Competitive team games and friendly communities - possible?

[Nielk1]

I very much agree with the last statement. However I also tend to disagree with the first statement. When I first started playing online it was in this game, and the online community at that time was, in my book, a very friendly and welcoming one (in general).
First time I noticed my esc-key no longer worked after patching to 1.2 it didnt take ½ a dozen people long to point me in the direction of Dutchboys site. Have a looksee at what has been made in the form of FE .. its mainly the last few years that there is little to be found in openminded mutually respectfull behaviour and trolling/bashing has become the norm.

This community was indeed very nice. I recall when BZ2Maps was first formed and everything was going good. BZ2Maps was to be a center for map development like ZST for 1.2, but after that starting points things started to go down hill. As people began the leave those that were left seemed to be either of two groups, failure and comfortable, or crazy. This was when the AVing began to become much more prevalent in 1.2 as well as the repeated attacks of anyone who played 1.3 and didn't say it sucked. And from there, it all went to hell.

[GSH]

Valve's made comments that jerks will be charged more in their competitive team game. If this takes off, it might help, at least in that game.

(Update): More thoughts here.

-- GSH

[Red Devil]

at least adjust their health accordingly

[GSH]

Some other thoughts.

-- GSH

[mrBazooka]

Games like now days are really rated m for mature. They need to start making new games that are like space and first time strateghy games .
Everygame i see on the market is rated m. Besides the sports games xD.



EDIT: competitive games are fine in my opioion like, halo reach, cod black ops, battlezone .

[Zero Angel]

That's a really good article. I know for strat games, new players could violate rule 4 (Bad players should always be better than nothing) for this reason:

• Any system which has limited resources which teammates can deny you use of, or use inappropriately (for example using a +100 hp health kit, when they are only missing 1hp)
• Any system where resources are shared out amongst teammates (smaller team size = you personally get more resources)

Its why 2v3, 3v4, etc usually work in favor of the smaller team if the smaller team has stronger players than the bigger team. In most team based sports, however (like hockey), having another player on the field (no matter how bad he is), is usually better than not having another player on the field. This can be false for some team games (like BZ2).

Weaker players are less troublesome for PvE games because those games do not require large risks to be undertaken by the players (e.g.: base hits to slow teching, helping teammates in a dangerous combat situation, getting 'ganked' while pool hitting while being unable to avoid death, etc) although teammates dying unnecessarily still does reduce the success chance for the team.

Rule 4 violation is also why BZ2 wouldnt work well if the teams were large (e.g: 8v8) unless some changes were made to unit cost/production and income mechanics were perhaps tweaked a bit.

[Nielk1]

Rule 4 violation is also why BZ2 wouldnt work well if the teams were large (e.g: 8v8) unless some changes were made to unit cost/production and income mechanics were perhaps tweaked a bit.

Please forward any ideas my way, even if it comes to core engine level mechanics stuff, I do have side projects that may or may not involve games that could use such information.

[Red Devil]

increased number of players (e.g. 32 vs. 32 BF3) tends to minimize the ramifications of stupidity, etc., unless ratio of noob:experienced is high and event horizon approaches.

[Zero Angel]

Rule 4 violation is also why BZ2 wouldnt work well if the teams were large (e.g: 8v8) unless some changes were made to unit cost/production and income mechanics were perhaps tweaked a bit.

Please forward any ideas my way, even if it comes to core engine level mechanics stuff, I do have side projects that may or may not involve games that could use such information.

Well it's simple in a way. Resources are essentially shared and limited. If Player A takes a resource, then it's not given to player B. Lets say as a commander I notice 2 teammates lose an empty scout. Well, that's 40 resource points that i'm going to have to recoup so I might get angry at my teammates if this continues to happen because it stalls my other production. But furthermore lets say that I need a teammate to be at X location and quickly respond to the situation. Well the noob 'steals' the ship from the better player (thus denying me a valuable asset) and then loses his ship right away, the objective fails because I couldnt get the better player in a ship, I lose resources from losing that objective, failing to deny my enemy one of his objectives and the 20 scrap I spent on the empty. So i've suffered a double-loss because the noob took the ship from the good player. However this is built into the mechanics of the game (shared but limited resources, time-based, linear production)

The only way that I think the negatives of that could be defeated was if the noob got free ships. Of course there's no real way to tell who the noobs are so you have to give everyone free ships just to be fair. In other words if everyone got a free ship after, say a 25 second waiting period after returning to base, (by, say, driving in from off-map or having it sent in via a dropship) then you don't really lose anything if the noob loses his ship. Of course this is difficult to work into BZ2 because of the way ship upgrading is handled. The most logical thing I suppose to do would be to present the player with a ship customization screen pre-spawn with options available that depend on what the commander has teched to.

