Hi Everyone...

I just returned to playing Nexuiz after taking a long break (I think I played too much and got worn out.) And I found the new version of the game really nice -- you guys did great work. The graphics are nice, the interface is snazzy and I like a lot of the new maps.

But as a long-time CTFer I find it sad to see that an essential feature is still missing: some sort of handicapping system for regular players. Without this, most games end up lop-sided affairs, as even one good person too many on a team can lead to a blow-out, which is boring.

Has there been any discussion of a system to improve game balance? Thanks.

As a regular player, I would be interested in this on some pubs, as long as it was obvious in the server title, and possibly show it in the scoreboard as well next to the playername, or a column showing the degree of handicap. It would make the game a little more challenging and allow me to play with newer players.

I could see this applied to DM, but not sure about how it would apply to other game modes.

Btw, this was one of the features of the Spidflisk mod.

I took a look through the mutators and settings in the last few days and got interested in a handicap mutator for the game as I seen one was needed. Was going to make a new topic about it but found this thread instead. I too am very much +1 for seeing such a thing in the Mutators menu and believe this would be a fair thing to have around.

The first reason this is needed is because often, someone who is an expert may want to play with someone who is a newb. One case was with me and my father irl where I'm already a medium to advanced player (I think) while he hardly even moves around without bumping into walls. So this mutator could make it possible for an advanced player and a new player to play together while both have equal chances of winning. Also there may be new players around who hardly know how to play but want a server to go on without being blasted before they even get to move, so this would also prevent skill rape on servers where the mutator would be selected.

The second reason is that even those who play well need to focus a lot to be good. I often keep my body contracted while playing so I can aim precisely and think fast what to do and my hand even hurts on my mouse sometimes. So another thing this would do is make a server where people can play more relaxed and without having to squeeze all power out of theirselves to have a good score (in other words make a relaxation server vs. performance server choice).

Weirdest thing however is that I read in this thread and post that there was a cl_handicap cvar around version 2.3 but I tried it in the SVN and there is no such thing in the menus nor code. The cvar search engine from Nexuiz-Ninjas also shows no results for "handicap" so I wonder why that got completely removed?

Handicap is in, it simply is missing from defaultNexuiz.cfg. Fixed now (set cl_handicap 2 to get a 2x handicap, i.e. damage affects you twice as much).

It works on all existing servers.

Just "set cl_handicap 2" (note the "set") and reconnect.

divVerent wrote:Handicap is in, it simply is missing from defaultNexuiz.cfg. Fixed now (set cl_handicap 2 to get a 2x handicap, i.e. damage affects you twice as much).

It works on all existing servers.

Just "set cl_handicap 2" (note the "set") and reconnect.

Thanks Div I tested it and found two bugs however, if anyone can take care of that;

- Handicap seems to be based on how many Kills you have, not what your score is (at least in DM). So if you kill yourself a lot and your score drops because of that you will still be most vulnerable even if you killed yourself so much your score is the lowest (wouldn't happen in reality of course but over my test this is what I seen). So just like the scoring in CTF which should not be frag-based, this should be fixed.

- When you are under the influence of handicap, this also affects how much damage your weapon does to you. This does make you kill yourself more easily which is fair if you're way too high, but it brakes laser jumping as you can die in the first few jumps like that.

Apart from the above however all else is well. I believe this can go in the Mutators menu even if the two small issues above exist since otherwise it works well and many people wanted to see it in. Made the patch myself, get it here or here.

It is not based on deaths, but totally fixed, IIRC.

Handicapping is the worst idea in an fps ever, what is the point of getting good if your just going to be punished for it? Why cant other people try and improve instead of being given an advantage for sucking?

It is voluntary handicap, not based on frags. You set it to e.g. 2 if you notice the match gets out of hand by you being too strong. Maybe thinking "Can I still beat him with handicap 2"... think of it as a higher achievement.

TwEaK, it's an option for those who want it. And it's supposed to keep massacres (15 frags in a row) away from newbie servers.

As long as it's voluntary (ie clientside) then i see no problem with it

It always was. Of course, you can always set it from server but nobody does that.

Not a client side setting but server side of course. And indeed it is optional and will only be a non-default mutator. I believe it's a great idea because certain people want to play with it on especially on newbie servers. This will never make normal servers go away or anything so don't worry about that.

No, you set up it at client side and server only parses and applies particular damage, etc...

Right. It works on any server.

It is meant like this: if you are a very good player, make a key bind for "setreport cl_handicap 2" or "setreport cl_handicap 3".

If you notice you massively own someone and the game isn't going to be fun for him, you press the key and try to beat him with the handicap.

I understand now, although I don't believe that is a normal thing. I mean shouldn't handicap be server setting and applied to every single player there? Or at least the owner to have a choice too to set it up for the entire server? A client-side option for handicap instead of server-side is something like asking someone if they'd kindly have a lower performance on a server where probably everyone else doesn't which probably isn't right.

