Quote from: Anubis on July 11, 2018, 03:51 PM

Quote from: TheKomodo on July 11, 2018, 02:49 PM

Quote from: Anubis on July 11, 2018, 11:29 AM
So you are saying nobody would be able to beat you, in like ever? You are saying you are so good at Mole Shopper that nobody would be able to catch up if they tried?

THIS is what pisses me off about this topic Zalo, it's your sheer delusions of grandeur, claiming nobody could ever be as good as you ever, claiming Mole Shopper as the greatest although you haven't even played all the schemes available.

Man, I fully understand I am widely regarded as the GOAT BnG player... But honestly, if Asians suddenly flooded this game, you would find people like Anubis for warmer, Mablak for TTRR, Zalo of Mole Shopper, myself for BnG, Volcom in Roper, we would be as common as black and white, perhaps even be exceeded easily.

I have always believed that the only reason we had special snowflakes in W:A is because of lack of players. We managed to get really good at this game no doubt. But for everyone that stepped up in the past there would be dozens others if we had a bigger player-base. There is a saying, somewhere there is ALWAYS a bigger fish. I would bet all my belongings that our greatest players would not be the greatest if we had more players that played this game. This also means, the less competition/players you play with, the lower the chances are that you are the greatest because only through challenge and failure you can truly become the best. Nobody is trying to take away your proficiency in Mole Shopper, Zalo, but to be the greatest you would not need to prove it, people would know it.

I can say with certainty that there are great Worms players who do not play W:A. Sure, they might struggle if they switched to W:A due to mechanical differences but their basic Worms skills and knowledge are at least on par with good W:A players. I've also noticed that when it comes to WMD in particular there is a number of Asian players and I don't know what their Worms background is, but some of them are pretty darn good. In fact, I lost a ranked game a couple of weeks ago to some Chinese guy I've never heard of. I too believe that there's plenty of people out there who could be tremendous Worms players if they only knew about the game and/or practiced enough to excel. However, I don't think that W:A is likely to see a new legend spring forth from the newer generation of players for multiple reasons. (Lack of active high-level players, lack of competitive push, small player base, noob schemes, people losing interest, et al...)

I can't be bothered to cut and paste a bunch of individual quotes, so I will just respond to you (Magnus) in order of what you stated.

First of all, since I don't know you and you don't know me, I should first inform you that I've been playing W:A since day one. That's nearly 20 years, so if I say that I can look at a scheme 'on paper' and understand how it works, I mean that. I am supremely confident that I have played far more schemes than you and logged literally thousands more hours of game time than you. I am not saying this to prove any other point than that you're not talking to an ignorant person here. You seem to be taking this topic personally.

The "efficiency" of the strategy one uses is important in ALL schemes, not just Mole. Being efficient and strategic is the name of the game, so to speak.

A lot of top-level Intermediate players (or just good players in general) wouldn't have much of an interest in seriously competing in Mole because of the luck factor. The fact that starting spawns and random crate luck determine who is going to win to such a large degree turns a lot of people off, and it's precisely why Mole is in the league that it is in. If Mole is truly the most tactical/strategic scheme there is then whoever excels at Mole should dominate in other schemes as well... but do they? Nope. You can try to mince words and talk about different 'kinds' of strategy and whatnot, but in the end it's all just Worms, and pretty much everyone here knows Worms inside and out. An elite-level Intermediate player could play TUS Mole matches and fare much better than an 'elite'-level Mole player playing Intermediate matches. This is because while there is a little bit of luck involved in Intermediate, it's not nearly as much as in Mole. The Intermediate player could win or lose based upon said luck, whereas the Mole player engaging in a match of Intermediate wouldn't have that same degree of luck to act as a W/L buffer.

