divVerent wrote:

Dokujisan wrote:XENO's keyhunt tutorial video is a good start. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but hope that trend continues.

Cool, he now made one too? I actually didn't make a real tutorial, I made it for players who already know other teamplay game modes and want to see some action... a real tutorial video would be cool.

heh, oops. My mistake. I changed it to say divVerent.

divVerent wrote:In my video, BTW, Xeno starred in some scenes - both as good and as bad example,

Yes, I think that was a great idea, to have good and bad examples. I think the overlay text works just find. I think we should all start to brainstorm on what types of things might go into some tutorial videos. Xeno created a thread about that a month or so ago. I'll have to dig it up.

Well its important to have both new and experianced players and also to have interesting stuff for both. You need experianced players because they show off skill, have knowledge and are the most active players normally. But you also need the beginners to have a growing userbase and to prosper among other games.

But to get a balance is hard.. i for one WOULD NOT LIKE to have a kinda of auto-balance during the game. That totally destroys any meaning of 'your team'!!! Why should i try my best if i get shuffled into the other team in mid game? Hell if i knew that before hand maybe i should even play bad so i have it easier when i'm forced to switch? THAT is one of the bad effects you call for if you want autobalance. the only autobalance that might work is BEFORE the game. But for that you need a sort of player registry and please remember that skill is nothing fixed.. sometimes you have a bad day or just want to have some fun. I love defending but sometimes i'm just fed up with it and want to attack (which i'm not as good in) or do neither and support by giving coverfire or similar. In such a case i doubt i can show all my skill. So how do you want to balance it? And lets not forget that we still speak about TEAM matches.. one good player can be the base of a team but he can't win alone. Play a few games with a bad team (which many people complained about in this thread) and voila your 'value' in this player registry is very wrong.
All that is to just say i strongly belive that team should still be balanced by humans. Maybe we can add '3min warmup' time in some release. That could be used to balance the teams 'by hand' but please no automatic shit especially during the game.

And leaving during a game happens way too often, its just hard to notice due to the action. On some servers its not that bad, because new players join quickly.
Also sorry to say this (i also do it too often) the moment you complain about the situation, you make it even worse because you drop out of the match for at least a half a minute to type.. Also the sad thing is that its damn hard to teach people some stuff. I posted the url to my CTF guide i dozens of matches but i can't say i see much improvement. Yeah its not as nice as a video but i doubt that a video would have a much huger impact, you still need to get people to watch it. You hardly get casual gamers to do that. But i hope i'm wrong here!!!
I added a simple conversion of my 'basic basics or what i wish someone told me half a year ago' to Nexuiz 2.3. So it should be really easy to point people to it. It can serve as an test to see how easy its to get people to learn new stuff..

esteel wrote:But to get a balance is hard.. i for one WOULD NOT LIKE to have a kinda of auto-balance during the game. That totally destroys any meaning of 'your team'!!! Why should i try my best if i get shuffled into the other team in mid game?

Oh, wait... that's not what I meant. I also don't like the auto-balance during the game. I'm suggesting balancing the teams at the beginning, before the game even starts. The primary purpose is to make sure the high-scoring players are split up as evenly as possible at the beginning. My theory is that there would be fewer frustrated people due to unbalanced teams, and thus fewer players dropping in mid-game.

Anecdote from this morning. I log in for a quick game on the RBI CTF server and it's Mentalspace. The score is about 200 to 50. Fine, I figure I'll wait for the next game, hopefully it will be better. Then I notice that blue (the leading team) has 2 guys with HUGE scores and the rest very low. The game ends at something like 315 to 72. The winning team had one guy with 167 points and one with 137. Everyone else had like 1 or 2. No, I am not making those numbers up!

Next game starts (Facing Worlds) and again the same two guys are on blue. I ask if they could balance the teams a bit, to which I get a reply from one that "they like being on the same team and don't care about game balance".

That's the problem in a nutshell. It only takes 1 or 2 people with that attitude to ruin the game for everyone.

So I switched to blue and began hindering that guy to slow blue down a bit. It worked, red at least got into the game.

The next game was something like 127-24 when I finally said "screw it" and logged off.

---

Now some constructive thoughts. Some that a few people won't like to hear, but that's never stopped me before.

