This is an off-shoot from another thread.
http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.ph ... sc&start=0

I think this should be a new topic of discussion. I'd like to hear everyone's input.

To summarize, there are some of us who think the current scoring system for CTF "pays" the attacking players far more than players that defend the base or the flag carrier. The scoring system does not encourage teamwork at all.

The current system pretty much encourages everybody to run toward the enemy base to grab the flag, while ignoring your teammates. At the end of a game, the scores will show one player with 125 points because they were the "runner", while the other players did not get any extra points for helping them run with the flag. I believe that teamwork should be reflected in the scores.

Here is what I propose...

Extra points scored....

- if your teammate grabs the enemy flag, and you are within a certain radius of them, then you get 2 extra points. This is interpreted as you helping them grab the flag.

- If you kill an enemy player that is within a certain radius of your flag carrier, then you get 2 extra points. This is interpreted as you defending your flag carrier.

Note: the ENEMY that you killed has to be within a radius of the flag carrier. You could be far away, sniping enemies and protecting your flag carrier.

- If you kill an enemy player within a certain radius of your flag when it is at your base, then you get an extra 2 points. This is interpreted as you defending the flag at your base.

- If you kill an enemy player within a certain radius of your base while the flag is gone, then you get an extra 1 point. This is interpreted as you defending the base while the flag was gone.

The game already does calculations based on radius for explosive weapons, so it seems like it would not be too hard to use radius to award points for teamwork. This radius system does work on some assumptions, but I believe they are safe assumptions that would be accurate in most cases.

This system would reward people for attacking in groups, defending the flag carrier, defending the flag, and protecting the base. Anything outside of these scenarios would just be treated as DM.

Please state your feedback and input on this.

I realize some of these might be hard to implement, but I think they'd be great.

BTW not sure if you saw my reply in the other thread, but even without these changes, just setting the points for returning the flag at half that of scoring (instead of a quarter) helps a lot. --c

Dokujisan wrote:To summarize, there are some of us who think the current scoring system for CTF "pays" the attacking players far more than players that defend the base or the flag carrier. The scoring system does not encourage teamwork at all.

Please state your feedback and input on this.

Well, defending the base can be quite profitable .

I defend very often, and mostly defending is easier than attacking, so that the attackers are very low on score and we defenders are very high. I even had a game when my team was only defending and won easily.

Yet your scoring system sounds promising. But one more thought: shooting the enemy flag carrier gives one point, returning the flag 5 points. Very often A frags the enemy fc, B returns the flag. Maybe it would be fairer to distribute the score 3/3, so that fragging the enemy fc is more rewarded.

(But I appreciate it, when - as already happened - the flag falls onto my head )

Finally: IMHO the individual score is just a rough estimate how useful someone is for the team. Don't overrate it.

(Maybe showing the individual score should be removed entirely...?)

RoKenn wrote:
Finally: IMHO the individual score is just a rough estimate how useful someone is for the team. Don't overrate it.

(Maybe showing the individual score should be removed entirely...?)

Well, that is exactly what it is. It is feedback to the user and that is the reason why people should not underrate it.
The personal score is basically a message to the player telling them which behavior is most valuable. Many people may think it doesn't really matter, but I think it actually does influence game play quite a bit.

Concerning the returned flag points, I agree. It makes more sense to balance that out more.
Perhaps
+1 for kill and +1 for killing flag carrier
+2 points for returning the flag.

So if you were defending your own base and the enemy ran in and grabbed the flag, but you killed them instantly and returned the flag, that would be...

+1 for the kill
+1 for defending base
+1 points for killing enemy flag carrier
+2 points for returning flag

5 points

In the same scenario, if you killed the enemy flag carrier and then your teammate returned the flag, then you would get...

+1 for the kill
+1 for defending base
+1 points for killing enemy flag carrier

Your teammate would get
+2 points for returning flag


Let's think of more scenarios to help iron this thing out.
More ideas and feedback please.

Dokujisan wrote:Well, that is exactly what it is. It is feedback to the user and that is the reason why people should not underrate it.

You mean I should think about why I'm very often the top scorer... of the loosing team...?


Your suggestions sound fair. Maybe one more issue: if you shoot the enemy fc into space it only gives one point. Maybe this also should be rewarded better?

