The Capture The Flag mode - Make Captures Matter?

[Blµb]

The last days I've been working a lot with CSQC. It all started when victim made a KeyHunt HUD in CSQC.
To get rid of the engine's hud and thus making the whole thing more flexible, I remade the whole HUD and Scoreboard in CSQC, and also added victim's KH changes.
Not only does that lead to improvements and changes, because CSQC can do a lot more:

Here are some screenshots of the developement, you might get an idea where I'm going with this (if you haven't read the title of this topic already )
http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/scoreboard1.png
http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/scoreboard2.png
http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/scoreboard3.png
http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/scoresboard4.png
http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/scoreboard5.png
http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/scoreboard6.png
http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/scoreboard7.png
http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/make- ... matter.png
http://217.16.115.15/~blub/images/ctfscores2.png (No, I was in the blue team captured, and then joined red, so the blue team DOES have 1 cap, even though the bot has 0)

The last 3 are the most recent and interesting ones.

It is now possible to actually count and display the flag-captures for each player, and the team.
However, RoKenn brought up some interesting points:
1) flagwhores (as he calls them) will be rewarded - Defenders won't

Well the thing is, the captures would count more than the frags of course. If the capture-score is 5:3, and the frag-score is 200:300, the first team would win. Although good defense also makes it harder to actually capture

2) measuring the individual contribution

Let's assume blue sucks, and the cap/frag scores (red:blue) are: 20:3/50:50. How'd you rate the contribution of the red defenders? Imagine Red treid to capture 20 times, and Blue 3 times, and comopare that to: Red trying to capture 50 times, and Blue trying to capture 3 times... or Red trying to capture 23 times and Blue trying to capture 50 times. The scores could still be the same in the end

When does a match end?
Well sure, you can say there's a capturelimit, and as soon as one team reaches the limit, it wins.

Then, should you also get frags for capturing?

Or, capturelimit is 0, so the game has a time limit, and when it ends:
1) The team with more captures wins
2) If they're equal, team with more frags wins
3) If they're equal, there'll be overtime
4) Both teams suck and go to hell


OR:
Just leave everything untouched...

What are your thoughts?

Of course, most likely there will be a cvar to choose between those modes...

[Xeno]

I have an idea to encourage defence and teamplay that you could incorporate into the scoreboard.

Create several "awards" categories to be displayed at the end of the game. For instance, a "best defender" based on the number of times someone KILLED the enemy flag carrier (not for flag returns, because the one who killed the enemy FC deserves more credit imo, but that's debatable). Maybe have a "best protector" award for killing enemies who are attacking your flag carrier, "most attentive" for picking up dropped flags, etc (just dropping these off the top of my head).

That could extend to non-CTF-specific awards later too ("best sniper"/"biggest railbitch", "rocket whore", etc.)


That might help to raise awareness of what people should be doing instead of spawncamping the enemy flag while their base and FC get raped elsewhere. It would also provide recognition for those who don't get a high frag/cap count even though they're make a great contribution to the team.

[Ronan]

It should be tested on a real public server, but I think :
- the winning team is the one to reach the capturelimit
- no overtime (it could take to much time for some maps, etc.).If the timelimit is reached and teams have the same number of capture, then the team with the most frags/points wins.
- to reward people, a special screen at the end display for the winning team the best attacker (based on individual capture), the best defender (based on how many flag carrier fragged or/and the number of retrieved flags), and some other funny award (best snipper, most suicide, etc.)

To manage the flagwhores problem, the frags/points could be :
- counted only by the number of frags
- counted by the number of frags, and to kill a flag carrier and retrieve the flag make additional points

[RoKenn]

IIRC so far (without csqc) it wasn't possible to separate team score and individual scores. If it is now (like the team still having the cap, but it doesn't get assigned to anyone else when the scorer leaves) that would be a big improvement imho.

And yes, there should either be something like a "best defender" award, or scores given for those things (capping, shooting efc, returning flag) to the individuals, but not the team. (Why should the team be rewarded for allowing its flag to be stolen anyway?)

And now for something completely different: if it's not too complicated, wouldn't it be nice to have a "AND THE WINNING TEAM IS" screen at the end? Maybe split screen with the voting. The current "... wins" message just scroll away before anyone notices.

[Blµb]

Showing the winner in the end is a good idea and I'll implement that. As far as the splitscreening is concerned, that might be a little harder. Although... even that might work since csqc also captures centerprinted texts...

The award idea seems to be a good one too.
And about killing the carrier and retrieving the flag - what should be done there? Should that be counted seperately too, just like the captures? Or added as frags? Like +5 for killing the carrier. Currently returning the flag gives some frags too afaik.

[tZork]

the radical approach to rewarding defense, killing and returning the flag = same value as a capture. (lets say 1 cap is worth 50 frags, 25 for fc kill, 25 for return)

also, what abt assists and sutch?

progress looks great btw, keep up the good work =)

[morfar]

Maybe captures shouldn't be rewarded with frags at all. A capture is worth more than frags anyway
So order players with most captures first in scoreboard. And then by frags.

[tZork]

I dont think they should (get frags for cap), but when scores are summarized a cap must be equal to # frags methinks.. or perhaps add a second score, "game score" for caps/returns/etc and de-couple frags totaly from sin conditions.

[morfar]

Yeah. or just rename "frags" to "score" when playing CTF, DOM, ONS, Runes and KH (if game scores takes to much room in scoreboard).

[[-z-]]

I think we need to start breaking this down into 2 scoreboards, one for during the game and one for post game. Here's what I came up with for during game.



FIXED:


Post game I'd like a tabbed scoreboard that uses the menu system div created showing off awards, shots fired and hit, etc. Div said the menu system is not currently coded to support this stating it runs off a static .dat file for performance reasons.


Notes:

[14:50:38] <morfar> Not sure about the column order though.. caps should be first in ctf

Something I overlooked. I agree with morfar.