Possible Solutions for Capping problem.

[MEGADETHTHRETH]

The capping problem in Red Orchestra is not a severe problem but, it is annoying on some maps, I said I'd make a thread on this to see what people thought would be a good solution.
The main problem is you get people playing just for the points, which is very Call of Dutyish and battlefieldish. You see guys travelling to places and staying there until captured, then travelling and going back and forth just for numbers, and I think other people sees these points and they say to themselves "I have to start capping also to rack up mine too". I have 2 possible solutions to get people thinking;

1. Have a system where the player can only capture a point every 20/30/40 minutes or something.
2. Have a system where the player gets only 1 or 2 points for capping.
3. Have a system where a certain percentage of the team has to take over the one point at the same time.
   eg. If there are 20 players on each team, in order to cap a location, instead of just 1 guy going round in a jeep, you need 4 or 5 guys to capture a location.
   
   
4. Maybe the capturer gets points but has to spend them on things like sandbags, or ammo crates or at guns to be placed around the base that was captured. This would be a kind of strategy part of the capture.

So maybe you guys can offer some more suggestions or alternatives.

 

[Bobdog]

Number 3 is the way it was in the mod days. You'd have a min of 2 or 4 ppl to initiate a cap. 10 point for making a cap makes sense though, because you want the player to try and cap an objective, rather than to go off somewhere and just kill things.

 

[Zetsumei]

Number 3 is the way it was in the mod days. You'd have a min of 2 or 4 ppl to initiate a cap. 10 point for making a cap makes sense though, because you want the player to try and cap an objective, rather than to go off somewhere and just kill things.

Tbh the removal of that ability with the cap system was a near deathblow to me on public play. Like a kid on crack i used to play RO for like a mad 30 hours a week on public servers and after the 3.0 release I quickly went down to about 5 hours a week of public play and pretty much only focusing on clan matches.

It was that feeling that whatever team mobilizes the most team mates to work as a team that will win that made me love the game in the first place. Then at some point a single soldier slipping through could cap. Later replaced with locking out most capzones but one.

The old cap system was not perfect as at times there would be no teamwork and a capture would never start on any cap. And could bring things to a stalemate. But I've always felt that the benefits far outweighted the negatives.

The need for teammates to decide what capzone to attack was one of the things that made me love the game. And I would LOVE a server option that brings back some of the choices players and teams can make on attacking a map. To win players actually needed to decide together what cap zones to focus on.

You still need poitns for capturing an objective of course but you need it for defending or holding it as well. And points should represent how helpfull you are to the team. If a location next to the capzone is more helpfull than being in the actual cap itself you should be rewarded appropriately.

 

[sampsa]

There's a Battlefield 1942 modificaton called FinnWars out there. It has points which can be captured only by one, two or three players. Of course the point can be neutralized even by one player. Then again you can't really neautralize a point in RO. The system has worked fine so what about we copy it a little?

The system we have now gives the feeling of acctually fighting over the objective. So what about this progress bar is initiated only after the critical sum of cappers has been reached?

 

[=GG= Mr Moe]

I think #3 is interesting and can be incorporated into the system, but I also agree that the system as it stand encourages fighting over the objective. I don't really feel (most) players are scrambling to objectives just for the points. I'm sure that some do, but I don't really play that way.

So, the point system encourages players to fight over objectives. In the same way, defenders could be offered some compensation to defend an objective as opposed to rushing forward to attack, often alone when in all reality the situation doesn't call for it. Perhaps awarding a point or two every so many minutes spent at an active objective defending it, or perhaps extra points for every few kills you make while defending said objective may encourage defending players to not go off as lone rambos. (just throwing out examples to get my point across)

 

[GaGrin]

Of course, if you genuinely want people to stop playing for points the easiest method is to just get rid of the points.

Team wins, or team loses as a whole, rather than individuals keeping score.

 

[Zetsumei]

Of course, if you genuinely want people to stop playing for points the easiest method is to just get rid of the points.

Team wins, or team loses as a whole, rather than individuals keeping score.

In clanmatches nobody cares for points and everybody cares for winning, in a public game without a point system a lot of people would just end up playing team deathmatch.

 

[Fedorov]

and thats why there will be a hero system with permanent stats, now you should really care

 

[Floyd]

I don't know how many of you (if any) ever played Delta Force (the original) before the hacks took over. It had a gametype called Team King of the Hill. I really enjoyed that gametype. To quote from the manual:
"In this scenario, players win by occupying a certain area for a specific duration of time.... The size and number of hot zones will vary depending upon the map.......You need only one teammate in the zone for the timer to start. Although your time in the hot zone is cumulative, as soon as you have no more teammates in the hot zone, your teams timer will immediatly drop to zero."

