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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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    At a tournament/event, the judge/organizer always has final authority, even if what they say is objectively incorrect. You can bring it up after the event so that it gets cleared up for future occurrences, but if you receive a (bad) ruling and argue with it, they are allowed to simply kick you out.

    Obviously I'm not saying this is a good outcome, but ultimately the judge's responsibility is to keep the event moving, and sometimes this requires making off the cuff rulings. Even if one of those turns out to be incorrect, the best thing to do is to apply it consistently for the remainder of the event.
     
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  2. meikyoushisui

    meikyoushisui Competitor for Most Ignored User

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    Sportsmanship can't exist in a ruleset that isn't completely defined.
     
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  3. Fathoym

    Fathoym Well-Known Member
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    That's a pretty bold claim. Want to expand on that a little?
     
  4. Diphoration

    Diphoration Well-Known Member
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    With a a ruleset that isn't completely defined you end up relying on player bias to determine what is and what isn't "okay" or "sportmans". This widly varies between people's opinion. Your system ends up relying on those opinions and if you want a competitive environment and exploit the full ruleset to its full potential someone will end up stepping on someone else's bias.

    If you have a clear set of rules with no ambiguity, everyone can simply do their best and exploit the whole system to it's full potential without fear of opinions. Because as long as you stay within the full, clear, completed ruleset there is no issues.

    Now, the currently discussed situation of lower point list is obviously a broken game state where you can play and your opponent doesn't even get a chance to respond. But the issue is still there: what is the treshold at which it is "okay" or "sportsman" to play lower than expected armies? Is 290 okay? Is 280 okay? Is 170 okay? If 75 is not okay because it creates that situation, is 76 okay?
     
  5. Papa Bey

    Papa Bey Clueless Wonder. Still.

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    And this is why I don't tournament.
     
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  6. Fathoym

    Fathoym Well-Known Member
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    Sure, but that doesn't inherently imply that sportsmanship cannot exist. You can still be a charitable opponent and a pleasure to play if the ruleset isn't completely defined, as @meikyoushisui put it.
     
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  7. Diphoration

    Diphoration Well-Known Member
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    Of course, if you're not fun to play with, this is 100% unsportsman. If you are unpleasant, sloppy, rude, you're obviously unsportmans.

    I think where @meikyoushisui was coming from is rule-based "sportsmanship" like the current example.

    Saying someone is "unsportsmanship" for using a rule that is within the scope of the rule is absurd.

    But like I said, the current example of low-list retreat is obviously an hyperbole of the situation, it's clearly not something that would fly at a tournament under any sensible TO.
     
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  8. meikyoushisui

    meikyoushisui Competitor for Most Ignored User

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    I don't think it's particularly bold at all. All sportsmanship that exists within areas the rules don't define is highly subjective and only causes problems.

    For example, is blasting a camo marker by shooting an impact template into a corpse "unsportsmanlike"?
    No, the rules allow it.

    If you agree with that, consider this:
    Is taking a list that ends the game because you start in retreat dirty?

    No, the rules allow it.

    I fundamentally don't see a difference between these two things. Anything that is allowed by the rules should always be fair game, and criticizing someone for playing by the rules is ridiculous. All you do by saying a set of things allowed by the rules isn't allowed is create an arbitrary ruleset in your own head that isn't accepted by any other player, and that allows you to deflect the fault from yourself when someone else beats you with it. Here's a decent write-up on what I mean by this, but I have to add the disclaimer that the author is an ass. Here's the most relevant section (in italics):

    A scrub is a player who is handicapped by self-imposed rules that the game knows nothing about. A scrub does not play to win.

    Now, everyone begins as a poor player—it takes time to learn a game to get to a point where you know what you’re doing. There is the mistaken notion, though, that by merely continuing to play or “learn” the game, one can become a top player. In reality, the “scrub” has many more mental obstacles to overcome than anything actually going on during the game. The scrub has lost the game even before it starts. He’s lost the game even before deciding which game to play. His problem? He does not play to win.

