) is supposed to have equal winning chances to a player that puts in more effort.

What's next then? APM assist AIs, that follow your train of thought and issue orders for you, because some people have lower APM than others?

The issue with a bunch of balance and "cheating" threads here is, that opinions on what needs fixing differ vastly. What is considered OP / broken / imba / cheating by one, is just a skill issue or minor annoyance to the next person.

Just to illustrate a bit more, what i mean by that, i will refer to the common Janus discussion. A lot of people want them to be nerfed. But the point is, that Janus aren't inherently OP. They can be oppressive and "broken" if microed well, but with no micro they are essentially suicide units, which creates a huge "skill gap" between people that have the ability and knowledge to manage them well and those who don't.

[plush girder]

AFAIK, it is currently allowed to use whichever widget one wants to. Even grey-area ones (I call them cheat widgets but yeah, not everyone agrees). So currently, technically, nobody who uses widgets is a cheater. Even if the player gets a big buff against the other players who don't use the widget.

[plush girder]

Hm, maybe I didn't write my intent clearly. I'm against widgets like aimbots, or APM assist AIs. IMO a player who spent more time in learning the game should have better chances, not the one who spent a lot of time finding the better "assist" widgets.

I think I understand the problem: It's hard to find a common agreement on which widgets significantly increase the chance of winning and which don't. IMO, when in doubt, one should disallow questionable widgets. Aimbot widgets definitely fall into this category or otherwise this thread wouldn't have existed. Unfortunately, I am under the impression that many people who stated their opinions in this thread (probably not the ones who voted YES), rather think the opposite: Every buff is OK because it's your fault if you don't search and download the widgets which improve your chances of winning.

[vestal ivy]

It's a game, so there are rules and an honor system for fair play. In the Olympics, may the athlete who trained the hardest and wisest win -- but steroids are a nono because they create an environment where people are doing unhealthy things to win.

[unborn heron]

My point was more that both is essentially the same thing. It's both about putting effort into bettering your chances of winning, just in different ways and they even depend on each other to some degree, because without a certain degree of game knowledge and / or experience, you can't even decide if a widget is actually advantageous (to you) or if it just adds more load on your system or even the server.

One could even argue, that the option for widgets like the one discussed here and the difficulty in finding and utilising them makes the game in fact more fair / balanced, because it benefits people, that might not have the skill / apm to micro their Sharpshooters like "pro players", thus balancing out their (dis)advantage.

It's a PoV / approach matter imho.

[plush girder]

I don't think it's the same thing. Like @vestal ivy said, it's a matter of fair play.
Making the widgets hard to find, won't make the game more fair. Someone with high APM has the same chance to discover widgets as someone with low APM, and the former can spend his/her APM elsewhere.

To boost weaker players, a much more fair approach would be to play with handicap. Than trying to balance the game with widgets.

[unborn heron]

I get that PoV and it's ofc not wrong. But if we do a reality check, then exactly when in history has the existence of rules ever prevented people from breaking them, finding exploitable grey areas, loopholes or even inventing completely new ways to better their chances, that aren't (yet) covered by those rules?

It's simply human nature to always push the boundaries of what's possible. IMO it's a bit hypocritical to allow only certain ways of pushing those boundaries, while others are forbidden, even tho most of these artificial restrictions are put in place in the name of "fairness".

To address your Olympics example: You simply can't tell me, that weightlifters, that are willing to disfigure themselves to an almost ridiculous extend (even without steroids), so they can lift those extreme weights, are actually living "healthy". Same for sprinters trying to achieve the optimal weight / muscle ratio to be faster than the competition and so on. I don't think any form of extreme specialisation is "healthy", unless you almost exclusively live in an environment that requires such extreme "adaptation".

In the end, even in the Olympics, it's a matter of how far every individual is willing to go for the win.

[vestal ivy]

I get it. I come from Stronghold: Crusader, where simply having a turbomouse is can be cheating (clicking super fast gives a HUGE advantage). A lot of trainers exist. A lot of exploits. Players are always trying to catch each other cheating and make a video about it. It's nigh impossible to police, and it really comes down to an honor system and choosing who you want to play with.

If players want to play with w/e cheats or gizmos, and they all agree, then sure w/e. Up to them. They can even make their own little competitions with their rules. The end goal is fun.

But if there's going to be any sort of 'official' competition--rank and tournaments and stuff--there needs to be some established base level experience. Everyone needs to be playing the same game, not bringing guns to knife fights.

[unborn heron]

Now that is something i can wholeheartedly agree with. In any "official" competition / tournament, where there's more on the line than pride and ego, everyone should adhere to the same rules, otherwise it's kinda pointless to have it in the first place.

And yes, any game should be about fun, otherwise you will eventually end up in a toxic, overly competitive environment, that definitely isn't much more healthy than taking steroids is for "regular" athletes.

[vestal ivy]

Some boundaries aren't necessarily healthy to push. Like using nukes or chemical/biological weapons in conflicts.

Yes, athletes often take themselves to unhealthy means. A lot of this is hard to police. How do you stop a runner from running? How do you control their diet? At least with steroids and such, they can test blood/urine/hair for performance-enhancing drugs. This is at least something they can police. In baseball, they can make sure you're not using a corked bat, for another example. There are some things that can be policed.

Again, it's just a game, so the end goal is healthy fun. You don't want an arms race of unhealthy behaviors to achieve victory.

[dark turtle]

In tournaments non default widgets are deactivated

[plush girder]

The non-official games affect Open Skill, too. So everything is sort of official. That's why I suggested to allow shady widgets only in games which are tagged with "cheats allowed". Such free-play games shouldn't affect Open Skill.

[cyan saffron]

Could also have a setting to allow custom widgets specifically, instead of just default allowing them, so at least people know the standard they're playing with.

[plush girder]

As long as the option defaults to "forbid custom widgets" and it is clearly visible before joining a game if this option was changed, I'm OK with that. Might be less prone to cause long discussions than "allow cheats"...

I'm not sure if Open Skill should be affected in games with custom widgets. In an extreme case, one could program an AI widget which completely automates the game and whoever has the best AI widget wins. It's definitely a skill to program such a widget but no Open Skill. Simply using such a widget would be no skill, at all.

[lime geyser]

Many features of the game are a result of people making widgets->players trying and liking the widgets->those widgets being integrated into the game. Making all custom widgets disabled by default = handicapping development of the game. Yes there are problematic widgets that have been surfacing as of late. The game design team has already made announcements of how they generally plan to restrict these widgets the general playerbase is opposed to without disabling widgets which could potentially become baseline

[cyan saffron]

Yeah, I think when it comes time to decide which should be baseline and which shouldn't and which should be disallowed (or only allowed in cheat mode), there is certainly going to be some disagreements.

[plush girder]

Do you know any details? Are they going to implement some sort of whitelist or blacklist for widgets?

[lime geyser]

Last i checked, the plan was to limit the rates of certain types of inputs from widgets in a way that specifically makes ones which auto-micro combat unit unable to function properly. There may have been changes since then.

[plush girder]

OK, breaking some widgets which shouldn't have been allowed in the first place, is a reasonable first step, I guess.

[lime geyser]

The old argument usually goes back to: once upon a time, line drawing a formation for your units to fight command toward was a custom widget someone made. It was a massive unfair advantage if you had it, obviously. However, in almost everyone's opinion, the game became much better when it was made baseline. If people couldn't easily try it out in pvp and form their opinions on it by using it in "normal" matches, it likely would've never been adopted, along with many other widgets we don't even think about any more because they're core components of how the game works. It sucks that custom widgets give people unfair advantages while the community is experimenting with things, but it's very hard to draw a fine line with what to allow and how to disallow undesirable widgets without impeding progress, and for about a decade the community was hoping the auto-skrimish widget would never be ported to this game, because it was known that it would open the floodgates for the various "cheat widgets" that have been made recently.

[plush girder]

Thanks for providing the background. As a consequence, the only 100% effective means against undesirable widgets, a whitelist only allowing certain unmodified widgets, is not likely to happen. At least while BAR still is in Alpha.

[runic frost]

Bro, they are allowed and they are not cheating. Putting up your own personal definition of what is cheating is and what is not and then calling people cheaters is highly offensive in my mind.
While I understand your point, it is just not up to you to decide that until you make your own game where you are in the position to define the rules of the game.

Also, I think lots of people are misinformed (like you were) what the "aimbot" widget, or more specifically, what the game itself does on its own anyway. This creates unneccessary drama and poisons any discussions.

[pallid phoenix]

Game will shoot a tick

Then a bull enters the range and sniper is sad

It's highly offensive to me how you think you think can tell someone to view something different way, no, you have to convince them.
Grow up.

If it offends you he sees it as a cheating, which it is, an unfair advantage, no other way around it, then either don't interact or present your view and hope its enough.

[lean cairn]

it might not be correct to call it cheating per se, but i think it is accurate to say that everyone isn't on an equal footing, that widgets are not presented to all players as in-game options, nor have they historically been documented or addressed to players up front or in-game, and that many players would presumably have the same concerns and desires as those who participate in the tournaments (that is to say, turn them off so opponents are on equal footing) if they even knew they were being used.

[pallid phoenix]

There's a widget that automatically eats units in nano range

How is that not unfair advantage, when 5 gremlins uncloack next to nano stack and are gone without player noticing anything

[pseudo oak]

game does eat units itself, if nano is idling too

[pallid phoenix]

The widget will eat while nanos are busy

[lean cairn]

subjectively, that widgets aren't default off in pvp leaves a pretty sour taste in one's mouth. feels very unsportsmanlike and makes a bit of a mockery of the transparency of the OS system and leaderboard.

[pseudo oak]

i wouldn't play BAR as much if there werent option of custom widgets, never liked the default camera, and needed some extra keys.

for me issue isn't widgets, it's reducing apm to a point where you don't have skill expression no more.

[pallid phoenix]

Yeah, watched a game in lobster pot where 5 gremlins killed 3 bases.
Got instantly killed in 4th by widget, player not even noticing what was going g on last 3 min.

[pseudo oak]

i need a widget to draw a circle around my mouse to use ingame selector syntax to select units, shouldn't be considered cheating. but integrating it, requires you to adhere to politics of getting your code into codebase

[lean cairn]

I'm not saying there aren't cool or awesome things that widgets do, but I think it's very hard to argue that it's fair or transparent right now.

[pseudo oak]

community needs to follow up on Behe's announcement of the Spring.GiveOrderToUnit API commands.

that and the projectiles cause 95% of widget pain.

[pallid phoenix]

Widget tagging spigots and such when they uncloack for a frame is blatant cheating too.

[lean cairn]

I'm not even against having a game that's targeted towards people who like to program and know what an API is, if that's what we're going for, but at the moment there should be a big fat warning sign and design decision that pvp is not fair, not to take it very seriously, and that some players who frequent discord and are familiar with these extensions may have abilities and advantages that the general public just playing the game just by downloading it from the website will not have.

[runic frost]

Whether something is cheating or not is not a "view" lol. There are rules set up by the game devs.
Instead of personally insulating me, you better read (and understand) my post completely where I explicitly said that I can understand the concerns. I can understand the "view" but you cannot call people cheaters based on your personal "view".

[pallid phoenix]

I'm insulted by your behaviour tho?
And you definitely can.
Vast majority of this community considers it cheating.

[runic frost]

how do you even know? Provide data?

[lean cairn]

well, it's far from definitive, but i think that the suggestion has garnered ~50 yes reactions here in the discord suggests that the concern is live/valid amongst a significant number of players who are even aware of it (again, it's not exactly advertised on the website when you browse to download the game). Whether you give it the label of cheating, or whether you just call it unfair(objective imo) or objectionable (subjective)

again, acknowledging that widget <-> cheating is not black and white in itself (i.e. not all widgets do give significant or actual game advantage, though it's probably reasonable to say that most non-aesthetic ones do to some small extent at least)

[dark turtle]

Calling someone a cheater even though the use of widgets is legitimate and condoned by the devs is an insult and accusation that cannot be tolerated. One may have an opinion on the use of widgets but calling someone a cheater based on a feeling is not only baseless but reckless. You try to give legitimacy to your argument by smearing other players honour. Cheating is an accusation that shouldn’t raised lightly without any evidence

Should I call players cheater because they use the prefer nano build widget? No

[lean cairn]

eh, it's not a hill I'm really going to die on personally. but i think a significant number would probably feel it is. my own subjective take is that it feels unsportsmanlike and isn't sufficiently transparent.

[dark turtle]

There is a significant difference to cheating

[lean cairn]

and just for the record, I've installed some widgets in the past.

[runic frost]

Also just for the record, I am using some non-standard widgets, but I think none of them anyone would consider cheating. Just a bit of "QoL". Never used the "aimbot" stuff or something like that

[dark turtle]

For the record cheaters should be reported and banned

[plush girder]

I didn't attack anyone personally but you act like I did. If anything, your posts are offensive, not mine.

[dire torrent]

Widgets aren't against the rules -> they are not cheating.

If anyone has good, specific ideas on how to practically limit how user widgets are allowed to act, that could be useful. But simply whining about it isn't.

[vast hill]

the widgets that are made are the exact reason why the spring ecosystem has progressed to this quality
Grid menu is probably the best case example
only a handful of DE members were testing grid menu in the early days because there was a general want to have proper keybindings for factories
instead of just clicking build menu
Gridmenu came into existance by both Badosu and resopmok

so just disabling custom widgets is an extremely distructive solution as the barrier to contribute becomes unnecessarily high
widgets have also been used to expose nasty mistakes in both game and engine that are resolved rather quickly

this has basically been the pattern that spring engine games have followed ever since spring started

[cyan saffron]

I think the point is that while it's technically not cheating to use custom widgets, it's in the same spirit of gaining an unfair advantage by using a program that provides additional control or information to a player over what is available in the base game and requires external additions to the game to have them. When you install a game, for it to be fair, that should be the whole game. If some developer ran a website that allowed computer assistants and some person hopped into the game not knowing that and was just playing as a normal unaided person and thinking they're just playing against another person, they wouldn't know if they got beat because the person is better than them on equal footing or because the other person used assistance and wouldn't know how much of the difference that made. As in the gremlins example, that addition can have little impact in some games and a huge impact in others, through no additional actual skill or actions by the player themselves. Or it may just give them non-obvious information to make them better at assessing the overall state of the conflict and help them make better macro decisions (like in the case of showing metal gained/loss by units dying on both sides in an area). With some widgets you're clearly looking to gain an advantage or avoid someone gaining that advantage over you by using the widget at the expense of everyone who doesn't and potentially at the expense of the game itself. To some mindsets they're practically necessitated to use such things when they become available and become rampantly used by such people, whether they're for the better or worse of the actual game.

I remember one season of Diablo 2 Classic I decided to compete on the ladder for a top position and played heavily and was third overall and second of my class and then I came to realize both the people above me and many others I'd been playing with were all using maphacks and it totally took the steam out of me playing competitively on the ladder to find out I was playing with a bunch of cheaters and I stopped competing after that and never did it again and only played online to mess around with pvp and stuff.

The best chess player is a computer. People play without computers to actually play the game themselves, which is why you don't want to automate too much or you're taking away aspects of the game from the player and removing the player from the game. This is both the player's ability to gather and calculate information themselves (versus timers on the map in League of Legends or metal gain/loss counts on the map in BAR) and control of units (like how units target other units or move to avoid damage).

The other point is fair that this is a game still in development and what functions should and shouldn't be a part of the base game is a real set of decisions that need to be made and those decisions will have a real impact on the resulting quality of the game, for better or worse. So it's in the developer's interest to start making decisions about what is and isn't allowed widget wise to draw the line on what is and isn't technically cheating. There is also a difference between using a widget to help refine it, using one because you think it should be part of the base game, and using it only because it gives an advantage when you may know it's bad for the game.

[dark turtle]

Aimbot should be part of the game

[pallid phoenix]

Sharkskin swimsuit weren't against the rules in swimming

Until they started beating all the records by significant margins

Then they were declared cheating

[dire torrent]

yes, rules can be changed, but right now they are not cheating. And for rules to be changed, you have to come up with a good idea for the new rules

[pallid phoenix]

What, do we have to start making widgets that drop janis out of comm range and snipe it instantly?

Tell me how broken it has to be to be declared cheating

[cyan saffron]

Activate Widget Flight of the Bumble Bees

[pallid phoenix]

I'll dust off my programming skills and try my hand at it

You don't need apm to do ridiculous stuff

[cyan saffron]

I think the point stands that many people, while they may not technically be cheating, have the cheater mindset and will take every opportunity to push that line to gain advantage over others at expense of the game.

[pallid phoenix]

Just math and computer precision

[cyan saffron]

Frankly, Olympic swimmers should have to swim naked and runners barefoot, get things back to the basics 😛

Just eliminate the clothes issue all together

a lot of 'runner' shoes mess up your feet anyways

[pallid phoenix]

Olympics were done naked at first

It's celebration of human body, not technology

[dark turtle]

Olympics are a tournament. Only default widgets are allowed in tournaments

[runic frost]

everybody has to play BAR naked. Teifion will verify via webcam

to celebrate human body

[plush girder]

Unfortunately, that's true. Limiting the APM for widgets won't stop clever programmers to come up with new ways to create utterly unfair widgets.