I didn't contradict myself. I understand how Mole is played and what general strategies are best to use in the scheme, but it all goes back to the crate luck factor. To say that I don't have the slightest idea of how the strategy in Mole works is just plain absurd, not to mention utterly untrue. Yes, I'm aware that the TUS Mole scheme is different than the HB Mole scheme but I still understand the scheme and the so-called strategy behind it. (Hoard crates, make tunnels, girder block, try to hold down the high ground, etc.) You have compared it to Chess a couple of times which I think is ridiculous because in Chess your pieces don't start in random places and they also don't get the ability to do unpredictable things. (Crates.) Worms in general is a highly strategic game, IMO even more strategic than Chess as Chess is deterministic. That said, there's nothing about Mole gameplay that elevates it above any other scheme in this game in terms of required strategic competency. NOTHING.

Two players of relatively equal skill level playing Mole? Whoever gets the best random spawn spots and the most/best crate luck wins. Period. If you are able to routinely beat people who have a much larger inventory than you, that indicates to me that you're playing noobs, or at the very least players who aren't near your general skill level. This isn't surprising given the fact that tons of noobs play Mole. *shrug* (And I'm not talking about HB Mole, either.) As I have said many times already - Mole does require some degree of skill and strategy to be good at it, but ultimately it is down to RNG. You can deny this all you want but I know it's true based upon extensive experience with the game, and others agree as well. You can call us all ignorant if you want but ironically you would be saying that to people who very likely have far more experience with the game than you, and the particulars of one specific scheme are trivial.

One can easily force a worm to drown in Mole, TUS or not. Even if they can stay above water you can still dominate the high ground and spam girders, launch moles and wait for a good opening to attack. It's not genius-level tactics we're talking about here.

As far as the mole digging backwards, I thought that maybe there was a key or key combination that one can press/hold to manually change the dig direction. I already knew about it reversing after colliding with terrain. Also, I never claimed to know more than anyone else about this scheme. I only claimed my own opinion, which is backed by objectivity and lots of experience. In fact, I said that I was wrong earlier in the thread and that I didn't know about the particulars of the TUS Mole scheme compared to the HB scheme. I then learned the particular differences and while the TUS Mole scheme is definitely more competitive than the HB Mole scheme, I stand by my objection to Zalo's opinion that (TUS) Mole is the most strategic/tactical scheme in the game, because it simply isn't.

How can I not prove my point that random luck plays a huge factor in the scheme? It's self-evident. BLATANTLY SELF-EVIDENT, even! I've already explained this, and if you cannot understand how and why random spawns and random crates aren't a big deal, then why should I bother?

As far as that old match goes... Yeah, there's a couple of errors but overall I didn't do anything irredeemably bad. I tried, but not like... laser-focus tried. The reason why I didn't really give a shit about the game was because I considered Mole a joke of a scheme. I knew even back then about dropping items standing on the edge of something going straight down but I thought that I had enough of a ledge for it to not drop but rather go down the incline and kill that last worm. It was a dumb misread that cost me the game, but I am sure that the thought that crossed my mind was probably something along the lines of: "thank god, I can go back to playing other shit now instead of being stuck in more mole matches!"

Anyway, I guess the tl;dr version of my entire piece goes like this:

1. There is nothing about (TUS) Mole that makes it more tactical/strategic than all other schemes

2. Random luck factors in a lot more than you seem to acknowledge, especially when the two competing players are fairly evenly matched.

Yeah I supposedly 'own' a small plot of land at the Laphroaig distillery from buying so many bottles lol

Quote from: Magnus on July 10, 2018, 07:30 AM
wall of text

Trust me, I don't take TUS league stats into consideration for anything. Until fairly recently I have historically avoided this site like the plague because I hate the notion that only TUS enshrines the 'best' players. One doesn't have to look very hard to find great players who have little - if any - TUS presence. As far as that Mole tournament from 2012, great internet sleuthing on that one. As I said before, my personal skill or lack thereof when it comes to Mole is completely irrelevant. That tournament that I joined 6 years ago out of sheer boredom because people probably spammed AG indicating that it was going to be beginning soon was me just killing some time and deciding to play something that I normally don't give a crap about. In other words, citing an example of a single game played many years ago doesn't do anything in this situation and is irrelevant relating to the claim that Mole is the most strategic/tactical scheme there is. I made some hyperbolic, tongue-in-cheek jokes comparing Mole to regular shopper, but I've also said that Mole isn't completely devoid of strategy/tactics.

