Elevator Action leeching

Discussion about MARP's regulation play

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Barra
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Re: Elevator Action leeching

Post by Barra »

Semantics much?
Skilled EA players don't repeatedly kill the same enemies on one stage because they know how frivolous it is.
Stop being a douche and just play the game properly FFS. Then and only then might you garner some respect around here.
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Re: Elevator Action leeching

Post by Almighty Dread »

Barra wrote:Skilled EA players don't repeatedly kill the same enemies on one stage because they know how frivolous it is.
On the contrary, I have observed that every single Elevator Action player "repeatedly" kills Agent Smiths in order to accumulate points. You really should stop making completely incorrect statements, it makes you look unintelligent.
Barra wrote:Stop being a douche and just play the game properly FFS. Then and only then might you garner some respect around here.
You can think I'm being a "douche" if you want, that doesn't matter to me. Especially as I do play the game properly, using a joystick, two buttons, and no bug exploitation. So that "respect" you talk about should be on its way, I wager. By the way, I like the way you come back here, time and again, and invariably fail to address any of the points I made in my first post. You are obviously a talker, not a player.
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Re: Elevator Action leeching

Post by mahlemiut »

Just a note about rule 2h:
h) Point or life leeching is strongly discouraged, and banned on some games, as described in the banned techniques list, or in the specific game's special rules. You cannot continuously gain points without some degree of risk and you must keep moving to complete a level.
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Re: Elevator Action leeching

Post by Almighty Dread »

"Just a note about" my gameplay and method:-

Any position taken up on floor 7 is frequently attacked from multiple directions, so the risk factor is both constant and high. I have never accumulated points on floor 7 without finishing the level on which it was done.
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Re: Elevator Action leeching

Post by OMG Kreygasm »

Just curious what the highest building # you have reached is.

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Re: Elevator Action leeching

Post by Almighty Dread »

OMG Kreygasm wrote:Just curious what the highest building # you have reached is.

Regards
The furthest I've ever reached is the 10th building. I've never gotten very far into it, I'll admit, but I think you'll agree that it's quite an achievement to get through the 8th and 9th buildings. I'll let you in on a little secret: if you can reach floor 7 of any building, and get through a killing session, you will have your best chance to complete the level. This is because, at the moment the elevators become controllable again, the Agent Smiths will attack a little less intensely. It's like you were at the top of the building again. The difference is very small, especially from the 7th building onward, but you will notice it, when you find you're able to get all the red doors in the lower floors without agents popping off two and three shots at you.

It's been nearly 30 years since I've been that good at this game. It will be a challenge for me to reproduce this on MAME, since my present set up consists of squatting on my sofa, hunched over my X Arcade. However, I enjoy a challenge, particularly when there are inferior gamers with loud mouths which require silencing.

You've shown curiosity and civility, rare attributes indeed. Perhaps some of the noisy little children in here will follow your example.
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Re: Elevator Action leeching

Post by Chad »

Almighty Dread wrote:
Barra wrote:Skilled EA players don't repeatedly kill the same enemies on one stage because they know how frivolous it is.
On the contrary, I have observed that every single Elevator Action player "repeatedly" kills Agent Smiths in order to accumulate points. You really should stop making completely incorrect statements, it makes you look unintelligent.
Skilled EA players do not repeatedly kill the same enemies on one stage. ALL Skilled EA players on marp kill agents until the elevators become uncontrollable and then head almost immediately to exit the building. All leeching at floor 7 (you've now proven) can be done with no significant risk with finding a building with a red door on floor 6, so it should also be banned against rule 2h.

http://replay.marpirc.net/inp/5/7/1/scl ... olf106.zip

49,650->120,350 no significant risk leeching after you found a red door on floor 6.
Last edited by Chad on Fri Mar 06, 2015 2:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Elevator Action leeching

Post by xelnia »

Almighty Dread wrote:derp
By ignoring my very first comment and dismissing the comments of others while continuing to engage them you have proven yourself a hypocrite. And since you're not afraid to call out people for their hypocrisy, I'll do you the courtesy of pointing out your own.

Also, there has been more support for my observations and statements than there has been for yours. Your "compelling reasons" are opinions. Your claims of being an inventor are an unproven assertion. So on and so forth... You strike me as a guy who has read up on logic and philosophy (maybe even taken a class or two), so I commend you on your attempts to better yourself through education. Unfortunately, you're still an idiot and an asshole. Anyone can play the micro-quoting game, pick apart every word, and create a tapestry of horribly deduced "facts." And if you can't see the problem with your gameplay...well, there's no hope for you. I'm sure highscore.com or recordsetter.com would love to have you.

