What's this I hear about bright skins? Isn't that cheating?

While you'll never hear this from any good player, there are still people out there who actually think using bright skins equates to a software cheat. There even still exists people who actually compare using promode skins to using an aimbot or a wallhack, hence making using these skins a ban worthy offense in their minds.

Mods such as CPMA, OSP, RA3, Threewave, UFT, all give players the option to force your enemy to a specific model and give them a bright skin making them easier to see. While they don't exist in the out of the box version of q3, this is how quake has evolved over the years, starting when pro players began dumbing down their video settings so that they could see their opponent more easily. Having your opponent blend into the background takes away from the Quake experience (Do your enemies even blend into the walls when you have simple commands such as gamma, vertexlight, and picmip?) where the focus should be on skill based combat. Therefore, all the competitive mods in quake 3 since then, all have promode skins built in.

But what happens when you play in mods that do not provide the skins to you, because they are based on the out box version of the game (e.g baseq3 servers)? If you copy your zz-osp-pak0.pk3 from your osp folder into your baseq3 folder, as long as the server is not pure, you will be able to use the promode skins. I recently played on a server where I was banned because I openly admitted to playing with promode skins. What's the big deal, when I've played with promode skins for at least 5 years in every other mod? It's really just nothing more than a personal preference.

I can only very minimally understand someone else's point of view on the issue, but I don't see how you can justify banning someone for using something that is generally accepted universally by the quake community, isn't it? While it could technically put someone at a slight disadvantage to those who aren't using it, they are likely already at a disadvantage because those same people probably still use lightmap lighting.

Brighter skins won't improve your game, or increase your aim. They won't let you see around corners or pull off 180 flick shots. They will... in grand total... do nothing for your game that simply tweaking your config (e.g picmip, vertex lightning) wouldn't do for you. Bright skins are not going to change the game or give you any advantage. Any advantage bright skins can offer is given just as easily by modifying your graphic settings or increasing your gamma. If you sucked before using them, you'll suck using them as well. Most competitive gamers just simply prefer clearly visible skins, as it promotes better game play, with less camping and faster action. Anyone who isn't using them, who thinks its an "unfair advantage", you can easily download the osp mod and copy the file to the baseq3 folder.

Many consider bright skins to be an aide, but a healthy one. Lets use baseball as an example. Players use sunglasses, batting gloves, pine tar, and rosin bags as aides, and they are not frowned upon. Now obviously, there are other aides to the sport that are not accepted, such as a corked bat, steroids, etc. So where to draw the line in quake?

Well, I think the line has obviously been drawn since OSP/CPMA have been the mods for use in tournies for years, not to mention most q3 mods having them built right in. ID Software has since included bright skins in Q4 and will do so in quake live. Most games over the past few years, all included bright skins as well (Painkiller, Warsow, Latest UT), so it's evident that the game has evolved to the level that these skins are acceptable.

I just want to hear your opinions, and hopefully end this issue once and for all (I really didn't even think it was an issue anymore). Do you think it's acceptable to be banned for using promode skins in a mod where they are not built in?

UPDATE: They banned me from their servers b/c I openly admitted to using promode skins. Their servers IP's are here:

www.vogon.vg

I posted on their forums detailing how anyone can enable and use promode skins on the server to make the game more enjoyable. The post in below and you can post anonymously:

http://vogonhq.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=67 nevermind they deleted the post and banned me off the forums.

The forums are:

www.vogonhq.com

The server admin replied to my post regarding promode skins:

"Promode skins are for retards. We don't want promode here.... Ask "pro" players about excessive and you will see how little respect and how noob it seems to them, yet they use fullbright skins like retards."