[dark turtle]

If the programmers don’t share it they will be moderated. That’s the rules right now

[loud ledge]

And this is checked and enforced how exactly?

[dark turtle]

Players need to report

[loud ledge]

Ah, so the players need to know all published widgets in Discord by heart and then police for the signs of unauthorized widget usage. Seems easy and fair.

[dark turtle]

Why would they need to know all the widgets?

If you see something you’ve never experienced how about using the chat function to ask other players about what you’re seeing

[loud ledge]

How otherwise they would know if the widget is published or not? I don't think players even know that they can report for widgets, much less can catch widget behaviour easily. Plus its essentially impossible in 1v1 games.

[dark turtle]

By asking obviously as I stated in the message before

[loud ledge]

Asking who exactly? Other 20ts noobs in their team who probably didn't see the thing you have seen? Pause the match until they can sort out the allegations?

[dark turtle]

“How do you do that x”

“Is that a widget that you are using? Is it on discord?”

[plush girder]

I guess that less than 50% of the players know that widgets exist, and less than 10% know what to look for and where to report possible unfair widget usage. As a noob, you have no idea if your opponent simply is damn good at the game or if he uses a widget.

[misty hollow]

Obviously atm its hard to verify, but the rule should allow us to do so at any time

So its to be up front about user widgets needing to be public

[dark turtle]

In that case the game should make a start screen informing players about widgets

[loud ledge]

Well, again, you are just disingenious if you think its realistic scenario to do in a real match without lets say pausing the game and annoying everyone. And again impossible to do in 1v1 unless you go and rewatch every replay you do, and then you don't have anyone to ask.

[dark turtle]

If it’s so unclear, if it’s so unnoticeable why would it even make a difference?

[plush girder]

It will be noticable for experts but not for the majority of players.

[loud ledge]

Lol. So if your 20ts opponent will whoop your ass with perfect micro and perfect skirmishing I guess they are just that good.

[plush girder]

OK, in this scenario even a noob will notice that something is awry 😅

[left tapir]

They wouldn't be at 20 OS if they can beat people of a higher level, the widget might be the thing that wins them the game but it still means their OS is going up

[plush girder]

Ah, I thought Kilian meant 20th opponent, not 20 OS.

[loud ledge]

Well you can't be 100% sure ever. And people probably won't spam reports on a hunch. With example of nanos eating stealth tanks, if you are opponent and see your tank being ate, you probably assume that there was countermeasures somewhere and player was prepared to react. Not that he was microing half of map away and widget did the job for him.

[pallid phoenix]

Let widget issued commands have little flare

[dark turtle]

Nanos eat enemy units without any widgets

[loud ledge]

Busy nanos don't. At least follow the thread

[dark turtle]

Stop command pressing s lmao

[plush girder]

Not a bad idea. Would make auto-evade, auto-attack etc. widgets obvious. However, e.g. an auto-eco widget would probably still remain unnoticed.

[loud ledge]

Well, yeah, thats what you expect good player to do. Not the player who relied on widget to do that, and didn't notice your tanks at all. Obtuse much?

[dark turtle]

I get audio warnings when stealthy units are detected. It’s part of the game

[pallid phoenix]

Yes, anywhere on the map

[loud ledge]

...
If you don't have countermeasures you don't get anything when stealth tanks pop up on your base

[pallid phoenix]

So second someone makes snipers, you get spammed whole game by it

[plush girder]

Oh, I like that idea.

[dark turtle]

When they uncloak you get the message

[loud ledge]

No you don't. Unless that is widget you are actually using lol.

[dark turtle]

You get the audio warnings even without the countermeasure building

You can activate it in your settings

No widgets needed

[pallid phoenix]

You get, if they are spotted anywhere on the map

Are you looking at your base every time you hear it?

[dark turtle]

If you don’t check your base in that case you deserve to lose. No need to blame widgets

[pallid phoenix]

Yes, but if you have the widget, you just dont

[left tapir]

i'm looking at my minimap

[pallid phoenix]

Gremlins die automatically

[dark turtle]

Minimap won’t show countermeasure waves. Also reclaim can only happen if they were decloaked before

[left tapir]

minimap will show units in your base

[pseudo oak]

i agree with Sabu, calling widget users cheaters is taking it too far, game is open source, so partly there is always that thing that if you disable custom widgets, some will tinker & get themselves custom engines and find something in engine to abuse. either way cheaters exist in every games, but custom widget developers shouldn't be marked as ones.

@cyan saffron External tools for gaming have been used, why it's unfair advantage? Plenty of information is available outside of the game. Did you know/use the selector language for custom keybindings, technically ingame no-one cares, but you can do some nice things with it or your setup, if you know how the engine works.

Engine allows these widgets to exist, has even API what user can & cannot do, the rules are clear.

It's not third-party stuff, it's a mod, similar to I dunno WoW addons.

Similar to WoW, I agree there is similar elitism (dunno haven't played much WoW), that people need to use the widgets or else they fail (idk something for the raids). Obviously PvE vs PvP impacts people different, and I despise cheaters in general.

About the aimbot itself, isn't it normalized in zero-k (similar to our state handling), that you can customize which units choose to ignore which units?

[plush girder]

If commands issued by widgets would cause a flare on the minimap to be seen by all players, that could balance several widgets and they would become more obvious.

[pseudo oak]

couple of custom reclaim widgets would fire every flare for every tree rock, doesn't really make sense

[dark turtle]

I would agree that showing an icon when a widget is used may help make the game more fair

[cyan saffron]

You mean help you identify when the game is unfair?

[pseudo oak]

Isn't it part of learning process, I've been bamboozled by the game multiple times, losing lane very hard even tho I felt I'm doing good, get completely smashed, think to myself wtf, load replay, then go - "ooooh, right there is some rock reclaim that, thats how he got 600m and made so much rockos".

I think with widgets it's similar

[loud ledge]

Anyway, the discussion about whether or not widgets are cheating here is really childish and just jumps through hoops around the definition and generous ToS policy that really is not some ironclad rules and can be changed pretty easily.

Before this, there were a lot of better propositions to introduce a better system around discovering and using widgets, and here is another one:

1. Introduce a mod browser similar to the AoE2 mod browser. Here is the showcase of it; needs one minute video to explain it to new people instead of a convoluted system that we have now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PhRbnt7-iI
2. Allow people to load whatever local widgets they want for custom games vs. AI. For multiplayer, only allow widgets uploaded in the browser.
3. If people want to use their widget in online play, they need to upload it to the browser, where it passes some minimal automatic checks. Non-creators can subscribe and get any widget from the browser.
4. Allow seeing ingame what widgets players are using, which should be easy if they can only use widgets from the browser.
5. If other players see actions that they think are pushing the limit of fair play from the player, they can easily identify what widgets they are using. Then they can go and report the given widget, and based on the report, the widget can be removed from the in-game browser by moderators/devs.
6. If people try to skirt the rules and upload widgets similar to already moderated ones, they will be moderated.

[plush girder]

Yes.

[pseudo oak]

I agree, DRG also has good system for mods, with 3 tiers, I think it's based on the mod.io thing.

verified/approved & sandbox

@loud ledge I think having that system is nice, currently most widgets are getting ported and there is similar ideas around, but yet no volunteers hopping to implement this.

I think it's crucial to have standards for widget making, that would help users extend the widget (change some colors, change some behaviours in the widget, as easy as possible too).

but making widget for public use is a bit harder, than you know hardcoding your function to one key

[plush girder]

Very good ideas!

[pseudo oak]

how does AoE2 handle mod configuration?

doesn't look like it does any checks what can be done in game or not, right?

[loud ledge]

There was ironically similar drama in AoE2 DE community about mods that added range indicators to certain building/units (that were never in game before for 20 years). In the end devs implemented the feature in default game, despite them being evil Microsoft.

[dawn viper]

I mean imo the tick spam meta is stupid in the first place

I will say I tested the widget thst this refers too still a dumb widget because there is a difference you need to be swapping in and out if you have unsupported snipers etc to target ticks etc also targets walls often

[round coral]

solution should be to nerf tick then; imo 4x DPS nerf could be reasonable; current 40dps at 17m cost is insane

[lime geyser]

that would heavily screw over arm bots in t1, and ticks would still be great sources of vision + cloaked unit screening lategame even if they didn't have an attack at all

[dawn viper]

Not the dps it's current targetting just gets overloaded by them unit target prio really needs to be added/improved the widget this post was about is not even op lol it has issues targetting walls and the such and it ignores the spam

[lime geyser]

providing intel is as large a factor in the prevalence of t1 spam as their ability to overwhelm high alpha units and the cost-effectiveness of their dps.

[dawn viper]

What needs to be added is a strong target prio Tachyans etc should not be targetting ticks and the such when there are more valuable units in range

[left tapir]

eh, tick spam is mainly for vision and flanking bonus

[indigo mortar]

yes, same for scouts. metal to damage ratio is mental

[dawn viper]

I mean the metal to dps ratio is insane on t1 disposable spam

[vestal ivy]

It's fine as long as there are adequate means to dispose of them.

[dark turtle]

Scouts doing damage is needed for early game. Also spam is part of the game. You can’t have massive robot armies without spam

[marsh finch]

Can you link your widget by any chance? Thanks

[vagrant flume]

https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1129695578998190140

[round coral]

this topic is just straisand effect and now u got 10x visibility and downloads, you're welcome 😄

[dawn viper]

True lol

[round coral]

trying to fight against op widgets/cheats/aimbots -> get more users of them in the game 😄

[runic frost]

I think large part of the drama is based on thinking that snipers would prioritize ticks without that widget. The author claimed that to be case and said you would need the widget if you want a different behavior. Clever marketing, but plain wrong.

[dawn viper]

It’s set to ignore not deprioritize so you got to keep swaping to fire at will if you got no anti t1 chaff

[round coral]

you are partially right - if heavy units and flea stand in the straight line snipers will prioritize heavy by default ( i didnt know it like probably most ppl); the thing is widget enables to completely ignore ticks; so if u have typical use case where various units are spammed then snipers will waste a ton of reload time on these light units like flea and then get killed by these heavier units because they got no reload time ready; so without widget distraction of snipers by flea works, with widget it doesnt work making sniper much stronger

[waxen token]

And a lot of us were saying that snipers should be smart enough to not shoot ticks when more valuable targets might become available shortly, and that snipers should be balanced accordingly. There's a point where we're trying to balance units by making them annoying to use, which just seems like bad design to me.

[dawn viper]

Also assumes someone does not just turn hold fire on and manual target slow cortex stuff lol

[waxen token]

A lot of units in both factions are annoying to use, that's definitely not a cortex-only thing.

[lime geyser]

I think it was a comment on cortex's slow units being easy for snipers to manually target

[left tapir]

yes, but this isn't a arm vs cor argument, but a game balance argument, so you also need to take into consideration arm vs arm

[lime geyser]

I'm not saying his point was relevant to the current discussion, just trying to clarify what seemed to be a misunderstanding of what 1 person meant

[left tapir]

i understand that, my comment is also targeted towards what Hunter123123 said

[dawn viper]

I mean still does not prevent hold fire manual targetting for stuff by player

[runic frost]

I don't think I wrote anything that contradicted what you wrote. My point is that the widget author clearly stated that snipers would prioritize ticks over e.g. bulldogs without the widget, which is not correct and I think it mislead many people about what the widget does. So ~~the ~~ one advantage many people think this widget brings, comes by default with the engine.

[dawn viper]

I mean target prio really needs to be heavily worked on

[oblique arch]

Disagree. Target prio is skill.

[indigo mortar]

nope, it's busywork. units being 'not stupid' is expected, especially in a game that is designed to minimise APM

[oblique arch]

Where does it say the game is designed to reduce APM. If you want to take that route. Just select a strategy at the start of the battle and watch everything happen

[indigo mortar]

the game itself does. much of it is designed to reduce busywork; queues, repeat orders, unit manageability, compared to say starcraft, it's vastly better

[dawn viper]

^

[oblique arch]

It's still an RTS. You need to have input on the frontlines

[harsh whale]

yeah and why it should be stupid busy work?

[oblique arch]

Who decides what is and isn't "busywork"

Kiting pawns with grunts is busywork? Should it be automated?

[harsh whale]

i personally decide it. kiting has some amount of meaningful decision making even if not much

[lyric epoch]

it is. it should be, and it already has been done in other more prominent RTS games. micro should be interesting. this is not.

[dire torrent]

What prominent rts's?

[lyric epoch]

Total war

Auto skirmish has been a part of the series since ROME 2

and the game is better for it

As for unit prioritization, HOMEWORLD 1 and 2 have had it since their inception. Bombers auto prioritize cruisers. Cruisers auto prioritize captial ships and frigates. Fighters autoprioritize bombers. Because these are intelligent fighting machines. You shouldn't need to tell a sniperbot that firing on a tick is a waste of time when there is a commander right behind it.

This should all be in the game by default. APM should always be freed up to make high level decisions. not to give common sense commands to units that should be smart enough to figure it out themselves.

[vestal ivy]

Attention is a global resource. Some things are heavily balanced around how much attention they require--how much they reward good micro and how much they punish neglect. Higher levels of attention required = higher skill ceiling. High skill ceiling is good, but we don't want these to be arbitrary skills like buying a drone perfectly every 15 seconds or w/e.

In the future, when everyone knows the best eco build and the best army composition, where do we want skill expression to be?

Sometimes it's nice to have some things that are bad in the hands of a novice but strong in the hands of an expert.

[vestal ivy]

There's the Strategic side and the Tactical side.

Strategic is grand scheme of things, like what to build and when and where.

Tactical is the micro aspect. How to actually maneuver an army and fight a battle. Tricks to get winning trades. Etc.

It's nice when you can win with a superior strategy, but that only goes so far before it becomes very mechanical. Like in Chess, the top players have the game solved for like the first 25+ moves. It becomes repetitive and boring with strategy alone; there's a very solid ceiling as people learn the ideal way to play.

Real-time tactics have a pseudo-infinite ceiling, as human error gets closer to perfection. Game knowledge. Reaction time. Appraisal of situation. Pattern recognition. Recognizing own patterns and changing them. Creating feints and false patterns. Precision in action. etc. All potential areas of skill expression that will always have room for human improvement.

It feels really nice when you can defeat a larger army with superior tactics.

[lean cairn]

I'll add a separate dimension though: mechanism. in many real world sports, you can be as strategic or tactical as you want, the third barrier is the physical. it doesn't matter how much of a tactical genius you are at basketball or tennis if you haven't trained the body in the requisite mechanics.

chess and go,for instance, have almost 0 mechanism barriers, but they're also limited in their skill expression by the uniformity and constrained nature of their boards and ruleset

starcraft, for instance, at least from my subjective point of view having chosen not to play it, has a relatively high mechanism barrier, and rts in general has a reputation for comparatively high ones

there is a not unpopular view to mixing the concept of skill expression with mechanics, but i don't think this is accurate. mechanics is one possible medium of skill expression, but the two concepts are not equivalent

my view on my ideal game has always been that I want to try to maximise both strategy and tactics possibilities, while minimising mechanism complexity and barriers, knowing that reducing mechanism complexity to zero in rts is impossible, and that increasing strategic and tactical possibilities generally necessitates some mechanical complexity

applied to unit target priority and kiting, my principal would be to find a way to enable both as an effective choice while minimising the mechanical difficulty of actually getting units to do either

you could imagine inbuilt unit targeting heirachies, to let players get to that level of customisation and choice if they so wish while just sticking to sensible defaults if they don't, as well as inbuilt targeting philosophy or combat options for combat distance and behaviour: maybe "none", "kite", "hug", "hunt", "avoid", etc.

[vestal ivy]

Commandos automatically build medium mines next to anything they are fighting.

[robust abyss]

Questions: what is the micro that we are forcing on the player for their units to be effective? is this interesting micro? or just a pain in the ass

i'd be down for you to be able to toggle whether units target certain tiers

that seems more meaningful -- you can turn it on when you want your pulsars to hit t1, and off just before a t2 wave crashes

[cyan saffron]

yeah, I really hate it when I find my LRPC shooting at ticks and then reloading while real targets are visible, if there was some way to control where it shoots better that would be nice, particularly when I want to focus on a certain region like water or defenses that keep falling out of vision, as that turn rate is super slow as well and shooting a ground spot manually isn't as accurate and takes a lot of manual control.

[misty fable]

I know it's not a perfect solution, but I would LOVE a toggle in, well, I suppose EVERY unit's UI that would cause it to start ignoring any unit on a blacklist defined by the player for that unit. Could probably be a widget I guess, don't know for sure. I usually tell my LRPCs to hold fire and then manually order them around but I so badly wanna tell my screamers not to shoot at anything except bombers and pulsars to ignore T1 spam.

