Encouraging teamplay

(Kendle) #21

It’s not about XP or your K/D showing on the scoreboard, it’s much more fundamental than that …

  1. Spawn waves need to be further apart to ensure that when you spawn a sizeable chunk of your team spawn with you. In DB spawn times are too short.

  2. Routes need to be designed to encourage players to travel them together, in DB there are too many narrow routes.

  3. Classes need to be limited in what they can do so everyone inherently knows who’s doing what. In DB you wouldn’t know who to travel with even if you spawned with them and the route to objective was clearer, because everyone can do everything, which means no-one’s responsible for anything.

These are the fundamentals. DB doesn’t adhere to them. That in a nutshell is the heart of the problem.

(tokamak) #22

Granted but this was in the context of rewards.

(Glottis-3D) #23

what engineer thinks.
‘why would o go to the obj and DIE, keeping in mind my low HP and defensive abilities, and also the fact, that everybody can do the OBJ - even the most strongest classes! i better go and place my turret somewhere and have 5-7 more frags with it, while others do the obj!! thats how i’ll help my team!’

the thing is - i cannot blame engineers for this kind of mentality. the game is designed for this to happen all the time.

#giefBackClassObj

(tokamak) #24

That’s exactly how I don’t think when I cricket bat my way to the objective. The 3/41 KD ratio does look a bit awkward at the end.

And it’s frustrating because lemming rushing rarely is the best way to go. However, when nobody is taking risks that really is the only way to stand a chance.

(INF3RN0) #25

For me a high KDR is just a natural consequence of a wide skill gap, though unlike your typical Freze KD farmers I have a high KPM/DPM and focus on clearing main paths/obj areas. The only case where you can truly be undeservedly rewarded for kills is on defense, for obvious reasons. What is important is to have an obj mindset though, even if the focus is on clearing the obj rather than physically doing it every time. I would do it more often if it wasn’t such a disabling action, which is why you give the task to the least capable player; though I do find myself doing the obj way too often. But the point being, doing the obj is not a skill nor is it the most impacting action performed in the game. The most rewarded players should always be the well rounded ones that make it actually possible for someone to come in at the end and press the F key.

(Glottis-3D) #26

Tokamak, Inferno and others, including myself - will be exeptions out of hundreds and hundreds of others. imo

i already feel myself like an exeption, unless some oldschool players ore on server.
‘Oh my god guys, where da F@CK are you going??? and what the Hell are you doing???’ - this i think almost evey match.

(tokamak) #27

Racing for xp/min though. That’s huge because people will start to try and farm xp as fast and as efficiently as possible. And even if they find loopholes then that’s just a matter of fixing before you got full objective-teamwork machines going at it.

(Sun_Sheng) #28

Agreed to some extent although I disagree that doing the objective isn’t a skill. I remember one of the biggest lessons I learned from back in the day … I used to love playing engy in ET, specifically riflenade, and I took great pleasure in honing my talent so that I could pretty much put one anywhere in an instant. It was great fun. Then we started playing clan matches. We got our arses handed to us many times in the beginning until we started learning, and until I personally learned that as much as I enjoyed something, it didn’t make me good. I demoted myself to 3rd choice engineer and things went a lot better because doing the objective, doing it well, doing it consistently, picking the moments, holding back when needed, rushing when needed, so many things that required a skill set that I didn’t have. Watching some of the guys do their job, I have nothing but admiration for a skilled engy or covert

(Glottis-3D) #29

only if they will give you XP for dying. then yes. otherwise i dont see why would casual player would want to be killed hundreds of times for a win. i dont buy it, i dont believe it.

(tokamak) #30

Currently the objectives themselves award enough xp for a lemming rusher to rival a k/d padder. Neither of which are the optimal way to play (at least not at all times) but that they at least can get close to each other in score gives hope. It would mean that a player working with his team, staying alive when required and risking his life where appropriate should be able to obtain a much higher xp/min.

(Glottis-3D) #31

in my experience, lemming-rushes do not work in DB if the opponent team is not awfull.
but more importantly - this kind of play doesnt give any pleasure. in ETQW it was fun. a lot of fun tbh. (building lasers, tap-charging bombs etc)

(tokamak) #32

It’s more important to compare it to what the friendly team is doing. Both playstyles suck and neither one should be encouraged. However, when your entire team is leaning towards lemming in OR KDpadding (way more common) then it pays to do the opposite.

