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Minimum points for a list and retreat

Discussion in 'ITS' started by Diphoration, Jul 15, 2019.

  1. toadchild

    toadchild Premeasure

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    I respect you decision, but I also want to assure you that the sort of discussion represented in this thread is not the norm for any Infinity tournament I've run or participated in.
     
  2. ijw

    ijw Ian Wood aka the Wargaming Trader. Rules & Wiki
    Infinity Rules Staff Warcor

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    By a looooooooong way...
     
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  3. daszul

    daszul Well-Known Member

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    So you are allowed to target troopers that have been removed from play?
     
  4. Diphoration

    Diphoration Well-Known Member
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    You guys don’t indulge in day long discussions about the philosophical meaning of games and discuss the definition of out of context words during the tournaments? Must be meta dependant. :grimacing:

    Joking aside, forum is a great place to have these discussions. I don’t think anybody ever brought a <75 points list to any tournament other than to say “haha, jk here is my real list”. And if someone did, any TO would simply tell them to switch list, because it’s absurd and non-interactive.

    My experience from tournaments so far (over a dozen) is that is is very much a casual atmosphere where you get the opportunity to play multiple games in a row, and we have what I’d consider a fairly competitive meta.
     
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  5. toadchild

    toadchild Premeasure

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    I assume that in this context, "corpse" was actually an unconscious troop.
     
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  6. meikyoushisui

    meikyoushisui Competitor for Most Ignored User

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    1) Rulesets are permissive in most every game. Doing something not in the rules is cheating in chess, and in Infinity. There's no rule against just declaring myself the winner before we deploy, but I can't do that, because the rules don't permit it. That said, there is an entire flavor of chess where neither player can look at the board and declaring an illegal move means you lose (the more you know!)

    2) As for bugs in games, many of them have become crucial for competitive play.

    In Street Fighter Alpha 2, there's a bug that allows you to land the most powerful move in the game even if your opponent should be able to block it. Instead of banning use of the bug, the entire competitive scene evolved around maximizing the use of the bug.

    Or look at Super Smash Bros Melee. Literally 90% of the competitive scene of the game is based around behaviors that certainly weren't intended by the devs -- wavedashing, momentum cancelling, Fox's waveshine, desyncing Ice Climbers or wobbling, taunt cancelling -- all of these are due to bugs or behaviors that arise from unusual programming choices. But the game is sure as hell a lot more interesting with all of these things than without them.

    What if someone brought a new one turn KO deck to a tournament in MtG or whatever other trading card games there are? No one would say that that is unsportsmanlike as long as it follows the rules of deck construction. But everyone would expect at least some part of the OTK would be reworked or banned if necessary afterwards, and no one would blame the player for playing the best deck they could field. The disconnect we have in Infinity isn't in not allowing the deck (or list) to be played, it's that if it were to happen it would take months to actually get some part of it reworked so it didn't work anymore.

    By corpse I meant an unconscious trooper, as could be assumed from the context.
     
    #46 meikyoushisui, Jul 25, 2019
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2019
  7. Diphoration

    Diphoration Well-Known Member
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    Or speedrunning, exploiting bugs to shorten your time is the norm a big part of the fun of it.
     
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  8. toadchild

    toadchild Premeasure

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    Video game systems are different than written rules for physical games. There is a canonical interpretation of the rules (i.e. the running piece of software) that serves as the ultimate arbiter for what is allowed or not. You can press buttons, and something will either happen or it won't. Games written as rules text are different, because each player has their own mental model of how the rules work, and the actual game is a negotiation between those two players to agree on the current state, and how a given action will change that state. If two people disagree, the game stops, because there is no built-in authority. The analogy here would be a Smash player declaring that they cancel their momentum, another player saying that's impossible, and then a judge being called over to make a final decision about whether the character should be flying or not.

    There are also competitive game scenes where certain entries in a series are skipped over because they've been deemed "not playable" due to bugs, or certain characters may be banned from competitive play due to bugs or insurmountable balance issues. In more modern games, there are also patches which can fix bugs or address balance issues, which are roughly analogous to FAQ/errata updates to textual game rules.
     
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  9. meikyoushisui

    meikyoushisui Competitor for Most Ignored User

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    In a game, if I want to test an interaction, I can have it loaded up and figured out in just a few minutes. If there's a bug, I notice it and can report it.

    In Infinity, I have to read every rule that I think could be related, and then some more rules that shouldn't contain relevant information but do (a good example of this was the recent fire-sensitivity trait of Symbiont Armor being packed into the Active Symbiont Armor state rule instead of the Symbiont Armor rule), then I have to ask people in my local meta what they think, then I have to search the current rules forum, then I have to wayback machine to get the old forum, then I have another group I discuss it with, then I bring it here and make a rules post, then I deal with people telling me it's actually not a problem at all, then we wait two weeks and people debate without an answer, then I tag Koni to try to get an answer at all, and then *maybe* I'll get an answer in the next FAQ, which could be as much as three months away.

    The system is flawed.
     
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  10. toadchild

    toadchild Premeasure

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    Infinity's rules could be better, stronger, faster. No disagreement there. But I think what you're describing is a fundamental limitation of textual rules for a non-electronic game.
     
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  11. Alphz

    Alphz Kuang Shi Vet. Retired.

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    Text based rules based on player agreement doesn’t work like a computer game. Trying to equate the two is an exercise in frustration.

    You could try by having a referee arbitrate every move.

