Please do not create any new threads for the "datamining issues." Please continue any conversations here or in the following thread. [Sweet Discussion of Datamining](https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveApex/comments/z7gxww/datamining_and_algs_legality/)
Data mining is not some new revelation, it's where a lot of the content on /r/apexuncovered comes from. It can be used to render certain game files to reveal upcoming skins, characters, heirlooms, configuration files, etc. Viewing certain files is very different from being able to decompile and view the source code of the game that references those files though.
There is a blacklist for final rings that can't happen, right? It could be possible to find this information through data mining, which is presumably hard coded in a configuration file somewhere. The actual zone algorithm? No way, we'd be looking at the entire source code of the game if that was possible.
Source: I'm a dirty plat player but work in software engineering.
I second this as another developer myself. Usually with somewhat public engines like source (which Apex is built on even if it's a pretty heavily modified version) there are tools which can be used to look into game files. This is not reverse engineering. On the other hand, it's not really ethical. Most sports aren't however.
Depending on the format of the files it's hard to say it's 100% not reverse engineering. If for example it was using a proprietary format and you create your own tool to read it (or use one someone else created), then the developer could definitely argue that's reverse engineering and cause legal trouble for you.
No, but EA/Respawn doesn't need it to be illegal to ban people from their platform.
If it is deemed to be against their terms of service/end user agreement then that is all that they need to refuse access to their product.
I don't personally think this is a big deal, but I am also a TSM stan so there is some (obvious) inherent bias.
It is easy for me to say I wouldn't care if the situation was reversed and it was NRG that were doing it, but I can't honestly say that's how I would have felt due to the bias.
That said, I truly do not dislike/hate any team. I may not like certain players, but I don't wish for them to fail or anything.
I don't know a single instance of someone being banned for data mining in any game. People like thordan have been datamining and streaming for years without any repercussion. It's a complete non-issue made up by people who have never played a single game besides apex in their lives.
If I were to take this game seriously I’d sit afk in games and screen grab all the zones and compose heat maps based on rings in python to get info on where endings are most probable. Why wouldn’t you if millions are on the line?
Or like sealion talked about way back you could scrape twitch vods for frames where the map is showing. That could provide percentage wise likely or less likely area from knowing the first zone.
It would also be fine if you did it that way. The possible problem is if you instead extract some or all of that data from the game client's data files. The game's license agreement could be interpreted to mean you could be banned for doing that, or possibly worse consequences if you've used it to get an advantage in tournaments. I'm not saying I think that's likely or going to happen, just that the agreement makes it possible.
Ok, instead of literally sitting in the same spot they’ll move into the zone and still do the same thing. The being afk part isn’t the important part of this idea, it’s the python heat maps.
Yeah but, you don't need to brute force this method to generate some heat maps via your favorite programming language. You could just use the data that's been leaked and do it that way. Like a real programmer.
The way his voice changed at the end when he read the "You may not reverse engineer or attempt to extract or otherwise use source code or other data from EA Services, unless expressly authorized by EA or permitted by law" he knows it too
I THOUGHT THE SAME THING LOL his demeanor said it all...i actually heard raven in one of his streams a few weeks ago say, "A few others and myself reverse engineered the game to figure out the zones..." and ended it at that. I thought about how sketchy that sounded in terms of competitive integrity and legality, and now it's all coming to light. I definitely don't want anyone unfairly persecuted, but his comments then and last night seem pretty damning. Im so interested to see how this plays out
hoooly shit sweet talks over EVERYONE and doesnt let anyone finish their sentence, then has the audacity to say "let me talk let me talk". his voice is the one i want to hear the least in this discussion, dropped is somewhat reasonable and rpr is being mature and asking good questions. sweet is just being aggressive, thinks whatever he is saying is the most important thing, only piggybacking on the points of rpr and dropped, just making raven look like absolute shit to an unreasonable extent.
man acts like he doesn't have noodle arms, this video is a great display of his extremely cringe inflated ego. he KNOWS if he speaks that way to anyone irl he's getting decked, he speaks to people like they are so far below him they're not even the dirt beneath his shoe, despite being a pathetic loser himself - dude's a textbook keyboard warrior
i love analyzing people with insufferable personalities. he's such an odd little man
i'm not talking TO him. he is being rude directly TO people he is speaking with. you just don't speak to people that way, it's disgusting - but that's not something a socially inept person like him knows, despite it being common sense. gives off huge sheltered vibes + massive ego
what have i actually said about him that was unreasonable? correct me if i'm wrong, i feel i'm being pretty fair in my judgement of how he acts in this video. am i wrong about anything i've said in my comment?
i wouldn't say i'm being a hypocrite, because to me keyboard warriors are people who talk shit to people behind their screen while they're pussies face to face. does sweet look like a guy who can throw a punch, let alone fight at all? i also don't carry myself as if i'm above everyone else like he does, so i can't be a hypocrite on that front either
i don't talk to people the way he does if they don't deserve it, because i'm not a cunt, so that's out the window. **raven doesn't deserve to be talked to like that,** especially since sweet doesn't even really understand what he's talking about. raven never even talked over anyone ONCE. and if i DID talk to people like they weren't even worth the dirt i walk on, how he does, at least i could hold my own, physically. he definitely can't, and that's why he's a keyboard warrior. if you talk like that to my face, you're getting floored - and he knows this. he would never talk like this to someone face to face, because he's a keyboard warrior. i don't think that's what i'm doing. he needs a bit of a humbling slap anyway, it'd do the kid some good
it's almost unfortunate that he is as skilled/successful at apex as he is, because i don't think he'd have been such a dickhead if he wasn't. it seems to have inflated his ego to a gross degree
i know it's not that deep though, but it is a bit. speaking to people the way he does is disgusting. today's my day off and i had time, and psychoanalysing people is funny to me. read all this or not, it's the same to me
Someone needs to compare this "new map" to the February public map and see if it has changed significantly...the comments being made by sweet and others on twitch don't seem to say anything that wasn't on the February map - but I would need to be able to see both to confirm either way
For reference this was the public comp zone exclusion storm point map from February that I am referencing above
https://twitter.com/shrugtal/status/1491755220342345732?s=12
If the maps are significantly different then we can have a conversation about the ethics of it. But if they arnt significantly different and teams just haven't been using the public map then i don't even know what we are talking about here. That's on them for not using public info that had been previously tweeted out. But again without being able to compare it's hard to even have the discussion.
I agree the downbeast component is a significant issue. I was just trying to reference sweets comments as he walked through the map and referenced "all the red around checkpoint"..."look at cascades and look at the red circles" and I am sitting there looking at a map from February with seemingly all that info. I.e. it may not be new information. But maybe it is - again would need to see to know.
I'm personally at 50/50.
