Default keys. The only non default keys I use other than the above scripts are a swap of crouch and walk ( it is easier to hold shift than ctrl ).

The way I see it is that you think the removal of them makes a huge difference at high levels. I.e. a player who has developed their skill with scripts will be crippled if they are forcibly removed. But yeah, as I stated earlier, perhaps the return on investment diminishes as you move up the skill curve and that may account for the descrepency in the advantage I percieve versus what you percieve.

It's convoluted into a mobius strip at this stage

Imagined or not, I continually see the "scripts don't provide an advantage" argument put forward and my experience tells me this isn't true.

I'm a devout athiest on most religous issues

I'm stating this without stating whether I think scripts should be allowed in tournaments.

This would be true if the scripts I have posted were blocked by setting mp_blockscripts to 1.

My K/D ratio improved alot when I got more than 30 FPS on average. It will probably improve even more once I get 100+ steady. I'm sure I would do significantly worse on mp_makeyourfpssuck 1 servers too.

Actually to be even more blatent, compare 2 pub players both having exactly the same experience and skill.

The trouble with using Delta players as an example is they would both be of such high skill that the scripts are secondary...

Why, then, should custom crosshairs, disabling music, and tweaking net variables be allowed? Everyone does these things because they think they will help their gameplay. They are things that affect gameplay that are not purely based on skill. Why are scripts singled out?

As a totally separate point, on the list of "things I want to be important in my favorite game", some items that do not rank very high are: the ability to click a mouse button 10 times in a second, the will to replace one's mouse with some frequency, or the ability to locate a mouse with a sufficiently loose wheel.

I am not trying to make the discussion about these other things. I am merely listing things that are widely implemented and considered legit by competive players, and using them to make a point.

Your response seems to be that these things should be given reasonable defaults in the mod. Presumably you would still allow people to change them, though. In addition, the fact that their current poor state has led all competetive players to change them has not induced any sort of controversy.

There seems to be something special about scripting. How is deciding one wants a different crosshair different from deciding one wants to bhop with the spacebar instead of the mousewheel? You are certainly allowed to believe script-users make the game worse; I am just trying to figure out what your argument against scripts is that does not apply to all these other things, so that I might actually evaluate it.

Many of the posts in this thread seem to start from one position or the other, and then invent arguments to support the position, rather than have positions based on logical arguments. While this situation is certainly not unique to this subject, I would rather like to try to make an exception of this thread and have some actual logical arguments to discuss.

Your argument seems to go something like this:

The skills that should be emphasized are aim and button-clicking, therefore the game should be built around that.

Your discussions of the individual tweaks seem based on this.

If you think that the ability to click a button over and over (modulo the mousewheel) is something that should be emphasized in an fps/rts or whatever NS is labeled as, then that is a pretty fundamental basis of your opinion, and maybe this is the core of the issue that separates pro-scripters from anti-scripters. I rather believe that pro-scripters think the idea of an important skill in NS being the ability to click a button quickly is sort of silly. If you believe that being able to click quickly is a skill, just like aiming, then the scripts under discussion would be analogous to an aimbot, which is obviously frowned upon.

Your particular discussions of the tweaks leave me somewhat confused, though.

Sure, better crosshairs make aiming easier, but they still provide you an advantage over players who have not gone out of their way to find/make third-party crosshairs. How is this advantage fair? Because your inherent ability to aim can translate more directly to the game, and aiming is one of the essential abilities of NS? What if one were to argue that being able to deal with a poor crosshair, such as comes with the game and many, many players use, ought to be a skill possessed by a good NS player? A good crosshair makes aiming easier with no downside, and it removes the necessity of a player to deal with the visual obstruction. Similarly, one might argue that a pistol script removes the necessity to deal with rolling a wheel while moving one's mouse to aim, emphasizing a player's aim over all else.

You say that removing ambient sounds is okay because players should be able to hear skulks with no distractions, making skulks need more intelligence. First, obviously, the same argument of "well most people leave ambient sounds in, so how on earth do you justify this as fair?" applies. Second, I was under the impression that CAL actually considered the removal of ambient sounds cheating. Third, while this causes skulks to need to ambush more, it affects balance in a game that is presumably intended to have those sounds as other stuff to hear in the background, to compete with the noises skulks make. Removing your ambient sounds means you no longer have to be able to pick out a skulk walking among background noise. This detracts from this skill, which one could say is easily as important as the ability to click a button repeatedly.

You brought up ambient sound, but I was merely speaking of the in-game music (cl_musicenabled 0). There is no option in the menu that I can find that disables this. I would bet that the number of CAL players who have music enabled is in the single digits. They do this because they find the music a hinderance, and it takes much less ability at audio recognition to notice a skulk walking if you do not have the music playing.

