Stats - some changes

[Dog]

Team Fortress is a very different game from DoDS and CSS. You'll notice that deaths are not recorded in the scoreboard!

Soooo, I have talked with the other Site Admins and we've decided to change the way points are scored. For the next week, on a trial basis, victims will no longer lose points when they get killed.

We are unsure of the ramifications and will be switched back if enough people don't like it. In a week's time, I may throw up a poll and see if it is worth keeping.

Rationale: TF2 is a team play game and so victims should not be penalized for dying.

Having said that, the penalty for suiciding has been increased. It's bad sportsmanship to prevent another player gaining points for killing you. Many of the demos and soldiers suicide when on fire...

So let's see how they work for a week and give me feedback.

[EzCrash]

AWESOME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you so much Dog for giving this a try. As you most likely have read, lately many players have been posing about getting frustrated losing 20 - 25 points per death.

One question, what is the suicide penalty now ? ( as in how many points do we lose )

I can't say that I have ever intentally suicided, it is usually from getting knocked around and firing my rocket into a wall I am facing. Or just doing something plain stupid like strafing out to fire a rocket but not strafing out far enough. DOH !

[Dog]

25...
Again...if we see it causing issues, we could lower it.

[abiscuit]

This should produce some interesting results. Points will sure rise a bunch.

[Shifty]

[quote="StrontiumDog";p="71638"]Having said that, the penalty for suiciding has been increased. It's bad sportsmanship to prevent another player gaining points for killing you. Many of the demos and soldiers suicide when on fire...[/quote]

Oh dam. This might turn out to be worse for me than losing 25 points a death considering I suicide (accidentally) unbelievably often.

Glad to see this change has been implemented. I forecast a huge change in how the leaderboard shapes up each month. Now the stats page will much more accurately represent the scoreboards we're seeing ingame.

The only thing I would keep in mind is the KDR, I kind of pride myself on keeping my deaths as low as possible and maintaining at least a 2-1 ratio (not like Ive met that goal this month). Now that no points are lost for deaths, a person with a 5000-4000 record will have more points than someone who's 4000-1000. Just a thought.

[Dog]

I'd rather reward for people who play longer on the server than those occasional hotshots....

[Squirrel]

I accidentally kill myself a lot. Not sure that one is a good idea

[Dog]

Let me know if it hurts then I'll change it back to 10

[l3eeron]

Why cant we just make killing a player =2 points

the guy dieing gets 0 points

[Dog]

So if you kill a higher ranked player, you can move up through the ranks quicker than being stuck at the bottom!

[Savant]

[quote="StrontiumDog";p="71638"]Having said that, the penalty for suiciding has been increased. It's bad sportsmanship to prevent another player gaining points for killing you. Many of the demos and soldiers suicide when on fire...[/quote]I'm not a fan of 25 per suicide myself. Not because I intentionally suicide, but because I (like others) run into cases where we explode ourselves unintentionally. For me, almost all of the time it's usually when a spy is trying to get the game to register a backstab while looking at my face. (IE, I caught him red handed trying to nab me.) What slays me is that many spies know the game glitch and so they continually will swing their knife at me, looking right at my face, while I am at full health. As such, to prevent my untimely demise from flawed game mechanics, I will shoot the spy with a rocket(s) at point blank range, which will also cause damage to me. Normally, I am able to blow him to a safe range to kill him. However, if I crit then we both die.

While this hasn't happened often, it has happened 75 times in my 1431 deaths. If you do the math, that's only about 5% of the time. (Or once every 20 deaths, but I have yet to have it happen more than once a game since I try not to die very much.) When you consider that the crit rate is about 5%, that would seem to reflect the main cause for my suicides. (5% of my deaths are suicides and 5% of my shots are crits, kind of an interesting co-incidence really...)

However, let's pretend for a moment that the 25 point death penalty was in effect from the beginning. Those 75 deaths would cost me 1875 points, and I only have 9275. So that is 20% of my points that I would have lost for 5% of my deaths.

A 10 point penalty seems more reasonable in my opinion, since it is the same as losing the intel. (I could live with the loss of 750 points for 75 deaths.) When you also take into account that people wouldn't be losing any points when they die to a player, there really should be no motivation to suicide to prevent a person from killing you. It won't affect your stats, so why do it? Heck, a person who is low on health now will probably go out of his way NOT to suicide simply because those are one of the few times you can lose points. However, there are times when it happens through no fault of one's own.

Just something to ponder...

[Squirrel]

The other problem is killing yourself while breaking up a cap. The only way to break it up is to stand on the point. When you kill the people on the point you also kill yourself. This might discourage people from breaking up the cap.

[Dog]

KK. will change it back to 10pts....

Or we can haggle.....

[KazeSim]

I agree with this change (not losing points just for dieing) due to this reasoning and context. Say you are trying desperately in the last moments to scout rush the point... in a cp map thats the goal and a capture is better then kills... besides I love rushing, also might get the stat fiends more of a reason to get in the action.

[RiceKrispies]

this just seems kind of dumb to me. The person with the most time is pretty much promised the top spot, no matter how good or bad they are. I think if you turned down the max loss to 10 or 15 it would be much more effective than turning it off in total.