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/kill nerfing

Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 10:54 pm
by bani
I've implemented the following system in etpro 2.1 to discourage cheesy use of /kill:

Damage you inflict on enemies is tracked. If they /kill themselves right in the middle of a firefight with you, you get awarded XP and a kill based on the weapon used to inflict the damage, and the % of damage you inflicted on that player vs how much was required to kill them (their maxhealth).

It is scaled like this:
>75% = full XP
33% - 75% = 2/3 XP
<33% = ~1/3 XP

If you get killed, you lose your damage credits.
If more than 5 seconds elapses from your last inflicted damage on that player, you lose your damage credit.

Basically this is intended to discourage players who /kill in the middle of a firefight in order to 'cheat the enemy out of XP'.

It doesn't prevent the anyone from using it, but it does take a lot of the incentive away.

if anyone can think of ways to exploit this or explain how it is unfair, please do.

Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 11:00 pm
by SwERvE
This is the best implementation of anti-/killing I have seen proposed so far and damn I hate when people do that. At least now they will have incentive to stop the hari-kari.

Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 11:54 pm
by dA*Rogue
Sounds good as a disincentive for trying to cheat the opponents out of XP. Perhaps change the time to 3 seconds instead of 5 though - 3 seconds still prevents people /kill'ing on you without being too long.

Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 12:12 am
by Kendle
In my experience people don't /kill just to deny their opponent XP, they do it also to preserve their kill/death ratio. To ensure it only gets used for the "proper" purpose (i.e. tactical re-spawn / Class change) you would also need to make /kill count as a death rather than a suicide.

Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 12:52 am
by dA*Rogue
In my experience people don't /kill just to deny their opponent XP
In my experience they do - ie. to deny panzer ability to level up, etc.

Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 1:29 am
by Majikthise
There are still lots of people who do it to have a more "impressive" kill/death ratio. I saw some guy with a 48/4 K/D ratio on a server, simply because he would constantly /kill himself to keep from ever getting a kill counted against him. It may seem impressive at first glace, but when you know -why- it's such a high ratio, it's just plain pathetic.

With the new /kill nerfing, ensuring that the /killer recieves a kill against them is just as important as giving XP to the potential killer.

Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 2:26 am
by Kendle
dA*Rogue wrote:
In my experience people don't /kill just to deny their opponent XP
In my experience they do - ie. to deny panzer ability to level up, etc.
Sorry, I neglected to highlight the key word in that sentence,

"In my experience people don't /kill JUST to deny their opponent XP"

Of course they do it to deny XP, although I don't see it much personally, but then I play on ETPro Stopwatch servers populated mostly by Clan players, who are more concerned with their K/D ratios than their, or anyone else's, XP. If /kill is nerfed simply to address the XP issue it won't stop people abusing /kill. Bani needs to make /kill count as a death for the person using it (rather than a suicide), and maybe, if full XP is to be awarded to the killer, award him/her a kill as well.

Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 2:56 am
by SickBoy
Yeah I agree with Kendle.

If you die, you're dead and that's a death imo tbh, the cause of death is unimportant. It would stop people using it for ratio, AND give ratio more meaning as it is then the real representation of kills/deaths

Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 3:08 am
by ReyalP
Excellent fix IMO.

If the K/D ratio bothers you, just mentally add the suicides column of their stats to deaths. :P

Unlike the XP, K/D stats have no real gameplay impact.

Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 3:19 am
by Kendle
SCDS_reyalP wrote:Unlike the XP, K/D stats have no real gameplay impact.
True, but unlike the XP impact, manipulating K/D ratios is the "main" reason people abuse /kill (on Stopwatch / Clan servers). If the object of the exercise is to stop people doing it, just addressing the XP won't achieve it.

Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 3:21 am
by bani
Kendle wrote: award him/her a kill as well.
it already does 8)

Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 3:49 am
by Kendle
bani wrote:
Kendle wrote: award him/her a kill as well.
it already does 8)
Excellent! And counting a suicide as a death?

Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 3:51 am
by KingJackaL
The only problem with this system ( and it's not easily fixable ) is the panzer /kill issue - players /killing on enemy panzers when they come barreling around a corner with a high pitched wailing sound.

....because panzers rarely if ever do any damage to the /kill'ing player - and the attempted panzer kill is often along a spawn-exit route, so that player normally hasn't recieved any damage from anyone in that life.

People /kill'ing when I'm panzer is just about the only time I've had people /kill on me - so it's a pretty major hole. But like I say, it's not easily fixable... ( predict from movement of every panzer rocket whether it would have killed somebody - and whether they /kill'd just before the panzer would have hit... )

Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 3:56 am
by piranha
correct me i am wrong but did they implemented in the lastest OSP release for RTCW also a anti kill thing (the only thing they did was count suicide as death)
this is idd true as said above, most people use /kill for better ratio.

Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 5:16 am
by Spark2
Can you gain levels with "temporary" XP? That would be a flaw IMO, just spraying into groups of enemies until you have enough XP to reach a new level. =) After all what really counts about the XP are the levels, not the XP themselves.