Well, personally, I believe that best system would be that one who successfully scores, gains 15-30 points. Every kill gives one point, logic.

Anyway, in public servers you can not really expect much of a teamplay anyway, thus changing scoring system in order to try to improve teamwork is, IMO, pointless.

Also, in clan matches, it is pointless to care about individual player's score, but the score of the team.

Calmatory wrote:I believe that best system would be that one who successfully scores, gains 15-30 points. Every kill gives one point, logic.

You mean the current system, right?

Well, in many cases, multiple players cause the flag to be captured, not just the one carrying the flag. However, recognition of that effort, the success of the flag capture, is only given to the one carrying the flag.

That scoring leads many people, such as you, to think of the flag carrier as the "successful" one, when that just is not accurate.

Calmatory wrote:Also, in clan matches, it is pointless to care about individual player's score, but the score of the team.

Then why are there personal scores at all?

My answer: it is to let players know how they are doing. It is to give credit to players for their role in capturing the flag. If they played a role in getting the flag captured, then the personal scores should show that. That, IMO, is what they are there for.

If the personal scoring is setup properly, that will influence people to focus more on team play. Players will learn to start following their flag carrier, because they get extra points for protecting the flag carrier.

RoKenn wrote:You mean I should think about why I'm very often the top scorer... of the loosing team...?

With my suggested personal scoring, you will know which teammates are not playing as a team.

Not to suggest that my proposal is finalized in any way. I really want some feedback and suggestions for this concept. We should run it through some scenarios to see if the scoring makes sense.

Like when you shoot the enemy flag carrier off into space. You should get
+1 for the kill
+1 for killing the flag carrier
+2 for returning the flag

I'm not sure how that could be "defined" programmatically, but that is the ideal result for that scenario.

- if your teammate grabs the enemy flag, and you are within a certain radius of them, then you get 2 extra points. This is interpreted as you helping them grab the flag.

Sounds good, as long as it is limited to 1 person. That way, a team can't just go in a massive party and rack up points.

torus wrote:

- if your teammate grabs the enemy flag, and you are within a certain radius of them, then you get 2 extra points. This is interpreted as you helping them grab the flag.

Sounds good, as long as it is limited to 1 person. That way, a team can't just go in a massive party and rack up points.

Good point.
Perhaps...

Option 1 : Limit the extra points to the two closest people, or the first closest person?

Option 2 : Make the radius reasonable small enough where a big group of people wouldn't likely be close enough to get the points.

MO, Dokujisan, it's just making it more complicated.

Adding extra points for killing a flag carrier is already quite odd; the defenders have to let the attacker actual touch the flag in order to gain the extra points.
Skilled defenders are penalized for doing a better job [ie, preventing the threat of a Xeno style escape].

When you start getting into radii, it becomes a map specific, some flag rooms are huge, while others are tiny and cramped;
and then the defender must let the enemy come within the radius again, or you must be following the flag carrier, when you could be watching the entrance, etc.
This may possibly lead to a whore-fest like situation where people just stay within the radius to simply siphon off bonus points, while they could be doing something much more tactical.

My proposal is this, in order to standardize groups, carrying the flag must impeded in such a way,
that escape from one defender with a shotgun is reasonably difficult [disarm the flag carrier? slower movement?];
The locations of both flag carriers should be available to both teams to encourage continued protection rather than prolonged cross - capture due to hiding in odd locations as well.
To balance this out, returning the flag must give absolutely 0 points, so people don't whore the bait-and-frag technique that is quite common among games that fall into a stalemate;
this way, people will eventually realize that attacking one by one is futile and should group together naturally.

In order to reward players who actually do this, the regular point counter could be removed and replaced with a capture & frags counter; with the frag counter having no effect on the game of course.
This should probably make players feel like they're actually on a team, and all of them can do something, contrasting with an average CTF game
where colourless people make a straight beeline to the opposing base, and die AFTER picking up the flag, forfeiting 5 points to the opposing team.
[This should also make CTF its own gamemode, not TDM with extra objectives]

TVR wrote:MO, Dokujisan, it's just making it more complicated.

Pfft.
I don't think what I'm suggesting is all that complicated, not any more complicated than any of the other mechanisms in the game.