If it has to be client side it should at least be the person who wants to be handicapped to make the choice, not the player if he/she wants to purposely be worse then others. That would be more fair although one would reduce their damage that way so it could be seen as cheating. Personally I don't think much use can be made of it unless it's a server setting and applies to everyone who's playing or no one, and games wouldn't be fair as long as some are damaged in one way and others in another.

No, that would be stupid. Why do you need to handicap ALL players?

It seems you're not understanding the handicap purpose at all. Let's say I come to noob server, grab the nex and make 20 frags in a row. It's boring for me, so I decide that it would be more fun (FOR ME and maybe for others) if I could be killed. Then I handicap myself at my own will in order to equal chances and balance the game.

And you can't decrease the damage with handicap.

Just a question: wouldn't handycap work better if you did not multiply the damage you receive but reduced the damage you deal? Very good players nex me instantly before I even have the slightest chance to hit them...

But maybe this is not feasible, I don't know where the damage calculation takes place. So if it isn't, disregard my idea. :o)

Alien wrote:No, that would be stupid. Why do you need to handicap ALL players?

It seems you're not understanding the handicap purpose at all. Let's say I come to noob server, grab the nex and make 20 frags in a row. It's boring for me, so I decide that it would be more fun (FOR ME and maybe for others) if I could be killed. Then I handicap myself at my own will in order to equal chances and balance the game.

And you can't decrease the damage with handicap.

My view of handicapping (and the way I thought it was) was that it would be server side and when enabled, every player on that server which has too much of a high score would be more easy to be killed the higher their score got from most others, until his/her score would drop to a more average value (the closer to the current average score the less easier to kill) while every player which has a low score would be harder to kill to be helped (and the closer they got to the average score the more vulnerable they would become), and that list would dynamically adjust depending on how well everyone is doing.

There is patch, which is used on DCC newbies servers and does exactly what you said.

Alien wrote:There is patch, which is used on DCC newbies servers and does exactly what you said.

Nice. Could as well go official then for people who want to have it on private servers too (like my example of an expert player playing with a newbie friend). But yeah I guess this solves the mistery of this feature

MirceaKitsune wrote:

Alien wrote:There is patch, which is used on DCC newbies servers and does exactly what you said.

Nice. Could as well go official then for people who want to have it on private servers too (like my example of an expert player playing with a newbie friend). But yeah I guess this solves the mistery of this feature

Err. You mean a private server for you and your friend, not a "Pro", full time, active private server, correct? I thought the main point of private servers was to get away from the noobs and play with the other better players. Having this "handicap" feature in a private server would make most of the 1v1's/CTF matches/TDM's unfair and not very fun. I guess it would be most appropriate for "noob" pubs but not for "Pro" pubs or "Pro" private servers. And as TwEaK said, how are you supposed to get better if you always need handicap on? If you play in a "Pro" private server quite a bit and always need the handicap on, there's something wrong.......

First, WB to nexuiz.

Second, there are more threads about this I guess. People are working for it. I think picking teams by looking at the scores of the previous game would work. If this is possible as built in, it might work.

We've just had a quickie 1on1 with GreEn`mArine (man, I was totally 0wn3d ).
We've tried this handicap feature (has anyone tested this anyway?), and we've found that:

+Increased damage recieved is good
-Same damage done is bad.

Or at least, GreEn`mArine was still kicking my ass. Imho there should be an option to handicap like: increased damage recieved AND decreased damage done.

As I said, very good players nex me instantly (and they don't even have to be as good as GreEn'mArine). So I think (additionally) lowering the damage dealt by the handicapped player would be my favorite way to go, if possible. I agree that a mixture of both handicaps might be the best solution.

Gee I wish I was able to code anything...

I'd like to revive this thread. Now it happened that I had a 1on1 match and was hopelessly owning someone else. Coool.

Well actually, it was rather boring. Anyway, I am not a very skilled player, so this does not happen very often, but I'd say handicapping me in terms of doubling the damage dealt to me would have been nearly useless, since the poor fellow didn't even manage to hit me before he died.

I believe it would be more effective, if he would have more time to place shots at me. So I still don't know if it is a lot of programming effort to not only double the damage dealt to the handicapped but also decrease the amount of damage that the handicapped deals. If it is, never mind. But if it isn't, I'd say this would be a great thing to implement. I believe this could help people of different skill levels to play interesting matches together.

... or has this been implemented already? Didn't test...

Is already in place with the regular handicap system

Oh cool man that's great. So I guess the proper command is cl_handicap 2 for doubling the damage dealt to you and lowering the damage you deal?

Here's another self-handicapping command you can use that can be accessed in game without the console:

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