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The current marketing pitch (a personal gaming -coach-) has nothing to do with the current functionality of e.g. voicing timers or providing notifications. That
by andrewzah 5y ago
The current marketing pitch (a personal gaming -coach-) has nothing to do with the current functionality of e.g. voicing timers or providing notifications. That's more akin to a personal assistant.
I would also say that what it's doing with Valorant is cheating. It's providing additional cues and advantages automatically, that other players have to keep tabs on manually. The other players have to risk glancing at the timer(s) and temporarily divert attention from the other parts of the screen, while the "AI" user can rely on auditory feedback that is not present in the game for everyone (and maybe was a conscious decision from the game developers).
The whole point of competition is to evaluate player vs player performance, not player+personal assistant vs player performance. If you allow uneven things like that, then it becomes an arms race and also becomes boring from both a viewer and participant standpoint. Part of the challenge of games like Valorant, League of Legends, DotA2, etc, is to learn how to manage the sheer amount of information while also engaging in fights/gameplay.
An actual coach "AI" concept could be to provide intelligent information -inbetween rounds-, not during gameplay itself.
- natdempk 5y agoI agree this feels like cheating. I read the Valorant page and they've basically re-implemented information that is available to you in game generally, but takes skill/timing/awareness to track and made it more obvious and automatically tracked. How is this not just a low-grade cheating program? If the game developers wanted you to have that information in the format Senpai.gg is giving it to you in, they would provide it in that format in the first place rather than using their own audio queues, omitting specific timers, etc.
- whateveracct 5y agoIn-game coaching _is_ considered cheating in FGC tournaments
- natdempk 5y agoYep, for any sort of eSport you can’t have outside help/information outside of designated times if the format allows it, but also this isn’t targeted at eSports.
- brundolf 5y agoBut cheating can happen (and be prosecuted) outside of eSports. The founders should be careful.
- atatatat 5y agoprosecuted, lmao
- woah 5y agoYou could go to jail for a long time. Watch it, buddy
- brundolf 5y agoI'm not exaggerating: https://www.pcgamer.com/south-korea-makes-cheating-in-online-games-an-actual-crime/ https://www.pcgamer.com/south-korea-makes-cheating-in-online... https://kotaku.com/forget-banning-online-gamers-are-in-legal-trouble-for-1595789066 https://kotaku.com/forget-banning-online-gamers-are-in-legal... https://gizmodo.com/chinese-police-bust-alleged-76-million-video-game-chea-1846586125 https://gizmodo.com/chinese-police-bust-alleged-76-million-v...
- IChooseY0u 5y agoThis only applies to Asia. Nobody gets sued for cheating in US/UK/Can. Cheat sellers being the exception.
- hyperhopper 5y agoThis is a thread about people selling a program that might be considered cheating, so I'd say that this is the only case that is relevant.
- Olcy07 5y agoWe do not target tournaments - any 3.rt part application or a human coach is also not allowed as well.
- whateveracct 5y agoMatchmaking has anti-cheat. This is cheating in an environment that disallows cheating.
- Olcy07 5y agoThanks for sharing your feedback, I agree that it takes time to learn and implement the specific actions in the game - and that is the reason why we developed the gaming coach. Ideally, we want you to learn the game dynamics so you can play better, improve faster and enjoy the game more!
- notJim 5y agoThat doesn't sound like how it would be used though. If I can run your app all the time, and get an edge, why wouldn't I?
- snet0 5y agoThis is akin to saying "if you practice with a cheat so you can see through walls, it'll train you to know where players are likely to be standing". No, it's cheating. It provides an unfair advantage by replacing a skill with a technology. There may be good intentions, but if so they are founded on a total misunderstanding of competition.
- debaserab2 5y agoI don't think it's quite that cut and dry - it appears to only be using data already available to the player. If anything it seems like a training queue to notice the information that's already present instead of passing it over.
- ben-schaaf 5y agoChess engines also only use data already available to the player. That simply has no bearing on whether or not it's cheating.
- alisonkisk 5y agoTransparent, shameless attempts to deflect criticism make people like you less than if you just ignore it, phony exclamation point.
- anonymoushn 5y agoThis sounds like "Deadly Boss Mods for games other than WoW" which probably is just cheating. I'd be really interested in a product that does more of what a human coach would do.
- alasdair_ 5y agoI was thinking the same thing. Blizzard explicitly allows this kind of thing but most games do not. Even with DBM - there used to be an addon that told you exactly where to stand to avoid different bosses attacks. That got banned pretty quickly because it over trivialized the mechanics.
- danr4 5y agoI'd say DBM being PvE is a big difference. But WoW generally is a whole other beast just because of how addons are ingrained in it.
- hnick 5y agoCompetitive PvE exists too (speedruns, world first races, etc). In FFXIV mods are less tolerated and while some raiders use triggers (TTS voice lines triggered by enemy actions or friendly buffs to tell you what to do), many consider it borderline or actual cheating, while others are fine with it because it's similar to having a player do it (ignoring perfect accuracy and no brain capacity used). So it's a controversial area.
