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Playing the meta is part of the game. If you're not loading in other code or using 3rd party assistance, it's fair. Understanding the buy strategy in CSGO does

Playing the meta is part of the game. If you're not loading in other code or using 3rd party assistance, it's fair. Understanding the buy strategy in CSGO doesn't make you a "cheater", in means you understand how to stretch the game to it's limits. Mike Vrabel taking penalties to burn the clock might seen unfair, but he was just leveraging the rules as written to improve his chances of winning.

SloopJon 7y ago
> Mike Vrabel taking penalties to burn the clock might seen unfair Certainly not unfair to do it against Bill Belichick, who did almost the exact same thing earlier in the season--first time I'd ever seen a delay of game or false start penalty declined.
leetcrew 7y ago
> Understanding the buy strategy in CSGO doesn't make you a "cheater", in means you understand how to stretch the game to it's limits. the economy in cs is a core mechanic of the game. I don't know of any buy strategies that are even close to considered "exploits". a better example would be illegal boosts. in the old days, there were many OP positions you could get into by boosting on top of other players (or even throwables in midair). each competitive league would have its own lists of illegal boost spots for each map. boosting on throwables was almost always illegal. you could also do stuff like defuse through walls, which was always illegal. bunnyhopping was something of a grey area. some leagues allowed it, while others didn't. it was eventually patched out of the default game settings behind an svar. allowing literally anything that didn't involve loading external code would have severely broken cs:source. there were even ways of replacing assets that would effectively give you wallhacks without injecting any code. these decisions always comes down to "how much does this deviate from the balance designed by the developer?" and most importantly "is the game still fun with this behavior?"
- retsibsi 7y ago
  All good points, but additionally: sometimes it's good to wait and see where a glitch takes a game, rather than banning it straight away because it 'breaks' the version of the game that everyone has been playing so far. A classic example is the Quake series, where the movement mechanics that gave the games lasting appeal were all originally accidental. (And Carmack even briefly patched strafe-jumping out of Q3, before quickly reverting -- but only because his fix caused other problems: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/02/quake-3-john-carmack-strafejumping/ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/02/quake-3-john-car...) David Sirlin also writes well about this sort of thing (with more of a focus on 'cheap' use of intended mechanics), though his tone could be offputting to people who think hyper-competitive videogaming is a bit silly: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    I totally agree. "skiing" in tribes is another classic example. fun mechanics take priority over everything. after all, it's a game! as an aside, strafe jumping is pretty similar to bunnyhopping in cs, probably because the source/goldsrc engine had its roots in quake code. I brought it up as a grey area. it's a fun mechanic, but timing is really important on cs maps, and it definitely breaks the balance on some of them. personally I think it was a mistake for valve to patch it out of the vanilla game (leagues, 3rd party servers, and matchmaking could have just disabled it through the svar), but that's all history now. my main point is that the mere fact that games take place in virtual environments doesn't make whatever the client/server permits the ultimate law of the land. just like in real life, the rules of the game are the intersection of what's possible and what's fun.

SloopJon 7y ago

> Mike Vrabel taking penalties to burn the clock might seen unfair Certainly not unfair to do it against Bill Belichick, who did almost the exact same thing earlier in the season--first time I'd ever seen a delay of game or false start penalty declined.

leetcrew 7y ago

> Understanding the buy strategy in CSGO doesn't make you a "cheater", in means you understand how to stretch the game to it's limits. the economy in cs is a core mechanic of the game. I don't know of any buy strategies that are even close to considered "exploits". a better example would be illegal boosts. in the old days, there were many OP positions you could get into by boosting on top of other players (or even throwables in midair). each competitive league would have its own lists of illegal boost spots for each map. boosting on throwables was almost always illegal. you could also do stuff like defuse through walls, which was always illegal. bunnyhopping was something of a grey area. some leagues allowed it, while others didn't. it was eventually patched out of the default game settings behind an svar. allowing literally anything that didn't involve loading external code would have severely broken cs:source. there were even ways of replacing assets that would effectively give you wallhacks without injecting any code. these decisions always comes down to "how much does this deviate from the balance designed by the developer?" and most importantly "is the game still fun with this behavior?"

retsibsi 7y ago
All good points, but additionally: sometimes it's good to wait and see where a glitch takes a game, rather than banning it straight away because it 'breaks' the version of the game that everyone has been playing so far. A classic example is the Quake series, where the movement mechanics that gave the games lasting appeal were all originally accidental. (And Carmack even briefly patched strafe-jumping out of Q3, before quickly reverting -- but only because his fix caused other problems: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/02/quake-3-john-carmack-strafejumping/ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/02/quake-3-john-car...) David Sirlin also writes well about this sort of thing (with more of a focus on 'cheap' use of intended mechanics), though his tone could be offputting to people who think hyper-competitive videogaming is a bit silly: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win
- leetcrew 7y ago
  I totally agree. "skiing" in tribes is another classic example. fun mechanics take priority over everything. after all, it's a game! as an aside, strafe jumping is pretty similar to bunnyhopping in cs, probably because the source/goldsrc engine had its roots in quake code. I brought it up as a grey area. it's a fun mechanic, but timing is really important on cs maps, and it definitely breaks the balance on some of them. personally I think it was a mistake for valve to patch it out of the vanilla game (leagues, 3rd party servers, and matchmaking could have just disabled it through the svar), but that's all history now. my main point is that the mere fact that games take place in virtual environments doesn't make whatever the client/server permits the ultimate law of the land. just like in real life, the rules of the game are the intersection of what's possible and what's fun.