Playing cheap.

[Zero]

Interesting topic. Lot of people vary on defining what 'cheap' is. What does it mean to be playing cheap?

first of all.. cheat and cheap is different. cheat is gaining advantage by using something outside of gameplay system and cheap is abusing a system within gameplay. So no talking about cheating. Just cheap plays.

[General Ludd]

Basically just using annoying tactics. "zerg rush" is a good example.

[Zero]

why is zerg rush cheap? Rush in RTS is a serious commitment. You have to ruin your economy for the whole game just to shave off few extra seconds. There are plenty of anti-rush tactics out there. Otherwise everyone would rush( ) to learn how to play zergs.

What is annoying isnt cheap either. Isnt annoying an opponent part of the mind game as any other? (pressuring/forcing a move/making them guess etc)

[rah]

Rehoming caravans in CIVII. Obviously the developers didn't want you to do it since they took the extra step and removed the option to do it from one panel, but overlooked that it could be done from another panel. Hence people still do it. And many people are so stubborn that they don't listen to people that say it's a cheap play.

Some rules sets in MP outlaw it. But it required a special mention.

[DrSpike]

In TFT cheap is elf going Beastmaster/Naga every fookin game.

[Zero]

Rah: good post. Glitch is on the greyline of whats cheap and not cheap IMO.

I think most ppl agree glitch that crashes or anything like that is downright nono in gaming community....

But most glitch i find it not cheap. Its unintentional. Thats true. But most glitches require practice and mastering to do it consistently. That and you need to be able to figure out the glitch. That takes some researching how games work etc. So if you can abuse the glitch, i give you thumbs up (for the most part)

If anyone knows Capcom v Snk 2, friggin just frame roll cancel glitch is cheap as hell (it basically makes you invulnerable for short time). True, It takes skill to do a just frame (1/60th of a timing), but gameplay gets reduced to just being able to perform that flawlessly like a robot..... jf roll cancel, attack, jf roll cancel attack....

It still isnt really "cheap" cause anybody has access to such option... but when glitches become too overpowering and has no countermeasures for it, it really kills strategy and gameplay IMO, and therfore should be considered cheap thing to do.

[Sarxis]

In FPS games, there's all kinds of 'cheap' tactics. Spawn camping; offense sniping; use of certain weapons in excess; etc.

Too many to name, and they vary from game to game. Sometimes its just players whining about getting PWND, but other times its just dishonorable play.

[Zero]

Originally posted by Anun Ik Oba
In FPS games, there's all kinds of 'cheap' tactics. Spawn camping; offense sniping; use of certain weapons in excess; etc.

Nah I disagree. Spawn camping isnt dishonroable play, but most FPS game has anti spawn camp measures. In Team Fortress for example, if you can beat the system and lob a nail grenade or mirv into spawn point... or enter thru the door and flush the room out before you get killed by automated defense system... , I think you deserve the kill.

In UT2K3, spawn camping is all too easy on deathmatch. But thats the point in that game. Nonstop action. I dont think its cheap cause in that game, ur supposed to be in action instantly at any moment.

Nor is offensive sniping cheap. Usually its camping mofos thats consdiered cheap. Thats not cheap either though...

Sometimes its just players whining about getting PWND, but other times its just dishonorable play.

agreed. But this thread is basically dicussing that. What do you think is the difference between thoe two lines is basically what we should be talking about.

In TFT cheap is elf going Beastmaster/Naga every fookin game.

they nerfed beastmaster. Still good though. Ive been hearing about new gossips on how dark ranger is the new queen biatch of creeping....

still not cheap though IMO. Best hero to choose cause its the most effective? yes. Cheap? I wouldnt go that far.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Zero
It still isnt really "cheap" cause anybody has access to such option... but when glitches become too overpowering and has no countermeasures for it, it really kills strategy and gameplay IMO, and therfore should be considered cheap thing to do.