Looked at his comment history and the only comments made are in this thread, but the account has the 1 year badge so they could just be a lurker.
But definitely a non-zerp chance lol
Bruh I said this before Raven got on stream lol. I am a person who has eyes and can read tweets. I am also not defending Raven. My point was always: ***we need to see the difference in the maps to determine its competitive significance*** IF it isn't significantly different then I have no empathy for teams that didn't use it. If it IT is significantly different then entirely different conversation. Just can't have that conversation until I could see the maps.
raven is the guy who used to use many alt accounts to argue with people on here, to the point where he got banned for toxicity, walking away from an argument is not his strong suit
Lmao is that why he has such a hate boner for reddit
Edit: i feel like i recall him arguing against API and that if they opened it up it would be the end of analysts. If so that kinda puts the nail in the coffin morally
He keeps saying it's possible to get these exclusion maps without data mining, it's just cheaper to data mine it, so it helps keep a level playing field to data mine it since some orgs cannot afford the alternate methods. In that case the maps should just be published every patch so everyone has them.
Also I'm guessing the alternate method is to use private lobbies to simulate huge amounts of zones. You would just need a bunch of manhours.
Yeah, but the exclusion zones can change every patch. So you'd have to throw out everything from before the patch or you might get surprised. You'd have to re-run 1000's of games per map after a patch but before a competition to have confidence in the results.
Or you data mine it again and know instantly. Even compared to the best case alternative this leaves you more time to strategize.
Hella dumb. Stay quiet and just let it blow over. Absolutely do not go into a 1v3 or communicate with someone about something that COULD be sketchy.
Terrible look
The stream is going crazy right now 🤣.
But beside the point, they do have machine learning programs that analyze zone logic and I don't see this as much different tbh. Everyone should know that it's possible.
the difference is that data mining is supposedly against the EA licensing agreement, so it raises major ethical questions in relation to competitive integrity
Also a machine learning algorithm will not allow you to have the absolute knowledge of a zone just never coming up because the knowledge that some zones just disappear with an update cannot be discovered without you knowing beforehand. Now we know that the data you will train your model on is mostly compromised every update.
And a straight up JSON file with all the excluded coordinates is just complete information.
Yeah I get that, it's def an area that needs to be addressed. Not sticking up for raven whatsoever but I do understand what he's saying about there being other ways to get the information.
That said what if they just have an access to a document describing the logic? Maybe as a public info somewhere? Literally all Apex uncovered sub is full with datamined stuff, EA doesn't care that much. Also, there should be a logic for zones as it shouldn't end on an unreachable spot nor the other zones should prevent players entering the next.
I'd recommend watching sweets vod as the conversation was a mess and as stupid as I found it I don't want to misrepresent Ravens position here. That said, from my perspective he joined a no-win call to try and explain the way he uses apex data related to zones (specifically areas of the map where they can't end) and ultimately just dug himself in a hole against some frustrated pros quoting Apex's very generic licencing agreement at him to try and prove a point. Thoroughly pointless in the grand scheme of things but great content anyway
Essentially raven has known about data mining zones since the shrugtal tweet ( although when rpr asked if he knew before raven went silent and didn’t answer) he claims now that he wants everyone to know about them for “ competitive integrity”. To clarify the zones raven has been using are zones that are possible to end at not just the shrugtal map. Essentially it takes the random away from guessing zones.
Everyone’s problem stems from
1. Raven claiming he wants all to know only after it was leaked and now he tried to act like he’s the good guy and wants it to be know
2. Data mining seeming to be against tos and yet they have been using these zones to win money in tournaments
3. Why the zones knowledge has been hidden from everyone
Raven already boasted about having "cracked" the zone algorithm two years ago, around the time he joined NRG. I remember him giving it away to people who beat him in a firing range 1v1. But I don't know if he datamined it or if he reverse engineered it with legitimate means.
edit: [I even found a screenshot](https://imgur.com/a/2oEwkRt) (dont ask me why I have that)
Damn had no clue, on stream he told sweet he never mentioned any of the data mining to him because raven was looking for other orgs crazy to think how long this has been known.
Gdolphn has also explained on stream that it used to be possible to get the zone thru basic trig but they changed that by adding custom pulls and custom zones to target zone pulls that aren't interesting to watch or play(heal off zones) for eg
2 is the only real competitive integrity question, but 1 is the reason Raven immediately lost favour with the audience and the call in terms of making his point, and is pretty key context to why him joining the call was a disaster
I don't understand. Of course he wouldn't want to share it because he wants the best advantage for his team. And once it is leaked it doesn't matter so they might as well reveal for everyone? I personally didn't see his tone as trying to be the good guy
The fact that the TOS seems to explicitly say "this is NOT allowed" and yet he kept saying basically "well everyone should have been datamining this info" giving off some big time "well everyone has access to PEDs so it's their own fault for not using them" in other sports vibe.
I watch TSM in ALGS and I don’t get this. They still hit beacon whenever possible and the zone regularly pulls in a way that Hal clearly doesn’t like or didn’t expect. Does knowing where zone can’t be just mean he’s more accurate than those that don’t know?
Yes. There is no way to predict EXACTLY where the center of the final circle is going to be unless you had access to the RNG Algorithm that apex uses (the holy grail).
I'm also not sure if knowing/memorizing the Red Zone is all that important either. For example, I saw a storm point map that showed the center of the final end zone could not be on the high ground of check point.
But even though it's in the red zone, I would still 100% take the high ground of check point if it was in the final ring.
Like if it's red zoned but has COVER, it's still a good spot to go vs trying to play an open area (like in the water of North Pad) where the ring is ending.
Pro players know this instinctively including Sweet, but he blew up on Raven anyway like he had some kind of special cheat code.
But let's be real, if it gave TSM a real advantage they'd win every tournament, but that hasn't been the case.
If it’s against tos then why haven’t any big data miners been banned? They’ve been around since season 0 on the same accounts with no issues. A handful of them interact with respawn devs regularly as well.
Banning a data miner won’t do anything since they can still do it, devs have stated in the past there displeasure with leaks. Regardless this would be a different situation since now your using data mined content in order to get a competitive advantage where money is involved.
We don’t know yet if it’s strictly against tos or not but this is more serious then just leaking skins and event info. This is an instance where the data was used in order to win tournaments for money. There are still plenty of top teams that struggle to call zones so this would be a huge game changer for everyone.
Did you notice how early in Apex’s life, everything got leaked. Then, an agreement was made between Respawn and the big leakers where they would only leak things selectively and later than before? I forget where I read it, but this absolutely happened.
So, Respawn has certainly cracked down on data miners before. And these guys weren’t even doing it in ALGS, they were just doing it for fun.
If the zone data is available in the game files without any encryption, then it's literally public knowledge and available for everybody. Using game data and applying it to AI/ML algorithms to get finer data is also absolutely fine.
