Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Various things about Spring that do not fit in any of the other forums listed below, including forum rules.

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Megatron
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Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by Megatron »

Months ago now we were told a decision was made by admins to force BA players to play BA10 (or only play up to 4v4's on BA9/103) even though most of them don't like BA10. Honestly I don't even care about ba10 vs ba9, I am fine with either version. This post is about the community, what they clearly want, and what is best for user-base.

The goal of these engine restrictions were ostensibly to force players to play on the newer engine "without bugs and exploits" (nobody every exploited any of these on BA, if they did they got banned).

Well this "goal" was not achieved, it was a resounding failure. The BA community has simply moved to play on Mando's private lobby-server instead.

Thus, as I see it, the only logical thing to do at thing point is to remove this effectively arbitrary engine restriction, and allow the BA community to play their preferred version of the game, on the older engine, using the official spring-lobby server. At this point the restriction appears to be entirely punitive on the BA player-base, serves no purpose, and has wholly failed in its stated goals.





MegaBuster
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PicassoCT
Journeywar Developer & Mapper
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by PicassoCT »

If they did they got banned and spam crashed the lobby several times.
hokomoko
Spring Developer
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by hokomoko »

Keep using words like "ostensibly", see how eager everybody is to help you.

The goal was to do what you said on the spring server. Everybody is more than welcome to do what they want on any other server.

We don't care the tiniest bit whether people play BA8/9/10/11/pi or any other game as long as they're using a recent engine if they're on our server.
We'd like other people to use a recent engine as well, but on your server you call the shots, just the same as on our server we call the shots.
gajop
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by gajop »

I think it's best to just accept the reality and think how you can adjust to it. Namely, is there anything preventing you from playing BA/PA on the newest engine?
Megatron
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by Megatron »

PicassoCT wrote: 17 Jun 2019, 06:45 If they did they got banned and spam crashed the lobby several times.
Unlike you, I actually played BA. What you're saying is not true. I've played hundred of games and this has never happened.
Megatron
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by Megatron »

hokomoko wrote: 17 Jun 2019, 10:51 Keep using words like "ostensibly", see how eager everybody is to help you.

The goal was to do what you said on the spring server. Everybody is more than welcome to do what they want on any other server.

We don't care the tiniest bit whether people play BA8/9/10/11/pi or any other game as long as they're using a recent engine if they're on our server.
We'd like other people to use a recent engine as well, but on your server you call the shots, just the same as on our server we call the shots.
Predictable response. You don't address my point at all. The claimed goal of the engine restrictions was to force players onto the new engine. The actual result was handing BA over to Mando and forcing the community to play on his server. Or in my case, I have switched to ZeroK, which is standalone and updates the engine when they are ready to, not forced to.

Why should BA players be forced to use the most recent engine? I have yet to hear a reasonable argument for why.

The player-base was enjoying the game just the way it was, and it wasn't hurting anyone/anything, except your ego it would seem.

Take a look at Diablo 2. There is a game where the community is respected; Blizzard has hardly updated it in decades, and as a result of its stability the loyal user-base is still robust. Forcing unwanted changes onto classic games is recipe for killing the player-base; I've seen it happen many times.

Given that the BA community formerly accounted for ~80% of the official server user-base, you would think the devs would want to keep them on the official server. Apparently its more its more important to people like you to be spiteful to the BA user-base for rejecting newer game/engine versions than it is to respect the wishes of the community, your post completely confirms this assessment. You present no salient arguments as to why the restrictions need to remain in place.
Megatron
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by Megatron »

gajop wrote: 17 Jun 2019, 11:02 I think it's best to just accept the reality and think how you can adjust to it. Namely, is there anything preventing you from playing BA/PA on the newest engine?
This topic has been covered in other threads, see "RIP BA" if you are unaware of the details. In short, overzealous admins are preventing people from playing BA9 on the only engine version it runs on by putting engine restrictions on the official server. BA has no devs, and the devs it did have made too many changes to the game and most of the community rejected BA10.

