Teamplay, how can we resurrect it?

[Thomek]

Atm the autobalancer, it may have even before afaik, takes into account block strength.

That means there is really no way to "beat" it except helping others get kills, AKA teamplay.

No matter the strength of yourself or your clan/block, it will be offsetted by the other team..

[gazda]

i didnt have any commanding skill in mind, i meant it like, a tittle that admin or dev would give to certain player,

[Joker86]

Atm the autobalancer, it may have even before afaik, takes into account block strength.

That means there is really no way to "beat" it except helping others get kills, AKA teamplay.

No matter the strength of yourself or your clan/block, it will be offsetted by the other team..

I don't think the autobalancer can really offset such things, otherwise you wouldn't have always the same top clan players being in the winning team all the time, over a few maps. And it's not because they try to get their team the most kills.

You try to evaluate something that almost noone did on the servers, and even if he did, you most likely wouldn't see it by his W:L, as it needs more people to use tactics so that they can have an impact on the success of a team. I think pikemen for example are per definition more teamplayers than other classes, as they need support (or someone to support, respectively) to work. And I bet most pikemen will have worse W:Ls than for example the best two handed fighters of certain clans.

Could one of the developers actually answer if there is already some data about the wins and losses of certain players, ans who has the best ratio? By seeing the names we could see if the system would be viable or not.

i didnt have any commanding skill in mind, i meant it like, a tittle that admin or dev would give to certain player,

Ah well, yes, that's what I already suggested, together with a forum vote to determine who will get those rights. I must say I like your idea 

[gazda]

i see there are a lot of ideas, why doesnt some admin or anyone else make a post containing all those idead, and a paragraph with quotaiton from original idea submitor explaining the actuall idea and a poll to choose which ideas do you like the most?

if noone does that all those ideas will be lost

[Lorenzo_of_Iberia]

Well, stats buff is another form of reward for following orders (e.g. a certain buff within the range of a flag. A "Defend" flag could provide Ironflesh, an "Attack" flag Power Strike, only the bonus of the last placed flag within an area apllies), and what you write after this, about people realizing and actively following orders, shows that we basically agree. 

I'm down with this ;)

[KaMiKaZe_JoE]

Still think we need better voice communication ability before we can even consider the possibility of getting leaders into the mix. Sure, he can talk to his buddies in his clan vent/TS--but the majority of pubbies won't hear him. Need in-game voip, or official vent servers. I can't follow someone IF THEY CANT FUCKING TALK TO ME.

Voip's by far superior to the normal chat, too.

That being said, if we're gonna put a "leader" in charge, then I think that that leader should be voted for. Empires mod does this, and it works spectacularly. There is also a "vote to kick out the current leader" option, in case of trolling or shitty leadership.

[SquishMitten]

in-game voip,

It would be hilarious and annoying all in one!

[CrazyCracka420]

It would be hilarious and annoying all in one!

Hence the need to be able to mute people...both globally by admins (so it mutes that person for everyone), and locally by individual users (so it only mutes for the person who choose to mute them). 

In game voip is basically a requirement for any teamplay based game since 2001.  Without makes it terribly difficult to coordinate.

I do realize having 50 people on a team trying to talk all at once would be kind of hard to prioritize.  You'd have to make rules like in TS/Vent with that many people, only leaders call out strats, and only if it's urgent do you get on the mic.  Would be cool if they tied in-game voip with the battalions.

[SquishMitten]

Would be cool if they tied in-game voip with the battalions.

this would be a good compromise

[Joker86]

It is a difficult matter, as if you give VOIP only to a few people others perhaps feel underprivileged, and would like to join a tactical discussion without having to type all the time.

On the other hand VOIP for everyone means a lot of noise and annoyance, and thus many players will mute everybody, rendering the new feature useless again and we are where we started. 

[Mosquito]

the 'swapping teams every round disaster' has now passed (fingers crossed, pray to almighty chadz)!

So............we're back to plain human defficiencies as the only thing stopping us from having teamwork as fantastic as the movements of a swiss clock?

