What is spam really?

[Zero]

Is spam just someones opinion?

[Vania]

Spamming is when you fire without a specific target.

There's dumb spam like a loopy keeping the "F" pressed.
There's smart spam that involves some sort of pattern, where you keep firing at zones enemy planes are likely to cross.

Either way its a repetitive and boring mechanic. <- This is someone's opinion.

[[Y]]

Spam is:
-a canned meat made largely from pork
-unwanted or junk e-mail
-a popular Monty Python sketch, first televised in 1970
-Spamming, in the context of computer games, refers to the rapid, repeated use of the same item or action (this one might help you the most)
-a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation

It's not someone's opinion. Its a term invented to refer to one of the above things.


I fear the infraction hammer, so I'll just let Beagle do the honors of posting a picture of a can of Spam.

[Zero]

Yea but what about strategically placed spam, tyr hit me with epic off screen nades a couple of times

[[Y]]

What ABOUT strategically placed spam? It's strategic, and it's still spam. I don't get what you're trying to say.

[TomBRowkaH]

To me, spam is when you fire at areas on the map instead of people. Alternatively, spamming could also be described as just hold down the fire button, but that doesn't really work in altitude since you run out of ammo pretty quick.

There is "spamming" of various kinds in just about every single video game ever, except for something like an exploration based game where you never fight stuff, or one of those puzzle games like Portal. Some video games are ONLY spam, like Diablo 2 (I loved this game, not dissing it at all). I'm not a big FPS fan, but in my experience all involve spamming of some kind, unless theres a very stringent ammo restriction. Even still it's usually advantageous to shoot around corners if you think your enemy might be approaching.

In altitude, the problem is not the game, but the maps and number of players on each team. You know the maps I'm talking about, Lost City and Hills being some of the most obvious offenders. Ever played a 7v7 on Lost City? That is TOO much spam. Also, neutral bomb maps suck for the most part. All the action is restricted to the area around the bomb, and the rest of the map is almost pointless.

Think about core, which is a map everyone seems to like (me too).. most of the strategy revolves around spamming the middle. The bottom portion of the map plays little to no role unless you're running away, or you are really dumb and take the bomb down there to kill the pointless turrets.

[Loli.ta]

I think of spam as a repeated set of attacks that had no intention of actually hitting something / hopes a certain repeated attack will successfully hit.

[Beagle]

They have spam in Afghanistan, I hear. I don't think they run out and complain when they get pinned by supressing fire, but then, I've never been there. There might be a committee.

Anyway, anything and everything will be used against you as a personal attack when someone who is a bad sport is losing to you. Sniping is overpowered, Dogfighter is overpowered, Reverse is a gimmick, my lag gives me all the advantages, Biplane is bull, Repair Drone is lame, Heavy Armour is lame, Flex Wings is broken and lame, etcetera etcetera. Spamming is no different. Call it blind-firing and all the stigma of the term goes away.

Don't let any of it phase you, just people mad at losing is all.

[Ferret]

Originally Posted by Beagle

They have spam in Afghanistan, I hear. I don't think they run out and complain when they get pinned by supressing fire, but then, I've never been there. There might be a committee.

I will never understand this. "Life isn't fair, so neither should any video game, ever?" Why not just make every video game about paying your taxes until you die?

"And I don't think anyone in Afganistan runs to their friend who happens to be a moderator and begs to get unbanned."

[Vania]

Spam is often a problem in games. Not so much in altitude cause your energy runs out.
As someone pointed its the maps that define how effective spam is.
Maps where spam is very effective are considered the worst by experienced players, and favored by beginners since it allows them to get some easy kills.

[as red as black]

spam is something you go on the forums to complain about when you have nothing else to complain about.

There is no such thing as spam.

Case study: Lost City

Throwing crap over the middle isn't really spam, it's cover fire so the other team can't go over it and so the other team can't lob **** over the middle.

It only becomes spam when you get hit by lobbed **** in question and rage.

Case Study: Cave

Lobbing crap in the middle controls the map.

When you get hit by lobbed crap in question, then call it spam and bitch about it on the forums.

------------

As stated before, you can't really spam in altitude because there's an energy limit. Spam is playing mortal kombat and pressing the kick button as fast as you can. you can't really do that in alititude.

[Beagle]

Originally Posted by Ferret

I will never understand this. "Life isn't fair, so neither should any video game, ever?" Why not just make every video game about paying your taxes until you die?

Well, the point of the analogy was that spam has its place as a tactic, not as something to be complained about.

I guess when your identity is based on trolling, any post will do for your fix, Ferret? :3

[nesnl]

Originally Posted by Beagle

Well, the point of the analogy was that spam has its place as a tactic, not as something to be complained about.