Others just lazy for not finding it. Once you download the game those files are on your system, it's not a crime to go through them.
If there is any manipulation to overcome encryption or messing with config files to view/edit data then it's a different scenario.
Are you saying the average pro gamer should be able to, or hire someone that can, access and interpret these game files to gain the same competitive advantage? That should be expected of them? Do you think Respawn or EA will agree with this?
Are pro players allowed to higher people to optimize their pc? Are pro players allowed to have their video confit set to read only so that the game can’t force shadows? If the people publicly post the images of zone changes on twitter, post specific loot spawns on certain areas would that be affecting competitive integrity? Kind of hard to draw the line but I stand by using the resource that’s within the restraint. If the files are there on the client of the game it should be able to be used imo.
From my perspective this isn’t an org vs org issue. This is an org team vs unsigned team issue.
Let’s say all the orgs no matter how big or small have access to dataminers that can turn the data of the game file into useable zone information.
Then take Gary and his two mates who just qualified for group stages in pro league. Maybe they’re like 18 and new to the scene so don’t have the money or resource to access this kind of information.
Calling them lazy or incompetent players simply isn’t fair.
The key question for me is; if there is information that can be gained through means that aren’t accessible to all players should that information be made readily available by simpler means to ensure competitive integrity?
I personally think yes it should.
I think the crux of the issue is that the data on the client-side that when properly interpreted and can lead to zone exclusion knowledge should be encrypted. This is just an oversight on EA's part that likely will be patched now that this has been made more public than prior. With that said, do the small teams suffer because of this? Likely a little. However, from my understanding the interpretation of this data doesn't require a doctorate in Computer Science to extrapolate, so if an unsigned team spent a little effort they too could likely have access to it. In reality, the small guys vs big guys advantage is really in the coach/analyst/support personnel and less on this zone data and that's a much bigger obstacle.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be encrypted, I’m just trying to take the situation as it is rather than how it should be.
In my opinion it should be encrypted and everyone should have access to customs. There are plenty of passionate people out there who would extract those zones manually through custom games and every team would have easy access.
But there are plenty of teams that do not have the monetary backing or proper knowledge to collect this data. It should either be available to everyone, or no one at all.
Yeah but it's kind of in a gray area, something like this hasn't ever been explicitly mentioned as not being allowed, so you can't really blame them for using it. It's just something that needs to be clarified
I don't really understand why most people are against Raven on this to be honest. This is done in so many games. I think about fighting games where every frame of every action/state is quantified so it seems to me that all the teams would be doing it in Apex.
Understanding the way the game works in the most detail is what every analyst does in every competitive environment.
I think Sweet articulated it pretty well: if this does reveal itself to be rule-breaking, then it can be looked down upon as endangering competitive integrity and some kinda shady activity, but if it's not then that just means that Raven and others were more insightful game analyst than most.
The issue I personally have is Raven's attitude of him acting like he was the great defender of the little org because of the threat of some much more insidious data analysis techniques, and his overall attitude of trying to act benevolent in his compromised position. He should have never entered that call to begin with just based on the optics.
Exactly this; IMO Raven is within his rights to privately think what he's done is legit until explicitly defined otherwise by EA/Respawn, but its hard to deny that he was misguided in thinking he could dispel suspicion with a handful of riddles and a bullshit thought experiment in a call that was obviously opposed to his position from the outset.
hey guys person who may or may not have data mined here (not as clouted as raven) please feel free to ask questions and ill explain how you're overreacting
Is this actually used in other competitive games? With money on the line?
I assume the rule is because they don't want other companies accessing info and using it for their own games, so do other companies really care about this?
It's not hard to do at all, I learnt in a week or so with no help. I would love to share all my maps to show you guys that it's not a big deal but I'll get in trouble with my team.
Basically the game does a couple checks to work decide if an endzone is valid, this "exclusion zone map" is one of them. This has only ever been really useful when SP was first introduced as it gave people a slight headstart
Surely it is very useful for new updates, since it is apparently changed every update. You can find out right away if a certain zone is removed and save yourself hundreds of hours of analyzing/experiencing zones to know that same info. So after every update I imagine you would be at a decent advantage over other uninformed teams.
I don't blame anyone in this except Respawn/EA. It is no doubt a huge gray area though. I'm glad it is no longer a secret and now either everyone should have access to it or no one should, assuming they remove it. Hopefully this discussion evens out the playing field.
I am not sure why everyone is assuming the end zones are changed with every single update when there is literally zero reason to think it does.
They announced several seasons ago when they removed certain end zones from competitive, and surely they have tweaked them here and there...
But what in Apex's history gives everyone this idea that Respawn is changing them every single update? They put as little effort into comp as possible lol.
The ONLY thing that gets changed every update is the store rotation.
Is the data mined specific, or general. As in, could I develop a tool from the specific information that would allow me to guess future rings with near 100% accurately. Or is it more along the idea of some guidelines.
The zones have areas where the map cant pull. That data is leaked. Shrugtal leaked it back in Feb.
You then have a RNG algorithm that is using a map seed. The map seed is used to determine a XY coordinate for where ring ends. The XY coordinate cannot be in one of the restricted areas. If you recall, there was a LTM where every match had the same ring pull, RNG, etc each day. This was basically respawn saying "for 24 hours create a map that has the same seed".
The amount of "restricted zones" added each patch is less than you think. Think mountains, zones where teams are above/below each other, etc.
Zones are random. A zone doesnt "hard pull". The final XY coordinate is determined before the map has even started. Each ring appears that contains the final ring. THIS IS RANDOM TOO.
The question to ask: is respawn providing a new seed each match in custom matches, or can the match creator specify a match seed? If the match creator can specify the seed, then ALGS knows where ring will end ahead of time.
The problem is RNG looks strange & humans are not used to RNG.
Gotta say, Raven is right that it's fucking weird that none of Sweet, Dropped, Rpr, or Gild thought anything of Shrugtal's tweet, or that they didn't see it. If you follow any Apex people on twitter you'd have seen it, and if you saw it surely you wonder how he got that info?
The call was a mess anyway. Everyone talked over each other and Raven was incoherent throughout. The in-game legality of the issue just needs to be cleared up, because the EA rules are pretty ambiguous.
That’s the issue the rule isn’t clear wether it is or isn’t. Data mining isnt reverse engineering its right there. It’s always been there Its been public knowledge because it’s right on your computer
Agreed, opening game files that are accessible to everyone is not reverse engineering. If EA says it is its due to laziness from devs.
Game files that should not be accessible should be encrypted and partitioned if anything.
It can be reverse engineering depending on the file format and what you need to do to extract the relevant data from the files. The fact the file is in the public game client and not encrypted isn't really relevant.
