blue - Base Comm Badge: 10+ hours commanding
silver - Pro Comm Badge: 100+ hours commanding
gold - Supreme Comm Badge: 500+ hours commanding
done.
And were back to grinding hours.
I really, really don't like the idea of anything to do with grinding. You aren't asking the player to accomplish anything, just to sit there and put the time in. Plus once you get your 500 hour badge then what, make a 2000 hour platinum badge? How about after that, what then? The most important thing is to make the people who are good at commanding KEEP commanding indefinitely.
The person with that 500 hour badge is the one you want to command MOST, but once he has the badge there is literally no reason for him to keep going. You can make a badge with an unobtainable number of hours, but that won't motivate most people who can realize that it is unobtainable and is likely to backfire to the point of people no longer caring about working for the lesser badges because they know they can't get the best one.
That's to say nothing at all about people sitting in the chair in a private server AFKing until they get their badge. It might be more complicated than just starting a server and sitting there, but it will still get done.
blue - Base Comm Badge: 10+ hours commanding
silver - Pro Comm Badge: 100+ hours commanding
gold - Supreme Comm Badge: 500+ hours commanding
done.
And were back to grinding hours.
I really, really don't like the idea of anything to do with grinding. You aren't asking the player to accomplish anything, just to sit there and put the time in. Plus once you get your 500 hour badge then what, make a 2000 hour platinum badge? How about after that, what then? The most important thing is to make the people who are good at commanding KEEP commanding indefinitely.
(...)
The bold and underlined : Hell no!!
If a player has a badge (whatever the theme) doesn't mean he should do it forever. It wouldn't help get new commanders and making bigger and bigger the gap between experienced commander and field unit. This logic forbid new comers to develop and get great a commanding.
Commanders :
-(even commanders at heart) also enjoy a good game on the field.
-should rest a little from time to time because it is stressful enough. Especially when they provide a service nobody is willing to do (= the curse). Meaning half the team will do the necessary while the others are "playing" (not to say jerking around).
-Should be able to learn and progress with proper tool. No badge will teach anything.
blue - Base Comm Badge: 10+ hours commanding
silver - Pro Comm Badge: 100+ hours commanding
gold - Supreme Comm Badge: 500+ hours commanding
done.
And were back to grinding hours.
I really, really don't like the idea of anything to do with grinding. You aren't asking the player to accomplish anything, just to sit there and put the time in. Plus once you get your 500 hour badge then what, make a 2000 hour platinum badge? How about after that, what then? The most important thing is to make the people who are good at commanding KEEP commanding indefinitely.
(...)
The bold and underlined : Hell no!!
If a player has a badge (whatever the theme) doesn't mean he should do it forever. It wouldn't help get new commanders and making bigger and bigger the gap between experienced commander and field unit. This logic forbid new comers to develop and get great a commanding.
Commanders :
-(even commanders at heart) also enjoy a good game on the field.
-should rest a little from time to time because it is stressful enough. Especially when they provide a service nobody is willing to do (= the curse). Meaning half the team will do the necessary while the others are "playing" (not to say jerking around).
-Should be able to learn and progress with proper tool. No badge will teach anything.
The point is to have a good com in the chair as often as possible, not to have the same person in the chair every game forever and/or force one person to com every game. Just to motivate someone who is good at it to keep doing it.
This is why I was for the 2hours/3wins per week system. It's far from being "required every game", it just keeps people coming back regularly.
Yeah that is just the GENERAL IDEA, i dont mind if the hours are:
25, 50, 100 or
100, 200, 300
as long there is 3 distinct badges to tell them apart i am happy i bet i would have insta-gold as soon this rolls out hehe. quick edit but here is an example what it could look like:
the bronze is maby a bit hard to read on the alien side so maby keep format BLUE, SILVER, GOLD? blue being plastic first until we move on to the metal medals hehe
blue - Base Comm Badge: 10+ hours commanding
silver - Pro Comm Badge: 100+ hours commanding
gold - Supreme Comm Badge: 500+ hours commanding
done.
