CTF

[[-z-]]

In fact it doesn't discourage kamikaze. I have have never seen anyone stop attacking just because they failed. They just keep coming, and then when a protective barrier shows up from time to time they will hate it and complain, that's what I believe.

In fact, they won't be able to "physically" access the flag, thus it does discourage kamikaze. The point of the bubble is to show them their actions are not in fact helping but rather hurting their team. They can go ahead and complain... but it doesn't change the fact that they are hurting the team. It's my hope that they can turn these complaints into something positive like, "oh, I guess if I get my capture rate up I won't get fail bubbled".

"Bad performers" will get a notice on the screen, and a message that tells them to defend for the time being. They will see the enemy flag surrounded by a bubble, and can't take it from the base. They still can take it when dropped, so they still can be useful.

Now who IS a "bad performer"?

The bubble looks great! However, I had envisioned a slightly different system. I figured more "after x number of failed tries, any player can get the shield for x number of minutes."

I'd recommend 4 failed tries for 2 minutes as a test (25% cap rate). These "x's" can be better determined by your other thread about capture rates.

[TwEaK]

This bubble idea is going to make the game even more defensively oriented than it already is...

[torus]

This bubble idea is going to make the game even more defensively oriented than it already is...

Yep, and that is NOT the direction to go. Why do players need to be punished for picking up the flag and losing it? What if it's the team's fault? WHY NOT JUST HAVE NO PENALTY FOR LOSING TO FLAG?

Can someone please explain this?

[TVR]

Forcing a punishment system upon 'poor' performance will solve:

[ ] 1337 solo flag carriers in a team-based game mode
[ ] CTF as a form of entertainment exclusive to the flag carriers
[ ] Fundamental flaw by rewarding inefficiency for the elimination of a target after touching the flag, rather than as soon as possible
[ ] Spawn frags
[x] Kamikaze behaviour

And will result with:

Keyhunt receives a much needed boost in terms of player count -> I support this proposition!

[[-z-]]

This bubble idea is going to make the game even more defensively oriented than it already is...

Yep, and that is NOT the direction to go. Why do players need to be punished for picking up the flag and losing it? What if it's the team's fault? WHY NOT JUST HAVE NO PENALTY FOR LOSING TO FLAG?

Can someone please explain this?

I've explained it plenty of times.


The system requires you to fail hard. Most players will never see the bubble. You should never see the bubble. If you see the bubble, you need to improve your technique. You have to try to fail this hard.



If this doesn't make sense, please explain to me why failing to capture the flag less than 25% of the times you've picked it up from the base is a good thing. How has this aided in the overall goal? Moral support? Should players feel good about making it to the flag and dying? Should they feel good about holding the flag as long as they did without ever scoring? I understand the later could be due to a team related issue but this may also be due to a selfish teammate, which, in order to succeed you would have to play a different position on the field because they will _always_ run to the flag. Here it's saying "hey, we need you you on defense."

The bubble is a way of letting new players, or perhaps stubborn old players, understand how to succeed in the game. Something a x% or less flag capture rate doesn't usually bring, unless both teams really suck or are really good. This is where the negative point system comes into play. It gives players a better idea of their overall contribution to the team.

I understand the negative flag base pick-up sounds weird but if you think of in consideration to the common goal, winning by flag captures, it needs to have a higher liability than a flag drop. A flag drop is pain the entire team shares and cannot simply heal because of the associated loss of power or advantage in reference to the match. A flag pickup is an individual pain the flag carrier must have the strength and confidence to take. One who's able to succeed in capture can heal the wound as it was just a deposit.

Putting fifty dollars down on top of the cost of the beer for a keg sucks but when all your friends chip in you actually save (or make) money. Having a successful party and returning the keg back unharmed gets you that money back.

[ai]

Let's just make this simple, let's vote. Cause as I see it now, a lot of people are against this bubble thing (even Div says it's not the best solution), and there is only one person that's totally for it, that's Z. So let's vote and we'll see what people think about negative flag pickups and the bubble, and not let ONE person decide what everyone else disagrees about.
For instance, what IS wrong with 1 cap = 1 score and a flag drop = 0.25 points (i.e 4 drops = 1 flag cap for the returning team) . That's pretty much the same system except here you do not get negative score (25%).
Now I'm not saying that system is the best either, but at least let's vote and see what the majority thinks before possibly wasting time on something that everyone might hate anyway.
If none of these systems is good then it's time to think about something else, or if nothing gets decided then just create SEPARATE modes, one true CTF and one with whatever crazy stuff Z tries to implement. What's so wrong with two modes anyway, the option should at least be there IMO. Servers might pop up once that option is available.