TVR wrote:Adding extra points for killing a flag carrier is already quite odd; the defenders have to let the attacker actual touch the flag in order to gain the extra points.

Well, I thought about that. However, it could be argued that they are taking a bigger risk by "allowing" the flag to be grabbed. But that is sort of playing around with the points does suck.

Perhaps the flag would actually have to get a certain distance from the base before the "returned flag" points could be rewarded?

TVR wrote:When you start getting into radii, it becomes a map specific, some flag rooms are huge, while others are tiny and cramped;

Not exactly. You can figure out a common radius to work with most scenarios. If the base is a cramped area, then the radius to extend a little past the walls. That won't hurt anything.

TVR wrote:This may possibly lead to a whore-fest like situation where people just stay within the radius to simply siphon off bonus points, while they could be doing something much more tactical.

You know how hard that would be???
It's hard enough just trying to synchronize an attack on the enemy base within a 15 second window. I don't think people are going to be able to coordinate well enough to take advantage of the radius scoring by hugging next to the flag carrier. Remember, that person is going to be laser jumping and moving all over the place.

The only thing I can imagine them doing is grabbing the enemy flag and the whole team switches to defense and NOT capping the flag...just to rack up bonus points for defending base and defending flag carrier.

So, to prevent that, perhaps the "defending flag carrier" bonus points don't work near the base. Problem solved.

TVR wrote:My proposal is this, in order to standardize groups, carrying the flag must impeded in such a way, that escape from one defender with a shotgun is reasonably difficult [disarm the flag carrier? slower movement?];

I don't understand this part of your proposal.

TVR wrote:The locations of both flag carriers should be available to both teams to encourage continued protection rather than prolonged cross - capture due to hiding in odd locations as well.

I don't think that will encourage people to protect the flag carrier. Instead, people will continue to do what they are doing now, which is pass right by their flag carrier and go to the enemy base to capture the next flag.

TVR wrote:To balance this out, returning the flag must give absolutely 0 points, so people don't whore the bait-and-frag technique that is quite common among games that fall into a stalemate;

Again, either a distance-from-base limit before giving those points, or a time delay before giving those "return flag" points would be helpful here. This will make it too dangerous to allow the enemies to grab the flag...just for a couple extra points.

Remember, they are getting extra points for grabbing the flag as well. It wouldn't be worth it to play around with that risk.

TVR wrote:this way, people will eventually realize that attacking one by one is futile and should group together naturally. In order to reward players who actually do this, the regular point counter could be removed and replaced with a capture & frags counter; with the frag counter having no effect on the game of course.

So a kill is a kill is a kill? That is what I disagree with. It's simply not true. In team play, killing someone that is trying to kill your flag carrier DOES matter more than killing random person. If defending your flag carrier doesn't gain any points, then people will continue to just pass up their flag carrier and try to capture the next flag when their flag carrier dies. Then they get the points and end up at the top of their team when the match ends.

TVR wrote:This should probably make players feel like they're actually on a team, and all of them can do something, contrasting with an average CTF game
where colourless people make a straight beeline to the opposing base, and die AFTER picking up the flag, forfeiting 5 points to the opposing team.
[This should also make CTF its own gamemode, not TDM with extra objectives]

I don't think your proposal will cause people to play as a team, because people are going to be influenced by the personal scores at the end of the match.

Dokujisan wrote:This is an off-shoot from another thread.
http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.ph ... sc&start=0

I think this should be a new topic of discussion. I'd like to hear everyone's input.

To summarize, there are some of us who think the current scoring system for CTF "pays" the attacking players far more than players that defend the base or the flag carrier. The scoring system does not encourage teamwork at all.

The current system pretty much encourages everybody to run toward the enemy base to grab the flag, while ignoring your teammates. At the end of a game, the scores will show one player with 125 points because they were the "runner", while the other players did not get any extra points for helping them run with the flag. I believe that teamwork should be reflected in the scores.

Here is what I propose...

Extra points scored....

- if your teammate grabs the enemy flag, and you are within a certain radius of them, then you get 2 extra points. This is interpreted as you helping them grab the flag.

I like this idea, with some reservations.. ill get into that later =)

- If you kill an enemy player that is within a certain radius of your flag carrier, then you get 2 extra points. This is interpreted as you defending your flag carrier.