1. esteel's CTF guide is superb and should be required reading for anyone who wants to play CTF. Unfortunately, most people nowadays don't like to read -- they are too lazy. And even worse, most players don't even really care about proper teamplay, they only want to run up their own scores or be on the "winning team".

Don't believe me? How often have you shot a flagholder and been going over to pick up the flag when one of your teammates zips in to grab it out from under you? Happens to me constantly. Why do people change teams when they are losing by a lot?

2. There is too much reward in the game for flag capture and not enough for useful actions taken by defenders and midfielders. This directly encourages everyone to go on the attack rather than playing as a team. It also disproportionately rewards the better players who are able to laserjump across maps quickly, and leads in part to the "run up the score" mentality.

Again, I like to play defence. I usually end up with a low score, and I don't really care, but some people do and they should be rewarded for it.

Consider an example. On Mentalspace, I'm on blue, and a red guy grabs the flag at the same time a blue guy grabs the red flag. Both are dancing around avoiding enemies. I get shot by a red guy and as I'm falling I take my laser and ping the enemy flagholder into the void. He dies so we can score. I get 1 point, and the guy on my team who scores gets 20 or something. Was his contribution to that score really 20 times mine? Why is killing a flagholder worth only 1 point anyway?

3. Laserjumping adds an interesting dimension to Nexuiz, but it also represents the most significant gulf between expert and beginner players. Whenever I am in a lop-sided game, it is nearly always due to a couple of expert players who laserjump around the map and run up high scores.

4. Having a player registry and whatnot would be too complicated, but there are other methods that could be implemented MUCH more easily. Some of these assume that most players WANT to be reasonable and fair (unlike the stooges in my games this morning) and just aren't sure how to do it.

For example:

- Have the server keep track of players from game to game and balance them accordingly. Most people do play more than one game so this should be easy to do.
- Create a skill coding system that people can put in their names, which servers would recognize at game start time and use accordingly. For example, you could put "{B}" at the start of your name for "beginner", "{I}" for "intermediate" or "{A}" for advanced. Or use a numeric system of some sort. Yes, it's voluntary, but I think most people would at least try to be reasonable.
- Make the server care more about relative score and not just numbers. When the score is 125-10 for blue, the next player should go to red even if red has 5 players and blue has 4.

5. Perhaps a better solution to all of this is more segregation of the really advanced players from the newcomers and the intermediates. Right now everyone is always trying to get into 1 or 2 CTF servers. Nil set up a beginner's CTF server, in part due to my request (thanks Nil!) but he took it down once and seems to be away so I can't confirm that it is going to be a permanent fixture. Even so, we can't get people on it.

The problem with CTF is that you need at least 6-8 people for it to work well, and you end up with the chicken and egg where nobody joins a server because nobody else is joining it. There could be features added to the "Join" function to make this easier to deal with for players looking for a game.

---

Nexuiz is a great game, but some work is needed to allow it to live up to its potential. I honestly think that the impediments to allowing newer and less experienced players a fun, balanced game experience are the #1 reason why the playerbase is, right now, fairly stagnant.

As another piece of evidence -- I initially found Nexuiz because two of my sons wanted to play it. They were very excited at first but rarely play any more because they don't enjoy being made into swiss cheese every time they log in.

esteel wrote:But to get a balance is hard.. i for one WOULD NOT LIKE to have a kinda of auto-balance during the game.

Am I right in thinking that the current 'teams unbalanced' message is relying solely on the number of players on each side?

If so could it not be altered, with relative ease, to not be displayed, (or to change the text maybe), if, say team 'A' has fewer players but is ahead in points? As a more general point could the messaging system, (which is already working and implemented after all), be more informative?

I say this because I've been playing a few times recently and I would have changed if I'd known my side was winning by 300-150.

I'm just trying to think of ways that don't mean any significant code changes but do help players act intelligently. The values of the numbers of players and team scores are maintained during games so this shouldn't be a problem to tell people every so often should it? Say, every 60 or 120 seconds when the player numbers is uneven or the point difference is greater than 20% or whatever.