So, shall we continue this dance where I (and others) point out the glaringly obvious and then you dismiss us in a condescendingly sophomoric fashion?

Let me know if you need any definitions of terms used.
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Re: Elevator Action leeching

Post by ***PL*** »

The "Compelling Reasons" list is valid, but incomplete. There is no mention about following site and specific game rules, so perhaps consider adding this:
4. Gameplay produces high score, but contains cheating or banned techniques.

Back when I was a Regulation Coordinator, I believe I originally wrote Rule 2h. It was a MARP general rule put in effect mainly to address increasing violations of "the spirit of the game". My dilemma was whether to include a fixed time limit on "point leeching" (lack of level progress or character movement) and decided against it. Thought being, several minutes could be acceptable, but certainly not an hour.

That said, and as far as EA, I do understand that you can be in both offensive and defensive situations which could be construed at "leeching". I've seen three world class players play EA live at tournaments. Current world record on arcade is 156500, just broken in January by Steve Wagner. Here is his scoring breakdown...

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Re: Elevator Action leeching

Post by CrazyKongFan »

***PL*** wrote:Current world record on arcade is 156500, just broken in January by Steve Wagner. Here is his scoring breakdown...

Image
pic doesn't work.

edit: I'm guessing maybe you need to be verified at TG to see the pic? A few people have told me it works, but it doesn't load for me, even if I cut/paste the link to a new window.
Last edited by CrazyKongFan on Fri Mar 06, 2015 7:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Elevator Action leeching

Post by simpsons99 »

are we going to vote on this?
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Re: Elevator Action leeching

Post by DKM »

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Re: Elevator Action leeching

Post by BBH »

Here's the thing - Almighty Dread, nobody is (or should be) saying that you're a bad player, clearly you do know your stuff when it comes to Elevator Action. But you're not some deity who should be worshipped by everyone for finding an efficient way to leech in the game. If you really want to have a civilized discussion about this issue, you need to drop the condescending attitude. This is what's turning people off from attempting to discuss this with you, leading you to further call people things like "children" and "ignorant".

But hey, I'll address some of the things you brought up.
Almighty Dread wrote:Your pathetically uninformed opinion doesn't concern me in the slightest. When you tell the Ms Pac Man players that they can't go around the maze dozens of times to ensure that they get the highest possible score because it isn't entertaining enough, you won't be a hypocrite for singling out my gameplay, but you'll still sound like the Jon Snow of gaming. When someone starts telling me what I can and can't do, that's when problems start. So, I've come up with a little principle, which I call 'the principle of non interference'. This principle states that no one should be told how to play a game, unless there is a compelling reason.
I'm not a fan of Ms. Pacman either, and I don't enjoy watching grouping in that game either. HOWEVER, I wouldn't equate Ms. Pacman grouping with Elevator Action leeching at all. For one thing, you're not continually building points running around the maze when you're not eating dots in Ms. Pacman. The game has an end (kill screen), so it's about squeezing out as many points as possible in the boards you're given, which often consists of grouping them all together to get a quadruple eat, or in the later boards, grouping to make survival possible. No I don't enjoy watching it either, but it's become accepted by the players, and is not an exploit that leads to potentially infinite (or maxed out) scores.

Compelling reasons include:-

1. Gameplay includes a point accumulation method which any muppet could execute.
2. Gameplay produces high score, but does not demonstrate high level expertise.
3. Gameplay exploits major bugs in the game's programming.

Compelling reasons do not include:-

1. Some mendicant's saying he didn't like the gameplay.
2. Demonstrably incompetent gameplay assessment.
3. Inappropriate application of gaming regulations.

Even with a compelling reason, telling people how they should play games should be a last resort measure. Persons who call for a ban on a gaming method without first having thoroughly examined said method are control freaks, and ought not to have any say in matters of intervention.

I am the inventor (and, possibly, sole practitioner) of the floor 7 point accumulation method. If you wish to learn a few facts about it, you will listen to what I have to say, and ignore the uninformed and simplistic opinions of those who have merely observed my method in action.

Firstly, defending a floor 7 position is not easy. Perhaps it looks easy when I do it, but anyone with a brain knows that something which seems simple in the hands of a master may actually be very complex. On floor 7, it's all about tracking your opponents, maintaining your shot accuracy, and not getting lulled into a false sense of security. Playing floor 7 is just like playing the rest of the game: most of the time, your opponents blunder into your bullets, and their shots are easy to avoid; but, every so often, there comes a critical moment, when one decision will see you survive, and another will see you dead. Anyone who can learn my method with little time and effort is entitled to dismiss it as “point leeching”. As of now, I have seen no evidence that anyone has earned said entitlement.

