[Forked] Scorch Shot Ban Discussion
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ban it so people stop telling me to use it
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The scorch shot discussion has always been a little funny to think about because there’s really nothing overpowered about the weapon besides it being annoying to people
The versatility it provides compared to other secondaries, which results in a lack of more specialized play, as well as generalized playstyles. I don’t think having some super applicable jack of all trades option is a good solution to the weaknesses of the class, one which only serves to sugarcoat and hide the issues at that.
The entire class would have been banned years ago if people screeching “annoying” had ever been an effective argument. Especially considering axtinguisher and puff and sting meta ran the table for years.
I find this point irrelevant. There are other arguments that’ve been laid down that have more depth to them than just the weapon being annoying. It is also unrealistic to imply that the class would ever be banned in highlander, a 9v9 mode with one of each class.
Pyro has been downgraded so significantly over the years that its role has dwindled to a mere backline watchdog, and if anything the sc meta is the first move in a long while to improve an otherwise extremely range limited class’ utility to further aid the team
The scorch shot does little to resolve this. It by nature promotes poorer play than the other secondary options. If you already have good mechanics, you can get a stupid amount of value out of it. If you do not have good mechanics, it becomes harder to actually develop important pyro mechanics with the scorch shot. Pyro’s role has indeed dwindled, but the emphasis should be on more divergent and branching playstyles in response to this; a redefinition of the class and it’s roles. The usage of scorch shot results in more cookie cutter playstyles to try and get the maximum value out of all of it’s many uses. This reduces the importance of individual mechanics, and in my opinion will only lead to further issues with the class down the line. Using a mechanically unintuitive option that promotes less specialized play will not solve the issues of the class.
But what I found is that there are many circumstances where you can assist in denials, albeit small ones, on maps where pyro otherwise has a limited role. This can be on sniper, or flank, or doing the final damage in a koth midfight where you’d otherwise have no role but to chill in the back
Again, I feel like having such easy access to all of these options results in a much less dynamic metagame for the class. Detonator allows for you to do similar things, while being more specialized, and requiring more mechanical input and development.
but not many stop to consider what it brings to a team on an otherwise shit class.
It brings an artificial level of enhancement to pyro’s versatility and utility, while requiring a lot less mechanical input. Bandaging an issue is not resolving it.
Not to mention, the scorch/det are direct downgrades in close range combat to the shotty/flare among others, which is significant when you consider the degreaser already has the lowest dps of any primary weapon and every second matters in trying to protect a combo at range
I disagree with this. Options can often be more valuable than a higher source of direct damage. Scorch shot gives a mechanically lacking way to control movement via bounce/stun, to and dictate the terms of an engagement. The detonator allows for you to control movement by timing detonations and smartly placing your shots, and also gives you the option to jump in and out of an engagement. The shotgun and flare gun are indeed better for sheer damage, but operating under the framework of secondaries being tools to provide options, scorch and det can easily help out more than a higher source of direct damage.
If I’m going to be honest on this, I find that the degreaser ends up training you to be reliant on the switch speed. There are cases where you will legitimately find value out of it, such as denying a bomb with shotty and the degreaser switch speed on ashville. But my argument is, the less access to an easy spam and back method of secondary usage you have, the less you’ll end up finding yourself in said poor positions. If you are to be punished for making poor decisions, you’ll naturally learn not to make them as much.
I personally find the stock and detonator to be a very effective and synergistic combo, as the weapons play to eachother’s strengths. The secondary being the tool to augment the primary, and the stock being able to effectively inflict a lot more chaos during exchanges. The slightly reduced airblast cost on paper is somewhat insignificant, but the extra afterburn can absolutely make the difference in something such as a detonator bomb. As in that case, you wouldn’t want to find yourself swapping to the detonator from the degreaser to spam it for the extra afterburn anyways.This sort of loadout results in a very space and chaos oriented style of play, which while not a style for everyone, is absolutely valid in it’s own right. To wrap back around, the detonator gives more options, while being more punishing than the scorch shot if you wish to get value out of it. Yet again, I think this trickles into a larger issue with the typical approach players take to the class.