I don't play CTF, but I got an idea for your problem of unbalanced teams.
Why don't separate CTF servers in two parts, a beginners part to learn to play, then go to the experienced CTF server if they think they got enough skill.
That's already used on DM, experienced use to go on DCC Plain DM and beginner go to the beginners DM.
That avoids to me making too much 30 frags in a row.
I think that's a good idea exept for watching skilled player playing on real. But with videos and demos a beginner can learn much.

charlesk wrote:Anecdote from this morning. I log in for a quick game on the RBI CTF server and it's Mentalspace. The score is about 200 to 50. Fine, I figure I'll wait for the next game, hopefully it will be better.

Those figures don't sound too bad if you join the side with 50. depending on the number of players and players involved.

charlesk wrote:Then I notice that blue (the leading team) has 2 guys with HUGE scores and the rest very low. The game ends at something like 315 to 72. The winning team had one guy with 167 points and one with 137. Everyone else had like 1 or 2. No, I am not making those numbers up!

The trouble with MS is that it's a bit too easy for a team to have 1 or 2 players with shotguns or single firing machine-guns that can stop players successfully negotiating the jumps across. If the other side doesn't do the same it's almost impossible to have an even match regardless of how good the players on the the other side.

charlesk wrote:Next game starts (Facing Worlds) and again the same two guys are on blue. I ask if they could balance the teams a bit, to which I get a reply from one that "they like being on the same team and don't care about game balance".

That's the problem in a nutshell. It only takes 1 or 2 people with that attitude to ruin the game for everyone.

So I switched to blue and began hindering that guy to slow blue down a bit. It worked, red at least got into the game.

Yeah, I've done that as well from time to time in similar circumstances. I'm sure es and others don't approve but when you're faced with a '**** you buddy' attitude it seems the only reasonable response. However, you should give them the chance to change first by repeated messages imploring a change of attitude.

charlesk wrote:Now some constructive thoughts. Some that a few people won't like to hear, but that's never stopped me before.

1. esteel's CTF guide is superb and should be required reading for anyone who wants to play CTF. Unfortunately, most people nowadays don't like to read -- they are too lazy. And even worse, most players don't even really care about proper teamplay, they only want to run up their own scores or be on the "winning team".

I'm not sure that's strictly true. I'd say 'some' players. Most people are reasonable given some prompting and a positive approach.

charlesk wrote:Don't believe me? How often have you shot a flagholder and been going over to pick up the flag when one of your teammates zips in to grab it out from under you? Happens to me constantly.

Happens to me a bit as well but I can't say it bothers me at all. I mean, I know I've shot the FC and so does the guy that picks it up. In any event if gets there first he's obviously closer than me so what's the problem.

charlesk wrote:Why do people change teams when they are losing by a lot?

To screw up the winning side, like you and I do No, again... I'm not sure that's really true.

charlesk wrote:2. There is too much reward in the game for flag capture and not enough for useful actions taken by defenders and midfielders. This directly encourages everyone to go on the attack rather than playing as a team. It also disproportionately rewards the better players who are able to laserjump across maps quickly, and leads in part to the "run up the score" mentality. Again, I like to play defence. I usually end up with a low score, and I don't really care, but some people do and they should be rewarded for it.

Hmm... yeah... s'pose. Speaking as one of the great 'brainless attack' merchants I'm not sure it's in my interest to agree about that. Also, bear in mind that a team gets a quarter of the points for a recapture as I get for capturing it. In maps like greatwall in the past I've suggested letting the other get it and then nabbing them on the way out. Assuming frags are about even it's quite a good way of winning on maps where the entrance is open but large making it difficult for the FC to get away.

charlesk wrote:Consider an example. On Mentalspace, I'm on blue, and a red guy grabs the flag at the same time a blue guy grabs the red flag. Both are dancing around avoiding enemies. I get shot by a red guy and as I'm falling I take my laser and ping the enemy flagholder into the void. He dies so we can score. I get 1 point, and the guy on my team who scores gets 20 or something. Was his contribution to that score really 20 times mine?

Well, bluntly, who cares.

charlesk wrote:3. Laserjumping adds an interesting dimension to Nexuiz, but it also represents the most significant gulf between expert and beginner players. Whenever I am in a lop-sided game, it is nearly always due to a couple of expert players who laserjump around the map and run up high scores.