    The scrub would take great issue with this statement for he usually believes that he is playing to win, but he is bound up by an intricate construct of fictitious rules that prevents him from ever truly competing. These made-up rules vary from game to game, of course, but their character remains constant.


    Games are won by exploiting (by 'exploit' I mean 'taking advantage of an effect or mechanic to leverage a victory') mechanics. The player who is best at exploiting the mechanics tends to win.

    Sportsmanship can't exist when there's controversy about what is and isn't allowed in a game, because sportsmanship is about how you treat other players in the course of exploiting the mechanics of the game. I don't say that using Jammers is unsportsmanlike even though I think they're terribly balanced and a load of shit. They're a rule in the game, and if the other player is better at exploiting the mechanics that make jammers powerful than I am at exploiting mechanics that defend against jammers, I deserve to lose (all other factors held equal, of course). If I have an issue with this, I should play something I feel more competitive with.

    Here's the bold claim: someone who knows about these mechanics and doesn't use them is the person who is actually playing in an unsportsmanlike way, because they are playing to lose. The essence of sportsmanship is treating players with fairness and respect, and offering competition to the best of your ability (being a good winner and being a good loser). I don't want to play against an opponent who isn't doing their best to win against me, it's not fair of them to not put up the best challenge they are capable of.

    And there's an easy solution for this -- fix the rules. There never seems to be any will among the playerbase to petition CB to fix blatantly broken stuff like this (and seriously, ITS missions ending when a player is in retreat is fundamentally in opposition to CB's claim that players should be able to come back even when in Retreat -- and all they would have to do is remove the clause that missions end when one player is in retreat). But at the same time CB won't make rulings about some of the basic mechanics of their game (intent, line of fire), so there can never be sportsmanship in the game.
     
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  9. Alphz

    Alphz Kuang Shi Vet. Retired.

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    Sorry @meikyoushisui sportsmanship exists simply because rules can never be 100% clear. Thats the nature of communication and humans in general.

    There isn't anything sportsmanlike only playing to the clear and well defined rules. Thats just the bare minimum expected conduct.

    Sportsmanship is about fairness. In Infinity I think thats about being clear on how to play grey areas and dealing with uncertainty with respect.

    I can totally relate that sportsmanship is wrongly used as a justification for people trying to enforce a certain way to play a game, or for additional restrictions not present within the rules.
    But to claim only completely clear rules can allow sportsmanship is pretty bizarre.
     
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  10. meikyoushisui

    meikyoushisui Competitor for Most Ignored User

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    It doesn't seem to be, given that many people in this thread are claiming that following the rules is somehow unsportsmanlike. Sportsmanship isn't only about fairness. It's also about respect, and playing in a way that doesn't disrespect your opponent. I would argue bringing a non-competitive list or playing in a non-competitive way at an ITS event is a better example of unsportsmanlike conduct than bringing this list is. Bringing a non-competitive list means wasting your opponent's time and throwing scores for your match, which has repercussions for the entire tournament.

    Navigating grey areas makes this impossible though. Who is to say in a game between two players whether or not something is allowed? I am of the opinion that if it's within the rules, it's acceptable. Sportsmanship is about your behavior and action towards how the rules are carried out and played, rather than following the rules themselves. You can either be a friendly, courteous, and willing follower of the rules, or you can be the guy who wants to whip out the rulebook to slow down the game to get a win. Neither of those things are technically about the rules themselves, instead they're about your behavior within the confines of the rules.

    I disagree that the nature of communication prevents rules from being clear. Competitive videogames have no problem (or at least have fewer problems) with this because the ruleset can be tested at anytime -- every interaction needs to be specified and coded or the game will break. Chess, Go, Mahjong, and the like don't have this problem either. Even other very heavy games don't seem to struggle with this nearly as much as Infinity does, or have introduced workarounds to make introducing errata quick and easy (such as MTG's Oracle). CB has yet to show they are taking any steps on this that are greater than 1 FAQ every 3 months (which is not nearly enough based on the thread of unanswered questions.)

    The scrub (as linked in my comment above) is a poor sportsman. He follows the rules, sure, but he concocts an entire other set of rules around them that don't exist outside of his head, and criticizes players for breaking them. He does not play to win, he plays to "do fancy moves" or something else. In this way, he's not a sportsman to his opponents.
     
