"Don't finish pls"

(amazinglarry) #21

The problem with limiting an area to one team instead of the other (like making it impossible for the camping team to be in the spawn) is that they will simply wait outside the area and keep them pinned in regardless. Spawn camping, by my estimation, isn’t so much that players are allowed in spawn, it’s just that the teams are unbalanced.

I’ve never really thought of a good solution to counter unbalanced teams. I hate shuffles because they’re unreliable (just because someone has more xp/points doesn’t mean they’re necessarily better at shooting people in the face). Plus, shuffles break up players who want to play together, and I know for me that kills the experience sometimes. Since I’m old now, I have the most fun when I’m playing with friends.

I wish I could offer some solutions, but I just wanted to give my thoughts. To reiterate, I think it’s less to do with map design and more to do with team balance.

(H0RSE) #22

This is why you set the zones up in such a way, that the “safe zone” is far enough away from the spawn, that waiting outside of it isn’t even “profitable.”

I’ve never really thought of a good solution to counter unbalanced teams. I hate shuffles because they’re unreliable (just because someone has more xp/points doesn’t mean they’re necessarily better at shooting people in the face). Plus, shuffles break up players who want to play together, and I know for me that kills the experience sometimes. Since I’m old now, I have the most fun when I’m playing with friends.

I wish I could offer some solutions, but I just wanted to give my thoughts. To reiterate, I think it’s less to do with map design and more to do with team balance.

I guess a game would need a more in-depth matchmaking system. A system that not only measures kills, deaths, assists, and XP, but one that also reads a players decision making. It recognized when it escorts players or makes tactical decisions, like sacrificing himself for the greater good. It would also need to understand the playstyle of players, so it wouldn’t just match up based on K/D, and put all the one-man-army player killers on the same team.

(SockDog) #23

Even with a small set of testers teams are being stacked and it’s impacting the quality of the game. I can’t propose to have all the answers to this but I think this is a critical player satisfaction point SD must solve. In my layman developer pants I’ll say it would also be something that needs addressing now while there is clear disparity between players.

In the very sort term it would be good if we had a shuffle or at least a means to swap players on the fly like in CS:GO.

Personally I’m still calling for camped and stalled teams to either get a temporary boost (weapon, health, armour) or the camping team to be handicapped in some manner until the stalemate is broken. Unfair? Well no pub game should be so one sided that one team can be totally dominated, so it’s already unfair to begin with.

Did I imagine talk of matchmaking plucking players from games if they performed too well?

To be clear though, you’ll be swapping to other classes as needed? You’re just finding your preferred class not the only one you’ll play?

Pretty much this.

(.FROST.) #24

[QUOTE=SockDog;414141]
To be clear though, you’ll be swapping to other classes as needed? You’re just finding your preferred class not the only one you’ll play?.[/QUOTE]

Thing is, I feel kinda naked with a weapon loadout I can’t work with. Believe it or not, when Brink came out, I ALLWAYS switched to the obj class if needed, even though I might not have built up that class as well as others, but at least I could keep my weapon loadout. Have to confess though, that a couple hundred hours into the game I’ve started to play almost exclusively as soldier. But since my preferred class in DB is the 2nd engineer, there shouldn’t be much of a problem with it; he’s kinda useful most of the time. It’s not like I went for the snipah(I’m very, very bad at sniping btw. so no fear about that).

(SockDog) #25

I personally try and get comfortable with each weapon loadout so that I’m not uncomfortable with any role. I just feel I’m limiting my effectiveness as part of the team if I can only fit one role or use one weapon. Anyway, just interested.

(Locki) #26

We solved this in past games with a vote to shuffle by XP (the campers usually have higher XP and get redistributed across teams).

(SockDog) #27

That sort of works but isn’t great either, I wouldn’t say it solved the problem, lets put it that way. :slight_smile:

Anti or Smooth also mentioned that this then brings up the subject of splitting friends onto opposite teams, which either leads to asshattery or just lots of quits.

Not being critical to be a dick but I think it’s an important issue that could really benefit from some out of box thinking rather than being stuffed back in its box.

Also those votes need to pass. :confused:

(rookie1) #28

If there is no other ways ^^ or open the enraged dogs cage after 4 spawn kills to kill the Campers :stuck_out_tongue:
They wont stay long there after :-))

(zenstar) #29

Have an area around the spawn zone that nullifies enemy supplies so non of their bars recharge.
They’ll soon run out of ammo and health and grenades unless they fall back.

(Anti) #30

There are a whole bunch of things on the list of ‘stuff to try’ to solve this:

[ul]
[li]Better routes out of spawn
[/li][li]Revealing campers in spawn points on the HUD or mini-map
[/li][li]Better spawning system that helps spawning players avoid campers
[/li][li]Team shuffles
[/li][li]Matching by a skill rating
[/li][li]Other stuff I’ve not even thought of yet… :slight_smile:
[/li][li]
[/li][/ul]

It’s just a case of us trying some or all of these until we’re happy. Our current preference is to take the least intrusive routes to fixing this for the player, which probably means smarter spawns and better choice of routes.