As for your comment about "its best to just accept the reality" I don't accept this "reality". Its never too late to undo a mistake and admit you're wrong. Maybe one day the people in control of the official server will actually listen to the community and do what is right. The devs havn't forced a single person onto the new engine version, people just switched to Mandos server or ZeroK. At this point the engine restrictions remain in place purely to spite the BA community.
hokomoko
Spring Developer
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by hokomoko »

Megatron wrote: 17 Jun 2019, 15:04You don't address my point at all
As all your claims are false/inaccurate they are unadressable.
Megatron
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by Megatron »

hokomoko wrote: 17 Jun 2019, 15:50
Megatron wrote: 17 Jun 2019, 15:04You don't address my point at all
As all your claims are false/inaccurate they are unadressable.
Everything i said is based on empirical observations. It seems you're admitting you're unable to directly address any points I've made or back up your assertions with any facts or evidence. I guess its easier for you to just dismiss me out of hand without anything to back it up than to actually engage in a rational discussion.
hokomoko
Spring Developer
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by hokomoko »

Megatron wrote: 17 Jun 2019, 16:04 Everything i said is based on empirical observations. It seems you're admitting you're unable to directly address any points I've made or back up your assertions with any facts or evidence. I guess its easier for you to just dismiss me out of hand without anything to back it up than to actually engage in a rational discussion.
You seem to misunderstand the situation.
Of the two of us, the one that's not satisfied with the current situation the most is you.
You seem to believe that the one who can change it is me (and other spring people).
So it is you who should address my points rather than the other way round.

Personally, I think that the situation is not optimal but passable and I think that if anyone can change it to the better, it is not me, but you. I won't try to convince you because as I said, the situation is passable and my chances of success are slim.
Megatron
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by Megatron »

I am still waiting for anyone to give evidence for how/why it benefits anyone (except the engine devs) to force these restrictions on the user-base. The only argument I've heard so far is the straw-man argument about "glitches and exploits" and "spam crash the lobby server". These arguments are entirely false and in fact disingenuous. Anyone who has actually played BA knows that this has essentially never happened. If it has happened, it didn't while i was online. During the hundreds of games I've played and enjoyed it hasn't happened to me once. This argument is false, please stop spreading lies to defend the engine restrictions.

Any other arguments anyone wants to put forth?
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very_bad_soldier
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by very_bad_soldier »

hokomoko wrote: 17 Jun 2019, 10:51 We don't care the tiniest bit whether people play BA8/9/10/11/pi or any other game as long as they're using a recent engine if they're on our server.
I would be way more open to your arguments for the ban if there wasn't this tiny detail that tied it to the game size which in the end makes it roughly apply to BA only. Would you please explain why only games >8 (or 10?) players are banned?
When the exploit is so bad and players need protection, why don't you protect players of small games also?

@Megatron
The attacks happened.

Disclaimer:
Sorry, I didn't follow the rest of the thread. I just want to understand this thing.
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ThinkSome
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by ThinkSome »

I agree with Megatron's analysis, this was (and still is) a failure in community management (or lack thereof...), but remember that engine versions were "banned" in the past without this much uproar.

What should have been done:
- ban problematic people (!!!)
- Implement matchmaking
- Make matchmaking good enough so that people can pick which games they'd play, with how many people and on which maps.
- Gradually remove permanent hosts in favor of permanent MM "waiting rooms"/game discussion channels (where everyone wanting to play a certain game would wait and be able to chat with other players)

Then we'd likely be seeing many more smaller (<8v8) games being played without too much anger. The 8v8 cluster***** would be removed due to natural causes (MM starting games as people would mark <8v8 as acceptable, thus in the short term not having enough players for 8v8). The side effect would be shorter wait-for-game times for everyone involved and probably larger community retention.

I've heard many people (incl. Megatron above) say that they have nothing against playing BA10, but the current arrangement of fixed autohosts means that everyone is blobbed into the same mega-room and thus cannot get any other form of (large scale) entertainment.

As far as engine 104+++++ testing goes, I suggest that the people desiring testing come out of their discord-caves and actually play the thing they develop. So far it has always been that if a game reports an engine issue then the issue will be fixed in latest development snapshot and if they want to benefit then they have to upgrade. I don't see any reason to force people to play latest. If they want bugs then let them have it.

