A Proposed Plan

[falconeer]

Look these are all great 'ideas' but they are still ideas, and all that's being done is sitting around and talking as usual. We need more action in this zone.

I'd prefer to test Fly's, Snakes, and 'My' own proposed idea AFTER we move to ASSS. We should test each idea for two weeks at a time, starting with THE LEAST invasive idea and working our way up to the more drastic changes. It isn't enough to say "your idea is bad" because clearly every idea here has it's merits and some are better than others under certain conditions. There is an unknown here and that is what the community will enjoy and get them playing more. We can debate about this unknown all day or we can actually test it and give every idea a chance. Through testing we will know for sure which idea works and why and what ideas have problems and what they are. Afterward we can ask players what they liked best and draw up a list of pros and cons. We might even discover that no matter what happens in pub, pub still remains at zero players. In which case It's like I said before. No map (or gameplay) changes, even if designed by God, will bring players into pub. What brings players into pub are other players.

Also sever, you should join the dev team. You've technically made maps for the zone already. I can help you install DCME.

[GKUA]

What is the lowest scoring event in a game like league/prac. Other then tracking damage and scoring for every bullet, the lowest scoring event is a flagtouch. You set flagtouch to 1pt, then you use human judgement to determine what a flagbell is worth say 10pts, then you determine what a kill is worth, you base that on how many flags are in play. Playing east you have 20 flags so kills are worth 20pts.

FlagTouches : 1 pt
FlagBells : 10 pts
Kills : 1 pt per flag in play.

Simple is best imo, so this is where i would start. As other have said you want to avoid suiciding for last second flagbells. More thought needs to be put into this ofc.

Current prac scoring is 150 per kill, but you lose 150 for a death, so every kill is worth 300, then you subtract the death bounus which is 5.. So kills are worth 295.. or something like this.

It seems strange that people abandon there team mates to flag in prac. Even with lock on east with all flags, the total flagbell is only worth 10 pts x 20 flags = 200. Not even worth a single kill.

Ofc kills are suppose to be set differently for each sector but its not functioning correctly so im told..

Then there is no place for new players to read up on how scoring works.. Staff isnt even clear on some of the categories in the end game printout...

-Fly

Hi Fly,

Now i'm confused, I never thought you'd lose 150 points for a death. AFAIK, a kill is worth 150 points and that's it. Otherwise we should definitely have encountered players/teams with negative total points, no?. Of course, the K(ill)-D(eath) points statistic in the output may be negative, but i always assumed this was simply a way of showing how many points a person's combats have contributed to the team's total points (by killing more than dying) or to the enemies' points (by dying more than killing, in which case the number is negative, because u could say it effectively reduces your team's points, in comparison with the opposite team).

Also, when comparing kills vs flags, u should keep in mind that the flag-rewards go to your teammates as well, so an east total flag-reward is worth 3 * 200 = 600 points in total.

That said, I agree with u that kill vs flag-reward needs to be rebalanced, but it is not as bad as u suggested here. Something around 75 would seem like a nice number. Finally, grabbing a flag in east/south/west results in identical team rewards, since all areas are being played with 3 players. In north, a flag is worth 1,333 times more (4 players get the reward). Then, the flag number/player number ratio = 6.666 in east and 8 for south/west/north, so overall i'd say the differences between sectors are not so dramatic that u should lose sleep over differentiating the kill-points between the sectors.

[Fly Swatter]

GKUA,

I see if Beer Hunter, Eridu, or Tembest can do an official write up on this.

A quick look threw the code:

These are player scores not team scores:

deathPoints += killBase
deathPoints+= killflagpoints

killbase is the value set in the .ini file (its set to 150 atm in all sectors (but it shouldn't be))
killflagpoints = killBonus * flag count of the other team // killBouns is set to 5

This makes up the players death score, how it is used in the overall scope of thing beyond this point (total score, endgame printouts) is beyond me (ill have a look later).

-Fly

[jim the chin]

Does this "match" style system really appeal to noobs and players who prac in the long run?
I don't know, coz otherwise we would have found them playing more pracs :/

No offense, but when I hear this it annoys me. First, we don't have any pub newbs to upset, and second, they don't have to participate in the game-play if they don't want to. They can fly off and duel outside the deathstar if they want. Nothing is stopping them.

