I am excited to see that this issue has taken on a life force on the forums. when the stats started, it was a tad frustrating getting all my points stripped by some guy who is popping his head in to the svr for an hour or so and then leave forever to never be able to get my pts back. But now, its all gravy.

I really feel the capture points is right on the mark and should be the glue holding the stats scheme together as it truly encourages capping as opposed to killing. The goal is to take down the map, not to take down the other players per se (of course to take down the points u have to murder fools) and i feel having higher points for capping encourages this kind of game play which will ultimately adhere a team together in an effort to take the points faster and harder to get those 50 points. Centering the points around capping definately makes the game more fun and for the skilled players who can actually cap, it boosts them in the ranks quickly.

Now i can totally see how tony would be upset with the medic getting points quickly. Simply for getting the kill assist irregardless of the victims rank gets the medic 5 points, so if the HW or whoever is being charged takes out 5 noobs, the attacker gets 5 points and maybe loses 10 for dying (net loss of 5 points) whereas the medic gets 25 points and loses 10 for dying (net gain 15 points). It can seem pretty frustrating for a non-healer to see the guy in the back taking more points for the effort than you are when all he does is make you live a little longer without doing any of the damage himself. BUT, i feel the medic class needs this incentive to play or more and more people will be bitching and moaning having to be the medic. Medics are vital but arent the most fun class to play. Allowing for medics to rise thru the ranks faster is a good thing i say, it keeps people playing that class.

The way i see it, tempest 2 is NEVER empty (well whenever i get on which is like all hours), and this didnt start happening til the servers were blessed with the statsx addition. People like to see how theyre doing esp relative to other players. People wanna know quatitatively if theyre doing better or worse whether or not one's skill can be ultimately determined by stats (not too sure what else you could use to tell which players are better than others... but apparently there is something innate in stats philosophy that makes it evil as people are playing for something more than just for fun but for an incentive (which is fun to obtain i say)). "Stats divide players" "stats make people only want one thing, more stats" "Its not fun when everyone is playing for a rank" THESE ARE WORDS SPOKEN BY LAZY PEOPLE WHO SUCK AT TF2. I know deep down in a perfect world, where liberals run everything and its all about how you feel and everyone is the same and all that bullshit ,not having stats is a good thing as it would disallow elitism on the servers but as we all know, liberalism is bawlshit and people NEED INCENTIVES TO BETTER THEMSELVES even if its as simple as a few numbers on a TF2 server. People take pride in their being uniquely better than others and having a stats system satiates this desire in players. whats more, these skilled players that we attract get to play other dedicated and skilled players looking to better their rank elevating the level of play making EVERYONE better.

Just go look in another server, everyone sucks and theyre all playing grab ass talking bout how shitty Hydro is whereas when we play hydro, people complain only long enough to get fucking killed and lose points. RANK BABY! RANK! its all about RANK!

Being in the top 20, I know exactly how it feels. Which is why I posted.

Ahhh, sweet vindication........... ;-)

Now that that's out of my system, I once again reiterate my strong opposition to a system that does anything but incentivize people to keep playing on our servers. As some wise person once said (I forget who), the point of the whole thing is really just to give people a reason to keep coming back, less a measure of any skill or amount of playing. And whether it's someone in the top 20 or someone who just hit 16k, losing > 25 points on a single death on any map stings, and enough of it can discourage that person from playing certain riskier classes, or even to consider playing somewhere else entirely when they feel frustrated enough.

Quick refresher: According to the HLSTATSX help section, points are calculated as such:

  Killer Points = Killer Points + (Victim Points / Killer Points)
                 × Weapon Modifier × 5

  Victim Points = Victim Points - (Victim Points / Killer Points)
                 × Weapon Modifier × 5

My proposal is to keep the way a Killer's points are calculated, just as it is. An 8,000 point player will still get the 40-50+ points for their kill, and I'd even support raising that 50 point cap as well (killing a top 20 = 100 points to the Killer?). But lower the Extra Modifier in the Victim Point calculation (currently 5). As you can see by my slightly outdated point calculation (originally posted here)...

...the lower the Extra Modifier, the more normalized the point loss, all the way down to 0 points lost no matter who kills you. While I'd honestly be just fine with no one ever losing points (Extra Modifier = 0), simply lowering it to 3 or 2 would still allow lower ranked players to gain while not discouraging higher ranked players as greatly.

And before anyone thinks to turn this into another "Endyss is losing too many points and whining about it," I literally have no personal incentive in the battle this time. I'm leaving the country on Sunday for four months with nothing but a laptop. I've been fiddling with it trying to get it to play TF2 but it's more of a portable than gaming beast, and even if it could there's no guarantee I'll have an acceptable ping where I'm going. Think of my advocacy here as just one last attempt to express a point I feel strongly about on these servers I have very much enjoyed.