Seems like XTA got hurt with this decision as well, for some reason.


hokomoko wrote: 17 Jun 2019, 10:51 We don't care... on our server.
I know you don't care and I know exactly why. Hokomoko, when was the last time you actually logged-in to *your* server? Not to mention actually played a match on this server of yours? Why don't you force ZeroK to play on the latest engine? All this makes me wonder why the ZeroK split happened...
hokomoko
Spring Developer
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by hokomoko »

very_bad_soldier wrote: 17 Jun 2019, 19:42 When the exploit is so bad and players need protection, why don't you protect players of small games also?
That is a good question.
We have to balance here our desire to let users do what they want with our desire that the games in the server represent spring in a respectable manner.
A passworded 1v1 needs no policing - there's practically no chance a new player will get there by accident and be appalled by bugs or bad behaviour.
A player hosted room might need some policing or might not, mostly depending on how many players are in it, for two reasons:
1) More players means a bigger audience that can get hurt by a single bad actor. That is why you put security guards in public places and not in every entrance to every home, crowded places are more of a target.
2) New players tend to follow popularity and are more likely to go to the largest rooms.

So we compromise on limiting player hosted rooms to some size, to preserve the freedom for a bunch of friends wanting to play and to have a firmer grip (in the form of autohosts policing) on the rooms that are most likely for a new player to come into.

I think this answers your question.

ThinkSome wrote: 17 Jun 2019, 21:03
hokomoko wrote: 17 Jun 2019, 10:51 We don't care... on our server.
I know you don't care and I know exactly why. Hokomoko, when was the last time you actually logged-in to *your* server? Not to mention actually played a match on this server of yours? Why don't you force ZeroK to play on the latest engine? All this makes me wonder why the ZeroK split happened...
Way to edit my sentence.
Anyway, as you are the person who's almost single-handedly responsible for me leaving S44, all I have to say is that the irony has went outside and shot itself in the head.
raaar
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by raaar »

I disagree with the restrictions on 103.0 (but not strongly) and also think this is a fail of community management, but it's also a fail of the BA community itself.
The actual result was handing BA over to Mando and forcing the community to play on his server.
The people weren't forced to join Mando and play on his server, they CHOSE to. Apparently, they got BA 10.x guys to revert some of the changes, they got other people making ba 9.46 conversions to 104.0, and rejected all of it. A few agressive members set the tone and the others went with it.
At this point the restriction appears to be entirely punitive on the BA player-base, serves no purpose, and has wholly failed in its stated goals.
It's failing because the people that want to use the older version decided to punish the admins by rejecting compromises, leaving and even advertising Mando's server.

Stroking the BA community instead of telling them "if you don't like it, leave" might have led to better results, though.

I'm curious about what the end result of this will be.
Last edited by raaar on 18 Jun 2019, 01:29, edited 1 time in total.
Megatron
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by Megatron »

Thanks for the input everyone, lots of really great points being made. Thinksome makes a particularly noteworthy point, about how the former status quo was not hurting anyone.
ThinkSome wrote: 17 Jun 2019, 21:03 I don't see any reason to force people to play latest. If they want bugs then let them have it.
I also agree that some of the BA9 loyalists are unwilling to make concessions, but I understand their perspective. Even after lots of changes were rolled back there were still changes that remained.. The vast majority of the community liked the balance of BA9, so there was really no reason to make any balance changes this late in the mods development. All the community wanted were bug fixes.

As I've said, I personally don't feel strongly about BA9 vs BA10; but others did care. When admins and developers are fighting the majority of a community/user-base I believe something has gone horribly wrong.
Megatron
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by Megatron »

raaar wrote: 17 Jun 2019, 23:53
The people weren't forced to join Mando and play on his server, they CHOSE to. Apparently, they got BA 10.x guys to revert some of the changes, they got other people making ba 9.46 conversions to 104.0, and rejected all of it. A few agressive members set the tone and the others went with it.
They made it more like BA9 but it was not the same. I found it acceptable, but clearly the BA community did not or they would be playing on the offical server.

