idea ??

[rufsketch1]

What happens if one of the teams is full of Nex gods and the other has the same number of new players?

I believe we can solve this problem using math.


God team has 10 players. at the end of the game, it has 500 points

New team has 10 players, at the end of the game, it has 100 points.

the average of 500 and 100 is 300.

from the god team, remove the player with the highest score that when added to the score of the new team, would not exceed 300.

if the score of the new team would now make less than 300, repeat the step again with a lower scoring member of the god team, who when added to the new total, would still not make the new team's score exceed 300. do this until there are no players left with scores that would not in total end up causing the new teams score to exceed 300.

in the next round, switch these selected god team members into the new team.


this round should be a much more evenly matched.

[[-z-]]

You forgot to incorporate time. If pavlvs joins with 30 seconds left and gets 1 kill, he's going to get ranked as a bad player.

The essential ingredients for ranking CTF players would be:
kills, deaths, flag scores, flag drops, flag returns and time. Ideally, flag carrier kills and accuracy would be incorporated but that would need bigger code changes. But ignoring those factors we can do something like this:

(k-d)+2*(1+f*(r-e))/t

Where:
k = kills
d = deaths
f = flag scores
e = flag drops
r = flag returns
t = time

In english, You'll get a combination of your killing power (kills minus deaths) plus your value as a team player (returns minus drops multiplied by the number of flag scores times 2). Notice, if the player has more drops than returns, they will be punished by the same function that would reward them if they weren't such a selfish player. Option, 2 could be subbed in with a value set by the server admin, v. Then divide those two numbers by time.

to summarize:

(k+v(x))/t

where:

k = killing power
v = value as a team player
x = bonus/punishment multiplier
t = time


Examples:

((k-d)+2*(1*f*(r-d)))/t

25 kills, 5 deaths, 3 flag caps, 1flag drop, 3 flag returns, 6 minutes
(team player)

((25-5)+2*(1*3*(3-1)))/6
(20+2*(1*3*(2)))/6
(20+2*(3*(2)))/6
(20+2*6)/6
(20+12)/6
(32)/6 = 5.333

20 kills, 15 deaths, 0 flag caps, 3 flag drop, 1 flag returns, 6 minutes
(selfish / unaware)

((20-15)+2*(1*0*(1-3)))/6
(5+2(-2))/6
= 1/6 = .1667

[tZork]

deaths are not necessarily a bad thing wrt to team value. for example, a player prepared to sacrifice himself to take the brunt of the counter attack while hes team got the other ones flag are a valuable team member. flag return scores are not that important, anyone can (and should!) return the flag. carrier kills however needs to be factored in.

kills are not always good. take a map like hydronex. killing off to much will mean the enemy base is crawling with 150 hp players armed with, at least, a rather nasty shotgun. making the attackers job near impossible. and then of course if you spend time killing instead of trying to cap or defend, or fulfill whatever job the middleman needs to be doing. your not helping your team.

killing power has little to do with k/d ratio, this part is bogus imo. k/t are more like it.

weapon / item hogging are a BIG - in team play. someone grabbing a gun they allready have _while teammates are close_ or gobbeling up more then 200/100 hp/ar need to have their team-worth-score cut drastically regardless of other factors. im sure theres other things like this that needs to be thought of, this was just of the top of my head when i read this.

what really would bring some valuable info to this equation is if the player a) announces hes role and b) tried to fulfill it. hard to make happen tho.

in all i think its good to try to develop a generic score formula. but in the end its hard to evaluate a players worth by statistics. perhaps a karma system could help. eg let players say i dis/like this player. to be effective that would need reliable between game tracking tho.

[rufsketch1]

You forgot to incorporate time. If pavlvs joins with 30 seconds left and gets 1 kill, he's going to get ranked as a bad player.

The essential ingredients for ranking CTF players would be:
kills, deaths, flag scores, flag drops, flag returns and time. Ideally, flag carrier kills and accuracy would be incorporated but that would need bigger code changes. But ignoring those factors we can do something like this:

(k-d)+2*(1*f*(r-d))/t

Where:
k = kills
d = deaths
f = flag scores
d = flag drops
r = flag returns
t = time

In english, You'll get a combination of your killing power (kills minus deaths) plus your value as a team player (returns minus drops multiplied by the number of flag scores times 2). Notice, if the player has more drops than returns, they will be punished by the same function that would reward them if they weren't such a selfish player. Option, 2 could be subbed in with a value set by the server admin, v. Then divide those two numbers by time.