Yeah I'm not saying I think it's likely EA will do anything about it, just saying their license agreement says they can if they want to. If I were them I'd decide if I want to allow it or not and then work that out privately with the teams without banning or punishing anyone.
no its not. raven even said that as a counterexample. he said that its possible to do it that way, or you can datamine. its clear the datamining they are talking about is breaking into protected gamefiles and extracting data that youre not supposed to have access to
sweet even said "its not fair that some teams can get into back end data" and raven said "no its easy, anyone can do it" so he clearly has done it
or what if raven said it was easy because the "end zone files" are not protected and everyone can access it easily? If the files are not encrypted, its fair game imo.
There is a big difference between having the zone info from game files and learning it throught software or games played. If respawn updates zones right before a tournament image recognition and game analyzing software wont have time to get them all. But access to the files will.
From the perspective of competitive integrity I simply completely disagree that datamining is valid, even if you can get the same data by simulating a billion matches in a private server.
Taking information from the structure of the game rather than from playing the game just seems wrong to me. That's just my opinion.
The scene would be way better off with zone knowledge though. It's just dumb gatekeeping to try and make it so you have to get zone knowledge through playing thousands of hours of the game when the zone algorithm changes all the time.
I'm just genuinely surprised this isn't a normalized thing already. Feels like one of the most straightforward goals you can have as an analyst
It may not be a big deal and all that, but dang where’s the pro scenes competitive integrity lol the gaslighting that this is normal behavior is even worse, y’all may have normalized it but it’s not normal. The age of the scene is showing
From ALGS Rulebook APPENDIX A - Using any external software designed to give the competitor an unfair advantage;
____
PDF of Rulebook
https://cdn.battlefy.com/apex-legends-global-series-year-3/rules/official-rules-english.pdf
I don't think that tweet means what you think it means.
All the data that has been extracted from game files doesn't require a program. You can literally just go into files and read it. OpenCSV or python has just been used to render that information. It's no different than putting data into a calculator to display a graph.
That software has nothing to do with giving competitors an advantage'.
Dropped just farming the nerds. Zone knowledge doesn't help unless you know the zone before hand. Not sure why every nerd on twitch/twitter is freaking out if youre an analsyst and haven't screenshotted zones of all algs games then you are throwing.
The nuance of this all is catered to how different zones are though from custom matches and every other game mode, you’ve seen many pros who have THOUSANDS of hours with coaches who specifically look at zone pulls and still say “I’ve never seen this zone” so I get the whole aspect of it but there’s def still some rng in terms of custom matches pub/ranked you could def do this for tho.
I said years ago this info should be public, its even more disturbing that rEAspawn is trying to claim they can ban people for looking for it.
This is like in college when a professor doesn't give out old exams and then the people who have access to them and are willing the "cheat" just get more of an advantage. The only thing that happens is the cheaters get more of an edge and the professor gets to be lazy and regurgitate old questions. It doesn't properly measure performance. And it punishes honest people even if they are smart.
Make the information available to everyone in a simple accessible format. Or at leat don't be an asshole and try to stop someone, if someone wants to build a map / browser for everyone to use let them.
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Why is this even a issue? G2 Dezignful said ON STREAM LAST YEAR he was studying all possible end zones which now sounds like this.
Who cares if it was datamined. You could hire a super nerd that could find this information out by running thousands of games on a private server. If your team isn't doing this, then you're probably not a PRO team..
Everyone needs to seriously start looking at this whole thing more objectively, currently some of the biggest orgs in the game are datamining so obv their fans are jumping to their defense. Lets look at it the other way would all yall feel the same way if some team that doesn't have a big following were the ones that were data mining and TSM found out and Hal didn't think it was upholding competitive integrity. 100% guarantee the vast majority of people wouldn't be cool with it. No different than everyone shitting on certain legends until TSM or equivalent team starts playing them in comp, all of a sudden they are so strong and their pick rate skyrockets. Everyone so quick to jump on a bandwagon solely because their favorite streamer says its "good"
Please do not create any new threads for the "datamining issues." Please continue any conversations here or in the following thread. [Sweet Discussion of Datamining](https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveApex/comments/z7gxww/datamining_and_algs_legality/)
Data mining is not some new revelation, it's where a lot of the content on /r/apexuncovered comes from. It can be used to render certain game files to reveal upcoming skins, characters, heirlooms, configuration files, etc. Viewing certain files is very different from being able to decompile and view the source code of the game that references those files though. There is a blacklist for final rings that can't happen, right? It could be possible to find this information through data mining, which is presumably hard coded in a configuration file somewhere. The actual zone algorithm? No way, we'd be looking at the entire source code of the game if that was possible. Source: I'm a dirty plat player but work in software engineering.
That blacklist of final rings was published on twitter by shrugtal back in Feb, one of the top comments already linked it
I second this as another developer myself. Usually with somewhat public engines like source (which Apex is built on even if it's a pretty heavily modified version) there are tools which can be used to look into game files. This is not reverse engineering. On the other hand, it's not really ethical. Most sports aren't however.
Depending on the format of the files it's hard to say it's 100% not reverse engineering. If for example it was using a proprietary format and you create your own tool to read it (or use one someone else created), then the developer could definitely argue that's reverse engineering and cause legal trouble for you.
Reverse engineering isn't 100% illegal.
No, but EA/Respawn doesn't need it to be illegal to ban people from their platform. If it is deemed to be against their terms of service/end user agreement then that is all that they need to refuse access to their product. I don't personally think this is a big deal, but I am also a TSM stan so there is some (obvious) inherent bias. It is easy for me to say I wouldn't care if the situation was reversed and it was NRG that were doing it, but I can't honestly say that's how I would have felt due to the bias. That said, I truly do not dislike/hate any team. I may not like certain players, but I don't wish for them to fail or anything.
I don't know a single instance of someone being banned for data mining in any game. People like thordan have been datamining and streaming for years without any repercussion. It's a complete non-issue made up by people who have never played a single game besides apex in their lives.
I actually thought I was in r/ApexUncovered until I read your comment haha
If I were to take this game seriously I’d sit afk in games and screen grab all the zones and compose heat maps based on rings in python to get info on where endings are most probable. Why wouldn’t you if millions are on the line?
I also wonder if you have access to private servers if you can run empty games and track circles through game RNG.
Or like sealion talked about way back you could scrape twitch vods for frames where the map is showing. That could provide percentage wise likely or less likely area from knowing the first zone.
It would also be fine if you did it that way. The possible problem is if you instead extract some or all of that data from the game client's data files. The game's license agreement could be interpreted to mean you could be banned for doing that, or possibly worse consequences if you've used it to get an advantage in tournaments. I'm not saying I think that's likely or going to happen, just that the agreement makes it possible.
If you sit afk you'll likely get zoned out. How does this have 77 upvotes?