And were back to grinding hours.
I really, really don't like the idea of anything to do with grinding. You aren't asking the player to accomplish anything, just to sit there and put the time in. Plus once you get your 500 hour badge then what, make a 2000 hour platinum badge? How about after that, what then? The most important thing is to make the people who are good at commanding KEEP commanding indefinitely.
(...)
The bold and underlined : Hell no!!
If a player has a badge (whatever the theme) doesn't mean he should do it forever. It wouldn't help get new commanders and making bigger and bigger the gap between experienced commander and field unit. This logic forbid new comers to develop and get great a commanding.
Commanders :
-(even commanders at heart) also enjoy a good game on the field.
-should rest a little from time to time because it is stressful enough. Especially when they provide a service nobody is willing to do (= the curse). Meaning half the team will do the necessary while the others are "playing" (not to say jerking around).
-Should be able to learn and progress with proper tool. No badge will teach anything.
The point is to have a good com in the chair as often as possible, not to have the same person in the chair every game forever and/or force one person to com every game. Just to motivate someone who is good at it to keep doing it.
This is why I was for the 2hours/3wins per week system. It's far from being "required every game", it just keeps people coming back regularly.
Ask ppl to choose between a SUV with full options and an old Honda Civic... You get the point. Leave the commanders alone. It's NOT because one has a better badge that the whole team will play better. If no one told you (all ppl): A commander is as good as his men !.
This badge types will never encourage people to get in the chair and get better at it. Grinding maybe. Making the whole thing better not really.
Because commanders:
1/ Don't have the same motivations. A badge ? ... whatever man. On public servers, commanders are starving from teamwork scarcity. In fact it would be better if it was commanders to distribute points to players who did well. I'm sure i would see only one row, bellies sucked in, and people willing to do as told.
2/ As said the commander is as good as the team. If they don't want to do it other than being bored, or exhausted, is probably they don't trust their own team. Which leads to 1.
With what is proposed; it would be the same all over again. I quote the usual stuff: "Hey you got 3 commanders badges on your team and one is gold, get a com already!".
You want good commander in the chair ? (General you)
-Make some. Help some new guys to try, test to get the necessary things understood.
-Play better to help them not pouring a medpack rain on you which could be used on other things.
-Look at your map. You will see where the commander wants you to go. So he won't loose time check and say it.
-Get in the chair yourself. 1 This game needs commanders. And Segundo, look at the 3 bullets above with the commander point of view after a game (eventually lost). You will probably understand why commanders are reluctant to go in.
Teamwork is above any commander badge IMO. There's no badge for it... unfortunately.
I dont even get what the commander badge is meant to achieve anyway.
So you know there's an experienced commander in the chair?
I know many commanders that are experienced but completely incompetent.
At the moment it's more like, if you see someone without a badge in the chair, your finger hovers over 'eject' until the RTs and the arms lab comes down.
I think advanced combadges would be intresting to get a little more motivation to go com. It's verry hard to stay motivated to game wich have no sort of progresssystem.
-Get new players doing com
-Get good coms
-Motivate any people to go com
With combadges we may can motivate some players. The other points are problems of the community you can't solve with badges or progress. Get a mic if u wanna cause u need to teamplay, be willing to learn, be nice to beginners and give them a chance as long they comunicate with you and allready played against bots. And over all players need to understand it's a teamplaygame. When the team doesn't listen they need to learn it the hard way and loose within 10mins.
it could also lead to abuse, which could lead to people not looking at commander badges and going "oh look, an experienced commander".
What kinds of abuse?
If you mean people getting all their friends to commend them, or creating fake accounts to commend themselves... You could hardcap it.
Orrrr even: Make it so in any one match, players can commend the commander. Only if a certain number of players (half the team? something like that) commend the commander will a +1 be added to their commendations counter.
