How to prevent (dretch) feeding?

[grmg.pl]

[1]Technical: How to compute the bonus? Just a kill/death ratio isn't enough. If Gunther kills a rant and dies as a rifle, it's certainly different then if I die as a bluci and kill a dretch .

[2]Conceptual: I don't like #3, since it actually punishes good players for being good, and rewards bad players for being bad. While it balances the game to some extent, it motivates people to be and remain bad players. This is my strongest reason against #3.

Well, since I don't love formatting as much as nalf does:

1. You compute the bounty by comparing credits spent to credits earned (or to be exact - evos to credits, some kind of rough exchange value can be calculated from test game).

2. First - make the armory/evo cost substantially higher (doesn'tmatter how much at this point, but for example +500 to lucisuit).

Second - divide the bounty into 3 (for example): low, medium and high.

Third - establish a rule: if you bounty is equal higher than your opponents' you get lower reward than standard, he gets higher.

Now. The best player in the world aka The Nab is running his dretch all the time against Filler.gm (naked rifle).
Unsurprisingly after 10 deaths, The Nab has 0 evos, for he didn't kill Filler. He spent 1500 ("150 credits for dretch" x10, example) credits and gained 0, so his bounty is rather low. Filler on the other hand has spent 200 credits (naked rifle - the amount of "evos alien gets for naked rifle" but presented in credits). Filler didn't die at all and earned 1500 cerdits, so his bounty is high.

Filler now buys lucisuit for 1500 credits, he's untouchable to The Nab (still dretch) but on the other hand for killing The Nab will get only 25 credits, so he aims his luci at the goon for the goon is rewarded with more credits.

What we have now:
1. You have to kill the bilion dretches swarming your lucisuit - that doesn't give you another lucisuit
2. You get your bounty lowered for killing weaker players.
3. To earn another lucisuit you have to kill a high bounty players.
4. You can stay naked rifle, but then again the low bounty drech will kill you fast, and get a goon.


But then again this might be totaly wrong

[Rotacak]

But what if everyone in team will have low bounty - you will never make any cred/evo Or only very hard.

[grmg.pl]

But what if everyone in team will have low bounty - you will never make any cred/evo Or only very hard.

If one entire team has low bounty that means the other team (or some part of it) has high bounty and that means:

- he has the credits to buy better weapons/evolve
- he is worth attacking because he gives high reward

So now we have a situation where high bounty better equipped team can afford attacking the enemy base defended by low bounty dretches or rifles AND the low bounty team is rewarded by going after harder targets.

This doesn't promote camping from the money-perspective as (1.2 gpp) credits awarded are proportional to damage dealt (no 5 evos for lucisuit that got his health eaten by acid tubes).

[Forty-Two]

I must second what gunther was saying about #3. I think that that balances the game considerably, and solves the underlying problem with feeding. I often feed on some maps until I get to 3 evos, because I am bad at dretch on those maps. Once I get to 3, I can goon, which I generally do much better than with dretching, on those maps. If there were this balance in place, then I might be able to get to 3 evos faster, and thus balance the game by removing a feeding dretch. This would be cool to implement on the n7 server, without other mods.

[nalf]

So far, nobody addressed the issue I asked about, which was: Won't diminishing the negative effects of feeding actually motivate people to play worse? If people know that feeding dretches/rifles does little harm, they won't be motivated to play better, to improve their playing style. If I should implement #3, I'd like to get this resolved somehow, or at least, to get various opinions on that from more people. Maybe, it's not an important issue after all, IDK, but I'd like it to be discussed a bit.

So far, I at least implemented a counter that counts kills and deaths for each player. (Credits/evos are divided by the value of a dretch/naked rifle.) When a player dies, he gets a large message showing him his last life's kill/death ratio. This should help (newbies) players to realize what helps the team and what doesn't.

Other than that, I discussed it with CU|ams, and perhaps the root issue of feeding (and other bad playing habits) is that people really rarely team up in Trem. Almost everybody plays solo, very very little cooperation. So maybe a solution would be to improve team-play, motivate (or even force ) people to team up and cooperate. I have some ideas about, I'll perhaps start a new thread for that.

______
And yes, I like nice formatting. It's nice to read, isn't it?

[Rotacak]

grmg.pl: high bounty players can die alone or disconnect. Then there will be everyone with low bounty...