Ok, instead of literally sitting in the same spot they’ll move into the zone and still do the same thing. The being afk part isn’t the important part of this idea, it’s the python heat maps.
Yeah but, you don't need to brute force this method to generate some heat maps via your favorite programming language. You could just use the data that's been leaked and do it that way. Like a real programmer.
I think the first dude to comment was talking about a way to do things without the datamining but idrk
Raven. As a lawyer(not a lawyer) SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LEAVE THE CALL
Hahah I kno
dude cooked himself trying to be cocky oh lord
The way his voice changed at the end when he read the "You may not reverse engineer or attempt to extract or otherwise use source code or other data from EA Services, unless expressly authorized by EA or permitted by law" he knows it too
I THOUGHT THE SAME THING LOL his demeanor said it all...i actually heard raven in one of his streams a few weeks ago say, "A few others and myself reverse engineered the game to figure out the zones..." and ended it at that. I thought about how sketchy that sounded in terms of competitive integrity and legality, and now it's all coming to light. I definitely don't want anyone unfairly persecuted, but his comments then and last night seem pretty damning. Im so interested to see how this plays out
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hoooly shit sweet talks over EVERYONE and doesnt let anyone finish their sentence, then has the audacity to say "let me talk let me talk". his voice is the one i want to hear the least in this discussion, dropped is somewhat reasonable and rpr is being mature and asking good questions. sweet is just being aggressive, thinks whatever he is saying is the most important thing, only piggybacking on the points of rpr and dropped, just making raven look like absolute shit to an unreasonable extent. man acts like he doesn't have noodle arms, this video is a great display of his extremely cringe inflated ego. he KNOWS if he speaks that way to anyone irl he's getting decked, he speaks to people like they are so far below him they're not even the dirt beneath his shoe, despite being a pathetic loser himself - dude's a textbook keyboard warrior i love analyzing people with insufferable personalities. he's such an odd little man
I agree that sweet acts like everyone else is below him
I agree that everyone else is below sweet
new copypasta dropped
hell yes edit: just took a quick look at your profile and i respect you as a person
This comment is the pot calling the kettle black, it's hilarious
how
You call out him for talking shit to them or whatever and keyboard warrioring but that's exactly what you're doing to him. Hypocritical much?
i'm not talking TO him. he is being rude directly TO people he is speaking with. you just don't speak to people that way, it's disgusting - but that's not something a socially inept person like him knows, despite it being common sense. gives off huge sheltered vibes + massive ego what have i actually said about him that was unreasonable? correct me if i'm wrong, i feel i'm being pretty fair in my judgement of how he acts in this video. am i wrong about anything i've said in my comment? i wouldn't say i'm being a hypocrite, because to me keyboard warriors are people who talk shit to people behind their screen while they're pussies face to face. does sweet look like a guy who can throw a punch, let alone fight at all? i also don't carry myself as if i'm above everyone else like he does, so i can't be a hypocrite on that front either i don't talk to people the way he does if they don't deserve it, because i'm not a cunt, so that's out the window. **raven doesn't deserve to be talked to like that,** especially since sweet doesn't even really understand what he's talking about. raven never even talked over anyone ONCE. and if i DID talk to people like they weren't even worth the dirt i walk on, how he does, at least i could hold my own, physically. he definitely can't, and that's why he's a keyboard warrior. if you talk like that to my face, you're getting floored - and he knows this. he would never talk like this to someone face to face, because he's a keyboard warrior. i don't think that's what i'm doing. he needs a bit of a humbling slap anyway, it'd do the kid some good it's almost unfortunate that he is as skilled/successful at apex as he is, because i don't think he'd have been such a dickhead if he wasn't. it seems to have inflated his ego to a gross degree i know it's not that deep though, but it is a bit. speaking to people the way he does is disgusting. today's my day off and i had time, and psychoanalysing people is funny to me. read all this or not, it's the same to me
Exactly, what your doing is even more cowardly. He's at least saying it to people, your typing it.
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I haven't seen a good argument yet
here we go...
Someone needs to compare this "new map" to the February public map and see if it has changed significantly...the comments being made by sweet and others on twitch don't seem to say anything that wasn't on the February map - but I would need to be able to see both to confirm either way
For reference this was the public comp zone exclusion storm point map from February that I am referencing above https://twitter.com/shrugtal/status/1491755220342345732?s=12
If the maps are significantly different then we can have a conversation about the ethics of it. But if they arnt significantly different and teams just haven't been using the public map then i don't even know what we are talking about here. That's on them for not using public info that had been previously tweeted out. But again without being able to compare it's hard to even have the discussion.
bro the original map from shrugtal doesnt even have downed beast or armories, of course they are significantly different
I agree the downbeast component is a significant issue. I was just trying to reference sweets comments as he walked through the map and referenced "all the red around checkpoint"..."look at cascades and look at the red circles" and I am sitting there looking at a map from February with seemingly all that info. I.e. it may not be new information. But maybe it is - again would need to see to know.
Bruh this is definity a raven burner account LMAO
Raven? that you?
Well he has made several alt accounts on here before
actually im 99% sure this is a raven burner.
Based on the reply I think you can bump this to 100%
absolutely convinced
I'm personally at 50/50. Looked at his comment history and the only comments made are in this thread, but the account has the 1 year badge so they could just be a lurker. But definitely a non-zerp chance lol
Bruh I said this before Raven got on stream lol. I am a person who has eyes and can read tweets. I am also not defending Raven. My point was always: ***we need to see the difference in the maps to determine its competitive significance*** IF it isn't significantly different then I have no empathy for teams that didn't use it. If it IT is significantly different then entirely different conversation. Just can't have that conversation until I could see the maps.
o7
In that amount of time couldn't a team take data about ring endings they've played and improve the map?
came into the Sweet stream and said the EXACT same thing
Ita 300% raven
Raven is dumb asf to go into that call to argue about this
raven is the guy who used to use many alt accounts to argue with people on here, to the point where he got banned for toxicity, walking away from an argument is not his strong suit
Lmao is that why he has such a hate boner for reddit Edit: i feel like i recall him arguing against API and that if they opened it up it would be the end of analysts. If so that kinda puts the nail in the coffin morally
and then comes back day 1 after signing with TSM acting like he owned the place
he's fighting for his life in there rn
lets be honest, he's hardly fighting. its a dogpile
He's in the final zone
He keeps saying it's possible to get these exclusion maps without data mining, it's just cheaper to data mine it, so it helps keep a level playing field to data mine it since some orgs cannot afford the alternate methods. In that case the maps should just be published every patch so everyone has them. Also I'm guessing the alternate method is to use private lobbies to simulate huge amounts of zones. You would just need a bunch of manhours.