I’m not a top player or anything, but I think it’s important to have these sorts of more niche and developed playstyles, that aren’t as reliant on the utility provided by the scorch shot.Not to mention, it one of very few weapons that can contest snipers at range, if anything else but to force them on to darwins
The detonator can also fulfill this purpose, while requiring much more mechanical investment and possible punishment/misplay.
The way to fixing pyro’s issues begins with evaluating the average perception and mentality applied to the class (which in my opinion somewhat stagnates innovation), and how various playstyles and roles of pyro fit in with differing teams and components. I think that this whole argument about the scorch shot best represents these flaws.
Pyro has had flawed metas in the past, and I think it’s time to try and tackle the issue in a comprehensive way. By removing the scorch shot, you’ll see more divergent playstyles with the generalized utility of the scorch shot being taken out of the equation. This would only go part of the way, but I think that not jumping on this possibility for change would be a mistake. If people want to see pyro as anything but a backline watchdog, there needs to be something that.
A. Forces an extent of immediate change towards more specialized play
B. A shift in perception that goes along with thisThe downgrades given to the class did a lot of harm, and I think it’s time we as a community reevaluate the roles and mechanics of the class; rather than relying on a secondary that stunts long term growth to fix the class’s weaknesses and issues.
I fully agree that it being annoying is not a good enough reason for it being banned. That being said, I think it’s certainly worth discussing for other reasons.
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@Bliztank woke up spittin damn!
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@wax yeah
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Would anyone like to help me collect some data on this? What I would like is a collection of logs of highlander matches, priority being invite matches. What I would like to do is collect these metrics in one place, so we can do some analyses. For example, what’s the probability that the second scorch shot hit will connect? How long does the afterburn usually last? To answer those kinds of questions, we need that data, and I’m too lazy to gather it myself. Please let me know in the thread if you’re interested in helping with this, whether from the data collection side, the programming side, the statistical analysis side, or otherwise. Once we get some data from invite we can see how it compares to the other divisions.
Thanks!
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@HA-Johnny I have links to all of the logs for every Invite official played in RGL because I check them when I collect the STVs, organized by match and season. Do you want them?
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i’ve got some nuanced thoughts on the SS that i’m going to try and delineate here
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does the scorch shot meet the criteria for being banned under a whitelist that aims to ban weapons that degrade competitive integrity? yes
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does the scorch shot meet the criteria for being banned under a whitelist that aims to be as open as possible and only ban weapons that are legitimately overpowered and straight upgrades in almost every situation (our current framework)? yes
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has the reasoning for why 2 was yes been brought up yet? no
let me explain a bit here. under our current whitelist guidelines, “it’s easy to use”, “it’s annoying to play against”, “pyro is a bad a class”, and bliztank’s theory of pyro development (as much as I deeply agree with his reasoning) are all invalid arguments to the current system. important to note that an invalid argument is not necessarily a bad one; it means that it’s inapplicable to the current situation. If you want to get the scorch shot banned, you need to do one of two things-
a) prove that the scorch shot is just objectively better than all other pyro secondaries AND that it contributes to poor gameplay (a bit of a grey area here, but it’s the difference between the crossbow being “overpowered” and still allowed vs. the machina being banned)
b) argue for a different system that the one we currently have, similar to what i mentioned in 1)Personally, I think there are ban cases in both systems, but the problem is that current teams aren’t good enough to really reach the level where the scorch shot is an obvious ban in the current system. Imagine the perfect highlander team. Hitscan classes that are basically aimbotting, a spy with mind control, and projectile classes running 80 different instances of the source engine on a giga-array to calculate the best projectile angles in real-time. On that team, pyro does not need to kill anything. Anything a pyro can do in terms of damage, another class can do better at god-like levels of aim.