No, I think that's wrong. I think it's that players that have played enough to be able to laserjump properly are also the players that have played enough to be good players with good movement, vision and aim. The notable exception to this is me. I'm good at laserjumping but crap at everything else

charlesk wrote:- Have the server keep track of players from game to game and balance them accordingly. Most people do play more than one game so this should be easy to do.

Servers don't monitor players over maps as I understand it. I might be wrong though.

charlesk wrote:- Create a skill coding system that people can put in their names, which servers would recognize at game start time and use accordingly. For example, you could put "{B}" at the start of your name for "beginner", "{I}" for "intermediate" or "{A}" for advanced. Or use a numeric system of some sort. Yes, it's voluntary, but I think most people would at least try to be reasonable.

I'm not sure what you mean. What does the server do with the information?

charlesk wrote:Nexuiz is a great game, but some work is needed to allow it to live up to its potential. I honestly think that the impediments to allowing newer and less experienced players a fun, balanced game experience are the #1 reason why the playerbase is, right now, fairly stagnant.

As another piece of evidence -- I initially found Nexuiz because two of my sons wanted to play it. They were very excited at first but rarely play any more because they don't enjoy being made into swiss cheese every time they log in.

Hmm... this sounds familiar.

http://www.alientrap.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=815&highlight=

esteel wrote:I posted the url to my CTF guide i dozens of matches but i can't say i see much improvement. Yeah its not as nice as a video but i doubt that a video would have a much huger impact, you still need to get people to watch it.

On that specific point, es, I mentioned in another thread about having a couple of tutorial demos included with the game. These would cover basic movement and weapon firing as well as health and armour collection. You did something like this a while ago and it was pretty good.

However, I think it could be improved as you obviously had to enter the text whilst playing. Could this not be entered into the config file and attached to a key. That way you could see more action without any pauses. I could help with the text if you like. My English is pretty good - almost as good as yours

I would envisage, say, a couple of demos and a couple of tutorials. One, very basic one and one more advanced.

What do you think?

old_codger wrote:

charlesk wrote:Consider an example. On Mentalspace, I'm on blue, and a red guy grabs the flag at the same time a blue guy grabs the red flag. Both are dancing around avoiding enemies. I get shot by a red guy and as I'm falling I take my laser and ping the enemy flagholder into the void. He dies so we can score. I get 1 point, and the guy on my team who scores gets 20 or something. Was his contribution to that score really 20 times mine?

Well, bluntly, who cares.

Well, I do agree that this does matter. This has been brought up a number of times on the forum before, IIRC. What the current scoring system does is influence people to ignore defense, because defense doesn't "pay". At the end of the round, when the scores are listed, the defenders will be at the bottom of the list...and that's just not representative of their effort in the game.

To play devil's advocate, some would say that defense is easier than offense, and it sucks to play a game where most everyone is camping out in base. That's a very slow, boring game because only one or two people would be attackers.

So, if scoring were adjusted to reward defenders, it would still need to be considerably less than attackers.

Dokujisan wrote:Well, I do agree that this does matter. This has been brought up a number of times on the forum before, IIRC. What the current scoring system does is influence people to ignore defense, because defense doesn't "pay".

I'd still be surprised if anyone thinks it that important tbh. I understand what you mean by 'doesn't pay' but I can't help think that people would rather be on the winning side than lose. Don't forget that you only get the points if you make the capture... just getting the flag gets you nothing.

I tend to make caps because, bluntly, my movements OK but my aim isn't so I'm more likely to give something to the overall effort if I get the flag and bring it back again. Sometimes this means I have a high score but it often means I am incredibly low because I get it and then can't keep it.

This often happens when the other side has a good defence. On those occasions I TRY and defend but it's often less than successful.

Well, what is the point of the points then?
The points are there to tell you what to do in the game.

For example...
Imagine if capturing the flag only scored 2 points.Then nobody would bother capturing the flag. Instead, they would just go around playing DM because it's not worth it to capture the flag.

Basically the scoring system is saying "do this because it scores more points"
That's part of the reason why people don't bother defending, because Nexuiz is telling them that it is not important to defend.

