Introduction
My original attraction to Nexuiz was provoked by it being a free fast paced quake-esque game with Capture The Flag (CTF). I had missed the "Quake train" because my computer hardware was never really focused on supporting games until recently. Feeling the need to replenish the enjoyment I felt from my xbox live Halo 2 days, mixed with suggestions and explanations about the Quake series and their awesome physics and competitive nature from my friend drags... I came about Nexuiz which fit the bill. Nexuiz was great but it wasn't perfect, soon I learned through school and experience, no software is.

The open-source nature of the game allows us to contribute our ideas and content to make it better for everyone. Some ideas never make it, lacking time, potential or otherwise care. Others flourish, creating breeding grounds for an avalanche of ideas that result in creative content we can all benefit and learn from.

My background is in web design but I'm still a code monkey junky at heart. Through a community some of you may know, an environment in which players who strive for a deeper understanding in both life and the game, relative to realms of knowledge in which we can collaborate and learn with others is emerging. I love being able to contribute while I learn and knowing others are doing the same.

Thanks for the history lesson, what's this all about?
I've often commented, maybe even complained of the imperfections in the scoring system. Blub's most recent contribution, the client-side scoreboard, has opened the doors of score calculating opportunity by providing more detailed statistics on the scoreboard. Concerning CTF, there are two things I'd like to address the first can benefit both public and private games/servers, the scoreboard, the second is only a concern on public servers, team balancing.

My Views On CTF

Like many professional sports, it's best played with teams setup using an offense, midfield and defense.


Being able to rotate between positions is a good quality to have but it's not required to make a good team. Again, like in professional sports, not every player is good at every position. As such, I believe the scoring system should try and compliment this style of play. Producing a feeling of accomplishment for not only the flag carrier but the other members of the team. Promoting a visual acknowledgment of their teamwork.

I've described this style of play in the past but I wanted to share the practice in action. If you have an SVN copy of Nexuiz, you can check out this demo which I believe shows many aspects of my average experience in CTF. The rush, the fall, the teamwork and the not.

Now that the I've explained how I understand CTF, I'd like to continue by address the two issues I mentioned above.

Scoreboard
The current trend is to use a "simple" method, showing only the # of flag caps and score. I believe this causes selfishness amongst players, especially on public servers where the only thing players have to gauge themselves in terms of skill are flag captures.

A more detailed scoreboard would result in a higher understanding of an individual's contribution to the team.

Some complain that the amount of information presented to them on that board is overwhelming, which is understandable if you're seeing all the information at once instead of focusing on the details you're interested in.

Others complain that "CTF is not (T)DM", but if you're dying 20 times more than your teammates, you're hurting your team. Your persistence isn't what should allow you to succeed, I believe it should be based on skill. Otherwise, you're in sense just ~gaming the system~.

Another solution may be a percentage based team contribution column.

Team Balancing
Concerning team balancing on public servers, I believe can all agree, sometimes, it's just not fair.

I've written this information in another thread but I want to refine and readdress the idea in this thread ("idea ??" is not the best title for a thread).

Post game, I propose a player is given a value (this could be doubled over for use in game as the percentage on the scoreboard). This value is weight against all the other players from that match and balance the teams in a fairer way.

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:

(Pk-Pd)+2*(1+Fs*(Fk+Fd-Fr))
----------------------------------
(Tp/Tt)

Where:
Pk = kills
Pd = deaths
Fs = flag scores
Fd = flag drops
Fr = flag returns
Fk = flag carrier kills
Tp = player's played time
Tt = total match 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.

Optionally, each F could have a weight value. i.e. Fr = Fr * Frm where Fsm = 1. While Fkm = 1.5. In English, The player would have a reward value mutator defined by the server admin. In this case, scores are worth the value of 1 but flag carrier kills would carry a higher reward.

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

To summarize
I have described what I believe to be the problem(s) with the current system. I spent a lot of time detailing this out and I expect mature, well thought out posts in response. I'd like to get your views on CTF in consideration to the details I've mentioned above.

Something I don't think your proposal addresses unless I've missed it, is that a team currently can win by never capturing the flag at all. Just by letting the other team get the flag and then fragging them and getting the return score. The only solution to this problem I think is the UT scoring system where a teams score is solely from 1 point per successful capture. There is still a secondary scoring system for team members. In UT individual achievement translates to a reward for those playing better as they earn more adrenaline from kills, captures and returns.

Ed wrote:Something I don't think your proposal addresses unless I've missed it, is that a team currently can win by never capturing the flag at all.

Apologies, I did not clarify my stance on this. I still wish for captures to win the game. I propose these dimensions as a way to increase teamplay and enhance gameplay.

Additionally, these statistics may be used to break ties.

Or maybe back to the system where only captures counts. Personal kills are displayed but you still need to capture flags because frags are not added to the score. Btw, deaths does not mean a lot in CTF. It's sometimes more useful to suicide and then pick the flag again or suicide to catch enemy flag carrier in your base.

I would actually like system where players would be ranked on captures. It would increase learning rate of speed movement and dramatically decrease the number of campers. You can kill 100, but who cares if you was just ducking all the time behind some pillar.

I see two elements to scoring in CTF.

1) Deciding the winner of the match.