It was basically a back and forth struggle to put and keep more men into an area than your opponent. iirc, some maps had moving zones. i.e. when a zone is captured, it closes and another opens up.

I wouldn't want to replace RO's objective style games with this, but as a optional gametype perhaps....

 

[Zetsumei]

and thats why there will be a hero system with permanent stats, now you should really care

I truly hope that it won't have a stat that gives you benefits, for how many matches you have won. Beside it primarily being out of a players hand what the 49 other players do. If you get benefits for winning players will flock to the easier side of the map (defending on kaukasus etc). And once they see their team is losing they will either leave the server or join the other team.

Any stat system should encourage players to help the losing side, and not the other way around.

You can only appraise a team as a whole when that team is an actual team that knows each other. When its a bunch of individual players the only sane thing is appraising the individual players for his additions and performances for his team.

 

[Floyd]

....
You can only appraise a team as a whole when that team is an actual team that knows each other. When its a bunch of individual players the only sane thing is appraising the individual players for his additions and performances for his team.

That is a little narrow minded and somewhat of a clan elitist attitude, imo. While it may perhaps be true the majority of the time, some of the most enjoyable games I've ever played have been when complete and total strangers came together as a team using the in-game VOIP and with communication and teamwork defeated what should have been a superior team. For me, its about using what the game gives you to the fullest and rewarding you for doing so.

 

[Zetsumei]

That is a little narrow minded and somewhat of a clan elitist attitude, imo. While it may perhaps be true the majority of the time, some of the most enjoyable games I've ever played have been when complete and total strangers came together as a team using the in-game VOIP and with communication and teamwork defeated what should have been a superior team. For me, its about using what the game gives you to the fullest and rewarding you for doing so.

Have you even read what i said, i want players to work together on a public game and it can happen. However as good as the idea is to reward an entire team for a performance it will lead to the opposite.

People will flock to the winning team from the losing team, people will try to primarily join the winning side on maps. It will remove the balance of a game. People go a far way to make their statistics better on a game. If its not even statistics but getting benefits like heroes status or special weaponry then things will get even worse out of hand.

Ideally you want to get people to try and do the opposite, people should try to join the weakest side to strengthen them. Join the hardest side on a map to make the game even. Your suggestion makes it advantageous for your own statistics to completely stomp the enemy into the ground, rather than trying to get a fair game going.

I want teamwork to be there on public and a fair game. But by putting in team based appraisal rather than individual appraisal is not the way to achieve it.

---

Believe me if anything I have experience in what bad things people try to do with a solution of good intents. Ideally you get a team to play as a team, and do not reward the individual but reward for the team effort as the team as whole. But if a team is divided then it will unbalance.

But the world and especially the gaming world is not that perfect, and something like that would create more issues and griefing than most people can imagine.

There is nothing clan elitists about that I want public gaming to be great, especially after i felt that a lot was lost since 3.0. In clan gaming if a clan performs bad a clan can decide to kick someone out to train someone or make plans to back people up. That is not possible in a public game.

I always play on the loosing side in RO with public games as do many others just to try and balance the game. If people get punished for doing that because they will inevidently loose those games and stats then I think its wrong. If anything rewarding an entire team for their performance will result in clans trying to overtake one side on servers and clan stack to the max to increase the chance of winning and improve their stats.

From the clanning side of things rewarding the entire team is a lot nicer as you'll get rivalry and competition amongst clans on public servers. That is something I would actually like. But it would be at the expense of the fun of regular public players and I do not think that should happen.

 

[Pvt.Skoko]

Zets is right. Maybe leave these reward systems up to the server admins for when they initiate a clan match mode?

 

[Zetsumei]

Zets is right. Maybe leave these reward systems up to the server admins for when they initiate a clan match mode?

Reward systems are good even more so for public games (in clan games personally I would rather do completely without), but they should strive to direct people towards teamwork, and getting balanced games. And not to the opposite.

 

[Fedorov]

what about the reward will only count for you if you've played in that same team the whole time?

for example, winning a round in x map, only counts if you've been in the team since the beginning. that way you prevent team switching for results

edit: there could also be a team balancer that instead of only taking player numbers into consideration, take average ping, and average stats of the players, to determine the balance and how many slots are opened for each team.

 

[Floyd]

@Zetsumi
Yes I read what you said. It was a sentence in your summation that led me to believe otherwise. "You can only appraise a team as a whole when that team is an actual team that knows each other." Perhaps an unintended ambiguity.

