While I think it would be cool as hell to have 'defender points', it would be kinda hard to implement. What do you do about the machine gunner who is set up perpendicular to the enemy's angle of advance? If he's continually mowing down enemy troops before they get to the objective, isn't that defending just as well as the SMGer who's hanging out right under the fountain/large rock/train car/whatever? Or the person who's 75m behind the objective, but consistantly picking off anyone who sticks their head up just a little too high. They're defending too. Or the arty that comes down on a side avenue, forcing to enemy to come in from one angle. That's defending for sure on the part of the commander, but he might not even get kills for it, how do you go about rewarding defense points?
Good idea, but the implementation would be too tricky to make it worth the time involved.
Points for blowing objectives though could probably be done easier, and it's much more uniform across the board (either you blew it up, or you didn't) for rewarding points.
While reading this thread I came up with this idea:
Note: As a prerequisite to even considering this idea you have to accept the fact that the average player cares what his score is. I know there are people like you, Velcro Warrior, who as you said "could care less if I had -20 or 200 points", but you are not the majority.
If you agree that points are an important aspect of the game, you can skip all the rest of the yellow text. (it got a little bit longer than I originally thought it would be). If not, here's why having a score is important AND useful:
A score in a game is there specifically to provide a numerical measure of how well a player is performing. Take a game like counterstrike for example. The guy on your team on the top of the scoreboard is performing the task the game wants him to do (completing setting/defusing the bomb and/or killing the other team while minimizing dying, for example) better than any other player on your team.
More often than not, this player is not doing it for the glory of his team, rather he is doing it for personal satisfaction; that's the reason we play videogames in the first place.
As we know, RO is a team-oriented game and to some, helping the team win is more important than getting a high score. But I submit to you that if in fact, if someone is helping their team out, they should have a high score, whether or not is serves as their motivation. If you are doing a good job capturing objectives and killing the enemy, you should, as a matter of course, have gathered many points while playing.
For this reason, people tend to care what their score is; it isn't necessarily because they want proof that they have "1337 skills", but more that they like being able to look at a score or K/D ratio in relation to other players on their team or server in order to evaluate how much they are helping their team. And think about it: Even if a player could care less about his teammates but has an amazing level of skill and almost carries an entire team by himself, is he not contributing to his team's winning?
Even if the player is solely out there to get a high ranking on the scoreboard, a good scoring system can use this to its advantage by being structured in a way that a player MUST cooperate with his team on some level in order to gain points. Think: Does it really matter if the player 5 feet on your right helping to defend an objective is thinking "I'm here to help my fellow players hold this position by killing the approaching enemy" versus "I'm here because I know the enemy will come this way and I can get some kills"? No. Either way he's still standing there throwing lead at the enemy. Regardless of his mindset, he's still helping the team out.
In designing a scoring system for a game, the best way to implement it is in such a way that a player is awarded points for what the developer "wants" the player to do. Basically, if you want your players to do something, you throw them points for doing it.
For (a somewhat extreme) example: Imagine the devs go completely insane and release a patch tomorrow that awards points for teamkills. Now you (meaning people like Velcro Warrior who care not for their scores) would still play to the "goal" of the game, which is capturing/defending objectives from the enemy. However, many "regular" players who care about their scores would probably just tk for points since it's an easy way to get them.
Conversely, by giving players points for something you want them to do (capturing objectives, killing the enemy, resupply MG'ers, ect.) you give them a reason to do that action.
What I'm really saying here is that having a score in a game has been an element since pong. And unless something MAJOR occurs, it's here to stay. And since we're going to have scores anyway, we might as well award points in a way that encourages players to work towards winning a map in a realistic manner. And for people like you Velcro Warrior, no offense, but you shouldn't really be in this argument because as you said, you don't care what your score is, so any changes to the scoring system are irrelevant to you. I'm not saying you're not allowed to comment on my or other people's ideas as well as posting your own, I just mean that saying something like "points don't matter" isn't going to change anything.
People will ALWAYS care about their score; rather than looking down upon them for this we should use it sculpt their play-styles.
And now, for my idea:
I propose that there be a kill-score multiplier be applied to everyone who is within a certain area around a capture zone that increases the longer the point is defended uninterrupted.