2) Giving feedback (personal score) to show who contributed to the win and how.

In current (2.4.2) nexuiz, with flag scoring and kill scoring being a mixed bag, the two elements above are the same with a collection of a team's personal scores deciding the match, and with flag caps providing the most points to a score. So flag capping scores the most points. The second most scored activity is flag returns. The latter is supposed to prevent people from diving at the flag at every opportunity, even when they don't have proper team backup, because it gives a negative consequence if you lose the flag. Instead of acting to prevent the flag-diving behavior, people still dive at the flag anyway and it often causes one team to focus heavily on defense and rack up flag capture points. This is not the intended effect of flag return points (I don't think). That strategy of sitting in base and racking up flag return points, to me, is a version of "playing the system", even though I've done it plenty of times before.

To play with this scoring mode, you have to be more aware of the danger of flag return points, or else you will lose a match because of it. This is because those flag return points actually apply to number 1 above (they will help determine a winner of the match). They are not simply used as feedback.


So some have (heavily) suggested using a simplified scoring method that matches that used in other FPS CTF games, and that is 1 cap = 1 point and ONLY caps determine the winner of the match. It's very much like soccer (aka football) where goals determine the winner, and it is less like american football where you can score points in other ways besides just a touchdown, or less like basketball where there are three ways to score points (normal shot, 3-pointer, free-throw).

I personally feel like 1 cap = 1 point results in people dive-bombing at the flag even more. This is because there is very little consequence for doing so. If you lose the flag, no big deal. In this gameplay, it appears that a large strategic move is using most of the teammates to attack, and try to control the middle ground as much as possible, with very little attention to defense (since defense doesn't score directly). Instead of defense to stop people from getting to the flag, the strategy is to stop flag carriers in the middle area, or stop people in the middle area on their way to the enemy base.

I would LOVE to see a bunch of variations of scoring in CTF and I would like to have them tested by the community. The result would be variations of CTF instead of the plain vanilla CTF scoring. I also think these variations need to be called something other than just "CTF" so nobody is confused.

I could imagine modifiers to allow bonuses for teamplay, as well as a CLEAR feedback system that lets people know when they are doing the right thing and doing the wrong thing.

Perhaps these modifiers could still be attached to flag captures, so ultimately flag capping is needed to score any points, but it's not as simple as 1 cap = 1 point. No flag capping? No points. That makes the game still ultimately about flag capping. But the modifiers would make the difference if there is one team playing better teamplay than the other team and the caps are close or tied. So a normal cap (1 person by themselves with no teamplay) = 10 points, but it could be 12 points with a teamplay modifier. Then the trick would be to get the game to be able to recognize teamplay so it could score accordingly.

Personally, I would even give them a lower score of 6 if they used a rocket boost to traverse the whole map in 3 seconds, but that's just me

But please, let's make a rule during all of this testing of different scoring methods. No matter what happens, let's not have any arguments after a game of "well, if the scoring was XXXX, then we would have won." That is just like saying, in basketball, "yeah, if those three pointers were only scored as 2 points, we would've won". If you know the scoring system ahead of time, then you should adjust your strategy to that scoring system. That's really the whole point. Different scoring methods = adjusted strategies. That is what makes it interesting.

Alien wrote:Btw, deaths does not mean a lot in CTF. It's sometimes more useful to suicide and then pick the flag again or suicide to catch enemy flag carrier in your base.

Ignoring the fact that you didn't read my thread close enough, let me expand upon what I said about deaths in CTF:

1) you lose your position
2) you lose your weapons
3) you lose a life
4) your teammates lose your support

How is a suicide a good thing?? Because you just wasted your life by running into the enemy base unprepared and just gave your teammates a bigger workload? That's a positive thing??

Alien wrote:I would actually like system where players would be ranked on captures. It would increase learning rate of speed movement and dramatically decrease the number of campers. You can kill 100, but who cares if you was just ducking all the time behind some pillar.

I disagree. Captures only causes selfishness as I address above, speed can be worked on by item strings.

Campers? Ha, most campers can be taken out with a long range rocket. Most GOOD players don't camp, though it is a legit strategy and if you're complaining about it, you must not have found a good strategy against it.



Dokujisan, I think the modifiers are a neat idea but most likely better as a secondary score set. Other than skewing the actual point results, requiring a flag capture to gain the points off mutators I believe again shows too high of a reward for players to not be selfish.

With 2 separate scores, players can determine how they wish to play the game in respect to the 3 main positions.

tZork already wrote about deaths and I would agree with him about the value of death, Everything depends on the context. Suicide is not running into enemy base but killing yourself at your own will.
Why? I 've already said why suicides can be a good thing especially when you want to replenish health quickly.

Item strings? Why people should run for items when they can just camp others running for them? In addition, not all maps have item strings and not all items are useful. Furthermore, taking all items by yourself is bad.

Take me please with a rocket on fw.

Btw, i have read your thread and I mostly agree with everything except what you've said about deaths. CTF is not TDM.


Ok, I suppose you want an explanation:


When you're fragged and respawn, according to you, you should firstly stock health and armour. In my opinion, everything depends on the context, Let's say i am fragged by enemy fc, while giving him some damage. When I respawn, I quickly run into my death place until fc's health hasn't regenerated cause I have expectations to kill him. It does not matter that only GREAT shotgun is in my possession. Constant attacking increases my chances to take him down instead of allowing him to stock 300 hp 200 armour and trying to beat him 1 on 1 (which is almost impossible to do alone).

