Ohhaidaremister.

You didn't really read Feyi's and others' posts, did you?

@krakob
oh I did, and they do have "different arguments" but they essentially end up with the same reason behind them. For example.

"If you have to kill 6 of them though you're bound to take some hits. Hits that otherwise wouldn't have been there..
This is also, and for me largely, about players that do have 4 bars, UVed gear, and experience, who still use AT."

So yeah, that argument really boils down to the part that he gets the hits and eventually gets killed by AT. And as I said these people just go and moan on the forums about it.(That's more of an extreme case, most people just voice they're opinion about it there but it's usually based on the fact that they were beat by AT)

Like really, if a player was never beat by AT then I bet they'd never complain about it. And the funny thing is, "all is fair in love and war". That statement holds true because lockdown is technically war.

Feyi-sama have mercy pls

+1 Achys

You just listed the weapons that are broken with AT. Brandishes are meant to be hard because their DPS is trough the roof.
High risk, high reward.

LD currently has no rules, while every competition does.

Depends on what you call rules. Lockdown has plenty of rules. You just don't realize they exists because the server enforces them and there's no element of player choice. Why do weapons deal damage consistently? Why do you have to capture points to win? Why do you have to pay sparks to insta-revive?

Suppose players are given the option of reducing the range of all the wide-swing swords (Flourish, GF, etc.). Would you advocate that everyone must play without the wide range? Would playing with the wide range be hindering competitive gameplay? Basically every Lockdown player owns a weapon with wide range.
Notice the ultimate effect of AT is a pseudo increase in angular range of your weapon. You don't have to aim as accurately because your hitbox can adjust itself over a larger area. According to your logic, that's somehow making the game less competitive.
So a truly competitive Lockdown game would involve people shooting each other with antigua-style guns because the bullets only hit where you're aiming and no where else.

What I don't understand is why people are complaining Lockdown isn't challenging enough and blaming anything other than their own decisions.
Unless you're in T3 lockdown and destroying everyone while wearing full proto gear (weapons and armor) with no trinkets and no UVs, there's always something you can do to make the game more challenging. Namely, handicap yourself.

Let's say Lockdown is a race.
You win most of your races. You see some people are wearing shoes that lets them take larger strides. You do not use those shoes. You say those shoes are making the race "not competitive". You want to race people without those shoes. How would that make it any more of a challenge? If you can beat them with the shoes, you can definitely beat them without.
If you want a challenge, tie some weights to your legs and race. See if you can beat them with 1 kg, 10 kg, etc. Heck if you are so pro, try to beat them while running backwards. Why focus so much on the shoes?

@Auto-Target

Variety is fun :).
I honestly have no idea how people can play the same loadout every game every day and still find it entertaining... to each his own I suppose.

@Auto-Target
Right on the dot there.

@Blueflood
You're right on the dot too o.o

As Auto-Target stated above lockdown does have plenty of rules. You guys are just trying to enforce a another rule which would be of convenience to you. Oh and also, I love how all the guys who go against AT are the guys who have sealed sword(or hammer) or flourish in almost every loadout(and those loadouts are usually the same except with the difference of armour). These weapons already have a wide swing which pretty much doesn't require you to use AT with it. I mean if you manage to miss with a gran faust or flourish at close range you sort of shouldn't be playing this game in the first place(mainly because you basically have to aim in a totally different direction for that to happen). And since I've not seen any of you play in lockdown with a brandish and do as well as you'd do with your wide swing weapons(or even close).

Also illu, no amount of practice will allow you to outperform a guy with a wide swing weapon while you are using a brandish when you're not using AT. Although if you are so confident that you can play well with it then I challenge you to prove it. Record a video of yourself playing with brandish as a main weapon(exclude any wide range weapons) and break 25k(which is the standard for being a good player these days apparently). Actually how about any of you accept this challenge ?

Sure you can call it steroids. If people who don't use steroids can easily outpace those who use them there's no competitive* reason to ban steroids.
People who complain about steroids being bad competitively are those who lose to steroid users.

*Obviously abusing steroids have health issues as well, but then the analogy breaks down.

I've gotten 25k with acheron before so yes it's possible.