[robust abyss]

yeah ambassadors are one of my fav unit, but it's frustrating that I can't make them easily do what I want them to do short of manually firing every volley

strategically speaking, there's no reason an ambassador should ever target a t1 unit

also area target is not great for ambassadors because they will like to shoot the same target

[lime geyser]

If you're on grid keybinds, I believe you could hit Q to select half the ambassadors, then hit N a few times to have that half of them skip the first few targets

Effectively splitting your firepower to reduce overkill

[robust abyss]

do you know what's the keybind for that?

like the name for that in uikeys

[lime geyser]

selecting half of your currently selected units is "select PrevSelection++_ClearSelection_SelectPart_50+"

skipping current task and moving to next in queue is "command_skip_current". extremely useful for setting blueprints with cons->having them move on while nanos/other cons finish the job

as a bonus, to remove the final task in a queue, "command_cancel_last"

the 2nd and 3rd were a widget that was made default a few months back

[robust abyss]

cool, thanks

[near aurora]

I've popped in and out of here but Ive always felt a basic addition that would help towards making widgets feel more fair is at least seeing what widgets any player has enabled in a game. This would also hopefully expose more people to more widgets and more quickly get the good/necessary ones into the base game. (maybe this functionality is there and I don't know it?) Even better although much more work (security wise especially) would be the ability to download/copy those widgets with a click in game.

[robust abyss]

information overload

[cyan saffron]

I keep seeing people say how widgets become standard and anyone can download them as a defense for all widgets, but I think there should be some preliminary approval process for widgets. They need to be tested out before everyone uses them, but the developers could still reject some from the start if they know it's something they don't want to be a part of the default game for people and which would be effective cheating versus anyone without them. Or could only allow unofficially approved widgets on the test server or with a modoption for the lobby to show when people are using unofficial widgets (which defaults to disallowed, so you can enter lobby and tell if 'extra' widgets are allowed or not)

[lime geyser]

this would result in people not trying widgets->widget makers less motivated to make them+ones that are made less likely to become popular->good widgets don't get added/created in the first place

[robust abyss]

could have an annoucement for what types of mod are allowed, failing to comply leads to mp temp suspend.

[lime geyser]

Problem is that plenty of widgets, particularly after bar version of the widget which spawned this thread was created, are very "grey area"

[vestal ivy]

Are there lobby options to prevent players from using widgets? Or is this unfeasible/impractical?

[misty hollow]

there is

[vestal ivy]

Then the solution is simple: Host your own game and turn off widgets.

[loud ledge]

Or we can make that setting default disabled, and then widget people will have similarly "simple" solution of hosting their own games and turning on widgets.

Nothing about this problem is simple.

[dense cairn]

I think so too. A framework is definetely necessary and then also a quick approval/check if the widget is according to the framework.

I mean that an aimbot widget or a widget pulling units with low hp back should be forbidden, is more than obvious. In many games this would be considered as nothing else than cheating.
What is next, a widget, which does complete eco build and you can come back after 20 mins to rush with marauders (and this would be even less impactful than the two widgets mentioned before).

[vestal ivy]

It sounds like the original intention of allowing widgets is to allow people to be creative and do things that may be adopted and improve the game.

But yeah some of them definitely do give a strong competitive edge; free apm vs the poor clueless newbies.

[dawn viper]

Or stop complaining and just use the function already in the game if you don’t want to allow non official widgets

[robust abyss]

but then you are playing with a significant advantage over most of the playerbase

could just leave t2 rocket artillery afk instead of having to aim everything

[lime geyser]

Except for the significant chunk of the time you end up wanting them to fire at places/units you neither have current los or radar on.

[robust abyss]

still, they will fire the instant a t2 unit appears on radar

instead of firing always at the closest target which is usually spam

if you don't have this when you try and blindfire your missiles will be on CD

[lime geyser]

Units only fire at closest target if on fight command. Otherwise they prioritize high value targets

Probably best to have them on hold fire regardless, so they don't fire at where a unit on the move was an hour ago

[robust abyss]

ah, I see

so they will shoot at reasonable targets if both are in range. but theres times where only ticks are in range so familiar problem

[lime geyser]

If they're both in range, and there's no active fight command. I'm unsure whether it's a bug or intentional, but fight command causes prioritization of nearest target no matter what

[lime geyser]

I have a feeling much of the drama in this thread wouldn't have happened if this interaction was more well-known, since there were many arguments about whether a target prioritization system should be added, and neither side knew it already is, because they probably always fight command the relevant units if they aren't manually setting targets

[tardy forge]

"They would need to be tested" : That seems like it would take a lot of time

[cyan saffron]

I was saying they'd be tested out in the same way they are currently, but only if they are something that would be approved by the developers to be an official widget. I'm saying there is no need for testing widgets to make them work well if they aren't ever going to be official because they're not good for the game and they can tell that up front by what it does.

[lethal valve]

Just caught up on this Widget and suggestion, and for what its worth I also think this should be super banned (and I hate spam)

whats even worse is this has an impact on performance.

[left prism]

PRs welcome for the functionality of super banning widgets

[vagrant flume]

didnt beherith wrote in announcements hes gonna do something like 2 months ago

[left prism]

For the record, I was in fact kidding

I think widgets like this either have or will get rate limited on applied commands

But I can't quite recall

[vagrant flume]

i think beherith forgot about that already so you can still try making a pr

[lethal valve]

this seems reasonable.

[dense cairn]

Is there now a framework in place? I mean it must be only a few sentences.

In the last days came the request for another cheat widget, auto self d t3 units under a certain hp threshhold (downside: they might also explode in own army, though i guess you could also program to detect if own units are close). So, the typical eco noob doesnt even have to micro t3 units anymore.... Getting riduculous to allow cheating actively.

[round coral]

yes pretty op cheat; and problem u describe might be easily fixed cause they may easily create shortcut to "activate self-d hp threshold' PER unit - so u only would activate it if u offensively use it hence no problem it will explode into your army

[dense cairn]

wow, this widget is even a bigger cheat:
https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1130732218843664505

1. microing low hp units automatically back
2. unbind them automatically from your control group
3. heals them up at a gather point
4. bind them automatically to your control group again after they are healed

WTF, this is such a clear cheat. How is this and ppl using it not permabanned yet?

The other cheat widget at least "only" sends lowhp units back, but this one is next level cheat...

[runic frost]

I think you got a misconception there what "cheat" means

[dense cairn]

Maybe u can explain me then, how a widget, which is automatting one of the most important parts of microing -trained by many ppl on higher OS lvls for months / years- is not a cheat?

If u play some BAR matches and pay attention to other players, u will quickly realize that only a relatively small percentage of the playerbase is even able to perform these micro actions regularly.

This comes on the scale of cheating pretty close to an aimbot in shooters - even worse than the ignoring ticks widget.

[left tapir]

Useful micro != fun micro
If i can have my units pull back and get healed automatically, then i would rather not have to do it myself. Not everyone wants the optimal play to need 200 apm to pull off.

[wary monolith]

Yes

[dense cairn]

Lol this is one of the core mechanics of RTS. Is BAR supposed to be a game for bad super casual RTS players, who usually play CoD?
In RTS and many other genres you are supposed to develop new skills, getting better by time and not all crucial actions performed by AI.

[harsh whale]

man i so glad i got some level of recognition even if 3 months later 🙏

[left tapir]

Skill and micro are not the same thing. From my PoV, BAR is different from most RTSes in that it puts more emphasis on tactical and strategic decision making and less on mechanical skill and ApM.
BAR isn't trying to be like every other RTS and that makes it unique

[dense cairn]

with tactical and strategic decision making u mean setting the rally points for the ticks and t3?
Lategame is already very bad at the moment due to exponential scaling making strategy etc. often obsolete.

I get ur point, but that is maybe how BAR wants to be or some ppl wished BAR would be, but imo it is not. Also very very hard for a RTS to achieve this mix.

[dire torrent]

So where do you think the line should be? What should be allowed and what shouldn't?

[cyan saffron]

no line, just let the AI play for you, easy

You just strategically pick your position and faction and it does the rest

[fluid harbor]

Gotta ban that or make it part of the core game

[cyan saffron]

verybadsoldier is just like 'it's not counterfeiting if the government makes a bunch more fake money, that's totally okay if they take your value'
Just because it's not 'cheating' because you've defined it away to a degree doesn't mean it isn't having the same practical effect of a cheater

So disregarding him because of a technicality doesn't really address the fact there is an actual issue

Point of playing against people is to play against people, with their human limitations. It's different things to play against a person and a person assisted by a machine to be able to do more.

Although I think it has been said they're going to limit widget inputs or something like that, so doing all that micro work of moving units will probably get disabled by that, if that is in fact the case.

May not strictly fully stop it, but will reduce it significantly at least

[dire torrent]

Cheating = breaking the rules. Widgets aren't breaking the current rules so they aren't cheating.

If you want the rules regarding widgets to change, propose what the limitations ought to be.

[willow solar]

the line should be drawn as follows: Any unit control widget giving a massive advantage to the user without being a fun mechanic that most players want to use themselves and see become an integral part of the game should not be allowed in the first place.

[robust abyss]

it's a significant advantage in the right cases

right, currently it isn't breaking the rules

[pseudo oak]

kinda right, but lot of these parts are highly subjective.
"massive advantage"
"fun mechanic"
"most players"

area mex gives massive advantage and isn't necessarily a fun mechanic. maybe most like to did want to see it become a integral part of the game, but because of the first 2 points, it would have never been developed & integrated.

[dire torrent]

Even "unit control widget" isn't clear cut

And there's not gonna be a court where ppl can argue whether a widget is allowed or not. Realistically a rule must be about what is allowed for a widget to do, technically

[dense cairn]

I was actually about to create a request for that in the widget section just to show what a ridiculous point we reached... (apparently since 8 years rofl)

https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1128742955356786693

Another example -> auto-skirmish with automatically keeping max distance -> have fun with whistlers........

[dense cairn]

Good approach, maybe adding the phrase of substituting important parts of microing

And then a list of examples of then previously forbidden widgets:

• Auto Retreat
• Auto Self-D
• Auto Ping of Stealth units
• Aimbot for targetting only higher tier units
• Auto Skirmish at max range
• etc.

I mean it is not so difficult to set up an initial framework, which can be updated and specified over time. But basically allowing cheating now is imo not a good solution.

[faint anvil]

why do you care so much, other people with widgets isn't the reason you win or lose

I think it's definitely a good idea to make a framework and rules for allowing widgets but saying it's cheating or whatever is just hilarious. people just want to take full ownership of their successes while blaming failures on something outside their control.

the concept of widgets as used in this game is really fucking cool and getting rid of it for your ego would be a tragedy

[dense cairn]

Exactly, in physical sports u have the WADA Code:

Anti-doping programs are founded on the intrinsic value of sport.
This intrinsic value is often referred to as “the spirit of sport”:
the ethical pursuit of human excellence through the dedicated
perfection of each Athlete’s natural talents.
...
Anti-doping programs seek to maintain the integrity of sport in
terms of respect for rules, other competitors,** fair competition**,
a level playing field, and the value of clean sport to the world.
The spirit of sport is the celebration of the human spirit, body
and mind. It is the essence of Olympism and is reflected in the
values we find in and through sport, including:
• Health
• Ethics, fair play and honesty
• Athletes’ rights as set forth in the Code
• Excellence in performance
• Character and Education
• Fun and joy
• Teamwork
• Dedication and commitment
• Respect for rules and laws
• Respect for self and other Participants
• Courage
• Community and solidarity
The** spirit of sport** is expressed in** how we play true.**
Doping is fundamentally contrary to the spirit of sport.

If we have an AI doing a lot of thing it is not anymore about our natural talents. And if not everybody has the same widgets it is also not a fair competition.
Also** dedication and commitment** is lowered a lot if u basically remove the fundamental parts, which require exercising.

Right now, we have zero regulation. Thus, basically every form of "doping" is allowed. That is why in sport you usually have a broad framework with the purpose showing what is ethical or not and then a list what is specifically not allowed and this is also not static but flexible during time.

[dense cairn]

Actually, I win most of my games and I do not internalize my successes and externalize my losses - for that bias I was too long into competitive sports.

What I just see here is an unfair environment for many people (and we here know about these widgets, others do not), with zero regulation, basically allowing whatever you want.
This has not much to do with sportmanship, excellence in performance etc. and everybody, who ever participated in a competitive sport should actually know that. I want to win fair and not because of a widget the other person does not have. As the WADA well stated the spirit of sports is how we play true.

I mean even without a framework, it is pretty clear what is ethical or not in the perspective of fairness.

I also never said to get rid of widgets lol, I said we should create a framework to regulate them. Are you sure that you are not underlying the previously mentioned bias and some of ur wins are actually partially due to a great help of widgets? 😉

[faint anvil]

I only use default widgets and I am in the top ~1% of players as of the last time I saw the ratings distribution

I'm pretty sure clyret (and probably most of the old guard of players) only use default widgets too

And I don't refrain from using them because I think they're unfair, it's because I don't like them. I find them unpredictable. I stopped using the dgun energy stall widget because I ended up with tons of my factories and workers and nanos randomly paused and it caused me to lose many games

[dense cairn]

and they can also perform the actions of the widgets mentioned above. But take a look at many players beneath 30 or 40 OS, they cant do this stuff, especially not simultaneously and they are about to learn it step by step (which is also part of the long term motivation).

There is a fine line imo between useful automating and automating too much affecting our lvls of "growing" in a game.

[dense cairn]

yeah i m not using them either, but they will get better over time and some of them actually work flawless (the issue is yet not that big, but it s already apparent with some of the recent widgets in which direction it might shift)

[faint anvil]

I'm not some mechanical god, I never played starcraft or any other competitive rts (was solidly silver ranked in lol though). I got to the rank I am by being good at tactics primarily. which should demonstrate to you that microing widgets aren't some super op auto win

And sure I've played the game for a while now, but many of the "new" players have way more hours in the game than me. So no I don't see what's op about the widgets, because I sit at 30 os with like, 30 apm as a pure front player. I'm not some super op strategic mechanical god. Frankly I would call myself a pretty mediocre player. And yeah it's only me talking here, but I think it's a pretty clear demonstration that automation widgets aren't that unbalanced

Like I said, I intentionally don't use these widgets because I don't like them and they're unpredictable and mess up my game plans.

[autumn moss]

you give too much credit to the widgets. Don't stop at the description, try them out (and I mean for real, in a real game). You will see why they're not actually as op as you think :p

[willow solar]

Didn't Zero-K at some point by default offer lots of automatic micro for many units? Like automatic dodging of plasma shots etc. And ultimately most got reversed because many didn't find them fun. I never played Zero-K that much, but I think experience gathered in Zero-K is valuable also when considering design in BAR.

[runic frost]

Please just read the thread here. It has been explained several times already.

Also, accusing people of cheating when they clearly are not cheating is an offense and should be moderated, in my opinion. No idea why moderators do not act upon it.

[dense cairn]

They are not so op yet, but if u follow some of the widgets threads, sometimes they already found solutions for certain issues by turning certain widgets off early game and only turning them on lategame and a lot of widgets will get better over time

[robust abyss]

i mean these widgets in most other rts would be met with incredelousness

[dense cairn]

Haha yes, stuff like this was what I expected. I mean we dont have to be geniuses looking onto some of the recent widgets to see where it is going. And sometimes it s better to just act proactive.

[robust abyss]

if you played a 1v1 and someone had automicro'ing missile trucks against you would you just be like "shoulda just git gud"

[dense cairn]

u would get flamed, banned, outcasted. That is why I cant even believe we have a discussion here, seems so obvious for me

[robust abyss]

widget devleopment does a lot for quality of life

drawing a rule is difficult. but it's pretty clear there is some tension between ease of use and even playing field

[dense cairn]

I m kinda the opposite, I played SC etc. on highest league with >200 apm

In BAR I enjoy mostly the micro battles on t1 and t2, t3 is imo very repetitive and boring. And when I see that even the t1 and t2 battles get (partially) automatted with certain widgets, there will be not so much fun left...
Where should the long term motivation come from, if you cannot easily get better anymore in various skills and a lot of stuff is done by AI?

[robust abyss]

maybe two categories of widgets that can be singled out are "micro bots", things that control targeting or movement, or self-d. And alert bots. stuff that takes information like steath unit appearing on screen for a sec and displaying an audio warning

[left tapir]

you can improve your strategic and tactical decision making skill

[waxen token]

Why am I not surprised that a starcraft player would hate automation?

[robust abyss]

it's not about getting better it's disagreement about what should be allowed automation

i don't really care about it but if I was more serious in 1v1 i might

[autumn moss]

Yes. But then that means it's not as you describe. You said the widgets remove skill expression altogether, but actually what they do -- as per your own words -- is transfer the skill expression to something else (e.g. when to or not to enable the widget).

The point here is that absolutely ANY kind of automation can be seen as "removing skill expression", as denoted above many times with the examples of the AREA MEX or FIGHT commands, both of which are part of the base game, despite the fact they do automate things that could be considered "skill expression" as well.

[robust abyss]

imagine if top level player used auto self-d on low hp toggle widget

or it could be smarter and and self d when below certain hp and certain amount of enemies nearby and lost hp recently

even if great automation doesn't exist yet
it could certainly be made

if people want to play widget+creativity and automation vs widget
that's a fair stance.

[faint anvil]

this is a great point. Because I would never use a widget that does that because it would immediately self obliterate fiend armies as soon as they came accross anything with longer range

[robust abyss]

that just needs programming
on-off toggle
auto spread units, iunno

[dense cairn]

Yes, but when u play with higher OS ppl u will recognize that on a lot of maps certain strategies turned out to be the best / the meta (in a broader sense also when to activate the widgets in the future). So, fast forward, when more ppl get better a lot of the differences would depend on micro again.

