"Super" Players Edge (advance timing?)

[voyager]

Well I have come to the conclusion that you are just a prat voyager; that you almost certainly have no concept of the very relative concept of ‘super’ in comparison to many other ‘levels’ and that u are still trying to put down great players. I mean…all your talk of ‘killing generals’ does alot to prove my point.

If someone were to read my posts, without carefully reading my definition of “super” player, then I would agree with your post.

My choice of using “super” as the word describing players with a unique set of characteristics may have been a poor choice. Perhaps I should have used the words, “players using technological advantages unrelated to skill to gain unfair advantages over other players” instead of “super”, but that is more than a mouthful to repeat everytime I refer to these players. Given the number of responses that attack my conclusions based on the premises that “super” simply refers to extremely good players, I obviously should not have chosen the word “super”.

[voyager]

Sadly demos don’t seem to really show exactly what you saw at the time, or what the server saw, so it is pretty hard to figure this kind of stuff out from them.

To anyone just reading this post: please read my definition of “super” player first. Thanks.

Yes, one time I was spectating a “super” player who regularly had 20 to 1 kill to death ratios, and generally could run through enemy spawn killing 2 to 5 players without taking any meaningful damage. Even when I was a general medic with adrenaline, and my only purpose was just to run through enemy spawn without dying, I was never able to duplicate this feat without either dying or almost dying. I’ve tried jumping, dodging, dancing, vibrating, hop-scotching, ballet, side-stepping, backtracking, strafing, spinning, dropping grenades as I dance, and every conceivable combination, but the outcome never resembled what this “super” player could do. If I was able to have a slight timing advantage, maybe, just maybe, I could somehow be a Clint Eastwood, and successfully shoot each and every player in the head, in the right sequence, hitting the players just before they are able to hit me. However, even with 20/20 hindsight, demo of myself, etc., and perfect reflexes with 0% lag on my part, it is not possible to do this using what I saw on my screen.

However, one time I did see him get killed by an SMG, he used quick chat to complain that the other guy didn’t take any damage, even though he was shooting him in the head.

As a spectator, I saw the other player go from standing to prone to standing very quickly, all the while containing to shoot the “super” player, finally succeeding in fragging him.

Until I explained to the “super” player what had happened, the “super” player had no idea how he lost the firefight.

How can anyone shoot what they can’t see?

[Sauron_EFG]

However, I’m NOT talking about the best 1% of the best 1% of clans’ players. That is not the definition I gave, describing what I meant by “super” players. I specifically defined characteristics that make it essentially impossible to be classified as a “super” player without using advantages that have nothing to do with player skill.

What are you talking about? :???:

You don’t play on low skill servers, but you don’t tell us where you do play. You give the impression that you enounter these players freqently, and yet you don’t have a demo of anything. You don’t play under the name Voyager…

[Sick_Boy]

this thread is worthless without demos

[voyager]

That is a bogus analogy. Everyone who gets to the olympics is already in the top 0.01% or better. Imagine a 100meter race that took completely random people off the street… a 90 year old grandma, a 500lb man, a 12 year old child, a falling down drunk bum, an olympic runner. A pub is like that. Something like the TWL alpha finals would a better comparision to the olympics.

What would you say, if I saw a marathon with hundreds of people (ranging from couch potatoes to athletes), and one or two runners finish in less than half the time of the next best runners? Have you heard of the 4 minute mile?

You tried to stretch my analogy to something I never intended it to be.

This is not true. Whatever your are observing or imagining, that isn’t it.

How do you know that what I’ve observed is not true?
Are you a certified network engineer? Do you know Cisco IOS? Have you configured a backbone or level 3 switch? Are you familiar with the Linux kernel’s implementation of the TCP/IP stack?

[voyager]

this thread is worthless without demos

“Sauron|EFG” and “Sick Boy”, please see the post from SCDS_reyalP regarding timing and demos.

Whether I am a really good player or not is irrelevant. The topic of this forum is “‘Super’ Players Edge (advance timing?)”.