I hate AA/AT too...the aa user think they are very good ...and they say I'm a "Noob" but they are using AA...
they have got more odds for more dmg than the /"not AA user"/...

+1 Achys :3

@Seiran

Considering the players you speak of already are the kings of UVs, the only excuse they would have left is "lag."

I'm not saying UVs are bad, I'm just saying that since they have them, it is not an excuse they can use.
I know there's more people besides the geared/rich players that dislike AT, but if you know much about a number of the people on this thread who are whining, it makes up a decent chunk of the anti-AT population.

I'm not implying that most anti-AT players are gear/rich, I'm saying a lot of geared/rich players dislike AT. Two different things.

You know, while the sirlin link is still around, I might as well link to this as well:

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/what-should-be-banned.html

We can't realistically expect OOO to put time in adding an AT ban option when the community can't even agree on it, so let's talk about player-led bans.

The short summary:
A ban must be enforceable, discrete, and warranted.

Is an AT ban enforceable?
- Only if all players are recording their matches (see: "LD Real Players tournament"). But is there any point to doing that in a team game? No. In random lockdown, it's unenforceable and not really worth the effort.
But the OP wanted a built-in ability to ban AT. So for this thread, I will pretend that "yes" we can ban AT via options.

Is an AT ban discrete?
- Yes: it's a matter of whether or not AT or AT Toggle are on.

Is an AT ban warranted?
- This is my point of contention: Is AT too good?
Let's look at a "high tier" setup: Striker skolver, grand flourish, and acheron. Oh no, now if you do a clone vs clone match, the AT user with acheron will just shield cancel and maybe combo you and bam, you're dead.

But wait: What if you swapped out to a gun, like valiance? The AT user still has to run up to you, at which point you can counter with a bullet during the approach and before they can hit you. Counter found.

But what if they're using AT with a gun? AT doesn't lock on if they're walking so this means they need to stand still to shoot. AT also does not lead shots nor take into account bullet speed, so direct strafing (see: striker boost) leads to an AT gunner missing. Counter found?

And finally, AT does not lock on to recon cloak. Counter found!

So there. AT isn't an uncounterable kill-all. In fact, it doesn't even guarantee the extinction of any single playstyle. Even if you're stuck in the 2012 swords-only metagame, timing and footwork can cause an AT user to miss. If you're not willing to accept there are counters by straight virtue of either:

a) not wanting to use guns
b) not wanting to use recon (though from striker skill I've seen, you really don't need to)

...Then you're just being a scrub. What's even the point of trying to discuss 'skill' if you're stuck in the options with a perceived weakness to the AT playstyle?
I mean, the basis of this whole ban-AT argument is that it voids 'skill'? If you're complaining about it at this point, it's like complaining in a fighting game that someone's using 'cheap' attacks by throwing you all the time. In that situation, you think "oh, he's coming in for a throw, so should maybe stop blocking and just hit him before he throws", not "WE SHOULD BAN THROWING BECAUSE I CAN'T BLOCK IT AND IT'S UNFAIR THAT HE CAN WIN BY THROWING WHEN I HAD TO LEARN SPECIAL MOVES ;_;"

Do you make the assumption that someone in a fight is only watching the person they're fighting?

If I'm visible and walking towards an experienced player in a fight, I don't just assume that they will ignore me and think I can safely walk inside their attack range. Changing targets often makes you less predictable in a 1vGroup situation anyway. "Clearly focusing" is an assumption on your part.

If you get hit, is it not your own fault for moving into their attack range when they're in a position to attack?

When I get hit, it is my own fault for not correctly predicting the right timing/direction when people try to approach me, as I use weapons that can outrange theirs (guns, heavy weapons).

I'm sorry, I'm starting to not understand your position here.

What constitutes "realistic" and beyond "realistic" to you? No, better question: What exactly is it about AT that makes you want to ban it in random lockdown?

Is it technically impassable?
Is it that you feel that people "catch up" to your level without the same effort?
Is it for perceived "fairness" for an unofficial competition?

I'm not being sarcastic here, I really do want to understand.

At the very least, I've done everything I've listed as countermeasures to AT-based players (or to be honest, against my standard of "good players") myself. Defensive counter-approach gunning is the staple of my playstyle. I play in a way that raises the importance of timing and prediction more than reflex and directional aim (AT is only directional aim). For the most part, AT issues have been irrelevant for me, with one exception: AT hammer.