You can argue this may have been different before the nerfs, but currently, 70% of pyro’s value is derived solely from airblast and the other 20% is to light spies on fire, with the most of the remaining 10% being a deterrent to people running into your combo. In a world where pyro does not need to kill anything, any additional damage the pyro can do to other classes in downtime without putting itself at risk is gravy; thus, the shotgun is useless and the flares are much better options. And of the flares, I’d argue the best one for doing chip damage is the scorch because of the ease, safety, and total damage output. Something that often gets ignored is how just how actionable scorch shot damage can be. When we played froyo in 7s, arekk would run scorch shot and just spam it at flank and the second he got a hit b4nny and blaze would push off of it, because those 20-30+ hp margins the scorch shot can essentially give you for free is enough for top-level players to take a fight that’s 60-40 or even 50-50 and flip it into an 85-15 or a 90-10. I freely admit that I’m not very familiar with how the det compares to the scorch in terms of harassment, but I’m working under the assumption that the det is more dangerous to use and less effective at getting the first hit due to the necessity to sometimes blind det it and with the projectile disappearing faster vs. the scorch remaining.
Obviously, the big asterisk on this is that there are no teams, nor have there ever been, that are good enough to warrant relegating pyro to such a small role, because players are human and make mistakes that a class like pyro is perfectly designed to clean up for. It’s the reason why shotgun is a still an option and is often the better choice depending on the team. But if you want confirmation for effectiveness of scorch shot scaling exponentially with team skill, look back to S1 of RGL highlander when IRENE had billysaurus run full time scorch shot - they relied on him for airblast denial and spychecking and anything a shotgun could contribute would just be done better by a different class. At the time people almost thought it was a meme and it was the team telling their pyro to troll as some kind of flex on other teams, like ‘we don’t need a shotgun pyro or flare pyro to win’, but I think they were just ahead of the curve.
So, back to the question at hand. Is there an argument to ban the scorch shot under the current system? I think definitely. Follow-up question: is it necessary to ban the scorch shot under the current system given the state of the top teams in HL? I don’t think the ban’s necessary in the same way something like machina or diamondback are necessary, as the true “broken” qualities of the SS (at least as I believe the current system would define it as) haven’t really been unlocked yet, and I think we’re straying further from the peak of HL skill where it would’ve been possible.
But because I think the current system is outdated as fuck, tl;dr it doesn’t matter what it is under the current system because we should move to a system that cares more about game integrity than an open whitelist. Fuck the scorch.
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@scaredy-bat That’d be a great start. I’m a bit lazy to download all the logs manually if there’s a lot, but if nobody will volunteer a well-labeled zip of all the log files I can probably write a script to download them all. So yes. That’d be helpful!
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I might be speaking from boomer land since I only had a season back with modern highlander. I’m gonna just play Devil’s Advocate here, while I agree the weapon lacks counterplay, I remember bans were given out on weapons that were truly game breaking.
Some examples:
Mad Milk/Jarate, one throw into a teamfight can easily swing itOld Razorback, buffed snipers with it could only be killed by another buffed sniper and the game devolved into a pure stalemate
Reserve shooter pyros would literally sneeze on someone when airblasted and/or destroyed anyone in the air.
I literally remember these weapons being completely dominant and/or being unhealthy for the HL meta.
The scorch shot just is a low risk weapon that provides high reward in regards to pressure. The majority of arguments I have seen is that the weapon is annoying and it will completely destroy you if you get hit by one. And that is simply not true, while with 46 damage + ~60 afterburn you’ll be left with very little health that someone can kill you off. You still have PLENTY of time to get aid whether it’d be from a pack, dispenser, medic, or your pyro farming points off extinguishing you. The knockback it hits you with isn’t a stun, I’m pretty sure you can still shoot the pyro that shot you with it. I probably will stop myself here.
As unhealthy as it is, I think if we start banning weapons cause they are annoying. we’re going to start trimming the whitelist. As @HA-Johnny said, we need data and proof that this weapon is truly game breaking. There hasn’t been much data presented that proves that it clearly breaks the game. I’m starting winter break so I am willing to take some time to write a quick program to parse logs.