I highly doubt that there's been that many Mole 'breakthroughs' since 2012. The game (W:A) hasn't been updated in such a way that it would dramatically change how the scheme is played, and it's not as though players of today are simply better than players of the past, generally speaking. SOME mole players themselves might be more competent at that scheme but that is more to do with increased exposure to that particular scheme. What I am saying here is that I doubt a Mole player of today with 2 years of experience would be able to easily defeat a Mole player of yesteryear with 2 years of experience.

I also fail to understand how or why Mole supposedly requires a greater degree of tactical OR technical skill than any other scheme. Knowing when to hide, knowing how to chute, knowing how to best utilize a weapon and when, knowing how to darkside, etc.... these are all competencies shared by many other schemes. Mole isn't unique in this regard by any means. I will admit that my experience with the TUS Mole scheme is extremely limited, but TBH I don't even need to play a scheme to understand how it works. I've been playing Worms for so long that all I need to do is see the options/settings 'on paper' and I can, in my head, understand how the game will play. I also do not understand how you can dismiss the overall luck factor in the scheme. Where the crates drop and what they contain is random, and although it generally holds true that they will likely spawn in the biggest cave, that's not always the case. You can of course attempt to manipulate the map in such a way that you maximize crate drops that are accessable to you, but at the end of the day it is still wildly random.

My estimation of Mole is that it almost invariably comes down to spawns, crate luck, and going all-out at sudden death for kills and/or depriving the other player of high ground and forcing them to drown. Everything else that occurs before that point is basically just crate hoarding and positioning, which, as I said, isn't exactly the epitome of tactical nor technical Worms gameplay. I'm not saying that the scheme doesn't have any strategy involved because it certainly does... all I'm getting at is that it's not the most skilled scheme to play in any sense aside from knowing how to best utilize the mole itself. I'll admit that I do not know how/why sometimes the mole digs backwards but I am sure that there's a simple explanation. Care to elucidate? Also, how does a mole do 200 damage? I've never seen that.

The main skill involved in Mole is quite simply just using the mole... making sure that it digs in exactly the way you want it to every time. That doesn't seem like a very difficult task to master compared to many of the other technical skills/competencies present within W:A as a whole. I am certain that if I actually gave a crap about Mole I could master the scheme in a relatively short period of time compared to what it would take to master something like roping, bng, elite, etc. As a matter of fact, this thread has inspired me to start playing more Mole games (with the updated TUS scheme) because I want to see first-hand if there is more to the scheme than I believe or if I am right after all. As I said before, that one and only game recorded here on TUS was a random example of me not really giving a crap and just playing something that I normally seldomly play simply because I was present when the tourney started. It wasn't taken seriously because I knew how luck-based the scheme was. It was never my intention to insult anybody here by my comments... I was only attempting to argue that Mole isn't nearly as hardcore as some of you clearly think it is. I contend that the random luck plays a much larger factor that ya'll will admit, that it doesn't take as much competency as certain other schemes, and that in general it's kind of noob bait. In AG I am constantly seeing noobs hosting and playing it, which says something.

edit 1: I watched that replay file and even though my opponent got TWO select worms via crates, I still only lost because I killed myself with a cow that I thought would pass through a girder. To me it looked like it would work, but instead of going over the girder it dropped right below me and killed me. I was in control of the match pretty much the whole time even though the guy started with 3 of his worms at the top and I only had one.

edit 2: I played a couple of Mole games today and although it was the HB scheme and not the TUS scheme, it was exactly as I remembered overall in terms of how it's played. I won both games too.

Eh, these types of threads have been going on for ages.

Quote from: j0e on July 08, 2018, 06:37 PM

Quote from: skunk3 on July 08, 2018, 06:19 PM

Quote from: TheKomodo on July 08, 2018, 06:10 PM
By the way every single scheme has luck factor whether you realize it or not.

Luck, as in your genetics as a human, your ability to understand and improvise, plan and carry out.