[robust abyss]

can widgets control off-screen units?

[left tapir]

pretty sure they can

[robust abyss]

then bar 3 years from now is
AI tool (widget) + human vs AI tool + human lol
it's like bot vs bot but with a human in the ring too

[faint anvil]

See but this is exactly what I mean. Skill in BAR isn't self destructing fiends, it's knowing what fiends to self destruct and when (as a microcosm of skill expression in this game). You can't automate that, and if you try, you're not going to be as good as those who just know

[dense cairn]

yes, that is also what I said in the other thread. You could just include additional if conditions in the programming. This stuff is just at the beginning.

[robust abyss]

players are strained by apm all the time

not in all situations, but being able to instantly react while you do something else is broken

[dense cairn]

or we only just pick the spawn point and kinda watch the replay then 😄

[robust abyss]

like making a widget that improves medium tank micro, or automatically pulling back the weak units, automatically makes your laz repair while retreating if enemy are too close
that stuff takes clicks
making your artillery/sharps not target low tier units on toggle

[waxen token]

Widgets have been available for a decade already. Don't pretend these are new.

[robust abyss]

what does that even mean?
it's not new therfore it won't ever be a problem?

[dense cairn]

You can automatically pull t3 units back (ton of hp, easy for AI to micro) to a group of lazarus, you can make 2nd if condition that they self-d under an even lower hp threshhold, you can make a 3rd if condition that they stop the self-d if friendly units are close etc. and you make another condition that it is getting send to your former control group when fully healed...

Basically the eco guy can stay afk after he was already afk the first 20 mins...

[faint anvil]

And you can do that and you still won't be as good as someone who knows how to micro their fiends

[robust abyss]

oh here
you can write a widget to auto pop down and pop up your pulsars every shot

[waxen token]

Go for it. Make your "OP" widget and see how well it does.

[robust abyss]

that's a terrible argument
it's not that making an OP widget is easy. It's that it can be made, and likely will continue to be made gradually

[waxen token]

You're arguing for a change. Go on, show us how OP it is.

[robust abyss]

you're saying it's not OP?
what are you saying then?

[dense cairn]

Might be so yet, but you will be better than someone, who is for instance not microing his t3.

And I actually see a lot of 30 + os not microing low hp t3 back or using self-d

[waxen token]

Yes, things that don't exist are not OP.

[robust abyss]

what about smart targeting?

[waxen token]

Half the people using the so-called aimbot widget said they turned it back off.

[faint anvil]

yeah because if your t3 unit just busts past their defenses with 10% hp and starts walking back to repair gg you just lost

I would absolutely rage with a widget like that

[autumn moss]

do you use it? 😄 because it's not op

[robust abyss]

just because avearge person doesn't know how to use a nung-chuck effeciently doesn't mean that it isn't OP in a fist fight

smart targeting IS a strict gain for units like banisher/ t2 missile trucks though
it's never bad there to ignore shooting tick/scouts

to manually micro them is very micro intensive

[waxen token]

Do you use it?

[robust abyss]

bruh this guy be like "did you see a murder?" then murders don't exist

[waxen token]

So you don't use it

[robust abyss]

zz i'm out

[waxen token]

That's what I thought

[dense cairn]

Look in the regarding thread and the posts of yesterday:

A: "I stopped using it because the lack of effective hold fire was pissing me off"
B: "Yea I disable it and** enable it midgame**"

Here comes already to play what Skymirrh said, you have to then time when to activate certain widgets during a match lol.

[waxen token]

Sounds like an obnoxious workaround to something the game should do by default.

[dense cairn]

just turn it off in such a situation? With a script - one buttonclick

[faint anvil]

ok then go for it. I can think of so many reasons not to have it on that I'd rather not. Instead of microing your units you'd just be microing your widgets the same amount, to worse effect

[waxen token]

It's so weird to have people come here and prophesy doom about functionality that's been available for 14 years.

[autumn moss]

I will repeat myself

The widget system is under the control of the development team: custom widgets can only do what the BAR developers allow them to do. As such, if it is determined that a custom widget abuses the possibilities of the widget system, the BAR developers will be able to adjust the system in order to prevent the abuse from happening altogether. In other words, widgets cannot be cheats by design.
and
All in all, the takeaway is that players should not focus discussions on whether or not a custom widget is unfair / cheating as it can only do what it's allowed to by the development team. Instead, players should focus discussions on whether or not it should become a default widget so that everybody can use it, including in tournaments. Actual unfair / cheating custom widgets will be handled by the development team.
and
Finally, remember that it is always possible to disable custom widgets in a public lobby at any time by tweaking lobby settings (Adv Options > Restrictions > untick Allow custom widgets). If you do think some of the custom widgets currently in the wild are abusive, we encourage you to do so.

[faint anvil]

it's really easy actually to just remove a unit from its control group and send it back to base

[dense cairn]

Did you read the WADA code I posted? Just because certain things are not forbidden, it doesnt mean they are ethically correct. And if we look on the definition of cheating in a broader sense "act unfairly in order to gain an advantage" -> could definetely apply here, since many people are not even aware of these possibilities. Though, you could argue they should check the widget section daily.

I mean let s assume this would be an egoshooter, people are allowed to program widgets and one guy programs the first aimbot ever. Would you not call that cheating? I would.

[waxen token]

Though you really don't want to send it back to base most of the time, you want it to move back a few feet so patrolling rezbots can hit it.

[robust abyss]

so non-default widgets cannot be used in ranked games?

[faint anvil]

tournament games

[waxen token]

If this were a shooter, I would have a different opinion. It is not.

[robust abyss]

why are non-standard widgets not allowed in tournament games?

if you recognize that they can make the playing field unbalanced in a tournament then isn't it wierd to not say they also imbalance the ranked games?

[dense cairn]

ahahahaha 😄

[autumn moss]

there are no ranked games nor unranked games at the moment, but it is expected that when there is a separation then ranked games work like tournament games

[robust abyss]

okay fantastic
that's the most important info of this conversation

[waxen token]

The difference is that tourneys are played for money. Our ranked games are just the exposed balancing mechanism, which only cares about how often you win.

[robust abyss]

people play for competition too. vast majority of us are not here playing for the money

[dense cairn]

if this is recognized, I dont even know why we are discussing here...

[robust abyss]

i mean automation can be good. a bunch of plp might prefer open widget competition

but there's also those who don't

[waxen token]

I certainly do. I feel the game doesn't automate enough tedious tasks for the player yet.

[robust abyss]

that's a fair point
99% rts still have some level of mundane tasks

[faint anvil]

In my experience this is all a bunch of nothing, widgets save apm for people who are bad at the game and lower your own skill cap. good players don't need them and are better because of it

[dense cairn]

Yeah I really like certain features like putting units on repeat or dragging units easily. BAR has a lot of great features some other RTS do not have. But I think we should be cautious where we draw the line of too much automation - and at the moment I cant even see the line.

[runic frost]

The point is that you are not in the position to decide about the ingame rules of BAR. That is up to the devs. You cannot just define your own rules that are not in line with the "real" rules and then then call people cheaters according to your own personal ruleset

[robust abyss]

cheating here is subjective feeling imo, not accusing them of breaking hte game rules

its clear what the game rules are

you can't tell me to think what is or not is unfair

[waxen token]

It's needlessly incendiary and will just invite insults from people with a different opinion. Since y'know, you insulted them first.

[runic frost]

well, then you have your own personal definition of "cheating". It's usually quite clear what is meant by "cheating". If you call other people cheaters while knowing they are not cheaters, is trolling then

[robust abyss]

well yeah getting into a flame war with them when it's allowed by the current rules is not productive

how is it trolling?
it's like complaining/criticizing
saying "X unit is BS" when you lose to it is allowed within the rules, same for "X widget is BS"

[runic frost]

you are intentionally using the term "cheating" wrongly as you just stated that what is happening here is not against the rules. that's what I call trolling then

[robust abyss]

okay just replace cheating with "unfair" which is an opinion

[waxen token]

See now that is fine.

[runic frost]

yes, that is totally sensible, thanks

[waxen token]

I can imagine widgets which I would consider unfair, but I don't know if they can exist. Would need a proof of concept.

[dense cairn]

As Chronopolize said

i mean these widgets in most other rts would be met with incredelousness
And this is very "nicely" said - they would call for bans etc. So, I think you might understand that I am kinda surprised that we really have to discuss a topic, which would be pretty obvious in most RTS communities. And there they would call you a troll and worse.

The rules/framework are not here yet, at the moment everything is allowed - still in eyes of sportmanship there should be some morale boundaries (and ofc a real framework, so it s clear).

[robust abyss]

a bot that handles my t2 missiles for me, keeps them at a safe distance, then walks them up to take shots, only firing at stationary t1 and buildings

a bot that auto micros scouts on the frontline securing vision while retreating when enemies get in range
and rebuilds them automatically when lost

[waxen token]

Take that a step further and make it fire simultaneously and we're starting to talk about an amazing artillery battery AI that I would absolutely love to have be a default widget.

[dense cairn]

which is pretty much the oxford definition of cheating ^^ But in the end it should not be about the terminology anyway.

[left tapir]

By this definition of cheating i can also claim that commando as a unit is cheating because some people aren't aware of its capabilities

Same with the juno

Or emp immune units

[dense cairn]

They are included in the game available for everybody - for the widgets you have to get discord, need to know about the widget section, search the newest widget etc.

[robust abyss]

the root issue is "what actions should be allowed to be automatable". could be different between casual games, ranked, and tourney.
different answer will make the game slightly different.

[dense cairn]

I think you need to have a discussion intern or public about the scope of the game regarding automation, since there are clearly two worlds colliding and maybe take a look what the majority of the target audience (including future players) would like and what not and find a compromise.

Personally, I like automation of base etc. to focus more on the battle, but if the battle also gets automatted... too boring for me.

[hidden heart]

There does need to be a better framework for the incorporation of widgets into the base game, so that they become options for different ways to control the game that everyone has access too. That framework should include some sort of review process which aims to sort out whether a widget adds enough unique functionality or QoL. The current form of anything goes for a lot of games isn't sustainable in the longer term, even if it is helpful for open development in the now.

[waxen token]

Remember what our “ranked” games actually are. They’re just the balancing mechanism doing its best to make balanced teams. You don’t really want to add a “casual” mode that doesn’t do that because then teams will get out of whack. It’s possible to do unranked games right now, but we don’t want them to be common.

[faint anvil]

yeah afaik the most op part of the aimbot widget is how it lags the game

which is a pretty big problem

[robust abyss]

true

it does have a leaderboard which makes it the defacto ranked mode tho xD

[dense cairn]

You could do it like some MOBAs - hidden elo for unranked. Otherwise the games would definetely be a mess

[waxen token]

Yep, I consider exposing the OS number a mistake. But it would be nigh-impossible to reverse at this point.

[dense cairn]

The current form of anything goes for a lot of games isn't sustainable in the longer term, even if it is helpful for open development in the now.
Yes, especially since there are coming more and more problematic widgets lately.

[runic frost]

what is the most critical widget in your opinion?

[vast hill]

I think this topic requires a ton of actuall look at bar
Advocating for the ban of users because of opinions is not a solution ever
Yes you should know who you are
Spring development has been aided by the creation and use of widgets to further games
That field display widget
It’s atleast 4 years old
But It was only working for bar for about 2 years
And even then people were calling it a cheat

[cyan saffron]

I think a lot of people are focusing on the fairness/effectiveness of widgets and may be missing the fact that you're also defining what the actual 'game' is when you decide what a player does and does not do and what is done for them. If the player does nothing, they're not playing a game, they're watching a scripted movie. And what type of game people want to play, what actions they think should be part of the game and what actions they think are okay to have done automatically is very subjective and changes the nature of the game. Like in the board game Risk you just decided where to place armies, where to move them, what cards to play, you don't individually control how any of the armies fight, you just roll a die. That's a very different game. So when someone is using a bunch of different widgets than someone else, it's not just that one person has an advantage or disadvantage, but that they're no longer playing the same game anymore. They've opted to automate different aspects of the game or display different information, changing how they perceive and interact with the overall conflict.

If you want to play against a person, but the aspect of the game you're actually playing has become player versus computer, that can detract and significantly alter the nature of the experience and may make it significantly less fun or remove it from the game for the person trying to play that part because they can't micro like a computer can automatically and now their micro is rendered somewhat irrelevant. It's at the heart of game design to decide what the actual game is for players and what you leave or don't leave them to do. Generally people don't want to do tedious stuff, like manually moving a bunch of units out of the way to walk through them or to place a structure they are in the way of being built, but any time you have the game start making small tactical decisions you're removing a little bit of the game and there needs to be enough left elsewhere to still have a fun and hopefully sufficiently deep experience to keep playing the game. Also I'll note that there are many times where a unit is low on health and you don't want them to retreat for a heal because it's dumb and won't work, which is why with air units you have a setting for when to retreat them and any time you're taking air units for a heavy assault you often want that to 'no retreat' otherwise they may leave instead of finishing the attack.

Another thing you COULD do, to retain aspects of the game, but have them be less micro-intensive, is to simply slow down the game in proportion to the number of units or something, so as the game scales up, you get more time to manage everything. That's why some people really like turn-based games, because they can be as thorough as they want without the time constraint, but that changes the nature of the game towards turn-based from real-time and the point of real time is to keep things at a certain pace both for time reasons and to force you to decide where to put your attention and control, a fundamental game design decision on the nature of the game.

Also, just because widgets have been around for a while doesn't mean a new one couldn't come out soon that is drastically more potent than all before it. Capabilities change over time and often rapidly.

[dense cairn]

That is exactly what I meant with deciding about the scope of the game - you worded it much better, also with this good example.

Maybe some of us are thinking completely different here. Previously, we also had the argument, if the skill is not within microing it will then switch to the area of strategic decision making etc.
For me (personally) BAR has not so many strategic aspects in 8vs8, it is like a line of timestamps of possible events:

• Tick/rover harrass
• Bomber harrass
• 4-5 blitz harrass
• hounds from consul for frontline (mostly from higher OS ppl)
• t2 from backline
• pre 11 min nuke rush
• normal nuke rush
• marauder rush
• 20 min bomber rush
• marauder + thor rush
• mass thors
• lolcannon
• etc.
  I am every game expecting these things and more and accordingly u build antinuke, bubbles or whatever. So, for me there is not "much" strategic thinking ingame, since u see the most patterns every game (depending on the map).

The interesting part remaining for me are the fights/the action- and here especially t1 and t2 fights (t3 with the high hp units and mass ticks is already quite boring). And if these t1 + t2 battles are automatted, I dont even know what should motivate me.

For me also Risk is quite boring, you can pretty easy predict what is gonna happen plus you have a huge luck component with the dice (=not "fair"), while other ppl totally love it (though I guess the majority would get bored rather quickly playing it daily instead of once in a while).

[dense cairn]

I do not have a comprehensive overview over the widgets to answer this question.

But my thought process would go like this:
Imo the focus of the game should be on action/fun, so most widgets, which lead to a bigger emphasis on the action might be good ("fun" might be subjective however).

On the other hand (in my eyes) the action should not be automatted too much (dragging groups with the mouse is for instance really cool, but unbinding low hp units, healing them automatically and sending them back is for me too much), because after more and more widgets you would ve basically Risk and roll more or less a dice for the battles.

This means for me all the widgets which automate crucial parts of the action (self-d units under certain hp threshhold, sending units automatically back, dodging shots automatically (someone mentioned this example from widgets from another game) etc.) are too much.

Another category would be widgets, which counter strategies in the game. For instance there is one player in BAR, who basically goes 5-6 stealth tanks each game and if his stealth tanks would get autotagged with a widget, this would counter his strategy nearly completely.

The aimbot widget is kinda a special category - here the question would be if this option should not be automatically in the game (button for ignoring t1 or sth like that). But this would partially also be a discussion about nerfing spam.

So, imo first you have to decide if u want a Risk like game with more or less a dice or a more action oriented approach (as it is right now)

[vestal ivy]

They are already off in tournaments. Host a lobby and turn them off if you're worried about them. Otherwise the philosophy seems to be let players come up with creative stuff that may or may not be useful to adopt into the game.

[raw flint]

The arguments about if this counts as cheating seems a bit of a red herring, it's more important to know if these kinds of widgets give an unfair advantage compared to players who don't have the widget.

I also think the impact on lower level play is being poopooed. Healthy fun gameplay at mid and lower level is going to be important for player growth and retention

[runic frost]

red herring? Cheating is a bannable offense mate.

So it totally matters if it is cheating or not. If it is cheating, then moderator actions are required.

[hidden heart]

It's been a contentious issue for some time already, with lots of emotions coming from every side. There are plenty of reasonable suggestions, including this as a resonable reply to this whole discussion: #1130483021213081681 message
The truth of the matter is I think, it's impossible to develop such a framework until a knowledgeable enough coder comes forward with a clear and fair plan, willing to do the work to put it into action.
So here I appeal to all the people in the discussion: If you can, do. Please.

[dense cairn]

I think above already a framework (purpose statement) was suggested. Imo we should maybe shift away from the thinking, if it is not perfect, we better do not do anything at all. Because the currently existing "solution" (no regulation) is definetely the worst. Since cheating is basically allowed as well. I cant think of any other game, which would allow that and would not close such a loophole immediately.