[da_hal]

i think it is important to define cheap. imho, cheap is:

1. something that cannot be defended against, eg. drop hacks in diablo 2, cheese kills in sf2alpha+, etc.

2. only in multiplayer. by definition, something you do by yourself should not be "cheap."

3. takes all the strategy and boils it down to just 1-2 options. for example, the zerg rush requires specific anti-rush measures that eliminates other types of play.

4. is fully supported by the programmers. for example, in ultima 4, you can reboot the game if i goes bad, and "journey onward" from the previous save. in epyx' "rogue", however, save games are erased once loaded, and if you die, the character is gone, thus making backup copies of your save is 'cheap.' (although if done alone, it shouldn't be by rule 2.)

5. cannot be used as an excuse for stupidity or noobity. for example, in chess, the 4 move and 2 move checkmate is in just about every single book ever written, thus falling for it is not the fault of the doer, but the victim.

6. something that is generally regarded as 'cheap' is given de-facto immunity if used in defense of a more 'cheap' strategy. for example, in d2, a slow burizazon is considered a "cheap" build, thus a less "cheap" build built to kill them is not cheap when used for this situation. also, a marine rush when used vs a zerg rush.

7. does not exist in tournament or money play. just win baby.

feel free to discuss.

[Zero]

drspike: meh. fine. We're talking greyish borderline cheapness though. By the way, is there a counter for NE who goes with beastmaster creeping? (maybe hero rushing etc? beastmaster = horrible anti hero isnt it?)

Da hal:
1. Yeah drop hack is not a cheap, but cheat. cheese kill? you mean death thru block dmg? Thats not cheap at all. Or do you mean broken custom combo strings? That is almost on the borderline of cheapness, but sf community learned to deal with it and and didnt reduce the gameplay down to bare nothignness...

5. Absolutely!
6. No, in that case, none of the two are cheap in my view. Extremly good strat beating another extremly good strat? As long as they all have countermeasures it will eventually become a heavily biased rock paper scissor game noentheless... (thus balancing the system)

7. Evo 2003, this japanese guy named ino wins with pure jf roll cancel glitch. Yeah it wasnt banned for tourney play, but it reduced the game down to whether you can match him by being able to prove that you can do the glitch consistently as well and nothing else.

Doing something over and over again is fine, but in this case this glitch is so broken that there is no countermeasure, no risk no nothing except the fact you have to be able to time it PERFECTLY. This is also on the greish are IMO.

Same thing with maddogjin in T4 using Jin's "cheapness" to win... quite debatable (less so than cvs tho).

[Skanky Burns]

2. only in multiplayer. by definition, something you do by yourself should not be "cheap."

Disagree.
For example, in certain RTS games you can build walls to prevent enemy movement. A cheap tactic would be to have walls with a thin winding path through them that the ai will automatically follow, even though they will get killed trying to run all around your new wall maze. Cheap.

[Zero]

disagree.

Thats abusing/screwing around with dumb computers. Its not ur fault computers are dumb. Perhaps exploiting more could encourage better ai system and improve single player experience.

Anyways it dont matter whats cheap in single player IMO. you can cheat and no one would care (except you and your own honor or whatever), so why would anyone care if you play cheap.

[Skanky Burns]

I doubt if anyone would care about a SP player using cheap tactics. The tactics are cheap though, which is the point.

[Mr. President]

Originally posted by Zero
What does it mean to be playing cheap?

In Magic, cheap is using a Platinum Angel ("You can't lose the game and your opponents can't win the game") or doing an infinite combo with a Wellwisher to gain 6,003 life.

[mrmitchell]

Cheap, in Red Faction:

(1) spawnkilling
(2) "green teaming" (a glitch that ****s up the game if you take flags while you're green)
(3) modding (cheating), but then claiming that "oh it's not rapidfire or flying" makes it okay. THEY CALL IT CHEATING FOR A REASON DUMBASSES!

