(May. 30, 2013 1:39 AM)Nocto Wrote: This is sabotage, not deception. Deception is not physical in nature, it is not done forcibly: It is a bait that your opponent leaves or takes of his own accord; it is not beaten down his throat.
What you seem to forget is that every sport you cite employ a form of deception. It's called a feint.
Oxford English Dictionary Wrote:feint, v.: 1. To deceive.
feint, n.: 1. A feigned or false attack. a. Fencing and Boxing. A blow, cut, or thrust aimed at a part other than that which is the real object of attack.
The soccer player pretends to go or kick left, but goes to the right; the football player pretends to make an aerial play, but goes for ground; the boxer will pretend to hit right, but will actually hit left: I will show you a Defense-type, I will go with an Attack-type. By your definition, your point, I am cheating: by our combined definitions, everyone is cheating.
And sports are played on an arguably leveled playing field, same number of players, same equipment (mostly), Beyblade is not. People are allowed to play no matter the number of Beyblades they have, the competitiveness of their parts. Beyblade is a game of rock-paper-scissors, itself a game of deception (you call rock, so I believe you will not use rock, but you use rock anyway, etc.), with a more complex underlying mechanic, someone with very little "rock" and much "paper" can call "scissors" while going "paper," hoping that his opponent goes with "rock."
Point one: Deception, when successful, breaks the actual game.
A single successful feint does not end an entire match in most sports, it takes multiple successful plays to win because the other player still has a chance to make a comeback afterwards, whereas a lot of the time with deception tactics, it becomes an auto-loss for the decieved. Deception also takes place before a match starts, not during the match, like a feint. A feint lacks an actual analogy in beyblade because we don't have control during the match, IMO. Perhaps there's something with launching, but we're getting away from the point. Even if the analogy is correct as it may be, my point is that it's far too 'powerful' in beyblade if it succeeds, and I think this explains the feelings of guilt Zeneo described - it's basically game over.
Quote:Do not forget that deception goes both ways, and that unlike other forms of cheating, its success relies as much on you as your opponent. There is little that can be done against sabotage, save preventing it; deception is as much a game as a tool.
And that game is not spinning tops, is what I've been saying. If you "win" deception in the way it seems to pan out most of the time, the tops battle becomes irrelevant. While perhaps the same could be said of knowledge, that at least derives from knowing the game, your opponent, your parts, their parts, deception requires very little that actually relates to tops - he who can lie the best and has a basic knowledge of attack beats stamina beats defense beats attack and what is good enough to do the above (which is well publicised on these forums) wins.
Also, like most sabotage, nothing can be done if it succeeds (though things can be done to prevent both - trying to ignore it/setting up better security) - deception represents two parties trying to sabotage each other at best. Successful deception basically ends the match there most of the time, or may as well. Matches between major players seem to just be decided on who can gain the upper hand through deception and mind games a lot of the time - a lot of our best players use them to gain an advantage, and I don't think that's right, it's just not part of tops.
Quote:You say "learning what your opponent will likely use through observation." Thus, you claim that there is guessing involved. So, what if a player with an affinity for Stamina-types battles you? You choose an Attack-type, even though you prefer Defense-types. You break pattern to counter his Stamina-type, while he does not, because he figured his pattern can beat your pattern, meaning that you, unwittingly perhaps, deceived him. And that's the problem, permanent Double Blind will only incorporate a system where the one with the most parts, and therefore the one who can break pattern the most, win. Deception encourages making more with less. There are battles and match-ups you cannot win, no matter how much skill and BeySpirit you pour into it.
And he can predict I will do this by knowing I am flexible in my typings, switch to defense, and I'm wrecked.
Point 2: Deception is more likely to be used by people with a parts advantage, and is much less practical without good part access.