Why not do it like in professional sports? Broad purpose statement and then lists of examples, what is not allowed.
And for that, you have to decide, if BAR should be action-oriented or should turn into Risk with rolling a dice.
Very clear steps to go imo.

Also the game is in alpha stage (though basically finished when it comes to the MP part), so I think it would be clever to tackle these quickly solvable issues faster before release.

I mean what is really missing? Onboarding for beginners (Tutorial, provisional rating for beginners), SP campaign, Keybindings ingame, maybe automatted matchmaking system etc.
Most of the other things are minor stuff.

I dont even know why it takes months to fix for instance the emp bombers.
Just nerf them, check the feedback, if it is too much -> adjust.
BattleBit (from another indie company) is here a good example, they only take one week or a few weeks to make these adjustments, still the crying of their comm is huge. Imagine emp bomber fix would also take ages with a larger comm... Now these things are still easily doable without hundreds/thousands of ppl raging.

[dense cairn]

Yeah, which is a contradiction in itself. We discussed here if certain widgets give an unfair advantage / are basically cheating and there the opinions obviously differ. On the other hand they are already switched off in tournaments - so, apparently some ppl already understood that some widgets give an unfair advantage. But then they should also turned off in other matches - since the majority does not play tournaments.

Also hosting always your own lobby and turning them off is not a solution (the problem keeps existing for the majority - who are even unaware of that). That is already done with emp bombers since months. If there is an issue, it should be fixed imo and not always "then play customgames with your own rules" - especially since the playerbase is kinda small and it takes depending on the time of the day etc. already ages to fill newly created lobbys.

[robust abyss]

i think toggleable micro-widgets is a good compromise for regular games (allow widgets that give order commands to units, other than toggle fly/land)

I'm not sure what the community as a majority thinks about micro-level widgets

[dense cairn]

The question is what do u want to do then? The game becomes already quite boring with t3 stage - where constant microing becomes less important due to the units hp.

Also making t1 and t2 stage boring is probably not the way to go.

[exotic glacier]

BAR design philosophy stands against auto-micro/skirmishing widgets

[vestal ivy]

There's some micro that's fun, like maneuvering your armies to kite damage. There's some micro that's unfun, like telling a rezbot to keep healing units in the area--so a repeat option came about. If automation comes about that lets us focus on more fun things, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Development for fun automation has to start somewhere, so it's left to the public.

With widgets off in tournament play, top players are still encouraged to learn the game without additional unfair automation.

[dense cairn]

Wouldnt this be then a good stance for the framework?
Many other ppl and me had the same stance, but apparently especially members of the development team argue against this (that is why I suggested to decide in which direction BAR should be going).
Ofc the exception could be made for fun additions like rez bots on repeat - but auto retreat, auto self-d etc. would be according to this definition clear cheats then (as in nearly any other RTS).

With widgets off in tournament play, top players are still encouraged to learn the game without additional unfair automation.
We have a very small community, not many people play tournaments, nor is there a real pro scene. Did real pro players even join yet (who practice like daily for x hours)?
So, saying cheating is fine, because it does not affect much the "pro" players doesnt seem to be the right approach for me.

[exotic glacier]

Yes we are putting together a game design document right now that is going to define such things amongst other

[dense cairn]

Thanks, sounds great! 🙂

[waxen token]

Stop calling it cheating. It isn't.

[dense cairn]

...would be** according to this definition** clear cheats then (as in nearly any other RTS).
"Officially" not yet, since there are no rules - but according to the design philosophy it is (in the sense of gaining an unfair advantage) and when the design document is released it is as well.

In the end it makes no difference anyway how we call it atm, in nearly every other RTS it would be called ("legal") cheating, here we call it "unfair advantage" - belittling doesnt solve the problem though.

[waxen token]

Why would I care what other games of a dead genre do? The genre destroyed its own playerbase with excessive focus on APM.

[runic frost]

There are rules and widgets are allowed. You are trying to twist reality to suppport your viewpoint.

[dense cairn]

Wait what - why are we discussing for ages if the rules are already in place and why are they not enforced?

This discussion is ongoing since months/maybe even years and now you say the rules already exist?
Where are these secret rules/framework apparently only known by you? Why do we all waste our time discussing then?

Why is PtaQ saying that a game design document is putted together right NOW to define it when u already have the ruleset hidden in ur shelf?
Why is another mod in another thread putting a framework together right NOW if you already have it hidden somewhere?

Please present your rules / framework for the widgets. Otherwise it sounds for me a bit delusional and as if you try to twist reality at all cost to support your viewpoint - for which you are blaming me lol.

It seems like a vicious circle:

1. Negating for months there is an issue / it has been like this for a decade, why would we change it
2. Is the issue really an issue or is the skill expression shifting somewhere else
3. can we really call the issue an unfair advantage
4. is it "only" an unfair advantage or cheating
5. if it is an unfair advantage/cheating, host ur own games and disallow widgets
6. Widgets are not allowed in tournaments anyway (why? if it is not an unfair advantage) and matches with OS are not "ranked" (lol), so it does not matter if ppl have there an unfair advantage
7. framework/rules should be setted up
8. framework/rules is already setted up, hidden somewhere - why would we need a framework, everything is fine
9. the rules are that we have no rules for widgets except being public, so why do you complain since we have already rules?
   etc.

After a few months a similar thread is created with a similar discussion history...

[dense cairn]

Puhhhhh, did you do a comprehensive market analysis? I did not, but there are several factors:

• RTS have been very popular in the offline area due to more focus on SP etc.
• in many RTS people might have even more played the custom games instead of the "real" game
• there are now more "categories" of RTS, splitting the userbase up
• RTS development costs are rather high, since you have to find kinda good balance for various modes (1vs1, 2vs2, 4vs4 etc.), have to make it accessible etc.
• many ppl shifted from "real" RTS to MOBAs -> way easier and you can use ur team as scapegoat
• people want instant gratification and quick successes -> tough in RTS, requires practicing, while in shooters you can with some luck also kill a pro early on
• RTS are for some people too quick, also the older generation might get issues, if the focus is too much on apm, since they might not have the same apm as with 15

Imo BAR could fill the niche between MOBAs and RTS, while it is still kinda hard in 1vs1, it is way easier in teamgames and with 7 other players on ur team u have enough ppl to blame for losses and protect ur self-esteem.

Also with 16 players the individual impact of one person gets lowered a lot, compared to 4vs4 etc. -> less pressure for the people

So, since probably more players will be playing 8vs8, question could be if the focus should be more on balancing this area instead of 1vs1 (though it might sound counterintuitive compared to other RTS - but they typciall didnt have great 8vs8 battles)

What is lacking at the moment is imo the onboarding of new players - this part might be crucial.
What could be also overwhelming for beginners is the immense mass of different units - vehicles, bots, sea, air etc.

Is BAR really that apm focussed? I have the feeling in 8vs8 u dont need much apm, especially since higher tier units totally outperform the lower tiers - if you micro or not.
So, imo micro doesnt have such a high impact anyway, but could be a motivating factor to be learned over time.

But that s maybe a (important) discussion for somewhere else.

[autumn moss]

Wait what - why are we discussing for ages if the rules are already in place and why are they not enforced?

This discussion is ongoing since months/maybe even years and now you say the rules already exist?
Where are these secret rules/framework apparently only known by you? Why do we all waste our time discussing then?
The rules already in place are in the CoC https://www.beyondallreason.info/code-of-conduct section B.5 Unfair Advantages). VBS' point is that widgets cannot be considered cheating as per these rules, no matter what advantage you think they give (because they do not fall under the exploits / hacks point).

The reason we have been discussing this for ages is specifically because we now have some widgets that some persons consider to be "too much", and because there have been no strong consensus on what should be done -- you and others are more in favor of disallowing, others are more in favor of allowing. At the risk of repeating myself yet again, ultimately all of this is only for game design / balance developers to decide, everybody here is free to state their opinion but since none of us have any actual power there is little point in running circles continuously once the point has been made.

[dense cairn]

• Custom widgets used on public servers must be made publicly available, we have a section on the discord specifically for it - #widget-downloads
  The "rules" for custom widgets are ONLY that they must be public? These are the "secret" rules? Seriously?
  This basically means there are no rules for widgets and everything is allowed as long as you post it in the widget category.

So, 9) in our vicious circle would be "the rules are that we have no rules for widgets except being public, so why do you complain since we have already rules"

I broadly read the other threads regarding widgets and the stances were relatively clear.
I mean even here we have a very clear vote of 78x yes to disallow the aimbot widget for a reason, already indicating the general issue with widgets not being regulated - while many players are even unaware of the issue. But the threads often got derailed a bit and ran in circles (leading to keep the status quo at all cost and no rules being enforced).

At least there will be now the game design document for more clearness.

[autumn moss]

This basically means there are no rules for widgets and everything is allowed as long as you post it in the widget category.
Yes, these are the current rules in place (and there are no "secret rules"), and again why calling the widgets "cheats" is technically incorrect as of now. The general point that VBS is making is that calling someone a cheater because they use / make a widget you don't think should exist is not proper, as per the current rules, because it's essentially the same as saying that someone is cheating because they use EMP spybots / Stilettos / [insert anything you dislike].

[hidden heart]

I could really get behind 1Daniel1 curbing his obvious zeal for this topic a bit, and find out instead what he can do to actually help with the problems he sees rather than continue to spew these tirades. The multiple sides of this issue have been discussed over and over, and what is lacking is action on the coding and implementation of a proper widget development framework, not the concept that it should exist.

[cyan saffron]

Work is hard, complaining is easy 😛

[dire whale]

This thread should be renamed, it's clearly not really about the aimbot widget itself but the idea of widget limitation

[runic frost]

what is it that has to be implemented?
I personally basically stopped all widget development cause I expect widgets to be restricted in some way in the near future. But I have no information in which way. Also I asked the devs if there is interest to include a widget I was working on and got ignored. So, I thought it does not make much sense anymore to invest dozens of dev hours into something nobody might be able to use in the end. That was at least my conclusion.

[dense cairn]

Scroll (far)upwards, others and I suggested action-oriented a multitude of practical solutions - Purpose statement similarly to the WADA code (heck I even posted parts of the WADA code highlighting important phrases), broad framework, list of allowed and forbidden widgets, so devs have a broad orientation.

It is not like we were just complaining, we were suggesting actual solutions, which could be implemented rather quickly ;-). Though they might have been partially lost in the vicious circle of this discussion, if we have an issue or not...
I also stated in an action-oriented way that it s better to have a solution, which could be adapted and specified over time, instead of doing nothing and waiting for the perfect solution coming one day (which could also waste the time of developers like VBS if in the end some of his widgets are not allowed. If the devs of widgets know before what the broad purpose / scope is that issue would be proactively prevented).

[hidden heart]

Have you tried a PR to the code on github? That's how changes are made to the game.

[hidden heart]

What I see is the need for a development framework that helps widget engineers follow a process that either gets their widget into the game or doesn't. For example, first there is an idea (e.g., for auto-skirmish). The widget author writes some code that does roughly what they want in terms of units avoiding shots while also moving to take shots. The author then does a bit of cleanup and submits the widget for review. The review process aims to determine some things (this is not a comprehensive list): is it optimized? is it functionality we want added to the game (as part of vanilla, or as an option)? should it be allowed as part of competitive play, be it tournament or matchmaking? The review process would also allow for some intermediate testing as part of a "widget review" options list, allowing players to use it in-game even before it passes review.
then, depending on how it passes review, it is added to the game either as part of vanilla, or as an option for additional UI/control that isn't necessary but maybe adds QoL important to some people.

Ultimately someone has to code all the stuff that supports the framework, someone has to manage the review process, other people have to be part of the testing and feedback process, and so on.. I have offered this basic outline for it many times in the past, but I have neither the coding skill nor time nor real interest to do it all myself, either.

[runic frost]

@hidden heart
But all you say is under the premise that user widgets are generally banned from the game and only widgets approved by the devs and added to the game after the process can be used?

[hidden heart]

I'm not being that specific, but if you cornered me into what I think should be done in that direction:

• Any widget under development can be used as part of PvE or unrated PvP game, even if it is not under review.
• Widgets under review testing may be used in competitive PvP so long as their promised functionality doesn't violate whatever distinction the GDT intends to make on the topic of auto-micro. In the example case, the widget will be allowed at least during the review period so that it can be determined through feedback whether this widget is QoL or does it detract from the competitive experience too significantly. During this time feedback can also be used to alter the widget, perhaps even its promised functionality, so that it is more likely to be included even if there are compromises to the author's original desires. Or not, maybe no changes need to be made.
• At end of the review process, this widget is either added to the game (because it would be unfair to some people to have auto-skirmish and others not) because feedback determined it's a net positive, or it is decided it detracts too much from the competitive experience and is not included. It's possible the review period ends without a decision, and maybe the widget can be resubmitted for an additional review period.

The goal is to both allow for open development and not stifle the marketplace of ideas, but create a fair and intentional environment where widgets are reviewed, not just for their compliance, but for their ability to meet stated functional goals with clean, efficient code.

In particular I think there are a variety of UI and key control widgets which could probably be developed, which might provide alternative methods for controlling and receiving game input/output. This is how grid menu started. But then again, they could prove to provide an unfair advantage to those who aren't using them, and it's not desired functionality, so ends up being rejected even though it's not auto-micro.

[runic frost]

Sounds sensible, but I don't know how this "under review" state is supposed to work technically? The widget dev would have to be able to make modifications locally and still use it in PvP games? How to distinguish from other widgets? How to prevent anyone else "pimping" the widget in an undesired manner?

For me personally, the hurdle would be to high. I don't think I would deving widgets in that environment. It means I am not able anymore to hack a prototype of a widget idea and see how it turns out. I have to pitch the idea first to get the blessing of the devs. That's what I can do right now already but (in my single case) got just ignored.
Hell, in the past, how many widget ideas I have prototyped that turned out to be bad ideas in the end? I would not even propose those to anyone lol.

[indigo mortar]

trying to get prior approval for widgets is not viable

[hidden heart]

I think under that framework you would definitely be able to protoype something quickly and test it in single-player, PvE, or unrated PvP. I think the idea is if you want your widget for competitive play, you need to jump through some more hoops and do your best to get it up to standards where it can be accepted as part of the game. That's the intent for the review process.
As for how to control the distribution or prevent people from cheating by using a spoofed widget or something.. I can't say for sure since I think some of that is probably practical code that would need to be written, and it's well beyond my expertise. A lot of my perspective for "fairness" here is that everyone has access to the same widgets in competitive play. That can be accomplished with the view process as part of the F11 menu or another tab in the in-game options.

[indigo mortar]

unless GDT want to appoint an Offical Widget Yesser Or Noer, any threads just waiting for permission will sink out of memory

free development is only option, and review once ready for that

[hidden heart]

Absolutely someone would need to be a manager for the review process

perhaps multiple someones.. they would need to be pretty familiar at least with the LUA part of the game's codebase, as well.

So anyway.. all that's my ideas waiting for someone to take them and run with it. It's the most I feel I can contribute to the topic, though.

[runic frost]

While from a player's perspective, I totally see your point. But from a dev's perspective I can say I won't start deving/testing widgets in single player or unranked games because I just don't enjoy those games and never played them. But maybe other devs will do so, I don't know.

[robust abyss]

-core widgets (included in game)
-custom widgets (enabled by default but can be disabled)

-Micro widgets: widgets that use specific functions (e.g. order unit) that are not in core widgets

for the sake of widget devs and players who appreciate more automation, let people use widgets as much as possible. if someone can implement the ability to disable micro widgets (as defined above) in lobby that would work and avoid needing manual verification

i suspect most people don't care that much

if there's an lobby option, then people can restrict it if they care (like 1v1 plp would care more), if not then not

[waxen token]

I’d care that functionality is being removed and probably give up on the game.

[robust abyss]

don't be dramatic
there's already an option to disable custom widgets. this is a subset of that.

let the players choose. if the majority care enough to toggle room option, then that's how it should be played

[runic frost]

If I would be concerned about widgets, then those auto micro widgets would not be my biggest issue

[robust abyss]

what's the biggest issue with widgets?

[waxen token]

Nah, if command-giving widgets defaulted to disabled, that would signal to me that there’s no point in sticking around because the game has decided to go the opposite direction I want it to. I’m not going to pretend that me leaving would be some great loss, but that’s how I feel about it.

[robust abyss]

it would be default to enabled, with an option to disable

[waxen token]

Then there’s no problem

[robust abyss]

i d/k what the dev intention is

for random play i think micro widget is no prob

if it bothers enough plp they can toggle it off. self-balancing.

[cinder forge]

So I the meantime is it considered allowed to use the widget? I would rather not, but in some lobbies it feels like I'm limiting myself by not having it.

[autumn moss]

Yes it is allowed

[lone zinc]

There are many technical solutions that are relatively easy to implement, but direction needs to be set by GDT.

For example, extending on @hidden heart idea that in PvE/unranked you can do whatever, you can still have some small step before available in ranked that is way outside the "needs to be reviewed by the dev" e.g. : a simple website where you log in and can create a widget, and upload new revisions, uploaded widget file gets cryptographically signed, and you can download the signed file (signature can be added e.g. in a comment in last or first line of file). When the game starts, it checks that the widget is signed by proper key, and that widget is not on the block list.