[Red Spot]

Well it's simple in a way. Resources are essentially shared and limited. If Player A takes a resource, then it's not given to player B. Lets say as a commander I notice 2 teammates lose an empty scout. Well, that's 40 resource points that i'm going to have to recoup so I might get angry at my teammates if this continues to happen because it stalls my other production. But furthermore lets say that I need a teammate to be at X location and quickly respond to the situation. Well the noob 'steals' the ship from the better player (thus denying me a valuable asset) and then loses his ship right away, the objective fails because I couldnt get the better player in a ship, I lose resources from losing that objective, failing to deny my enemy one of his objectives and the 20 scrap I spent on the empty. So i've suffered a double-loss because the noob took the ship from the good player. However this is built into the mechanics of the game (shared but limited resources, time-based, linear production)

I understand where you come from, but I sometimes wonder if some people realise they are playing a game, and their live doesnt depend on it.
The outcome of above is usually that the noob doesnt get new ships, at least not nearly as fast as the experienced players gets.
That may be helpfull for that game, but it doesnt help anyone in the long run and might even take the fun out of the game for the noob.

[MrTwosheds]

The main issue with bz2 is the over reliance on the commander, I feel. It could possibly benefit from a more distributed command structure approach, thugs could become "the healer" by being able to produce their own pods somehow, scav management could be formally given to a thugs, rather than needing constant attention by the commander who is also trying to fight and build at the same time.

[Zero Angel]

I disagree with the scav managing part. Most thugs do a poor job of managing scavengers, by letting them wander into the enemy base for example. It's not always the fault of a thug either. A lot of thugs dedicate most of their attention to tactical matters (attacking pools, helping teammates, etc) and breaking formation to go set a pool could sometimes spell disaster for a team that would otherwise stick together.

Due to the often unreliable scav management by thugs, some coms manage the scavengers personally. This means they have a little bit less time to fight and may have to juggle around their free f-slots quite a bit (when I play a team game, I sometimes ask the com to pass me his base turrets so that he regains use of an f-slot that would otherwise go to static defenses.) I think that engine-wise the burden of managing unit slots could be reduced if there was a way to have say 2 'rows' of units and use a toggle key to switch between the rows of units that you are managing.

The hardest part of being a commander is having to deal with your team getting wiped out (either from battle or an unsuccessful base hit). Building 4 empties can stall your other unit and building production for over a minute (which tends to seem much much longer in 'bz2 time'), and you have to get used to disappointment or you will have a hard time having fun as a strat com because its a very demanding position for that reason.

[MrTwosheds]

Most thugs do a poor job of managing scavengers

Yes, indeed some of the time you would probably be better of just recycling it again Personally I hate attempting to manage everything, and having to tell people what to do with the stuff you have given them control of. What I am trying to say is that a bz2-like game would be better done by making team work a more important aspect of it. Bz2 does demand a hell of a lot more from a commander than it does thugs, which is why we all spend so much time in lobbies waiting for the commanders to be decided and why we get this Elite player problem where nobody wants to command a game they are almost certainly going to lose, A greater emphasis on team work would smooth out these issues a bit.
Given the opportunity...My play style would be one where I do pass out all the scavs and other units for thugs to control, as it is I am often unwilling to do this as some thugs just ignore the stuff you pass out and just want to dogfight, sometimes at great cost to the team.

[Zero Angel]

Be careful emphasing teamwork. Giving more opportunities for players to let their team down is a bad way to go about things, teamwork needs to clearly reward the individual for cooperating with team dynamics more than punish the team for the individual failing to cooperate.

[Red Spot]

Look at a game like S8-Prejudice, you can make your team win and even have the least amount of kills while still end up number 1 in score. For instance defending critical points, helping in additional 'quests', or simply supporting an other player and getting 'assists' may actually make you a better player than a lot of the die-hard rambo's, no matter how skilled they are at aiming.
There is no such thing in BZ2, and the only reward for a grunt is basicly to dominate the opposing grunt and beat him in a dogfight. For the rest all than can be gained is by what the comm dictates, and if he doesnt dictate, it means all is gained by what the comm actually does, or not.
If the majority of players could listen(unskilled players) or leave their ego out of the game(selfproclaimed 'vets') a lot more could be achieved by a comm that makes his team play as a team.

(As you can see here, eventhough we lost the game, unskilled me carried the game where a couple of admirals cant with just Rambo-skills. Piranja Chick is even one of the top ranking players in the leaderboards.
Here we got outranked by the other team, eventhough we beat them 2 to 1 in score, which shows how little impact individual score actually has.)