    #30 meikyoushisui, Jul 25, 2019
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2019
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  11. xagroth

    xagroth Mournful Echo

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    You have just lined yourself as a target for those who value being "politically correct" more than thinking, and while I don't completely agree with your definition of "sportmanship", I must applaud you for presenting it.

    Personally, for me "Sportmanship" is not entirely about the rules, but the attitude about solving disagreements in situations when playing (in tournaments, I go with the easy "ok, let's ask the TO", because experience have taught me that is more common for people to get caught up in inertia and defend their stance to the death, than to stop and think, so a third voice, in authority, helps).
    I confess, however, that I never thought "respecting your opponent" is a part of Sportmanship, if only because, while I do try to present my best challenge, I rarely suffer when losing (the dice can be extremely definitive, after all, in this game), and winning matters less to me than learning something new. That is, to me were two separate concepts, even if I always tried to apply both.

    Now on the quoted text: I doubt the Retreat mechanic will be removed from those ITS missions with it, simply because it has several uses. first, it prevents a player from obliterating his opponent and then score without opposition (so a single TO/AD specialist could earn you a 10-0 if you start and your list, desgined to kill everything on turn 1, succeeds in erasing all enemy presence); by your definition of "exploit", all lists would need to become this (maybe mixed with good defensive power), and players would always choose to have first turn.

    As it is now, a player can get trashed in his enemy's first turn, but during his own he can, maybe, grab 1-2 points and get a basic victory (with the game ending that turn), or focus on removing scoring enemy pieces, so the enemy suffers a pyrrhic victory that will net him 2 tournament points, more than likely preventing him to reach first place in any tournament.
     
  12. Armihaul

    Armihaul Well-Known Member

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    Seems to me someone is confusing playing by the rules as missusing/abusing confusing rules

    If a rule is clear, then the way of using it is clear and should not bring more discussion

    But, if a rule is unclear because the wordind is ambiguous, and perhaps also seems that is against the way the game should be played, then 'exploiting' it is far away from sportsmanship. Maybe it could be legal, maybe not, but that is not sport

    In those cases I think is more fair to not exploit it. Why? Because using it and get later a faq explaining that the correct interaction was the other one, is like if someone cheated. In fact, there are 4 possibilities, and that is the worst one for sportsmanship. More in detail, it could be resumed in "don't choose the interpretation that benefits the player that can choose". I explain

    Player A has 2 posible interpretations of a rule. He can choose to use it in his list or not (the oponent can not, obvioulsy, because is player's A list)

    1. A dont uses it but it was correct. A was handicapped, but he had the option of using it. Its a minor mistake and nobody had to face a missuing if rules
    2. A uses it and ends be correct. No error, no mistake. All happy
    3. A don't uses it and is is incorrect. No error, no mistake. All happy again
    4. A uses it and it is incorrect. He has uses a nonclear rule that his opponent had no option to choose, and that interpretation was incorrect. He gained a benefit that was outside the game, non legal. That can be hardly called sportsmanship, even if maybe it wasn't cheating on purpose

    Yes, bringing the rival with your most powerful game is respectful, but you should not confuse that with abusing the ruleset and thinking that is sport
     
  13. xagroth

    xagroth Mournful Echo

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    While I agree with this, the sad state of affairs is that unless an exploit is shouted to the four winds, and people truly complain about it, which demands a lot of people suffering the wrong end of said exploit, little to no effort to patch it gets done.

    For example, the Xenotech exploit. I never used it, but I made really sure EVERYBODY and their dog was aware of its existence. Even so, it took months for CB to publicly aknowledge there was such an exploit, and more months until a solution was mentioned (in this very forum), plus more time until the first of the scheduled FAQs included it.
    In the end, half of the season had passed with that exploit being totally legal... I doubt that is "good" enough.

