Damage-based XP proposal

[Kendle]

Kendle: you're my new best friend because you're understanding what i'm saying.

But not agreeing with all of it

Damage based XP has got to be better than Kill based XP because it more evenly rewards the "team", which is all that matters in competition, and it addresses the XP inbalance that can occur between defence and offense, thereby improving Stopwatch competition. However, neither Damage nor Kill based XP are the ideal. NO XP AT ALL is the best solution, IMO, but I'm constantly being told that removing XP completely would magically and instantly transform ET into RTCW.

I do however agree that Leagues (ALL Leagues in ALL countries) need to be consulted on this and the issue put to the vote on their forums, rather than taking the views of this one to be representative of the competitive scene, because it isn't.

I do however believe, or at least hope, there is a genuine desire amongst the majority of those Leagues to agree on universal settings.

[bani]

From: http://www.et-center.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=34

"Note: THIS WILL DELAY THE RELEASE OF ETPRO 2.1"

no it wont. and trying to bias the discussion and vote by stating that seems pretty dishonest to me.

etpro 2.1 has the same schedule regardless of the outcome of this thread.

and re: euro players. well, there must be some reason the euros consistently kick NA clan asses in competition (under NA rules no less!). dismiss their views at your own expense i guess.

[Solal]

Right now we have these scenarios:

Scenario 1:
Player 1 in an smg firefight with Player 2.
Player 2 is down to 2hp. 15 seconds left on spawnclock. He hits /kill to 'deny lightweapons xp' and 'preserve k/d ratio'. Player 1 gets nothing for his efforts (eg another shot would have resulted in player 2 still dead, but he would have got XP.)

This is more a /kill pb than a damage based/per frag based XP pb

Scenario 2:
Player 1 is in an smg firefight with Player 2 (medic, 160hp)
Player 2 is down to 2hp. So he runs away.
Player 3 comes round the corner and gets Player 2 with a lucky random pistol shot, thus being awarded the full lightweapons XP and the kill, for virtually nothing. Player 1 gets nothing at all.

You're not thinking with a "team" perspective : if we're playing a competition match, then Players 1 and 3 are likely to be belong to the same team. So the XP is not really "lost" at all. It's up to the teams to decide who should be in a position to finish other enemies and who should make the initial contact.

Scenario 3:
Player 1 throws a nade/airstrike at player 2 reducing him from 140hp to 2hp and, tossing him up in the air.
Player 2 falls to the ground and dies from falling damage.
Player 1 gets 0 XP.

Who cares ? The effect is the same and overall, the frags you get for people which were already wounded "even out" the ones you lose even though you dealt a lot of damage.

Please explain how you think this proposal is unfair or worse than etmain. ("because thats the way etmain works' isnt a valid answer )

Again you're introducing a lot of distortions : one of the problems is that if you deal 49dmg to an opponent you get nothing whereas dealing 50dmg will award you 1xp. Do you find this any more fair than the random pistol shot ? And you will face a lot of similar rounding issues.
What's more with this kind of system, just sitting at a MG will become very rewarding....

[pack]

Again you're introducing a lot of distortions : one of the problems is that if you deal 49dmg to an opponent you get nothing whereas dealing 50dmg will award you 1xp. Do you find this any more fair than the random pistol shot ? And you will face a lot of similar rounding issues.
What's more with this kind of system, just sitting at a MG will become very rewarding....

I think a counter keeps total damage given during a match. Considering most matches tend to take longer than some minutes rounding errors can be neglected.

I won't vote but atm (as the proposal in first post) I have some remarks. Afaik from rtcw, the panzerboy allways gets most damage/kill in stats. That means panzers and other spam weapons will get more XP faster (unless this is counted differently in ET). Also panzers tend to give a lot of non-skill related damage on each shot.


It would be nice to have X vary for different clases, weapons. (X bigger for mines, panzers, airstrikes)
Again, this is a change it gameplay and it's difficult to find new balance. But then again, if it needs to be done, it's better now than in 6 months.

blabla, not my problem

[bani]

Again you're introducing a lot of distortions : one of the problems is that if you deal 49dmg to an opponent you get nothing whereas dealing 50dmg will award you 1xp. Do you find this any more fair than the random pistol shot ?

yes, i do. since right now if you deal 49dmg you get 0 in etmain already, so it's certainly not any worse. right now that 'rounding error' is generally >100 in etmain... since you either count a kill or you dont, and absolutely nothing in between is scored.

if anything, this makes it much more accurate than etmain and less prone to the existing huge rounding issues in etmain...

