Z wanted to punish players for pickuping the flag. This punish is wrong, because the pickup action is RIGHT action in itself, but LOSING the flag is bad.
So instead of giving -2 for pickup, I suggest to give +1 for it, but reduce your score by -2 when you DROP (not necessarily lose) it. The drop would happen whether you suicide or killed by enemy or teammate. If you're killed by teammate -2 is "awarded" for him instead of you in order to prevent teamkilling. This will also prevent racking up score (eg, killing yourself and picking flag again) and will also limit the frequency of suicides to replenish health. In all previous cases you'll get -1 for these actions.
Killing enemy fc is good thing, even you are camping. To reduce campers and make people roam instead, I suppose these scoring changes:
+1 for killing enemy fc
+5 for returning
+1 if the killer and returner is the same person (so in sum +6)
Team will get more advantage if the same person who killed the fc, returns the flag and it might prevent other people from running and grabbing the flag first. Usually these people just get a lot of points without doing the real job. You might ask why it would reduce camping? You see, when you camp on the tower, it's hard to reach the flag in time, so if you want more points, you should at least fight in the battlefield. Rather naive, but might be little incentive to fight. Of course, additional graphical features (icons, shouts, prints) as in q3, ut would help a lot to move players into combat.
Ok, now back to the value of capping. The golden ratio is 1:3,5 to keep scores going up and not letting defense to win the game by defending. Practice shows that it shouldn;t be lower. (Currently 6:21, where 6 = 1 for killing fc and 5 for returning and 21 = 1 for pickup and 20 for cap).
In my system cap score should be 30. Defenders will get 2+1+5(+ possible 1) so their score would be in [8;9] interval. So attackers score should be in [27;31,5]. Because we play CAPTURE the flag and not DEFEND the flag, i suppose score should give small advantage to the attackers.
To summarize:
+1 for pickup (does not matter if you picked it at enemy base or in the "world")
-2 for drop (does not matter how you died)
+1 for kill
+5 (+1) for return
and +30 for return which should compensate -2 easily
Now some of you might notice, that there is disadvantage in picking up flag and dying then from some camper attack. I don't like this part but thinking from the other point of view, you should wait for the stocked up teammate to take it and do not allow an enemy to return it. If you have lots of health and armour, of course feel free to take it. But if you are low on health try to kill approaching enemy defenders/campers and let your friend escape even if you die from angry enemies. Frags do not mean anything so don't worry about your death, the goal is to make your fc safe and NOT to stay alive during whole game (this is not ctftdm). Of course, staying alive whole game and racking up points definitely shows your skill. Assist (like in q3) and other similar things might be implemented to show what you've achieved during the game even your points are not very impressive.
Now about several other suggestions which were posted in #alientrap channel:
1) Wait
You get points for keeping flag not returned for some predefined amount of time and returning it at the last second.
Conclusion: wrong. Could be easily exploitable by killing enemy fc at your base and and waiting on your own will to rack up points knowing that enemy won't be able to retake the flag again in that time. It means nexuiz would turn into sneaky game where you should wait for enemy to pickup the flag, nexing him, waiting again without returning, nexing, waiting again, nexing again (in that time you get points).
2) Wave respawn
Not all maps were made for this and some of them could be exploited my mass rocketing, electro spamming at predefined time at known spawn places. If mappers could provide us with better maps, I don't see anything wrong with it even in public ctf if we keep time difference between waves rather small (3-5). This could be just another server set up option.
3) Predefined amount of life
This would suck for new players. You will lose all your lifes in 6 minutes and you'll be able to spectate only for the remaining ones. This would make Nexuiz unattractive for most of new players and will definitely mean slow death. Another thing, at which I agree to div, is that waiting makes people aggressive. I come from the country where cs is some sort of mania and I know that he is right. Impatience makes people swear, laugh from others, comment on various things and makes gameplay annoying if some 10 years old boy all the time calls you dick/gay))/fucking pig because he can't to play. Personally, I left cs and liked nexuiz because of it's adult community and game ethics (not yet another : woo l4m3, u suck, bitch, cheater, he has an aimbot game).
Congrats to the community for this achievement.
In overall, I think that freedom to choose is the most important, so div0 should leave all options intact and leave server admins ability to choose what they want. So all complaints about server should go to server admins and not to div directly. He gave you the freedom, it's in your responsibility to use it wisely (in other words). Greets to him for his great work on Nexuiz and not letting down because of our anoyance.