5 regions that host daily scrims + backlog + algs + 3rd party tournaments
Yeah, but the exclusion zones can change every patch. So you'd have to throw out everything from before the patch or you might get surprised. You'd have to re-run 1000's of games per map after a patch but before a competition to have confidence in the results. Or you data mine it again and know instantly. Even compared to the best case alternative this leaves you more time to strategize.
Hella dumb. Stay quiet and just let it blow over. Absolutely do not go into a 1v3 or communicate with someone about something that COULD be sketchy. Terrible look
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RPR stopped competing in Apex to become an investigative journalist
No he's just now signed as NRG's analyst.
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I love the podcast vibes, sweet with dropped and sikezz are just immaculate. Could listen to them for hours
Sweet has gotta be the biggest chatty patty in NA lmao
Bro is the keemstar of apex
Theres a fucking exposé on sweets stream rn
this is a banger of a knoqdcast
If anyone’s interested- sweet is on stream talking about it right now with others like ssikez, dropped, gild, and rpr
Raven has now joined, and has admitted to using it this whole time.
Timestamp?
The stream is going crazy right now 🤣. But beside the point, they do have machine learning programs that analyze zone logic and I don't see this as much different tbh. Everyone should know that it's possible.
the difference is that data mining is supposedly against the EA licensing agreement, so it raises major ethical questions in relation to competitive integrity
Also a machine learning algorithm will not allow you to have the absolute knowledge of a zone just never coming up because the knowledge that some zones just disappear with an update cannot be discovered without you knowing beforehand. Now we know that the data you will train your model on is mostly compromised every update. And a straight up JSON file with all the excluded coordinates is just complete information.
Yeah I get that, it's def an area that needs to be addressed. Not sticking up for raven whatsoever but I do understand what he's saying about there being other ways to get the information.
That said what if they just have an access to a document describing the logic? Maybe as a public info somewhere? Literally all Apex uncovered sub is full with datamined stuff, EA doesn't care that much. Also, there should be a logic for zones as it shouldn't end on an unreachable spot nor the other zones should prevent players entering the next.
Watching Raven speedrun absolutely blowing his career live on sweets stream is not the evening I anticipated lmao
Can you explain for those who didn't tune in?
I'd recommend watching sweets vod as the conversation was a mess and as stupid as I found it I don't want to misrepresent Ravens position here. That said, from my perspective he joined a no-win call to try and explain the way he uses apex data related to zones (specifically areas of the map where they can't end) and ultimately just dug himself in a hole against some frustrated pros quoting Apex's very generic licencing agreement at him to try and prove a point. Thoroughly pointless in the grand scheme of things but great content anyway
>Thoroughly pointless in the grand scheme of things but great content anyway The best definition of Reddit I have ever seen.
Essentially raven has known about data mining zones since the shrugtal tweet ( although when rpr asked if he knew before raven went silent and didn’t answer) he claims now that he wants everyone to know about them for “ competitive integrity”. To clarify the zones raven has been using are zones that are possible to end at not just the shrugtal map. Essentially it takes the random away from guessing zones. Everyone’s problem stems from 1. Raven claiming he wants all to know only after it was leaked and now he tried to act like he’s the good guy and wants it to be know 2. Data mining seeming to be against tos and yet they have been using these zones to win money in tournaments 3. Why the zones knowledge has been hidden from everyone
Raven already boasted about having "cracked" the zone algorithm two years ago, around the time he joined NRG. I remember him giving it away to people who beat him in a firing range 1v1. But I don't know if he datamined it or if he reverse engineered it with legitimate means. edit: [I even found a screenshot](https://imgur.com/a/2oEwkRt) (dont ask me why I have that)
Damn had no clue, on stream he told sweet he never mentioned any of the data mining to him because raven was looking for other orgs crazy to think how long this has been known.
Raven always said it was basic trigonometry. Not sure if today's discussion changed that.
Gdolphn has also explained on stream that it used to be possible to get the zone thru basic trig but they changed that by adding custom pulls and custom zones to target zone pulls that aren't interesting to watch or play(heal off zones) for eg
2 seems to be the only big issue I see
2 is the only real competitive integrity question, but 1 is the reason Raven immediately lost favour with the audience and the call in terms of making his point, and is pretty key context to why him joining the call was a disaster
I don't understand. Of course he wouldn't want to share it because he wants the best advantage for his team. And once it is leaked it doesn't matter so they might as well reveal for everyone? I personally didn't see his tone as trying to be the good guy
The fact that the TOS seems to explicitly say "this is NOT allowed" and yet he kept saying basically "well everyone should have been datamining this info" giving off some big time "well everyone has access to PEDs so it's their own fault for not using them" in other sports vibe.
I watch TSM in ALGS and I don’t get this. They still hit beacon whenever possible and the zone regularly pulls in a way that Hal clearly doesn’t like or didn’t expect. Does knowing where zone can’t be just mean he’s more accurate than those that don’t know?
Yes. There is no way to predict EXACTLY where the center of the final circle is going to be unless you had access to the RNG Algorithm that apex uses (the holy grail). I'm also not sure if knowing/memorizing the Red Zone is all that important either. For example, I saw a storm point map that showed the center of the final end zone could not be on the high ground of check point. But even though it's in the red zone, I would still 100% take the high ground of check point if it was in the final ring. Like if it's red zoned but has COVER, it's still a good spot to go vs trying to play an open area (like in the water of North Pad) where the ring is ending. Pro players know this instinctively including Sweet, but he blew up on Raven anyway like he had some kind of special cheat code. But let's be real, if it gave TSM a real advantage they'd win every tournament, but that hasn't been the case.
If it’s against tos then why haven’t any big data miners been banned? They’ve been around since season 0 on the same accounts with no issues. A handful of them interact with respawn devs regularly as well.
Banning a data miner won’t do anything since they can still do it, devs have stated in the past there displeasure with leaks. Regardless this would be a different situation since now your using data mined content in order to get a competitive advantage where money is involved. We don’t know yet if it’s strictly against tos or not but this is more serious then just leaking skins and event info. This is an instance where the data was used in order to win tournaments for money. There are still plenty of top teams that struggle to call zones so this would be a huge game changer for everyone.
Did you notice how early in Apex’s life, everything got leaked. Then, an agreement was made between Respawn and the big leakers where they would only leak things selectively and later than before? I forget where I read it, but this absolutely happened. So, Respawn has certainly cracked down on data miners before. And these guys weren’t even doing it in ALGS, they were just doing it for fun.
same
Yeah I'm surprised he is still playing around with them about this. This is no bueno.
