A Formal Letter of Complaint from a Humble Flag Thief

[Silica Gel: Do Not Eat]

I agree that the scoring system is broken. It should only reward scoring and frags and maybe count flag frags as double frags.

Defender - person who defends your flag
Camper - person who defends enemy flag

That's not a camper that's a midfielder (or trailblazer or saboteur). Don't provoke us midfielders into writing a letter to you defenders now. :p

Sorry what i meant was
Camper - Opponent who defends his flag

In other words, if a good defender is on your team he's a defender
But if he is on the opposite team he is a CAMPER

[ai]

In other words, if a good defender is on your team he's a defender
But if he is on the opposite team he is a CAMPER

That's quite correct. This is one of the reasons why I NEVER complain about campers and never even call them campers. Cause I know they are defending their base/flag.
What should they do? Run around like crazy chickens? I would actually like a definition from someone who calls defenders campers, and what they think a defender is.

Sure, I know a camper is someone who sits in the same spot over and over and over and over again. But that's what makes them such an easy target, you always know where they are. Defenders are a little bit more flexible, who are in the vicinity of their flag, yet, they are called campers cause they don't get out of the base and help the enemy score.

Those who call people campers, ANY PEOPLE, are delusional and frankly, retarded.

[divVerent]

As all this scoring stuff has been analyzed fully before...

http://www.forums.alientrap.local/viewtopi ... tf+scoring

here is just some scoring numbers:

in z's system:
- successful capture = 25 points
- failed capture = -10 points (enemy gets
- failed capture and shot in void = -2 points (enemy gets 5)
- dying with the flag, picking it up again: -1 to -4 points (enemy gets 5)
- suicide with the flag, then pick it up again: -1 to -4 points

So: to get an increasing score, you need a success rate of at least 28%. To get more points than the enemy, you need a success rate of at least 42%.

http://www.forums.alientrap.local/viewtopi ... tf+scoring

If needed, I can make a new analysis of CTF scoring for separate views of attacker and defender (i.e. for personal scoring). It's not that hard.

[ai]

If so many people hate the new scoring system why insisting on having negative points? As said, not all flag pickups are made to score, as Oblivion said, some are made to stall an enemy FC from scoring.
Also as said, the scoring system was meant to dealt with a select few bad people, shall everyone suffer for a few stupid players? This is not right.

Disband this scoring system and implement a sane one PLEASE!

[RoKenn]

So: to get an increasing score, you need a success rate of at least 28%. To get more points than the enemy, you need a success rate of at least 42%.

You simply can't solve this with mathematics. Games are so different that any attempt will fail.

If, for example, your opponent team has a good defense your cappers will naturally have a lot of failed attempts. I've seen games in which the strongest player did the capturing alone, while all others defended, roamed or were useless and the capper made his team win - needing a lot of attempts due to strong defense of the other team. At the end he was the only one who had a negative score in his team. What an [CENSORED_BY_MYSELF.]


I for one solved the problem of this fscked up scoring system for myself by playing only on a server which doesn't use it. And the only thing that I miss from that old scoring system is that fc kills are rewarded a bit stronger, flag returns maybe a bit weaker.

Thanks, Oblivion.

[Dokujisan]

well, the question (to me) is how to get the game to detect different scenarios. Like how can it tell that it was a "good" flag grab as opposed to a "bad" one. How can Nexuiz tell whether you are hurting your team or helping your team?

I know one thing it could look for is whether the player grabbing the flag has low health or not. If someone grabs the flag with 10hp, that's usually a bad thing. But that is the only example I can think of right now that nexuiz could actually detect.

Another example is if you yourself are a slower flag carrier and a faster one is standing 4ft from you and you decide to grab the flag instead of them. That is a selfish move. But I seriously doubt that nexuiz could detect a scenario like this. There are probably a lot of other examples similar to this where getting Nexuiz to recognize the scenario would be very difficult.

Without that type of "scenario detection", nexuiz isn't going to be able to have excellent scoring, imo. That is, scoring that reflects how player's actions truly affected the match.

So the next question would be...what sort of scenarios can Nexuiz detect, for the sake of scoring?

[divVerent]

So: to get an increasing score, you need a success rate of at least 28%. To get more points than the enemy, you need a success rate of at least 42%.

You simply can't solve this with mathematics. Games are so different that any attempt will fail.

If, for example, your opponent team has a good defense your cappers will naturally have a lot of failed attempts.

This is exactly my point. 28% success rate is NOT a good idea to require just for a positive score, as many games show. Which is why I suggest rethinking this "penalty for taking the flag" idea. A perfect scoring awards positive numbers or none, but this cannot be ENTIRELY done for CTF.

[ai]

There is a new version of ctfscoring_ai.cfg. I took a look at it and morfar committed that to the SVN. Basically, the only way of people to get negative score is to suicide. If you suicide you get -1 point if you have the flag and suicide you get -2 because you had the flag as well.

Furthermore, if you drop the flag (with the drop key) you get -1 point. I don't see this to be a big problem as I rarely see anyone using this feature, and even if people would, they wouldn't use it that often. While 1 point is relatively easy to get back.

Another reason for this -1 point for dropping the flag is that yesterday there was a dude who dropped and captured the flag all the time. In the end of the match he had like 111 flag pickups, now his score stayed the same. But if someone where to do something like that again with the -1 for dropping the flag he would have a very negative score.

[divVerent]

Why is a failed capture attempt +1 point in your system? Why is pickup_late +1 (probably by mistake, should be equal to pickup_early)?

Other than a failed capture actually INCREASING score, I like your system. To fix the score increasing problem, I suggest these changes:

g_ctf_flagpenalty_returned 1

Then, if you lose the flag and the enemy returns it, you again lose the point you got for picking up the flag.

Alternatively:

g_ctf_personalscore_pickup_base 0

Just taking the flag doesn't really need to give a point

[Flying Steel]

There is a new version of ctfscoring_ai.cfg. I took a look at it and morfar committed that to the SVN. Basically, the only way of people to get negative score is to suicide. If you suicide you get -1 point if you have the flag and suicide you get -2 because you had the flag as well.

Furthermore, if you drop the flag (with the drop key) you get -1 point. I don't see this to be a big problem as I rarely see anyone using this feature, and even if people would, they wouldn't use it that often. While 1 point is relatively easy to get back.

Well this sounds like an almost perfect system and certainly a major step up from the current system of confusing and sever penalties that are probably counterproductive anyway (like badly punishing people for only getting the enemy flag halfway home- still a benefit for their team).

Sorry what i meant was
Camper - Opponent who defends his flag

In other words, if a good defender is on your team he's a defender
But if he is on the opposite team he is a CAMPER

Heh, well I was joking anyway but I see what you meant now. Personally, I see anything you do in game that benefits your team as perfectly okay (which by definition excludes hacking or text spamming).