Okay, okay, we have done it again. No editorial since October 1st and the supposedly weekly rant didn’t happen either.

Well, at least the latter happened deliberately. As much as I love to make those small rants I realized that I would drown the site quickly with them, burying the more important content (excuse me for being such immodest) of the editorials. So right now we are considering a few changes on this site to adapt it to our overflowing creativity :-).

And who knows, maybe it will still happen this year …

Meanwhile I will return to the subject of personal scores once more (picking up the topic from one of my rants) ...

Sunday, 26 November 2000 1400Z
Scores ... a constructive model for a change ... -Teatime

After doing my rant on personal scores in TFC I was contacted by a reader (amazing to see people are actually reading this stuff :-)) who brought to my attention the scoring system used by Q3CTF (thanks a lot for doing so, Gav). And quite frankly I think it’s a very good system, which fits the more complex gameplay of CTF far better than the old-fashioned system TFC uses.

So the following is taken from the Q3A 1.25 readme:

New Medal Awards
  
Two new medals will be awarded to players during Capture the Flag games.
These medals recognize individual player actions that often go unheralded in the heat of play.

Assist
This medal is awarded whenever the player actively participates in a capture being made. Active participation includes carrying the flag part of the way, or close proximity defense (fragging attackers) of the flag carrier close to the time the capture is made.

Defense
This medal is awarded whenever the player either frags a foe who is physically near the flag base or when the player frags a foe anywhere else while he himself is near the flag base.

Individual Point Scores in Team Games

During the course of play in a Capture the Flag game, points will be awarded to individual players for actions that they or their team perform. This serves, to some degree, as a measure of a player's performance against other players. In the event of a tie game (game time runs out before one team reaches the map's capture limit), the game enters a sudden death elimination. First team to score a capture wins. 

 ACTION                          POINTS      EXPLANATION

Now that’s what I’d call a scoring system for a CTF game. It would be even more appropriate to a class based game like TFC, which has a higher complexity than pure CTF.

Of course the points would not fit into the recent system because Q3CTF uses much higher award points than TFC. But this would be a minor problem of scaling down those points to a more familiar level (like “Capture Bonus” = 10, “Team Bonus” = 3, “Flag Bonus” = 2 etc).

The “Medals” would be obsolete in TFC (I mainly quoted the medals for completeness, but also to show how much this scoring system strives to reward players for supporting the game goal) and the “Recovery Bonus” would not work in TFC either, unless in a map like flagrun, though I could imagine it being changed to points given when the flag returned after the set time. I could even imagine giving the defense the more points the further the flag has been moved from the flagroom.

That introduces us to another problem presented by parts of this score: The scoring system is partially based on areas and locations. Different areas are defined for the scoring system, like the team bases (see “Flag Defense Bonus”), as well as the proximity of players to each other or areas (see “Guardian Bonus” and the defense medal). Frankly I have no idea if maps can define such areas (though I remember Faelic’s “Tempest” using areas to award points) and if the game could handle actions like assists, etc. On the other hand I doubt it would be that difficult to add such things to the game.

But that would mean that even if you would apply a similar scoring system to TFC it would – partially at least – not work on older maps. Valve could update their own maps, as could other mapmakers. Yet there would be maps whose mapmakers – for various reasons – would not update them. Also there are a number of maps those themes would not work well with a scoring system like that (maps like “Avanti” or “Run”). Those maps could still use the old scoring system (I’d imagine adding a flag to maps which when set to 0 or not set would make the game using the old scoring system while when set to 1 it would use the new scoring system).

An interesting thing is that – according to the table above – the game doesn’t reward frags as such. I was told that frags would still be rewarded with 1 point per frag, but regarding the much higher rewards for other actions would be neglecting.

I don’t say the presented system would be perfect for TFC (for example, it still rewards offense to a higher degree than defense, and it require refining for working better on other themes like warpath or cz2), but this scoring system reflects much better the different roles in a game like TFC as well as it rewards working as a team. A scoring system like that would eventually reflect the efforts of weaker classes to help their team, it could motivate to help teammates and most important it would shift the emphasis from fragging to the game goal of capping the enemy flag (which is by far the predominate theme of most TFC maps).

I could also see that such a system would be helpful for clans as well. Stats based on such a scoring system would reflect more accurately the performance of players during practices or matches (well, at least way better than the pathetic current scoring).

But of course such a system could also be abused. I’m sure with a scoring system like that people would probably kill an enemy flag carrier just to get the points for that and then either ignore the flag or, worse, wait for another enemy to pick the flag up just to kill him as well. But such things would still be better than those people who are just playing DM ignoring flag carriers at all as long as there’s any easier prey.

Or the system would have to prevent that a player could just pick up the enemy flag, then drop it and pick up again a number of times to get a high score (which should not be too difficult).

In conclusion I would consider a system like this to be constructive, as it would support the game in many aspects, rather than the scoring we are still dealing with, and which - seeing a scoring system like that - can only be called destructive, as it does almost *nothing* to support the game, but rather promotes a deathmatchlike mentality.

Wednesday, 01 November 2000 1000Z
Turtling and backtracking revisited... -Teatime

It has been brought to my attention by Barker of the Top 10 Tournament League that TTT has set up a "Code of Conduct" which participating clans can adhere on a voluntary basis to signal their willingness to follow this Code of Conduct in clan matches. This Code of Conduct is laid out as followed (quoted from the website):

My clan agrees to make a "best faith effort" to not do any of the below in matches against clans who also agree to not do the below:

1.Excessive spam at enemy respawns (1 gas/nail/etc grenade is not excessive spam) 
2.Turtling (significantly increased defense after obtaining a lead: 5 defense out of 8 or 9 is not turtling). 
3.Excessive chasing of enemy offense (chasing, for instance, is when the red team's offense players chase incoming blue offense back to or into the red base while shooting the blue offense players in the back; defense fighting enemies is never chasing; furthermore, when a team's flag is in motion or moved to an exposed spot, expect chasing, spamming, and generally all hell to break lose). 
4.Constant/intentional blocking of elevators/teleportals to make them unusable when enemies try to use them (do be aware your opponents have as much right to use the elevators as you do; defending an elevator by putting a dispenser, etc., nearby is not blocking the elevator as long as it can go up/down properly). 

More details and how the CoC is handled can be found here.

I want to congratulate TTT for this effort to improve sportsmanship in clan matches and for trying to show that competetive gameplay is possible without an "anything goes"-mentality, and for the same reason my respect to all clans adhering to this Code of Conduct.