And where you were born and how you were raised contributes to that, and that's completely random luck...

Do you have a family that can buy you a good keyboard for roping, were you raised in a place with opportunities to get a good job and buy good equipment?

There is so much more underneath the iceberg than you will ever realize


@Zalo, I find your commitment to Mole Shopper more impressive than your skills, because I personally agree with skunk, it's nowhere near as highly skilled as you think it is. And i'll always expect you to defend that, it's admirable haha!

That is going off of the deep end.


There are certain schemes that have no luck involved, like TTRR, Big RR, etc. Of course we could argue about people not having the exact same keyboards and whatnot but that's really reaching and pretty stupid. I could also argue that I can't play TTRR at 7 a.m. because of the light coming in through my window and reflecting on my screen.

Big RR/TTRR still has random wind.

Quote from: ZaLoAnyone wants to earn 40$? way is open, just win in any of 5 games against me, and 40$ is yours.

Wind is only a factor if you fall. Falling isn't luck.

Quote from: TheKomodo on July 08, 2018, 06:10 PM
By the way every single scheme has luck factor whether you realize it or not.

Luck, as in your genetics as a human, your ability to understand and improvise, plan and carry out.

And where you were born and how you were raised contributes to that, and that's completely random luck...

Do you have a family that can buy you a good keyboard for roping, were you raised in a place with opportunities to get a good job and buy good equipment?

There is so much more underneath the iceberg than you will ever realize


@Zalo, I find your commitment to Mole Shopper more impressive than your skills, because I personally agree with skunk, it's nowhere near as highly skilled as you think it is. And i'll always expect you to defend that, it's admirable haha!

That is going off of the deep end.


There are certain schemes that have no luck involved, like TTRR, Big RR, etc. Of course we could argue about people not having the exact same keyboards and whatnot but that's really reaching and pretty stupid. I could also argue that I can't play TTRR at 7 a.m. because of the light coming in through my window and reflecting on my screen. 

Quote from: j0e on July 08, 2018, 05:38 PM
The TUS scheme has superweapons disabled, limited girder range (vs unlimited), slow water rise, regular banana (vs. gold powered), and random placement. Not sure if it's played with manual placement in leagues since I've never played mole for tus. You still have the hilariously overpowered clusters, airstrike, baseball bat, firepunch, dragonball, shotgun, etc. There's lots of opportunity to darkside or block until you have good weapons, so the luck element isn't that huge.

Just like any scheme on WA not all the top players play it on TUS. Not that I count myself among the top mole players (far from it). FMA is probably better than Zalo and he's played like 6 tus games. You probably wouldn't recognize that name because he is a serial-aliaser. Every game he changes his name and country flag.

After playing however many thousand Worms games I don't care about winning anymore. I often root for the other guy to win because he probably cares more. Games with zero luck factor are what I find boring. Those games often just reward whoever plays the safest and most boringly -- dAiNa dominated the league at one time but her roping was like watching paint dry. To each their own I guess. But I do find Team 17 pretty boring as well.

Not very coherent point but I feel that if you wish to continue ripping on mole shopper you should put your skills to the test first.

I only briefly looked at the page for Mole so I clearly missed a lot of differences. TBH I was only thinking of starting inventory and basic settings, not about stuff like gold banana (I pretend it doesn't exist) and whatnot. I couldda swore that it said something about placing worms in holes to start. As far as the other differences, they don't really change my estimation of the scheme, and IMO those changes reflect how the regular scheme should be played anyway. It also still isn't the most strategic/tactical scheme there is by a long shot, which is ultimately the only point I care about here. There's very few schemes in W:A that have a zero luck factor, but generally speaking I enjoy playing schemes with less luck involved as opposed to more luck involved because they are more of a test of who is playing the best at the moment and/or who is generally better. If I just want a 6 player funner match I don't really care what we play, but if I am playing someone 1-on-1 I definitely care about what we play because I don't want to invest time and mental energy into trying to win a game only to be screwed over by random, unpredictable luck. I do care about winning, and I play to win, and losing due to random crate luck is lame AF but a part of the game sometimes. If I didn't care about winning I probably wouldn't play Worms at all because this game is all skill + strategy. I'd play something else. Winning feels better than losing, and while winning isn't a requirement for having fun, it definitely makes the experience more fun, at least in my personal opinion. My personal skills when it comes to Mole are irrelevant to the point at hand. I don't need to be a director to critique a film, nor do I need to be a chef to critique a dish. This isn't about me. 

