Is 'Backdooring' cheating?

Battleborn Battleborn Competitive Multiplayer Discussion
#41

While we can discuss people who exploit that, I think it’s way more fundamental and important for gearbox to fix the exlpoit, very, very quickly - if such mechanically-applicable thing isn’t intended indeed.

I mean, people gonna people and developers as well as everybody knows that. They should react swiftly to game-breaking elements, not days and weeks after the fact.
You don’t deal with botters by advocating fair play, but by implementing elaborate ticket/review system, reports, match replays and so on.
Now, I am not saying botters are a cool bunch, but they WILL be present. The approach is to mitigate that, not to advocate.

So, while I might be digressing a bit, I think gearbox should have fixed things like these way before release.

#42

Backdooring is not cheating:

-If there was only way to the objective and you guys are heavily bunkered in that route and the other team has no possible way of winning that would suck

-“Backdooring” involves you being near the enemies territory so you have a chance of killing the attacker in your own playing field

-MOBAs have multiple routes to get to the objective(s) and since currentyle Battleborn only has 1 route since I have tried using Oscar Mike to try and destroy their second sentry while their first one is alive it is technically one objective with 3 possible routes maybe four is you consider Oscar/S&A/Deande stealth behind enemy lines base

-That is reason they gave people Double jump/ Flying/ Take off/ poison jump/ and teleport to get to through the Double thrall side on overgrowth and to get up certain platforms in echelon.

MY favorite thing is PEOPLE really have issues with Oscar Mike stealthing his way into your base and attacking the sentry which is pretty damn funny

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#43

Wow, just because you haven’t seen something means that it is irrelevant… excellent argument! Oh wait, no, that’s actually an extremely bad argument.

People are back dooring and tanking the sentry, I’ve watched members of opposing teams like Boulder, Galilea and Rath do it with other ranged teammates. Chances are, opposing members of the team have back doored and tanked your Sentry, you just never noticed it or ignored it.

Also, it took him several respawns before we both took down the sentry, but we did it.

#44

No that’s just unfair. It only takes one person to kill minions. They’re too weak to depend on too much. I’ve had too many games where we kill all but one enemy and they just kill the minion and thralls before they even get close. I had 3 games that ended in a 100-100 draw bc of it. It’s a defense and attack game. If you don’t pay attention to your objective or try to push enough you’ll lose. You can’t get mad that you don’t hear or see or even care it’s being shot at and do nothing. Both naps have this. The sentry shoots at you. One shot did about 1200 damage to me. It can defend itself from both sides it just won’t be able to do so unscathed if no one is there to help. I died right after bc someone defended and got me before I could escape.

#45

Exactly.
Plus echelon has two sides flanking can take place on that any character can get too if people don’t defend.

#46

Boldur, Galilea and Rath are not back-dooring a sentry. None of them have an ability to jump up the ledge. You’re not talking about what we’re talking about.

Isic, Kleese, and several other characters who are ranged with an ability to scale the thrall ledge are able to get up on the ledge, behind the first sentry, and deal damage to it from a location where they are unable to be fired upon by the sentry. This is back-dooring, they are able to kill it in one life, without taking damage. They are not tanking the damage.

A team running in and dealing damage while their tank blocks a lot of it is a rush, a tower dive, not a back-door.
There has never been a time that a team has “back-doored” my sentry by tanking it. I’m not speculating, this is a fact. They would die before they could kill the sentry.

#47

Why? Backdooring requires you having to go on a risky solo mission behind enemy lines. Marquis sits in the comfort of his own base safely and does the same thing. Totally different.

#48

Yeah Backdooring isn’t like Marquise cheese tho.

Marqcheese is him being completely safe at full range.

When I (used to do this because now its kinda bad for ISIC) used to backdoor as ISIC it was incredibly risky because any organized couple of enemies with mics or something could spot you on the minimap and flank you. It really sucks when that happens.

You miss out of a lot of Exp if you try to do this for too long and fail, and you are not helping your allies.

If the enemy is too incompetent to go and stop you then they deserve to lose that sentry, but usually against a higher level player this backdoor strategy is a waste of time. As I said I no longer try this with ISIC because I have found that it is usually better to help your team out by keeping lane clean with ult or by tanking.