Another thing, why deaths are not important is sacrificing yourself (e.g. blowing rocket to stop enemy fc). Sacrifice will get you -1, but will allow your team members to finish the job.

Losing weapons is not a big thing (especially in defense) cause you shouldn't carry all weapons alone.

Alien wrote:Why? I 've already said why suicides can be a good thing especially when you want to replenish health quickly.

I don't believe that's a strong enough counter argument for the 4 reasons I've listed above. You lose all your weapons and start with 100 health. I usually run around with 150/150-200/200+ because of the next item I'll address, item strings

Alien wrote:Item strings? Why people should run for items when they can just camp others running for them? In addition, not all maps have item strings and not all items are useful. Furthermore, taking all items by yourself is bad.

Name one map you believe is without an item string and I'll make a demo for you to show you this isn't so. Items respawn every 15 seconds, and USUALLY because I'm a stronger midfield and offensive player, I take the enemy's items. Which is a win win situation, I'm gaining power and my enemy is losing it.

Alien wrote:Take me please with a rocket on fw.

find me on IRC, and I'll show you what I'm talking about.

Alien wrote:Btw, i have read your thread and I mostly agree with everything except what you've said about deaths. CTF is not TDM.

I didn't say it was and I believe I countered that argument in my first post.

Alien wrote:Ok, I suppose you want an explanation:

Yes, yes I would.

Alien wrote:When you're fragged and respawn, according to you, you should firstly stock health and armour.

Not my words. Item strings can consist of weapons as well. Depending on the situation, yes I too would run directly towards the enemy FC or my teammate.

Alien wrote:In my opinion, everything depends on the context

This is actually fact. Context is greatly important. A smart man knows the rules, a wise man knows the exceptions.

Alien wrote:Let's say i am fragged by enemy fc, while giving him some damage. When I respawn, I quickly run into my death place until fc's health hasn't regenerated cause I have expectations to kill him. It does not matter that only GREAT shotgun is in my possession. Constant attacking increases my chances to take him down instead of allowing him to stock 300 hp 200 armour and trying to beat him 1 on 1 (which is almost impossible to do alone).

Strength in numbers, team communication and a planned attack are much better than strategies than running straight for the enemy FC because he's ~running out of health~ and you're going to attack him with a shotgun and 100 health so you don't ~waste time with item strings~. Also, the shotgun is quite powerful if used properly, check out morfar's weapon data.

Alien wrote:Another thing, why deaths are not important is sacrificing yourself (e.g. blowing rocket to stop enemy fc). Sacrifice will get you -1, but will allow your team members to finish the job.

Losing weapons is not a big thing (especially in defense) cause you shouldn't carry all weapons alone.

While a sacrifice may be admirable in certain situations, I don't think a reward is in order because it creates incentive to do this. We're trying to limit the amount abuse to the system. A sacrifice is just that, a sacrifice. If you're so worried about having enough health to return the flag after you kill the flag carrier, so you can reap all the points (note that you'd get points for flag carrier kills in my proposed theory and bitching about ~losing flag returns points to your teammates~ is selfish), perhaps you should consider using more item strings.


I think a lot of your arguments stem from largely unexplored physics on your part. I think you'd be surprised just how fast some players can move while maintaining their health, armor, weapons and understanding of the entire map.

Speed allows you to shrink the map and break down strategies into simple movements based on item availability and flag status.

Code: Select all

(Pk-Pd)+2*(1+Fs*(Fr-Fd))
----------------------------------
(Tp/Tt)


Such a formula for scores in the game is NOT AN OPTION. It simply is too complex.

First problem: if you never have returned a flag, captures HARM your score. What is with that?

Second problem: If you have returned a flag 5 times, but died with a flag 10 times, capturing HARMS your score. What is with that?

Third problem: You join 5 seconds before the end of a 20 minutes game, and kill someone. That means 240 points for you. What is with that?

And the final problem: such a formula is simply too complex to base scoring on. Although nonlinear scoring (where the same action does not always give the same score) sounds interesting and will help balance, it simply is not transparent to the players - which is why no sport does that. People would not understand any more WHY some team has won.

Imagine doing a similar system in basketball:

score = ball steals - ball losses + 2 * (goals * (dunks + longrange goals - fouls))

so one player would get 20 points for what now is 3 points... and people would not understand it. Maybe the players can be trained to understand such a complex system - and e.g. have some players pass the player with more dunks and longrange goals the ball to score as that means more scores for his team - but what about the others, new players, TV announcers, and the public?

So even if the formula did not have the aforementioned bugs - it is not an option to decide team scores on. For personal stats that have no influence to scoring, it may be a good idea, though - but only if the bugs are fixed.

Map example: facing worlds, hydronex, basically any map with direct nex vs nex combat involved. Enemies will kill you if you jump around in the map stocking up.

Does not matter how fast players move cause they can still be shot with nex. Item strings are available only then when you're playing with and vs team, which does not care about them.

You shouldn't have more than 2 other wpns in addition to 2 starting ones.

