Originally Posted by Niroz
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"Awakened is under Raid Suspension for the next 10 days for breaking the posted rules that are in place for ToV when on 12/19 an Awakened member (Hjial) was manipulating his game to increase his running speed to levels faster than SoW during an FTE race in Temple of Veeshan to secure an FTE on Vulak."
I assume the rule being broken is:
"Spirit of Wolf is the only movement speed buff that is allowed during the FTE race."
Of course, alt tabbing isn't a buff, but we'll go ahead and lump it under this category since clearly, that's what was done to warrant the raid suspension (judging by the words used in the ruling and what is posted for ToV FTE racing). Of course, the problem with this is, doesn't strafing buffed with SoW move you faster than just SoW? Yes, yes it does. So do we now suspend everyone who has ever strafed during a FTE run?
Moving forward, let's talk about why alt-tabbing during jumping is advantageous. This will be redundant, but will expand a bit on what is actually happening and why the actual outcome of it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to reasonably enforce.
When you are in the jumping forward state, you move slightly faster than simply running. When your frame rate is lower, you stay in the jumping state longer than you do at higher frame rates. When the game client is not focused, resources normally allocated to the client are significantly reduced, thus lowering the frame rate of the game to single and teen digits.
So what kind of ruling and enforcement can you put into place to prevent this advantage? I suppose you could force FTE runners to Fraps their runs to prove they are not alt tabbing or unfocusing their client. However, that only proves that they are not using either of those methods to achieve low FPS during jumps. What about those who simply FTE at lower FPS using the built in max FPS settings for example? You could force FTE runners to Fraps their runs with their "Max FPS client settings" shown. That of course would not only be silly, but would only prove that they are not using the built in client settings to manipulate their FPS. One can simply underclock their GPU/CPU or have multiple processes running in the background to get the desired lowered FPS. This also means that disabling Windowed Mode is not a solution.
Now you can argue that having significantly lowered FPS only during the jump is much more advantageous than permanently running at low FPS. In fact, I'd reckon it is nearly impossible to competitively run a FTE race at single to teen digits FPS. However, I can see running a race at 20-30FPS being much more manageable while still providing nearly the same benefit as jumping in the alt tab state.
I suppose you could try enforcing some sort of FPS minimum requirement, but now you are dipping into hardware requirements to compete (otherwise, runners can state they're utilizing less than desirable hardware). You then have to come up with a system to enforce this rule - such as again, runners recording their runs with FPS being displayed or having other runners submit recordings of the accused. I don't see the volunteer staff wanting to allocate - or hell, even having the resources to reviewing a multitude FTE videos every time there's a ToV race. Not to mention dealing with the excuses (desyncing, low FPS spike due to x, etc).
You could ban jumping on these FTE runs, but then you put small races at a significant disadvantage when it comes to many of the routes in ToV with uneven terrain. I suppose a smarter solution if you were to go this route is to only allow jumping when there is an obstacle. However, that just pushes the door back open to low FPS jumping not to mention the amount of lawyering on what is considered an obstacle.
In the end, I really don't see a reasonable solution to this. Without a way to reasonably enforce a rule to prevent low fps jumping, there will most likely be racers continuing to utilize this method to gain an edge.
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01-20-2017, 02:33 PM
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