Horrible scoring - Why custom game modes aren't popular and suck

[Zehra]

Intro:
The scoring in custom game modes sucks and stats sites get bad data. Players don't want to play games to lose score for no reason.

Argument:
In CTF, teams which have their flag capped are reset and the reset does not impact personal score.

The opposite happens in KeepAway, Koth, rabbitTimer, and rabidRabbit. Player scores are negatively impacted. This is very counter-intuitive to players, impacts stats sites negatively (for 10+ years), reduces likelihood of players playing on those modes as their scores are negatively impacted overall.

Conclusion:
This suboptimal scoring reflects badly on custom game modes. It reduces interest in alternative and custom game modes, and impacts player interest and choices by offering suboptimal games.

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For extended and expanded details as well as patches, please view the following: Overhauling of scoring systems used in custom game modes

-Zehra

[Pesky_UK]

Given that there's very few regular players left it's not going to be much of a problem. Even you haven't played since mid September.

APOC is like a graveyard most times I look (GMT timezone).

[Zehra]

I haven't been active for quite some time, so it seems like I'm just an inactive player who brings up a non-issue.

You do bring up a very good point of regular players being few. For as to why, it would make a good thread.

Even though my suggestions for enhancements to be made at this point may seem futile, new features have often drawn activity.

I do have hope for a positive cycle to occur in 2024 because of this. (I'll bet a year on that possibility.)

-Zehra

[Pesky_UK]

I think the why of regular players is mainly down to the method of consumption of games nowadays - casual play has moved from desktops / laptops to Steam, phones and tablets with all the shiny bells and whistles attached to that. While the BZ devs avoid / can't get to that route the game continues to lose regulars and new players are rarely sticking around.

I once years ago put together a Windows 10 BZ package that worked and could have been submitted to the MS app store but was told that Tim Riker wouldn't allow it / wasn't interested in the future of the game so porting the game to other platforms sounds like it will never happen.

Also, demographics. BZ players are for the most part 40+ years old. We're all old curmudgeonly buggers!

[macsforme]

Nice intro, argument, and conclusion, although I didn't mean to infer that it needs to be a rigid structure with labels. I suggest reading up on argumentative essays (the same can apply to forum topics, albeit with less formality) for a general understanding of how to present an idea with meaningful flow.

I haven't been active for quite some time, so it seems like I'm just an inactive player who brings up a non-issue.

I do believe this is a non-issue. In my experience playing HTF and the like, players know what the goals are and disregard their personal scores. High/low scores on stats sites have been meaningless ever since Gnurdux and some others messed with them probably fifteen years ago.

You do bring up a very good point of regular players being few. For as to why, it would make a good thread.

Numerous such threads exist; I believe you once compiled a list of them. There is little more to add to the conversation.

I once years ago put together a Windows 10 BZ package that worked and could have been submitted to the MS app store but was told that Tim Riker wouldn't allow it / wasn't interested in the future of the game so porting the game to other platforms sounds like it will never happen.

I thought we were ineligible for the Windows app store, at least in the past; off the top of my head, something about requiring UWP? There was a licensing issue with the Mac/iOS app stores, which took about a year of sending Tim messages to resolve. I believe there are still one or more other impediments to getting us into those app stores, such as the requirement for your app to support IPv6 (we are close to finally completing this).

[Zehra]

I think the why of regular players is mainly down to the method of consumption of games nowadays - casual play has moved from desktops / laptops to Steam, phones and tablets with all the shiny bells and whistles attached to that. While the BZ devs avoid / can't get to that route the game continues to lose regulars and new players are rarely sticking around.

I've had friends do invites for BZ and the majority of the invited have simply gone inactive after a month or two or less. And this is with a friend having made an invite, not just a random finding BZ and giving it a try, we even gave help for improving settings and similar. We have very bad player retention and this is from ideal circumstances.(a.k.a. a friend invites a friend to the game, is given a rough walk-through/guide of it and knows someone from the game..etc)

I once years ago put together a Windows 10 BZ package that worked and could have been submitted to the MS app store but was told that Tim Riker wouldn't allow it / wasn't interested in the future of the game so porting the game to other platforms sounds like it will never happen.