You could also cap the number of times any particular player can commend any other individual, so people playing regularly with a group of friends dont rack up >9000 commendations because their whole team commends them every game.
Think I'm onto something here... This idea needs to be given more air-time fo sho
I dont even get what the commander badge is meant to achieve anyway.
So you know there's an experienced commander in the chair?
I know many commanders that are experienced but completely incompetent.
At the moment it's more like, if you see someone without a badge in the chair, your finger hovers over 'eject' until the RTs and the arms lab comes down.
Sounds like good advice regardless of whether they have the badge or not. If the badges help the team coordinate an eject vote a little bit faster than that's a big help.
And don't even start on "give the newbie some time". There are plenty of ways to figure out com controls (even click controls) and if you haven't had the importance of RTs (and their locations) drilled into you by the time you step in the chair you haven't spent enough time on the ground yet. It's after that first step that a bit of patience is allowed to come into play. I wouldn't be so harsh about the arms lab though, any of the available choices (arms lab, armory, robo, IP) is fine for a pub.
I'm not trying to be hard on someone who is learning, but they need some kind of starting point before we can teach them.
The problem I see is that all the people who don't have the badge are afraid to go into the chair *myself included* because everyone yells at them for not having a badge, even if they are decent or just learning. While a comm who has a badge can just get in and be absolutely horrible, people don't care as long as they have a badge. (Also I'm afraid of doing bad and having everyone yelling at me for sucking )
The problem I see is that all the people who don't have the badge are afraid to go into the chair *myself included* because everyone yells at them for not having a badge, even if they are decent or just learning. While a comm who has a badge can just get in and be absolutely horrible, people don't care as long as they have a badge. (Also I'm afraid of doing bad and having everyone yelling at me for sucking )
If you're that afraid of being yelled at you probably shouldn't com. Even if you are good, you are still going to get yelled at.
@Warrior_of_katz
On our server it's not because they don't have a com badge. When we have someone in the chair with no combadge we ask him if he had gathered some experience by commanding bots or watching some videos. In 90% of all cases there is not even a response --> Eject.
I don't have a problem with loosing a game cause we have a newbie com, but i hate it when it's because he had no idea what to do and don't communicate at all. I commanded about 8 games against bots (set marine difficulty to easy, it will be harder for you) to have some preparation and don't f*ck up everyones game. And the best at all is when u have a Mic. Use it!
I think that both methods are wrong. Win/lose ratio and hours total. If its a win/lose ppl will only comm if thay know thay have a very good team (stacked teams), if its all about time ppl will just do few rounds as comm even if thay sux (bad commanders not yet ready for the job any consequences and thats bad).
It should be a vote thing! Your team can vote if you did good or bad even if the team lost. Your team will judge Commander if he should receive a point or a point should be taken.
Points should not be less then zero. Second thing the icon should be changed NS2Stats have Steam Cards icon which are identical with the comm badge! Thats why i made a new one.
1 - 10 Point 11 -50 Point 51 - 200 Point 200 - 500 Point 500+ Point
And this is how the vote system should look in my opinion.
Good/Bad/Neutral and average would say if a comm received a point (+1) or not...
Commander should get a feedback on votes to.
I don't think it should be possible/accessible to give negative ratings for commanders. It should simply be a choice between commending for exceptional commanding, or nothing.
If you can neg other people, that just simply provides too many opportunities for being an asshole.
It might be worth weighting "was this comm good?" votes based on the skill rating of the voting player. Rookies are going to upvote commanders that are slightly better than them, but decent players might straight-out eject the comm for doing 'rookie strats'.
I'd say that sometimes less is more. A simple colored-tier badge system -still based on commanding time only- would simply be an upgrade to what we currently have. It would let the teams know who are the experienced commanders and could help yield more balanced games.
Will some people grind the gold badge? Perhaps, but IMO those people would grind stats / achievements / badges / whatever anyways, and it's not like the badge confers any advantage if they do.