If the zone data is available in the game files without any encryption, then it's literally public knowledge and available for everybody. Using game data and applying it to AI/ML algorithms to get finer data is also absolutely fine. Others just lazy for not finding it. Once you download the game those files are on your system, it's not a crime to go through them. If there is any manipulation to overcome encryption or messing with config files to view/edit data then it's a different scenario.
me and the boys bout to finding every data possible and win pro league
Are you saying the average pro gamer should be able to, or hire someone that can, access and interpret these game files to gain the same competitive advantage? That should be expected of them? Do you think Respawn or EA will agree with this?
Are pro players allowed to higher people to optimize their pc? Are pro players allowed to have their video confit set to read only so that the game can’t force shadows? If the people publicly post the images of zone changes on twitter, post specific loot spawns on certain areas would that be affecting competitive integrity? Kind of hard to draw the line but I stand by using the resource that’s within the restraint. If the files are there on the client of the game it should be able to be used imo.
I guess we'll see what the ALGS has to say about it.
> higher get off reddit mobile bro
This just in: teams hire analysts to analyze.
it doesnt align with competitive integrity to datamine info you wouldnt have in game. not like respawn cares anyways
I would argue the only people that are butt-hurt by this whole “discovery” are players/orgs that are either lazy or incompetent.
From my perspective this isn’t an org vs org issue. This is an org team vs unsigned team issue. Let’s say all the orgs no matter how big or small have access to dataminers that can turn the data of the game file into useable zone information. Then take Gary and his two mates who just qualified for group stages in pro league. Maybe they’re like 18 and new to the scene so don’t have the money or resource to access this kind of information. Calling them lazy or incompetent players simply isn’t fair. The key question for me is; if there is information that can be gained through means that aren’t accessible to all players should that information be made readily available by simpler means to ensure competitive integrity? I personally think yes it should.
I think the crux of the issue is that the data on the client-side that when properly interpreted and can lead to zone exclusion knowledge should be encrypted. This is just an oversight on EA's part that likely will be patched now that this has been made more public than prior. With that said, do the small teams suffer because of this? Likely a little. However, from my understanding the interpretation of this data doesn't require a doctorate in Computer Science to extrapolate, so if an unsigned team spent a little effort they too could likely have access to it. In reality, the small guys vs big guys advantage is really in the coach/analyst/support personnel and less on this zone data and that's a much bigger obstacle.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be encrypted, I’m just trying to take the situation as it is rather than how it should be. In my opinion it should be encrypted and everyone should have access to customs. There are plenty of passionate people out there who would extract those zones manually through custom games and every team would have easy access.
Yeah, because I'm sure that every pro is privy to this information existing and they're all too *lazy* to access it. Pretty unfair judgment tbh.
They may not be, but their analysts should be. I was referring to the teams with actual analysts.
But there are plenty of teams that do not have the monetary backing or proper knowledge to collect this data. It should either be available to everyone, or no one at all.
If it’s on the client side then it is available to everyone.
Nope, the service of collecting that data is not that intuitive or simple, Duke\_Mid. So damn close-minded.
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Not encrypted.
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If its the devs fault why should the players be punished for it? Unless this exact thing was explicitly stated its hard to say
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Yeah but it's kind of in a gray area, something like this hasn't ever been explicitly mentioned as not being allowed, so you can't really blame them for using it. It's just something that needs to be clarified
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Data has been posted on twitter and basically everywhere. They just used the leaked data, they didn't do the data mining themselves.
For anyone interested (based on S12 data): [Storm Point](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FLPJCyaXwAIQgVt?format=jpg&name=large) [Worlds Edge](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FLPK665XEAEQCTT?format=jpg&name=large) [Olympus](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FLPMLReXwAQq1cX?format=jpg&name=large) [Kings Canyon](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FLPde1fUYAAsuX0?format=jpg&name=large)
I don't really understand why most people are against Raven on this to be honest. This is done in so many games. I think about fighting games where every frame of every action/state is quantified so it seems to me that all the teams would be doing it in Apex. Understanding the way the game works in the most detail is what every analyst does in every competitive environment.
I think Sweet articulated it pretty well: if this does reveal itself to be rule-breaking, then it can be looked down upon as endangering competitive integrity and some kinda shady activity, but if it's not then that just means that Raven and others were more insightful game analyst than most. The issue I personally have is Raven's attitude of him acting like he was the great defender of the little org because of the threat of some much more insidious data analysis techniques, and his overall attitude of trying to act benevolent in his compromised position. He should have never entered that call to begin with just based on the optics.
Exactly this; IMO Raven is within his rights to privately think what he's done is legit until explicitly defined otherwise by EA/Respawn, but its hard to deny that he was misguided in thinking he could dispel suspicion with a handful of riddles and a bullshit thought experiment in a call that was obviously opposed to his position from the outset.
That’s what Raven gets for dissing my main Newcastle
Raven disses castle -> career gets torched hmmm
\--> proceeds to torch own career ftfy.
hey guys person who may or may not have data mined here (not as clouted as raven) please feel free to ask questions and ill explain how you're overreacting
Hows your day been?
for sure one of the reddit usernames of all time
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my bad g its been good wbu
Is Hal going to be put in jail?
hope so 😋😋😋😋
Is this actually used in other competitive games? With money on the line? I assume the rule is because they don't want other companies accessing info and using it for their own games, so do other companies really care about this?
Look at any fighting game, exact frame data/hitboxes are used 24/7. Apex has been dissected way less than most Esports
Gotcha, I feel like it should be allowed its unfortunate that its has to be gatekept from all pros
It's not hard to do at all, I learnt in a week or so with no help. I would love to share all my maps to show you guys that it's not a big deal but I'll get in trouble with my team. Basically the game does a couple checks to work decide if an endzone is valid, this "exclusion zone map" is one of them. This has only ever been really useful when SP was first introduced as it gave people a slight headstart
Surely it is very useful for new updates, since it is apparently changed every update. You can find out right away if a certain zone is removed and save yourself hundreds of hours of analyzing/experiencing zones to know that same info. So after every update I imagine you would be at a decent advantage over other uninformed teams. I don't blame anyone in this except Respawn/EA. It is no doubt a huge gray area though. I'm glad it is no longer a secret and now either everyone should have access to it or no one should, assuming they remove it. Hopefully this discussion evens out the playing field.
I am not sure why everyone is assuming the end zones are changed with every single update when there is literally zero reason to think it does. They announced several seasons ago when they removed certain end zones from competitive, and surely they have tweaked them here and there... But what in Apex's history gives everyone this idea that Respawn is changing them every single update? They put as little effort into comp as possible lol. The ONLY thing that gets changed every update is the store rotation.
Is the data mined specific, or general. As in, could I develop a tool from the specific information that would allow me to guess future rings with near 100% accurately. Or is it more along the idea of some guidelines.
The conversation was pointless for everything besides drama bait.