[Zero]

Magic is a funy lil game. Its a game where rules can be broken as long as card says that you can.

Those cards seem pretty cheap though. Anything that nulls or create infinite loop is cheap in my world. Im sure those are banned in magic tourney plays?

Mrmitchell, I've never played red faction but in most fps, spawn camping/killing isnt cheap.

[Zero]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
I doubt if anyone would care about a SP player using cheap tactics. The tactics are cheap though, which is the point.

but its not. da_hal's post #5 also applies to AIs

[da_hal]

lil' clarification:

cheap: what we are trying to define here.

cheat: this would probably come as a corollary to #4: if programmers insist that they did not expect/want it to be done, it is a cheat. so, there is a difference between say open bnet vs closed bnet, where on one side it would be cheap (yet more or less ignored by programmers) vs a cheat (where programmers spend days/weeks trying to patch it.)

exploit: taking advantage of the AI. in 99.99999% of games, the AI has some weakness or another. while AI's get better all the time, it will never be perfect, much less good. the classic exploit is doing something stupid and the AI isn't programmed with the proper response (in any Earth map 4X fortifying antartica or australia, for example.)

i disagree with the ino example. because of the difficulty of the move, not anybody can do it, so to my list:

8. is widely used. If only the minority of people can do it, even though the majority of people know the underlying "moves," then that is the definition of skill, not cheap. For example, Dragon's lair had 1 button and only four possible joystick moves. You could master the basics in less than 5 minutes. However, could you do the entire game blindfolded? (i've heard of it, and i don't think that guy was being cheap.)

as a corollary:
8a. is not available to the general population through ebay, a hack site, or "secret code." For example, you can "buy" an elite d2 char through ebay which will enable you to win the majority of duels, even though you could never build that character yourself.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Zero
drspike: meh. fine. We're talking greyish borderline cheapness though.

I was just using your own definition to show how my conclusion applied.

[pg]

cheap is a relative term as shown by this thread. i'd say there's very few things if anything that is considered "cheap" at the highest skill levels of play in say quake 3 or warcraft 3. less skilled/less competitive players seem to find much more things cheap as shown by the mentioning of spawn fragging(i thought people got over this years ago).

[DrSpike]

In Quake3 I agree.........in WC3 there have always been strategies at the highest level (and indeed below) that are considered cheap. Sure everyone can do them, but its not good when the game is about who can be cheapest. Also in a game with multiple races one races' cheap tactics are not available to all.

Cheap tactics should be differentiated from rushing, or spawn camping etc, things which bad players always complain about. For me cheap tactics are overpowered unbalanced ones that ruin the gameplay by forcing people to switch races and be cheap yourself to have a chance to compete.

[Zero]

Cheapness is quite relative. I think what Drspike said is roughly good definition of what cheap is (still with grey lines).

however, as overpowered as they may be, if they have at least one counter measures, i see it as being fair. If so, the mind game is there. If you always go for that one cheap overpowered move, ur opponent will always play the counter. If you dont go for overpowering move, ur opponent wont use the counter measure and counter the conventional defeatable move.... the rps cycle will be there so its fair.

Da_hal: Fine you disagree thinking ino's example isnt cheap. I can understand where you're coming from. But even if I could constantly jf roll cancel glitch at will, I'd like to play CvS2, not a game of "who can mess up jf-roll cancel glitch first and lose to timeout game"....

You're right tho. Everyone has access to it. It is fair. Very gay and overpowering but fair.