(DarkangelUK) #31

If they’re within a specific radius of the spawn point, have their XP start counting down, that’ll make them move :smiley:

(rookie1) #32

[QUOTE=Anti;414300]There are a whole bunch of things on the list of ‘stuff to try’ to solve this:

[ul]
…
[li]Other stuff I’ve not even thought of yet… :slight_smile:
[/li][/ul]
[/QUOTE]

…Like… open the enraged dogs cage after 4 spawn kills to kill the Camper :penguin::slight_smile:

(Virus047) #33

Whats funny is this might be a actual useful setting if it was server side for some ET/RTCW mods like Shrub/Bani. I can’t see it being used in competition or organized competitive player servers but might be useful to have handy.

(kamikazee) #34

[QUOTE=Anti;414300]There are a whole bunch of things on the list of ‘stuff to try’ to solve this:
…

[ul]
[li]Other stuff I’ve not even thought of yet… :)[/li]…
[/ul][/QUOTE]A few potentially crazy ones:

[ul]
[li]Faster spawns the closer you get killed to the spawn point (only works if the spawn point is far enough from objective, i.e. must be disabled on Camden)[/li][li]Longer spawn invulnerability when killed too close to spawn point - allows you to walk up to enemy and melee at least one of them (as invulnerability goes away at first attack of course).[/li][/ul]

(iwound) #35

or
find where they live and cut their ****s off
permanetly brand them on in-game models fore head as *****
tractor beam holds them for 5 mins while they think about what they did.
no access for enemy <-- easy one higher ground oldie but goldie
more exit routes
guns, lasers and other painful stuff or more specifically
a bleeping dart is shot at and attaches itself to them with bleeping timer. if they can make it out of zone it disarms if not bang-a-boom

now i dont want to name names cough violator cough but i just did…

good thing is the campers are testing this part of the game.

(rookie1) #36

[QUOTE=iwound;415265]or
find where they live and cut their ****s off
permanetly brand them on in-game models fore head as *****
tractor beam holds them for 5 mins while they think about what they did.
no access for enemy <-- easy one higher ground oldie but goldie
more exit routes
guns, lasers and other painful stuff or more specifically
a bleeping dart is shot at and attaches itself to them with bleeping timer. if they can make it out of zone it disarms if not bang-a-boom

now i dont want to name names cough violator cough but i just did…

good thing is the campers are testing this part of the game.[/QUOTE]
HaHa! and or…
If they come to near of the spawn place …their pants go down :smiley: that would be so funny lol

(ailmanki) #37

There are 2 problems in my opinion. Spawnkilling and spawncamping/unbalanced teams.
Spawnkilling first. The current solution is to give a spawnprotection. Which often is disabled once a player starts shooting - don’t know how it is in DB right now. Ideal would be, a zone of spawnprotection which is the spawnarea. Once you leave that zone you get that timed spawnprotection (even if you walk back into spawn, protection is gone.)

Spawncamping or unbalanced teams,
I already made two topics about this, it is very important to measure the player skill. The way it has been done till now, is bad .period.
They way its done in Enemy-Territory is wrong. It does not account for sneaky skills, nor does it account reviving an engineer repairing something, instead of reviving the spawncamping mate. I have only played QW a short time (8 games), but from what I experienced it was also easily unbalanced.
Lastly if you guys go and make an elaborated skill system, be sure to separate skill from earning stuff. Maybe from what I saw in DB, skill would be XP, and earning stuff would be coins. But makes no sense either … cause skill should be something which can be normalized between 1 and 0. While the earning stuff … has no limits.
Once its known how good a player is, its also possible to award proper reward for killing another player, at that point spawncamping will be useless - cause it will be better to join the weaker team - to gain more rewards. It should be more rewarding to kill a stronger enemy in a overall stronger team. Well this needs a lot of thinking I guess, maybe some ELO system is the solution.
Imagine your skill is displayed in the scoreboard. Some image at your name showing how skilled you are. Now one team is full of guys of very skilled people. Even a new player will know whats going on, its not like maybe they are better maybe not, maybe to many had been AFK or maybe just doing crap.

On Bunker servers we got a script which measures the kills per minute, KPM. and that works better then XP, but it does not reflect the engineers at all. Being hardcore engineer means to die a very lot mostly. That way its possible that all of them are on same team. Which results in a very fast ended map.

  • Consider I don’t play professional or in a clan. I play basically on public only -
(tokamak) #38

I’m saying again: Let the total xp difference between the teams become a percental bonus-compensation for the team on the lower end. That way high skilled players will be scrambling to get on the losing end.

(iwound) #39

first bit i didnt understand, second bit i didnt like. seems an over-complication of a problem that has an easy solution.
im not sure of this link with spawn camping killing. iv never found high xp results in a person deciding to spoil a game if possible.
its down to design. spawn protection/accessability and routes its a,b,c. we’re not re-inventing the wheel here.

(tokamak) #40

Currently xp doesn’t matter but if this game ever wants to have a viable F2P model then xp is going to be playing a much larger part.

If there’s then a dynamic incentive to be a good sport relative to how unfair the teams are balanced then no forced shuffles or whatever would be required.