to summarize:

(k+v(x))/t

where:

k = killing power
v = value as a team player
x = bonus/punishment multiplier
t = time


Examples:

((k-d)+2*(1*f*(r-d)))/t

25 kills, 5 deaths, 3 flag caps, 1flag drop, 3 flag returns, 6 minutes
(team player)

((25-5)+2*(1*3*(3-1)))/6
(20+2*(1*3*(2)))/6
(20+2*(3*(2)))/6
(20+2*6)/6
(20+12)/6
(32)/6 = 5.333

20 kills, 15 deaths, 0 flag caps, 3 flag drop, 1 flag returns, 6 minutes
(selfish / unaware)

((20-15)+2*(1*0*(1-3)))/6
(5+2(-2))/6
= 1/6 = .1667

I didn't forget to incorporate time, I chose not to. there is no study to my knowledge on what amount of time is statistically significant in an fps game of capture the flag. so best leave it out, and let the unbalance exist for one more round than anything else. even then, the match should be fairly close, its no fun if its always perfectly balanced.

[Dokujisan]

Belittling replies aren't really necessary, are they? Simply because you don't see the utility of something doesn't make it meaningless or useless. The truth is you have no idea why I care about such things nor will you ever. Perhaps I have good reasons, perhaps I'm just batshit paranoid (which in turn might have a reasonable basis).

I don't think it was belittling (especially not compared to some of the comments you make from time to time).

You seem concerned about a threat stemming from this.
I don't see any reason for concern, even in theory, from someone who participates in IRC and on forums. I don't see the difference. Thus, it appears like paranoia to me. You don't seem interested in explaining any further, so we're at an impasse.

My concern is that you could be holding back development of a much-wanted feature while giving very little explanation. I don't want to know your personal life, but it would be useful to know something more to support the concern. I don't see how it could be any more dangerous than using other internet services, like a web forum, IRC or email.

Btw, apart from the anonymity aspect, global stats just leads to more prick-waving as people get more focused on trying to be better than everyone else.

Competitive gameplay doesn't spawn "prick-waving" any more than forums spawn heated arguments. It is really dependent upon the community. Many people value competition for adding excitement to a game. Some might use stats as a method for tracking improvement.

[[-z-]]

deaths are not necessarily a bad thing wrt to team value. for example, a player prepared to sacrifice himself to take the brunt of the counter attack while hes team got the other ones flag are a valuable team member.

lol wut? You're still dying, it doesn't matter if it's for the good of the team, that's a whole 'nother level of statistics that my equation is not concerned with. Regardless of the fact that Nexuiz can't predict whether you died to help your team or not. Dying is not a good thing, I don't believe you should get points even if you did die ~for your team~. You still died, and lost all your weapons and your location.

flag return scores are not that important, anyone can (and should!) return the flag. carrier kills however needs to be factored in.

Well now, your ideology and public server realities are two distinct pictures. You'd like to assume everyone knows to retrieve the flag but spec on galts for a while and you'll see just how oblivious some players can be.

kills are not always good. take a map like hydronex. killing off to much will mean the enemy base is crawling with 150 hp players armed with, at least, a rather nasty shotgun. making the attackers job near impossible. and then of course if you spend time killing instead of trying to cap or defend, or fulfill whatever job the middleman needs to be doing. your not helping your team.

In this example, the deaths are also high... so if we go back to my point about deaths being a bad thing, you'll see how this balances out.

killing power has little to do with k/d ratio, this part is bogus imo. k/t are more like it.

it's all over time... kills minus deaths times a multipler OVER TIME.

weapon / item hogging are a BIG - in team play. someone grabbing a gun they allready have _while teammates are close_ or gobbeling up more then 200/100 hp/ar need to have their team-worth-score cut drastically regardless of other factors. im sure theres other things like this that needs to be thought of, this was just of the top of my head when i read this.

Again some sort of ideology here. I'm speaking about public servers. Public servers.

what really would bring some valuable info to this equation is if the player a) announces hes role and b) tried to fulfill it. hard to make happen tho.

While I'd love a team fortress mode, that's hardly a solution to balancing.

in all i think its good to try to develop a generic score formula. but in the end its hard to evaluate a players worth by statistics.

Really because there are quite a few out there that do a pretty good job.

perhaps a karma system could help. eg let players say i dis/like this player. to be effective that would need reliable between game tracking tho.

What could possibly go wrong?!?