Though I'm a "clanner", I never have cared for the "serious" competitive side of gaming. I understand there are those that eat/sleep/breath clan or pro match competitions. More power to them, its just not my cup of tea. For some reason it irks me when I hear competition players speak about games as if that is the only way they should played, or how if it weren't for them games would die, blah blah. In reading your post, I was probably blinded by my own predjudices and pre-concieved notions.

You bring out some excellent points regarding clan stacking on public servers and reward systems in general with which I heartily concur. Personally, I'd prefer no rewards at all, but I recognize the reasoning behind them. If there is to be a reward system, I say something as totally benign as BC2's would be in order (I'm not speaking of the weapons upgrades, just the pins and medals). Individual stats for teamwork could then be included without the likelyhood of people bailing for the winning team. It would just be an acheivement for doing good with no offsetting "your team sucked" pin.

 

[Zetsumei]

@Zetsumi
Yes I read what you said. It was a sentence in your summation that led me to believe otherwise. "You can only appraise a team as a whole when that team is an actual team that knows each other." Perhaps an unintended ambiguity.

You can only appraise a team when its an actual team. Doesn't have to be a clan could be a group of friends as well. But to say something about the performance of a team you can only compare it to other teams, and for that a team must be pretty constant. When a team is nothing more than a group of individual persons on the same side, and there is no conscious feeling that they are a team. Then people will only get aggrieved when he gets punished for the doings of others. (People blame the rest of the team already for losing).

In RO an individual can pretty much not affect the outcome of a match. You're just 1 person out of a group of say 25 people on your side. that means your effect to the team success on average is 1/25th. And giving an individual credit for something he had 1/25th a part in is just a form of bad statistics.

If you give some individual credit for the teamwork of a match, it should be for what he has individually achieved (for the team). If you give a team credit it should be for what a team achieved. But on public you never play with the same team so you cannot give the team credit you can only accredit the individual.

 

[Floyd]

Lol....I see where you're going now.... We are comparing apples and oranges. In no way would I have assumed that by TEAM you meant a perpetual team in the sense of a team that is in a league. To give a TEAM credit it would have to remain a TEAM for as long as it chose to collect the type of stats I suppose you're referring to. And the stat server would have to keep up with each TEAM that people put together. What an unnecessary nightmare.

Is there even fps game that even does that? I can't imagine a game developer that would even want to put themselves in that kind of position.

Never in a million years would I have wasted my time even considering that train of thought. wow I hopped in the wrong thread.....lol. never mind

However, I still feel that inspite of the over-analytical insistence otherwise, credits/acheivments/rewards for teamwork (by teamwork oriented rewards) can still be used to encourage players (especially new ones) to work together as a team, even if they are somewhat skewed. And besides you can't really have any totally "accurate" stats without considering ping/cpu/monitor size, etc.etc.....so one has to take any stats anywhere with a grain of salt. Its a game.

Carry on with the disertations.

 

[Colt .45 killer]

1: not all caps locked
2: players shouldent be able to use cap bar to detect how many enemies are present
3: % of team needed to cap

 

[Zetsumei]

However, I still feel that inspite of the over-analytical insistence otherwise, credits/acheivments/rewards for teamwork (by teamwork oriented rewards) can still be used to encourage players (especially new ones) to work together as a team, even if they are somewhat skewed. And besides you can't really have any totally "accurate" stats without considering ping/cpu/monitor size, etc.etc.....so one has to take any stats anywhere with a grain of salt. Its a game.

I agree that there should be achievements and all that shizzle and that it should used as a tool to encourage teamwork (only for public servers though). But people should be rewarded for the teamwork they do not for the teamwork of others. That is why the pure end win condition isn't a good indicator on whether a person used good teamwork or not. It would indicate who can predict the best what team will win.

The best team player would ideally get one of the lowest win ratios if you judge purely on match outcomes. As the best teamplayer would help the team in the biggest need for help. Which is pretty much always the losing side.

Getting teams that stay constant is not possible as I said, but you can only rate a team if it is a constant team. Or at the least a team that knows each other and knows he can trust the next man to not reduce the rating of himself. Otherwise you will get fighting among players, as they are getting judged for something they pretty much cannot influence themselves.

Stats, perks bonuses etc. Will become an obsession for a lot of people, that obsession can be used to steer people towards doing some good stuff (like teamwork). However ranking someone for something he had virtually no part in is bad, all people that play normally should ideally have a 50/50 win/loss ratio. While players that on purpose try to join the winning team will get all the goodies that is simply screwed up.