It would be easy to extend that to add review by somebody on the idea of widget etc, it also makes it that all widget by default are published.

That's just one way it could be implementated (and for me e.g. it sounds like a fun code to write).

Any special UIs, whatever in lobby to make it convenient to install widgets etc, are ofc also important, but it can come incrementally.

[dire torrent]

Unranked games being more of a thing would be a requirement for that to be a reasonable divider

[lone zinc]

Not really, it's already fully possible. Just a new modoption "allow any widget" could be used to control that, and the server already has logic to disregard games in different conditions e.g. when one player has resource boost.

[dire torrent]

It's already possible to disallow user widgets, but if that's the default, widget development is likely to come to a near stop

[round coral]

in all serious IT projects development of features is not done on the same environment where real users operate

developers everywhere understand that users do not want to be experimented on and dev environments are required and noone makes decision to stop development cause of this reason

[long garden]

why write widgets if you cant use them when playing the game?

[round coral]

so if u add allowanywidgets=1 to allow custom widgets it would serve as dev/experimental rooms just like eg now with emp rework

[dire torrent]

You mean playing with someone who's using a custom widget is "being experimented upon"?

[left tapir]

I think the major thing that would help is a subset of lobbies with different modoptions forced to always be active

[round coral]

you can in unranked or if u make them official; "innocent" widgets should be just made official; and cheat widgets should obviously be reserved to unranked

[dire torrent]

What is an innocent widget and how big a list of such official widgets should there be

[left tapir]

It would mean that people can still dodge the lobby if they don't want custom widgets, while still providing default lobbies where widgets can be tested

[round coral]

in the context of this thread your questions is kinda like "why write sniper automicro cheat widgets if you cant use them when playing the game?" 😄

[left tapir]

Tbf that still makes sense, what's the point of trying to cheat if it doesn't work

Not saying these widgets are cheating

[round coral]

lol so your point is "but i wanna cheat" 😄

[long garden]

the only "innocent" widget is the one that changes your mascot cat. as Errr said, informational widgets can give just as large of an advantage

[left tapir]

right click drag to make a line of units is (or was) a widget...

[left tapir]

there would be no point in making widgets if you can't use them, it's like making a burger and then putting it in the closet and never eating it

[round coral]

no, its like making sniper cheat widget and only using it in unranked lobbies or vs AI

[left tapir]

and please pray tell what percentage of the playerbase consistently plays in unranked lobbies or vs AI?

This would heavily stifle the development of widgets because "muh fake internet points"

[round coral]

are u author of any widget that u fear would be banned in ranked/default matches?

@vagrant flume would you not create your sniper widget IF you (and others) couldn't use and develop it in all ranked games?

[dire torrent]

Iirc he doesn't even use it himself

[waxen token]

He only made the thing to piss people like Forlog off.

[dire torrent]

But is unit behavior in a perfect spot rn, so that it should not be made smarter by default, anymore?

[runic frost]

lol sorry, got interrrupted... 😄 but here you go:
well, I do not agree if you consider this a relatively simple solution 🙂 Seems quite alot of work to implement on the development side and also quite a hassle for the user (widget-dev) to get his widget signed every time he changes one byte in it. And the signing process does only make sense if someone actually reviews the changes, no?
But in the end, we are talking about open source software here: if someone really wants to cheat, it is absolutely not too hard to do. That raises the question how much effort to put in such a signing workflow.

[lone zinc]

You are already supposed to publish your widget if you want to play with it according to CoC. What I described is only enforcing that.

[long garden]

and signing gives the power to later say some widgets are not allowed in certain game modes.

[dire torrent]

Publishing something is very different from it being added to the game proper

[lone zinc]

And I'm not talking about adding something to proper game. I'm taking about getting widgets playable in ranked game and not requiring rigor of getting merged to base game.

[lone zinc]

It's not a lot of work in my opinion to get MVP, only bump I see might be getting signature verification code in Lua. And again, seems like fun stuff to write for me.

Signing doesn't only make sense when there is review process, only initial idea/version might need review. Then you build trust. How do you think people get the write access to different repos? Transparency is already value.

From usability perspective, we can expose API and cli or something to sign quickly, so it's easy to do

[long garden]

you don't need a review, publish it and then if it is too op there'll be a 1500 comment thread about whether to disable it

[lone zinc]

And re the "if someone wants to cheat it's already easy", that's bad argument. Every single anti cheat solution in existence is just basically "making it a bit harder". And we might get one day a ways to get relatively strong anti cheat without compromising open source, via different attention mechanisms.

[vast hill]

most cheats that exist in bar
exist for all players
not just to widgets with the way that bar works

unsynced data is what widgets rely on to make things possible
and that is something that should stay open

[lone zinc]

Anyway: I'm contributing a possible technical solutions to one of the potential problems. I'm just pointing out that there are things that are possible and it's not all or nothing like some here argue. It's a false dilemma.

[runic frost]

No, it's not a bad argument because that's not what I meant. The point is there are different attack vectors and there are quite easy ones already. It's like claiming you will improve the security of your house by investing dozens of hours into installing a 3rd lock to your backdoor while your windows don't have panes and you always leave the front door open. But sure, technically you still did improve security, I guess. We will see if someone will appear willing to invest time on that

[robust abyss]

yeah signing widgets is too much work. it's not a security or esports level

just approval process for included-in-game widgets

[lone zinc]

Maybe somebody likes installing locks, but hates dealing with windows (I actually hate dealing with Windows :P). I don't see anyone soon fixing spec cheating, doesn't mean other areas can't be worked on. You can do anything locally if you can compile engine yourself. The bar to execute those it's a bit different though.

[lone zinc]

Are you really saying that a full blown approval process is easier than running a command?

[robust abyss]

no?

not signing widgets, but having to sign and get every version change approved is impractical

[lone zinc]

I've never said that it would need every change to be approved, I've said initial scope of widget, first upload. Not even the code probably. But that's flexible.

It really is only: if we want to control what can be used in game, have more flexibility with approval process, in the future use it as a start for the widget store that can be used straight from lobby, or something like that, that's how we could start to approach that.

It all depends on the GDT guidance.

[round coral]

better methaphor that u are missing somehow: its like disabling sniper widget so ppl dont use it in ranked games

"different attack vectors and there are quite easy ones already"
ur argument is "i still can cheat easily because im pro developer" cool just plz dont reveal your methods - but for 99% of gamers its just "now i cant use cheat sniper widget, i need to really tryhard if i wanna cheat"

[dire torrent]

do you think target selection for snipers (and units in general) is in a perfect spot now, and it should not be touched in any way?

[harsh whale]

Can't say for others but I wouldn't made auto retreat and energy stall widgets if I and others couldn't use them in normal games

[cyan saffron]

You could just add categories to widgets and add some modoptions to allow/disallow certain categories.
Default status: Unknown - off by default
Experimental - allowed by default, potentially to be added to base game (let people give it a go and see how it is, a developer would move it to this category if they think it has potential to be officially added)
Power overwhelming (Restricted by Default) - off by default, cheater widgets or other misc. stuff developers know they don't want to be an official widget, but don't want to ban outright so people that want to can still use it

This way people can still add widgets freely, but to get them into the experimental category (so they default to available) a developer would just need to have some idea of what they do and make a decision to add it to the experimental category or put it in the Restricted by Default category, as they have time to look at the widgets
And if it was experimental and an official decision is made that it's not going to be official, just move it into the Restricted by Default category

That seems like an improvement that requires the least amount of work

[runic frost]

Ok, I see your point. You really don't need to be a super duper developer to cheat in BAR, but ok:
If you want a quick solution, you can just have a blacklist of widget names in BAR that won't be loaded. This can be implemented in like 15 minutes. Sure, that is VERY easy to circumvent, but, I guess, it would still keep like 90% of the "gamers" you mentioned from using a widget. Also, just delete the post of the widget in the widget forum. I think it would have a significant effect with barely any effort.
But first step would be for someone to decide about what should be allowed and what not that using widget xy is not allowed.

[misty fable]

Lol FUCK natural talent, the last thing in the world I want is for any game I enjoy to move towards becoming more about who has the innate advantage. I don't want widgets to overly automate things because it means in order to compete you have to do the same and it makes it boring, not because I give a single molecule of shit about making people who won the genetic lottery feel better.

[lime geyser]

Where do you draw the line for natural talent? If someone is innately more capable of learning why and when to use a strategy, or more capable of coming up with unique strategies, is that not just as much of an innate, likely genetic, advantage?

[dense cairn]

Good point. The WADA code uses this terminology a bit misunderstandable.
„Natural“ in the context there is most likely meant in the sense of not enhancing ur natural conditions by doping. Because then everybody is enforced to dope as well to compete on the highest level.

Transferred to our BAR example it would mean that you always have to scan for the latest substances (widgets) to be able to compete on certain lvls against ppl who use them already. So, they kinda say the same as u.

[dense cairn]

yeah hard to draw the line. It’s also definitely a question of mindset - fixed vs flexible one. And then the question would also be to which extent we can change our personality traits, mindset etc. Imo a lot, but the most persons remain in one mindset or the other, except they suffer some extreme experiences (and in current research these mindsets are also seen as fluid and varying depending on the area u look at)

In BAR you see a lot of people with a kinda fixed mindset, though they could easily improve by e.g. the modelling approach from NLP. But since they are not aware, they don’t improve much.

[misty fable]

I'm of the belief that basically all advantages are genetic on some level, but I can live with the ones that obviously can't be reasonably accounted for. I'd just prefer games not move toward doing it any more than absolutely necessary.

Frankly I think people in sports who risk their life and health to use performance-enhancing drugs are winning as fairly as anyone, if not more fairly because it seems to me if they'll go to those lengths then they're the ones who want it the most, and are willing to sacrifice the most to get it.

In video games, I'm opposed to cheating and excessive automation because I think it pushes games in a boring direction, not because I think it's any less fair to win by breaking the rules than it is to win by having a naturally faster, smarter brain than your opponents that worked as hard or harder to get better.

[misty fable]

Ah, I see. Yeah I maybe took it too literally. I don't really believe any contest has ever been or will ever be fair, but yeah I don't object to people wanting to be the best they can be.

I think my problem is that I have an enormous bias against "talent", being a person with learning disabilities and a litany of psychological illnesses who loves RTS games but finds them exceptionally difficult to play even competently.

And try as I may to avoid it, I still often find myself raging over what amounts to a chip on my shoulder.

[robust abyss]

people have different abilities and aptitudes for it

but a lot of it can be made up with consistent pracitce
practice method and mindset

[faint orchid]

One of the reasons BAR is appealing is that it has this sense of automation. I can queue up 100 buildings and space them out at a specific distance in just a few clicks. You don’t see that in other games. Widgets like this one and auto retreat help automate the boring stuff. If you like microing every single unit, go play StarCraft.

[robust abyss]

the game's most important actions are mostly macro already
spend like 60% of game actions building my base
you want to take out more micro?

[dense cairn]

auto queue of buildings and units is surely great to have more time for the battles.

But if you also add auto skirmish, there would be basically not much game left…

Especially, since the strategic decisions are also very limited

[faint orchid]

Having layers to delineate the skill between players is important but I think BAR will benefit as a game more from being different than other RTS'. And I think it does that by leaning more into automation. No other game does it. I'm just not sure widgets like these are the best way but they certainly automate the boring stuff.

[vestal ivy]

Should be more like 10%. Know what you want to do, queue it up real fast, and spend more time applying pressure with army--so enemy has less time to focus on eco.

[dire torrent]

The split between micro and macro very much depends on playstyle

[robust abyss]

true. also how much micromanagement depends on map and base
having to micromanage a t2 con back and forth to build adv. mexes and struct

[left tapir]

I like microing my eco

[cyan saffron]

I wonder if someone will make a widget that makes the commander auto-reclaim any enemy units he's within range of when he's not on hold fire. Construction turrets do this already now, but the commander, unless micro'd, will not try to eat the units he's shooting at near him.

And it could also stop the last shot just before enemy death to make sure the unit gets eaten and not killed (assuming something else doesn't kill it first)

[robust abyss]

yeah con turrets won't auto reclaim and fight command doesn't make them reclaim trees hgm

[lime geyser]

They will if they have nothing to assist/repair

Also, all of their automatic funtions are tied to fight command. That's why a nano with no commands left always issues a fight command to itself

[robust abyss]

They don't for me 🤔. A fight command doesn't reclaim trees

[left tapir]

If you leave them idle, do they reclaim trees?

[lime leaf]

To anyone claiming that this sort of stuff invalidates balance and makes any noob good without any effort - collect all the "aimbot" widgets you can find, go 1v1 some like 30+os dude and see if they help you
and if they do - I believe we have a more serious issue with the game than a couple of widgets

[robust abyss]

This is like saying why don't you try taking steroids and compete in cycling. Obviously it doesn't make you pro but at similiar skill level it's an unfair advantage

[robust abyss]

its wierd in custom game they reclaim trees but I remember using fight / stop and they wouldn't reclaim without a specific command

[waxen token]

It's like saying somebody is cheating if they use a bicycle better than Karl von Drais's original.

[dire whale]

I think these analogies are a bit different. Having a bike is part of bike races. You need one to even compete, and everyone understands that going into it. The gain from having a better bike may be significant, but a bike is still required. Taking steroids is separate in that it's not a necessity to biking, yet gives an advantage that isn't necessarily obvious. I think these widgets are more analogous to steroids, but I think it's closer to say allowing an E-bike than steroids or a better bike.

If E-bikes were allowed, they would become the requirement for competing. Not stating anything about E-bikes, one might assume they weren't allowed, and have an unfair disadvantage. IMO, this is what these widgets do. They are an unfair, unspoken advantage. It'd be like competing in a bike race and losing every time, not understanding that the top competitors are using an E-bike.

IMO, it's fine to have or not have these "cheater" widgets. The problem is most many would assume they don't exist because of the unfair advantage they provide. Once discovered, it leaves people feeling annoyed that they exist and annoyed that part of the challenge they enjoy has been a ruse.

I use the auto-retreat widget. But do I feel like I'm using an E-bike vs people that aren't? Absolutely.

[waxen token]

I don't currently use the auto-skirmish widget. When I did(in NOTA), it exposed how overpowered morties were and they got nerfed hard.

And you edited your post so now this looks like a non-sequitur, heh.

In any case, my stance all along has been that we need a more convenient way to find and install widgets. Maybe the new lobby will give us that.

[dire torrent]

Fine tuning your UI is kinda comparable to tweaking a race car.

Everyone must have a car, there's a standard model out of the factory, then you can tweak it to improve your performance within certain limits. Tweaking keybind to your liking, icon viewing distance, whether to use inbuilt widgets like factory guard etc. And using/making custom widgets can be part of it too.

But there's no one single best setup, tuning can give a benefit without it being cheating.

[robust abyss]

Making something that automates part of driving for you is different than passively better controls or mirrors

Say there is a widget that lets you set a group of rez bot behind your army, automatically pulls back low units and repairs them, then rehotkeys them back into your group

Say it lets you perfectly retreat laz when enemy appear, without your input

How many high os players have lost laz because they are busy doing other stuff

Auto focus fire with the exact # of missile trucks, skirmish micro beyond human capabilities

There are some automation that could make it into the real game, like smarter ai pathing around blueprints

Micro Widget are allowed atm but you only need to look at other games to see examples of all the unhumanly good things micro bots can do (in rts too), with enough development time

Oh another one, widget to make my thors automatically emp t3 defense s the millisecond they get in range

[lime leaf]

I think both comparisons - the bike and the car - are missing the point. Just like widgets aren't allowed to make your units deal more damage or have more hp, so in a race you are not allowed to make your bike or car go faster. All of those modification are applied to "control system" and are designed to make the car carry out your decisions better, not just "make it gooder". And, again, if they on their own can control the car better than you can - there's a fundamental problem here.

[robust abyss]

an ai in most sectors can do what a human can do but better
chess, go , unit control, macro

"a chess ai doesn't make your pieces stronger does it, so we should let pro players use ai"
well sure, but then it's a different type of competition

there's multiple kinds of widgets.. widgets that improve the game's controls, and widgets that automate micro
or otherwise react automatically

[lime leaf]

Good point, I didn't think about chess actually

A bit off topic, but I sometimes think that writing game AIs and similar stuff is kind of like the strategy game distilled to the limit - no micro, no time limitation, no nothing, pure decision making and planning
but then again, chess - it's not like writing a chess bot is about calculating the actual possibilities on the board, it's rather simply the optimization of search algorithms

[robust abyss]

well rts micro is sort of like turn based strategy but the micro is fuzzier
if your ai can understand the optimal micro frame by frame then its basically turn based yeah

[dire torrent]

there isnt a clear line between that. Is factory having rally points automated micro? Would adding rally points to a consul by a widget, be automated micro?

We dont micro converters by hand anymore, you got option for nanos making new nanos w high preference, so on and so forth.

[robust abyss]

factory having rally points is a standard feature in rts, not sure what is the rally point for consul

It's true that some widgets improve the behaviour of clicks or automate some cumbersome task

something that, say, allows you to set all air plane facs to fly by default, or something that makes builders path better around new blue prints, you could say they streamline and improve the gameplay (not many people would argue having a builder bumble around blocking it's blueprint is ideal gameplay)

These are less clear: a smarter solar collector widget on/off that only closes your solars when there's a real threat, or pulsar microer that pops down and pops up the pulsar between every shot (no loss in dps)

those are automation, but the question is are those something that is intended to be able to be automated away?

generally one can draw a line at bots that micro units -- something like skirmish, or automatic reaction.