Likewise, there are not special points awarded for protecting the flag carrier.
So people will pass up their own flag carrier and head to the enemy base to capture the next flag...because it scores more points.

Dont forget team dynamics ppl. just two ppl that works well togeter can be mutch more then the sum on their 'normal' points. Same thing goes the other way to, a well working team of not so experiances players *will* whop a team of unorganiced more experianced. To a certin point ofc, but relly the first-day-fresh-hatched-noob will experiance a learning curve, specialy if he/she is new to the gametype too.

And abt defense not beeing worth it.. now that just stupid. If you mean personal score, fine yes you wonr be on the top. If you feel the need for personal pwnage, i dont think team based games are not the right thing.. Sure there could be some more inteligent point system for defenging carriers or halting massive attacks etc. But frankly that would only make the score diffrance even bigger. its not the team with 90% of the players planlessly attacking that wins most of the time.

So, you're basically saying that personal scores don't matter.

That raises the question: why are there personal scores in Nexuiz CTF at all?

Why not get rid of personal scores and just have a team score only?

My answer : Because people want to know how well they are doing. Evidently, the personal scoring system doesn't show that at all. You can't look at your personal score in the game and see how much value you are adding to your team. It's pretty much a broken scoring system, because it doesn't mean anything (the personal scores, that is).

Am I wrong?

I also have to disagree about defending being worthless. First of all you get 5 points for returning the flag + 1 for frag = 6 points. Sure it should not happen on each attack but its what defending is about and its very well possible to get many points. But there is talk about changing the points system after 2.3 (its being uploaded right now so its really too late )

On the other hand its a team game after all. Do people really expect they can go off to get the flag and be able to capture if noone is back and defends the flag? Similar the complains here that 1/2 guys on mental space with machines can make a capture impossible. Well that good defending. Thats really the strangest thing: on unbalanced teams there is hardly any defense on one side.. but instead of getting their lazy ass into the base to help defend people are even more likey to attack or complain about the bad teams.. From my experiance those massively unbalanced games are because of lacking (or bad) defense and its hard for an experiance player to really help then. Sometimes this will work out.. fine but for sure not always. And call my stuborn i still think the main point to improve this is to teach people how to play, not curse at unbalanced teams or think about fancy autobalancing stuff that IMO will never work out good enough to make a difference.

Well part of the problem is that we have very different opinions on the topic. I think too good of people.. i except them to play witfully, help others and act as a team just because its a team game. I know this is NOT the case but its how it should be. As tZork said the better team (or better part of a team) will win. Its fun to find 1. 2 or 3 players that you can join and play like a team. Were is the fun if you always have to defend on public matches just because the others do not defend? There are really times when i'm fed up with defending though i really like to do the job. Its nice wasting wave after wave of attackers but you need a good team if you want to switch and thus i can understand why good players team up. Similar if you are attacking you just need people to back you up. On good teams you can message your team 'attacking' wait 10 secs and there is someone to help. Or just have someone that clears your way back or snipers at enemies following you when you flie with the flag. In that regard i can understand people that rather team up and enjoy teamwork then to split, join the other and have to worry about your team mates

And sorry to say this but players switching teams just to 'show off' how bad the team balance is or to 'stop players from the dominating' team ARE JUST AS CRAP and maybe worse then unbalanced teams and IMO destroy the fun even more. If i ever happen to be on a server were you do this prepare to be kicked! (if i can do that on the server that is )

esteel wrote:First of all you get 5 points for returning the flag + 1 for frag = 6 points.

But, what if you are an even better defender and they don't even get the flag in the first place? The result is that you get fewer points? Does that make sense?

esteel wrote:But there is talk about changing the points system after 2.3 (its being uploaded right now so its really too late )

Yay!

I'd like to be involved in the discussion on CTF personal score reform.

Dokujisan wrote:

esteel wrote:First of all you get 5 points for returning the flag + 1 for frag = 6 points.

But, what if you are an even better defender and they don't even get the flag in the first place? The result is that you get fewer points? Does that make sense?

Depends.. either you really are better then you can 'play' with them and allow them to grab the flag, Or you are not that much better then they WILL grab the flag a few times. Either way you keep them away for sake of the attackers so they can come back anytime and have a flag to capture.