[rah]

In civI. Settler farms to take advantage of getting money by selling you palace and getting a free one with the next city built. You could build 30 cities a turn and get 300X30 gold, alternating buying up settlers (for under 100 gold) and creating cities for a net profit of just over 200 gold each. You could use the money to buy an empire (improvements and troops). Very useful for record setting runs. Most people didn't know it existed. And since there was no MP, not many people found out about it until CIVII was released. (the free palace flaw was removed)

[Traianvs]

Under no circumstances can spawn camping be allowed.
In SoF1 mp, the game I still play online, only 1 weapon is basically used because it's so powerful (and fun) to use, the shotgun. Now in a clanmatch, if the enemy team starts camping your shotgun you are definately ****ed because then the enemy can steal a flag before you can manage to kill the campers.

cheap is giving your opponent almost no chance to defend himself. I don't care if it's a hard thing to do, that only a few people can master; it's still cheap.
Another cheap thing is tweaking your config in FPS games. In many games such as ut2k3 or Q3 you can turn on brightskins and greenskins etc so you can see your enemies from miles away. This totally spoils the game. Okay it is available to everybody, but first of all you need to know how to do all that (I don't know how to tweak my games) and secondly it spoils gameplay because it gives other people a disadvantage.

[da_hal]

heh this is the most interesting thread i've seen in years.

i have no idea what spawn fragging is, so can't comment.

the idea of camping brings up another idea: isn't the ability to uproot a camped unit(s) a skill? eg. this appears to belong with rule 5. I can't uproot camped units, therefore, if somebody uses it against me, it is cheap. I remember this idea back in command hq, where units could fortify themselves, thus learning how to uproot them was vital. I also uprooted all defensive units in mechcommander as well (usually, if it was AI, through an exploit, like luring 1-2 units away with a bait unit into a trap.)

one counter measure: hmm, i can see how this would not be cheap. in simpler games, such as say connect-4, which does not have many options towards the endgame, there are forced moves that in other circumstances would be considered cheap. Lets say that if the 1 counter measure makes the game incredibly boring, that's cheap? In warcraft 1, we would often play without elementals/demons, because it limited play too much (first person to build them usually won, and the only defense was your own, so games became a race for them.)

settler trick: a couple of ideas:

1. as i recall, money wasn't that important, once you got railroads (through the settler exploit, hehe) you often had more money than you could spend anyway. even legitly through trade routes, money was not that hard to come by.

2. even though that trick results in 200% profit, the computer players on warlord level had 1/3 production and upkeep costs, making it greater than 200%, thus it does not nullify the computer's advantage. it would be the equivalent of playing on king level without using the trick (since at king level, the ai and player's production was equal.) thus, by rule #2, is not cheap.

3. since programmers did remove it later, it was a cheat, not cheap, by definition.

the greenskins example brings up another idea: honor. if the players involved propose ground rules that are accepted by all opponents, breaking those rules are "cheap." this seems to hold true for most examples i can think of, although heavily rooted in the noobity rule. Most noobs define honor through word of mouth, thus is often inaccurate, which is why they are most guilty of slinging the "cheap" tag around: they have no idea what the ground rules are to begin with.

[mrmitchell]

Well, spawnkilling by itself is "okay". If you're running for the other team flag and a jackass spawns right in your path, it's acceptable to mow them down. But camping behind the spawnpoint to kill them immediately is DEFINITELY bad, and on most servers doing it for a long time and nothing else will get your sorry ass kicked.

[mrmitchell]

i have no idea what spawn fragging is, so can't comment.

In an FPS (first person shooter) game, as a character dies, there are predefined "spawn locations" on a map where his new life will start over. Spawn fragging is when you kill them immediately after they start, and spawn camping is when you stay behind the spawnpoint and shoot as they come.

[da_hal]

re: spawnfragging

in team games, wouldn't it be logical, if one team is spawnfragging, for the other team to do spawnguarding?

[mrmitchell]

in team games, wouldn't it be logical, if one team is spawnfragging, for the other team to do spawnguarding?

But then no real advancement can happen because both teams are just racking up the dead spawn.

Also on many maps theres less spawn points than (in large games) players. So in a map with 16 players and only 5 spawn spots (per team), 5 players of a team could be dispatched to kill new spawn while the other 3 go get the flag. A spawnee who could jump around and shoot his camper would be very lucky and probably not get throguh.