...because knowing that a hammer will dash directly towards me is one of my favorite ways to score free hits and instant kills with alchemers.

I love this quote here because it really shows the core of the OP's and feyi's argument.

"The players who invest their money in their gear, and their time in practice.
In other words, the players who feel wronged because other people did not make that investment and turned on easy mode instead."

So essentially in those words, just because someone decided to use a harder method to be strong everyone should follow in his footsteps just because it would be unfair on that person right ?

That's pretty much how the world is, it's unfair. Some people go and work they're way upwards. Some people are just gifted and are naturally good or some just take an easy route. Deal with it. Also, AA is like a 45 degree correction... it's not some sort of aimbot which does 180 degree rotations for them.

"Once you're in range of the dreaded AT asi VH acheron you're in stunlock country."

No, just no. That's way exaggerating it. Pretty sure most people who AT can't even land 3 consistent hits with it. Also it's pretty easy to kill people with AT too... Ever hear of guns ? Ever hear of how to use them effectively in combination of swords ? Pretty solid way of killing AA peeps with a combination of those. Funny thing is, a lot of methods on how to kill an AA user have been listed here. Heck most of you probably knew how to do it. Although you still complain. Why ? Well my take it is because you just complain about your deaths(or lack of skill to pull of the gun tricks).

welp... sort of a long post there. Also,even though I used quotes from your posts feyi. Most parts of this post are directed to everyone.

The AT effectiveness increases range only by aligning your sword perfectly so it would get the maximum range. It basically done the same thing as you without AT except that you had your cursor a bit down the screen. And the range is only what the range of my sword would be really.

I don't get all this rage about AT. It is literally the only thing everyone in the game has access to. Saying it is a broken mechanic in a "competitive PVP game" does make sense, but there are many many other issues which break the competitive play to a far greater extent than mere AT alone, ie UVs, and ping. AT is always there for you to switch on, but what is one to do about ping? Move overseas? Take up residency in a new country? Live next door to the server?

On the list of issues to actually solve ping imbalance and UVs should be on higher priority than AT itself. Is AT alone going to turn a poor player into a "decent" one, performance-wise? Maybe, but the same can be said about UVs and low ping to a greater extent. If you're saying AT benefits low ping, ASI VH players, then shouldn't the other two aspects be addressed first?

What about the players on massive ping? Take away AT now and some of them will be even more disadvantaged. As it is, even with AT, there has been many incidents of such players missing hits, mostly due to a syndrome of "hit target exactly in spot on screen, hit passes through doing no damage" (basically, server registers them as being elsewhere but unfortunately not on the poor attacker's client-side)

Saying people shouldn't use AT is like saying that people who can't aim for whatever reason (due to connection or skills or lag) shouldn't play Lockdown at all. Ever.

If a rather skilled player that doesn't need the aid of Auto Target does in fact choose it use it, then in that scenario it is really a matter of standards. If you don't think they should use it because they can do quite well without it, then you are imposing YOUR standard upon them to not use it. You are in your mind trying to conform them to what you think is right and how things should be done whether you realize it or not. It's the same immature logic as trying to say that if someone doesn't choose the same gear as you do, then they should be ridiculed. Lockdown can have a competitive environment, yes, and it may not feel "balanced" as some choose to use AT and some don't (I am in support of these lobbies spoken of, just not the the removal of AT entirely which is what the OP is about), but in random LD things are going to be random. The only thing different about Guild LD is that teams are chosen beforehand. Otherwise it's still a random environment. Choosing your opponent isn't always an option. And of course, you can't choose your opponent's tactics and standards either. Same as RLD.

During a game, I only see people complain about what the opponent is doing. I never see people complain about their teammate (for that match alone) using AT, toothpick, reving, etc. If you wan't to make it sound like you have legit reasoning behind your complaints, don't only complain when it's hurting you.

EDIT: Fixed typos.

Big ping = lag

So, if I were to gather anything new and insightful from this thread...

That would be, what now? I'm honestly curious, because this discussion has been done to death for years now, yet for some reason the same people keep saying the same things over and over each time this topic comes up.