Before you start reading this thread, I would like you to take a deep breath and think clearly. Say "woosa" three times

So me and some friends had a nice fruitless discussion about fakeshaft and we decided to continue it up here (thanks sassa).

There are a couple of questions:

1) What good reason can be made to ban fakeshaft in theory?
2) Why did Ownage tournament ban fakeshaft?
3) Why was fakeshaft banned from ruleset smackdown?

So, I will give my positions (and some other positions) on the above questions. Please give your opinions also, but please be civil and as professional as possible. There has been a lot of threads on this subject but the Ownage tournament has made it alive and not enough discussion has been made about it now that they censored (another negative point towards them imho) that thread on their site. (Btw, outside the fakeshaft topic, I think Ownage is very good and wish the admins lots of luck and success with it.)

1) What good reason can be made to ban fakeshaft in theory?

I personally cannot think of one. Every time I try to concoct one, it boils down to the "crosshair" analogy. Qwcl 2.30 came with an off-center crosshair which was actually the plus sign written on the center of the screen. But if you remember those early years, the rockets and nails and so on actually were shot a little bit up and left of the crosshair. More recently, crosshair was ugpraded with v_viewheight (and probably crosshair_x crosshair_y) as well as alpha blending, custom crosshairs, etc etc. Noone really wants to ban this. And yet it helps you aim. It is an improvement over the old crosshair, definitely.

Suppose you are playing DM6. Your opponent has RA control, you have mega. You wait for him GA-side, in the top cell tunnel, across from GL. He is running out of RA, on top of GL, and you splash-damage him off the floor under GL, and backpedal to GA. This is a common tactic I see in euro DM6 games. And it is directly facilitated by the centered crosshair. So my point is, if you say "fakeshaft helps your aim", the same can be said for crosshair. Fakeshaft works the same way as the crosshair. It certainly is not an aimbot, it does not automate anything, nor does it send or receive anything new from the server.

2) Why did Ownage tournament ban fakeshaft?

I also don't know the answer to this. I think the proper thing to do would have been to ban ezquake. Or to ban ezquake build so-and-so (whatever the new one is that allows fakeshaft). The ruleset system is there for a reason. You cannot just accept a ruleset and then selectively ban things from it. That defeats the whole purpose of a ruleset. And since ezquake is the only currently developed client, directly descendent from the previously accepted client (fuhquake), in charge by the best dev team we have now, in consultation with the best admins we have now, I think they are fairly authorative on saying what ruleset smackdown is.

One objection to this that I have (thanks ibh`123) is that maybe ezquake should have not touched ruleset smackdown and made another ruleset. But the problem with that is: no tournament ever has, is, or will use any other ruleset besides smackdown. The only purpose "ruleset" has is you can write "f_ruleset" and confirm that the client of your opponent is in accordance with the rules of the league. That is a very important feature, and ruleset should stay for that reason, but you should have no illusions that making a new ruleset will be any kind of progress, because noone will actually use that ruleset. So to make progress you have to use ruleset smackdown.

Not only that, but to make progress you have to have authority. The community has recently voted for fakeshaft, and, really, in absense of an answer to question #1, there is really no reason to not allow fakeshaft.

3) Why was fakeshaft banned from ruleset smackdown? I really don't know myself, but I would like to know. It seems a vote was taken and it (narrowly?) decided that fakeshaft was bad. It would be answered by question #1, of course.

...

Thank you for reading thus far, and I hope you can shed some light on this discussion. Of course the most important question (to me...) is #1.

Cheers,

Phil


Edit: Up2nOgOoD[ROCK]:

BEFORE YOU REPLY, READ http://quakeworld.nu/forum/misc.php?action=rules

ESPECIALLY RULE #5

ye phil i agree with you in most points.
fakeshaft is no advantage for low-ping players.its more of a disadvantage for high-ping players.
but the players should be able to decide by themselves if they wanna play with this disadvantage or not.so if a 50ms guy really wants to play with fakeshaft cause it feels better or whatever for him , he should be able to do so.
so i would have no problem with changing the rules to get it unbanned...
i really really advise people not to use a fakeshaft value over like 0.1-0.2 for 50+ms.it will not help you!
thank you for posting in a mature way unlike some players who acted like little kids in #ownage.qw yesterday.
"i dont get my toy then i hate you now! bleeeeeeeeh"

btw. fakeshaft was banned from the ruleset some time ago in a public voting on the old qw.nu and i dont know why it was enabled again in new ruleset.same for independent_physics btw.

for flames /query spoink

have another vote, it's that easy.