Tl;Dr Backdooring isn’t cheating because it has tradeoffs from basic game mechanics that can punish you for doing it. You shouldn’t even try it against experienced players.

#49

I’m not too sure I’d call it much of a risk since (at least personally) people don’t see it coming. I certainly don’t expect the cause of sentry damage to be someone behind it. I had a match yesterday where our sentry took it’s last 20 points while we were pushing the enemy sentry. I was confused as hell and ran back to find nothing there. Didn’t seem like too much of a risk to me. I do see your point however. It isn’t the same thing, however I do maintain they are both somewhat cheap tactics. At least with backdooring you have an attempt at killing them.

#50

So, if the enemy team is so “incompetent” then why do you have to exploit map issues in the first place? If they’re not very good, why do you need to use such an under-handed tactic at all?

The problem is that against two evenly matched teams, frequently a match will come down to a tie, 100 to 100 or 50 to 50, or a very close score.

The issue is it only takes a few seconds for that flank to adjust those numbers enough to “win” the game for a team that otherwise is unable to win… and it wouldn’t happen if the announcement was reliable and prominent enough to warn you that the ONLY OBJECTIVE THAT MATTERS is under attack or if the sentry defended itself correctly against that spot. If these aspects were not present, it certainly would never work.

I have no problem with a team pushing into the front and doing it while taking or managing the damage in some way, I have no problem with them hopping on the ledge if they’re under attack and I get a notification… but right now, hopping on that ledge, and sitting beside the wall where you can’t get shot is completely scummy and just as cheap as Marquis, so don’t kid yourself that just because you do it and sometimes it doesn’t work out makes it okay.

I’ve never lost a sentry to someone back-dooring… I have lost a few games to it though, where teams that stood no chance of actually beating us, managed to sneak someone up there for just long enough to do a point or two of damage and then they manage to defend theirs (usually with heavy Kleese shield regen usage) They were all close matches.

An OM camo’s steps into sentry range, drops napalm and his ult and manages to hit a few points of damage on it: Not cheap.

Two members of a team dive through your line, one tanks and they both ult managing to put just enough damage on it that they get the advantage: Not cheap.

One player hops up on a ledge, shoots a sentry while the sentry can’t fire at them at all, and can certainly kill the sentry BY THEMSELVES without anything else if you don’t instantly go deal with them: Cheap underhanded garbage.

In both of the first two examples the team takes a gamble, and a risk, and they also have no chance of doing full 100-0 damage on the sentry before dying.
In the 3rd the only risk is that they get collapsed on by a team that notices them. There’s a big difference.

#51

The way I see it is no one character should be able to take out a sentry no matter what skills they have etc. I the whole point of incursion is to escorts your minions so They can take down the sentrys Shields opening it up for damage. As it is now you may as well just remove them.

#52

You can still stop the backdooring with team coordination and by watching for the Exclamation mark. Maybe I was hasty to say incompetent, but that is all I usually see when someone falls for this. They don’t notice the exclamation mark, they don’t hear nova saying “Sentry is under attack” (tho maybe the devs need to give her better lines for expressing which sentry is under attack), if I tell allies it is happening they just continue what they were already doing as if it didnt matter.

It really is a team tactics issue if they lose to a ledge cheese. If it was a loss because a team didn’t collapse on someone who is probably gotten a couple snipe shots from the sentry already just to find the safe spot, then that team failed to react.

And where does the distinction of backdooring being bad end? I won a game once where we had no minions on the enemy sentry, but me (as whiskey) a montana and another char rushed to the enemy sentry and managed to kill it before our sentry that had both minions and their team on it could kill ours.

That is the same backdooring at that point. We snuck behind their line and hid on a ledge where that final sentry couldn’t reach us and we won by destroying that 2nd sentry before their front line. They could have collapsed on us if they just turned around. We already wasted ults and had tanked the sentry, but they didnt turn around.

Awareness of what is going on is a skill a lot of players are lacking in this game and I really hope more develop that skill. But hey, if they don’t then yes they deserved that loss because they were outplayed. They made a mistake and they payed.