Here is a simple example map:
The Germans are defending against the Russian advance; as the Russians capture objectives the latter objectives become available for capture; Germans are unable to recapture. (Obj. 1 captured--> 2 & 3 become available)
Now here is an illustration of the objective's capture zone and defense multiplier zone:
The capture zone is in blue; anyone (German or Russian) inside the blue square is actively affecting the capture meter of the objective. The defense multiplier zone is in the green and includes the blue box as well. Any Germans in this zone fall under the influence of the defense multiplier but those who are in the green rather than the blue do
NOT affect the capture meter of the objective. My reason for making the defense multiplier zone larger than the capture zone is that there are many positions on a map that one can take that are not necessarily in the capture zone, but still can contribute to its defense; for example, a sniper in a nearby tall building would not be in the capture zone, but would still be contributing to its defense. Of course, this zone can be any shape the mapper desires to make it, and could even be separated into "islands" for instances where a machine-gunner or sniper would be likely to set up far away from the capture zone but the ground in between is lacking in cover.
Notice: Only the first objective has a defense multiplier zone as it is currently the only objective that is captureable. Once it is captured, the defense multiplier zone around and including it will disappear and new zones will appear around those newly capturable objective(s)
"Well," you must be thinking, "all these pretty graphics are well and good, but you have yet to explain how this whole multiplier thing will work."
Well, today is your lucky day as I was just about to do just that.
Here goes:
First, you need to take into account that the multiplier will affect scores from
KILLS and
KILLS ONLY. Re-supplying Mg'ers does not count, using satchels (for destroying objects only) does not count and artillery kills may.
In all normal areas (brown areas of the map) as well as outside of active defense multiplier zone(s) as well as in inactive zones scoring for kills operates as it does now. Killing a regular enemy grunt gets you 1 point, an officer, more. Outside of active defense multiplier zones, this will ALWAYS be the case.
Inside an active zone, however, points awarded for killing enemies will have a "bonus multiplier" applied to them, starting at 1 x score. As the defenders successfully hold a position longer and longer, the multiplier will slowly increase. Let's start a hypothetical game.
So, the map loads, team Germany spawns behind objective 1 and has to run there to take up defensive positions. They arrive and barely settle in, and the Russians are attacking. Objective 1 is meant to be that first, somewhat easy victory for the Russians to afford them a foothold; the map is so designed that most of the time, the Russians will have a fairly easy time capturing it quickly. So, the shooting begins. For the first 2 minutes the multiplier is set at 1 x score, and the defending Germans receive points normally. Now for this map, 2 minutes is a reasonable amount of time for the the Russians to overwhelm and push back the Germans. But in this particular instance, the Germans are more organized than usual, and manage to hold the Russians back. Once the timer rolls over the 2 minute mark, the Germans are rewarded for their perseverance by having the defense multiplier go up to 1.5 x score. This means that after 2 minutes of defending has passed, all Germans within the defense multiplier zone will receive 1.5 times the normal amount of points they would get for a kill for every kill they make after the 2 minute mark. If they continue to hold the position, the multiplier will continue to increase. For example, if they were to succeed in holding it an additional 3 minutes, thus bringing the total time of defense up to 5 minutes, the multiplier would move up to 2 x score and they would receive double the amount of points for kills made after the 5 minute mark.
As soon as the Russians capture the objective, the multiplier for the Germans on that objective disappears and they revert to getting normal amounts of points for kills made in that area. Conversely, if the Germans could manage to shut out the Russians for an excessive amount of time, such as for the ENTIRE span of the round, they could eventually reach a very high multiplier value such as 5 or 10 x score for each kill.
However, there should be a maximum multiplier value for most of the objectives, with the maximum getting lower and lower as you go to later and later objectives. For example, it takes a great amount of skill and teamwork to hold the attacking team back from its first objective which it is meant to easily capture, whereas keeping them out of the last, well defended and entrenched objective is a much simpler task. Therefore you would see a maximum limit of something like 5 or 10 x score for an objective that would be almost impossible to defend the entire round whereas an intermediate objectives may be capped at a number such as 1.5 or 2 x score and final objectives get little or no multiplier at all, being capped at perhaps 1.2 x score
In my opinion, this system, if it is even possible for it to be implemented would reward defending players better and better as they defend more and more proficiently. A defending team that manages to shut out or to have a standoff with the attacking team on the early objectives will be rewarded with very high scores, whereas a team that just barely manages to hold on to the final objective, while still winning, will have less massive scores.
Well, that sure took forever to write; I hope you guys understood it.
So what do you think? Questions, comments, criticisms?