Ostensibly the only real difference between a funner mole and a ranked mole is gonna be the starting placement. My guess was correct.

Quote from: TheKomodo on July 08, 2018, 05:15 PM
Skunk why don't you at least check the tus scheme before making accusations.

I am on your side but the fact you don't even wanna check the scheme first is ignorant.

What accusations? I just looked at the scheme and unless I overlooked something, it is as I said - played the same as every other Mole except there's manual starting placement as opposed to random.

Quote from: j0e on July 08, 2018, 05:02 PM

Quote from: skunk3 on July 08, 2018, 04:47 PM

Quote from: j0e on July 08, 2018, 06:50 AM
If mole is so luck-based, why don't you accept Zalo's challenge Skunk? Instead of playing 20 games, just play until you win. Should just be a game or two, right?

Because I'd rather spend my time available for gaming doing something fun rather than having a pissing contest playing a scheme that I don't really enjoy due to random luck. That said, if I was in AG and nobody else had anything decent hosted and friends weren't online I wouldn't turn down a game. Besides, even if he won 2-3 games in a row vs. me that wouldn't prove his point that Mole is the most strategic/tactical scheme of all time. My issue is with that claim. To me, the scheme clearly is not. On top of that, if he is claiming that Mole is the most strategic scheme of all time he is by extension claiming himself to be the #1 best player because wouldn't it stand to reason that whoever dominates the most competitive/strategic non-rope-based scheme is therefore the best player? If Mole is more strategic and tactical than say, Intermediate or Elite, then wouldn't that dominant player also dominate those schemes as well? The reason why all of this sounds absurd is because his original premise is absurd. Mole is not the most strategic/tactical scheme there is just as I said, and it is also a highly luck-based scheme, just as I said. Clearly Zalo is quite good at Mole according the rankings but he has played over 2x more ranked games than ANYONE else, plus out of the 200+ players who have ranked Moles recorded in that list, roughly 5% of them at most are truly high-level players. Anyway, I'm not trying to make anyone angry here; I'm just trying to interject with a bit of rationality. To me, bragging about being the best Mole player is no different than claiming to be the best at T17.

Well sure his statement that it's the most strategic scheme is obviously bullcrap. I don't think anyone took that seriously. I'm just saying that it's more skill-based and strategic than you give it credit for. I don't think it's boring at all. Talking about the TUS scheme here.

I'm not saying that Mole is completely devoid of strategy and tactics. Obviously there is some degree of competency required to excel at the scheme, but I can't take any scheme super seriously if it has such a high degree of random luck involved. Mole can be fun to play as a funner, just not as a serious 1 vs 1 game IMO. I don't know if the TUS Mole scheme is any different than what I am used to. I'd imagine that it is probably the same except maybe it has manual starting placement?

.

Quote from: j0e on July 08, 2018, 06:50 AM
If mole is so luck-based, why don't you accept Zalo's challenge Skunk? Instead of playing 20 games, just play until you win. Should just be a game or two, right?

