I think you meant 'brilliant'.

Placing fake intel on the map is a legit strategy. Just because it is an exploitation of the system does not necessarily mean it is bad. It is like the trojan horse or the fake air bases that were made during....world war 1 or 2....i dont remember.

In any case...fake intel is deception, made to confuse the enemy team and to divert their attention towards a now fruitless task, while you look for their intel. It is a strategy that is completely legitimate and should be exploited. The fake intel is destructible...just destroy it.\

On the topic of explodable intel....stupid...enough said.

I love this idea.

I'm gonna make a map that's just a grid of fake intels suspended above water.

/bump

Step 1: place decoys around and below the real intel
Step 2: watch enemies pick up the fake intel by accident while trying to pick up the real intel
Step 3: ????
Step 4: PROFIT!

and thats why this idea is completely exploitable by anybody with a brain.

I was referring to your logic of Except exploits like team switching and fake intel are something anyone can do, on either team, in any condition.

I think it's pretty well accepted that switching teams to grief the other team is cheating and grounds for being kicked from a server.

Since people from both teams can hack too, that still doesn't make it right.

Since when is placing blocks hacking?

@VFB: Two wrongs don't make a right. Just because everybody could easily gain access to hacks, doesn't make it fair.

I've never had a problem with map based intel markers. My method always cooked out the real intel and i would always tell my team if i notice. Ben himself liked the idea in his blog.

This is war, one of the rules there in is deception.
Deception is a huge part of winning, tiger blood and all.

I'm definitely taking notes here so i can efficiently make new intel markers that are fake.

I disagree with Kaede on the exploitation of it, because its not really that big of an exploit. If its an exploit at all.

I also think that being able to see straight up and down through voxels is fair game as well, other wise no one would ever find tunnelers and that is just silly.

Except exploits like team switching and fake intel are something anyone can do, on either team, in any condition. Therefore it is fair. Things like speed, ammo, and gun hacking are a one-sided advantage, and therefore not fair.

Only unfair advantages, like making everybody's gun really long so the ends poke out of walls, things like exploits.
People who use cheatengine, etc.
I like it when there's a level playing field for everybody without the use of exploits.

To be totally honest, I've never seen you play, so I can't confirm this, but it seems like you hate anything that gives someone else an advantage because you lose a lot or something.

Once again, I can't confirm, but that is SERIOUSLY what it's coming off like to me.

The reason they're horrible is because, as I've said 1000 times, it's exploitation of a quirk in the map interface. Unless we get Mr. Aksoy confirming that it's intended or that he just doesn't care, or that he actually likes the idea that people are abusing an interface quirk, I will assume it's exploiting the interface.

Where exploiting in this case meaning cheating.
Just like somebody from blue team hopping to green team to grief their structures. It's exploitation of the ingame option to change your team.

They also aren't hard to mark as decoys if you visit them either:

Your definition of "visit" and mine must be different. (Admittedly, mine involves exploiting a bug, but it's one everybody exploits all the time.)

I'm also doubtful that Beret's "little tricks to work out which one is real" work very well in the case I'm talking about either.

(Hint: my method of "visiting" involves being under the intel. Possibly by a lot. Extra hint: it's called "tunnelling under the intel".)

Just because people can, Kaede, doesn't mean that they do. I've never seen them sprout up quickly like that. Besides, a failsafe fake intel with indicators top and bottom needs more blocks than one person can provide. The chances of completing fake intels before an enemy sees the construction on the map is pretty slim too. Then there's the fact that about 1 in 3 fake intels get the dimensions wrong and can be spotted as fake instantly.

I don't see why fake intels are so horrible. It's a fucking blue or green box that distracts you on the map. It's not like its going to come to your house and rape your wife and shoot your dog. Worst case scenario: you check another site or use your brain to figure out which is which.

It's not an exploitation of game mechanics, its a perfectly valid strategy that takes advantage of the maps display of what's being built. They also aren't hard to mark as decoys if you visit them either: pickaxe ONE block off. Once the map refreshes the fact that a block is missing will be visible and it will be clear that that that is not the real intel. If that's not enough, mark the the decoy with a black block or two.

I've even gone so far to construct fake intel on top of a bunker and pop the head off of any green bastard who tunnels up to come and get it. Now that's some fun stuff.

Beret, fake intels take 10 seconds to build, you can literally have 8 of them up in a couple minutes, so your point is moot.