    Strangely enough, the same trick used with a sturdy or disposable troop inside of a Fireteam is considered fair game (for example, a Total Inmunnity troop with either 2W or NWI, exposed against single enemies)
     
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  14. Armihaul

    Armihaul Well-Known Member

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    Well, that kind of exploit could be done since the beggining of n3 with a moran and white noise agains visors, but was just a moran loosing a koala and was ok. Then could be done by aquilas/hsiens/asuras and so against almos any trooper and was no ok. Now it can be used again by a linked hsien and for some are ok, and for others is not. For me, that was never ok and never used it, and by the statement from before, I think it still is the best way to act, even if it has been used against me
     
  15. Papa Bey

    Papa Bey Clueless Wonder. Still.

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    Just because it's legal, doesn't mean it's moral.

    Everyone in this thread has espoused their own version of what sportsmanship is for themselves. Demonstrating to me even that isn't a defined term. Much less the rules of this game.

    This thread is about gaming the game, instead of playing it. So I take my little metal men and go home.
     
  16. ChoTimberwolf

    ChoTimberwolf Artichoken Friend

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    But who defines what is moral? Using smoke stealth msv trick to force the enemy to aro against the wrong trooper feels unmoral to me. Jammer and fatality 2 dont really feel all that moral to me. Mates dont feel moral to me etc everyone has a different view of moral so in the end we depend on the rules to make it easier that both play the same game with the same rules etc it shouldnt depend on a moral compas
     
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  17. Diphoration

    Diphoration Well-Known Member
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    I think the issue is easily demonstrated with a simple example.

    If you play chess, is it unsportsmanlike to do a Castling? Is it unsportsmanlike to do a En Passant? Is it unsportsmanlike to put all your moves on your strongest pieces?

    If you’re playing a shooter game, and you only use the best available weapon to win, is that unsportsmanlike?

    If you’re playing a fighting game and using all the combo moves your character can do, and using the ones that are the hardest to counter for your opponent, is that unsportsmanslike?


    Of course not, the game has an extremely tight ruleset, and so long as you stick to it, there is no dilemma of fairness or “morality”.

    While these are extremely polarized example, you can apply the logic to other games.

    Sportmanship is about the conduct of the player out of the rule frame.

    If the rules are poorly defined, people put in their own bias and nobody is happy.
     
  18. Armihaul

    Armihaul Well-Known Member

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    But all those examples are about rules that are clear, but we are talking about exploiting unclear rules

    In chess, can be sportsmanship hiding the table from the other player so he cannot see clearly your pieces? That is something that is not in the rules so is not cheating by those standards

    Or in a shooting gamen exploiting a bug that let you cross a wall that should not be crossed. The game allows it due to a bug, but that is something that was not designed for. Using it is sportsmanship?
     
  19. Diphoration

    Diphoration Well-Known Member
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    That's the whole point of me making this thread and the whole premise that there is no unsportsmanship issue for sticking to the rule so long as they are well defined.

    The current issue is the most competitive list someone can do, and if someone wanted to make the most competitive list within the ruleset, they'd have to follow it, which is completely absurd as it creates a situation where 2 players could have the same list concept (<75 points list) and then the outcome of the game is solved on the LT die roll.

    This current issue is sticking completely to the current rules, so it's not a sportsmanship issue, but it's a game balance issue.

    It's not a scenario that anybody wants in the game, it's not an interesting way to resolve a game of Infinity.

    --

    Which is why literally the first post gives a clear rule addition that would completely solve the situation so that it does not arise in any game.
     
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  20. Armihaul

    Armihaul Well-Known Member

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    No. That issue is at most unclear, because in spanish (the original one) is the about % of the original list points, not the total one. And thinking that using an unclear rule to find a game when only 1 player does his turn and the other only can aspire to a draw with only AROing, for then thinking that is competitiveness is a complete lack of sportmanship and missing completely the point of competition. Because is an atempt to exploit a bug, not to exploit a clear rule.

    If a rule is unclear, and you also know it is, theb abusing it is not playing by the rules, but trying to exploit bugs. That is also something far from sportmanship.

    And lastly, trying to justify that kind of abuse, is just a way to justify unfair play. Finding a bug (because to me this seems completely a bug in the english version) and trying to get advantage of it is not fun, neither good for a competition
     
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