On Sportsmanship

[codepants]

I'd like to start a discussion about what it means to be "sportsmanlike" in supcom. I have a few scenarios in particular I'm curious about, but I'm also curious what other experiences people have had.

To be clear, I am not trying to whine, or complain, or say that things should be different (though maybe they should be), I've just had some... "interesting" experiences, and I'd like to share and see what people think, and I'm sure others have had "interesting" experiences as well, and I'm curious what those are, because shared experiences.

Just so we're all on the same page, when I use the word "sportsmanship" I am referring to "doing something because it's fun for everyone." Things like cheating and stacking a game, for instance, are usually not examples of good sportsmanship, but they can be if everybody is in on it (nothing like a noob trying his luck against a pro "just because," or playing a cheat game against someone and having them spawn and then ctrl+k a paragon next to your ACU).

So, here are my experiences.

I once played a game where someone... "exploited" the SACU laser bug. For those of you who don't know, a GC should kill a SACU, but because lasers often don't hit SACUs, the SACU will often win (note: I believe this is being fixed in the upcoming patch). I was aeon, making a GC, and my opponent just spammed SACUs. When they were murdering my GC I said, "I don't know that you should be winning right now." They replied, "Knowing how to use units isn't cheating. Anyways, you'd do the same thing." I can't prove they were building SACUs specifically for the exploit -- maybe they just built them because they thought it was a good defense. And I don't know what I would have done were I in their shoes, but I don't often go SACU before experimental.

I've also played a lot of games lately with disconnects. For some reason (I assume luck of the draw), the disconnect is usually on my team. Depending on the stage of the game, I usually ask the mirror of that person to leave, and they almost always decline (of the 5-10 times this has happened, only once has someone left). Inevitably, the other team will win. It's not really a very enjoyable experience for the team that loses a player. Sure, you get the mass of the disconnected player, but unless you were planning on getting their mass, you probably don't have enough spare build capacity, power, etc to make it count. You need more APM to take their mass, and it takes time to get the eco on those spots back to where it was, whereas their mirror is already ahead of you and already has units to take it from you.

Furthermore, I've played games where someone disconnects, and the other team either rushes their spot or double-team-rushes the person next to them. Of all the things to do in that situation, this seems the most unsportsmanlike. Nobody likes disconnects, but it seems possible to exploit them, and IMO that makes them even less fun.

In another recent game, an ally built a GC, walked it into an opponent's base -- the opponent's ACU was on an upgrade, so could not move, and did not cancel the upgrade to run -- and the GC did not fire. It fired on units up to the walk into the base, got in range of the ACU, and simply stood there, not firing. It did this for about ten seconds, then fired long enough to deplete the shield the ACU was under, and was then killed. Had it been firing for the entire time it was in range of the ACU, the ACU would have been dead hands down. Cybran ACU, no vet, no upgrades.

I'm just curious what other people do in these situations -- both on the side of the team with the choice to "exploit" (I don't actually mean exploit but I'm not sure what the word is I mean) and the side of the team that has no choice and just has to live with it. Is all fair in love and war? Or do you make concessions to make the game more fair and fun for both sides? IMO, while winning is usually fun and losing is usually not, doing things that are only "technically" fair and "technically" not exploits but that are less than sportsmanlike make the game less fun, regardless of the outcome.

Again, I am not trying to complain. Sometimes I or my team gets crushed fair and square and it's not very fun, but that doesn't mean it's unsportsmanlike. Those are not the situations I'm talking about. And I understand that if a GC doesn't fire on you for ten seconds, you want to consider that a serendipitous event and play on instead of ctrl+k'ing because you should be dead. It's just frustrating as the player or team that was betting on that GC -- betting on the principles of the game engine that are supposedly hard-coded, and the reason the game exists and the reason you made that GC -- to have it not work the way it works 99% of the time.

Thoughts?

[Blackheart]

Could you please summarize in 2 lines or so what you want to say?

[theeggroll]

Tl;dr <3

[speed2]

This looks like a complain post where you keep repeating you're not complaining.

And to that game stacking... There is always "X" required from everyone, so no need to complain during or after game when you're losing.

[---]

The easiest probably is to accept that a lot players don't care about sportmanship. They want to win, that's all. How it is fun to win based on an unfair advantage (e.g. disconnect) is beyond me. Oh well, people are different.
For technical issues - report them on the forum and hope they get fixed some day.

[Why comment if you don't even read the post?]

[DeimosEvotec]

Well the laser bug is going to get fixed but I don't know what to think about the disconnect thing since he might as we have been sniped and that would have resulted in the same situation. The only difference to dieing from a snipe or combat is that a dc is not predictable.
Maybe we could change the disconnect behavior so that the units don't self destruct instantly but after a set amount of time.
The ability to reconnect would be the best but that is not easy to implement. The simplest method would be if the game of the dc'd person would save the current game state and the game gets paused for the rest of the players. Then the player gets one minute to reconnect to the same lobby or until all other players vote him out. If he reconnects to the lobby the game loads the save and the match could continue but this probably is not possible or at least very hard to implement so I wouldn't bet on this being implemented.
As for the not firing GC I don't know, would help to have the replay to take a look. Maybe it got stuned by loyas?

[Softly]

I sometimes ctrl-k units if I think they have survived through unfair means.

e.g, I once ctrl-ked a mantis instead of raiding a couple of engies because opp mantis got stuck in a hill.

I don't really expect people to reciprocate

[Morax]

Proper procedure:

1) Take screenshots of chats of said "unsportsmanlike conduct" if it is purely chat
2) Write down game replay ID where these actions take place (most applicable to your post here)
3) Report it to the FaF administration through conversation or post about it on the forum for review in the proper subsection
4) Look for banhammer post in Administrative Actions



PERSONAL COMMENT:

Online gaming is always going to have knuckleheads so just learn to dodge repeat offenders and there is optional therapy to cope with depression some might endure because of painful thoughts.

I wish you luck in your endeavors.

[E8400-CV]

Play Fullshare, solve 90%

The people that spend 30 minutes in-game with bad language aren't the ones reporting for TML teamkill anyway, so have had it man.

[---]

1) Take screenshots of chats of said "unsportsmanlike conduct" if it is purely chat
[...]
3) Report it to the FaF administration through conversation or post about it on the forum for review in the proper subsection

If it is unsportsmanlike I don't think it is punishable. Thus, I don't understand why it would be useful to take a screenshot of the chat.
I highly suggest not to post any screenshot of an inappropriate behavior (public shaming) - just send the post to the mods, they will take care of it.