Why credit sharing is bad for gameplay

[benmachine]

Hi guys,

I'm posting this here because I honestly think that some people are so used to /share and /donate that they haven't even thought about what it implies for the game, and I think its introduction has made many Tremulous servers a great deal less fun to play, even for those who believe it to be a good idea.

Here is a brief list of the reasons I believe credit redistribution systems such as share to be detrimental to Tremulous:
1. It encourages camping at home since you no longer need to leave the base to get a luci
2. It makes it significantly easier for single players to determine the outcome of a game. This not only makes the team balance more volatile and therefore less interesting, it also means that real teamplay, i.e. taking a leading role in commanding a co-ordinated assault, is far less important to victory.
3. It discourages newer players (and older ones too) to learn how to use all classes and weapons effectively since they can just rifle or dretch until their wage packet comes around
4. It makes it much, much harder to defeat a skilled enemy player or make a dramatic comeback from a disadvantaged position since the elites of the team can farm credits from their teammates, effectively neutering the 2000 credit cap (which is there for balance, not technical reasons). This makes games less dynamic and exciting.
5. It encourages killwhoring and feeder farming as a tactic to support a team, and therefore makes kamikaze runs and base assaults less appealing as a strategy - these being the very elements that make many games so interesting, challenging, and entertaining to play.
6. It completely changes the operation of several major game mechanics and plays merry havoc with the delicate balance of Tremulous without any concern for what effects will result.

Yeah, so that summarises my views. I hope this thread will help server owners to think twice about their allowShare setting, and maybe for players to think about playing Tremulous more often 'as it was intended'.

Out of interest, qstat reports that of the 77 servers that report a value for g_allowShare in their serverinfo, 13 have it disabled and 64 enabled. Those 13 are:

Code: [Select]

[The Void]
I.T.A. Prolinux - powered by servergame.net
++Beer Garden++ Tremulous
Brothers In Arms {B|A}
~Adrenaline
 HighBp Trem
PureTremulous
PureTremulous 2
PureTremulous 3
 ATCS+@tm
 Public@tm
The Linker's Servermaybe you should drop by and see how you like it
(also if you count you may note that there are only twelve names listed there. Guess which server is the thirteenth?)

love and kisses,
benmachine

[zybork]

Preamble: Just to easify the whole thing, I will refer to credits or evos as "revenues" from now on.

What you are can be described with just one word - wrong.

Meanwhile, I do not play on servers anymore that have sharing disabled. Why? Because without sharing, no teamplay is possible, and any team turns out to be just a group of lone heroes (or losers, respectively ), but not a team. Why?

• Sharing off discourages players from building, because they know they will not have much revenues later in the game.
• Sharing off encourages feeding, because even a rifleman or a dretch will go out for kill, just to get revenues no matter the cost, therefore feeding the opponent team.
• Sharing off weakens defences, because you have to go out killing just to get better weapons.
• Sharing off makes you camp. Nobody with common sense will go out as a rifleman when tyrants are waiting in front of your base. So you are just there, waiting for a foe to near so that you can shoot him.
• Sometimes, you are not lucky - you get killed three times in a row. Then, you are out of revenues. What do you to then? Right: You camp! Or you ask for revenues, get them, and go out again!
• Sharing enables you to teamwork better, to be more tactical: If you are en excellent dretch and take down half a dozen humans by yourself, what do you do with your credits? If you are an excellent goon or so and are unlucky, get killed a few times in a row, what do you do? Without sharing, whatever your teammates do is not that important as it is with sharing on.
• Sharing is good for teamwork for another reason: It does not condemn the unskilled player to eternal riflemanship or dretchendom - he can get revenues from other players and try out some things. I got a lot of my skills in that game because somebody once donated me something and said: Enjoy yourself, try out this or that. I did - without having to fear that I lose my hard earned revenues too easily and hardly ever get those again. My skills increased dramatically the time I avoided servers with share off.
• Never forget one thing: Sharing works for both teams!
• Sharing is also good for teamwork, because it enables players to remain what they are best in or - more important - they like most (games are mainly for fun, still, never forget that!), sharing makes it less important if you unluckily get killed too many times.
• Apropos luck: I cannot stress this too much: Even the best player can run out of revenues. With sharing turned off, he is f...ed. Sharing on makes skills more important than luck.
• Sharing is teamwork! It is a very social thing, it glues the team together. You feel gratitude for someone who shared you some revenues, and you are willing to cooperate more. This is a very important factor!
• Sharing off makes you camp. When I have maximum revenues, why should I run into enemy fire/claws and lose it? I have nothing to gain, I can only lose something. But then, well, I can share away some revenues, and go out again.
• Sharing makes the team more important than the single player, because you have a kind of a collective pool of revenues one can pay in and one can get paid out of it. I don't want to miss it.
• I do not play on servers with share turned off. It sucks. It is antisocial. I avoid it.