1) The most common reason i hear from people being against fakeshaft is _skill_. They tend to say that with using fakeshaft it is like super-ez to get a shaft percentage of 30% and up. Personnally Im a lousy shafter regardless if fakeshaft is enabled or not so i cannot judge that. But of course people mastering the secrets of shafting fear to lose some of their advantage when their grandmommy will be able to shaft as good as them.. all because fakeshaft makes it so easy!

Maybe it is a relict from alt times without f_modified when people tend to use a straight shaft model and afterwards was considered cheating. Which back then from my judgeding it was :-)

Personally i tend to enable fakeshaft a little bit just because it is much nicer to look at. With native screen resolution and interpolated models and vsync on etc qw is so super smooth for me.. but in contrast the shaft with its jerky moving is so unpleasant for the eyes..

Maybe it improves shafting for some people. But i guess nobody wants to play with standard rocket explosion in qw anymore too! Using bigblood or blood for explosion dramatically improves overview in rocket fights imo. I wonder if we had fakeshaft in the original client or qizmo when these adjustments began if we would have this discussion.

2) well because of 1) i guess? skill?? :-)

3) i think you are talking about the introduction of the rulset smackdown command? probably because of 1) too. I cannot remember if the l33t people decided that or the smackdown admins who requested such ruleset. But apparently i thought that the new ezquake build removed banning fakeshaft from ruleset smackdown because a public voting suggest this?

/Tuna

I have to say this, I started playing with fakeshaft 40% After that(this is no joke) I improved my lg-% in povs
got around 27 instead of 22. Most people probably know that I have a high ping even in Sweden, this is very hard to accept for some but I manage and it's ok to play with when stable. However, over 25 ms the shaft gets a little wild, running all over the screen. When I started using fakeshaft, this stopped and I can improve my aim now on the high ping I have, instead of just ignoring the lg and mainly using rl.
fakeshaft allowed please

I can only reply to 1).

Using fakeshaft CAN improve your lg aim in the following situations:

1. player is distracted by the graphic presentation of lg bolt
2. player has high ping and the thing above applies

LG is a skill+ping weapon. Players with >30% shaft (other than dmm4, like paradoks and inter and some others) will not benefit using fakeshaft. Players with "bad" lg however can benefit from fakeshaft, if they do not aim with the crosshair as they should but are highly distracted from the lagging lg-bolt on the screen (remember, lg's visible bolt isn't the place where it hits, but more like where it did hit).

Due to this, fakeshaft is even more efficient with high pings like 52ms since you should still be aiming enemies almost without LG prediction (some is needed but not much).

In my opinion fakeshaft should be banned. It's impact isn't as big as movement scripts but it still makes aiming with lg easier for people who are not so good with the lg. If people want to improve their lg they should consider using bigger/more visible crosshair and lowering gl_shaftlight. Learn how to aim properly instead of taking shortcuts.

In my Opinion this is the only way in keeping QW alive. Make it easier for noobs to get better. div1 wont get defeated of a div2 player which uses fakeshaft 1.

Fakeshaft is nothing else then a graphical change, like fullbright, crosshair, explosions, picmip ? You see ? all these things are already allowed.

its not the shaft that separates good players from bad.

I'm going to spoil everyone's fun, now.

Allow fakeshaft or don't, it's completely irrelevant because you can have custom crosshairs. Just replace your crosshair with a large bar coming from the bottom of the screen to the centre whenever you want to use lg. Instant fakeshaft, problem solved.

Any questions?

In relation to the above comment, what he has stated has been available since the mqwcl days. It's just, the anal liptards were too busy screaming about FS to even notice it.

1) What ezQuake team wants QW to look like is the default ruleset. Smackdown ruleset is how someone else forced us to change the client. Also it's the place where we put things that we feel would make too much drama on forums. Why would it be better to have "the only one" ruleset?
2) Note the difference between "disallowing", "giving possibility to disallow" and "allowing", think about in what way the relation between smackdown and fakeshaft changed.
3) I've seen lots of people new to QW asking "hey, can I make that lightning thing not be so jerky?". When they got the big-no response, they really didn't look much satisfied.
Think about the prices of
A) making the game more attractive to newcomers
B) keeping old "a bit more skill-full" behaviour. Is it worth it, hm?

The reason I don't think another poll is necessary is two-fold: 1) correct me if I'm wrong but a poll was done recently and most people were for allowing fakeshaft 2) it seems a lot of people's decision is based on "emotion" and "feeling", and lacks any good reason. So I think before we can do a poll, it would be nice to educate ourselves on the issue.