By now everyone should know the flag bubble concept (by reading up on it), it can also be applied to other systems beside the negative flag pickup as well (I'm really against negative flag pickup, NO MATTER where on the map you are).
As it stands now, people are really against this flag bubble thing, and only Z truly for it.

[divVerent]

ai: it is useless to vote for such stuff.

Even with the current poll now. Whatever we do, close to 50% are for it, and 50% are against it. It simply does not matter.

And, the problem with your system is that there are no _personal_ scores for other useful things, like killing flag carriers (i.e. defense).

And sure they will all be separate modes.

[Alien]

I'm not totally against bubble thing but against strategies which could be formed in competitive play or very noob game using that bubble:

1) 3 vs 3 good players with dedicated positions:
One teams camps/defends and lets other team attacker attack and grab the flag. Then they kill him and do this until he gets negative score (-20 or smth). Then he can't attack and their flag is relatively safe from him, so this lurker team can attack in 3 instead of sending 1 attacker and having 1 middle-fielder to support. If both teams employs this strategy, game stalls. It means basically the same what Tweak said.
2) Public CTF:
Let's imagine game is balanced. So good players are distributed equally. Not so good (N) amount > decent/good players amount (usually). Possible situation is 2 good, 6 N. Knowing that N. like easy frags and the easiest way to get those is camping for other attacking N. or spamming around in closed areas, possibilty that N. gets a flag diminishes with every additional player. So the only 2 good players can actually reach the flag where they are met with huge resistance in electro balls, bouncing crylink and hagar splash damage and sometimes successful nex shot. Health goes down quickly in tightly spaced maps cause you even don't need to be accurate to kill somebody. You can easily lose flag 4 times in such situation. After that the only thing which remains is staying back at your base and camp for other good players or N. from opposing team, who are trying to attack. You can even employ strategy at 1) to decrease the amount of good attackers from opposing team. So the situation of both two good players in each team getting -20 is not so impossible and the only way to increase the personal score is to defend. Ultimately, we get 2 defending teams consisting with 8 players and a casually vaporized N. It means basically the same what Tweak said.

The whole CTF thread was begun because div wanted to fix speedcaps. This does not fix the speedcaps, cause bad maps, which allowed it, are unaffected. Those maps and the gameplay in those suck as it sucked before bubble idea. This tries to fix kamikaze, which does not affect gameplay a lot (you kill kamikaze and return a flag). If we count only-caps so kamikaze score is not related at all to the victory of the team, cause it only affects kamikaze. Kamikaze means the person, who SUICIDES and does not return the flag. Yet, you may say that kamikaze might have a chance to be a successful, capture the flag and bring victory, but this only shows that your team lacked defense to stop solo attacker. Instead of fixing kamikazes, you better fix your defense. You increase personal score easier, so here is defenders incentive to kill kamikazes.

Now when the bubble idea would work. It would work when all people are similar in skill and can attack, defend, roam equally. In this case, scores would be distributed equally so one wouldn't need to camp to get his score up. If all team has -20, you can still pick the flag and try to cap.

From the j/k side: if smbd wants bubbles, he should try bubble trouble.

The one thing I liked from the TVR comment is that team should stop enemies as soon as possible. This could be implemented as -1 or bigger number for whole team members personal scores when flag is picked from the base by enemy. Neither this, neither return nor pickup should affect the deciding value: the amount of flags captured.

EDIT: For the sake of clarity deleted about z's negative deposit and teaching neural networks. Don't want to argue about that.

[ai]

And, the problem with your system is that there are no _personal_ scores for other useful things, like killing flag carriers (i.e. defense).

You can add some if you want. I actually prefer to have personal scores as well, I'm not against that, I'm just against negative pickups. The main thing is that you'd get 1 point for 1 cap, and not 20 or alike.

And sure they will all be separate modes.

Good to hear.

[k0jak]

have to agree one cap = 1 capture point, then just do personal scores for certain things like flag returns, flag capture (personal points also) flag kills, frags, assists?

ive read this negative scoring, and its got a lot of negative feedback for good or worse im not sure, but everything seems to be getting over-complicated...


and i like the idea of flag carrier speed-reduction if it helps to fix maps.