Anti-lock in BnG

[KoreanRedDragon]

Komo, the difference between what Intermediate players do (count the steps from the edge of a worm's head to align their mine/dyna drops) and placing your thumb on the screen is that one really is just paying attention to visual cues from the game, while the other is more than that, and requires physical access to and contact with a part of hardware that (unlike the keyboard and mouse) might not actually be physically accessible in an environment such as a live LAN tournament or other event. While I don't personally think thumbing is a form of cheating anywhere near comparable to using physical rulers and such, I do think live events would very likely prohibit both. And if they had any sense in them, they almost certainly wouldn't prohibit walking on top of a worm's head one half-pixel at a time, or the BnG equivalent of it, so notching (without visual aids). Would you roughly agree with that, or do you feel thumbing doesn't look ridiculous enough that in-person events would want to keep spectators from having to endure watching it?

On the more immediately relevant issue of the new "anti-lock aim" extended scheme option for BnG, I am actually in agreement with your sentiment that, in a perfect world at least, manual reaiming is a better solution than having the game reaim for us, because a slight bit of the scheme's nuance is actually lost this way. Namely, there are some very complex bounce shots out there that likely wouldn't even make sense to go for anymore if you couldn't somewhat reliably bypass the spirit of the reaim rule by using visual cues such as edges of terrain or the terrain texture (but not thumbs!) to get back to your crosshair position from your previous attempt at that shot. Instead, if doing this meant having to rely on thumbing or coming up with some other even more cheaty solution to (sometimes) finding your previous angle again, I think these already risky and difficult to justify bounce shots would likely completely disappear from the repertoire of competitive BnG players, in favour of just rolling near-sitters into easy hides. And that would be a shame, even if currently nobody playing TUS BnG would ever even consider going for these shots anyway... which is probably why the simple solution of just reaiming for people automatically was the chosen preference, when Senator was discussing this with us on IRC/Discord.

[StepS]

What if anti-lock aim would randomize the angle instead of pinning to 0/90?

Problem solved.

As said above, notchers can just aim straight up and start counting, non-notchers still have to guess every time.

Nope, we still have Circular Aiming, which although doesn't fully prevent it, makes it much harder. Also it is very obvious what people are trying to do when it happens, which should discourage them from doing it.

Changes to the engine to prevent discrete aiming steps are possible and have been considered (so no single tap of an arrow key is the same, and counts fractions of a frame/pixels), as well as programmatic rotation of the crosshair graphic.

[TheKomodo]

"while the other is more than that, and requires physical access to and contact with a part of hardware that might not actually be physically accessible in an environment such as a live LAN tournament or other event"

I fail to see how you would not have physical access to the monitor sitting directly in front of you, I have watched a fair number of professional gaming events live and yet to see one where the monitor is not within arms reach.

The only valid reason I can possibly think to prohibit using your fingers as visual aids is to prevent the screen from getting marked, however this can be countered as long as the screen is maintained and cleaned properly.

What I do, and what they do, no matter how you approach it, in basic form is described as using visual cues/aids.

They are using the same basic peripherals, what they see on the screen and using their body to get the right aim.

I am using the same basic peripherals, what I see on the screen and my body to get the right aim.

The point I am making is that you are using your own body and nothing but your own body and any connected peripherals to play the game, it is 100% natural, I have seen people make a living on Twitch from doing speedruns using Dance Dance Revolution pads, saw people literally playing games using their feet to control the gamepads(heck even Anubis experimented with this in roping lol), and while some people find that ridiculous, I do not, so to answer your question, I do not think that it would look ridiculous enough that live events would want to keep spectators from having to endure watching it, as long as they are using the same equipment, it is fair in my opinion.

I also do not think taking the opinions of some people that they personally think something looks ridiculous should be used as good judgement for making rules, so long as you are not hurting anyone directly.

Also, I would like to see anybody play without "physical access" and "contact" with their monitor, our eyes are physical and make eye contact with the screens, our brains are physical too, and they relay information and actions throughout our body.

That might come across as annoying, or frustrating, or even condescending but in all honesty I like to be specific(and realize people hate me for it), and yet we still discuss these things based on opinions as there is no law for it, and my opinion is that I do not see an unfair difference in using the full extent of your physical body while playing a video game, it is the actions inside the game that matter.