I know morfar weapon stats, but I can also see how it is not used almost by anyone and general people opinion. That high damage is achieved only when you're basically touching your oponent.

I'll see you on irc.

And there is no and probably will never be any communication in public ctf.

And div0 it's shot not goal.


Btw, I know I'm not fast. I've seen jLue playing (or teaching me) and I know that I lack a lot speed and skill in speed movement, but even it won't help in certain situations.

This was discussed on irc but here's my take.

These suggestions are for public servers, not for competitive matches.

Basically a match would be won ONLY by caps/returns. So Kills/Deaths = not part of who wins or who loses, but they could still be shown on the scoreboard for statistics.

(those are not real numbers I would suggest but only to give an idea, point ratio between caps/returns could be worked on but would require testing)
Cap = 25 points
Return = 5 points
Team losing enemy flag that gets returned = -5

On the scoreboard, cap and return points goes to team score, not to players. The Caps/Returns/Kills/Deaths per player become only statistics about who did what.

ie: If you cap, you get 1 added to your "Caps" points and your teamscore gets 25 points. If you return flag, you get 1 added to your "Returns" and your teamscore gets 5 points, opposing teamscore gets -5. The points given to players are not counted in team score, they're only statistics to show who did what.

Defending becomes important and attacking requires good teamplay to not hurt your team. It's definitely possible that a team ends up in the negatives if their players do kamikaze attacks without teamplay and don't ever defend. I think the -5 to your team when you die as a FC would make a huge difference on how players perceive attacking. In that perspective, you could even add a "flag pickups" column or something with a better name, along with caps/returns/kills/deaths to show players success ratio as flag runners. That way, if you play like idiot, people will know. They'll see if you have 10 flag pickups but 0 caps that you're hurting your team pretty bad.

But the only real way to make this work would be to have a way to give "award" points of some sort. ie: Killing enemies that are running after your fc (determined by a radius around fc) or enemies who did damage to fc in the last few seconds before you killed them could award you with a point for protecting fc. Obviously this feature is not possible with nexuiz yet, but that way players would feel useful even if they're not doing caps and encourage them to help other players because there would be something visual that everyone can see. So imho this would be good for teamplay.

To nifrek:

dokujisan wrote:The second most scored activity is flag returns. The latter is supposed to prevent people from diving at the flag at every opportunity, even when they don't have proper team backup, because it gives a negative consequence if you lose the flag. Instead of acting to prevent the flag-diving behavior, people still dive at the flag anyway and it often causes one team to focus heavily on defense and rack up flag capture points. This is not the intended effect of flag return points (I don't think). That strategy of sitting in base and racking up flag return points, to me, is a version of "playing the system", even though I've done it plenty of times before.

I agree -5 will increase camping and spamming even more than it is now.

You forget that in 3vs3 it's much harder to defend the flag then in 8vs8.

I think what would be really important is some obvious and direct feedback, no matter what point system is used. Something like a big number at the top (+20 in green, or -5 in red) with an explanation underneath it (Complete Flag Capture, or Lost Flag).

With this, servers could more easily use different point systems, without confusing the player too much, as they can immediately see why points are given or taken, and play accordingly.

I'm in favour of the "1 capture = 1 team point" system (as this is the purpose of CTF), with 1 additional column for the summarised points of the individual player (not contributing to the end result, but displaying the individual contribution). These individual points should be defined by the server, and stated clearly in a direct feedback as described. This could go as far as "-2 , For not changing position during last 30 seconds" (If this is possible to monitor )

divVerent wrote:

Code: Select all

(Pk-Pd)+2*(1+Fs*(Fk+Fr-Fd))
----------------------------------
(Tp/Tt)


Such a formula for scores in the game is NOT AN OPTION. It simply is too complex.

Too complex in respect to processing speed or what? It comes down to simple algebra that requires no new information than what's already available.

divVerent wrote:First problem: if you never have returned a flag, captures HARM your score. What is with that?

If you only dropped the flag and didn't kill the flag carrier or return it, yes you'll get a negative mutator because dropping the flag multiple times is not contributing to the team.

divVerent wrote:Second problem: If you have returned a flag 5 times, but died with a flag 10 times, capturing HARMS your score. What is with that?

This is where the sub mutators would come into play, giving Fs a 4x value and a drop a 1x for example. Then it would be 20-10 and be positive, depending on how the admin likes CTF to be played.

divVerent wrote:Third problem: You join 5 seconds before the end of a 20 minutes game, and kill someone. That means 240 points for you. What is with that?

Sorry for the confusing, my examples are dated, using the older formula. The new formula divides the players played time by the total time, so 5 seconds over 20 minutes = 0.00416 or 0.04% of the game. However, testing my theory, over the percentage is wrong, it should be multiplied by it >_<.

Code: Select all

((Pk-Pd)+2*(1+Fs*(Fk+Fr-Fd))) * (Tp/Tt)


divVerent wrote:And the final problem: such a formula is simply too complex to base scoring on. Although nonlinear scoring (where the same action does not always give the same score) sounds interesting and will help balance, it simply is not transparent to the players - which is why no sport does that. People would not understand any more WHY some team has won.