And again is that really bad? In my CTF guide i wrote that its good to have three sorts of players, defenders, attackers and midfielders. Right now only the Attackers can score the really big points. So while it does not payoff immediately (on your personal scores) if you help them by defending or joining them, protecting them it will help your team as a whole.
And your changes will only work (IMO) if you have a seperate capture counter which determines which team does win. then you can try to rank up points and show off you skill . Without that your changes will basicly just make capturing unimportant as you can sum up points by other means.. Without a capture counter your changes will turn CTF into a DM match.. And it will need a few larger changes to bring you a capture counter (that is also displayed)..

Just to make things clear.. I would love a separated team and frag score system, and more inteligent rewards. its just not currently something thats easy doable afaik. And while its nice to score high ofc sutch sys would not really alter the balance mutch. its still the team that wins not the one with the most individual score.

ANd a strongly have to agree with esteels point that: its gets boring beeing the eternal defender and that just once every now and then its good play be on a team that acctualy tries a bit of teamwork.

For the ppl that join the winning team to waste pickup or join and laser ppl arround etc, just to play solitare or someit where your childish tantrums dont fuck up the game for everyone else. If you relly whanna balance the game.. GET DEFENDING, get better, get teamworked.

my god, there's the same exact problem with ET. Everyone cares about their own personal score, and does not play the game it's meant to be played. I think it's just a matter of maturity really, but that's my opinion, I'm sure it's many other reasons why this kind of thing happens, but we can't blame score alone.

Let me try to explain this a little further.
I'm not saying that teamwork is bad or that defending is bad. I love teamwork and I am better at defense than offense.

I'm saying that people SHOULD be able to use the PERSONAL score to determine whether or not they are being an effective teammate. Otherwise, the personal score is useless. Right now, the personal scoring system works AGAINST teamwork.

You want better teamwork? Then offer more personal points for teamwork. That will communicate to the player something like...

"Yes, you are doing a good thing when you protect your flag carrier...here's 2 points".

or

It's great when you help your teammate grab the enemy flag. Here's an extra point for anyone that is within X radius of their teammate when the enemy flag is grabbed

Get what I'm saying? Right now, you only get 1 point for protecting your flag carrier, and you get nothing for helping your teammate grab the enemy flag. The current personal scoring system communicates the message of...

"Protecting the flag carrier isn't really important. It's not any more important than killing anyone else on the map".

because you only get 1 point for it.

It's all about placing value on behavior. The current system places all of the value on one particular behavior.

difficult algorithm to actually implement, plus there are way too many rational adaptions of it. It'd be tough to program effectively.

esteel wrote:On the other hand its a team game after all. Do people really expect they can go off to get the flag and be able to capture if noone is back and defends the flag?

There is nothing, NOTHING more irritating than getting the flag back and then having to spend about 5 minutes trying to stop the other side getting it.

esteel wrote:Similar the complains here that 1/2 guys on mental space with machines can make a capture impossible. Well that good defending. Thats really the strangest thing: on unbalanced teams there is hardly any defense on one side.. but instead of getting their lazy ass into the base to help defend people are even more likey to attack or complain about the bad teams.. From my experiance those massively unbalanced games are because of lacking (or bad) defense and its hard for an experiance player to really help then. Sometimes this will work out.. fine but for sure not always. And call my stuborn i still think the main point to improve this is to teach people how to play, not curse at unbalanced teams or think about fancy autobalancing stuff that IMO will never work out good enough to make a difference.

That's been my experience too. If your team doesn't defend you're absolutely screwed and it doesn't matter HOW good you are... you can't be in 2, (or 3, 4 or 5), places at once.

esteel wrote:And sorry to say this but players switching teams just to 'show off' how bad the team balance is or to 'stop players from the dominating' team ARE JUST AS CRAP and maybe worse then unbalanced teams and IMO destroy the fun even more. If i ever happen to be on a server were you do this prepare to be kicked! (if i can do that on the server that is )

Hmm... who can he be thinking of?

In honesty I think I've only done that once in the past 4/5 months and that was when I repeatedly, (and I do mean repeatedly), asked for a better team balance because we'd lost 2 guys in a row that looked like new players, (as evidenced by the fact that they shot me when I was on their team), and who left within about 5 minutes.

