AOE-II Is "stream-sniping" the apex of moral deviation?

[_Mr_St4rk_]

We all now that some behaviors such as lamming, trash talking and so on are still debatable in the community... some tournaments even prevent such things such as lamming, or lamming before minute X, claiming the lucky-element involved..

But if there is one thing that pisses me off is spec-cheating/stream-cheating! Man this is almost like maphacking, what is the point of adquiring an horrendous info advantage vs your opponent by watching his stream, this is obviously abolished in tourneysby enforcing rules such as private games, stream-delay and so on... but i get "stream-cheated" often... and by often i mean on a daily basis by a different number of players, some of them with quite some frequency.. and some don't even bother in hiding it anymore 11 which is a shame...

Note: for the ones who are "lmao st4rk just add a stream delay, i won't, i lose the live interaction with my chat, and i'm not gonna do it.

Let me show you an example of what i'm talking about:
I played a Bengali war vs SongSong! very good player btw!
View attachment 202877

But problem is... i felt i was going quite well... got pretty confident after i killed SongSong scout at 10:06!

Right after that, i started scouting his base... and to my surprise, he was doing a semi bengal fast-castle, almost totally open.. sides wide open, not fully walled... and he had no information till this point other than i had done 2 militias...
Was i going for Scouts? M@A? Archers? how could he knew?

We work with two options now!
1) Clairvoyance
2) SongSong on my chat watching my moves and countering them by actively looking my no-delay stream! (ty chat for the printscreen)

And SongSong supernatural power's work quitewell! he suddenly feels like.. let me make one skirmisher and send EXACTLY at where St4rk is massing up archers!

^^ what a natural talent this guy has man... i envy such instincts... how to even counter that?

He obviously gonna deny it!
He was watching me ofc, such a big fan, and forgot to close my stream.. happens quite often!
But there are other guys who even pause... and spot my sneaking vills (happened to me more than once 11)
vs some players it's quite impossible to "surprise" them...

Why have we fallen that hard? those motherfuckers made me sad...

 

[ahnud]

 

[Influenza]

Hi guys,

I want to end this story here. I really don't want to speak up, but I have something to say:
- He has just started streaming so he doesn't have a lot of experience so it's easy to cause misunderstandings.
- The gameplay issues you list out are very easy to understand when achieved at level 2300+, he even achieved score 2400 with Tatars, that is very normal judgment and handling.
- Finally, before judging anyone, we should have clear evidence, doing so is like insulting a gamer.

 

[HongeyKong]

Socialism man! Theres no such thing as your stream / his stream / your screen / his screen, everything is shared!

 

[Liamsmalley7]

lmao st4rk just add a stream delay

 

[The Bloodless]

Song song is getting a bit of a reputation... Rightfully

 

[DracKeN]

Looks way too suspicious and from a player who has a very recent history of cheating. To be fair, this doesn't have a solution. If you want to cheat in ladder game, you'll be able to vs streamer, or you can use friend to spec.. Banning 1 acc isn't an ultimate solution either. For me it's more surprising that people like Badboy, Mr. Bean are allowed in tournaments and without any restrictions. There's a clear evidence these players used to cheat in games cca. 18 months ago, we know Songsong cheated in a tournament now. And guess what, I'm sure next S-tier will have all of them in brackets as usual.

 

[SouFire]

Song song was kutatoxa on voobly his reputation wasn't great back then, i guess that is why he changed his id, he certainly has great skills but being on you stream while playing you can't be defended from a sportive perspective, sadly there aren't rules outside tournaments, another good reason why we should have either ranked lobbies or at least a black list like in voobly.

 

[Rayne]

Stream delays do kill vibes, at least for me. Doesn’t feel as fun even though I am only a lurker on most when I am on twitch. Poker, chess, some Valorant streams etc. I know Hikaru has refused to do stream delays when suspicious stuff has happened for that reason.

Edit: Actually on topic, nc as they say. I see Influenza is on the job anyhow.

 

[100Dragonstar]

Maybe im jumping on conclusions , but i have seen way too many shady things happening from the
VNS TG community . I have actively been keeping track of most of the streamers from their discord group.

They all sit in a private discord and actively stream their tournament games even have people talking in the back (saw on badboy's stream) , like 2-3 players spectating the game in the same vc as the main guy streaming (who is participating in the tournament)

example - Badboy streaming his pov on his stream when he was playing vs capoch in only land cup and it showed atleast 10-12 other guys sitting in the same voice chat . even if he lost the series it doesnt explain him talking to the other guys in the discord while playing in a tournament , even though i cant understand vietnamese it sure hell looked a lot like that he was being fed info about capoch's play.

Ofc its a TG discord and i expect there to be players wanting to stream the games to other players in that group . But why does the player participating in the tournament sitting in the vc streaming his POV while there are bunch of other guys in the same vc chatting about the game and have the game open in spectator . This shouldn't be allowed when you are playing a tournament .

I could care less about getting stream sniped or spectator sniped in ranked games for made up elo pts
it just adds to the difficulty which i enjoy , but hate to run into the same sort of plays in tournament .