Yes, I'm not saying use it as the way to score. I want flag caps to be the decider, I want this system as a secondary system to provide an incentive for teamwork.

divVerent wrote:So even if the formula did not have the aforementioned bugs - it is not an option to decide team scores on.

I agree, minus a tie. I think it would be cool to be able to award the team with better team play the win in the event of a tie.

----------

Alien wrote:Map example: facing worlds, hydronex, basically any map with direct nex vs nex combat involved. Enemies will kill you if you jump around in the map stocking up.

Does not matter how fast players move cause they can still be shot with nex. Item strings are available only then when you're playing with and vs team, which does not care about them.

In Facing Worlds, it's as simple as getting a rocket launcher, the mega shield outside your base and rocketing yourself to the health in the center, then rocketing yourself to the enemy's mega shield. You may at this point want to grab one of the 3 nexes available at the enemy base if you haven't grabbed one from yours.

For hydronex, fire 3 or so rockets at the bunker while you're running towards the enemy base and they'll scatter or at the least back off. Assuming you have now directed them towards the back of the bunker, have a mortar ready for it's fast refire and ability to screw up a nexer's aim and start bouncing secondaries to give you a set of "landmines" that tip you off if the enemy is looking for you.

Alien wrote:You shouldn't have more than 2 other wpns in addition to 2 starting ones.

lol wut? A player can hold 10 weapons. Seeing as how they respawn every 15, it's asinine to limit yourself. That's your own personal shit causing you problems.

Alien wrote:I know morfar weapon stats, but I can also see how it is not used almost by anyone and general people opinion. That high damage is achieved only when you're basically touching your oponent.

Shotgun is used by every one of the more experienced players. It's a very powerful weapon that just takes practice. Having that attitude is going to hurt your abilities as a Nexuiz player because as I said earlier, you can kill someone in 3 shots.

Alien wrote:And there is no and probably will never be any communication in public ctf.

I communicate on CTF all the time and I play with a few others that do as well. Dokujisan just setup a mumble server to help this issue even more.

Alien wrote:Btw, I know I'm not fast. I've seen jLue playing (or teaching me) and I know that I lack a lot speed and skill in speed movement, but even it won't help in certain situations.

Again, I think you'd be surprised just how limitless the possibilities can be when you begin to wrap your mind around the physics in the game.

Unconsciously, my mind says, "I need this force to push me at this angle at this velocity while only taking away this much health with only these weapons available while I'm posed this much of a threat by the enemy."

-------

nifrek wrote:(those are not real numbers I would suggest but only to give an idea, point ratio between caps/returns could be worked on but would require testing)
Cap = 25 points
Return = 5 points
Team losing enemy flag that gets returned = -5

This is how I weight them on the Nexuiz Ninjaz servers.

Code: Select all

timelimit_override 12            // global timelimit for all maps and gametypes
fraglimit_override 150           // global frag/point limit for all maps and gametypes

g_ctf_capture_limit 150          // frag/capture limit for CTF
g_ctf_flagscore_capture_team 2   // each player gets this many points on a flag capture
g_ctf_flagscore_capture 15       // The player that caps the flag gets this many points
g_ctf_flagscore_pickup -5        // 5 point deposit on pickup
g_ctf_flagscore_return 5         // 5 points for returning the flag


-----

sev wrote:I think what would be really important is some obvious and direct feedback, no matter what point system is used. Something like a big number at the top (+20 in green, or -5 in red) with an explanation underneath it (Complete Flag Capture, or Lost Flag).

Awesome idea! Visual cues would DEFINITELY help. Preferably not using centerprint though ;o) (unless it was higher and more stylized like in OpenArena.

sev wrote:I think what would be really important is some obvious and direct feedback, no matter what point system is used. Something like a big number at the top (+20 in green, or -5 in red) with an explanation underneath it (Complete Flag Capture, or Lost Flag).

Yes, I mentioned this briefly earlier, but it's a very important aspect of making a more complex scoring system work. People will be able to follow the scoring if they can SEE that they have a "modifier" on their screen and it's made very obvious. I've seen this type of concept in a lot of games, especially RPGs, and it doesn't confuse anyone. You attack with a modifier and it does more (or less) damage. People can grasp that concept. They just need to see it on their screen.

Imagine playing a CTF match where you are protecting the FC and when you kill someone, it shows "+5 defending flag carrier", or something like that.

Dokujisan wrote:Imagine playing a CTF match where you are protecting the FC and when you kill someone, it shows "+5 defending flag carrier", or something like that.

With a sprite above their head? Like a smiley face for good job and a sad face for losing points (dropping flag)?

From what I could extract from this thread using my messed up brain this evening, I think -z-'s ideas are good. I mean, we all agree that scoring should still primarily be based on the flag-captures, but the idea to give a score for all the actions you do in a game (considered by this formula) would really help to "rank" people, so that the server knows their ability/skill in the game and could use that for team balacing in the next rounds (on the next map).

I hope I got that intention right.

GreEn`mArine wrote:From what I could extract from this thread using my messed up brain this evening...I hope I got that intention right.