It's difficult, we have good ideas, we have some try them, but even if they happen, there is no support for them.(Even for the devs too.)

I do believe this is a non-issue. In my experience playing HTF and the like, players know what the goals are and disregard their personal scores. High/low scores on stats sites have been meaningless ever since Gnurdux and some others messed with them probably fifteen years ago.

I believe it is though, as HTF in particular has dismal scoring and counter-intuitive game play, while the rest of the modes suffer from sub-optimal scoring.

The entire scoring system in BZFlag is sub-optimal and needs to be revamped. For example, having a significantly negative score is discouraging to new players who are trying to learn the game.

(and yes, I grant that our scoring system features negative scores too prominently and is discouraging to newcomers, but that is another discussion)....

Specifically for HTF:

Some thoughts on serving HTF:

I'm not sure whether or not you want to make this a public server or not. I tried making an open server at one time, and ended up explaining what the heck HTF is, a million times. At least half the time, the guy who had just asked said something like, "well, that's stoopid" and left. Perhaps a good helpfile that can be sent with /sendhelp would take care of that to an extent. The PlanetMofo crew had an HTF server up for a while, and it seemed to work. Maybe they'd have some advice on how to do this too. The -advertise LONGHAIR.LEAGUE etc line causes the server to appear in the main list only to a group of people that I made up via this forum. There's a request groups thread around here somewhere if you want to make your own groups.

i think that this pluggin needs some major help. i think that it schould make it so the points for tk dont count you down and dont play that annoying tk sound. maybe in the future it can just be included in to the bzflag game, just a thaught

The regular score, as depicted by the normal "score board" does not apply in this mode of play. Nope. In HTF games, that score is inaccurate and is not correct as the HTF plugin and mode of play still needs a bit of work.

The goal of HTF is to be the one who captures your team's flag. Where they get the "hold" part of "hold the flag" is beyond me. Think of it as a figure of speech. When a flag is capped, a special HTF scoreboard notes the point and you can see it in the same area chat and server messages are displayed in.

The added fun @ Planet MoFo is I have two team flags in play, meaning more chase and more is at stake. There is talk to make it three or more team flags, while the use of only one team flag is on the table as well. Feedback is welcome...

The aspect of the scoring being confusing can be noted specifically:

But yeah, to the untrained noob, this can be very confusing. I use the red team for my HTF games (everyone COULD be blue, if I specified it) but you got to think of everyone as Rogues.

It being very counter-intuitive and confusing is a sign of a major issue in the implementation of the mode. The scoreboard itself is useless, as it provides no useful indication or metric as to the actual game.

Providing Contributions
=======================

Pull Requests should be entered submitted via the GitHub pull system:

https://github.com/BZFlag-Dev/bzflag/pulls

Contributions are gladly accepted for modifications that do not
affect the core gameplay. Interacting with the other developers in
the IRC channel is recommended for any changes which will affect
gameplay.

The suggestion(s) I make, are for players not to lose points by kills attributed to the server, and to modify HTF to integrate with the scoreboard. Previously it was impossible to do so, as point manipulation of players was not a viable or workable option at the time. I do believe that this is not a modification of core game play, merely fix relating to scoring of the modes.

Yet another classic case of the best being the enemy of the good, where a positive effort is discouraged because if our game was less broken than it is then it wouldn't be necessary. We all know that the development pace is very slow, that it is difficult to do major refactoring in the code, and that in the current climate there would likely be no agreement on what "sane defaults" should be (or it would have happened long before now). So realistically, as long as this game is dying a long, painful death, with little actual progress toward saving it, community-provided aids that could help people get up to speed (which do not require programming skill to create) should be welcomed, not discouraged, even if they are a crutch that we shouldn't ideally need.

I can say my suggestion is small and it isn't perfect, but it is for an improvement over what we currently got.

To summarize my point: We have confusing game play in HTF, we have sub-optimal scoring in all custom game modes. We can at least prevent players from losing points needlessly. At very least, it will be a bit better and less discouraging.

-Zehra