I think that while voting is a good idea on paper it would just complicate things, and grading would differ quite a lot depending on the result of the game (win or loss) and the experience of the voter when compared to the experience of the comm. It could dissuade people from going in the chair and right now I'd say that this is the last thing we want. Getting good comms in pub games, that communicate and actively try to do something on a team level, is already hard enough.
On a separate note, I remember seeing a video by Riot Games concerning how they approached player psychology in their games, trying to use tips in loading screens to explain players how a positive and teamworking mindset helps their team mates and themselves. They had great results. Loading times are already long enough in this game. Perhaps we could use this as a chance to give important tips, I.E.:
"When commanding try to call people by their names, they'll respond better."
"When comanding it's better to tell people in a specific room to do something instead of just saying 'some one go do this'"
"When playing on the field and regardless of the outcome remember to give some words of encouragement to your commander"
"Use voicechat to call out enemy movement and structures on the map, your team will love you for it"
"Don't spam the medpack / ammo request key. Help your commander be focused where he's needed!"
I suck at giving tips but I think you guys get the point. Other playtips could be used. "Check out the tutorial to learn how to walljump with the skulk to travel up to three times as fast! It's one of the key skills in the game". Etc.
I think that both methods are wrong. Win/lose ratio and hours total. If its a win/lose ppl will only comm if thay know thay have a very good team (stacked teams), if its all about time ppl will just do few rounds as comm even if thay sux (bad commanders not yet ready for the job any consequences and thats bad).
It should be a vote thing! Your team can vote if you did good or bad even if the team lost. Your team will judge Commander if he should receive a point or a point should be taken.
Points should not be less then zero. Second thing the icon should be changed NS2Stats have Steam Cards icon which are identical with the comm badge! Thats why i made a new one.
1 - 10 Point 11 -50 Point 51 - 200 Point 200 - 500 Point 500+ Point
And this is how the vote system should look in my opinion.
Good/Bad/Neutral and average would say if a comm received a point (+1) or not...
Commander should get a feedback on votes to.
And then when stupid assholes start to give bad point when they can't even understand that : RT up equals upgrades, i doubt these commanders would be willing to command these kind of teams. You totally reverted the thing. It should be commander to give evaluations on players not the contrary.
I would be willing to accept that from another commander. But you know what? When 2 commanders are talking it's never about that. It's about tips or something like: "i guess you couldn't beacon coz you end up throwing medpacks on these loons trying to kill a fade.".
Unless the commander is a total rookie and do nothing.
How on earth a field unit can have the same understanding of the game while the two points of view are different ?
First person Vs hovering the map. A player with only the first person view do not have all the information to evaluate the commanders decision. He doesn't have any clue about what is doing the commander and can be hateful about a medpack delivered too late. But guess what ? He was doing the same thing with other players on other targets.
How a field unit can judge (it's all about evaluation, isn't it) if he's not a commander in the first place ?
Usually the kind that avoids entering the chair is the kind that is clearly not aware about what the commander do and how he does that... And a commander that is providing a service for everybody should accept an evaluation from this guys ? Thank you but no thank you.
We all make mistakes, why should it be the commander to suffer alone from bad evaluation ?
If CDT would include that, i tell you, i'm not even entering the chair EVER. And i'm sure i'm not gonna be the only one. It's not difficult to see that it doesn't encourage AT ALL to do commander stuff. The thing is; it's one of the critical role in this game. No commander, no start.
The best we can do is to train commanders to make them progress in order to make sure they have the minimum required knowledge to ensure proper games (at least). No "Scoring" can do that.
@bleu:
Well; you already have some advice in the loading screen. Reading isn't the gamers thing. Videos could help though.
Every system that is based upon player feedback - whether it is upvoting / downvoting or just 'commending' and giving points - is subject to abuse and potentially unfair. I think some folks take the idea of a commander badge too seriously.