Note: the ENEMY that you killed has to be within a radius of the flag carrier. You could be far away, sniping enemies and protecting your flag carrier.

What abt enemy snipers? many, many times when i take down a fc i do it with the nex over large distances. a verry effective metod thats now to be unrewarded to counter?

- If you kill an enemy player within a certain radius of your flag when it is at your base, then you get an extra 2 points. This is interpreted as you defending the flag at your base.

Again basicaly a good idea that may have a evil twist to it (more later)

- If you kill an enemy player within a certain radius of your base while the flag is gone, then you get an extra 1 point. This is interpreted as you defending the base while the flag was gone.

Woot! give em 50. bases are always overrun when the flags gone Seriosly tho, would be a nice touch, and perhaps make baseraåping a bit less attractive.

The game already does calculations based on radius for explosive weapons, so it seems like it would not be too hard to use radius to award points for teamwork. This radius system does work on some assumptions, but I believe they are safe assumptions that would be accurate in most cases.

Well yeh thats not the problem here. Its more of a logical/design one.

This system would reward people for attacking in groups, defending the flag carrier, defending the flag, and protecting the base. Anything outside of these scenarios would just be treated as DM.

Please state your feedback and input on this.

Oki first off im mutch pro a better ctf/teamplay score system. But i do think it will be a big task to plan an realize sutch a system.

Now the diffrent bonus sysems for helping grab the flag, protecting and defending etc could be just as "abused", hell proly even more so then the current simple system. The more advanced player will be getting all kindsa assist point all over just by the faqct that hes fraging and with all thise systems in place hes bound to get em by luck, skill or evil scheemes. The one things that do speak for the current system is - its simple. simple systems are hader to abuse. I can easy see a pile of scenarios where a not so honest player uses thise systems meant to ecurage teamplay to boost hes own score at the expense of hes teammates.

And we havent even considerd the noobfriendlyness(tm) yet. Something like this would make ctf a more compicated gamemode, make it harder it understand and the learning curve steeper. Not nessesarely a bad thing, but non the less something to consider.

The latter is fairly hard to do anything abt. To combat the abuse ability i sugest that players need to assume a role (defender/roaming/attacking) first to be even considerd for bonuses. The system should not allows role switching very often, perhaps one switch per 5 mins AND after a capture (for example). The default profile would be roaming, unaffected by most bonus evens except for say assisting the fc (again would need to be carefully considerd what goes to what role) The downside ofc beeing that CTF gets even more complicated, elitistic and the advanced playres will likely to have a even bigger score then even before.

Dokujisan wrote:

Calmatory wrote:I believe that best system would be that one who successfully scores, gains 15-30 points. Every kill gives one point, logic.

You mean the current system, right?

Well, in many cases, multiple players cause the flag to be captured, not just the one carrying the flag. However, recognition of that effort, the success of the flag capture, is only given to the one carrying the flag.

That scoring leads many people, such as you, to think of the flag carrier as the "successful" one, when that just is not accurate.

Calmatory wrote:Also, in clan matches, it is pointless to care about individual player's score, but the score of the team.

Then why are there personal scores at all?

Who cares about them at all?

CTF is team based game, no matter how good one player is, the team may still fail against even the poorest team, if the teamplay sucks or so.

I still think the current system works best, unless your only satisfaction is to have the biggest score in the end of the round...

Those who go for the score instead of teamplay, should not be playing CTF at all, at least not in organized games, such as clans and so.

Calmatory wrote:Who cares about them at all?

I think I've explained that a couple times already.

Calmatory wrote:CTF is team based game, no matter how good one player is, the team may still fail against even the poorest team, if the teamplay sucks or so.

And a team is made up of individuals...and, currently, those individuals are not focused on team-play most of the time, and there is feedback in the form of personal scores that tell them that the only valuable act in the game is grabbing the flag and capping it.

Calmatory wrote:I still think the current system works best, unless your only satisfaction is to have the biggest score in the end of the round...

As I said above (and you obviously skimmed over) is that the personal scores should be feedback from the game telling you how much you contributed to the team. It absolutely influences gameplay. If you get a higher score, then you're doing something right. That's the idea. Right now, you only get a high score by being the flag carrier.