Even today I used sharing: I knew I am not good being a tyrant in a certain map, but some were. I helped them by dretching the humans out of corners they could not reach and got evos for that, of course. They hardly ever cut one down because humans fled into those corners, but I needed them to drive players away from the long paths where they could easily gun me down. Whenever one of them got down, I shared, he ranted again, and we continued our succesful teamwork.

Sharing means teamwork, sharing means skills get more important than luck, if sharing is turned off on a server, I do not go there.

[Kaleo]

Shareing is good for some things, and bad for more.

[BunnyTheLifeguard]

blablablablabla

No.

[Kaleo]

blablablablabla

No.

+1

[techhead]

Shareing is good for some things, and bad for more.

QFT.
Anonymous credit overflow is my only serious suggestion for public servers, on the subject.

[David]

Stuff

Congratulations on contradicting yourself, spouting irrelevant and pointless things, and saying absolutely nothing of substance.
Come back when you have a point.

[zybork]

I know, I write too fast - slow readers cannot read it. But here's something for you:

Some people are jerks. You can't play with them with sharing turned on, you can't play with them with sharing turned off. But with those who are not jerks, sharing is something good.

[Death On Ice]

Guess: MGDev

[Circle]

I'm pretty sure alien/human are interchangeable, please note if i'm wrong.

# Sharing off discourages players from building, because they know they will not have much revenues later in the game.

You either suck at building and like to suicide, or have never touched a conkit.

After not dying for 2 minutes, you get a 175 credit paycheck or an evolve. << Since you must now know about this... I refer back to my statement above.

Sharing off encourages feeding, because even a rifleman or a dretch will go out for kill, just to get revenues no matter the cost, therefore feeding the opponent team.

You learn to get that 2% dretch skill to 3%.
^
I'm sure you did read the benmach... oh wait, you didn't

taking a leading role in commanding a co-ordinated assault, is far less important to victory.

^
The "leader" is in front, he is "leading" the poor riflemen. He uses his "leading" skills to either take the blows, or dodge the alien. Typically, the poor riflemen gets some amount of credits even if s/he didn't kill the alien.

Sharing off weakens defences, because you have to go out killing just to get better weapons.

+ It creates an element of stratagy into this FPS game.
+ This is called Tremulous, not Campulous, you are trying to kill the other teams base, not to just camp and defend the whole game.

Sharing off makes you camp. Nobody with common sense will go out as a rifleman when tyrants are waiting in front of your base. So you are just there, waiting for a foe to near so that you can shoot him.

I will follow the leader out.

Sometimes, you are not lucky - you get killed three times in a row. Then, you are out of revenues. What do you to then? Right: You camp! Or you ask for revenues, get them, and go out again!

.. You tell them not to feed, but you ask them to feed.
If you die 3 times, odds are that the other player is better then you.. so it turn you are wasting team funds.

Sharing is good for teamwork for another reason: It does not condemn the unskilled player to eternal riflemanship or dretchendom - he can get revenues from other players and try out some things. I got a lot of my skills in that game because somebody once donated me something and said: Enjoy yourself, try out this or that. I did - without having to fear that I lose my hard earned revenues too easily and hardly ever get those again. My skills increased dramatically the time I avoided servers with share off.