Your brain is fine, you hit the nail on the head

I am one of those who like the old school, or 'vanilla' CTF as some call it. Meaning, 1 cap = 1 score for the team.
Of course there should be individual scoring system like frags, deaths, jumps, hits taken, hits made, religion, gender, hair color, breed, blood type, favorite color, favorite food, etc. etc. etc. Well at least the first two.
I know many people think that 1 cap = 1 team score is a bad thing and would hurt gameplay. But look at all the other games out there who have this system. I know for a fact that UT works pretty well. Of course they have that adrenaline reward thing but still. I also think it all boils down to time. Of course some people will hate it and other will need time to get over with because they are used to what it is now. But this current state ISN'T CTF, no matter how much you tell yourself that. It actually IS TDM with just a different set of rules.

Now I would consider having some other system in place than 1 cap = 1 team score, but the bottom line is this. A CTF game should ONLY be decided by flag captures, and possibly flag returns. Not by individual frags or whatever else my be going on.

If people like the current system with this TDM/CTF, create a new mode which is called Team Deathmatch, Now With Flags, i.e. TDMNWF or whatever. I really wish for a real CTF though.

ai wrote:I really wish for a real CTF though.

In svn you can have this by changing a simple cvar. I have no idea why this isn't default yet. Since almost everybody wants that.
Captures should be the only thing that decides a winning team. I have been saying this for years now.

I have no opinions at all about this advanced math scoring system. I trust it's fine for individual scores but I don't really care about that. It's the team effort that counts.

Against, as has been discussed to death. Should probably close the topic and ban everyone who opens a new one on this.

Nexuiz IS NOT "all the other games".

Nexuiz is much faster than UT.
Nexuiz is played with more players on smaller maps.

These two factors mean:

In 8vs8 CTF, an unproductive player hurts the team much less than in the usual 3vs3 in e.g. UT. Therefore, there should be scores that punish unproductive team members, like, those who enter the enemy base, take the flag and get killed every single time because they always do it alone. That is what flag return points are for.

Also: a kamikaze capture run has much higher chances to succeed in Nexuiz than in UT. In UT, players are much slower, so it is easy to catch up with the enemy flag carrier. He can't use the translocator, while everyone else can. In Nexuiz, there is just a single chance for the defenders to stop the flag carrier. One Nex shot. If you hit, he's dead. If you miss, he's out of your view in the 1.5 seconds reload time.

So if ONLY captures count, this would favor single kamikaze runs in Nexuiz. Out of 20 attempts, one is bould to succeed as your defenders simply CANNOT have a >95% success rate.

Caps-only scoring ONLY works on maps that work against one or two of these factors.

E.g. hydronex, which has a VERY strong defense as defenders spawn in a good spot for getting runaway flag carriers.

Or tznex03, which has many angled hallways working against the high player speed of Nexuiz.

That's what the talk about handicapping the flag carrier is for. There was a talk about that before, dunno what happened to it. There was something like making sure the FC wouldn't be able to gain that much speed as he can now. Cause that's just ridiculously big speed.

divVerent wrote:In Nexuiz, there is just a single chance for the defenders to stop the flag carrier. One Nex shot. If you hit, he's dead. If you miss, he's out of your view in the 1.5 seconds reload time.

Properly laid out teams (defense, midfield, offense) with proper communication can thwart this. Isn't that why police do with runaway cars? Radio to their buddies and tell them to lay out the spike strips?

If you want everything to be handed to you and prefer "shooting fish in a barrel" as opposed to creative thinking combined with communication, sure, there is only one way. Personally, I enjoy trying to set traps for the flag carrier? It's quite rewarding feeling when you drop the flag, especially when it's inches from capping.

divVerent wrote:Or tznex03, which has many angled hallways working against the high player speed of Nexuiz.

You mean make it totally awesome like mikectf2? I love swooshing around in Nexuiz Physics at high speed.

This will be a long response, both to z and to div.

Sorry for the confusing, my examples are dated, using the older formula. The new formula divides the players played time by the total time, so 5 seconds over 20 minutes = 0.00416 or 0.04% of the game. However, testing my theory, over the percentage is wrong, it should be multiplied by it >_<.

Code: Select all

((Pk-Pd)+2*(1+Fs*(Fk+Fr-Fd))) * (Tp/Tt)

Now if i played 3 mins from 20, my score is multiplied by 0,15 but if i played 20/20 by 1? Why? If I managed to achieve same thing in less time why my score should be lower?

In Facing Worlds, it's as simple as getting a rocket launcher, the mega shield outside your base and rocketing yourself to the health in the center, then rocketing yourself to the enemy's mega shield. You may at this point want to grab one of the 3 nexes available at the enemy base if you haven't grabbed one from yours.

For hydronex, fire 3 or so rockets at the bunker while you're running towards the enemy base and they'll scatter or at the least back off. Assuming you have now directed them towards the back of the bunker, have a mortar ready for it's fast refire and ability to screw up a nexer's aim and start bouncing secondaries to give you a set of "landmines" that tip you off if the enemy is looking for you.

You oversimplify everything. It seems like your opponents are bots but not living players. There isn't general winning strategy. Otherwise anyone would use it. Personally in fw you can easily be vaporized by roof campers while you will be going to take shield. Nex defenders not necessarily should stay in the bunker and better ones do not stay there at all.

lol wut? A player can hold 10 weapons. Seeing as how they respawn every 15, it's asinine to limit yourself. That's your own personal shit causing you problems.