Calmatory wrote:Those who go for the score instead of teamplay, should not be playing CTF at all, at least not in organized games, such as clans and so.

You're missing the point of the personal scoring. If a player truly did a lot to help their team out, then their personal score should reflect that. That's the idea.

One more idea: since with the new scheme you would give points quite generously...

Maybe it would make sense to detach individual scores from team score?

Then you could give points to the team for stealing/returning and capturing.
And you could give points to the individuals to rate their contribution.

It has been criticized anyway in the past that the team gets points for fragging, after all that's not the purpose of CTF. (fragging => individual gets points, team does not)

RoKenn wrote:One more idea: since with the new scheme you would give points quite generously...

Maybe it would make sense to detach individual scores from team score?

Then you could give points to the team for stealing/returning and capturing.
And you could give points to the individuals to rate their contribution.

It has been criticized anyway in the past that the team gets points for fragging, after all that's not the purpose of CTF. (fragging => individual gets points, team does not)

I believe that's the way they do it alrleady

Well, I am totally against new system because of multiple reasons:

There is no way to make a system which would reward you from teamplaying. How does Nexuiz know how important it is to defend your flag carrier (I mean, wtf, you are 5 meters away, you get no points, you are 3 meters away, you get points for being closer? ._.)

The way to exploit this: 4 players, one has flag, 3 players stand around him and gain points for that. No logic.

If you kill EFC, that could probably be +1 point + kill, but nothing more. If you return the flag, that could be +1 point aswell.

But really, you can not expect good gameplay in public servers, because of multiple things(e.g. newbies, people who just ignore others and go for it alone). If you want to go for
teamplay, play clanwars. Or Gathers. (I dont know if there is one for Nexuiz though)

Publics just arent place for organized gaming, have never been and will never be, no matter what.

RoKenn wrote:Maybe it would make sense to detach individual scores from team score?

That would be great, but it's pretty much impossible atm. Seperating the scores is easy, but there's no easy way to display the team score on clients, so nobody would know the current scores...

[TSA] Psychiccyberfreak wrote:I believe that's the way they do it alrleady

No, it's not. Teammodes just sum all player scores for each team.

Calmatory wrote:The way to exploit this: 4 players, one has flag, 3 players stand around him and gain points for that. No logic.

There are options to prevent that, I think.

First, if the whole team is standing in one place, that makes one really easy target. Throw a missle into that group and you kill multiple people at once, including the flag carrier.

Remember, capping the flag still scores the most.

Also realize, this concept that I'm proposing is just an initial idea for discussion. It can be tweaked, added to, manipulated, etc...to make it work in most, if not all, situations. You have to think like an engineer and pick away at the challenge until you come up with a good solution for it. I certainly don't think that my idea is perfect. It needs adjustment.

Maybe there is a time limit for the flag carrier to hold the flag...like a ticking time-bomb. If they hold onto the flag for too long, they die and the flag returns to enemy base. This is a feature that I would like to see anyway, regardless of scoring changes. This would prevent people from sitting somewhere trying to hide with the flag. Maybe a 2 minute time limit for this?

Maybe the team only scores points if the flag carrier is moving around.

Maybe having the team huddled too much around the flag carrier makes them a sitting duck. If they have the skill to sit in one place in the middle of the map and pick off the enemy over and over without dying or losing the flag, then maybe they are the better team. That would require a LOT of skill. Think about it.

If you kill EFC, that could probably be +1 point + kill, but nothing more. If you return the flag, that could be +1 point aswell.

Fair enough. As I said, the idea needs to be tweaked, tested, adjusted, etc.

But really, you can not expect good gameplay in public servers, because of multiple things(e.g. newbies, people who just ignore others and go for it alone). If you want to go for.

Publics just arent place for organized gaming, have never been and will never be, no matter what.

C'mon, don't just throw up your hands and give up like that. I've had a few public games where the teams were pretty synchronized. I think there are ways to improve the knowledge and skill of the general Nexuiz populous. If everyone had the mentality that you are demonstrating, then we would never improve anything. It's worth it to at least try to improve things, isn't it?

RoKenn wrote:Then you could give points to the team for stealing/returning and capturing.
And you could give points to the individuals to rate their contribution.