[dense cairn]

really glad that @robust abyss never gets tired to keep explaining the stuff, so our vicious circle can’t land again at the start. Thanks!

@lime leaf You should inform yourself about AI. There is a good reason Ai is already substituting humans in certain jobs and will do even more in the future. And the reason is not that AI is doing it worse.

[cyan saffron]

I wonder if anyone is working on a widget that works like the green field on radar, but for cannons and nukes/juno, to reveal areas that are and aren't blocked by terrain when you're placing them and when firing to avoid wasting a shot on the side of a mountain. Right now you have to have a sense of it and guess, but that may be taken away if someone creates such a widget.

[robust abyss]

seems expensive to do for multiple units (like boats firing over a cliff), but fine for artillery. big cannons have a error spread, could do some calculation and print out X% of shots are blocked by terrain. better yet, have it simulate taking shots and mark the obstacle that blocks shots (red if it blocks all shots, oj if it blocks a % of the shots)

[cyan saffron]

error spread? You mean inaccuracy? I know cannons shoot all over the place, but is there anything that changes whether or not they can or cannot actually hit a very specific spot on the ground? I though the spot that shots come from was fixed. And yeah, I don't know how computationally expensive it is, but someone may still consider it worth it if they have the spare computing power (and particularly so if it can be calculated on a different cpu core without lagging the main one).

Only thing I can imagine is if pointing directly towards it, it cannot hit, but at a slight angle the shot is fired from slightly over and then the error causes it to angle back towards the first target, but able to actually hit it. That could probably be ignored or taken into account to still be fairly accurate with the coloration.

[robust abyss]

ahh good point. I guess the trajectory to hit a particular spot will be the same

[lime leaf]

I am quite familiar with how AIs work actually, I played around with this stuff myself at some point. Totally agree that at some point they will be doing better than us in pretty much any area, and I guess BAR eventually will be one of those areas too - the bots we have now are already pretty decent at their job
There is one other point that I think should be taken into consideration. I believe there are two types of actions a player performs in RTS: one of them are always correct to perform, you should be doing them as much as possible (like targeting important stuff with snipers for example), and the other ones represent the choices you make (bot or veh factory?), they are not immediately right or wrong. Computer can certainly perform first type of actions better than most of us, and probably at some point will also be able to make better choices (as Chronopolize pointed out, it already can in chess). I think everybody agrees that it's this type of decision that widgets should not be allowed to make. That's what I meant by saying that widgets would not help you much against a more skilled player - widgets that we have now are mostly of "mechanical" type, and a more experienced player would just make better decisions while also being at least decent with their mechanics. If you make an AI that makes such choices that are not obvious - yeah, now it's a different type of competition
So in my opinion the core of the problem is not so much the question of "What types of action should not be considered skill and thus can be executed by scripts", but "What types of actions are already recognized as always correct to perform and thus can be executed by scripts"

[waxen token]

Yeah, that matches up well with the idea that the best definition of a game is "a series of interesting decisions"

[cyan saffron]

Perfect aim is always correct, but not something you want the game doing for you in a first person shooter. Just because it's always correct doesn't mean it should be automated by default.

[lime leaf]

Shooter is not an RTS game, it is a competition in a different set of skills
it is the point of a shooter game to challenge your air and reaction speed

[cyan saffron]

And this is a real time strategy, not a turn based one, so some mechanical skills are implied

It's a game design decision how much, there is no one right answer

[lime leaf]

True, and I sometimes encounter people that argue that things like UI and unit control are poorly designed in some RTS games, but those people miss your exact point - some games are just designed to be hard to manage, and I see nothing wrong with that. I think, in most cases its actually not very difficult to see what level of convenience developers are going for, if you pay attention to this sort of stuff
I wouldn't defend BAR's widgets like this one if I didn't see how developers already showed that they want the game's difficulty to be focused more on gameplay complexity rather than on having trouble with execution

[vestal ivy]

Execution is what makes an rts game. Otherwise just make a turn-based game. xD

The skill ceiling is much lower in turn-based; everyone just copies what is best. In rts, what's best generally requires better skills to execute, like microing scouts to harass without dying.

[lime geyser]

I have a semi-related question that could potentially clarify some things: competitive HoMM3 multiplayer is played with simultaneous turns for the first few turns, and the standard time-limits per turn are restrictive enough that players need to make decisions pretty quickly, and even choose whether certain battles are worth manually controlling to not run out of time. Do we consider competitive HoMM3 multiplayer to be an rts?

[dire torrent]

We don't consider competitive homm3 to be an rts.

[lime geyser]

In that case, I don't think we're all that many widgets away from BAR no longer being an rts. Regardless of the argument that BAR isn't a normal rts and people are attracted to it because of its lower apm requirement, if auto-micro widgets become majorly more powerful than they currently are, this game goes from being "a unique type of rts which shouldn't be directly compared to other games in the genre" to "not an rts"

[dire torrent]

BAR will never stop being an rts, even if snipers get smarter target selection. Even zero-k with its autoskirm is an rts.

[lime leaf]

Guys, I think you took a wrong turn here. Coura's words were "Otherwise just make a turn-based game", not "Otherwise it's a turn-based game"
rts is rts, turn-based is turn-based

[lime geyser]

There are many arguments in this thread for "automate as much as possible without removing decisions about your overall strategy", at which point i find it hard to see what is even accomplished by the game being real-time rather than turn-based with a timer

[dense cairn]

Just saw this thread on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/beyondallreason/comments/1ahixdh/cheating_using_health_macro/

Is there now a framework what is allowed and what is not - since this person claims that people were "cheating" in the 2vs2 tournament.

He showed in an video how op it is to automatically select units with low hp and then send them easily manually back and already calls that cheating (and also demonstrates well, why it looks like cheating).

Funnily, he is not even aware that there is even a widget that let low hp units retreat automatically....

[misty hollow]

usually tournaments require a setting that disable custom widgets

[vast hill]

No, it would not of been possible unless someone forgot to turnoff custom widgets
Ptaq infact pinged a whole bunch of people for watching matches and ensuring that option was on

[lusty briar]

This is not done with widgets but keybinds @vast hill

[vast hill]

Anything that comes with the game as is isn’t cheating

[waxen token]

Units should require an explicit order to fire their weapon for each bullet. Anything more is the game playing itself for you.

[long garden]

auto-firing units is literal aimbot

[vast hill]

Omg I should be blamed for making units actually able to shoot toaster and the ambusher

[dense cairn]

so, basically after 5 months there is still no framework and all this stuff, which is in most of the other RTS considered as hardcore cheating is still allowed?

Seems for me like an endless story and now comes the typcial derailing again. Thus, certain ppl can still use their widgets instead of microing 😉

[chrome hawk]

Oh please stop the drama, you can disable the widgets in lobby

[vast hill]

There has been some@changes with the widget api
Specifically certain calls have been disabled

Widgets are a part of what has really made spring progress
The line move we have today was a widget intesting only
And it’s only because people used it enough for testing did it actually get implemented into spring (now recoil)

The reclaim field widget was not a first party widget
It took about a year in a half for it to be merged as part of the base game

[faint anvil]

wow different games have different rules this is so crazy

[vast hill]

More importantly different engines develop differently

[dense cairn]

drama? in every good RTS clear cheating like this is forbidden for a good reason (and here it is not cheating, because there is still no framework I know)

I mean especially in 8vs8 there is not much to do anyway. And then automating microing (while ~80% of the people playing are not even aware of these possibilities) is just unfair and ridiculous.

But we already had this discussion half a year ago, I stopped saying anything about it, since a framework should come to regulate this kind of stuff.

Imo it’s a big issue if a huge percentage of the testers, contributors etc. apparently never played competitively and keeps repeating weird arguments, which would sound ridiculous in any competitive and known RTS.

yes, there might sometimes be new ways to go, but i’m not sure if it is the best idea to automate the most important aspects of fighting (especially if not everybody is aware of this option), so a certain percentage of players can keep playing sim city style. This is imo only nice for casual players and in the long run not very fun. But proof me wrong in that.

[dense cairn]

yeah i think there are really great widgets and they contribute to the game a lot. also the recent Thor widget to spread the rockets is really great.

This and the not spreadable junos (maybe possible now?) were the two most important things in BAR, which didn’t seem so smooth. Except that it really feels great in terms of gameplay.

and the line feature you mentioned is really awesome, since I can see that many ppl might have issues doing this manually. But for me personally auto retreating and auto healing units is too much and takes away fundamental, motivating and fun elements of the game (since you can get better in it)

[vast hill]

junos should be spreadable (as they have always been)
or am i missing a detail like timing which could be the source of my confusion

thors specifically had the issue because they use the dgun command
which is where the problems occur
and should not of been limited that way intentionally

[chrome hawk]

So if those widgets are such big issue, how prevalent are they in games ?
Competitive just disables widgets so it’s not a problem for them

[dense cairn]

i meant in the sense of putting several junos into a group and then launching them with hotkey click on the different location. They all fired then (like the thors without the widget) their rockets all on the first location you clicked

[vast hill]

a right click drag doesnt work?
it did a year ago when i last used them
thats a very big bug if thats the case

[dense cairn]

most people are still not aware. except for instance the widgets for pinging spybots, where it gets very obvious if you use it.

i mean it’s getting tough to say if people are microing well , have good map awareness, do great focus fire or use widgets

[vast hill]

every game
you will not know which users have custom widgets without observing a lot of things
and some things you cannot tell
like when i had the reclaim widget as a tester and no one else had it

[dense cairn]

will test it, I asked other high os people when i started and before i was „high“ os myself and they said it does not work. but they might have been just not aware^^ (i mean BAR has a lot of nice hidden features)

[vast hill]

custom widgets need testing to ensure that they actually work for the public
there was a bug with the reclaim widget before it got merged for all to use. the text was being drawn below wrecks and other things. which occasionally made numbers unreadable

[vast hill]

just tested
those people lied to you this is how you do it #1130483021213081681 message

[vagrant flume]

widgets exist precisely because there is a framework for them

[muted blaze]

Just because there is framework does not mean it is intended to be used for this purpose as multiple things share frameworks

why improve your micro and get better at the game if you can have something do it for you

[vagrant flume]

no it's a framework specifically for widgets

[muted blaze]

I might have misread what you said

I missed the widget part in your sentence your right but that does not mean a widget can exist it should exist especially when people can miss them and they can give an unfair advantage

[chrome hawk]

I think that the developers are aware that it should be constrained in some manner.
But that’s a thing that needs to happen before the release because right now the „op widget cheating” is not really prevalent.

Moreover since the game is open source and seems to attract programmer types a dedicated cheater can just compile a version with whatever enhancements he likes…

[waxen token]

Making the UI bad so the game requires more APM to play is not the way to go. Sure, we could be like starcraft where basic tasks require sky-high apm. But we aren't, and I wouldn't be here if we were.

[muted blaze]

And I like that about bar it gets rid of all apm the makes you unable to get better simply because you can't click fast but this is not a task arbitrarily limited by having to click fast

[waxen token]

Ultimately, I'd like all widgets to appear in the game client so people can't miss them. But I lack the skills to make that happen, so I must simply wait patiently.

[vast hill]

that wont happen currently
there is no political drive for that

[dense cairn]

Ty! They didnt lie though, they just did not know. You would be surprised what even some 30-40 OS ppl dont/didnt know - I mean BAR offers a lot of features, which you cannot easily discover by yourself.

[dense cairn]

Oh come on. You mean the "framework", which basically says that everything is allowed (if I remember right) and that is why we cannot call someone cheating by getting an unfair advantage with widgets?
Half a year ago, a precise framework was about to be initiated to solve that matter.

[vagrant flume]

widgets are already heavily restricted compared to i.e. gadgets

[dense cairn]

can we please not always go into the extremes? Nobody wants a bad UI and we/I really appreciate your effort and the efforts of the others a lot. As said before, features like dragging units in a line, thor rocket split etc. are really great.

But there should be a limit for automatting things and for me this limit is definetely at auto retreat or auto focus fire (ignoring ticks is one thing, but for example limiting the amounts of shots of units, so they dont overkill or autotargetting the lowest hp unit is too much). And no, this does not make SC out of this game - many convenient features are already included.

If we allow all this automatting, what is left there for the more competitive and not casual players? Already now in 8vs8 not that much is to do and the "real" proplayers, who want to continously improve, didnt mostly even join yet.

[left tapir]

I wouldn't call it an unfair advantage. People can get the same advantage by doing research and downloading the widget themselves. This is like saying that studying for a test gives you an unfair advantage over people who didn't study

[waxen token]

Total War has such automation features as skirmish and heavily damaged units do indeed retreat on their own(even if you don't want them to). Do you feel that the player has nothing to do during those battles?

[dense cairn]

I think we have to differ two different things:

1. most players are not even aware of certain potentially very impactful widgets
2. certain widgets should be not allowed since they take away crucical elements of the game

Regarding 1): Isnt the goal of BAR to make it accessible to everyone? Nearly nobody wants to study the newest widgets monthly.
Regarding 2): The game should ve still some long term motivation and this you usually get by being continously able to improve, if we make with widgets a smartphonelike game out of BAR I dont see much long term motivation in the future.

[left tapir]

Total war auto skirmish is also better left off most of the time as it will completely mess with your commands

[dense cairn]

And what happens to the units in Total War? do they come completely healed back in the same battle? No, they dont. The impact is totally different, also we dont have a morale system etc.

But here as the guy in the video showed, you can easily navigate the units back into a bunch of heal bots / nanos (he didnt have that in the video) and then send them in again (and this looks already with his script totally op - not even using the widget there).

[waxen token]

I'd rather build that in and balance accordingly. What I'm advocating against here is making it difficult to execute braindead-obvious commands like retreating damaged units. I don't value the skill of "doing the obvious, but faster."

And that's partially because I am simply slow. If the game values speed over what I can handle, then I'm skillcapped and should stop trying.

[patent storm]

Did this widget get removed?

Its showing #unknown to me, the original sniper autotarget widget that is

[dense cairn]

that s not easy though, because it would make the game really different.

Did you watch some of the better players and particularly these, who dont play very "individually"? Especially in 8vs8 (ofc more difficult in 1vs1) you can basically put a lot of buildings in very long queues and then nearly exclusively focus on the microing. This makes the game already now soooo much easier then SC etc., however I see not many players doing that.

You can for instance queue, 2 nanos + 1 energy storage + 8-10 converters + t2 lab + x adv. solar and with the t2 con fusion (if u didnt go adv solar before) -> 2x adv. conv -> fusion -> 2x adv. conv -> Afus -> 4x Adv. converter etc.

[waxen token]

Got a meeting, will try to talk later.

[vagrant flume]

https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1129695578998190140

[patent storm]

Damn looks like its still around

[vagrant flume]

save yourself a copy 😛

[dire torrent]

The widgets currently available just aren't that good that you should leave microing to them. I don't know if any really good players use custom widgets for micro

Though there's definitely potential for widgets to be better than what's currently, but you'd also have to tailor your playstyle around them then. And have to play without them in tourneys

Customising keybind and little stuff like that can make you more efficient for sure though

[waxen token]

Well that was a very short meeting.

[waxen token]

I do that. It doesn't make me particularly good because I have other issues, but I do it. Where I struggle is the forwardbackwardforwardbackwardforever because I can't do anything else while that's going on. It sucks and is the reason I prefer not to play bots.

You can say that microing bots quickly and well is an expression of skill, and you'd be right. But I think being chained to my bots because they'll die if I'm looking somewhere else for a moment sucks and therefore avoid playing bots.

[dense cairn]

You have your factories and units in control groups and use hotkeys? You can also queue basically your whole t1 unit production for certain maps in the beginning + your front defense production.

Because then the only thing "really" remaining is the forwardbackwardforwardforever, which is for me in 8vs8 the core of the game, since the rest is already kinda automatted.

And yeah microing bots is a lot harder than microing vehicles since they die pretty fast if you dont look for a few seconds.

[waxen token]

I usually put the factory on repeat and use alt to add special units like cons when I need them. It has to be modified as the game progresses, of course.
And yeah, that's the core of my desire for more automation. Bots just die if I don't give them orders. I would like that to not be true.

It's also why I love Legion vehicles; they have the tools to counter the skirmish micro that I am quite bad at.

Can't dance your bots at the edge of their range if I set the ground on fire!