Remember it's 8vs8 not 3vs3. I generally hate people who grab all the weapons they can. Does not matter that they will respawn in 15 secs. 15 secs is almost always enough to capture flag (from my nose).

Shotgun is used by every one of the more experienced players. It's a very powerful weapon that just takes practice. Having that attitude is going to hurt your abilities as a Nexuiz player because as I said earlier, you can kill someone in 3 shots.

I'll stay at my opinion. It's bad I don't see those more experienced players a lot. I already stated my opinion about sg lots of times.

Again, I think you'd be surprised just how limitless the possibilities can be when you begin to wrap your mind around the physics in the game.

Good knowledge of physics increase your chance to survive but does not make you invincible.

Unconsciously, my mind says, "I need this force to push me at this angle at this velocity while only taking away this much health with only these weapons available while I'm posed this much of a threat by the enemy."

I would agree talking about dm or 3vs3 ctf but not 8vs8 cause you don't/can't know where all the enemies are.

sev wrote:
I think what would be really important is some obvious and direct feedback, no matter what point system is used. Something like a big number at the top (+20 in green, or -5 in red) with an explanation underneath it (Complete Flag Capture, or Lost Flag).

Awesome idea! Visual cues would DEFINITELY help. Preferably not using centerprint though ;o) (unless it was higher and more stylized like in OpenArena.

Agree 100% with visual feedback. q3 had assist, defense, etc with visual icons displayed for some of your skills.

I am one of those who like the old school, or 'vanilla' CTF as some call it. Meaning, 1 cap = 1 score for the team.
Captures should be the only thing that decides a winning team. I have been saying this for years now.

I agree with ai and morfar. Oldschool ctf . Now you lose because your teammates are fragged > 100 times by camping and spamming team of your opponents. There is no incentive to attack while you can WIN defending. If you go to minus with unsuccessful attacks, that's even worse. It's better lose trying to attack then win without trying.

In 8vs8 CTF, an unproductive player hurts the team much less than in the usual 3vs3 in e.g. UT. Therefore, there should be scores that punish unproductive team members, like, those who enter the enemy base, take the flag and get killed every single time because they always do it alone. That is what flag return points are for.

Firstly, they should punish the players not teams.

Also: a kamikaze capture run has much higher chances to succeed in Nexuiz than in UT. In UT, players are much slower, so it is easy to catch up with the enemy flag carrier. He can't use the translocator, while everyone else can. In Nexuiz, there is just a single chance for the defenders to stop the flag carrier. One Nex shot. If you hit, he's dead. If you miss, he's out of your view in the 1.5 seconds reload time.

Kamikaze attack is 99,9999% useless if team has at least 4 dedicated and good defenders.

So if ONLY captures count, this would favor single kamikaze runs in Nexuiz. Out of 20 attempts, one is bould to succeed as your defenders simply CANNOT have a >95% success rate.

You can have 100% success rate (seen that a lot of (and I mean TOO MANY)) times.



It seems you don't pay attention to that with increasing player count it's getting easier and easier to defend and much much harder to attack. Trying to make it fit both 3vs3 and 8vs8 is imho illogical.

Why 1 point for 1 capture is good (in my opinion). It was justified in plenty of other fps. Q3 had much more speed than UT and yet it used 1 point 1 capture. 1 point 1 capture will make Nexuiz more dynamic game where whole team (even noobs) will TRY to attack. It will make them learn laser jumping, bunnyhopping and corner cutting instead of rushing to the nearest nex/crylink. If enemy kills your defenders/grabs your flag , hunting down enemy fc, protecting your own becomes main priorities. Hunting and protecting yourself across whole map with insane speeds means more action than trying to grab the flag 10th time in a row alone.

About deaths and team play. Good defenders should get some appreciation like you now get rage, massacre, berserker, etc... eg., assist (call it differently), body defense/sacrifice, something for pickup, etc...

This is why sometimes deaths mean good thing. It's better to die while defending your fc with your own body then trying to stay alive all the time (cause CTF is not TDMNWF )

Alien wrote:This will be a long response, both to z and to div.

Sorry for the confusing, my examples are dated, using the older formula. The new formula divides the players played time by the total time, so 5 seconds over 20 minutes = 0.00416 or 0.04% of the game. However, testing my theory, over the percentage is wrong, it should be multiplied by it >_<.

Code: Select all

((Pk-Pd)+2*(1+Fs*(Fk+Fr-Fd))) * (Tp/Tt)

Now if i played 3 mins from 20, my score is multiplied by 0,15 but if i played 20/20 by 1? Why? If I managed to achieve same thing in less time why my score should be lower?

Hmmm we then I guess it _is_ divided by

Alien wrote:

In Facing Worlds, it's as simple as getting a rocket launcher, the mega shield outside your base and rocketing yourself to the health in the center, then rocketing yourself to the enemy's mega shield. You may at this point want to grab one of the 3 nexes available at the enemy base if you haven't grabbed one from yours.

For hydronex, fire 3 or so rockets at the bunker while you're running towards the enemy base and they'll scatter or at the least back off. Assuming you have now directed them towards the back of the bunker, have a mortar ready for it's fast refire and ability to screw up a nexer's aim and start bouncing secondaries to give you a set of "landmines" that tip you off if the enemy is looking for you.