Also personal opinion, banning the scorch shot won’t really drastically change how pyro will be played in the top level, we’d probably just see mixtures of shotgun and detonator would just take scorch shot’s place as spam and provide some mobility.
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@Frost I think most of what you’ve said is fair. That being said, I am focusing on how it impacts play from the bottom up. The main focus on what I’ve said has been on the developmental aspect of it. Perhaps I’m not entirely right, but from what I’ve seen and the talks I’ve had, I think it certainly does harm the development of mechanics in less experienced pyros to an extent. I feel like this applies much more to the scorch shot meta than prior pyro playstyles and metas.
I’ve seen a lot of players struggling with pyro and actually being able to help their team on it, and I think that looking into the scorch shot is a good way to start resolving this.
I’m not sure if that makes it ban worthy, but I see an issue, and I wish to see that issue discussed; be it a proper reason to warrant a ban or not.
If you already have the mechanics (ie yourself and other top players) it gives you a lot of versatility and spam potential for little cost. But if you do not already have good mechanics developed, I completely believe that it will inhibit you from developing more healthy mechanics.
I get that there’s most certainly been issues like this in the past that could be easily attributable to prior metas, but I feel like it’s more pressing in this case. I think it’s time to try and tackle it in the present and to try and resolve the issues, roots included.
I think that after quarantine ends, we’ll see a decent share of generational shift pyro and player wise, and I’d rather see more healthy growth for the class.
Apologies if I have not conveyed all of this too accurately.Sidenote: To condense my arguments and for ease of read, these are what I believe to be my main points.
A. The class is weak but two wrongs don’t make a right.
B. To strengthen the class, there should be genuine change in the perceived roles and functions of the class, and how individual players are taught of it and learn to play with various teams.
C. More specialized play will also lead to better performance, and given how the scorch meta has generalized play much more than prior metas, a ban now would force an extent of divergence. This would only benefit the scene from a bottom to top level, while also not dealing much damage to an invite level of play, as stated by frost.
banning the scorch shot won’t really drastically change how pyro will be played in the top level
D. Some would complain about pyro’s role and lack of options/utility to a team. By bandaging this with scorch, you ignore the issues, become complacent with said role, and become a part of the overarching issue with the state of the class.
Pyro has been downgraded so significantly over the years that its role has dwindled to a mere backline watchdog, and if anything the sc meta is the first move in a long while to improve an otherwise extremely range limited class’ utility to further aid the team
E. What may happen when quarantine ends given these prior reasonings, which I do not think has been a scenario that could be considered or applied to the past metagames and scene states. With this in mind, I think it’s paramount to nip the scorch meta now.
While this may not warrant a ban from a traditional viewpoint, I feel like it is time to reconsider how and why we ban weapons. And then to begin applying this to other classes afterwards, with this as a showcase for the reasoning and merit of this sort of whitelist management. I feel like it is negligent to base bans out entirely on a basis of how game breaking something is, as by considering the developmental aspects, you have the chance to positively impact future generations of players, and do your duty as a member of the community.
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The main argument I’ve seen since my initial response to this thread in defending the scorch shot from being unchanged in the current whitelist is that “you can’t ban a weapon for only being annoying”. But I think the initial concerns with the weapon have been missed.
While I’m glad we can all agree that it’s one of the most annoying unlocks in the game to face in the current whitelist, I feel like the main issues with the weapon have been overlooked and it can come down to why it’s so annoying and those reasons that warrant a ban.
Pyro is, and always will be, a specialist class. I feel like this is obvious, but it should be reiterated. What Pyro excels at can’t be matched by almost any other class, but comes at a cost of being more poor to other aspects of the game. A majority of the defending arguments in this thread from the Pyro players come from “Pyro is already weaker at most points in the game, and the scorch shot helps alleviate this weakness”. Although I do want all classes to edge more towards being applicable in more situations, I think the scorch shot brings too much to table, on top of what Pyro already excels at, to stay in competitive play. I do not want the pillar for banning the weapon to be “It’s too low risk for its reward and makes the class look like a low-skill ceiling joke”. Instead, I believe the major concern that should spearhead the ban is the overwhelming effect it has at all points in the game in comparison to its counterparts that see much less limelight in the current meta. These effects include, restated from my original post:
“spam splash (for full afterburn ticks + initial impact), long-range spy check places a Pyro couldn’t normally (from safe distance), pop-up/stun on direct with extra damage, stop all momentum with directs, flare jump, and clear stickies is such an overpowered secondary where if you’re not using it you’re really just being a detriment to your own team”.