Well, Stev and mIXu, eloquent as they are, make a very good argument for allowing fakeshaft. It is basically the same as mine :> The "wobbly shaft beam" is about as close to a good argument for not allowing fakeshaft as I have heard so far. But it does not really say anything about fakeshaft, because there is gl_shaftlight and bolt2.mdl (or what ever) that you can use to make the shaft beam less of a distraction. And, of course, the real beam will always lag behind, no matter the on-screen representation (thanks Renzo for that good explanation).

I'm all for fakeshaft and I subscribe under phil's words.

I think all that situation about banning fakeshaft is pure HYPOCRISY because ezquake allows much more things that actually can REALLY help in improving skill much easier/faster than fakeshaft could be EVER able to do. Most of us use these little things every day and can't even imagine giving it up in the future.

I personally use fakeshaft for only one purpose - it's easier for me to switch from ping 13-25 to 50-60 since I use it. It didn't improve my lg aim at all, but I have nothing against people who claim that fs improved theirs aim - good for them, bad for me!

Ad 2)
Several days ago I posted my opinion in the Ownage comments below 'fakeshaft news'. The comment has been deleted the day later along with the 'fakeshaft news'. However, the 'no-fs-rule' has remained in the rules section. That's AT LEAST weird if you ask me.

Fakeshaft has been allowed in ruleset smackdown for a half year now I think, many players were using it during last EQL and AFAIK no one ever objected. And now you (Ownage admins) are telling these people "no, you can't use that because we think it's cheat etc. etc. etc.". More - you tell that AFTER over 100 people signed up to the tournament. That's at least SILLY.

I personally don't have much time to get use back to fs-off so I probably won't even try, I will play with fs-on and if my opponent objects he will get his precious WO. And I'm surely not the only one who will act like that.


The really SAD thing is that we don't learn from mistakes.
First the ezquake was banned at all.
When it eventually became allowed the independent physics were banned for no real good reason.
Now when independent physics became allowed the fakeshaft seems to become the next target.
I'm pretty sure that will change sooner or later, so what will be banned next? Any bets? :E
And this circle of banning was started almost 10 years ago when first brightskins appeared. Sad.

Yeh, plz admins of ownage, tell us the reason behind that rule !

I think the admins (those who use smackdown) should show some level of maturity and once they go thru all those public & private discussions about crucial stuff, they should make a public statement why they've decided for some rule. If they do so and their league is accepted, there's no reason why new leagues shouldn't follow their steps.
Because there was an empty place after many tournaments ended and none of the admins announced that there's been a full agreement on the fakeshaft change, it looked like some hidden developer from ezQuake changed it. Not true. But because Ownage admins didn't know that, they made their own "new" decision. I think that this is the whole problem.
As a self-defense act ezQuake is running a mailing list for quite a long time where it gives one admin from each of following leagues: EQL, Besmella Duel, NQR, LG Tourney and newly added Ownage.

Whos representing EQL on that mailing list?

this debate is much like the one on the thread about custom obituary messages..

the changes made all these years client-side(!!) renders this type of discussion pointless.. too many stuff changed client-side and arguing on a matter of preference is silly

a good compromise is to let players decide before the match.. if one side doesn't agree -> no fakeshaft

[irony]better yet: i suggest that the smackdown rules should "make" everybody default gl_gamma, since lower gamma obviously improves your shaft [/irony]

You call that compromise? Good god.

What is the difference between the current situation then?

It's Zanne.


Please no. We've got enough stress with choosing fair ping.

I hope you havent sent any e-mail for the last eight months then.

well.. i thought some players might tolerate others using fakeshaft. apparently not :'(

Im representing EQL now

Please allow fakeshaft. I also see no reason to ban it. Phil's crosshair example is a perfect analogy.

Pretty sure you mean sarcasm instead of irony

I dont like fakeshaft! Im just against it, think the shaft is good as it is

you think the shaft is good as it is because you don't shaft better with fakeshaft and don't want anyone else to improve their shaft with fakeshaft while you will be left there with an unimproved shaft, phew!

fakeshaft is undoubtedly a great improvement to the shaft which will give noobs a better first impression of quakeworld, and if some people gets an improved shaft, who cares? if 1 more noob stays to play quakeworld because of the fakeshaft, it's totally worth it. if someone leaves because fakeshaft is allowed? we're better off without those conservative whiners anyway.

amen !!!

ZOMG (c)DRAMA
obviously. im quite happy fakeshaft (aka truelightning in mqwcl) is allowed in ruleset smackdown.

Agreed to one 100% procent ...