- anonymoushn 5y agoFor suresies. I didn't play in Firelands but I heard some stories of the "drawing football plays on the ground" era. We used a similar addon for Sha of Fear p1 side platform but it displayed where to stand on a HUD, not on the actual floor.
- mike_d 5y agoProviding situational feedback during gameplay by way of an overlay or audio queues is clearly cheating. If I were an investor in this company, I'd be asking the founders what their plan is when they get banned by the major anti-cheat engines.
- tmp_anon_22 5y agoCheating in video games is a growing industry. But if they push boundaries and are a US or EU company they will be sued to splinters for it.
- alisonkisk 5y agoWhat tort is "helping someone cheat at a video game"?
- meheleventyone 5y agoCheating in a game ruins other customers experience so does have a direct monetary impact which is why games companies care about it so much.
- tmp_anon_22 5y agoMany large studios, I specifically think of Blizzard and Jagex, have a reputation for wielding legal successfully against third party clients, phishing, trademark/branding abuse, botting, and similar activities. Further there are severe legal consequences in China and elsewhere for cheating in video games. Even if there isn't decisive legal consequences they can carpet ban whoever they want whenever they want. Which is likely the reputation which causes the landing page of this service to be plastered with "don't worry you won't get banned" all over the place.
- berkozer 5y agoThanks for sharing your feedback. We understand your concern but we are very careful to not develop any feature that would be considered as cheating for the majority of the gaming and game developer.
- bee_rider 5y agoThe idea of: > For example, we have an "Early Ganker" tag for the gamers who tend to gang in the early game. [...] We provide these tags based on only publicly accessible data on the official game publisher API. For example, any gamer can search for the opponents’ game data and conduct a similar analysis. also seems questionable to me. Is it common/practical to do this kind of thing in these games? It seems to me that, while it might be technically possible to get the info, it should be impractical for a human to actually do the analysis, in the timespan allowed by a pregame lobby, right? I guess it could also depend on how much preprocessing they do... hypothetically we could imagine a game where every match is recorded and saved to a public user account, and a "coaching" AI system that extracts users tags by watching these offline, and then just queries them at match time. This analysis would pretty clearly be information that players wouldn't normally be privy to, despite being available through legitimate means.
- EamonnMR 5y agoIs an AI that aimbots by predicting player moves with uncanny accuracy really that different from a regular old aimbot?
- bee_rider 5y agoAnother interesting point in the spectrum could be, what about a program that marks up the screen or minimap with detailed heatmaps of likely player positions based on historical data? If that's not obviously cheating, make it time dependent, make it player dependent, etc. If that is obviously cheating, what about producing those maps and not providing an in-game overlay?
- snet0 5y agoI think it's very simple: if you'd describe its usage as a "skill", it's probably fine. Obvious "navigating this cheat menu UI takes some practice" cases aside. If a professional team uses data analysis and then teaches their players something like "at 30s, on this map, this player rotates from here to here in 70% of games", that's just good training. If they have this data being live-streamed to their second monitor, it's cheating.
- Vadoff 5y agoDota 2 allows for a real time coach to join your team during a match at any time, it's built into the game. They have full vision/information of what your team has. However, "Coaching is available in private lobbies, casual matchmaking, and Co-op bot matchmaking, but not Ranked matchmaking, Team matchmaking, or Tournament lobbies."
- berkozer 5y agoYes, Valve has a similar vision for CS:GO as well. We don't provide any coaching services for tournament or professional events.
- Olcy07 5y agoThanks for your feedback. We understand your concern, but we do not share any information that is not available on your screen. In a sense, we provide an alternative interface so you can learn about the game dynamics to improve faster. All the features that we develop aims to accelerate the learning curve - so we do not share any information about your opponent, their location etc. that is not available to you while you are playing the game.
- notJim 5y agoProviding an alternative interface is exactly why it sounds like cheating.
- luaKmua 5y agoSpeaking as a league player and a game developer, the audio cues are 100% cheating and also explicitly against Riot's ToS as stated here: https://support-leagueoflegends.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/225266848-Third-Party-Applications https://support-leagueoflegends.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/artic... The relevant excerpt: "Exposing information that’s intentionally obfuscated (cooldowns or timers)" As for all of the other match data mining, that's par for the course in competitive games these days.
- jcelerier 5y ago> "Exposing information that’s intentionally obfuscated (cooldowns or timers)" Doesn't this just benefit people who are good at counting ?
- luaKmua 5y agoCompetitive games have a variety of ways for players to express their skills. I'm not going to comment on whether or not it's good design, but it is clearly the intended design and that's the important differentiating factor. Competitive games are always going to benefit some players who are good at some specific aspects of them inherently by their nature.
- gunshai 5y agoIn Dota you have to keep track of all sorts of stuff like this. There is a decent sized list of all the timings you should keep track of with in a game, and they change from game to game. If you don't do it you're basically lost.
- tigertigertiger 5y agoThat's the way games work. Doesnt having a good memory give advantage to chess players? Or having good reflexes benefit shooter player?
- jcelerier 5y agoWell, at least in a casino, if someone notices that you look like you are counting cards you will promptly be escorted to the exit