New CTF scoring system

[Dokujisan]

- if your teammate grabs the enemy flag, and you are within a certain radius of them, then you get 2 extra points. This is interpreted as you helping them grab the flag.

Sounds good, as long as it is limited to 1 person. That way, a team can't just go in a massive party and rack up points.

Good point.
Perhaps...

Option 1 : Limit the extra points to the two closest people, or the first closest person?

Option 2 : Make the radius reasonable small enough where a big group of people wouldn't likely be close enough to get the points.

[TVR]

MO, Dokujisan, it's just making it more complicated.

Adding extra points for killing a flag carrier is already quite odd; the defenders have to let the attacker actual touch the flag in order to gain the extra points.
Skilled defenders are penalized for doing a better job [ie, preventing the threat of a Xeno style escape].

When you start getting into radii, it becomes a map specific, some flag rooms are huge, while others are tiny and cramped;
and then the defender must let the enemy come within the radius again, or you must be following the flag carrier, when you could be watching the entrance, etc.
This may possibly lead to a whore-fest like situation where people just stay within the radius to simply siphon off bonus points, while they could be doing something much more tactical.

My proposal is this, in order to standardize groups, carrying the flag must impeded in such a way,
that escape from one defender with a shotgun is reasonably difficult [disarm the flag carrier? slower movement?];
The locations of both flag carriers should be available to both teams to encourage continued protection rather than prolonged cross - capture due to hiding in odd locations as well.
To balance this out, returning the flag must give absolutely 0 points, so people don't whore the bait-and-frag technique that is quite common among games that fall into a stalemate;
this way, people will eventually realize that attacking one by one is futile and should group together naturally.

In order to reward players who actually do this, the regular point counter could be removed and replaced with a capture & frags counter; with the frag counter having no effect on the game of course.
This should probably make players feel like they're actually on a team, and all of them can do something, contrasting with an average CTF game
where colourless people make a straight beeline to the opposing base, and die AFTER picking up the flag, forfeiting 5 points to the opposing team.
[This should also make CTF its own gamemode, not TDM with extra objectives]

[Dokujisan]

MO, Dokujisan, it's just making it more complicated.

Pfft.
I don't think what I'm suggesting is all that complicated, not any more complicated than any of the other mechanisms in the game.

Adding extra points for killing a flag carrier is already quite odd; the defenders have to let the attacker actual touch the flag in order to gain the extra points.

Well, I thought about that. However, it could be argued that they are taking a bigger risk by "allowing" the flag to be grabbed. But that is sort of playing around with the points does suck.

Perhaps the flag would actually have to get a certain distance from the base before the "returned flag" points could be rewarded?

When you start getting into radii, it becomes a map specific, some flag rooms are huge, while others are tiny and cramped;

Not exactly. You can figure out a common radius to work with most scenarios. If the base is a cramped area, then the radius to extend a little past the walls. That won't hurt anything.

This may possibly lead to a whore-fest like situation where people just stay within the radius to simply siphon off bonus points, while they could be doing something much more tactical.

You know how hard that would be???
It's hard enough just trying to synchronize an attack on the enemy base within a 15 second window. I don't think people are going to be able to coordinate well enough to take advantage of the radius scoring by hugging next to the flag carrier. Remember, that person is going to be laser jumping and moving all over the place.

The only thing I can imagine them doing is grabbing the enemy flag and the whole team switches to defense and NOT capping the flag...just to rack up bonus points for defending base and defending flag carrier.

So, to prevent that, perhaps the "defending flag carrier" bonus points don't work near the base. Problem solved.

My proposal is this, in order to standardize groups, carrying the flag must impeded in such a way, that escape from one defender with a shotgun is reasonably difficult [disarm the flag carrier? slower movement?];

I don't understand this part of your proposal.

The locations of both flag carriers should be available to both teams to encourage continued protection rather than prolonged cross - capture due to hiding in odd locations as well.

I don't think that will encourage people to protect the flag carrier. Instead, people will continue to do what they are doing now, which is pass right by their flag carrier and go to the enemy base to capture the next flag.