Do not want. :<

Look at the bigger picture for a second- in the early game, decoys are extremely rare, and if they're not made well the enemy will twig pretty fast and avoid them. I once tried to find my own team's intel to defend it, and found a decoy made on top of a mountain inside a crater. It was brilliant. That's a dynamic part of the game that should be nurtured, not destroyed. Besides, intel capping is much more fun when you know there are two or three 'possible' sites to investigate. There are already little tricks that can be done -without needing to take notes- to work out which one is real, and using those tricks to pull off a successful run under the noses of the decoys always feels pretty good.

Decoys only really become a problem in the later game, when you've got 5 or more. It's harder for greens, too, as the blue intel sometimes looks just about invisible on the map. But you don't need flashing icons, or glowing intels or any of that nonsense to balance out that problem. That problem, along with many others, would be solved with the map resetting. Remember? On map reset, everything goes back to how it started, right? that includes all built decoys. With a map reset on a win, any other anti-decoy measures become unnecessary.

If that were the case, then wouldn't it be easier for people to spot the intel?

If the real intel flashed at the same speed, then all people would have to do is take note of that, and sort the odd one out.

I do agree with the second paragraph, though.

Spengbab, they would both flash, decoy and real. There would, however, be a slight subtle difference, either in the frequency of the flashing, or perhaps a slight shift in the color, decided randomly upon spawning (for the decoy only, the real intel would always flash at the same frequency and always have the same color)

Perhaps as an extra caution, allow intel to be shot. Decoys would explode, the real intel, if shot more than once, would disappear and respawn elsewhere. (cannot be shot by the same team to force a respawn, because that would be abused)

Someone mentioned that the intel sign on the map should flash.

If that gets added, why don't they both flash, the fake and the real?

And how about we remove the explosive property? And instead, when they deliver the fake, the team loses a point instead of gaining one?

1. This would replace having fake intels on the map, as they wouldn't (and shouldn't) work anymore.
2. I think it'd be fun and add more risk to the current game-mode.

What we really need though is new game-modes entirely. Capture the intel is getting old.

Personally, I would not like this..
Reasons:
1. It already takes a fair amount of time to get to the other side of the map, dodging the flak
2. Once inside the enemy spawn area, it takes a bit of skill to find the intel out of the fakes, and this increases the amount of time you spend wondering around, exposed
3. And after all that, the intel may just blow up in your face.
4. Fake intels on the map are deceiving enough, and hard to find the real one if there are a few well-made and well-placed ones.

I would find explosive fakes annoying..

Simply having a flashing intel icon on the map (which it should, because icons are part of an interface that aren't meant to be exploited) would solve all the problems.

The exploding decoys would also have their own icons on the map, but the difference between them and the real one would be very subtle.

The problem isn't actually that it's unintentional -- there's unintentional stuff that turns out to be fun.

The problem is that it it means playing the game optimally makes the game less fun.

Someone could have pencil and paper and whenever the intel resets, they make a quick note showing where the real one is, and never be fooled by fake intel. Whenever somebody has an advantage by taking notes, you have to ask why the game isn't taking notes for you automatically.

Someone could make a program that captures map screenshots every 30 seconds, displays them on a second monitor, and not even have to take notes. So, again, the game might as well do this for us.

@1337101: The problem is that it is exploitation of the interface in a way that was not intended. It's not an in-game feature, it's just exploiting a gimmick with the map.

I quite like this actually, but I think if the defender team isn't able to move their own fake intel, then it should spawn quite close to the real one, close enough that a careful map check would be needed to make sure it was the right one or not. Also, it shouldn't give the proper picked up intel message. New players would be baffled by how they always explode after picking up the 'intel'.

Considering a player can't willfully drop the intel, why not just tell the player upright that they've picked up the decoy so that they can spend the last 10 seconds of their life either in a panic, telling their team to keep away, musing on how they were tricked and need to be more careful next time, or just running at an enemy to try and take them out too?

I honestly don't see what all the fuss is about decoys in the first place. Nine out of every ten servers I join don't even have any decoys, so it's not what seems like a huge problem to me. If someone's clever enough to make a decoy, I say let 'em. Thanks to the look-straight-down/look-straight-up glitch, it's pretty easy for a tunneler to tell the difference, and to a surface raider there can be a lot of other giveaways.

Glad you guys like this idea :D

Regular intel

False intel

Or was it the other way around?

Another way to do it would be to have both look identical, the only difference being the real intel shows up on the map, and the false intel explodes while strapped to your back.