I also acknowledge, and always have, that with that statement people could say:

"But isn't notching using the full extent of your physical body as well?"

The answer is yes, as depending on your belief, math is universal and exists as a natural state that exists before mankind did, however my problem with that is specifically counting and using math to achieve 100% angle accuracy without fail, and when it comes down to it, that is because in my opinion it is boring and ruins the fun.

Does that sound selfish to you? It sounds selfish to me, but that is how all man-made rules and laws are created through belief, opinion and/or agreement, which is a massive discussion alone, but let us not go there.

There are many examples we could discuss where using the full extent of your body is allowed, but you must resist the temptation to do specific things inside the game itself because they are rules.



I also did notice your careful selection of words here:

"While I don't personally think thumbing is a form of cheating anywhere near comparable to using physical rulers and such"

Which does not rule out the possibility that you still personally think it is cheating, it could come across as you suggesting it is still cheating, just not as much as using physical rulers and such. 

Personally I don't believe in distinguishing between minor cheating and major cheating, cheating is cheating, if you break the rules you break the rules.

As for the entirety of your 2nd paragraph, I did not read anything that convinces me adding Anti-Lock to BnG with the already existing rules is a good decision, and I already explained why.



Now I want to elaborate a bit on my opinion between using your hand as a visual aid and notching.

One of the differences between using your hand as a visual aid and using notching/math/charts/rulers etc to play BnG, in my opinion, is that you learn everything on your own, everything you do, even adjustments are still a guess as opposed to already knowing if it is the right angle because you used math and the fact the aim moves exact distances with each notch.

If you knew everything that is going to happen in your life, do you think you would find it as fun?

Granted I did learn 3s grenades 4s full power grenades and some low wind bazookas from M3ntal when I 1st started but then had to re-learn doing absolutely everything again without using math and moving notch by notch and counting to myself.



Let us discuss the re-aim rule as well since Senator mentioned it.

Why was it added in the 1st place? Was it not to stop players repeating the same shot over and over? Other than that and phrases similar to, "It looks better", I have never been told any other reason.

Is this not why we have the no repeat shots rule, in order to force a variation of shots after successful hits rendering this rule almost entirely obsolete, which is influenced based on the factors of the repeat rule you are using.

So, I now find myself asking, why do we even need the re-aim rule? Should we just get rid of it?



StepS - Yes, we have circular aiming, but you did not say that the 1st time.

I also discussed this with M3ntal yesterday about changes to the game engine which would give us real-time aiming instead of it being limited to what it is, so your aim would change for the time the aim button was pressed, it would also make it possible to now aim inbetween the current notches available making BnG even more accurate! I would be ridiculously happy if this was implemented, once and for all get rid of notching and in turn giving a real possibility of reviving the scheme in ways never before thought possible

Either way, I think the hardest challenge in BnG is the fact that so many people have different opinions, at the end of the day we do not have any official professional way of deciding rules for schemes, we don't have a legitimate and trustworthy board of people who can represent the best interests of the entire community.

This issue alone, has the power to destroy friendships, I for one will never forget the pain and depression felt for years due to the issues this has caused, it has created hatred amongst people and countless arguements over the years, no wonder it's becoming an extinct scheme, nobody wants that negativity anymore.

[MonkeyIsland]

Maybe the best anti-notch solution is to decrease the turn time so much that there wouldn't be enough time for counting.  (combining it with anti-lock and circular aiming to make it harder) *cough* hysteria *cough*

[KoreanRedDragon]

Well that's all sorts of awful and is equivalent to saying that (real) BnG shouldn't be a competitively played scheme. Which, yeah, understandable sentiment on the forum of a league that has been haunted by notcher paranoia for a decade. But still completely awful and upsetting to people who know BnG has the potential to be not only competitive but fun and engaging to watch as well.

[TheKomodo]

I think at that point MonkeyIsland, it's going to be a different type of BnG.

I've always personally thought of Worms as having 3 different genres of schemes, everything else is a sub-genre.

Artillery - This includes everything where the main focus/skill of the scheme is accuracy with firing weapons at other worms, e.g, BnG, Hysteria, Aerial, Boom Race, Golf, Fort, etc.