2 minutes.. pow, a 175 credit paycheck and/or an evolve. OR, you follow the player who has the "leading role" and then you leech off his kills.

Sharing is also good for teamwork, because it enables players to remain what they are best in or - more important - they like most (games are mainly for fun, still, never forget that!), sharing makes it less important if you unluckily get killed too many times.

So you are asking players to only do things they are good at and not improve on their weaknesses. f33d me more!

Apropos luck: I cannot stress this too much: Even the best player can run out of revenues. With sharing turned off, he is f...ed. Sharing on makes skills more important than luck.

Obviously, if he is the best, he can get more money. He doesn't suddenly become worse because he is poor, he can still shoot and dodge, no?

# Sharing off makes you camp. When I have maximum revenues, why should I run into enemy fire/claws and lose it? I have nothing to gain, I can only lose something. But then, well, I can share away some revenues, and go out again.

Again, this is called Tremulous not Campulous.
+Yes. with 2k credits, you can go kill the alien base without worry because you have a something to get you back on your feet.
--
I may have misread or misinterpreted something that you have said.
buuut

I know, I write too fast - slow readers cannot read it. But here's something for you:

[Rabbitt]

Guess: MGDev

WRONG !


Answer is BenMachines own server is the 13th server with no shared enabled.

[Kaleo]

I'm sure you did read the benmach... oh wait, you didn't

I lol'd

[kevlarman]

Guess: MGDev

WRONG !


Answer is BenMachines own server is the 13th server with no shared enabled.

mgdev doesn't have share anywhere in the code, and therefore doesn't have a cvar to enable it. benmachine doesn't have his own server afaik. the 13th server is satgnu, the original nameless server.

[Lakitu7]

It is no surprise to anyone that I agree with this thread completely.

Out of interest, qstat reports that of the 77 servers that report a value for g_allowShare in their serverinfo

Hooray for my qvm and things forked from it

I like how 8 of the 13 are run by MG, hosted by MG, or have multiple admins who are members of MG. A big thank you goes out to all servers who leave share off, for not contributing to the game's continued decline toward a strategy-devoid twich FPS.

[edit] Forgot that the unlisted one is MG as well.

[Undeference]

Out of interest, qstat reports that of the 77 servers that report a value for g_allowShare in their serverinfo, 13 have it disabled and 64 enabled. Those 13 are:

What about the other 100+?

Sharing off weakens defences, because you have to go out killing just to get better weapons.

That is by far the most compelling reason credit sharing is bad in this thread so far.

[Amanieu]

Well.... you have those, but also 80% of the servers, which are either:
A) Run on a 1.1 trem client
B) Run on a 1.1 trem server with stock qvm
C) Have a qvm that does not have share
I think most servers fit into A or B, and then servers like MGDev go into C, but there aren't many.

[player1]

@benmachine:



@zybork:

[Diggs]

Hmmm....

Zybork:  4-5 times you repeat that sharing is teamwork.  Are you trying to convince yourself or others?  Since you don't play on non-share servers obviously you have lost the perspective of how sharing discourages teamwork.  Share servers have one or two killwores that go off by themselves and supply "revenue" to the rest of the team camping back at base singing Kum-By-Ya.  This is not teamwork. 

Non-share servers have groups of players, usually organized by a leader going out to fight together.  They know this is the only way they can be effective and get "revenue".  This is teamwork.

I have to agree with Ben, L7 and others that sharing has really contributed to a decline in the strategies and gameplay of Tremulous.  I see players join a non-share server, begging for donations and then whining and throwing a fit when they find out they can't mouch off another players skills.  It is disappointing, but then again, this is just my $0.02.

[khalsa]

http://www.mercenariesguild.net/forum/index.php?topic=704.msg6400

Khalsa

[Metsjeesus]

If sharing off, then mostly aliens grow big and humans have no money and it ends like humans have no armory.

By me, sharing is important factor if you hunt tyrs and goons.
If tyr kills 1 chaingunner and dies, humans profit from it.
If tyr kills 2 chaingunners and dies, aliens profit from it.

