[?] Spades hacking? - Page 175

On June 06 2012 02:30 confusedcrib wrote:
First off I want to say that my opinion is in no way reflective of the rest of Team Liquid's or its staff. I went through three of the games but I wanted to do things a little bit differently than everyone else. I've tried to stay out of this to see if anyone can say anything conclusive, but so far it looks like very little has been changed. First of all, I went backwards through the games, thinking that the odds are that, if hacking, he would get lazier over time at covering up (although there seems to be more evidence in earlier games for whatever reason?). Another good reason to do this is that I imagine most of the analysis time has been spent on the earlier replays.

Second, rather than focus only on lucky coincidences, I focused on big mistakes that, if map hacking, a pro player should have never made. Here are my results:

Shattered Temple

• Spades let's Lucifron's hellion poke all of the way up his ramp rather than pre spreading marines at the choke (something most players do anyways)
  
  
• Spades doesn't really react to Lucifron's air build, not getting a reactor starport and skimping on vikings,
  
  
• Spades was really sloppy with the execution of his first push. He almost lost his raven and took plenty of free tank shots
  
  
• At one point Spades looks into the fog of war, I'm confused about whether or not this debunks the thing entirely, as if he had a mod shouldn't we not ever see him do that?
  
  
• He loses an entire dropship without ever reacting
  
  
• He's not prepared for Lucifron's low ground tank attack, it seems to catch Spades completely off guard
  
  
• At one point Lucifron drops a tank onto the highground in the middle of the map, why wouldn't Spades move his tanks back faster? Technically if he was using a map hack he would have seen it right away anyways since he happened to be looking there.
  
  

Daybreak

• Spades seems to spam a lot when opening, he doesn't seem to be watching for his opponents strategy.
  
  
• Okay this part is kind of weird, he sends all of his marines to kill an SCV after it had already gone through a xel'naga. Here's the picture
  
  
  
  This is either a delayed reaction to seeing the SCV run by the first tower, or a map hack and Spades is just noticing the SCV late. I find it more likely that it's just a delayed reaction. If it was a map hack why wouldn't he put marines at his third to block the scout faster? Plus Spades doesn't even notice when it goes to the Xel'naga rather than his third base
  
  
• The scan is a little weird, but if I were scanning to see production, I probably would have scanned a little further to the right, thus seeing just as much stuff. It's hard to land a scan in Lucifron's base at this point and not see everything.
  
  
• When Lucifron's army is heading south, Spades doesn't notice in time to save his marine that was scouting
  
  
• Why would Spades scan Lucifron's army so much?
  
  
• During the actual engagements, Spades loses his army by Lucifron's third multiple times, not really knowing how much Lucifron is committing to breaking the contain there.
  
  

Tal'darim

• The camera locks over an SCV for a second which is kind of weird, but it's quite possible he looked at it for a second before giving minimap commands.
  
  
• He looks at the fog of war at 7:14 (again I'm unsure whether or not this completely rids him of guilt, since if he's using a camera lock shouldn't we never ever see this?).
  
  
• Scan at 9:30, again Lucifron makes it hard to not see everything with one scan.
  
  
• Spades doesn't even see Lucifron's marine coming to take xel'naga until it starts attacking him.
  
  
• @13:17 Spades again looks at fog of war.
  
  
• Moving his hellion to the watchtower at the exact moment of a push is kind of lucky, but you can see from rallying to his base that he's beginning to get concerned about a counter. To be honest when you have such a nice contain like that, it makes sense to be prepared for a counter.
  
  
• Why is he not more prepared for the initial doom drop to his main?
  
  
• Why is he not more prepared for the 20 min attack on third?
  
  
• Why not put vikings in better positioning to stop doom drops in the main? This seems like something someone would do who wasn't even map hacking
  
  
• @ 26 it is weird how he just decided that lucifron isn't going for his main anymore, but this turns out to be a bad decision later anyways as Lucifron attacks it again.
  
  
• The weirdest moment of the game is scanning just in time to see a doom drop at 33 minutes, but he still loses his third base to another attack that he should have known was coming.
  
  
• If he had known how spread out Lucifron was, why wouldn't he have dropped or harassed any of the bases?
  
  

All in all, I find it really hard to conclude that Spades was cheating. I never noticed any weird camera locking or sudden stops of him spamming to go look at something. To be honest, Spades makes so many mistakes that if he was map hacking, he'd have to be one of the worst players in the world to still mess up so badly.

The pro gamers in this thread are much more knowledgeable than me, you should obviously count their opinion as higher than my own. I just wanted to do a blind run through of the games without any prior bias and report on what I found. To be honest, I'm sort of baffled as to how the OP was able to watch the games and be so certain of map hacking in the first place.

Again, my opinion in no way reflects that of TeamLiquid or the rest of its staff.

I would also like to state again that I was watching for mistakes that a map hacker shouldn't have made rather then looking for proof that he was map hacking.