[left tapir]

there's the fundamental difference between the things we believe make the game enjoyable. You are of the opinion that the enjoyable part of the game is the fights themselves and how to use your units to effectively beat the enemy units. The other school of thought, of which i am a part of, believes that the more enjoyable part of the game is the decisions made going into the battle rather than the battle itself: what units to make, how much eco to have, the initial positioning, the time and place of engagement, effectively the macro aspect of the game
i would be completely fine if the combat itself became a lot more automated, as then i can focus on micromanaging my economy and production

but this is coming from a person who has played a lot of 4X and grand strategy games, so my focus is a lot more on the macro than on the micro

[dark turtle]

People call it cheating but don’t know that the snipers default behaviour is to target larger units anyway. Also custom widgets are not even allowed in tournaments. Further splitting off damage units from the main force is now considered cheating?! Please do some research before adding any more misinformation

[vast hill]

the specific keybinding about spliting out damaged units has existed since 2005 per git history

so this keybind is not even specfic to bar
but it most likely came during AA (not sure about the timeline)

[muted blaze]

Oh yeah definitely not cheating It's a question of should it be put into the game

[robust abyss]

custom selectors are generally a usability improvement and do not require any widgets

[vast hill]

well if its a part of AA then BA and now bar
all are ta likes specifically
i think that ansers the question

[robust abyss]

it's stuff that automatically will command it for you

[vast hill]

its been fine in the past with high levels of scrutiny with the old spring devs
it should be fine now\

[robust abyss]

that should be under unit automation widgets or something

perhaps widgets that use specific api calls can be disallowed/allowed based by lobby choice

"Allow unit controlling widgets"

[dark turtle]

Nanos focussing nanos or aa prioritising bombers are widgets controlling units

Dgun unstall too, the list goes on and on

[dense cairn]

hmm but maybe also easily improvable by practice?

what I observe is that there are not many real RTS pros here yet, even on the higher lvls. Many people still lose because of build order issues and not because of micromanagement. And tbh this whole macro game is really fuzzy, since it’s for the most never really clear, how much energy’s production to build and when

[dense cairn]

true, but imo the macro decisions are not so huge, since we often end up with similar unit choices and certain game timings (t2 arty, nukes, marauders, lol cannon etc). Quite repetitive strategic decisions after a while

[dense cairn]

I could ask you the same - maybe you do some research first?
you have a tendency to post in threads with only having read half the conversation. Already saw u doing that in the afus debate half year back.

But please enlighten me how auto retreating damaged units under a certain hp threshold and healing them automatically is totally normal in the RTS genre. Seriously, you are neither a beginner nor below 10 os and still post sometimes -besides clever stuff- these weird statements…

[waxen token]

Why should we care what’s normal in the RTS genre?

[dark turtle]

Unfounded accusations. I have more in depth knowledge about this topic than you would imagine. I’ve not really seen you play with the top tier players so I wouldn’t expect you to know the ins and outs.

BAR is quite different from other games and why wouldn’t it be? There are enough clones out there so better to distinguish oneself.

Manually selecting damaged units and retreating them is a basic skill yet you will see in higher level play.

You accuse people of using widgets in tourney environments but don’t know that they are deactivated. Basically say people cheat without any foundation

[waxen token]

Seriously, the RTS genre runs the gamut from Homeworld to Command and Conquer to Total War to StarCraft to Total Annihilation. It’s a huge and varied genre.

If you see something that another game does and think it’d improve BAR, great! But that’s very different from saying that something BAR permits is cheating.

[vagrant flume]

did you just say real pros only ever lose because of inferior micro... lol

[chrome hawk]

I mean there is also an interesting question whether skill in this game should be based on basic repetitive action or strategic decision making

[dire torrent]

Automatically retreating isn't even good most of the time, better to do it yourself. But having a custom keybind to do it faster definitely helps

[dark turtle]

In fact half of the time you actually want to sacrifice units in order to do more damage

[chrome hawk]

Y so it makes for a nice strategic decision

[dense cairn]

I dont doubt that you have knowledge of the game, but you have issues understanding messages - and I do not think that you are not able to, you apparently just do not read the whole context and then we have misunderstandings like this one.

"I’ve not really seen you play with the top tier players so I wouldn’t expect you to know the ins and outs."
So what are the ins and outs of auto retreat precisely? I am very curious 🙂

"BAR is quite different from other games and why wouldn’t it be? There are enough clones out there so better to distinguish oneself."
Not sure what this general statement -to which I would agree to- has to do with the topic at hands. So, we want to get our USP by adding auto retreat? 😄 really?

"Manually selecting damaged units and retreating them is a basic skill yet you will see in higher level play."
This is basically what I am saying? Or did you forget a "not"? I have seen enough high lvls microing their units and that -besides other things- is also a huge motivation to get better at the game. That is why I do not think it is clever to automate this crucial part of the gameplay.

"You accuse people of using widgets in tourney environments but don’t know that they are deactivated. Basically say people cheat without any foundation"
I never said this, I posted the topic from reddit. This is not a widget, this is a keybind and according to the poster it was allowed and used in the tournament.

What I said is: "Funnily, he is not even aware that there is even a widget that let low hp units retreat automatically...."
-> Meaning the widgets goes even further than this keybind and that one is allowed in normal "ranked" games (not in tournaments though). But the aspect of fairness should imo apply to all parts of a competitive game anyway (edit: besides the tournament - I would also consider this "cheating" in any context, because it is against a lot of values of "competitive sport, which also kinda apply here imo. But that was not what I was writing in the message you quoted)

[dark turtle]

#1130483021213081681 message

You don’t seem to read

[dense cairn]

This is your profund reply to all the things I quoted to show (again) your misunderstanding of messages? :DDD Seriously...

If you have valid point please show me, but these general (and sometimes wrong) statements dont help anyone.

[dense cairn]

Definetely, I mean that is also -besides other factors- how for instance Blizzard became so successful, taking the best elements of some other games and putting them in new concepts together.

I also see great potential in the widgets, I just think that particular options should be limited. Especially auto retreat (if it might even work better in the future) takes away one important long term motivation factor for the "pro" scene, because then you could just send your units more or less on auto queue in the enemies base while eating some popcorn. I can see on the one hand the beauty in this, on the other hand there is motivational aspect of continous improving lacking.

[dense cairn]

hmmm no, first of all I think there are just not many "real" pros here (yet), they mostly play the games where they can make money by winning tournaments, getting a lot of viewers etc.

Just check the apm of some top players and compare them with some pros in other RTS (and yes apm is not everything). We have here a imo kinda old playerbase, who are also ofc mostly not as quick as younger players, but might compensate this by more experience, better decision making etc. And BAR has some nice features offering all ages etc. to compete at a kinda high level.

And micro plays of course a crucial role, but the more players the less impact it has - in a 8vs8 the impact of microing is a lot different than in a 1vs1. Due to exponential scaling the worth of a single unit also decreases a lot the longer the games goes. In some other RTS losses of 2-3 units can be already gg and BAR lowers this issue in 8vs8 + exponential scaling a lot, making the game attractive to also more casual players.

But if you observe the people closely, you will recognize that many things in this game are about timing and a better BO can make you x times better (especially on the lower levels - many 10-20 os people just lack basic BOs and some of them are not even aware while always blaming team etc.)

[dense cairn]

we are talking here so far about a complete retreat and heal, another possible option -which is also not forbidden- would be automatically retreating focus fired units a bit and moving them into battle again, making the focus firing opponent lose target or walking too close to ur army and take additional damage. And another widget could make sure that your units are always targetting the units with the lowest hp and another widget could make sure that not too many for instance janus attack the same target ("overkill").

These are also basic skills of a good player, which would then be done by widgets - and the question is how much is then left of the game and the long term motivation by improving in the game.

[dark turtle]

Yea and this is detrimental to winning the game as already stated in previous messages. Hence no one uses it

[dense cairn]

The possible widgets I mentioned do not -afaik- exist yet and they would not be detrimental to winning the game, they would help you a lot in winning the game.

If you refer to the auto retreat widget, I would agree in the current state - but that one could also be helpful if you only activate it in certain situations and for certain units, for instance you want to just pressure the front, kill some units without own losses, retreat and attack again.
This might not be sooo relevant with t1-t2 units, but with t3 the impact is huge if you do not lose a single thor while killing a lot and then attacking again with all ur still alive thors - won enough games like that.

edit: what I mean with "retreating focus fired units a bit" is that you only move them a few meters back and as soon as they are not focus fired anymore they move in again to shoot. Thus, if you have whistler + janus ball vs the same on the opposite side, your whistlers would have to move closer to still be able to attack the focus fired unit -> they might come into janus range. This is at least in the most known RTS a typical concept.

[waxen token]

I am firmly on the side of units being intelligent. The less I have to fight units being stupid, the better. If units staying at max range when I tell them to, or retreating when hurt, or shooting what they ought to shoot puts me on your level, then maybe you aren't as good at the game as you think you are. Maybe you just have more tolerance for terrible interfaces than I do.

[dark turtle]

It already exists fyi

If someone uses it you will notice right away as half of the units run towards the Front other half is running back

But afaik no one is using it atm

It’s just not worth it

[dense cairn]

Agreed, though I think we disagree in the part how intelligent they should be. I am also annoyed if units get stuck in wrecks or if the comm is moving in a weird way when you want to build, units blocking each other etc.

Also staying at max range with f move is definetely a good feature.

Ohh, I am not that good in BAR, for that I do not play it often enough (and also should buy a "real" desktop computer for that). I was kinda on pro level in another RTS and won some tournaments and ofc some of the skills there are also necessary here (to a lesser extent). And yes, if these widgets would do these things your micro would be kinda similar to mine or most likely even better. And then my question would be -especially in 8vs8- how can people get as mentioned before the long term motivation by improving in the game? The strategic decisions are definetely limited and after a while you know the timings for nearly everything.

[dense cairn]

yeah of that specific one I heard (but not about a widget moving units only a bit out and then back in when not being focused anymore), but what I am a bit worried about is the scope for the future and where we set the constraints what should be allowed and what not (even though the current widgets regarding this are -yet- not working so well. This might change.).

Since I think that it would be of course possible -like in real life- that AI could do many things better than us.

[waxen token]

Are the strategic decisions limited? I certainly don't think so. There's more to strategy than timings, and an endless river of higher-level decisions awaits us beyond how many times per second we can order our thugs to move backwards and forwards.

[dense cairn]

of course, you are limited by income. So, you can not go ragnarok, nuke etc. at the same time or build a t2 factory + a t2 bot lab easily. Thus, you usually have one rax and there are some typical best choices and considering what the enemy builds you adapt slightly. In theory there would be a lot of different choices, in practice -if the enemy continously pressures- you are limited.

[ashen gull]

Well, I will say I personally don't think that the widgets are too far but I have heard of some that have been disabled. Very tough to say where a line should be drawn. The biggest one that I'm thinking of rn is teddy's tick pushing widget that would allow ticks to push bigger units so that all units, even commanders, could move at tick speed.

[vast hill]

that doesnt work anymore

as in its nog going to work because of the engine changes that have been made

[ashen gull]

Yea. It might still be possible for widgets with similar powerful-ness to be created

[waxen token]

Yeah, that sounds more like an exploit. Widget just made it easier to do something that was broken to begin with.

[left tapir]

can you imagine, tick speed behemoth
would literally become the most OP unit in the game

[vast hill]

that already happened

[waxen token]

Now I want to see that replay. Sounds hilarious.

[muted blaze]

Micro is not broken it's a fundamental part of the game and in bar it's much less of a limit to how good you can be unless you plan on going into pro level 1v1s

[waxen token]

If micro lets you move a behemoth faster by pushing it with ticks, there’s a problem. 😛

[muted blaze]

That's less of a micro problem and more of the engine physic problem lmao

[waxen token]

Hence me calling it an exploit. Exploits need fixing, and this one was indeed fixed.

[muted blaze]

Based bar team does it again

[waxen token]

There’s more to strategy than buildlists. What I want is to give units standing orders so I don’t have to babysit them. I want to give the order to skirmish once, not multiple times per second.

[faint sandal]

Why is the thread title and the OP so biased though?
Of course people will vote "yes" when the title is talking about disallowing aimbot and cheating. Aimbot is the name of an actual cheat in FPS games. In this game there is no "aimbot" because it's an RTS game, you don't have to aim to shoot anything, at most you're just telling units where to shoot and they do the aiming and shooting part.

I guarantee the votes would be wildly different if the title was "petition to disallow unit target priority/intelligent targeting widgets", and the OP talked about how it makes no sense for units in RTS games to be able to filter what they are going to shoot at and how dumb units are a fundamental aspect of RTS.

[muted blaze]

Dumb units are not an aspect of rts games but micro is and knowing how to use your units effectively is one of the most important parts to getting better this and other widgets that could be made like remove that aspect of skill and ruin the achievement of getting good at the game also I read the thread before I reacted and so did a lot of people

[waxen token]

“If our units aren’t stupid, what will we spend our APM on?” How about making meaningful decisions instead of obvious ones. I’ll never understand how people can enjoy giving the same two commands over and over just to keep a pack of units from dying.

[faint sandal]

"micro" as in small decisions that make up a whole (macro), or "micro" as in just clicking? The latter is not fundamental to RTS games, it's just the current means to interface with the game. Did all of the other QoL stuff in BAR lower your skill and ruined the achievement of getting good?

You say that KNOWING how to use your units effectively is important, but in this case people do know how to use their units effectively and that is what OP doesn't like. People know that snipers wasting their shots on crap is not effective, and since this game lets users create widgets to do things they just made one that allows them to use snipers effectively.

Players came up with strategy in real time and used snipers because of the high burst damage which kills high value units quickly. Their opponents came up with strategy in real time which is using spam against the snipers so they waste their shots. The sniper players then came up with strategy in real time which is not letting their snipers waste shots on random spam, but this time the sniper players aren't allowed to execute their strategy because "lots of clicking is fundamental to RTS".

[robust abyss]

You could do a lot of things with widgets to make your units smarter or give some amount of auto control

Make amba and sniper ignore low tier unit, use a memory system to smart a move ambassadors against fog of war buildings

You could make a widget to make fast units dodge projectiles automatically?

While micro widgets take work to integrate into 1v1 control, in most team games you can see the player with them has advantage

Somethings are balanced around being hard to micro

It could be changed but they are atm

[waxen token]

Yeah, if one guy has a widget and the other doesn't, that's obviously an advantage. But nobody has been arguing that it isn't.

[vast hill]

This isn’t possible due to projectile positions not being retrievable via the engine

[robust abyss]

What about enemy fired api

Dodge based on timing for when enemy fires

[vast hill]

You still don’t know where the projectile is

[robust abyss]

You can assume it was fired at you or were you were going

Or just some automatic spreading / evasive auto pattern

[vast hill]

You would need a massive table

Or just dumb luck about being right

Plus you won’t know which I’m unit is being targeted

[robust abyss]

Ye true

[faint sandal]

Thing being balanced around being hard to micro sounds like an excuse or trying to create filler mechanics to make something try to appear more interesting or complex. If snipers become 300% more efficient as the OP says then you just nerf them instead of limiting the entire game just because one unit needs to be dumb to not become op. If snipers ignore spam then those units will pass through and you could nerf snipers there by lowering health/speed, or you may even realize that having your snipers ignore units 100% of the time is not the most efficient way to use them and that ignoring units is a strategic decision that you want to have control over, and the game just has to let you easily execute your decision. Right now if you want to make the decision of having your snipers ignore spam it'll not be possible to execute it most of the time because it's not worth it.

[chrome hawk]

Yes its basically a debate whether the game should be made into sc2/aoe4ish game or something unique

[robust abyss]

toggleable unit targeting is sometihng im def for

ambassador's shooting ticks is never correct and not fun

[final briar]

Ticks have multi roles. They are for vision and making the heavy hitting units Target them and cause reloads/friendly fire.

You should always have your high value units on hold fire if you have time to micro them and on fire at will when you need to base manage.

Adding a widget that stops auto firing spam would impact imo a key role of spam

[waxen token]

(which is a good thing, since spam is a much-despised phase of the game that also causes performance issues)

[final briar]

Why would spam be despised lol its a pretty normal progression of the game. Spam is very much a Key component of every game

If your PC cant handle a steam of spam then you basically cant play the game pass 25 mins by the sheer size of people's bases.

[waxen token]

My PC can.

[tranquil sparrow]

Dang nofair karolson get his widget removed but mine didnt

I need to improve it i guess

[vast hill]

i can tell you places to look at if you want a widget actually banned

[tranquil sparrow]

Dm's open xD

For quality assurance purposes i promise

[waxen token]

I still want to see a replay of the turbo-behemoth exploit. Sounds absolutely hilarious.

[tranquil sparrow]

Im curious if new pathing system has any new exploitable quirks

[vast hill]

yes

and they are known to me
and already should be to tarnished

[elfin rose]

Only the Sith deal in absolutes.

[final briar]

Having a Unit on fire at will should attack unit they see first. The point of spam is to soak up the first wave of HIGH DPS units and vision.
If snipers ignore the first waves of ticks completely ON FIRE AT WILL with no additional input from the player then its really unfair.

Same thing with SAM sites if they dont use their missiles on fighter screen or scout spam and just save the missiles for only bombers without player input they thats basically free APM for the player on the defense.
So they can just make 3 SAM sites and not worry about mircoing them on the high value stuff and never waste missiles on figs or scouts trying to drain their missiles.

[elfin rose]

Lol can we get a Win bot widget next please. I'll just sit back, scratch deez nuts and my Com can just go Dgun everybody upside the head.

[red violet]

This widget would no longer be allowed in ranked games once widget restrictions are implemented. See https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason/issues/3910

[pseudo oak]

@red violet additionally should include Spring.GetProjectile* commands as per #announcements message Behe's post

[red violet]

Thank you for bringing this to my attention

I have passed it on to the relevant team