Demos do not show or capture some of the possible technological advantages (some of which the majority consider cheats). One of the major points I’ve tried to make is the existence of a class of “timing advantages” exist. There are several, unrelated, ways to achieve such advantages, some of which are not considered cheats. For example, under some situations, some players had difficulty shooting other players because what they saw and reacted to on their screen did not match the “state of the world” on the server, resulting in misses instead of hits, while the other player had accurate, and timely, frame updates allowing them to much more easily get head shots on their opponent.

In fact, would anyone disagree that using a hardware or software cheat can make a reasonably-skilled clan player into “super” player? (Please see my unique definition of “super” player in prior posts.) There are numerous example of cheats that were undetectable, but are not detectable with the latest software. Do we think that hackers suddenly quit trying to make undetectable cheats???

Demos are pointless to this discussion. If you want demos of players using cheats, there are already enough posted to fill your hard drives. If you want demos of players that have timing advantages, see SCDS_reyalP’s post. It can’t be done. Demos come from server information, and do not show the differences in timing (who sees what when, and who’s reactions are recorded when) between two players.

If you have only two players in a firefight, you would need two demos, one for each player. Each demo would need to be produced using statistics provided by each player’s PC in order to actually have the information needed to determine who saw what when. I have never heard or seen any available software for ET that does this. Even if someone made such software, it could easily be defeated through cheats (extremely easy to defeat using a hardware cheat - a P.C. in between filtering and modifying packets).

[Sauron_EFG]

We want the demos to be able to assess the skill level on the server and the style of play the “super player” has. It may or may not show cheats, and he may or may not be using any, but at least it will show if you’re full of crap or not.

In fact, would anyone disagree that using a hardware or software cheat can make a reasonably-skilled clan player into “super” player? (Please see my unique definition of “super” player in prior posts.) There are numerous example of cheats that were undetectable, but are not detectable with the latest software. Do we think that hackers suddenly quit trying to make undetectable cheats???

Nobody denied there are working cheats. I have no idea what you mean by hardware cheats though.

Having low latency is not a cheat btw.

[voyager]

We want the demos to be able to assess the skill level on the server and the style of play the “super player” has. It may or may not show cheats, and he may or may not be using any, but at least it will show if you’re full of crap or not.

So, if I don’t provide time-lapse photos showing a horse winning a race, then you can not determine if the horse used steroids or illegally light-weight gear?

Even though thousands of examples of cheaters already exist and are posted, if I don’t provide time-lapse photos showing horses with “technological advantages unrelated to skill” winning a race, I’m full of crap.

Ok. I give up. You must be right. I’m full of crap. Have fun playing with others that can frag you with head shots using various advantages unrelated to skill.

Goodbye.

Having low latency is not a cheat btw.

Never said it was.

[SwordOfDamocles]

Ok I see what you mean by the term ‘super’ now. If however you are considering that they have a massive advantage due to technology such as ping timing and you say these players can run through spawn killing between 2-5 players and not taking any meaningful damage, that could never be put down to a large difference in ping…or even packets/framerate/settings.

Why? Because with regard to timing, if you have the ‘super’ player at the ‘fastest’ end of the proposed spectrum, and say talking in the ridiculous, all other 2-5 players at 300 ping each with network and cfg settings far inferiour to the ‘super’ player at the other end, the point which u are trying to propound i.e. ‘TIMING’, would still be only marginal in it’s advantage. If you have 2-5 players to kill before they all kill you, then even if we were to suppose that u have a 2 second advantage and skilfully kill 2 of them before they all have chance to react, then you still have up to 3 ppl left to kill, no ammo left in ur clip and i have the feeling that at least a couple of them would have fired back. And I am giving your ‘advanced timing’ theory as much technical plausibility as my own objective common sense will allow.

No form of technology either hardware, connection, or cfg would allow you THAT much time advantage. Your theory is to me, quite simply, preposterous.

[SCDS_reyalP]

Are you familiar with the Linux kernel’s implementation of the TCP/IP stack?