I think that once you go into the 'give ppl a buff to stats' routine it becomes impossible to stop and the game becomes something totally different to what we recognize, ie it becomes World of Warcraft........?i don't believe anyone wants that or they wouldn't be here.

We are basically like sheep, we like to follow, all we need to do is make it easy to see what we are following (coloured text, flags etc) and we like to know who is the best shepherd so we don't follow any random loser:) i still think that the 'leaders' have to be decided somehow before the round starts and perhaps we should have a short 'briefing period' at the start of round;perhaps 10 seconds where everyone is frozen to issue orders?

I see over the course of this thread that many people hold similar views  over what teamwork is about and hold it close as a valued ideal, i believe that this community could thrive on this idea given the chance as they are not quite as hardbitten as we might believe. I've seen cavmen give up thier horse if they accidently got a team-mates horse killed by their actions, maybe something exists beyond the base kill/frag whoring machines we sometimes picture the community as?

Lets push on.

We really only need some leaders to follow, i've seen plenty of good candidates in this thread for example (unfortunately most players won't read this!), i will follow you and when it works it is an infectious idea.

Time to step up Thomek:)

[Thomek]

I've stepped up many times, that's why I raged and wrote this thread..

I'm no leader. I fail mostly, or team fail, or they fail to follow, or I have bad ideas, or I don't communicate them well, or they demand that teammates understand what a charge is etc..  I don't even have any urge to lead, I sometimes try out of mere frustration from the general retardation! But I would love to see more organized play in the everyday pub battles.

I'm not so very opposed to forum votes, but at least W:L ratios should be made public. Thing about forum votes and general activity is that many players don't read it.. Also just because we are forumers that write a lot of crap doesn't make us leaders.. We are just known among forumers.

Joker, the autobalance DOES offset such things, at least it used to, and if not completely, to a very large degree. The reason you see top clans/players winning is just because they are always topping the charts, wether they are winning or loosing. Winning usually means they get more kills, which means their K:D ratio improves beyond their individual skill level, which means they are weighted heavier, which means their weight is again offset by the other team.

[Riddaren]

Step one - show W:L ratio

In the scoreboard, show the W:L ratio of all rounds played since the player joined the server.
That way people caring about winning rounds rather than getting a nice k:d ratio would get the recognition they deserve.

This would only be useful if the W:L ratio is kept between maps, not reset. Is it possible?

(click to show/hide)

The reason for not showing the total W:L ratio of the player is that it cannot be trusted, just like the total K:D ratio can't be trusted.
Instead it is the W:L ratio since the player joined the server that is displayed.

Step two - Appoint leaders by W:L ratio

Once the scoreboard W:L ratio is implemented, it will be easier to successfully implement the idea of leaders.
They could either get appointed automatically or by voting (or both combined somehow).

Important: The leader should not see his own banner in the field of view. It should instead be displayed in the HUD.
The reason for this for those who doesn't know is that the field of view is decreased so badly you would not like to become a leader if this doesn't get fixed.

A leader should not get team swapped of course and for the rest it should not happen as much as it does at the moment.

The leader will stay leader as long as his team wins. Then a new poll can be made so that the round after someone else becomes leader.

The hard part about this is to have 2 teams vote for their own leader...
One thing you could to is to just have 2 polls, then randomly appoint those selected to each team no matter in what team they were before selected... hmm...
I think it will be more simple if it is done automatically somehow... maybe have the setting of prefered leaders on the web page.

[Joker86]

I like the first half of your suggestion, but I have to disagree with you and Thomek on the second part.

In the current state of the game you can NOT recognize good leaders by their W:L-ratio. A single player doesn't have the possibility to constantly influence the course of a battle to his favour, unless he is incredibly skilled or only plays with a large amount of clan mates. Which is again an argument against the W:L-commander, because being skilled or in a good clan doesn't tell anything about your leadership skills.

[Tomas_of_Miles]

I believe Empires has a system whereby people nominate themselves to be available to vote for. As Kamikaze Joe said, Empires' system works well.