(Kendle) #33

I hate that XP is even being discussed in this thread (no offence to warbie as it’s not my thread to take offence at).

Question: If there were no such thing as XP, what would need to be done to encourage team-play in DB?

Whatever the answer to that question is, is what I want to see happening?

And guess what, the only previous game in the team based objective genre that didn’t have XP, is RTCW. So look at what made team-play work in RTCW (clue: the 3 things mentioned in this thread and elsewhere).

(tokamak) #34

I like competition and for me competition means more than seeing a ‘win’ or a ‘loss’ at the end of a match. For me, competition also means being the best of my team. I’m not just fighting to win from my opponents, I’m also fighting to win from all my team-mates.

Not every player contributes equally to a win or a loss. In order to compete on that contribution it needs to be quantified. And for that xp is the most accurate unit we have. This isn’t just an ego-thing. Having team-mates compete to be the biggest contributor towards the greater collective also turns both teams into efficient well-oiled machines that won’t give each other an inch on the battlefield.

We’re discussing XP here because we’re comparing it to K/D. K/D is currently a big part of the game, it’s the first score unit displayed in the score tab. And it’s perverse. That’s why we’re discussing xp.

(warbie) #35

No offence taken at all - I’d started writing a similar post and stopped half way as I’m probably as tired of writing negative post and others are of reading them :confused:

I agree. Teamplay was better in RTCW than in ET and subsequent titles and it had no XP at all. Some people like XP in games, which is fine, but it will never encourage teamplay in a meaningful way on its own. If anything it tends to steer how people play and sometimes in a negative way - with medics whack a mole healing when they should be hiding and staying alive, or engies going after useless secondary objectives for the XP rather than serving the team. ET was full of that. The same is true of achievements in game - which are perhaps even worse. Get 20 revives in one match for an XP boost. Get 10 sniper headshots for a new gun etc.

I agree with what you’re saying about k/d btw, tokamak.

(tokamak) #36

There´s a certain taxonomy to the xp distribution. There’s really crude things, like completing an objective, killing someone or reviving that person that are easily to quantify on their own. And yes, once they start being repeated or put in the wrong context then you get diminishing returns or perverse behaviour.

I don’t believe however, that there’s a single major loophole that can’t be accounted for through better rewarding. There’s decays, bonuses, area sensitivity and player sensitivity that can help improving the system and ruling out any gaps that make players behave to something less than they should.

If there are any flaws still left after rigorous indexing then they’re going to be minor. Minor enough for players to ignore them and do what’s right.

Another major way to make xp more representative is to make the victory reward a modifier bonus rather than a flat one. This means that players will HAVE to win the game in order to make their padded xp worth the effort.

Combine these two and there won’t be a way to distinguish a padding player from one that genuinely tries to win. And that should be the goal of a reward system.

(Glottis-3D) #37

XP doesnt have anything to do with teamplay until the game itself starts to favour the teamplay. and that is what we need to fix in DB.

[ul]
[li]i have hp regen.[/li][li]i have ammo boxes around the map[/li][li]i can do all objects[/li][li]my abilities’ cooldowns do not depend on anything from my team[/li][li]no friendly fire, so i dont even have to care about avoiding shooting my teammates[/li][/ul]
this list literaly says: PLAY ON YOUR OWN.

there is no teammate interaction in the game.

no reparing teammate’s stuff.
no multidefuse.
no double-merc objects.

(ThiagoScala) #38

Agree 100% with Glottis-3D. right now this game is not a teamplay game.

(warbie) #39

[QUOTE=Glottis-3D;512568]XP doesnt have anything to do with teamplay until the game itself starts to favour the teamplay. and that is what we need to fix in DB.

[ul]
[li]i have hp regen.[/li][li]i have ammo boxes around the map[/li][li]i can do all objects[/li][li]my abilities’ cooldowns do not depend on anything from my team[/li][li]no friendly fire, so i dont even have to care about avoiding shooting my teammates[/li][/ul]
this list literaly says: PLAY ON YOUR OWN.

there is no teammate interaction in the game.

no reparing teammate’s stuff.
no multidefuse.
no double-merc objects.[/QUOTE]

Agreed. Couple that with map layouts and spawn times that result in you not being near your team that often. So even if the above wasn’t the case and we had synergistic abilities and the need for them coming out our arse, it wouldn’t be happening.

(BomBaKlaK) #40

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Glottis-3D again.