I can't speak for the majority of the community, but I feel I am being forced to play on the private server. I held out for a long time hoping the admins/devs would rollback the restrictions or come up with a better solution/compromise. I tried playing TechA which I find very boring by comparison (no offense intended). In the end everyone went there so its my only option if I want to play BA. At this point I have just stopped using offical spring lobby and switched to ZeroK. Recently I joined Mando's server. I was surprised to discover that everyone from BA has moved over there.

I will also add that I find it unfair that the BA community seems to be characterized by the two or three most obtuse BA9 loyalists. There are plenty of reasonable people like myself and VBS who have been caught in the crossfire, who just want to play some BA at the end of the day. We were never significantly bothered by the minor bugs or super rare lobby spam; which i personally have never observed first hand. I find having to play on Mando's private server, and the inability for new players to discover BA to be a far bigger inconvenience than the occasional transport bug or trolling.

It seems like in an effort to spite a handful of people the entire BA community is being punished undeservedly. I want to go back to playing BA on the official server. The engine restrictions haven't forced anyone to switch to the new engine, they just handed the BA community to Mando.
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MasterBel
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by MasterBel »

Megatron wrote: 18 Jun 2019, 01:31 They made it more like BA9 but it was not the same. I found it acceptable, but clearly the BA community did not or they would be playing on the offical server.
FYI: Most BA players don't care. They just want games. They follow the people. And people went to the other server, so they did too. Question: why do you play on the other server?
It's literally the same answer for everyone else (except the loyalists)
were never significantly bothered by the minor bugs or super rare lobby spam
FYI: There was a time when this was every game, every day, for days. It hasn't really happened since. A lot of people missed it, and I'm glad they did because it was horrible.

There are probably solutions to this problem. Probably. But we first need to be community enough to work together. So, Megatron, if you want to solve this problem, make friends. And then tell them about this great new future where we all play on the official server and get along and help the devs give us shiny new engines that run faster and prettier than the engines before. Or, decide that what we have now is okay. It's up to you.

~MasterBel2
Google_Frog
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by Google_Frog »

Megatron wrote: 17 Jun 2019, 16:16 I am still waiting for anyone to give evidence for how/why it benefits anyone (except the engine devs) to force these restrictions on the user-base.
You spent many posts asking how the restriction was intended to help BA players, or the community, or whoever, but then concede that the restriction is in the interest of the engine devs. Why are you asking for reasons that groups with no power regarding the restriction may want to impose the restriction? If those that have the power to impose the restriction want to impose it, then it will be imposed. That should be enough reason for you to move on from "why" to "how can I improve the situation".

The Spring community consists of many groups of people with disparate goals (though this is an approximation as the disparate goals actually split down to to individual people). Various groups have different levels of power and interest to put towards their goals. If the goals of the BA players and engine devs have diverges so dramatically that the engine restricted was needed, then the question you should be asking is not "why oh why don't the engine devs care about players?". Rather, you should ask "how can we appease the engine devs (possibly with some mutual goals)" or perhaps "since we have such disparate goals, how can we achieve our goals without help from the engine devs?". Mando appears to have asked and found one answer to the latter.

The goals of the BA players are not perfectly aligned either. I expect that some want to be big fish in a small pond, playing the same game with the same group of people far into the future. Others likely want to grow the community and update the game. The majority probably just want to casually mess around in a game of BA every once and a while. If your goals don't align with running an independent Spring 103.0 BA server then you had better exert some power to change it. I think we're at a point where everyone knows that the goals of the engine devs and players have diverged, so you'll have to do more than tell people who don't share your goals that you have a problem.

The engine devs could update BA to run, unchanged, on the new engine. They could make engine changes to make this happens. They could fork 103.0 with the fixes that some people claim that the BA players need (these may well be strawmen, I don't know who made these arguments originally). They could scrap engine development and work full time on making BA and a dedicated BA engine. The engine devs don't want, or don't have the time and prioritisation, to do any of these things. In fact, anyone could do these things with the requisite investment of effort. You could do these things (at least the first one, and perhaps the second if required).

Perhaps updating BA is insufficient at this point. I expect that some BA players would like having unmoderated power over their own server. In that case you have a much more complicated fight over the majority of players that don't care either way.
Ares
Balanced Annihilation Developer
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Re: Its time to remove the engine restrictions

Post by Ares »

please unban
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