You oversimplify everything. It seems like your opponents are bots but not living players. There isn't general winning strategy. Otherwise anyone would use it. Personally in fw you can easily be vaporized by roof campers while you will be going to take shield. Nex defenders not necessarily should stay in the bunker and better ones do not stay there at all.

Maybe you make things out to be much more difficult than they really are. I know my opponents and I state these facts based on this knowledge and my experience. If you're getting vaped by nexers in fw, apply the long distance rocket technique with a dash of mg or crylink, it'll be enough for them to backup for a few seconds, giving you a window to rocket yourself.

Alien wrote:

lol wut? A player can hold 10 weapons. Seeing as how they respawn every 15, it's asinine to limit yourself. That's your own personal shit causing you problems.

Remember it's 8vs8 not 3vs3. I generally hate people who grab all the weapons they can. Does not matter that they will respawn in 15 secs. 15 secs is almost always enough to capture flag (from my nose).

Well if you recall me saying earlier that I usually steal the enemy's items, you can leave that hatorade on the bench.

Besides, that's not an argument against carrying more than 2 weapons.

Alien wrote:

Shotgun is used by every one of the more experienced players. It's a very powerful weapon that just takes practice. Having that attitude is going to hurt your abilities as a Nexuiz player because as I said earlier, you can kill someone in 3 shots.

I'll stay at my opinion. It's bad I don't see those more experienced players a lot. I already stated my opinion about sg lots of times.

Well, continue playing with this mentality and you'll die more often. Not learning how to utilize a default weapon puts you at a disadvantage.

Alien wrote:

Again, I think you'd be surprised just how limitless the possibilities can be when you begin to wrap your mind around the physics in the game.

Good knowledge of physics increase your chance to survive but does not make you invincible.

Didn't say it makes me invincible but it sure keeps me out of a lot of trouble.

Alien wrote:

Unconsciously, my mind says, "I need this force to push me at this angle at this velocity while only taking away this much health with only these weapons available while I'm posed this much of a threat by the enemy."

I would agree talking about dm or 3vs3 ctf but not 8vs8 cause you don't/can't know where all the enemies are.

I don't need to know where ALL of the enemies are. I need to know which ones pose a potential threat. The potential threat is a dynamic measurement based on match events, combat situations, personal status and teammate positions.

If it is divided, then if i've played 5 secs and killed 1 person, my score would be 720.
If I killed 100 persons and died 0 times (:D), but played all game time, my score would be 102.

I hope I'll see you sometime on (European) public CTF. Maybe the gameplay is very different between European and American players. At least, I'm starting to make this opinion.

[-z-] wrote:

divVerent wrote:In Nexuiz, there is just a single chance for the defenders to stop the flag carrier. One Nex shot. If you hit, he's dead. If you miss, he's out of your view in the 1.5 seconds reload time.

Properly laid out teams (defense, midfield, offense) with proper communication can thwart this. Isn't that why police do with runaway cars? Radio to their buddies and tell them to lay out the spike strips?

You often have only 3 seconds time from flag to flag. How to COMMUNICATE in that little amount of time?

divVerent wrote:Or tznex03, which has many angled hallways working against the high player speed of Nexuiz.

You mean make it totally awesome like mikectf2? I love swooshing around in Nexuiz Physics at high speed.

mikectf2 also works well. It limits player speed by its many corners and curves, but does not make it unenjoyable like terrain maps do. Also, on that map you actually have chances to communicate.

There now IS a change in place to give flag carriers just 70% force from self damage (e.g. laser jumping). Let's see if that slows down flag carriers enough. Slowing them down TOTALLY (like forbidding them to use the laser) is too much, one would not have a chance to capture AT ALL without really good team mates - it would make defending far too easy. This 70% reduction however may be the edge a pursuer needs to catch up.

No!!! Wait. Will be it by default?

That's wrong, totally wrong. I disagree with it with all my heart. Really. That's practically almost ruins CTF. It's not enough that crylinkers stops you with negative force, almost anyone can shot you with nex, now you limit the speed of flag carrier. Why???

If this will be as bad as I think, CTF popularity will go down soon. And CTF is the most popular part of Nexuiz.

divVerent wrote:You often have only 3 seconds time from flag to flag. How to COMMUNICATE in that little amount of time?

3 seconds is a bit mellow dramatic. But a good offender would know when he hears 'flag taken' or sees the indicator, to run towards the enemy flag, try to pick off the flag carrier or worst case, if he cannot find the enemy fc, grab the enemy flag to stop him from scoring.

A simple keybind that says, "I need help" or "chasing enemy fc" with a waypoint would give the offensive line a better idea of where to help.

Alien wrote:No!!! Wait. Will be it by default?

That's wrong, totally wrong. I disagree with it with all my heart. Really. That's practically almost ruins CTF. It's not enough that crylinkers stops you with negative force, almost anyone can shot you with nex, now you limit the speed of flag carrier. Why???

If this will be as bad as I think, CTF popularity will go down soon. And CTF is the most popular part of Nexuiz.

Perhaps it will chide more players into carrying keys in Keyhunt, a flag-running experience with genuine, viable strategies for everyone else.