I would also like to couple these advantages brought by the scorch shot with the buffs since Jungle Inferno/MYM to the overall class that include increased afterburn tick damage from all flame sources (including scorch), and the abundant airblast buffs (Pyro’s most important mechanic in competitive play). I know the flamethrower changes have been seen as nerfs, but I consider them to be overall buffs outside of damage ramp-up and I won’t talk about the flamethrower here because of this controversy.
The scenario that @Alto brings up, arekk would run scorch shot and just spam it at flank and the second he got a hit b4nny and blaze would push off of it, because those 20-30+ hp margins the scorch shot can essentially give you for free is enough for top-level players to take a fight that’s 60-40 or even 50-50 and flip it into an 85-15 or a 90-10 is seen in almost every map in the pool where just putting a Pyro on the flank with scorch shot, or just spamming it from safe distance without even leaving the combo, can turn what would normally be coin flip fights into one-sided guarantees and at no cost to the Pyro to his team. You could also swap out the scorch shot with detonator, or even stock flare, but it’s the insane splash (pointed out here from @Catalyst), momentum-stopping power/damage on direct that the scorch shot brings that the other options do not. You would be hard pressed to give a reason why shooting a detonator to hit behind a corner is more beneficial than hitting the ground with a scorch shot (they have the same blast radius on impact/det at 110 HU).
I would also like to bring up @Melon’s argument and couple this with @Alto’s
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the scorch/det are direct downgrades in close range combat to the shotty/flare among others, which is significant when you consider the degreaser already has the lowest dps of any primary weapon and every second matters in trying to protect a combo at range. Not to mention, it one of very few weapons that can contest snipers at range, if anything else but to force them on to darwins.
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Hitscan classes that are basically aimbotting, a spy with mind control, and projectile classes running 80 different instances of the source engine on a giga-array to calculate the best projectile angles in real-time. On that team, pyro does not need to kill anything. Anything a pyro can do in terms of damage, another class can do better
The argument that shotgun/stock flare is an upgrade in close-range is mitigated by the fact that pyro is normally close to other classes that outscale his own damage at this range, while these classes being safer to do so. The skillset for pyro in competitive is not this damage-dealing class that rivals scout, sniper, and demoman, and his niche is in afterburn and airblasting. The shotgun/flare may prove useful in a small number of engagements where these other classes are dead/not around and could ultimately save your team, but in the long term of a round or even a whole match they don’t come close to how the scorch shot changes the entire situation for the enemy team.
In higher levels of play, you’re even more hard pressed to find a reason to run an alternative to the scorch because your teammates generally have higher DM and are more suited to these situations and can stop them before you would need interfere with shotty/flare. Why would you equip an item that may not even see much light of being used or has an even bigger niche to one that is applicable to almost every situation? The fact that the shotgun, the generalist hitscan for most classes, is being outshined by an unlock for being even more generalist and even game-changing should be the biggest red flag. Just running the scorch shot can easily mitigate close-range fights from happening in the first place by hitting enemy flank members, spies, and damaging the enemy combo, all from safe distance, and ties back into how the game changes just from this one weapon.
So when it comes back into banning the weapon for being annoying, it stems from the overall impact and how much you see the scorch shot and its effects throughout every single game. It’s the overwhelming amount of power on a small-scale that can turn what would be 60-40 or coin toss fights into guaranteed ones and how it can shut down multiple classes in the larger scale. No other pyro secondary, or pyro unlock in general, comes close to the impact the scorch shot has, and not using it in the current whitelist is really just throwing.
and about banning other unlocks if the scorch gets banned, idc lol
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@Frost said in [Forked] Scorch Shot Ban Discussion:
Some examples:
Mad Milk/Jarate, one throw into a teamfight can easily swing itHuh. Not related to why you brought this up, but it’s funny that those things are countered by Pyro. Maybe if there was a pressure for the pyro to pay close attention to these weapons, they would have less time to mindlessy spam, as that spam could punish your entire team with un-reflected jars.
