Hi there.
Me keeps text short. If don't wanna read, take penis -> knee -> fuck. Try read, looks like long text, is not. Many notes, little text.
If still too much, read from first red part to last red part. Not much. Not much.
Requirements for reward system:
- rewards good skills
- rewards teamplay
- rewards not completely dependent on the performance, to keep noobs and baddies motivated
- rewards need to be as little dependent on your team as possible
- rewards need to reflect the effort
Problem: contradicting requirements.
Solution: compromises.
Conclusion: will never be perfect.
Recommendation: lower your expectations.
First things first: this suggestion is assuming that the conquest mode is already implemented. That's why I will repeatedly refer to flags and flag areas.
Flag area: the area around a flag within you can capture it. Who would have thought it?
The system:
1. Class based.
The community will be divided into the following classes:
- 1hd/throwing + shield = Shield infantry
- throwing = Throwers (which means that throwers with shield always have two classes)
- 2hd/2hd-polearm = Heavy infantry
- Pikemen/hoplites, perhaps 2d-Polearms = Defensive Infantry
- Crushthrough infantry = Shock infantry
- archers/crossbowmen = Ranged infantry
- melee cavalry (lancers/1hd-cav/2hd-cav) = Cavalry
- ranged cavalry (Horsearchers/horsecrossbowmen/horsethrowers) = Skirmisher Cavalry
2. Area based
Some classes get kills only within a certain area around them. Which means we go back to the old system.
3. Kill based
Dead enemies grant rewards. This is again a step back to the old game. More about this later.
4. Multiplier based.
All the rewards you collect during a round are put in a "pot". At the end of the round you get a certain percentage of the pot (= multiplier), depending on manifold factors.
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Getting rewards:
Getting points for your pot:
All rewards are distributed by "points", and at the end of the round the points get transformed into gold and XP. As said, you collect a pot full of points during the round.
Deaths:
Whenever you get points for a killed player, your "value" (= level, generation & equipment value) is being compared with his value. The more the value of the enemy is bigger than yours, the more rewards you get. And vice versa, of course.
Flags:
Conquering flags grants points, obviously. The less teammates and the more enemies are around that flag, the more points you receive.
Getting more out of your pot with the multiplier:
Your multiplier determines how many points you can actually get out of your pot. It is even possible to get more points than what you had in your pot.
Surviving teammates/enemies:
The more teammates and the less enemies survive the round, the bigger your multiplier. (Note that due to conquest mode you can survive the round and still lose)
Time passed:
The shorter the round lasted, the bigger the multiplier for the winner. The longer the round lasted, the bigger the multiplier for the loser. As soon as the amount of living players of the teams exceeds a certain relation, e.g. 2:1 or 3:1, the time calculation stops, to prevent useless prolonging/delaying of the round by the losers. As soon as the relation jumps back to a more challenging value, the "frozen" time gets added again, and runs on.
Flag areas:
Whenever you get points for a killed enemy or something like that and you and/or the enemy was within a flag area, the points you get for it get multiplied by a certain value.
Teamhits/teamkills:
Every teamhit lower your multiplier a bit. Every teamhit which is being reported lowers it quite a good bit. Every teamkill lowers it a lot. Note that these punishments are permanent for that map, so they are being kept from round to round!
Won rounds:
For every round you won in a row you get a higher multiplier. But unlike before, the value is much lower, it's rather something like x1.1, x1.2 and x1.3 instead of x2 x3 or x4. But the limit can be raised to something like x2 at the most.
Dying:
Once you die you still keep on getting points for killed players and other stuff, but only at a certain percentage (like 50% or the like). It's easily determined by the time you lived. ([time you lived]x1 + ([round time]-[time you lived])x0.5 for example). This multiplier can be different for the classes, depending on how likely it is to die. (So infantry will probably get a higher death multiplier than archers or cav for example)
Generation:
The generation does not directly affect your multiplier. It affects the rate at which points get transformed into gold and XP. The higher your generation, the more valuable your points are.
Motivating the classes to play "properly":
Problem with rewarding kills directly:
Now the biggest problem doing so is directly rewarding kills. It would lead to a lot of kill stealing, teamhitting and teamkilling, and would support a general attitude and behavior which is definitely not desirable.
Old class balance problems concerning infantry:
There were always a lot of complaints and lobbying in the community, concerning class balance. And usually it was either infantry complaining about ranged or infantry complaining about cavalry. This has a lot of reasons, some of those have to do with the game mode, others have to do with the general way infantry players tend to play, and others have to do with the special gameplay requirements of infantry compared to the others classes. Whatever it is, the reward system should do something about the "infantry problem".
The core point of my suggestion:
Infantry receives points for enemies which have been killed within a certain range around them. If this happened within a flag area, they get even more rewards. BUT:
Infantry does not get rewards for killing enemies themselves!
Next to this, infantry gets a higher multiplier for every other infantryman who survived the round, compared to other teammates:
Infantry should be interested in protecting their infantry colleagues.
And finally, the most interesting point of my suggestion:
Every infantry class gets a target class. You never get ANY rewards when your target class is killed, neither by you nor by your teammates!
Now what does this mean?
You are encouraged to actually protect your fellow infantry mates, instead of racking up kills. You want THEM to make the death blow, you don't want to do it yourself, because you would not get rewards for it. And you want them to survive, that's why you look after them and support them whenever you can. But as you want to kill something, too, you will focus on your target class, because you don't get rewards for it, anyway. The big advantage of this system is, that you don't get greedy for kills, because you don't lose anything if someone else kills your target class. The focus of the game is shifted from making kills to actually helping and protecting each other. I think the gameplay can only benefit from it.
Examples for target classes:
Defensive infantry targets cavalrymen and horses.
Shock infantry targets shield infantry.
Heavy infantry targets defensive infantry and eventually horses.
Throwers target shock and heavy infantry and cavalry + horses. (Probably need some multiplier assistance due to the amount of targets which grant no reward)
Shield infantry target throwers and ranged.
Shield infantry are a special case, as they also get additional rewards for surviving friendly archers and being around the flag. This is to represent the (much underestimated) importance of shields for infantry. You see it's rather meant to be a defensive class (by me).
Weak parts of my suggestion:
I don't see any other reasonable solution for archers and cavalry than to directly reward them with a higher multiplier for kills they score, and bonus rewards for their target classes, which means that ranged and skirmisher cav target melee cav, melee cav and sirmisher cav target archers and so on. In return to prevent them of going apeshit on their teammates, their punishment multipliers for teamkills and teamhits could be bigger than those for infantry.