To balance this out, returning the flag must give absolutely 0 points, so people don't whore the bait-and-frag technique that is quite common among games that fall into a stalemate;

Again, either a distance-from-base limit before giving those points, or a time delay before giving those "return flag" points would be helpful here. This will make it too dangerous to allow the enemies to grab the flag...just for a couple extra points.

Remember, they are getting extra points for grabbing the flag as well. It wouldn't be worth it to play around with that risk.

this way, people will eventually realize that attacking one by one is futile and should group together naturally. In order to reward players who actually do this, the regular point counter could be removed and replaced with a capture & frags counter; with the frag counter having no effect on the game of course.

So a kill is a kill is a kill? That is what I disagree with. It's simply not true. In team play, killing someone that is trying to kill your flag carrier DOES matter more than killing random person. If defending your flag carrier doesn't gain any points, then people will continue to just pass up their flag carrier and try to capture the next flag when their flag carrier dies. Then they get the points and end up at the top of their team when the match ends.

This should probably make players feel like they're actually on a team, and all of them can do something, contrasting with an average CTF game
where colourless people make a straight beeline to the opposing base, and die AFTER picking up the flag, forfeiting 5 points to the opposing team.
[This should also make CTF its own gamemode, not TDM with extra objectives]

I don't think your proposal will cause people to play as a team, because people are going to be influenced by the personal scores at the end of the match.

[tZork]

This is an off-shoot from another thread.
http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.ph ... sc&start=0

I think this should be a new topic of discussion. I'd like to hear everyone's input.

To summarize, there are some of us who think the current scoring system for CTF "pays" the attacking players far more than players that defend the base or the flag carrier. The scoring system does not encourage teamwork at all.

The current system pretty much encourages everybody to run toward the enemy base to grab the flag, while ignoring your teammates. At the end of a game, the scores will show one player with 125 points because they were the "runner", while the other players did not get any extra points for helping them run with the flag. I believe that teamwork should be reflected in the scores.

Here is what I propose...

Extra points scored....

- if your teammate grabs the enemy flag, and you are within a certain radius of them, then you get 2 extra points. This is interpreted as you helping them grab the flag.

I like this idea, with some reservations.. ill get into that later =)

- If you kill an enemy player that is within a certain radius of your flag carrier, then you get 2 extra points. This is interpreted as you defending your flag carrier.

Note: the ENEMY that you killed has to be within a radius of the flag carrier. You could be far away, sniping enemies and protecting your flag carrier.

What abt enemy snipers? many, many times when i take down a fc i do it with the nex over large distances. a verry effective metod thats now to be unrewarded to counter?

- If you kill an enemy player within a certain radius of your flag when it is at your base, then you get an extra 2 points. This is interpreted as you defending the flag at your base.

Again basicaly a good idea that may have a evil twist to it (more later)

- If you kill an enemy player within a certain radius of your base while the flag is gone, then you get an extra 1 point. This is interpreted as you defending the base while the flag was gone.

Woot! give em 50. bases are always overrun when the flags gone Seriosly tho, would be a nice touch, and perhaps make baseraåping a bit less attractive.

The game already does calculations based on radius for explosive weapons, so it seems like it would not be too hard to use radius to award points for teamwork. This radius system does work on some assumptions, but I believe they are safe assumptions that would be accurate in most cases.

Well yeh thats not the problem here. Its more of a logical/design one.

This system would reward people for attacking in groups, defending the flag carrier, defending the flag, and protecting the base. Anything outside of these scenarios would just be treated as DM.

Please state your feedback and input on this.

Oki first off im mutch pro a better ctf/teamplay score system. But i do think it will be a big task to plan an realize sutch a system.

Now the diffrent bonus sysems for helping grab the flag, protecting and defending etc could be just as "abused", hell proly even more so then the current simple system. The more advanced player will be getting all kindsa assist point all over just by the faqct that hes fraging and with all thise systems in place hes bound to get em by luck, skill or evil scheemes. The one things that do speak for the current system is - its simple. simple systems are hader to abuse. I can easy see a pile of scenarios where a not so honest player uses thise systems meant to ecurage teamplay to boost hes own score at the expense of hes teammates.

And we havent even considerd the noobfriendlyness(tm) yet. Something like this would make ctf a more compicated gamemode, make it harder it understand and the learning curve steeper. Not nessesarely a bad thing, but non the less something to consider.