As unhealthy as it is, I think if we start banning weapons cause they are annoying. we’re going to start trimming the whitelist. As @HA-Johnny said, we need data and proof that this weapon is truly game breaking. There hasn’t been much data presented that proves that it clearly breaks the game. I’m starting winter break so I am willing to take some time to write a quick program to parse logs.
What languages are you comfortable with? For my part, I’m planning on using python to gather and parse the logs. If you have some tools to help with that let me know!
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pretty much everything bmpd said is 100% correct
The SS brings something good to the game in the fact that it lights snipers on fire and provides some good additional pressure to hl
The SS is bad for the game because its the easiest thing in the world to use, and the mini-crit+ extended afterburn+ knock up is the actual annoying part of the weapon and is awful for the health of the game. Afaik the only pyro who legitimately used the knock up to the best of its ability this season was Marty, and if more pyros started using it in post ubers/coordinated flank fights you would see even more complaints than there are right now.
The things that SS does good (lighting snipers on fire, explosive jumping) the detonator can do as well, albeit at the cost of more mechanical skill and a small loss of certain spam angles, which is a GOOD thing.
To the point of sidegrades, the SS is a straight upgrade to the shotgun/flare if you are playing in invite. Pyro is a bad class for actually killing things compared to scout/demo/sniper/etc. Meanwhile if you aren’t scorching and the enemy pyro is, your scout/demo/ and especially sniper are going to have much much less space than their counterparts.
The det lets you do all those things above but without the unhealthy parts, i would say keep the SS unbanned if there literally wasn’t already a gun that was just a better designed version. Also ban the darwins along with the SS to make det stronger.
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@HA-Johnny said in [Forked] Scorch Shot Ban Discussion:
What languages are you comfortable with? For my part, I’m planning on using python to gather and parse the logs. If you have some tools to help with that let me know!
I am mostly C/C++, I had a potential idea on how to tackle parsing through log data since my current project uses json data to build scenes/levels for my game.
Funny enough I was actually thinking about how to architect this program in the shower this morning. I think current my plan currently involves on using curl to fetch the data from logs.tf rapidjson to read the data logs.tf api. I have no experience with curl so it should be my first time working with that, but I have a basic idea how rapidjson works. I should be versatile enough to pick up other programming languages. Python was something I was really interested in actually practicing. Most of the extent of python I done was reading/parsing through code and debugging HW assignments for other students.
I’d really love to talk more about this project and my general architecture I am starting to build for it. If you’d want to work in python i’d be happy to swap and give it a shot. Should i reach out on Discord or Steam?
If I happen to get started on this project, and end up doing it in C++. I will most likely open source it on github.
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@Frost said in [Forked] Scorch Shot Ban Discussion:
I am mostly C/C++, I had a potential idea on how to tackle parsing through log data since my current project uses json data to build scenes/levels for my game.
Funny enough I was actually thinking about how to architect this program in the shower this morning. I think current my plan currently involves on using curl to fetch the data from logs.tf rapidjson to read the data logs.tf api. I have no experience with curl so it should be my first time working with that, but I have a basic idea how rapidjson works. I should be versatile enough to pick up other programming languages. Python was something I was really interested in actually practicing. Most of the extent of python I done was reading/parsing through code and debugging HW assignments for other students.
I’d really love to talk more about this project and my general architecture I am starting to build for it. If you’d want to work in python i’d be happy to swap and give it a shot. Should i reach out on Discord or Steam?
If I happen to get started on this project, and end up doing it in C++. I will most likely open source it on github.