Then we come to scripts. You say throughout your post that disabling and changing various things emphasizes aiming, and takes out random elements. If you have a poor mouse wheel, doing any sort of useful motion with your mouse while trying to scroll the wheel can result in wildly inconsistent behavior. With automated repetition, the actions focus on your aim and bhop movement abilities (though I again refer to the many people who say that, with a decent mousewheel, bunnyhopping without scripts is no easier...I haven't seen anyone really argue with this).

A couple of other generally-accepted tweaks that I am curious about your opinions on:
customized huds: the goal of these is generally to increase screen real estate, so that the player can see something he might otherwise miss. I hope I am not putting words in your mouth (well, I am, of course, but I hope that at least they sound like words you might say ), but I presume the defense of this would go something like "they allow you to see more so that you're able to aim and aim becomes more important". Aim cannot be emphasized over everything. The same argument could be applied to the removal of gun models. "If you take out the skulk teeth, then skulks aim becomes more important, so obviously we should take out the teeth".

What is considered an illegal exploit vs what is just a smart tweak always comes down to community opinion.

As near as I can tell, this issue in particular boils down to whether you think that being able to click a button repeatedly should be considered an integral game-skill. I'm not sure how much debate can take place on this point, as I'm having a difficult time imagining arguments one could construct about it aside from "of course it's important" or "d00d why should being able to click fast matter". I guess the last recourse would be to ask the devs if they think that being able to click quickly should be an important part of NS

"the better NSPlayer"

part of NS is switching between controls for maximum effect. if one guy can blink-metab-swipe without a script then he's better at that than the people who cant without one.. he should REMAIN better at that.

"we want to see whose smarter, faster, better at aiming, positioning, movement and awareness."

faster? pistol scripts increase speed, 3jump scripts also do when compared against other single button bhop methods.

better at aiming? when i spam a button ur hand shakes and u lose accuracy, when u hold down a button u dont shake as much and u have more accuracy.. pistol scripts remove button spamming as much.. helping the aim, so with scripts u actually ARENT seeing whose better at aiming.

movement? such as fade energy conservation which is a MASSIVE part of fading.. you can remove the effort and time needed to be great at that with a script.. way to see whose better at it!

"spending 16 hours a days leveling a character or sorting your socks by color - they're all skills. But they're not things you look for in an intelligent and fun game"

spending many hours practicing your abilities in playing NS is somethig to look for, mastering the "clumsy controls".

if other people play without scripts, what makes you so special? or is it just ignorance of the fact that scripts DO improve certain abilities without the need for as much practice.. (not saying this is for everyone, but its a possibility.. and we should REMOVE possibilities of this.. keep it all on the same level and then we dont have ANY need for these discussions)

next you'll be saying wallhacks dont give an advantage because people can hear where the enemy is anyway.

So you don't agree with evening of the skill gap because I'm pretty sure that diminishing it was what blockscripts was implemented for. I mean basicly bs 0 makes it harder for nubs to play on the same level as so called "high skilled" players.

newer clans don't stand a chance either way, when against the "top" tier clans.

and thats where you lost. A wall hack is where you have to hack into a couple of DLLs and change a bunch of settings, using some random thing. Or downloading the DLL.

If you can set it up ingame, its okay.
I can write a bhop script in the consol and bind it to a key easily.

I can also spend 35 rez at the observitory and get an ingame wall hack. yet thats okay.

but...basicly this debate is kinda the same debate as:
Christanity vs Athiesis.
Athiesist will burn in hell
&
Christains are not in touch with reality.
(I think you get the idea)

Now conserning the tourny. Seeing how the european clan seen had deminished, and the NA clan sean is growing. It would be logical to allow scripts, for this will attract far more clan than the rest.

Now granted since there are more NA clans than European, Which would technachly mean there are more Scripting clans than non ones, It seems as if the anti-script movement is slowy dying, untill to the point any anti scripter will be burned at the steak. but thats just my theory.

You don’t need to try, to not make any sense. You were already being rather successful

care to give any examples so i can explain it for you

If you reread my post more carefully you will see that in my "dream ns" crosshairs would be better, ambient sounds would be lower/non-existant, music would be toggable through the options menu (didnt actually talk about music but this is kind of obvious considering the other things I have mentioned), +jump wouldnt be bindable to mwheel etc. I want all of these things changed just as I want scripts to be removed, but frankly those have nothing what so ever to do with the topic at hand (scripts and bs_1/0). I do in no way say these are more fair than other things. My opinion on how these items should be handled differs from my opinion on how scripts should be handled though, for reasons I have already described.