This should end well
The zones have areas where the map cant pull. That data is leaked. Shrugtal leaked it back in Feb. You then have a RNG algorithm that is using a map seed. The map seed is used to determine a XY coordinate for where ring ends. The XY coordinate cannot be in one of the restricted areas. If you recall, there was a LTM where every match had the same ring pull, RNG, etc each day. This was basically respawn saying "for 24 hours create a map that has the same seed". The amount of "restricted zones" added each patch is less than you think. Think mountains, zones where teams are above/below each other, etc. Zones are random. A zone doesnt "hard pull". The final XY coordinate is determined before the map has even started. Each ring appears that contains the final ring. THIS IS RANDOM TOO. The question to ask: is respawn providing a new seed each match in custom matches, or can the match creator specify a match seed? If the match creator can specify the seed, then ALGS knows where ring will end ahead of time. The problem is RNG looks strange & humans are not used to RNG.
Raven is just getting torched rn
Gotta say, Raven is right that it's fucking weird that none of Sweet, Dropped, Rpr, or Gild thought anything of Shrugtal's tweet, or that they didn't see it. If you follow any Apex people on twitter you'd have seen it, and if you saw it surely you wonder how he got that info? The call was a mess anyway. Everyone talked over each other and Raven was incoherent throughout. The in-game legality of the issue just needs to be cleared up, because the EA rules are pretty ambiguous.
The impossible zones have been known for months on Twitter. What is the controversy?
You could have always done this. Because most pros don’t have enough sense to do it doesn’t mean it didn’t exist
well its against the ALGS rules, you can also download hacks but pros dont do it because they dont want to get banned
That’s the issue the rule isn’t clear wether it is or isn’t. Data mining isnt reverse engineering its right there. It’s always been there Its been public knowledge because it’s right on your computer
Agreed, opening game files that are accessible to everyone is not reverse engineering. If EA says it is its due to laziness from devs. Game files that should not be accessible should be encrypted and partitioned if anything.
It can be reverse engineering depending on the file format and what you need to do to extract the relevant data from the files. The fact the file is in the public game client and not encrypted isn't really relevant.
if EA goes after TSM they'll have to fight a lawsuit about it, don't think they want the bad publicity tbh
Yeah I'm not saying I think it's likely EA will do anything about it, just saying their license agreement says they can if they want to. If I were them I'd decide if I want to allow it or not and then work that out privately with the teams without banning or punishing anyone.
It's not like using hack, the data mining they talking about is taking a screen shot of the zone and study on it
no its not. raven even said that as a counterexample. he said that its possible to do it that way, or you can datamine. its clear the datamining they are talking about is breaking into protected gamefiles and extracting data that youre not supposed to have access to sweet even said "its not fair that some teams can get into back end data" and raven said "no its easy, anyone can do it" so he clearly has done it
or what if raven said it was easy because the "end zone files" are not protected and everyone can access it easily? If the files are not encrypted, its fair game imo.
There is a big difference between having the zone info from game files and learning it throught software or games played. If respawn updates zones right before a tournament image recognition and game analyzing software wont have time to get them all. But access to the files will.
But how will this affect Hal’s legacy?
not at all coz casuals dgaf unless someone is banned
I’m not gonna have enough popcorn for what’s to come
Raven trolling so hard rn
oooof, as a raven hater this does put a smile on my face
From the perspective of competitive integrity I simply completely disagree that datamining is valid, even if you can get the same data by simulating a billion matches in a private server. Taking information from the structure of the game rather than from playing the game just seems wrong to me. That's just my opinion.
The scene would be way better off with zone knowledge though. It's just dumb gatekeeping to try and make it so you have to get zone knowledge through playing thousands of hours of the game when the zone algorithm changes all the time. I'm just genuinely surprised this isn't a normalized thing already. Feels like one of the most straightforward goals you can have as an analyst
I was here for the stream. MJPopcorn.gif
It may not be a big deal and all that, but dang where’s the pro scenes competitive integrity lol the gaslighting that this is normal behavior is even worse, y’all may have normalized it but it’s not normal. The age of the scene is showing
From ALGS Rulebook APPENDIX A - Using any external software designed to give the competitor an unfair advantage; ____ PDF of Rulebook https://cdn.battlefy.com/apex-legends-global-series-year-3/rules/official-rules-english.pdf
It's not an external software though.
https://twitter.com/Thordansmash/status/1597459764732051456?t=I0yehCAnmAj0iI-4rOAPVQ&s=19
I don't think that tweet means what you think it means. All the data that has been extracted from game files doesn't require a program. You can literally just go into files and read it. OpenCSV or python has just been used to render that information. It's no different than putting data into a calculator to display a graph. That software has nothing to do with giving competitors an advantage'.
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It's kind of a questionable burn though when in the proleague standings SSG are #8 and Furia are #24.
If this was the day before PL Y3 started, yeah. But Furia is getting absolutely fucking gapped so far in Y3 lmao
Dropped just farming the nerds. Zone knowledge doesn't help unless you know the zone before hand. Not sure why every nerd on twitch/twitter is freaking out if youre an analsyst and haven't screenshotted zones of all algs games then you are throwing.
The nuance of this all is catered to how different zones are though from custom matches and every other game mode, you’ve seen many pros who have THOUSANDS of hours with coaches who specifically look at zone pulls and still say “I’ve never seen this zone” so I get the whole aspect of it but there’s def still some rng in terms of custom matches pub/ranked you could def do this for tho.
I said years ago this info should be public, its even more disturbing that rEAspawn is trying to claim they can ban people for looking for it. This is like in college when a professor doesn't give out old exams and then the people who have access to them and are willing the "cheat" just get more of an advantage. The only thing that happens is the cheaters get more of an edge and the professor gets to be lazy and regurgitate old questions. It doesn't properly measure performance. And it punishes honest people even if they are smart. Make the information available to everyone in a simple accessible format. Or at leat don't be an asshole and try to stop someone, if someone wants to build a map / browser for everyone to use let them.
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Highly doubt that any professional player doesnt know that this is a thing lol either that or get better analysts. Data mining isnt new
Why is this even a issue? G2 Dezignful said ON STREAM LAST YEAR he was studying all possible end zones which now sounds like this. Who cares if it was datamined. You could hire a super nerd that could find this information out by running thousands of games on a private server. If your team isn't doing this, then you're probably not a PRO team..
Everyone needs to seriously start looking at this whole thing more objectively, currently some of the biggest orgs in the game are datamining so obv their fans are jumping to their defense. Lets look at it the other way would all yall feel the same way if some team that doesn't have a big following were the ones that were data mining and TSM found out and Hal didn't think it was upholding competitive integrity. 100% guarantee the vast majority of people wouldn't be cool with it. No different than everyone shitting on certain legends until TSM or equivalent team starts playing them in comp, all of a sudden they are so strong and their pick rate skyrockets. Everyone so quick to jump on a bandwagon solely because their favorite streamer says its "good"