 

[100Dragonstar]

https://youtu.be/pWLlmM2KsJE?t=18415 VOD Proof

https://i.imgur.com/vB8OQlk.png

 

[Shulk]

This shows that tournament rules should be more punishing toward players streaming their POV in a private discord, or make it almost impossible to do so by forcing them to be present in a tournament private discord vocal channel for example. It would be very hard to do it when there's like 200 players for a qualifier but if I take RBW qualifiers for my example, players could be forced to be in it when BO3s are starting.

 

[100Dragonstar]

even did it to riut an year back https://youtu.be/4QT796R17jk?t=4300
https://i.imgur.com/zBhDh06.png. WTF didn't realise it was happening for so long

 

[Huehuecoyotl22]

This shows that tournament rules should be more punishing toward players streaming their POV in a private discord, or make it almost impossible to do so by forcing them to be present in a tournament private discord vocal channel for example. It would be very hard to do it when there's like 200 players for a qualifier but if I take RBW qualifiers for my example, players could be forced to be in it when BO3s are starting.

So you mean an admin listening to every player during the games?
That would require at least 2 admins being there for each match and matches have to be live and can't be played at the same time. (Because if you don't listen to them, they could be online somewhere else on a different account/app and still receive information.)
That would be good, but also is a lot more work and has so far only been possible for a few of the highest-prize pool tournaments.

 

[Shulk]

So you mean an admin listening to every player during the games?
That would require at least 2 admins being there for each match and matches have to be live and can't be played at the same time. (Because if you don't listen to them, they could be online somewhere else on a different account/app and still receive information.)
That would be good, but also is a lot more work and has so far only been possible for a few of the highest-prize pool tournaments.

Yes it's almost impossible to force someone not to cheat but I believe forcing them to be present on an official discord will make it more risky to try cheating. I recognize this solution may not be perfect but it should take the cheaters more efforts to stream their POV. I think tournament organizers should punish extremely hard this kind of behavior by banning for a certain time players having this kind of behaviour in tournaments.

 

[100Dragonstar]

https://i.imgur.com/ZBYsrtn.png Hope playing vs Kasva in RBW qualifiers ( look at badboy and songsong streaming their games in spectate to help him )
https://i.imgur.com/LLWJVpO.png Mr Bean vs Argh
https://i.imgur.com/MokE8I0.png TieuQuy vs Blackheart (songsong sitting in the same lobby feeding info using spectate )
https://i.imgur.com/9HGZKUt.png Bean playing vs Dark in RBW (Badboy and songsong both present in same voice chat )

 

[100Dragonstar]

ok yea this is way worse than i thought 11111 , its so many of these 2k2+ vietnamese players who just sit in a vc and help on random ladder games and also do the same in tournaments .

 

[Socksyy]

Welcome to the champions club​

 

[LockeAoC]

So you mean an admin listening to every player during the games?
That would require at least 2 admins being there for each match and matches have to be live and can't be played at the same time. (Because if you don't listen to them, they could be online somewhere else on a different account/app and still receive information.)
That would be good, but also is a lot more work and has so far only been possible for a few of the highest-prize pool tournaments.

I mean, this is exactly what we did for BOA3.

 

[Huehuecoyotl22]

I mean, this is exactly what we did for BOA3.

Yes, I thought so. But did it also already happen in the qualifier or only start in the group stage?
Because one might say that the qualifier is less important, but in many cases it still can decide about who gets a few $100 (or $1000 in RBWL) and who gets nothing. However, in qualifiers maybe 4 or even 8 admins would be needed for many hours.

 

[Tempires]

Technically MS could already ban Songsong for what he did for RBW qualifications according to code of conduct & community Standards for Xbox. streamsniping / spec cheating would be even more justified reason and many other games do ban people who streamsnipe streamers.

Hopefully tournament admins like @Chrazini are aware of these issues especially when these players played in RBW qualifiers and likely to sign up for future tournaments

 

[TheCapybara]

Yes, I thought so. But did it also already happen in the qualifier or only start in the group stage?
Because one might say that the qualifier is less important, but in many cases it still can decide about who gets a few $100 (or $1000 in RBWL) and who gets nothing. However, in qualifiers maybe 4 or even 8 admins would be needed for many hours.

It only happened for the group stage, for precisely the reasons you're describing. Would be way too much to expect Chrazini and Rorarimbo to manage all of those qualifiers happening at random times alone.

 

[siestes]

So you mean an admin listening to every player during the games?
That would require at least 2 admins being there for each match and matches have to be live and can't be played at the same time. (Because if you don't listen to them, they could be online somewhere else on a different account/app and still receive information.)
That would be good, but also is a lot more work and has so far only been possible for a few of the highest-prize pool tournaments.

if they are on a voice channel on discord at least they can't be on another voice channel on discord (sure they can cheat with another program but at least that makes it a bit more difficult)

 

[IvIaximus]

Apex of moral deviation is picking mirror in game with 42 cvis.
Also, people are cunts. If they wanna cheat, they will find a way to cheat. It is matter of character, not game or streaming.

 

[zShades]

Coming out from nowhere and getting 2k3: RollsRoyce + Hope + Mr.Bean and counting
I never played RR but against the others, it's so hard to have a clean idea about what's happening. I still remember a game vs Bean where he lost the sc to my tc but he managed to sneak 2 ranges in my base and spot my sneaky stable in his base at the same time; i wish i still had the screens Kappa