Now, I'm using scripts because frankly when everyone else is its just silly not to yourself. I change crosshairs, and use stopsound and cl_musicenabled 0 for the same reason. This does in no way I can percieve have any impact on my points, and arguing they have is silly.

Being able to correctly time your turns while bhopping is widely considered a skill, how is this different from being able to consistently shooting at max rate of fire with the pistol while keeping a stead aim? They are both about learning to execute repetetive key click and mouse movement patterns.

Aiming and clicking buttons are skills, yes. Skills that needs to be learned to gain an advantage you can use to an effect varying depending on how well you have mastered the tactical element of NS. Both are equally important and non-exclusive. In the end I do believe that someone who has practiced something and mastered it should have an advantage over someone who hasnt.

While I advocate the removal of scripts, the inclusion of better default crosshairs and enforcing them through consistency, removing ambient sounds (or making them optional through the menu) and removing "stopsound" this doesnt mean I wont use and customise these things while it is allowed, but using an aspect of the game and wanting it to be removed is two separate matters, and I'd be happy if you acknowledged that.

Bottom line:
1) we're talking about blockscripts here, not ambient sounds or crosshairs
2) me using or customising these things have no bearing on my arguements validity

As explained in previous posts, much depends on what players consider a worth wild skill.

Players around the world are and always have used methods that remove the so called skill of timing jumps. Do you disagree that mwheel has replaced the jump script in bs 1 leagues? Because that is what the information concludes. Some leagues have adopted blockscripts because other methods have allowed the timing of jumps. I believe bs would NOT be enforced by ANY league if it disabled the use of mwheel.

While bs may prevent some scripts that are considered exploitive the MAIN impact is how it effects bunny hopping. And as I was trying to point out in my post, which you see as pointless, the worldwide competitive community has accepted that timing jumps should not be a major factor in determining the skill level of a player.


It is also woth noting that tfc and adrenaline gamer, both games which are extremely based on the skill envolved in bunny hopping, both encourage the use of methods to aid in the timing of jumps.

Your so-called information is very inaccurate and far from conclusive. That coupled with the lack of explaining your reason for taking the samples made the post very inflammatory.

I believe you are wrong about the main impact is on bhopping. Since you can still use mwheel the impact on bhopping is minimal.

You still need to realise that the useage of mwheel for bhopping purposes doesnt imply that the person in question feels mwheel is less "lame" than 3jump. In the example of europe, people like I use mwheel since it is allowed and not using it would land me at a disadvantage. This doesnt mean I think mwheel usage is preferrable to 3jump scripts. I believe both are as bad and I'd like to see them removed. Untill then though I will continue to use mwheel for jump timing since this is the most reliable method in europe considering the widespread use of bs_1.

So your little poll didnt really show anything at all in the end. You say that everyone failed at giving a valid explanation to why 3jump was worse than mwheel? Perhaps that is because there isnt any, and people use mwheel for the reason I stated in the above paragraph.

Regardless, it's all speculation just as your conclusions, since we really dont have any conclusive data to test our assumptions on.

Not any more than a 3jump script, maybe you need a better peice of hardware. In fact a mwheels has many advantaged over a scripts. An mwheel has a closer effect to a macro in the fact that it can be repeated continuesly without hindering other commands. An mwheel can send commands at the frame rate of the client.

The real disadvantage of using the mwheel is having to use your finger to jump. Many players become accustom to using the default mapped keys. Not everyone likes to change their system and rebind their keys as all the mwheel exploiters have.

Sheer brilliance in a line.

mp_blockmousewheel 1 YEAH!!



I do find it ironic that an american was trying to argue with an english league official, and now its flipped and a swede is arguing with an american league official.

I have nothing against either side of the argument. But I am curious as to what other purpose mouse wheel can have? It is a legitemate input to the options screen, aswell as legitemately bound through console and config editing.

It serves no purpose changing weapons without a fast switch fix script, as mousewheel changing still requires the use of +attack, when hud_fastswitch 1 is used.

It could be used to flashlight or +use, to really annoy the hell out of people. Or perhaps +attack to get the most out of your blink, maybe if you want to make some kind of short animation you could bind it to snapshot.

I do know people who can bunnyhop on a single button, bound +jump only. But they don't use spacebar, as its a far too unpredicable key, it does sometimes miss the contacts when you press it.

There is however no reason to be proud of yourself for achieving something due to an extended code bound to your config.

Myself, due to damage to my hand, can not reach the pistol cap as I once could, that doesn't mean I will script it, I make do with my limitations, and will gain full function of my hand again through forcing myself to use it like I did before. (Although I do have +attack bound to a key near my left hand too).

nice :>