Hell, I would even be supportive of a variation of your suggestion that is based upon a percentage rather than points. Nobody would see the total team score, but they would see their portion of the team score (in terms of frags, defending and assists).

Score : 2 vs 7
Blue team WINS
Team scores....

ai : 40%
esteel : 20%
Sally : 19%
PsychicCyberFreak : 16%
Dave : 5%

(Because we all know that Dave is a weak player)

I like my original idea better because their effort would be reflected immediately in the "game" score, but I think splitting the frag and capture scores and using percentages like the above would also be better than what we have now.

You ever play any Basketball video games?

Don't they track "assists" for post-game statistics?

What logic do you think they use to count assists?
How do they programmatically define an "assist".

Maybe something like that could help here.

hi folks,

I play UT CTF since 1999 and this is how the scoring system on my favorite server works, maybe it helps a bit:
-------------------------------

+3 for killing someone targetting your flag carrier (FC)
+1 for killing someone near your FC
+1 for killing the enemy flag carrier (EFC) in your base
+10 for killing the EFC in his base
+5 for killing the EFC anywhere else
+1 for killing someone in your base
+1 for killing someone while a flag is taken
+2 for killing someone while holding the flag
+2 for returning the flag far from your base
+5 for returning the flag near the enemy base
-1 for respawn-killing
-1 for type-killing

10 points are distributed to all the flag carriers upon capture. Those who backed up the FC will be rewarded as well.

-------------------------------
As you can see, killing in your own base isnt really rewarded much. I strongly disagree that defending (camping at your base) is important on public servers (needless to say that it's a totaly different story in clan-matches), rewarding ppl for that only leads to annoying + lame playstyle (its actually much easier to hide somewhere, watching the entrances for the fc's to come in, or even worse, snipe at the flag and wait until the enemy fc did take it, then kill him and be rewarded with high points for the kill + the return of the flag...... than to go for the flag urself, or to cover your flagcarrier on its way to the homebase and later on in the base) .

just my 2 cents worth,

cheers

R4ND0M

RoKenn wrote:One more idea: since with the new scheme you would give points quite generously...

Maybe it would make sense to detach individual scores from team score?

Then you could give points to the team for stealing/returning and capturing.
And you could give points to the individuals to rate their contribution.

It has been criticized anyway in the past that the team gets points for fragging, after all that's not the purpose of CTF. (fragging => individual gets points, team does not)

That's a good way.

R4ND0M wrote:+3 for killing someone targetting your flag carrier (FC)
+1 for killing someone near your FC
+1 for killing the enemy flag carrier (EFC) in your base
+10 for killing the EFC in his base
+5 for killing the EFC anywhere else
+1 for killing someone in your base
+1 for killing someone while a flag is taken
+2 for killing someone while holding the flag
+2 for returning the flag far from your base
+5 for returning the flag near the enemy base
-1 for respawn-killing
-1 for type-killing

10 points are distributed to all the flag carriers upon capture. Those who backed up the FC will be rewarded as well.

I like that system alot. Exept for the type killing/respawn killing stuff.

I like that system alot. Exept for the type killing/respawn killing stuff.

:?: So you think type killing/respawn killing is honorable in any way

R4ND0M wrote:

I like that system alot. Exept for the type killing/respawn killing stuff.

:?: So you think type killing/respawn killing is honorable in any way

no, but it happens accidentally many times, and plus it can be abused by hitting t last seccond... kinda unfair...

A clueless nubie can capture the flag by misstake. So should flag capturing be a non score event too? I would gladly see -1 typefrag insted of mirror dmg. (at least the dumb mirror dmg we have atm)

Some of thise events would be hard to implement in nexuiz. things like

+2 for returning the flag far from your base

for example. Nexuiz maps do not contain enougth information to decide what your base, whats far away and whats neutral grounds. Other then thise snags, they could proly be solved (at least in new/revised maps), i think this system is a good boilerplate. +3 for whacking a carrier threat seems a bit mutch tho, so do +5 for efc kill. But tweaking the event scores would be the easy part once the system is in place.

I'm glad this is being discussed by others. Thanks for your ideas. I think if *something* were done then it would be an improvement.

Dave had mentioned that he might want to tackle coding this as a mod that could be run on the Fusion CTF server for testing. I'll see what he thinks about that after he gets back from his trip.