I think it's also worth pointing out that it doesn't happen that often with most of the good players because, frankly, they don't want to win 300-10 with clearly unbalanced sides. what's the point? If you're on a server and the scores at or near that level I think I know you well enough to say you'd probably switch, as would I.

The score dont always tell the whole story eigther. even in the map is won 300-100 teams can be very even, one team had soem breaks, lil more luck, better teamwork etc.

Again a key point here is defense. i noticed that many ppl that bitch abt team balance (and i dont mean ppl politely pointing out that teams are / they consider the teams unbalanced) dont even try to teamplay, often just go for the crazy ivan tactics and try to defeat the oposing team by drownign them in their own gibs. No matter how good or bad you aim, move and know the map your not gunna accomplish anything by manicaly trowing yerself at the enemy defense. well maybe give the defenders some nice long spress. (ok at some point, if theres enougth lemlings, the defense will be overrun, but at that point the attackers base is likely to be a easy target for a counter attack)

Re: Consider an example. On Mentalspace, I'm on blue, and a red guy grabs the flag at the same time a blue guy grabs the red flag. Both are dancing around avoiding enemies. I get shot by a red guy and as I'm falling I take my laser and ping the enemy flagholder into the void. He dies so we can score. I get 1 point, and the guy on my team who scores gets 20 or something. Was his contribution to that score really 20 times mine?

Well, bluntly, who cares.

A lot of people, apparently. If nobody cares, why bother with individual scores at all?

Re: Create a skill coding system that people can put in their names, which servers would recognize at game start time and use accordingly. For example, you could put "{B}" at the start of your name for "beginner", "{I}" for "intermediate" or "{A}" for advanced. Or use a numeric system of some sort. Yes, it's voluntary, but I think most people would at least try to be reasonable.

I'm not sure what you mean. What does the server do with the information?

The server could use those tags to determine how to balance the teams. For example, if it starts a new game and sees two "{A}" players and four "{I}" players, it would put one "{A}" and two "{I}" on each team. Right now it just randomly allocates the players.

Basically the scoring system is saying "do this because it scores more points"
That's part of the reason why people don't bother defending, because Nexuiz is telling them that it is not important to defend.

Well, some do defend anyway, but the current system definitely discourages teamplay by putting too much emphasis on individual scores.

On the other hand its a team game after all.

That's what we are saying -- it should behave more like a team game than it does now, if possible.

Do people really expect they can go off to get the flag and be able to capture if noone is back and defends the flag?

Based on my experience, yes, I'd say a lot of people do expect that they can do this.

From my experiance those massively unbalanced games are because of lacking (or bad) defense and its hard for an experiance player to really help then.

In my experience, as someone who plays almost exclusively defence, that is not the case. Inexperienced players are more likely to play defence because it takes somewhat less skill. It is the experienced players who laser jump and frag anything that moves that cause the imbalances.

Well part of the problem is that we have very different opinions on the topic. I think too good of people.. i except them to play witfully, help others and act as a team just because its a team game. I know this is NOT the case but its how it should be.

But it isn't. So the decision has to be made if the game is better off tailored to an unattainable goal, or to the reality of what is.

And sorry to say this but players switching teams just to 'show off' how bad the team balance is or to 'stop players from the dominating' team ARE JUST AS CRAP and maybe worse then unbalanced teams and IMO destroy the fun even more. If i ever happen to be on a server were you do this prepare to be kicked! (if i can do that on the server that is Smile

Kick me if you want, but doing this is, IMO, the only available way of making clear to uncooperative people that they are ruining the game for others. Some will not listen to reason.

Again a key point here is defense. i noticed that many ppl that bitch abt team balance (and i dont mean ppl politely pointing out that teams are / they consider the teams unbalanced) dont even try to teamplay, often just go for the crazy ivan tactics and try to defeat the oposing team by drownign them in their own gibs. No matter how good or bad you aim, move and know the map your not gunna accomplish anything by manicaly trowing yerself at the enemy defense.

Again, I think this is more of a convenient stereotype than the truth.

I have been in COUNTLESS games where I was on the losing end of a 300-100 or so match, and it wasn't due to everyone attacking, it was due to a couple of people laser-jumping too fast for newbies to defend against, while the losing team didn't have any laser-jumpers of their own.