And you will face a lot of similar rounding issues.

such as...? and it's worse than the current etmain system because...?

if anything, this makes it much more accurate than etmain and less prone to the existing huge rounding issues in etmain... 50 is a lot less error than etmain's >100 ...

What's more with this kind of system, just sitting at a MG will become very rewarding....

it already is. mg's are very powerful and you can lay down a lot of kills with them. how would things be worse than the etmain situation?

[Solal]

it already is. mg's are very powerful and you can lay down a lot of kills with them. how would things be worse than the etmain situation?

Well MGs are good for kills, but even better for wounding. What i'm saying is that they just will get even better than they already are.

[bani]

it already is. mg's are very powerful and you can lay down a lot of kills with them. how would things be worse than the etmain situation?

Well MGs are good for kills, but even better for wounding. What i'm saying is that they just will get even better than they already are.

why is this a problem? mgs will get even better than they already are. in fact all weapons will, because you'll get 1 XP for many situations where you used to get 0 (because of etmain > 100 rounding errors)

what this change means is that on battery, the offense has at least some chance to score a few XP before they are killed and level up a bit. in etmain where usually you only get 0 before you die in the spamfest near the ramp, and defense levels up quickly...

in other words in heavily defensively biased maps, damage based XP gives offense a chance to score some skills before they are always obliterated... where usually there is a huge chasm between offense and defense skill levels because defense manages to get "kill" even though offense did a lot of damage... yes, defense will still level up quicker, but offense will no longer be so heavily biased toward 0 skills... it would make stopwatch suck much less imo.

[SickBoy]

Same goes for sniper rifles and FG42. Great for wounding, maybe not that great for killing. So this may help CO's leveling up faster, which is good.

[bani]

yes, it would make CO suck much less. but then some players might be scared of that

[Solal]

yes, it would make CO suck much less. but then some players might be scared of that

Now that would really be an improvement : why is it that people can tweak their cvars in order to see through the grenade's smoke ? Why does the covert have less HP than other classes AND inferior weapons for close combat ? Why is it possible to "mark" fireteam-teammates, making it completely useless to steal a uniform ....
Sorry for posting out of topic.

The fact is that a damage based system would:
1. Affect the relative strength of weapons : better for MGS (a lot better), worse for pistols (a lot worse), ... >> GOOD or BAD, needs testing
2. Create a new breed of "damage stealers" : guys who'll camp somewhere and inflict damage from a distance, and just pull off when they have scored 1XP (and since they had a head start you will probably get nothing if they pull off fast enough) >> BAD
3. Make it easier for offense to score XP >> GOOD

(all of this in my opinion of course)

[Kendle]

What cvar allows you to see through Covert Smoke? cg_wolfparticles 0 removes smoke from explosions (Air-Strikes etc.) but not Covert Smoke.

[pack]

If you look at stats after a match, spam weapon users always get more damage for each frag.

Which means in general, spam weapons in the new system will indeed be encouraged. This isn't necessarily good for gameplay. A solution would be giving them a higher value for X.

There is allready some kind of damage given/received xp system in vanilla ET anyway. It's called battle sense.

[pack]

reason co sniper things aren't effective is because there are no snipermaps used in competition. In rtcw we had beach, assault. In et just fueldump and battery and these are hardly played...

Co Sniper is still effective in maps like temple_final, though this is more like a public kind of map. Hasn't got to do that much with the weapon.

[bani]

Which means in general, spam weapons in the new system will indeed be encouraged. This isn't necessarily good for gameplay. A solution would be giving them a higher value for X.

yes, splashdamage type weapons (grenade, arty, airstrike) could require higher X. and heavyweapons (mg42, mortar, panzerfaust, etc) also.

scoped fg42 is the most ridiculous weapon ever though. the scope on there is pretty useless because its so inaccurate... combined with the ridiculously low damage... up close its ET's equivalent of the RTCW venom.

[pack]

(off topic) In temple I tend to use the garand/k43 weapons, they seem as effective for me there as a (rtcw)mauser would have been + you also get satchel sarge, ability to spot mines, smoke grenades,...

If Temple would be played in clanwars (not advisable :p) I'm sure both teams would use those weapons. (/ot)