Edit:
I’m not against the devs deciding they do not want this in their game, but if they DO I don’t think the lane minions should be a requirement. If the devs wanted to make the sniper shots coming from the sentry pierce the environment to strike anyone attacking them, then this would be good fix. I’ve been snipped by the SENTRY occasionally shooting from the Marquise ledge (I never play as marquis tho this happened when I was Whiskey), but has a strange AI bug on the backdoor ledge. Sometimes he notices and sometimes he does not. Just make the sentry better at dealing with this and do not remove the potential for team’s trying last-minute backdoors.

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#53

That’s a very present factor in most mobas: Tower diving. You don’t have to have minions, but the tower will certainly defend itself, and everyone in the game will certainly be notified that it’s happening. It’s usually handled by a simple range requirement before you can damage the tower, and anything within the range is going to eat damage from the tower in response. In my opinion, the game should function similarly, where unless something is in the range of the sentry to take some damage, it shouldn’t be able to take damage, and if you want to damage it then you should either have to push a minion within range, or step in range yourself.

Like I said, I have no problem with back-dooring, I have a problem with the AI not fighting back and the notifications being buggy about it on top of that, if you’re diving and handling the sentry retaliation, then it’s perfectly fine, but if the sentry isn’t shooting you, and the defending team’s only indicater is the “!” at the top of the screen, that’s exploiting what is obviously an unintended situation.

I’ve rushed a sentry down myself, Shane and Aurox camo in, OM camo in, Phoebe teleport up the back-side and all three ult and hammer on the sentry at the same time.

We took a lot of damage, and did quite a bit of damage. The enemy team came back and cleaned up a few kills, but we wound up winning.
But we didn’t sit on a ledge and pick away at it without taking damage. There’s a big difference IMO, we dove the tower, we didn’t exploit a glitch to kill the objective.

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#54

Sigh No, you’re talking about back dooring, I’m also talking about back dooring, they are the exact same thing. Back dooring is typically considered attacking a tower/sentry/turret/etc. without the assistance of minions to block the damage. What you’re whining about, is that some characters have an advantage of being able to attack outside of the sentry’s attack range from a ledge; which again, the dev’s had to have known it would have happened, so no, it’s neither an exploit or a cheat. Sure it can be cheap, but there’s a lot of cheap tactics that can get you a win.

I’d also like to point out that EVERY ranged character can attack outside the sentry’s attack range. I’ve seen almost every ranged character attack the sentry from the tunnel in Overgrowth without being attacked back.

Sadly, you seem to have failed to comprehend what I’ve said… yet again. What I saw, was back dooring, and back dooring can and is often done with more than just one person.

And you can’t back door in Battleborn like you can in Smite or LoL, I’ll admit to that, but even if they die while doing it, they are still back dooring, regardless of whether you want to admit it or not. And no, even if the entire team was there, attacking a sentry without minions, would still be considered back dooring, not a rush.

Rushing cannot really be applied to any current Incursion pvp maps, because there is only one lane. Also to note, rushing in other games, is typically done early in a game when people are levels 1-2.

Oh, and just an FYI, tower diving is where you kill someone under their tower, not attacking the tower.

#55

As ISIC now it is risky. I haven’t seriously tried it as anyone else though.

The main exploity problem for it seems to come from a couple of things I’d definitely support changing:
-The sentry being dumb as a rock at finding priorities
-He needs to penetrate ISIC’s reflective wards, or have a built in feature that does not allow his attacks to be reflected (as long as that is kept separate from Geoff’s attacks)

These two thigns are definitely iffy.

@Turkeysocks I don’t undestand your hostility. He was responding to something a little off topic and sort of my fault.

But:
Tower diving and backdooring are still pretty similar. I think traditionally in league backdooring is attacking the objective alone, but in that game the Nexus doesn’t have any way to defend itself so it is completely on the player’s fault for not defending it. So the only real difference is that Diving is when the thing defends itself, and backdooring is when it doesnt.
Diving is going in under the fire of the tower. Doesn’t matter what your real objective is in the action. Its quite possible in League to Kill a tower while diving BEFORE moving onto the champion at all that it was protecting (which I do as Trundle or other top laners).

The “backdooring” business does seem to be trying to abuse the sentry’s limited mobility to shoot its legs and hide around a corner. Its still a really risky move in this game like it is in League. You can still get collapsed on and then it will be a free kill to lead into a 4v5 for the next objective if that team is organized. If your death timer isn’t long enough for an objective steal in that time frame, then that means the backdooring has kept you too low level to have a serious death timer and that will affect your ability to help your team.