No matter what other issues people want to raise, the heart of the balance problem is very experienced players who misbalance games unless there are roughly an equal number of them on each team.

charlesk wrote:Create a skill coding system that people can put in their names, which servers would recognize at game start time and use accordingly. For example, you could put "{B}" at the start of your name for "beginner", "{I}" for "intermediate" or "{A}" for advanced. Or use a numeric system of some sort. Yes, it's voluntary, but I think most people would at least try to be reasonable.

The server could use those tags to determine how to balance the teams. For example, if it starts a new game and sees two "{A}" players and four "{I}" players, it would put one "{A}" and two "{I}" on each team. Right now it just randomly allocates the players.

I think this is quite a good idea and it would be great if such a thing could be implemented and tested in the field.
Names without a "skill indicator" should be treated as newbies of course.

yeah, but one problem: it can easily be abused. I think the server should keep track of who's a newb and who's a pro based on the matches, however that would promote personal scores. Man, there's no way of fixing this...

[TSA] Psychiccyberfreak wrote:yeah, but one problem: it can easily be abused.

I'd think advanced players would be mature enough not to abuse it. And even intermediate players could be.

I think the server should keep track of who's a newb and who's a pro based on the matches, however that would promote personal scores. Man, there's no way of fixing this...

Automatic skill tracking is just too complicated. So let's try to let humans help out with this idea of self declaration.

[TSA] Psychiccyberfreak wrote:yeah, but one problem: it can easily be abused. I think the server should keep track of who's a newb and who's a pro based on the matches, however that would promote personal scores. Man, there's no way of fixing this...

Agreed, my idea can easily be abused.

But my feeling is that most would be honest. I believe the reason for game imbalance is not usually that players WANT it to be imbalanced, it's just apathy -- they don't really care. Even if they see the score run up 200 to 30, they aren't going to bother switching teams. But I believe most would prefer a balanced game if that is possible.

This would promote balance without any work on the part of the players, and it's entirely optional.

charlesk wrote:I have been in COUNTLESS games where I was on the losing end of a 300-100 or so match, and it wasn't due to everyone attacking, it was due to a couple of people laser-jumping too fast for newbies to defend against, while the losing team didn't have any laser-jumpers of their own.

Excellent point.
I have thought many times that "Nexuiz CTF" should really be renamed "LaserJump CTF" because that is the primary skill that wins CTF matches. This is map dependent, as some maps are designed better for laser jumping than others (like facing worlds), but it applies to most matches.

I'm getting to be an "okay" laserjumper, but I still have a lot of practice to do with that skill. When I first started playing Nexuiz, I played Herforst almost exclusively, which used the grapple. Everyone can learn to use a grapple pretty easily, but laser jumping is a more difficult skill to pick up. I didn't start focusing on laser jumping until much later when Herforst was set to only cycle through two maps, and less people played on it. I also switched to laser jumping after joining the TSA clan because I knew the 3v3 ladder was based on standard CTF (no grapple).

I think rocket jumping from Q2 was cool, but it was cool mostly because it was balanced with taking off a large chunk of health when you used it. Laser jumping allows for people to jump all over the place without very much concern for losing health.

I don't really know the answer here. I know that the tutorial videos that are proposed could help a LOT of people more quickly pickup skills like laser jumping. For me, I still have difficulty with laser jumping horizontally forward. When I laserjump, I tend to go more upward than forward. I see people do that a lot, but I don't know how they do it. People that can pull that off have a HUGE advantage over me in CTF.

[TSA] Psychiccyberfreak wrote:yeah, but one problem: it can easily be abused. I think the server should keep track of who's a newb and who's a pro based on the matches, however that would promote personal scores. Man, there's no way of fixing this...

There is a way, IMO.

The current scoring system promotes attacking players.

My proposal is a system that rewards people for team effort.

In order to rack up your personal score, you have to have behavior that helps the team.

Currently, players can rack up their personal score by ignoring their team and just focusing 100% on offense. The personal scoring system does not reward players (enough) for supplemental actions to flag capping. The closest it comes to that is rewarding 5 points for returning the flag. We need more "additional points" like that.