I feel like you're trying to hold my formula up against unrealistic hopes and dreams. I'm tired of this "it won't work" attitude. Experiments are how we build knowledge about our science.

[Psychcf]

deaths are not necessarily a bad thing wrt to team value. for example, a player prepared to sacrifice himself to take the brunt of the counter attack while hes team got the other ones flag are a valuable team member.

lol wut? You're still dying, it doesn't matter if it's for the good of the team, that's a whole 'nother level of statistics that my equation is not concerned with. Regardless of the fact that Nexuiz can't predict whether you died to help your team or not. Dying is not a good thing, I don't believe you should get points even if you did die ~for your team~. You still died, and lost all your weapons and your location.

But deaths already have their consequence, the other team gets a point. Why have double-punishment?

flag return scores are not that important, anyone can (and should!) return the flag. carrier kills however needs to be factored in.

Well now, your ideology and public server realities are two distinct pictures. You'd like to assume everyone knows to retrieve the flag but spec on galts for a while and you'll see just how oblivious some players can be.

Yes, returning the flag is good, but then people will just race toward the flag. I feel the person who killed the FC should be rewarded, not the guy who returned it.

kills are not always good. take a map like hydronex. killing off to much will mean the enemy base is crawling with 150 hp players armed with, at least, a rather nasty shotgun. making the attackers job near impossible. and then of course if you spend time killing instead of trying to cap or defend, or fulfill whatever job the middleman needs to be doing. your not helping your team.

In this example, the deaths are also high... so if we go back to my point about deaths being a bad thing, you'll see how this balances out.

I agree with tZork on this one.

killing power has little to do with k/d ratio, this part is bogus imo. k/t are more like it.

it's all over time... kills minus deaths times a multipler OVER TIME.

I disagree with both of you here. Maybe on the scores box you could put how many deaths the player had, so they could realize "oh, I'm dying way too much, and everyone can see it. Better pull back on the carelessness"

weapon / item hogging are a BIG - in team play. someone grabbing a gun they allready have _while teammates are close_ or gobbeling up more then 200/100 hp/ar need to have their team-worth-score cut drastically regardless of other factors. im sure theres other things like this that needs to be thought of, this was just of the top of my head when i read this.

Again some sort of ideology here. I'm speaking about public servers. Public servers.

Even on public servers. Maybe we could add a sprite to people who just have starting weapons so it's easier to tell? (Of course, this would only be shown to team-mates)

what really would bring some valuable info to this equation is if the player a) announces hes role and b) tried to fulfill it. hard to make happen tho.

While I'd love a team fortress mode, that's hardly a solution to balancing.

meh, that sounds sort of like a completely different gamemode. Maybe some sort of fireteam system would help?

in all i think its good to try to develop a generic score formula. but in the end its hard to evaluate a players worth by statistics.

Really because there are quite a few out there that do a pretty good job.[/url]

It's possible, but we have to stop the bickering and allow for constructive criticism.

perhaps a karma system could help. eg let players say i dis/like this player. to be effective that would need reliable between game tracking tho.

What could possibly go wrong?!?


I feel like you're trying to hold my formula up against unrealistic hopes and dreams. I'm tired of this "it won't work" attitude. Experiments are how we build knowledge about our science.

User moderation works, but only if the user is willing to do it, and only if the user is reasonable. I don't think people are willing to fill out a questionnaire at the end of every map. On top of that, I'm afraid people may get the mentality of "if he's on my team I'm going to say he was good so we win, but if he's on the other team, he sucked."

[[-z-]]

I think you guys are missing the point that my calculations would be for weighting on public servers. Done behind the scenes. Most users wouldn't even know about. I believe however, it would create fairer matches than what currently exist.

Each user gets a score used internally at the end of the match and then the new teams created would used the data from the previous match to try and weight the teams fairly.


I like psychcf' idea about the 'new player' sprite but unless we match a user's ip against a database, how would we know? Let the user control it? That'll lead to abuse. Global login? Don't hold your breath.

If you think my formula is flawed, I challenge you to argue it with math, not just an opinion.

[Psychcf]

I like psychcf' idea about the 'new player' sprite but unless we match a user's ip against a database, how would we know? Let the user control it? That'll lead to abuse. Global login? Don't hold your breath.

No no no... if the player has /just/ the starting weapons, then he'd have a sprite above him. That way his teammates know he needs a weapon.

Or, if the player could only use the starting weapons because ammo from another weapon has been depleted, then it'd show the sprite.

[[-z-]]

Ooooh even better idea. Sounds doable too!