Even if the enemy doesn’t respond to you for some reason, your team is still just 4 vs 5 and than can really hurt their defense.

I don’t know exactly how I got into a stupid forum fight here but I’m probably just going to walk away from the rest of this thread. There appear to be far too many misinterpretations of what everyone is saying to actually get good discussions on the topic.

#56

I’m curious as to how long it takes for this to actually happen. In essence when someone decides to backdoor you’re leaving your team in a state of 5v4 anyway. So are you at an advantage or disadvantage? From what I’ve seen so far it actually takes a good bit of time to get the shield down an start chipping away at the sentries health ( at higher levels of course it would take less time). I’d say this is a legit tactic, but moreso exploits the lack of communication that there is in this game right now. Just like in any MOBA you should be splitting your attention from whats going on in front of you and and whats going on in your HUD (sentry exclamation mark, NOVA shouting at you, the sentry shouting at you). My question to those that are calling this cheap or cheating is do you not have a back line? In every single game if you don’t have an OM,Marquis,WF, Benedict or just someone who’s role it is to basically sit back and clear waves and such you might be doing it wrong and need to be THAT guy. Just having that would prevent a lot of backdooring anyway. I haven’t tried backdooring myself by but when I use benedict or marquis, i’m just sitting on my perch and killing minions/chipping away at enemy BB. There’s legit no way you can NOT hear/see the multiple indications that he’s being attacked imo. Not only does the exclamation mark pop up, nova says something and then your sentry himself starts complaining and crying that he needs help, doesnt want to die alone blah blah. I CAN vouch for the fact that the exclamation point popping up is bugged I believe but you should be checking on your sentry anyway just to see but it doesn’t happen often enough for it to warrant NOT checking to see whats going on. But thats where the communication comes in unfortunately because if you ARENT the guy in the back line whose job it is to actually handle that then its kind of an SOL situation because of course everyone cant be that type of character and expect to win against anyone thats competent. Just my two cents.

TL;DR no its not cheating because there are still plenty of indicators to help you prevent it from happening even if they are taking 0 damage from the sentry itself. Pay attention to your alerts. imo.

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#57

Hostility? There is no hostilitity, just pointing out that he is not comprehending what I’m saying. What me and my tank did, was back dooring, but he says it’s not and dismissing everything I’ve said as irrelevant because he hasn’t seen it himself… that is not only an absurd argument, it’s down right insulting!

However:

Tower diving is almost always used when someone dives under a tower to eliminate a player who is under their tower.

Back dooring in MOBA’s (which Battleborn is sorta a MOBA) was originally about players being able to destroy towers out of order, IE destroying the second tower before you destroy the first tower. Once the dev’s made it where the tower is immortal unless the tower in front was destroyed, back dooring morphed into referring to player (or players) who would attack towers without minion assistance, typically while opposing players were busy/not paying attention across the map.

Now, back dooring can turn into a tower dive, and vice versa a tower dive can turn into back dooring. And while they are similar (as in they are being attacked by the tower), the purpose are two completely different things.

However, unlike other MOBA’s, no one, atm, can be geared to solo and kill a sentry alone, or in a very short amount of time. However, it completely depends on the situation. The situation I was in in that particularly game, the enemy team was camping our first sentry area and was not pushing at all. They just wanted to get as many kills, hence why me and the tank sneaking around and fighting their sentry (he did die a few times) didn’t really affect our team. And even after we took their first sentry, only one or two of their guys would try to push for our last sentry, the rest continued to camp our first sentry area for some reason… don’t ask me why.

#58

Rath can double jump

#59

The negativity has kind of gotten out of control. However I do like what you suggested, where the sentry is immune to damage unless under attack by minions. They could also balance this out by making the sentry’s shields weaker, but only able to be damaged by minions. It would be similar in concept to other MOBAs, where you can only attack the enemy core after the Inhibitors have been destroyed.

Also, while I doubt the third lane is considered cheating, I bet it will be changed with the upcoming patch. I have a feeling (or rather a hope) that there will be some significant changes to the Incursion Map Layouts.

#60

Well you said it is a mistake in a Moba when you lose sight of your enemy. So even if a person sneaking up and attacking your sentry without being seen by the sentry you should use prior experience to find where your target is at.