Modified Skins Cheating?

[swatllama]

Jumper and I had a long discussion about whether using modified skins are cheating. PenguinSnuggles, our mediator, wanted me to upload it here so we can get opinions.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8d30zphzud738cn/ClosingJumper.mp4?dl=0

The text we were responding to...

[7:53:37 PM] (Channel) Jumper: Why should modifying content be forbidden?
Everyone can buy a new PC, a new mouse or a keyboard, because nobody forbids you to do it. Same thing here, everyone can modify whatever they want in the game, especially in an open-source game like Sauerbraten.
So you may ask: Why am I not allowed to use modified skins? There is a thing called advantage. There is two kinds of advantages - legal and illegal.
The first one is when you bought a better, faster and more responsive keyboard or headset.
And a second one is when you installed cheats on your PC and playing with them to win.
In an open-source game you cannot control content modifying, so there is a community to control it. But nowadays the community allows you to use modified skins.
Let's get into it and make a decision - Is modifying content cheating or not?
Someone will say that it's obviously not. However if you will look on it from another side - you will have a different opinion. If you modify your playermodels and make them bright - it will give you unfair advantage over those players who's aren't using bright skins.
Why? Because it deeply affects the gameplay. One player can have a modified player models and another can have standard ones. You don't have a control over it, it's up to the player you're playing with and you can't check what they are using.
But the same situation with cheating. Everyone can download/create cheats and use them because it's an open-sourced game and it gives you the possibility to do this.
But then you would ask:
So you say that any kind of source/content modifications are cheating? No!
Only those which really affect gameplay. For example source modifications such as scoreboard statistics are legal. They don't affect gameplay and they don't help you to kill an enemy. Overall decision is - only and all those modifications which affects the gameplay and helps you to kill an enemy are illegal.
Thank you for reading. Sincerely yours,
Jumper

[Zoocata]

This has been an ongoing pissfit since the beginning of time.

The bottom line is: modifying anything that directly affects gameplay is cheating. Modded maps, deleting trees off capnight, aimbot, wallhack, or other things that make it /easier/ to play is cheating.

Brightskins don't help you aim. They don't let you peek around corners or see their positions on the minimap and they certainly don't give you an unfair advantage. All they do is make things more obvious. A trained eye can see red Ironsnouts just as easily as an untrained eye can see my bright yellow skins.

End of story.

EDIT: I only read about half of this before making this reply. I was under the impression Jumper thought brightskins should be consider cheating. Oops.

[swatllama]

Earlier, he was asserting that it was cheating. He did in the text too.

[star]

Topic says skins, your first sentence says modified maps, I'm confused.

EXPLAAAAAAAAAAAIN!

[swatllama]

Sozzy, Star, typo! We were talking about maps too, but that stuff had absolutely no substance other "It's stupid" from him and "It's fun" from me.

[Zoocata]

Earlier, he was asserting that it was cheating. He did in the text too.

So you say that any kind of source/content modifications are cheating? No!
Only those which really affect gameplay. For example source modifications such as scoreboard statistics are legal. They don't affect gameplay and they don't help you to kill an enemy. Overall decision is - only and all those modifications which affects the gameplay and helps you to kill an enemy are illegal.

I didn't pay too much attention to the text considering who the author was, so I read the first half, then this part. Made an assumption.


And if he does think brightskins are cheating... well have fun being picked across the map by everyone else

[star]

i could go on, but ... NUFF SAID

[Suicizer]

As it takes less time for the human brain to respond on something that clearly differs from the rest of the environment; I do think modifying the original skins to get more frags is cheating.

It nowadays actually isn't necessary anymore as you can overbright players by the use of commands.

Comparing brightskins on  other games to Sauerbraten is a sad business as it fully is integrated in Quake Live for example (you don't need to download any content for it).

Modifying content is generally a lack of respect towards the original creator, especially for a goal like getting more frags.
This can only be justified if the license of the content permits so.

Modifying maps obviously is cheating as others aren't having the very same map (and spreading your version over an identical name as the original map is not the way it should be done).
Make a copy of the map, rename it like putting your name behind the map ("ladder_suicizer" for example) and add your stuff in it if you think you can do it better (as long as the license let's you do so).

[Jawer]

I will be honest and say that I only have other coloured and higher brighted models cause others also have them. I would say that any advantage (no matter how big) you get from using anything apart from the integrated game settings is indeed cheating.
I played without "cheats" for long but hopped on as others asked why i didn't have bright skins yet (nocontext)
An argument against that is that you can vari player models like snout, fixit, cpt canon... and a certain span of fullbrightplayermodels is already given in game. It is already the case that not every player has the same playing circumstances. There's also forceplayermodels and forceteamplayermodels or how the console command for that one is. The pro cheating arguments outweight the contra ones for me in this question.
We are only allowed to modify our player models because it is internally accepted in the community and a non-significant number of people critisize it.

[Buck]

Brightskins don't help you aim. They don't let you peek around corners or see their positions on the minimap and they certainly don't give you an unfair advantage. All they do is make things more obvious. A trained eye can see red Ironsnouts just as easily as an untrained eye can see my bright yellow skins.

End of story.

EDIT: I only read about half of this before making this reply. I was under the impression Jumper thought brightskins should be consider cheating. Oops.

Zoocata, you had the right impression, i think he just changed his mind over time because he realized that it is just part of the game, and was intended for the player to choose the brightness of models to his/her preferences.

[Jumper]

What the fuck Buck? I did not changed my mind and that's the documentation given at the beginning of this topic.... read more carefully please, I told you this like 10 times already. I am saying that modifying the original skins provided by default IS cheating. 

[swatllama]

It was a little presumptious (though understandable) of Buck to think you had changed your mind, because your wording at the end leaves it ambiguous. I think he just didn't listen to the video.

[Buck]

It was a little presumptious (though understandable) of Buck to think you had changed your mind, because your wording at the end leaves it ambiguous. I think he just didn't listen to the video.

idk, all i did was read the mumble chat, i didn't listen to any recording :/ Sorry if I had the wrong idea.

[Skillz]

I feel like this is one of jumpers tricks to make us all cheaters, therefore his cheating isn't bad.. clever.

[greenadiss]

Oops, just found this topic. So, Jumper says modifying skins is cheating? How interesting!

I wonder how people can even compare modified player model skins with modified maps. As Star already mentioned by giving the examples of Quake and Warsow games, it's legal there to use bright skins and by default in Quake you can change colors of the skins to whatever you like though modifying maps is not legal there and everywhere else because you have a different version of the environment which may help you to score flags faster, to see more or to get to some places to which naturally you can't get.

But what about skins in sauer?
By default you can find in sauer Inky models which are very bright and pretty big. So what kind of advantage we get by using bright Snouts, for example, which look as bright as Inky? Every newb who doesn't know about stuff like modifying player model skins can always use Inky and be happy.

So we have:
+ bright Inky by default for newbs
+ modifying colors of skins in the client of the popular game with which even developers compare our lovely sauer
+ bright skins can help you to get faster brain reaction but they can't help you to aim better or to see more than a player who use default skins