On June 06 2012 02:30 confusedcrib wrote:
First off I want to say that my opinion is in no way reflective of the rest of Team Liquid's or its staff. I went through three of the games but I wanted to do things a little bit differently than everyone else. I've tried to stay out of this to see if anyone can say anything conclusive, but so far it looks like very little has been changed. First of all, I went backwards through the games, thinking that the odds are that, if hacking, he would get lazier over time at covering up (although there seems to be more evidence in earlier games for whatever reason?). Another good reason to do this is that I imagine most of the analysis time has been spent on the earlier replays.

Second, rather than focus only on lucky coincidences, I focused on big mistakes that, if map hacking, a pro player should have never made. Here are my results:

Shattered Temple

• Spades let's Lucifron's hellion poke all of the way up his ramp rather than pre spreading marines at the choke (something most players do anyways)
  
  
• Spades doesn't really react to Lucifron's air build, not getting a reactor starport and skimping on vikings,
  
  
• Spades was really sloppy with the execution of his first push. He almost lost his raven and took plenty of free tank shots
  
  
• At one point Spades looks into the fog of war, I'm confused about whether or not this debunks the thing entirely, as if he had a mod shouldn't we not ever see him do that?
  
  
• He loses an entire dropship without ever reacting
  
  
• He's not prepared for Lucifron's low ground tank attack, it seems to catch Spades completely off guard
  
  
• At one point Lucifron drops a tank onto the highground in the middle of the map, why wouldn't Spades move his tanks back faster? Technically if he was using a map hack he would have seen it right away anyways since he happened to be looking there.
  
  

Daybreak

• Spades seems to spam a lot when opening, he doesn't seem to be watching for his opponents strategy.
  
  
• Okay this part is kind of weird, he sends all of his marines to kill an SCV after it had already gone through a xel'naga. Here's the picture
  
  
  
  This is either a delayed reaction to seeing the SCV run by the first tower, or a map hack and Spades is just noticing the SCV late. I find it more likely that it's just a delayed reaction. If it was a map hack why wouldn't he put marines at his third to block the scout faster? Plus Spades doesn't even notice when it goes to the Xel'naga rather than his third base
  
  
• The scan is a little weird, but if I were scanning to see production, I probably would have scanned a little further to the right, thus seeing just as much stuff. It's hard to land a scan in Lucifron's base at this point and not see everything.
  
  
• When Lucifron's army is heading south, Spades doesn't notice in time to save his marine that was scouting
  
  
• Why would Spades scan Lucifron's army so much?
  
  
• During the actual engagements, Spades loses his army by Lucifron's third multiple times, not really knowing how much Lucifron is committing to breaking the contain there.
  
  

Tal'darim

• The camera locks over an SCV for a second which is kind of weird, but it's quite possible he looked at it for a second before giving minimap commands.
  
  
• He looks at the fog of war at 7:14 (again I'm unsure whether or not this completely rids him of guilt, since if he's using a camera lock shouldn't we never ever see this?).
  
  
• Scan at 9:30, again Lucifron makes it hard to not see everything with one scan.
  
  
• Spades doesn't even see Lucifron's marine coming to take xel'naga until it starts attacking him.
  
  
• @13:17 Spades again looks at fog of war.
  
  
• Moving his hellion to the watchtower at the exact moment of a push is kind of lucky, but you can see from rallying to his base that he's beginning to get concerned about a counter. To be honest when you have such a nice contain like that, it makes sense to be prepared for a counter.
  
  
• Why is he not more prepared for the initial doom drop to his main?
  
  
• Why is he not more prepared for the 20 min attack on third?
  
  
• Why not put vikings in better positioning to stop doom drops in the main? This seems like something someone would do who wasn't even map hacking
  
  
• @ 26 it is weird how he just decided that lucifron isn't going for his main anymore, but this turns out to be a bad decision later anyways as Lucifron attacks it again.
  
  
• The weirdest moment of the game is scanning just in time to see a doom drop at 33 minutes, but he still loses his third base to another attack that he should have known was coming.
  
  
• If he had known how spread out Lucifron was, why wouldn't he have dropped or harassed any of the bases?
  
  

All in all, I find it really hard to conclude that Spades was cheating. I never noticed any weird camera locking or sudden stops of him spamming to go look at something. To be honest, Spades makes so many mistakes that if he was map hacking, he'd have to be one of the worst players in the world to still mess up so badly.

The pro gamers in this thread are much more knowledgeable than me, you should obviously count their opinion as higher than my own. I just wanted to do a blind run through of the games without any prior bias and report on what I found. To be honest, I'm sort of baffled as to how the OP was able to watch the games and be so certain of map hacking in the first place.

Again, my opinion in no way reflects that of TeamLiquid or the rest of its staff.

I would also like to state again that I was watching for mistakes that a map hacker shouldn't have made rather then looking for proof that he was map hacking.