Mostly, teamleader dies first, so he gets less amount of cash back and cant buy bs+chaingun. 
Mostly im second chaingunner, i get most of the cash and i survive.
If sharing is on, i heal in medi and share to teamleader cash so that we can rush as a same team again. Same All got same setup or better.
if sharing is off, i heal on medi and must be teamleader next rush. Difference is, teammates have now less firepower because lack of money. 
So i have bigger chance to die and aliens have bigger chance to kill me and my teammates.
2-3 failed rushes like this in row, and aliens can freely snipe all buildings, game over.


Mostly, thats the reason why alien won often then humans, slowly draining all cash and feeding on unarmed humies. Sharing gives humans a better chance to stay as a good team.

Mostly i like social aspect of sharing, i give only money if they buy what i say and come with me. It works better then yelling "team guys, wait for team".

[Circle]

Mostly, thats the reason why alien won often then humans, slowly draining all cash and feeding on unarmed humies. Sharing gives humans a better chance to stay as a good team.

Stratagy aspect of Tremulous.
-->
Pro have rant
--->
Pro has 9 evolves
--->
Pro KillWhores
--->
1 rant
--->
Good humans sneak around, kill dretches
--->
balance of power restored
.
Instead of:
Pro rant killwhores
--->
Many rant
--->
Many rifle
--->
rifle ded

[benmachine]

mgdev doesn't have share anywhere in the code, and therefore doesn't have a cvar to enable it.

true

benmachine doesn't have his own server afaik.

also true

the 13th server is satgnu, the original nameless server.

this was also my guess.

Undeference: I dunno. I used all the information available to me.
player1: *hugs*
Khalsa: I seem to recall sending that link to a friend of mine who told me they needed an account to read it. Yeah, the points I posted here were basically the same points I posted there, only perhaps a little more fleshed out.

I'm very pleased to see the amount of agreement in this thread, I was under the impression I was in the minority

Metsjeesus: your logic seems incredibly specific. What about stages 1 and 2? What about lucis, shotguns, bigger teams, other tactics? You can't pretend that every skirmish ends the same way.

[khalsa]

Benmachine, That changed some time ago. Check again >.<



Khalsa

[Revan]

* Revan donates his evos/credits all the time

[Prince_Andrei]

I think both share servers and no share servers have problems. I really don't like the camping that share causes. However, some of that is due to donate, which is an abomination. Likewise, I don't like the feeding that no share causes. The answer might be somewhere in the middle. On no share servers, I'd like to see increased spawn times for frequent feeders. It should be impossible for a single player to wreck a game by dying 10 times in the first 5 minutes.

On share servers, I'd like to see donate disabled and share limited. Share could work with a 50% penalty. Perhaps an individual player could share only 2 or 3 times per game. Then it could be used strategically. On share servers, non-builders should not get free credits for camping for 2 minutes.

[ThePyro]

I have mixed feelings about sharing.  On the one hand, games with no sharing tend to yield more interesting and enjoyable situations.  But on the other hand, without sharing I'm forced to deal with a rather unfortable conclusion: in order for my team to win, I must kill the enemy less.

I can already hear some of you thinking, "Wait, you have to kill them less?  How's that work?"

Simply put (and I hope this doesn't come off as too arrogant), I'm pretty good at Tremulous.  Not the best, of course... but I tend to kill the enemy.  A lot.  The problem is that, when sharing is turned off, I either have to hold myself back or my teammates receive almost zero income.  And while I may be very skilled at killing humans, assaulting their base requires a team effort...

Thus you end up with a war-game in which killing the enemy is not necessarily a good thing, because you could be hurting your teammates.  With sharing turned on, however, I don't have to worry about holding back.  I can donate excess funds to teammates, who can then assist with base assaults.

An interesting solution would be to divide all income evenly, regardless of who gets a kill, and then forbid sharing between teammates.  I don't know how well that would work, but I'd like to try it some time

[Plague]

What a load.

All this debate about whether share is slowly killing the strategy involved in Tremulous is Pure Nonsense.