I guess when your identity is based on trolling, any post will do for your fix, Ferret? :3

I think ferret has a valid point. The idea is that this is a video game and that we can change whatever we want, unlike in real life. Although spam is part of the game and is a legitimate "tactic," I think that ideally we would eliminate it as much as possible from the game. I think although your analogy has a point, it would probably confuse a lot of players into thinking it actually makes sense, to which they would then be more likely to accept spam. It is like the arguments of people who say "Biplanes are more agile than Bombers in real life so therefore it should be that way in game," which is again an argument based on the idea that this game is supposed to be life like. I realize this is a thread about what spam actually is defined as, but it has degenerated into a discussion about the merits of spam.

[Phenoca]

Originally Posted by Zero

strategically placed spam,

... Not!

xD

[Sarah Palin]

Spam is the statistically likely field of fire of an enemy plane.

If you fly into a "kill zone" then you will get spammed, that is, the enemy will be able to kill you with very little effort. In dogfighting or when tailing another plane, staying out of the enemy's kill zone is one of the most crucial factors.

Each build of each plane has a different killzone, but when you don't know what build your enemy has it's better to be safe than sorry. These are the areas I avoid on each plane (drawing is to scale):



When I play Alti I have the attitude that if I fly into these zones, or if another player manages to blindside me and get me into one of their zones, then I deserve to die. Doesn't matter if it's a Loopy who got on my tail, or a Biplane who rounded a corner on me, or if I accidentally flew into the open and let a Miranda draw a bead on me, etc.

A biplane may spam me with his machinegun but it's my fault for waltzing into his spam zone.


What Tom calls "firing at areas of the map instead of people" isn't spam, it's covering or suppressing fire. I think indirect fire is a valuable part of the game because it sets a premium on teamwork to dislodge the enemy plane (usually by flanking him, for example charging him from multiple angles in Core). Indirect fire will only kill you if you waltz into it, i.e. if you have no clue how to fight it and deserve to lose.

In general people overreact to graphics and underreact to threats. They run away from graphics of bullets that have little or no chance of hitting them, and they tend to underreact to being in an enemy's kill zone when no bullets are flying (but when, in real life, your cockpit would be beeping and the "Missile Lock" light would be on). Those people are usually easy to kill. Then they come on the forums and whine about instadeath

[tyr]

Looks like for a lot of people, spam in altitude is firing without a specific target, as Vania said.
Then, I pretty much never spam. (Well, everyone knows that already, I Spam, not spam)

Each time I fire stuff offscreen, I know 85% of the time if it will hit or not at the moment of pressing f.

[Zero]

Originally Posted by Sarah Palin

nice drawing, u have 2 much time on ur hands tho =p

[nesnl]

Sarah,

You say you drew the drawing to scale, but if you were to account for remote mine I think you would have to draw the square in the backside of the explodet covering basically the entire drawing you made including all the other planes.

[[Y]]

And the front kill-zone of the whale needs to be as thick as the box behind it. Whale rocket has an AoE.

[tyr]

Originally Posted by [Y]

And the front kill-zone of the whale needs to be as thick as the box behind it. Whale rocket has an AoE.

translation :
And the front kill-zone of the explodet needs to be as thick as the box behind it. Explodet rocket has an AoE.

[[Y]]

Whoops. Need to remember that not everyone knows what a whale is.

[hurripilot]

For me, the terms "Suppressing fire" and "spam" are not the same. Suppressing fire is done for the good of the team, not the good of the ratio. It's used either to clear a path for your bomber, or to stop their bomber. It has two purposes : To restrict the area in which the enemy can move, and to reduce the effectiveness of the enemy defense/attack by whittling down their number of players. Suppressing fire is not an individual act in an attempt to gain kills, it's used to further the team's goals and limit the enemy's mobility.

Spam, on the other hand, is a selfish act, usually (but by no means exclusively) undertaken by Bomber pilots. Its only aim is to farm kills with minimal effort for the pilot. The spammer will often continue to camp a certain area and spam it throughout the game, whether or not the pilot's team needs his/her fire elsewhere.

tl;dr - Suppressing fire is a team tactic, spamming is whoring

Just my HO

[Phenoca]

Originally Posted by Zero

nice drawing,

Indeed!

Tsk, tsk... You should also draw a line behind the Randa

Originally Posted by tyr

translation :

Thanks

[Sarah Palin]

Originally Posted by nesnl

Sarah,

You say you drew the drawing to scale, but if you were to account for remote mine I think you would have to draw the square in the backside of the explodet covering basically the entire drawing you made including all the other planes.