The latter is fairly hard to do anything abt. To combat the abuse ability i sugest that players need to assume a role (defender/roaming/attacking) first to be even considerd for bonuses. The system should not allows role switching very often, perhaps one switch per 5 mins AND after a capture (for example). The default profile would be roaming, unaffected by most bonus evens except for say assisting the fc (again would need to be carefully considerd what goes to what role) The downside ofc beeing that CTF gets even more complicated, elitistic and the advanced playres will likely to have a even bigger score then even before.

[Calmatory]

I believe that best system would be that one who successfully scores, gains 15-30 points. Every kill gives one point, logic.

You mean the current system, right?

Well, in many cases, multiple players cause the flag to be captured, not just the one carrying the flag. However, recognition of that effort, the success of the flag capture, is only given to the one carrying the flag.

That scoring leads many people, such as you, to think of the flag carrier as the "successful" one, when that just is not accurate.

Also, in clan matches, it is pointless to care about individual player's score, but the score of the team.

Then why are there personal scores at all?

Who cares about them at all?

CTF is team based game, no matter how good one player is, the team may still fail against even the poorest team, if the teamplay sucks or so.

I still think the current system works best, unless your only satisfaction is to have the biggest score in the end of the round...

Those who go for the score instead of teamplay, should not be playing CTF at all, at least not in organized games, such as clans and so.

[Dokujisan]

Who cares about them at all?

I think I've explained that a couple times already.

CTF is team based game, no matter how good one player is, the team may still fail against even the poorest team, if the teamplay sucks or so.

And a team is made up of individuals...and, currently, those individuals are not focused on team-play most of the time, and there is feedback in the form of personal scores that tell them that the only valuable act in the game is grabbing the flag and capping it.

I still think the current system works best, unless your only satisfaction is to have the biggest score in the end of the round...

As I said above (and you obviously skimmed over) is that the personal scores should be feedback from the game telling you how much you contributed to the team. It absolutely influences gameplay. If you get a higher score, then you're doing something right. That's the idea. Right now, you only get a high score by being the flag carrier.

Those who go for the score instead of teamplay, should not be playing CTF at all, at least not in organized games, such as clans and so.

You're missing the point of the personal scoring. If a player truly did a lot to help their team out, then their personal score should reflect that. That's the idea.

[RoKenn]

One more idea: since with the new scheme you would give points quite generously...

Maybe it would make sense to detach individual scores from team score?

Then you could give points to the team for stealing/returning and capturing.
And you could give points to the individuals to rate their contribution.

It has been criticized anyway in the past that the team gets points for fragging, after all that's not the purpose of CTF. (fragging => individual gets points, team does not)

[Psychcf]

One more idea: since with the new scheme you would give points quite generously...

Maybe it would make sense to detach individual scores from team score?

Then you could give points to the team for stealing/returning and capturing.
And you could give points to the individuals to rate their contribution.

It has been criticized anyway in the past that the team gets points for fragging, after all that's not the purpose of CTF. (fragging => individual gets points, team does not)

I believe that's the way they do it alrleady

[Calmatory]

Well, I am totally against new system because of multiple reasons:

There is no way to make a system which would reward you from teamplaying. How does Nexuiz know how important it is to defend your flag carrier (I mean, wtf, you are 5 meters away, you get no points, you are 3 meters away, you get points for being closer? ._.)

The way to exploit this: 4 players, one has flag, 3 players stand around him and gain points for that. No logic.

If you kill EFC, that could probably be +1 point + kill, but nothing more. If you return the flag, that could be +1 point aswell.

But really, you can not expect good gameplay in public servers, because of multiple things(e.g. newbies, people who just ignore others and go for it alone). If you want to go for
teamplay, play clanwars. Or Gathers. (I dont know if there is one for Nexuiz though)

Publics just arent place for organized gaming, have never been and will never be, no matter what.

[KadaverJack]

Maybe it would make sense to detach individual scores from team score?

That would be great, but it's pretty much impossible atm. Seperating the scores is easy, but there's no easy way to display the team score on clients, so nobody would know the current scores...

I believe that's the way they do it alrleady

No, it's not. Teammodes just sum all player scores for each team.