[grmg.pl]

grmg.pl: high bounty players can die alone or disconnect. Then there will be everyone with low bounty...

Bounty can set by credits spent/credits earned not by deaths. Make the bounty relative to for example credits spent/earned in both teamsduring the entire match.


Ams (high bounty) dies, -1500 credits (standard 1000 for lucisuit+500 from upping the prices), but that 1500 credits plus, for example, 500 (30%) reward (for killing high bounty by low bounty) is distributed to low bounty players.

Now they have more money to buy more weapons/evolve. Now they can attack.

Meanwhile Ams spent 1500 credits, earned 0 (he didn't kill anyone) so he is now low bounty, so he gets high reward for anyone.

Here we have situation where credits circle between all players, not just the good ones.


BTW: I'm not pushing my idea, call it an thought experment.

[nalf]

One more thing that CU|ams mentioned: Trem actually has a system that gives higher rewards for better players. The reward for a player is computed as damage dealt by the player / max.hp, not as damage dealt / total damage. Let's say a rifle is bitten by dretches to 1HP and escapes, heals to 99HP and then is killed again, it rewards alien total of almost 2 evos, not 1. The thing is that when healed to 100% of HP, the counters are reset. But if this was disabled, killing a long time surviving player would give a fat reward to all that damaged him before.

[[{USATREM}] !Gunther!]

But what if everyone in team will have low bounty - you will never make any cred/evo Or only very hard.

Then if it's really hard to make an evo, then supposedly, by nature perhaps, then human team will get more credits, raising their bounty, meaning that now aliens have reasonable chance.

In one game, (picking random game from ones I know) called Altitude, a game where you shoot down planes and such...
Anyway. So when you kill someone, you get a bar by your name. 3 bars to a class, 3 classes; bronze, silver, and gold. The more classes you gain, (ie, more kills), you actually get a slightly faster plane, more maneuverablity, and weapons slightly powered up. If you get 3 gold bars, well...better get out of the way. >_>
HOWEVER, if you kill this unstoppable 3-gold-bar force, then instead of getting only one bronze bar, YOUR bar gets shot up into the 2nd silver class or so.

Point is, we could implement something like that in Trem. Good players wouldn't be punished, and if they died, then a noob would get about 75% (hypothetical) of total "rank". Then as starting at zero, the good player would just kill the noob and get about 75% of the noobs rank. (probably putting him in 3 bronze bar range). Now good player has slightly better stuff, but is still worth a lot if killed, BUT can get it back easily if killer (or killers) are really bad.

This is all just a basic idea. I don't mean actual "bars" by people names, but still. Just google "Altitude" and download it if you can't understand what I'm saying.

[nalf]

I was thinking about #3 and the whole idea can be reduced to the amount of evos/credits a player has. A person that kills a lot and doesn't die has a lot of credits/evos, and vice versa. So we don't need some other counter - bars etc. Player's evos/credits is all we need. Someone with a lot of credits/evos would give a high bounty bonus, someone poor a low bounty bonus. Something like 1+(c-500)/1500 where c is the number of credits the victim has, and similarly for aliens. (The formula could be parametrized by a cvar). I'll try this out soon to that we can try it out, and I won't elaborate #3 further until I get some feedback how will that affect players' motivation to play better/worse.

[grmg.pl]

I was thinking about #3 and the whole idea can be reduced to the amount of evos/credits a player has. A person that kills a lot and doesn't die has a lot of credits/evos, and vice versa.

F1.

1. Credits player has - as in credits left or credits "on him" (he bought lucisuit)?
2. The reward is "TAKEN from and GIVEN to" or like in gpp - simply "rewarded"?

1+(c-500)/1500

Where does the "1+" come from? I can't see it at all (as in math, not trem).

[nalf]

1. Credits player has - as in credits left or credits "on him" (he bought lucisuit)?
2. The reward is "TAKEN from and GIVEN to" or like in gpp - simply "rewarded"?

I meant, the number of credits he has in his "wallet". The number of credits he has "on him" is already taken into account in GPP.

1+(c-500)/1500

If an alien kills someone with 0 credits in his wallet, the multiplier bonus will be 0.666 , so 0.666 evos. If it kills someone with 2k credits, the bonus will be 2, so 2 evos for the kill (Here I didn't count what the human is wearing "on him" for.).