This diagram is for dogfighting.. when I'm close to the whale the only really dangerous zone is that square on the backside, where the whale can pull the poop-n-detonate trick. If you stay to the side or back far enough, you can usually juke mines, even remote mines sometimes.

[[FN]MONXY FIST]

Originally Posted by Sarah Palin

This diagram is for dogfighting.. when I'm close to the whale the only really dangerous zone is that square on the backside, where the whale can pull the poop-n-detonate trick. If you stay to the side or back far enough, you can usually juke mines, even remote mines sometimes.

Your really funny.

[Reach]

the plot thickens

[Beagle]

Originally Posted by Reach

the plot thickens

No it doesn't. The plot hasn't thickened at all.

[Phenoca]

Originally Posted by Beagle

No it doesn't. The plot hasn't thickened at all.

Yes, but I've detected trace amounts of flour and cornstarch... There appears to be a source!

Remember, explodets have to resurface for air, and that's when we can attack.

Actually, can't you just run forever in a 1v1? Are there any rules about this? Because I'd much rather run and survive than attack and be roasted.

[Zero]

Originally Posted by Phenoca

Yes, but I've detected trace amounts of flour and cornstarch... There appears to be a source!

Remember, explodets have to resurface for air, and that's when we can attack.

Actually, can't you just run forever in a 1v1? Are there any rules about this? Because I'd much rather run and survive than attack and be roasted.

wtf are u talking about

[[Y]]

yeah i don't know either



+



=

THICKENING PLOT

[Beagle]

Originally Posted by [Y]

can we all agree that the question has been resolved and that there is no need for this thread to be open?

Why the obsession with closing threads? If no more discussion is necessary, the thread will naturally fall off the front page. If more discussion IS necessary, we'll have to make a new thread for it. Closing threads is for when things get out of hand and its become a negative point of discussion, not for when you want to decide if discussion is over for the entire board.

[Zero]

Originally Posted by [Y]

can we all agree that the question has been resolved and that there is no need for this thread to be open?

Backseat mod FTW

Yea so about spam....y cant we do it?

[[Y]]

Who said you can't do it?

[Carbon]

the reason that there is spam is that we can shoot farther than we can see, and some projectiles move rather slow. If we were able to have higher resolutions there would be less spam.

As it stands if you aren't doing predictive firing (spam to some) you are less likely to get kills

[Smushface]

So spam exists, it sucks, and ideally we find some way to reduce it without drastically altering the gameplay. To clarify, I'm defining spam as a series of low-probability shots to an area suspected to having a target(s).

My ideas so far:

-Change the ratio of plane/projectiles to official map.
pros: Ability already currently exists, would be able to see planes and incoming projectiles from farther away.
cons: Makes seeing stuff harder especially for people with smaller / low res screens, makes it harder to sneak around.

-Reduce the range of all projectiles
pros: lowers effectiveness of aiming at offscreen areas
cons: makes it harder to chase down planes

[Kuja900]

Spam is definitely at the bottom of my list of game play problems, it really is not an issue imo.

[STACK]

The only people who complain about spam and other BS are just raged because they are getting killed. This is not an issue. People complain about everything. I was told today that stalling is overpowered by some time anchoring noob. He was warping all over the damn place so I stalled to pewpew him on my loopy and he says omfg stalling is so imba.... lol. He was serious too, got pretty raged.

[Pieface]

I know Vi has already said this a bunch of times, but this is one of the reasons why the New England Servers are set to a plane scale of 95 and a view scale of 110. Having this small difference really helps in that you have another split second to see where something is coming from and dodge it if possible. I know people don't like the idea of using anything but the default settings, but I'd really recommend playing with this a couple of games and seeing what a difference it can make.

I personally would support changing the Proleague settings to 95/110 100%.

[nesnl]

The only problem is that by setting the server to 95/110 it creates weird graphic distortion and it often hurts my eyes after a while because of that. I am not sure if that can be fixed, but I can tell you the game does not like to be at that setting.

[tgleaf]

Originally Posted by STACK

The only people who complain about spam and other BS are just raged because they are getting killed. This is not an issue. People complain about everything. I was told today that stalling is overpowered by some time anchoring noob. He was warping all over the damn place so I stalled to pewpew him on my loopy and he says omfg stalling is so imba.... lol. He was serious too, got pretty raged.

lol about the stalling complaint! I agree with STACK. You can complain about anything if it affects you personally. I see explodets and mirandas "spamming" all the time, and some of them get upset when a loopy is doing the same thing. (This is not a rant on explos or randas, just a comment that all planes are capable of it.) Yes, there is a difference because loopies can track, but the spamming issue seems blown out of proportion. Learn to avoid it, or don't play on servers with 10 double-fire loopies.