[jim the chin]

I had nothing to do with the current prac scoring either, so I can't help much on that. However, if you look at the final scoreboard after a prac, you'll see that it's pretty well balanced. A team might have +10 kills, but -15 bellflags, and it will look pretty even. In fact, I would say that flags are worth slightly too much when it comes to north. In north, you have more flags, more flagpoints for the team, and slightly fewer kills per player. Flags seem to dominate the scoring a bit, though I can live with it. The balance seems good enough.

[falconeer]

First, we don't have any pub newbs to upset.

Page 3, bottom 2 posts.

Didn't I say this, and you where blabbering on about how we have noobs. What like 1 a month? Or were you speaking about players like Eridu being the noobs? Distinction between new players and noob then? Did you mean we actually have players in DSB who started continuum 3 months ago? Are you confusing Big-f's 120 smurfs for a new player? Oh I see maybe you meant IF we had a decent pub and DSB was once again filled with new players AND noobs, we would need to take certain steps to retain these noobs AND new players.

Anyway some good ideas sever, generally when people have them, I don't post. So take my lack of response as an acceptance of your ideas to Fly Swatters plan. But my plan for pub still deserves to be tested, and since its way less invasive, it should likely be tested first. And as well the first move of the zone again should be to move to ASSS. Somehow you clowns fail to understand this still. How's that for tact?

The transparency in this zone is like a 3 meter lead door. Fucking cia over here. Protecting their big secrets in a 2D space game.

[jim the chin]

Yea, I knew you'd say that actually. Before, I was talking about future new players to the zone, and newbs who are currently in the prac arena. Snake seemed to be talking about current pub newbs, which we don't have. We need to cater for new players in the public arena if and when we get any.

This "blabber" really is an irrelevant diversion though.

[Tembest]

GKUA,

I see if Beer Hunter, Eridu, or Tembest can do an official write up on this.

A quick look threw the code:

These are player scores not team scores:

deathPoints += killBase
deathPoints+= killflagpoints

killbase is the value set in the .ini file (its set to 150 atm in all sectors (but it shouldn't be))
killflagpoints = killBonus * flag count of the other team // killBouns is set to 5

This makes up the players death score, how it is used in the overall scope of thing beyond this point (total score, endgame printouts) is beyond me (ill have a look later).

-Fly

I don't have to time to read through all previous posts right now, so I'll get back to you later, but I am pretty certain kills are only
rewarded by 150 points. The dying party will not lose points. The formula is probably there because for some reason Ent wanted then
to include the "Death Points" into the statistics table and the Total, which can be a negative value. Nevertheless, it should not be
included in the actual calculation of the total team points.

[Tembest]

Now I had time to read the previous posts.

The prac scoring has been discussed in multiple topics and I have changed the value of a kill previously but Eridu then changed it back
for some reason. Anyhow... once again...

Gkua is absolutely correct.

A kill is worth 150 points - no punishment for the dying team. 1 flag is worth 10 points for each player on the team.
In east: 3 players = 1 flag = 30 pts
In south: same
In west: 2 players = 1 flag = 20 pts
In north: 4 players = 1 flag = 40 pts

Now, when it comes to the value of kill. The optimal range for each sector is between the worth of 2-2.5 flags.

In east: 3 players = 1 flag = 30 pts = kill should be 60-90
In south: same
In west: 2 players = 1 flag = 20 pts = kill should be 40-60
In north: 4 players = 1 flag = 40 pts = kill should be 80-120

It depends on which one we want to emphasise more - killing or flagging.

However, the worth of a kill should under no circumstances be under the worth of 2 flags in any sector for the team.
At this stage, committing a suicide after each DING becomes clearly beneficial as anyone can get 2 flags with a port.

Something around 2.3-2.4 is in my opinion the correct number.

[Fly Swatter]

Thanks Tembest, Took another look at the code, its scattered among several different files, would take several hours to piece it all together and figure out. But, yeah, as you said death score isn't used in the total points, its there for display in endgame stats, and used for player ratings.

Beer Hunter will start a thread in the staff section, and we will try to map all this out in time.

-Fly