The fact is the system is already very parts-focussed but let's be honest, does deception really favour those with few parts as it is? The people who seem to benefit from it most are still those with more, they're still the people who place. See, the thing is the people who learn to deceive well (and I won't lie, it's a learnt skill, but it ain't a tops skill) are the people who care enough about winning at tops to learn to deceive and are willing to deceive to win at tops. These sorts of people, generally, are the people who have good part access, and those that don't have good part access in the first place will struggle to put together enough decent combinations to use deception in the first place. Instead, what happens is people who already have both a parts and mental advantage end up doing it against kids, parents complain, the WBO looks bad. It doesn't work as it is, and ends up doing a lot more damage because it's easier to abuse with better parts.
But yes, there is some value in it because players who are mentally capable of deceiving well but who don't have a large budget for tops do have an improved chance of winning. However, deception just isn't nearly as successful if you don't have enough good parts to make the opponent believe you AND good enough parts to beat what you trick them into using (whereas if you already have good part access, both become a lot easier), and in addition to this, a large number of the people who use it - if they are somehow not the majority, they are a highly-publicised minority - use it when they already have a significant advantage over their opponents. Usually this is a significant age and thus intimidation advantage (and usually a mental and, for whatever it affects, a physical one, and generally, for the reason described in the previous paragraph, better part access than most of their region), and that reflects very, very poorly on the WBO, as I described in the opening post.
Even if it is to be considered a legitimate tactic, then we still have, at best, a case of some poor sports who use it against people they really shouldn't need to (i.e. young kids), who are ruining it for others - as we can't build "who you can and can't use deception against" into the rules, but I still do not think, due to how devastating it often ends up being to the deceive-ee's chances of winning, it is a legitimate tactic akin to a simple feint where the opponent may recover. It's a skill unrelated to actual tops - both knowledge and technique require research of and practice with tops, whereas deception only requires some very basic knowledge and the right cookie-cutter combos, and to win when successfully deceived requires an incredible amount of skill AND luck - it basically doesn't happen.
Lastly, as shown by wpardin's test case, and as I privately suspected, removing deception - a method which aims to make the matchup predictable - places greater emphasis on combo innovation and skill, because being able to beat a wide range of things becomes that much more important - good players have to build in versatility at the expense of complete certainty against a single type to win reliably, and people who innovate well become that much better. A lot of people get really bored when a metagame becomes repetitive, and by removing ways for people to reduce it down to rock-paper-scissors (without going so far as reducing things to blind chance), we will fuel a much more varied, interesting metagame. Combo research/building is one of the key parts of the beyblade hobby, and we already have a test case showing this helps it a lot. I think we can all agree that that is a good thing, no? This is, of course, on top of other benefits provided by double blind picking, given how many questions and dramas arrive over things that push the rules too far (see: brooklyn's battalion where deikailo put left launcher prongs in basalt (don't actually see the thread that was embarrassing)). A whole arms race over who can lie most convincingly by showing certain people certain things and judges others and so on has basically developed, when people should be focussing on making better combos and practising harder to win tops through skill at and knowledge of tops, not skill at spotting gaps in the rules they can exploit - and the vast majority of these gaps can be plugged by double blind picking.
BillyBlast: Yeah squealing comes under 'dude not cool', and the rules should cover it. Not sure how it could be enforced without being abusable or heavy-handed, though.
@BHK: I've edited my post now, I was tired. As I said, I'm working on making it simple to do/explain, just needs some thought IMO, but it would be interested in seeing what Kai-V thinks of a flat 2 minute maximum based on what wpardin said - IMO it's a solid test-case, at least for everything except plastics (and probably even then IMO).
![[Image: LOGOBEYBASH2X2.jpg]](https://i1230.photobucket.com/albums/ee494/wpardin/LOGOBEYBASH2X2.jpg)
![[Image: UwZsp7A.png]](https://i.imgur.com/UwZsp7A.png)
![[Image: 2u76mnk.jpg]](https://oi41.tinypic.com/2u76mnk.jpg)
![[Image: beybase-signature-is-beyblade-a-sport-Article.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/VLksgt2k/beybase-signature-is-beyblade-a-sport-Article.jpg)
![[Image: janstarblastsignature.jpg]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-imUVk9PErhw/Tb5jNvGKumI/AAAAAAAAAFw/8iSsYhW7vEw/janstarblastsignature.jpg)