Since I've demonstrated a high level of expertise at the game, and have not exploited any bugs in order to attain my score, I see no compelling reason for anyone to interfere with the way I choose to play it. I did not play the game in this way to entertain anyone, I did it to make a score higher than anyone else's.
Your argument seems to be that you think nobody else is on your level and can show the extreme mastery of staying on one floor where enemies don't spawn and have no choice but to take elevators to reach you. Perhaps you're right in people don't fully understand how to set up the leeching so let me explain that I have since tried this and I *DO* fully understand how this works.

The most important part of this trick is that it requires a stage in which there's a red door on floor 6. Enemies can not spawn out of red doors. Because there's only two doors on floor 6, one on each side, this limits the possible number of directions in which enemies can approach you. If you were to try this trick on a stage that does not have a red door on floor 6, eventually there's going to come a point where two guys are riding the elevators up to reach you at the same time from each side, and these guys are the most dangerous because you have less time and space in which to react.

This is why in your recording you don't do the trick until stage 3 - it was the first stage in that run to have a red door on floor 6. Perhaps not everyone understood that just from watching, but they will now.
Almighty Dread wrote:Any position taken up on floor 7 is frequently attacked from multiple directions, so the risk factor is both constant and high. I have never accumulated points on floor 7 without finishing the level on which it was done.
I fully acknowledge that there is risk involved in doing this. HOWEVER, one can argue that there is much less risk in doing this trick than there is by playing the game normally and reaching the later stages. During the trick you're in a controlled environment where you're making no effort to advance gameplay, and you're performing the same actions over and over. In regular gameplay there's a lot more risk involved with everything, since as you move through the level you get put into different situations that you have to be ready for. In the later stages the enemies are even more dangerous, with less delay on their shots and "reload" times, the ability to lay flat on the ground under your crouch shots, they come out of doors faster, etc.

So if this trick was allowed, what's to keep someone like you from NOT making progress after that initial ~70 minute leeching is up, and just doing it again? As I just established, this trick is only possible on stages that have the red door on stage 6, and you don't know if the next stage will have a red door there. You could do it again on the same stage to build up even more points a second time and then play through to the end of the stage afterwards if you feel like it, just so you can say "But I was making progress!". It opens up a can of worms. So no, the best way to treat the timer is that when the hurry-up music starts, you need to make an effort to clear the stage. If you get stuck in an area where you can't control the elevators to reach the bottom, then who's fault is that?

So... yes, I tried this trick out, yes, I got it to work just fine and didn't die in the time frame in which I was doing the leech (which was around 20 minutes). I wasn't recording since it was my first time trying the trick, but... even if I did post an inp, I'm sure you'll say that I didn't do it long enough and demonstrated no mastery of anything, am I right?
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Re: Elevator Action leeching

Post by Almighty Dread »

Chad wrote:Skilled EA players do not repeatedly kill the same enemies on one stage. ALL Skilled EA players on marp kill agents until the elevators become uncontrollable and then head almost immediately to exit the building.
You have no idea what you're talking about. All these "skilled players" hold a final position and repeatedly kill respawning agents. The difference between my method and theirs is time and sustainability.
Chad wrote:All leeching at floor 7 (you've now proven) can be done with no significant risk with finding a building with a red door on floor 6
Again, you show your ignorance. The red door does not eliminate or even reduce the risk of defending a floor 7 position. What it does eliminate is the crossover of two attacks coming from the far right, which is frequently covered by the empty elevator at near right. Even though I know how to handle this crossover, it is an aspect of the game that it does not always fire your character's gun when you press the appropriate button. This interferes with your ability to kill the two or more opponents attacking simultaneously at the earliest opportunity, allowing the ascending attacker to fire a shot which forces you to jump into the descending attacker's shot, which would otherwise have gone over your head. Because of the dodgy firing aspect of the game, I've found over the years that it's almost guaranteed to happen during that most problematic crossover at the far right. That's why I've formed the habit of eliminating the crossover, so that, even if my shots don't go off as intended, at least I won't be faced with an inescapable situation.
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Re: Elevator Action leeching

Post by Almighty Dread »

xelnia wrote:Let me know if you need any definitions of terms used.
No, I don't, as you're clearly just a retard who spouts garbage all the time.
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