Python is usually used for this kind of data processing, but if you want to save yourself some time and you’re familiar with this kind of architecture, you might be interested in multithreading the data gathering and processing. OpenMP and the C++ standard library are both fine for this task, but I would probably learn Python before diving into that unless you’re just excited about C++ and want more multithreading experience.
If you’re curious feel free to dm me on discord.
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I’m just going to say this now so that I won’t be saying this in direct response to however the data turns out.
It is important to have this sort of data to draw more encompassing conclusions and to get an idea of how broken or unfair a weapon is. I support the notion that this should be involved with making decisions on the state of a weapon in competitive play. That being said, I feel as if the sheer statistical aspect is being used as somewhat of a scapegoat in this case.
I say this, as it seems to me like the defense of the weapon has turned into a case of: Look at the numbers, it’s not unbalanced nor harmful to the scene!!!I do not feel like statistics, whether they support the scorch being fair or unfair, are an adequate response to concerns with the weapon. It seems to me, as if the statistical aspect is being used as a way to generalize concerns with the weapon into a single category, and to displace any legitimacy of an argument being made for the weapon being banned. I believe this to show a fundamental issue with how the community approaches bans.
I believe that this has been seen with other weapons in the past, where weapons, such as the soda popper, are only banned if they are being actively abused by top players.
People bring up theory and concerns with the balance of these weapons, and it turns into a case of:
If I don’t see it with my own two eyes and sheer statistical data, I refuse to believe that it’s unbalanced. This leads to needless delays, purely due to a refusal to compromise from personal viewpoints.I believe this to be representative of a certain tendency to avoid innovation or meaningful change when it comes to weapons, maps, and other competitive standards.
There will not always be statistics to prove or disprove something, and something does not always need to actively be being abused to be an issue worth resolving.
Map changes should not only be occurring when maps are brought up as being flawed. Innovation should happen on it’s own, and not when a few big names have to tell you that something should change.I think it’s important to have these statistics, however it should not be an entire basis of an argument. It should be used to support a conclusion, rather than to be a conclusion to an argument in it’s own right. I say this, as meaningful discussion is in my opinion slowing down as a direct result of this project.
The statistical argument may indeed resolve arguments that state that the weapon is annoying/unbalanced, but development of this project should not prevent the other points from being discussed.
If it was being used to support a fair and truthful conclusion, I believe that we would be seeing more back and forth discussion before the statistics are collected. This is what leads me to conclude that the project is entirely reactive, and will not lead to a meaningful resolution.The developmental aspect for instance, has to be seen with two eyes and theory; or an expansion of the project to every div get an idea of the influence the weapon has on the class outside of invite. (where I fully believe that the concerns with the weapon are more relevant as I have argued for reasons stated beforehand)
I do not see how the project, in it’s current discussed state, is relevant to the argument I am making. I feel like it is very negligent to use the project as a means to avoid responding to it while focusing on the sheer balance aspect of it.
If an argument in defense of the weapon is to be made, it should be all encompassing, and not selective.As I have said in my prior post, I think it’s time that we revisit the whitelist, and work our way up from there. I believe this to be the best way to attempt to correct the course of innovation and balance in the scene.
That being said, I have in my opinion offered all that I can, and do not wish to discuss this further unless I am needed to directly defend my reasoning. I do not intend this as a post to stir up drama.Edit: Also sorry if it seems like I’m being very harsh or rude, I don’t mean it towards anyone in specific.
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@Bliztank I’m not sure I’ve seen someone claim that the stats and data would be the the entire basis of an argument, maybe I missed that? Edit: Since you don’t want to point anyone I retract my rhetorical question.
For me, I just think it’s interesting, and maybe can be helpful in informing decisions.
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@HA-Johnny
It’s more so me jumping the gun a bit and trying to keep momentum with the spirit of change, to avoid having the discussion stagnate in the meantime. I also don’t want the discussion to end up being held back by the statistics, so I wished to voice my concerns on the matter ahead of time.
I feel like if I was to voice my concerns after the matter, it’d only appear as attempting to discredit the results no matter the outcome.