Strategic - This includes everything where the main focus/skill of the scheme is strategic planning, adaptation and execution, trying to out-think your opponent, e.g,  Team17, Elite, Intermediate, Abnormal, Mole Shopper etc.

Physical - This includes everything where the main focus/skill of the scheme is a players physical ability, e.g, Roper, Wascar, Big RR, Tower Race, Bungee Race, TTRR, WxW, Darts, Warmer etc.

With that being said, implementing circular aiming, anti-lock, and possibly other things into BnG, in my opinion would change it enough to consider that a seperate scheme, because it requires a different approach and new way of processing your thoughts when taking turns, just like Hysteria and Aerial are similar in a lot of ways, but still very different in a lot of other ways, and I believe these schemes originated as ways to enjoy artillery schemes such as BnG, but without the hassle of things like notching.

[KoreanRedDragon]

That's well said, though I think the main hassle was still following written, and attempting to follow unwritten, rules. That's historically been the main, and possibly only real problem that BnG has faced as a competitive way of playing WA. Whether fixing the rules would save BnG without even attempting to address (real or imagined) anti-notcher sentiment in the community remains to be seen, though. I don't think an honest, carefully considered and implemented effort has so far happened in that direction, so we just don't know.

[TheKomodo]

This is more of a fun conversation rather than a dispute at this point, which is nice.

Hence why BnG has been referred to by many as "The gentlemen's scheme", as you had to trust your opponents were not doing anything considered unfair or "lame", and generally speaking, many of us did share that trust and respect for each other.

From my perspective, I consider the most interesting peak of BnG being a period of time about 3 to 5 years long, starting before, and including when b2b was at peak activity and engagement, funners, leagues and tournaments were booming, there was a healthy amount of enthusiasm for BnG, and in general people had a higher level of trust for each other, once that trust faded and disappeared, so did a massive amount of interest for the scheme.

I was unfortunately not into BnG between 1999-2004 back when players like Psydome were dominating, but i'd consider that era a peak as well, but i'll never know that experience. 



So far, the only ways I know of to prevent notching in BnG, pretty much ruins BnG for many players, or rather doesn't improve it for enough players, because it changes the scheme too much.

MonkeyIsland just described one of them, reduce the time so it's impossible for notchers to count out their shots, but on the other hand, where does that leave people who take the time to adjust their aim naturally and visually imagine the path of their shot a few times before actually taking the shot?

Changing turn time, adding weapons, removing weapons, implementing rubberworm, adding and removing rules for various leagues, it has pretty much all been discussed and experimented with.



Heck, one day I even became excited when fantasizing about a continuously rotating aim which you have no control over except firing once selecting the weapon and/or fuse, and you press space when you think it is at the right angle to fire, but then with haste I found myself thinking of ways that would put me off:

How fast is the rotation? Too fast and it is more difficult than it needs to be, too slow and if you miss your opportunity to fire, you might run out of time before it reaches that angle again. However I did think of a solution to this by adding the ability to press left/right to switch rotation between clockwise and anti-clockwise.

It already takes people a long time to become good at BnG, with this in place the learning curve would be even bigger and take longer, because of this the average game would take forever, even I believe there would be struggle to hit accurately at a comfortable rate for myself, even more so if people hide in "evil" positions.

Not to mention it would totally take away the freestyle side of BnG where people like to attempt the same trick shot with multiple bounces many times over, imagine how many attempts it would take with auto-rotation implemented? You would probably have to go to get ready for work the next day and go to sleep before you even hit anyone...

[Senator]

Why was it added in the 1st place? Was it not to stop players repeating the same shot over and over? Other than that and phrases similar to, "It looks better", I have never been told any other reason.

Is this not why we have the no repeat shots rule, in order to force a variation of shots after successful hits rendering this rule almost entirely obsolete, which is influenced based on the factors of the repeat rule you are using.

So, I now find myself asking, why do we even need the re-aim rule? Should we just get rid of it?

According to KRD, the rule is also about "not just taking your new shot from the position where your previous one was. It's a matter of literally reaiming (the crosshair)."

Manual re-aim means you can get back to your previous aim angle by memorizing the crosshair position just before re-aiming. Then you can repeat the previous shot or adjust the aim based on the previous shot. So you can basically do exactly what the rule is supposed to prevent.

Now auto re-aim makes it a bit harder to bypass the rule but can also make people "cheat harder" as KRD said.

