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Measuring and rewarding team work programatically? [message #436867]

Wed, 22 September 2010 09:34

reborn
Messages: 3231
Registered: September 2004
Location: uk - london

Karma: 0

General (3 Stars)

Vloktboky mentioned several times that he would like to re-write DA's veteran system to reward team work, and drifted on to what really started stepping outside of a veterancy system and into the realms of remodelling the game to reward team work better in general.

Here are some quotes from him on the matter:

Quote:

Knock it off, for the love of God. Higher veteran status? The damn thing is already "too high." You're playing a damn team game. Quit trying to further express your individual ego in the game and start working towards the benefit of your team overall.

You want more veteran goodies? Then I suggest taking your ideas and twisting them around a Team Veterancy where the entire team must work together to satisfy certain requirements which promise benefits across the entire team. For example, if your entire team manages to thwart off more than 8 enemy vehicles in the area of your base during the game, you are awarded with slightly cheaper vehicle production (due to the collective wreckage and scrap). Tweak the numbers, figure out other ways to wrap around building defense (such as bringing a health back to life after it has dipped into the 10% area) or some other repairing method, infantry kills, aircraft kills, vehicle/soldier purchases, enemy building destructions, whatever. If the entire team has something that they can work towards which will benefit them all, then they may... just may... figure out that if they work together to accomplish it, then they can get their fun toys and go play with them all they like.

ANYTHING to get them to work together so little twerps like some of you stop running off to get that shiny green medal so you can stare at it with 10 minutes left on the clock and a deadlocked game on the horizon.

Quote:

I'll leave the logic up to you guys but I will take care of the mechanics behind the scenes, dealing with such things as group detection and common interests. I can write you some code that well let you easily see if a given player is in a common group with other players based on similar character or vehicle classes, or a common target such as if you are attacking the same type of building. I won't bother if you are not interested, but if you are, we will need to work as a team and that includes allowing me to work in your current solution for DA. Let me know if you're interested.

And to the rest of you, if you want to see something like this put in, I suggest you start an open discussion. I'll start by stating I want to see one of my original ideas put in to play. I want to see group dynamics. I want to see benefits given to players who stick close together with the same type of soldier or vehicle layout. Think C&C Generals, China faction. If you are in a medium tank and you stick around 4 or so other medium tanks, then each of you will be given a little extra fire power or armor so long as you stick together. And where you stick, you tend to travel and attack as one.

Quote:

Good suggestions so far and I am starting to understand where the discrepancies will lie. To make it more clear, my code will only detect groups - a collection of people within a certain radius of each other or a collection of people who share a common target - and will report those groups/peoples to other modules executing on top of the game. Such logic as Veterancy or bonuses can then be applied on top of this. I am now writing anything that specific. Such ideas are up to you guys to implement.

I am not 100% where I will be working on this at this time. I will say that unless I get a confirmed offer from someone by the end of this weekend, I may not have enough time to complete this. But I have written some preliminary code and I will make that available irregardless of what ends up happening. Others may be able to come in and fill in the gaps.

This was from back in early 2007, and I actually took him up on the offer. Unfortunatly what he sent me at the time was too difficult for me to understand (this wasn't a failing of his code, but my understanding) and it was only partially finished.
After a hard drive failure and an all but absent vloktboky the idea, concept and proof was totally lost.

At the time the code was too complex for me and I gave up on the idea, it was only when I was re-reading the thread it was mentioned in recently that I kicked myself for not still having the code he sent me, as I probably would of been in a better position to make something out of it, or at least read it and understand it.

What he was saying makes sense to me, it always did make sense only at the time I was incapable of doing anything about it, and afterwards I forgot all about it. Until now...

Now while the idea of rewarding team work is a nice one, obviously you cannot capture all types and forms of team work, boky had realised this too and hense his plan to reward groups...

I've taken this idea and made a working proof that does the following (obviously the specifics can be changed/tweaked):

Groups of the same or similar class characters/vehicles in close proximity to eachother apply a healing "aura" to eachother that stacks. For each member of the group you gain 2hp per 3 seconds.
There is a visual indication of this by manor of a special effect.

Groups of the same or similar class characters/vehicles attacking the same object get a damage buff. For each similar object attacking you recieve a 10% damage increase.
There is a visual indication of this by flashing the double damage red bullet model on the player/vehicle.

If a group kills an object (any object, building, vehicle, c4 etc etc) then they will recieve a proportionate amount of team veterancy points in line with the amount of damage they applied to the object that was killed.
The plugin determines if they was part of the group that killed the object by seeing who damaged the object within the last ten seconds.

I want to polish the system up, and I want to extend it's functionality to do other things and capture more teamwork, but I thought I'd try and test people's initial response to such an idea (albeit a recycled one).
I will absolutely need an active server to test this on once there is a beta release.