There are no numbers whatsoever that share has somehow increased camping or complacency, it's merely an individual perception or else one player hears it from another and it solidifies into fact. Lets make a fairly large assumption in assuming share has made it easier to obtain a higher credit- or evo-costing weapon/upgrade/class. So what? After all, it's not what weapon or class you currently have, it's how you use that and for what purpose. Many of the top-tier players (note of clarification: those that I know, almost exclusively NA) have little concern whether share is enabled or not, as they are justifiably secure in the knowledge that they have the skills to use any or most of the available weapons/upgrades/classes at hand to the teams benefit.  If you want to peg individual player traits, such as camping, kill-whoring, feeding etc. on share you can. But when that same player is still camping, kill-whoring, and feeding without share, I hope the point has been made that such a minor game element like share will not make or break a player, how they choose to play the game will. 

In the end, we're left arguing over what should be a non-issue.  Different players have different preferences, and if they're faced with a server that is in conflict with those set preferences - leave. The fact that you're (the reader, not the OP of the thread or any respondents in particular) not being forced to play on a specific server, use a specific QVM, et cetera should in theory negate any right to complain about something like share, and yet invariably complaints arise. There are many things I don't like, whether they're related to Tremulous or not. I hardly feel compelled to stand in front of the Tremulous community and arrogantly act like I can tell the community what they should or should not condone. Like it or not, share has quickly become accepted as a common setting, and although not everyone is in full agreement with it, any decision to remove it from the QVM's or source trunks that currently have support for share would be seen as more antagonistic than meaningful.  After all, it is just a game. 

[_Equilibrium_]

I have no trouble getting credits/evos on non-share servers. The rifle and dretch are very effective starting classes. I don't understand why people think they can't get evos/creds without their team throwing it at them. What are you doing on non-share servers: sitting in base staring at a wall while complaining there there is no share? GO FIGHT! Why do you think that just because your teammates have full credits/evos and you have none, that it is not a team game anymore? Tremulous did not start with share. Do you think that there was no teamwork for all those months without share?


Personally, I would not mind having a few scrims with share off as well.

[zybork]

Metsjesus: Full ack!

Plague: Even more ack!

What pisses me off about those guys who always yell, "uh, sharing is so bad, it causes camping, feeding, and skin cancer" is the fact that most of them simply don't get the fact that sharing is something nobody forces you to do, and, the hell with it, I have to quote myself, maybe none of you criticists read my posts:

Some people are jerks. You can't play with them with sharing turned on, you can't play with them with sharing turned off.

Sharing gives you more possibilites, possibilites that are great! And I wasted a lot of time playing on share-off-servers, until I found out about the benefits of it. Those benefits have their cause in a few facts those "sharing-causes-cancer"-guys did not realize yet:

• In no way does the amount of revenues you get have anything todo with your social skills or good teamwork, respectively.
• You do not necessarily get killed (=lose revenues), because you are a bad. Sometimes you are just unlucky.
• The amount of revenues you get does not necessarily match the level of your skills.

Those are - flaws in the game. Sharing is the way of getting around on this flaws. People who work with you, who are good, team-oriented players, you share to. Jerks, killwhores, uber-campers... won't never get nothing from me.

When I still played on those share-off servers, I used to camp a lot - because I was afraif of losing my credits. So I ended camping, hoping for lucky kills. When I got killed, I grunted, oh no! Not again! Now I have to start all over again - camping for 10 minutes, hoping for dretch kills... Senseless!

Now I avoid share-off-servers, and live happily ever since. On share-enabled servers I experienced much less camping, killwhoring, and morons in general.

Hey you share-off-guys: If you don't understand it, if you don't like it, then just don't do it! But don't get on my nerves complaining about it...

[techhead]

What share has definitely increased is people joining servers and almost immediately starting to ask for anywhere up to 5 evolve points, often without the capability to earn a single one using a dretch. What is worse, people often ask this regardless of whether share is enabled or disabled. One of the consolations of playing on share-enabled servers is the ability to make these people shut up. If they take it and die, I can ask them what happened to the last 5 I gave them.

I would wholeheartedly support a patch that made people only able to receive via share a maximum value equal to half as much as they have earned by shooting enemies.