I think the whole reward matter is incredibly complicated. Next to balancing throwing weapons it's the game design question in cRPG I am most afraid of. To be honest, I don't really dare to touch it. I just want to say that conquering/protecting the flag should definitely matter. In whatever way you do it.
Despite my statement of above I decided to give it a shot anyway. Perhaps it offers a base for someone who really finds the best was for a reward system. So let's get started:
The requirements for a reward system are:
- Rewards good skills
- Rewards teamplay
- Rewards not completely dependant on performance, to keep mediocre and bad players motivated as well, and to help noobs.
- Rewards should be more individual, not the same for the whole team. This is to make it more difficult to suffer from a bad, or to leech from a good team.
Now most of those points seem to be difficult to put together, if not they are even contradicting. But let's try anyway.
This reward system I am suggesting here is revolving around conquest mode. So it's about capturing flags. Let's see what the different classes can do here.
First of all, the game needs a precise system of determining a player's class. I don't think it's too difficult, and can be even done on the homepage mainly, thus the server has only to check if something changed on the equipment, so that the additional server load is not too big. The classes we need are:
- 1hd/throwing + shield = Shield infantry
- 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
Now my idea for the following classes would be:
-Points = XP, Money or any other points which can grant benefits. Rewards are basing on the points you get at the end of the round.
-Points for dead enemies are basing on the relation between the own level and generation and the enemy's.
-Like in the old system, all points you get during a round are put into your personal point pot. At the end of the round you get a certain percentage of rewards out of that pot, depending on the amount of points you get out of it.
-The more teammates survive the round, the higher the percentage you get out of your pot. Let's call that the point pot percentage, PPP.
-The time needed to win is also considered. The faster you win, the higher the PPP.
-If you lose, you get a PPP which is based on the time you survived. The longer the enemy needed to defeat you, the more you get. You count as defeated as soon as the enemy outnumbers you 2:1 or 3:1 (needs to be tested). This is to prevent the last few survivors of running away to shift the time bonuses for the teams. If the relations between the teams somehow get back to less than 2:1 or 3:1, the counter starts running again, and the time it was frozen gets added again.
-The size of the teams also influences the PPP. The smaller your team compared to the enemy, the more you get.
-Some kind of multiplier can stay, but it should not be x3, x4 or x5, rather something like x1.1, x1.2 and so on. But you could raise the cap for it.
-Infantry in general (including throwers) receives points for every enemy killed within a certain range.
-Infantry receives additional points for every enemy killed within a certain range who was also within a certain range of a flag.
-Infantry does NOT get any rewards at all for enemies they killed themselves. (!!!!)
-Defensive Infantry also don't get any rewards for horses or cavalry being killed within range.
-Shock Infantry does not get any rewards for shielders being killed within range.
-Throwers in particular don't get any points for killed Heavy or Shock Infantry. (Throwers should get some bonus points somehow, though, due to the relatively high percentage of enemies which don't grant any points)
-Infantry receives points for being around a flag while it is being contested, even if it doesn't move as the enemies are too few, it still counts. Actually you can say that only being around a flag while no enemies are there does not give any points at all. In any other situation, you get some.
-Infantry in general receives a PPP based on the amount of teammates who survived the round.
-Infantry in general receives bonus PPP for other infantrymen who survived the round.
-Infantry in general receives a (slight) PPP reduction for every teamhit or teamkill inflicted during the round.
-Shield Infantry (including throwers) and Defensive Infantry additionally receive a higher PPP for every archer who survived.
-Shield Infantry gets bonus points for being around contested flags.
- Heavy infantry is a special case. Considering the tasks of Heavy Infantry, which are: "Kill what you see", I don't see any other solution that rewarding them for every enemy killed within range + bonus points if this was near a flag + the same amount for points if they killed the enemy themselves. I don't like this solution, as it does not have the nice side effects of the solutions for the other infantry classes, but what can you do?
- Ranged in general receives points for every ranged kill on the map
- Ranged receives bonus points for every ranged kill which was also within the range of a flag
- Ranged receives points for wounding enemies.
- Ranged receives bonus points for wounding enemies near a flag.
- Ranged receives the same amount of points for killing an enemy themselves. (Same problem like Heavy Infantry)
- Ranged receives (good!) bonus points for hitting or killing horses.
- Ranged receives a PPP based on the amount of teammates who survived the round.
- Ranged receives a (heavy) PPP reduction based on the amount of teamhits and teamkills inflicted.
- Cavalry in general receives points for wounding and killing enemies.
- Cavalry in general receives bonus points if this happened within flag range (for Skirmisher Cavalry the position of the target counts).
- Cavalry receives bonus points for woudning and killing Ranged Infantry
- Skirmisher cavalry receives bonus points for wounding or killing horses and other cavalry in general.
- Cavalry receives a PPP based on the amount of teammates who survived the round.
- Cavalry receives a (heavy) PPP reduction based on the amount of teamhits and teamkills inflicted.
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That's it.
For those of you who are too lazy to read through all this, or don't really get what I am aiming at, I have a
TL;DR-Version:For me the gameplay of the infantry is the core problem. If infantry plays "properly", the other classes have to adjust. But as long as infantry plays like it does at the moment on the battle server, the other classes are free to hunt them, causing all those complaints on the forums.
So the changes aim towards keeping infantry together. The fact, that you don't get points for enemies you kill yourself, but that the reward at the end of the round is depending on your infantry teammates who survived, will hopefull encourage infantry to play more "together" and to protect each other, instead of going for a kill hunt. Actually hunting kills on your own would not help you anything, as you can only get points if teammates near you kill the enemy.
The fact that you don't get any rewards for having your "target class" killed (e.g. Crushthrough infantry does not get rewards for killed shielders) sounds paradox at the first glance. But on the other hand this means, that in difference to the other enemy classes, you are allowed to kill them, without having to suffer from reduced rewards. This system is meant to encourage players focusing on certain enemies, not to get direct rewards, which always causes terrible behaviour. It is for the sake of protecting your teammates, who in return will increase your rewards. But you don't get "greedy" on those kills, as if someone else kills your target, you don't lose anything. I hope this system is what we were looking for all those years, as it has the benefit or rewarding classes for killing certain other classes, without all those kill stealing and teamwounding side effects.
As I already wrote, the system for heavy infantry (= two handed players) is an exception of this, which makes my kind of sad, but I could not find any other solution. But perhaps one of you will?
The fact that archers and cavalry get rewarded for kills directly is not nice, but I think it's not that much of a problem either, as you can't compare it to the problems direct kill rewards would bring for infantry in general. That's also why cavalry and archers receive a much higher teamhit malus, than infantry. It's because it is easier for cav and ranged to avoid hitting teammates than it is for infantry.