I'll agree that we need wider acceptance for the auto re-aim feature because it changes the way people have been playing all these years.

[TheKomodo]

Senator, the reason why it's encouraged to "re-aim" in the 1st place though is to prevent people from repeating shots.

And using your thumb to re-aim is not breaking the rules, because you are still re-aiming.

[Hussar]

I think the only solution is to somehow remove the ability to notch, and I don't know how that's possible with the current game options.

Just remove 4s nades and use shorter maps ?
Or add rule that full power shots are illegal.

[GrO]

Or add rule that full power shots are illegal.

...good idea though, but it could cause in-game arguing between players trying to prove some guy made a full power shot or not, so it'd be good to have this as a future game feature, but at the second thought it would be hard to explain to the community, and what should be the changed max power value, or should it vary, plus ability to set 0-100% in the scheme options, but after all it seems like an additional confusion...

Regards...

[j0e]

Changes to the engine to prevent discrete aiming steps are possible and have been considered (so no single tap of an arrow key is the same, and counts fractions of a frame/pixels), as well as programmatic rotation of the crosshair graphic.

I think this, combined with auto re-aiming, would be the best solution. BnG to me is about relying on your judgment/intuition, not calculation and counting taps. Notching in all of its forms is lame in my opinion.

[Anubis]

The equivalent of notching in one of the greatest eSports game of all time (CS) is aligning your grenade throws to visual in-game clues like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu-wi-J3wn8

I personally think that BnG itself would never become a competitive scheme with wide appeal just because there are so many ways to exploit the game engine, it is easily abused. It doesn't really matter if you use a physical visual cue or an in-game cue. Both ways are intended to remove skill and have higher hit chance. It would just not be interesting to watch a game where there are so many systems in place that let the players abuse the spirit of the scheme. BnG is a game of memory, which means the skill ceiling is lower compared to other facets of worms, it's extremely static and predictable (hence notching exists in the first place). In a static environment it's intuitive to just memorize the possible outcomes especially when they are limited by physics itself, it's a 360° circle of which you only need to use roughly 90° (of which 45° are mirrored so it's just a copy to memorize). You can shoot below your worm but it really is just a fancy way to use LG. Besides that, again, you can still apply the 90° you learned from "up there" and divide that by 2 because it's a mirror. The enemy is 99,9% placed in a position that is easily reachable within these 90°.

Notches are set ° angles, I forgot what it was but I think a notch is roughly 3-4° per "tic". These tics then get visual clues (worm animation) at 5, 9, 13, 16 (roughly 45°), 19 etc. So if we removed these static tics we would just up the possible angles by a measly factor of 3x. Now that might sound like a lot to you, but really it isn't because of the way we play BnG and how the physics in-game work and our rather small maps, we usually operate in a narrow angle. We would extend the range of shots to 45 possible shot angles instead of 16 (remember the mirror, and tics). I don't believe the engine can simulate endless amounts of ° aka 3,7° or even 3,52124°. Even if it did, it would also make the game extremely random because good luck trying to hit exactly 40° with a key press when the game allows decimals.

To conclude, I think a possible solution would be to try to implement wider range of angles, why not re-design the maps entirely and have full (or close to) 360° of viable angles. In a way worms2 BnG with these cups was way more skillful than our narrow W:A BnG we have established. We should look at W2 BnG and learn from ancient ways of artillery. More angles, more targets all make notching harder and enhance the strategy layer. If both teams have 4 worms and you can place 1 worm on top of the map he would be the most valuable worm because he has the easiest shots (notching), then you would have lower levels where you can't really do full power shots and have obstacles in your way etc. I tried googling some old maps but found none but I hope some of you remember these old w2 maps and know what I am referring to. xD

[GrO]

The equivalent of notching in one of the greatest eSports game of all time (CS)

...sorry for continuing the off-topic course, but referring to cs:go... The fact it was cheap before and now it's free-to-play made servers flooded by kids and cheaters, while micro-transactions, childish colorful skins, and gambling with some treasure chests, changed the purpose of this game totally (I don't mean eSports while it's approach is different). I don't play much lately, but as you can see at my profile I was a big fan of cs:s (also configured some populated servers), and cs1.6 before I started to use the Steam:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197995879779/games/?tab=all

Regards...