Because I'd rather spend my time available for gaming doing something fun rather than having a pissing contest playing a scheme that I don't really enjoy due to random luck. That said, if I was in AG and nobody else had anything decent hosted and friends weren't online I wouldn't turn down a game. Besides, even if he won 2-3 games in a row vs. me that wouldn't prove his point that Mole is the most strategic/tactical scheme of all time. My issue is with that claim. To me, the scheme clearly is not. On top of that, if he is claiming that Mole is the most strategic scheme of all time he is by extension claiming himself to be the #1 best player because wouldn't it stand to reason that whoever dominates the most competitive/strategic non-rope-based scheme is therefore the best player? If Mole is more strategic and tactical than say, Intermediate or Elite, then wouldn't that dominant player also dominate those schemes as well? The reason why all of this sounds absurd is because his original premise is absurd. Mole is not the most strategic/tactical scheme there is just as I said, and it is also a highly luck-based scheme, just as I said. Clearly Zalo is quite good at Mole according the rankings but he has played over 2x more ranked games than ANYONE else, plus out of the 200+ players who have ranked Moles recorded in that list, roughly 5-10% of them are truly high-level players in my opinion, and most of them have very few ranked games recorded. Anyway, I'm not trying to make anyone angry here; I'm just trying to interject with a bit of rationality. To me, bragging about being the best Mole player is no different than claiming to be the best at T17. I am certain that if more skilled players decided to start playing a bunch of ranked mole (for whatever reason) the rankings would look radically different.

Quote from: Chicken23 on July 07, 2018, 09:31 PM
kids, family life, when i find time outside of work and for myself its usually spent watching tv series if i'm not spending free time with my partner.

I'd like an hour or so a day/every other day if i knew i could come to ag and find tus games..

No TUS games but you can still play!

Quote from: Zalo on July 06, 2018, 05:45 AM

Quote from: skunk3 on July 05, 2018, 10:03 PM
Mole shopper is no more difficult to play at a decent level than any other scheme. It is incredibly basic, in fact. I would never play 20 games of mole shopper vs. anyone because it's boring and too lucky for my tastes. I've played plenty of mole shoppers, so it's not like I don't know the scheme and how it is played. I'm not ignorant and lacking the super duper moleshop secrets to winning. Hiding, stealing, invading, chuting, etc... all of this stuff is present in many other schemes. To say that mole shopper is the most tactical/strategic scheme is ludicrous and lots of people agree. Not trying to get you pissed off or whatever because clearly you love it but that's how I view it. To me, mole is just a funner scheme to play when nobody else feels like playing something more serious in AG. There's a reason why it is so popular amongst noobs... because it is very easy to play and almost anyone has a chance of winning, especially in 4-6 player games. Random luck plays a huge part in the game whether you can recognize that or not.

Ignorance part #2

I doubt I would even lose 1 worm out of 4 against you. You clearly don't know this scheme.

https://www.tus-wa.com/leagues/free-standings/Mole_Shopper/?s=overall
https://www.tus-wa.com/cups/cup-1035/
https://www.tus-wa.com/cups/cup-1051/
https://www.tus-wa.com/cups/cup-1052/

Nobody wins 1st out of 32 people, or wins 100x games in a row, or 3x cups in a row "by accident" or because of your imaginary "huge amount of luck". You are just an ignorant, Sir.

You can claim that I don't know the scheme and that I am ignorant all you want, but you're just looking like a self-important psycho in the process... like I am taking a bit, fat shit on your very soul for thinking mole shop is for the kiddies. I was talking about funner moles at first, and you're talking about ranked mole games. Okay, I'll go along with that. Even in a 1-on-1 ranked mole game luck still plays a huge factor due to random crate drops and random crate contents. I don't know if you get manual placement at the start of a ranked mole game rather than random placement (because I've never played a ranked match, why in the f@#! would I want to?), but if it is in fact random then there's even more luck involved. Obviously mole is going to be more strategic than, say, roper or shopper (because there isn't a ton of strategy involved in those schemes), but I think it is debatable as to whether it is any more or less strategic than T17 (I'd say they are about the same in terms of skill level), and it is most definitely far less strategic than Intermediate, Elite, Darkside, Strategic, etc.  Zalo, while you do have what appears to be an impressive record, where is your competition? There's a handful of skilled players in that ranking list but for the most part it's a bunch of noobs. Your record, to me, only signifies that you participated in a bunch of Asbest style ranked noob bashing and that not too many other players actually take ranked mole seriously because only 4 players out of 244 had a total number of games played in the triple digits, with yours being more than double the total of the next player with the most total games played. As I said - you basically grinded out a bunch of noob bashing games. Cool.