So I’d rather tackle the hypotheticals and what I see to be the larger problems now, rather than after the matter with the benefit of hindsight.
I’ll admit I may be wrong in doing so, I just really want to see this sort of change last and to begin to transfer to other instances. -
@Bliztank I respect that. I’m just motivated by personal curiosity. That’s why I made the other thread, since I felt that talking about stats/metrics would distract from this one. If, in satisfying my curiosities, I can provide something that’s helpful, that’s cool. If not, that’s also cool. Whether it’s helpful isn’t up to me!
Anyway, to hopefully re-rerail the convo: I haven’t provided any opinions on the ban because I don’t really have one right now. If I HAD to choose, I’d probably ban it, but that’s just because I am a believer in the secondaries, like jetpack and panic attack, and I would love to see more experimentation with these weapons. Then again, maybe there’s been plenty of experimentation and I’m just not aware of it all. Then again, I think the weapon presents a lot of opportunities for fun and exciting tactics, such as double-axtinguishing heavier classes using the second hit to restart afterburn.
Also, a thought on the weapon being low-risk: I believe a big contributor to that is not because of the scorch shot, but because of the degreaser, as well as the banning of the jar weapons. The less the pyro has to worry about reflecting things in the moment, the more time they have to spam scorch shot without much risk. The fast deploy speed of the degreaser lets you spam a secondary while have fast access to airblast and flames in order to react to a threat. And if the Jars were unbanned, I think there would be a HUGE pressure on pyros to reflect those consistently, otherwise their team will suffer greatly. Degreaser helps with reflecting jars, but sometime’s it’s much easier to handle positioning for those reflects when you are already holding the flamethrower out.
Basically, pyro has extra time resources moment to moment when using degreaser, and when there is not a threat of a jar. Those resources can be used to spam scorch shot. Whether we should ban degreaser or unban the jars is a different topic, but tangentially related since there seems to be concern about low-risk high-reward gameplay. If we lock the other items in place and consider SS in a vacuum, then I can certainly see why it has that association of low-risk high reward.
But that’s just me, maybe the weapon is naturally low risk. I’m just trying to see it outside of the vacuum.
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@HA-Johnny
I think relatively speaking, we’re going to see a lot less value out of a reliance on the switch speed with other secondaries. I touched upon the degreaser a bit in my second post, which I concur also plays into the issue.
I think that the relative reliance on the degreaser’s switch speed is an issue, however I think that it’s only that unfair when combined with the scorch shot. I think that the degreaser promotes interesting play. The more one uses it, the more they are going to become reliant on the speed for combo plays and the extra saved time.
I’d argue that you’d even see more synergy with stock while running the detonator, if not used entirely for a spam role, at which it is much less potent and requires more mechanical investment than the scorch.
The degreaser gives an increase in potential mechanical ability, while somewhat lessening the importance of sense related functions, which can result in you developing less as a player in the long term. This creates an interesting dynamic between the weapons. That being said, I believe the presence of the scorch serves to destroy this dynamic. I also believe that there is not enough conscious thought put into primary choice.
Without a secondary as spammable as the scorch, there is a lot more punishment for a lot less reward if you end up baiting your team by attempting to secondary spam.I wouldn’t call it unreasonable to call the degreaser a problematic weapon given it’s influence on past metas in addition to the current one. That being said, I believe that it genuinely is not an issue outside of when combined with the scorch shot currently. I think that a ban on the degreaser would needlessly restrict the playstyle options pyro has and weaken the class a bit too much from a mechanical standpoint, but that is a topic for another day.
I do hope that going forward we see a bit less reliance on the degreaser, and I think that a scorch shot ban will help lead towards a healthy and natural progression from this point.I’m going to maintain that the scorch teaches poor mechanics compared to the other secondary options due to all of the usages it provides. If a player learning the class is relatively able to do everything, then I do not think they will truly learn nor master anything.
For this reason, I think that banning the scorch shot will be beneficial.also +rep for giving a shoutout to the jetpack, I love that weapon for specific points