CTF

[ai]

I agree with Div, I think the records of cap gives (more competitive) people a mentality to try to cap as fast as possible without thinking of their teammates.
Sure, you should cap as fast as possible, no one wants to take the flag and stay in the enemies base. But the speed cap record works in a way counter teamplay way. If it worked in a teamplay way they might have said: "Will you help me cap the flag and break the record? Can you hold off the enemy."
In a way that's good, but it's the wrong reason those other guys hold off the enemy. This mentality is wrong to CTF.
As Div said, now that there is 'Race' that's where people can get their sport on and try to beat the records. CTF is not some kind of race trying to beat records.

I'm not saying it should be removed completely (personally I'm for it), but at least try and see how people react. Maybe disabling the feature while saving the statistics so that no one gets mad if all the records are gone.
This is just my personal opinion.

[divVerent]

Or maybe disable the records when there is more than 1 (human) player on the server.

Which actually makes the records more fair, as runs where you were "assisted" by a team mate or an enemy won't get recorded.

[Alien]

Look at your_errors thread somewhere around. There are categories for each type of cap.

[divVerent]

I know that. The different categories don't change the fact that the capture timer DID worsen the general CTF experience, in favor of this speedrunning. That timer probably should never have been introduced, as it served no good and only harmed the game.

However, removing it now would be too late anyway, I suppose.

[ai]

@Div:
That's a very good idea actually. I really like that.

@Alien:
I will later on. But also keep in mind (I'm gonna say it before I've looked up on that thread so please take this loosely) trying to break the record for flag caps is the wrong attitude to CTF. One should cap the flag to score, help the team and hopefully win, not to break a record.

[ai]

Ok, I think I know what will happen if people get negative personal score.
There was this one guy in public CTF who complained about the scoring system. He had -28 points yet he didn't suicide once he said. Then he left.

Even if cap only counts, if people get negative score by doing nothing wrong, they will not think it's fun and leave. I am strongly against negative score in any kind whatsoever. This just cannot happen in the next release, it will drive people away I think.

[ai]

Forgot to add. There were 5-6 players on the server. I saw two people on the enemy team having negative score. That started to make me think, that this is how it can be even with more people. So I have to stress the fact, how fun is it to play when half the team has negative score? Even for me, who was on the winning team and had positive score it was boring and totally weird. I didn't want to discourage them from taking the flag but I couldn't let them get away with it either. That's a dilemma right there, negative scoring discourage players and then they will stop playing the mode and possibly even the entire game.

[[-z-]]

I don't think it's fair to make a statisical analysis based off one experience. I've played with players who ask "why do I have negative?" and I explain and they improve their game as such.

I think a message stating they lose points when picking up the flag would be better than dropping the idea all together because of one bad experience. After all, they would probably be losing the game anyway if they were able to reach -28. Clearly their strategies aren't working out so well.

[ai]

But they also didn't know what they were doing wrong.
But still, trying to improve the public servers with this system is not good. If this system only applied to more competitive play maaaaybe I would think about considering this. But let's face it, public games will _always_ have people jumping for the flag not doing anything else. You can't improve everyone.

Plus, one bad experience is more than no experience at all. This was the first and only time I played with this system and on this occasion people already told this system 'sucks', his words. I too didn't like it as it felt I had to be more 'generous' to the enemy and let them capture the flag in order to make them stay in the game and play.

People get irritated and annoyed easily. Even if they are doing something "wrong" which actually isn't wrong, and they get punished for it this way they will be irritated and give up.
I'll play some more and see the reactions of the people, but if the majority doesn't like it (which seems that way already based on the comments on these forums) then this will be a moot point. No use in arguing as this would then never be implemented.

[[-z-]]

But they also didn't know what they were doing wrong.

Which is why I suggested a message be shown on pickup in my previous reply.


I'm not wasting energy on this argument anymore. It's met with too much FUD. If anyone would like to help me develop this system further, feel free to contact me. I will continue to evolve it privately.