Yes, I am. While I haven’t had to deal with ciscos in a while (thank god) I’m quite familiar with the way this stuff works.

On a properly functioning network, what you describe simply doesn’t exist in a way that would have a meaningful effect on gameplay. Certainly not on the timescales you describe. Furthermore, anything going on in the intervening network (as opposed to the et engine or game code) can only have a very limited range of effects. The only things it can change are whether a packet arrives intact, and how long it takes. These things will show up in the lagometer and ping display in the normal manner.

I agree with what many others have said, we have no way of telling what you mean by ‘super’ players without at least seeing a demo. Yes, demos don’t show exactly what happened, but as it stands, your description is so full of vague rambling and dubious assumptions that it is pretty much impossible to figure out WTF you are talking about.

If someone has a huge, artificial advantage, it will show up in a demo. What causes it may not be obvious, but at least we can judge for ourselves whether it is something like an aimbot, or noobs getting stomped by a good player, or something else. I know you have sworn up and down that it isn’t the first two, but that is an extraordinary claim.

[Sick_Boy]

[quote=Sauron|EFG]We want the demos to be able to assess the skill level on the server and the style of play the “super player” has. It may or may not show cheats, and he may or may not be using any, but at least it will show if you’re full of crap or not.

So, if I don’t provide time-lapse photos showing a horse winning a race, then you can not determine if the horse used steroids or illegally light-weight gear?

Even though thousands of examples of cheaters already exist and are posted, if I don’t provide time-lapse photos showing horses with “technological advantages unrelated to skill” winning a race, I’m full of crap.
[/quote]

We just want to see the horse.

[SwordOfDamocles]

Neigh

[DG1]

Whats with these analogies with the olympics? Of course it doesnt compare, it’s uncomparable with a public ET server. Of course the athletes finish very closely to each other, every single one of them is of the absolute cream of all mankind, and have relatively huge amounts of resources and dedication towards ensuring their competitiveness. Anyway, for physical sport, there’s only so much that can be done to push the human body, and for every unit of improvement there is an increasingly large amount of effort required, for a top athelite to cut 3% off their times would be a massive advance, because they are already so close to the absolute best possible. That’s why a gold medallist is something of a national hero, and an ET tourney winner gets praise in IRC. Thats why you get like a billion people* watching the olympics on telly, and the best ETTV can manage is like 1000.

The same can most definately not be said of any computer game server, even including the final of a major tournament of the best teams on a LAN with preset configs, and most obviously not of some public server. Even if there was, there’s many other factors to consider since ET is not some pure 1v1 skill game even as far as Q3 instagib, players are often focusing on tasks other than fragging. You often cannot see why a player is so good because half of it is done in their heads and you need to be just as smart to even notice, never mind fully understand what they’re doing, just like you can watch so many of a player’s demos and still not learn enough to be equally talented.

IMHO rather a lot of people have difficulty accepting that some people are much more naturally adept at gaming, and put in far more dedication and training. Better connnections and computers can result in “unfair” performance differences, but its not an “unfair advantage” but rather an “unfair disadvantage” brought about by absolutely no fault of the advantaged. Such is true often in life.

• I wouldnt even value that figure as highly as a guess

[SwordOfDamocles]

thank (Dave) God

[Aikon]

I’m not going to quote 'cause it’s just way to much…just read this full page

imo: a good player, is not only a player with a good aim, but also a player with a good mind. What GD said:

You often cannot see why a player is so good because half of it is done in their heads and you need to be just as smart to even notice, never mind fully understand what they’re doing, just like you can watch so many of a player’s demos and still not learn enough to be equally talented.

is true. The dude playing it smart, wins. Also, don’t act so negative against tweaking, I know a lot of people who are very gratefull for tweaks. E.g. I know a guy who’s got a GF3, but who plays ET with 125fps, and is hella good at it.
TWEAKZ R0X0R Y00R B0X0RZ (so far my stupid comments, carry on. ^^ )