    An alternative to what you’ve described is you would discuss it with your opponent and agree. Infinity is a social game, and while I wouldn’t go so far to say the fluid rules creates that environment it certainly contributes by forcing players to figure these things out.
    Turning up to a tournament with a 74 point list isn’t in the rules until you convince the whole tournament It is. I’m kinda ok with that, there been a certain barrier of entry for janky shit that infinity just seems to get less of people within communities who are trying to find those exploits like video game players would.
     
  12. meikyoushisui

    meikyoushisui Competitor for Most Ignored User

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    The whole thing I am getting at is that having rules that are based on player agreement instead of a complete and accurate ruleset is an exercise in frustration to begin with. For some reason, the tabletop games I listed above don't seem to have issues where players have to arbitrate on the rules themselves. Magic doesn't frequently seem to have issues that fundamentally break the game due to how players approach whether or not they agree on certain parts of the ruleset, and the Magic rulebook (last updated less than two weeks ago btw) is 234 pages right now. And that's without all of the Oracle/Errata stuff.

    I'm not arguing the ruleset needs to be perfect, but again, there are fundamental mechanics of the game that CB believes should be negotiated between players, which is detrimental to the competitiveness and consistency of play from area to area. Needing to learn a new ruleset every time you move between groups is a bit ridiculous imo.
     
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  13. toadchild

    toadchild Premeasure

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    The problem with the MtG core rules is that while they generally do cover every situation, most players haven't read them (nor are they expected to have). One of their design goals with Oracle text and the core rules is that the card should do what it says, even if the underlying game mechanics have changed since the card was first published.

    And there are sometimes errors in the core rules that go unnoticed for a while, which results in patches to restore the "do what the card says" consistency. Take this example from the recent M20 core set update:

    https://magic.wizards.com/en/articl...t-2020-comprehensive-rules-changes-2019-07-03

    701.3

    Can an Aura be attached to a player? Sure, says Bitterheart Witch, it's what she's all about. Of course, says Curse of Misfortunes, it's the funnest thing ever. Takklemaggot said something but I don't care because tl;dr. 701.3 is all about effects that instruct you to attach something to something else, but it weirded a couple people out when they noticed that it didn't allow for players, so I've updated the rule to make it more encompassing.​

    Did cards like Bitterheart Witch or Curse of Misfortunes not work previous to this errata? I don't know! I never actually played with those cards, but if I had, I would have just done what it said on the piece of cardboard and attached the aura to the player. If someone had pulled out the comprehensive rules text and told me it was actually impossible? I would have called a judge over. (Or more realistically, I would have gotten up and had another drink, because I only play MtG casually at home with my friends)
     
  14. Armihaul

    Armihaul Well-Known Member

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    Recently, in some competitive videogame tournaments have been banned onw type of controls that give extra advantage because they had a different behavior than the oficial controllers (I don't remember if it were ps4 or xbox) allowing blocking moves while attacking. Instead of allow those controllers (that have been in the market for some time) they decided to ban its use before the competitive scene abused them

    Thinking that exploiting a bug is something related to sportmanship is so wrong to me. Is hard to explain. Is a really a twisted way of thinking abour competition, because is not trying to win over an oponent with the own hability, but with a bug the opponent doesn't need to know about to play.

    Maybe we can not say that bug is illegal, but it is neither legal
     
  15. LankyOgreBP

    LankyOgreBP Well-Known Member

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    I think that one huge and massive advantage to Infinity over any other game I've played is that the players usually strive to have a good game first and foremost. I have played in a tournament and in multiple different metas and everybody that I have played against has come to the game with an attitude of working with me to make sure we both enjoy the game. Winning and losing comes up, but its not the primary goal. Maybe my experience is unique though.
     
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  16. meikyoushisui

    meikyoushisui Competitor for Most Ignored User

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    Can you provide a citation for this? It's incredibly rare a player-organized competitive game scene bans something before it is used.
     
  17. Alphz

    Alphz Kuang Shi Vet. Retired.

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    Did you cite a game other than magic or video games?
    Ones a card game, a particularly unique card game with how tight the rules are. And the other I think has been covered by toadchild pretty well.

    Im not arguing that the rules couldn’t be better or improvement isn’t needed.
    But I don’t think we need to or believe infinity can realistically achieve the same extent of accuracy and definition as magic or a video game. There are a lot more variables at play.

    Edit: But this is continuing to deviate on a wide tangent to the OP. So we should agree to disagree and move on.
     
    #57 Alphz, Jul 26, 2019
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2019
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  18. meikyoushisui

    meikyoushisui Competitor for Most Ignored User

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    If you want a minis game, Warmahordes in the past has had excellent rules. And toadchild cited a single issue -- we have issues that big that we still haven't gotten an answer on *for years.*

    What variables do you think prevent this?
     
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  19. SpectralOwl

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    Language barrier creating rules difficulties. Truly variable data in measurements. Tying to maintain a consistent set of rules in both metric and Imperial, with one set of templates. Extreme variability of terrain. Complete lack of a resolution mechanic for unintended interactions between rules, or an exit clause for defining when a game is unplayable and needs to be reset. The whole ARO concept allowing far more rules to interact than would be otherwise possible.

    Honestly, the big issue just comes down to error handling. Magic's so discrete and structured that it is very hard to break its sequence completely, and videogames automatically know all their rules and can take the easy way out and crash if an interaction wasn't planned. Infinity deals with extreme variables such as distance, true LoS and unpredictable terrain, and has a bunch of complex exceptional abilities that can sometimes fail to account for each other. I don't think I've ever gotten through a game without referencing the wiki or Mayanet to figure out an unusual interaction, whereas I've never had to check the MTG wiki at all during a game as the card does exactly what it says, no more and no less.
     
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  20. Armihaul

    Armihaul Well-Known Member

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