It's nothing mythical, no shiny halo, and currently all it stands for is: "That person spent 10-20 hours in the command chair already." - And that's as informative as you can possibly get. It just means that they're not new to commanding - it doesn't mean they're good at it.
If you want to measure and express the 'quality and skill' of a commander through points given by other players you may as well start considering the number of Facebook likes on an individual topic to be a trustworthy indicator of what's good and what is not. And we all know Justin is a talented and great singer based upon those numbers, right?
l like the idea of just using the time spent in the com chair to give out a different badge at certain levels; it's simple, it doesn't try to give the badge any deeper meaning that's open for dispute anyway, and it's easily measurable, including all the edge scenarios when your awesome commander has a connection issue 30 minutes into an epic game, and someone else takes over.
@Luchs Agree, too much thought and second guessing going into this.
(KISS) Keep it simple stupid! at the most have 3 tiers of badges like others have suggested based on the amount of hours,
Blue
Silver
Gold
It brings a healthy variation into the mix without bloating it all down with all of this "commander has to keep commanding to retain his badge", "point based solutions", "player feedback upvoting and downvoting" and unnecessary complications.
Sometimes too much insight and complex solutions is given to something that needs expanding if only by alittle.
Stick to what works and don't think too hard into it.
Yeah, keep it simple and never use a votingsystem. Too easy to abuse and I bet commanders get downvotes even when they did it all right. About every fifth game as commander I stand there with tied hands and can't do anything cause nobody defended/recap RT's, but all cry for upgrades... I don't care how many tiers are used, but i belive we need to be satisfied with playtime badges.
BTW: What about using the existing colors (Reinforced Colors, like WC Badges did)?
Blue, Silver, Gold, Diamond, Shadow?
@Hoeloe (Badges) Agreed, anything from 3 to 5 seems like a good compromise, having too many seems unnecessary.
(Commanding) Many games where you have done everything you possibly could do to instruct and guide the team but if you lose the team will blame you anyway (unless they are honest lol) which will result in being downvoted even though you done the right thing.
Sounds absurd that having free choice will have possible negative outcomes but this is the modern age we live in so having such a system will be open to abuse and sadly as such alternatives have to be presented.
Special Game mode for learning/teaching.
What about a game mode (like Pregame) for commander training: Fake game.
Rules could be we can't kill the first base, people train their aim and upgrade they usually don't use (alien), commander train their skills and shortcut use. So there is not stress for newcomers, no stat as it is fake.
Also this would a perfect time to explain the game mechanic to people. Helped by a special "you aim at the guy and use the talk only to this guy" (or only to those who are close) shortcut to explain something that others don't care about (or listening to someone else) will definitely help. Many aspect of the game could be taught without annoying the rest. This would allow 4 players to teach and deliver information to say 2 new players. Exponential isn't it?
It could be enabled by voting a "fake game session".
But... Would someone mod it ? CDT ?
The team at L*ckyf*ckers servers have a bot implementation if there are less than 5 players on the server. Only applies for marines though. Maybe implement it as a mod for newbies?
tired of seeing horrible commanders with commander badges just because they sat in chair long enough
Just like 'good commanders' are tired of horrible teams, and therefore don't hop in the com chair on pubs or rookie-friendly servers where the average player has roughly 20 hours of playtime.
Yet it motivates them to try, and the game is lacking commanders. If all you get are horrible coms, you may want to switch to a server with a higher skill average, or - at the very least - acknowledge that the team is accountable for winning and losing games just as much as the commander is.
"Don't spam the medpack / ammo request key. Help your commander be focused where he's needed!"
OMG yes, this is hands down the #1 tip that ALL players need to have drilled into their heads. Really it's so important it's the sort of thing that should be posted on the loading screen. I very rarely command, but every time I try to command Marines I am met with NONSTOP requests for meds, ammo, and orders.
Game I played yesterday had people constantly spamming requests so much I just gave up on trying to respond to any of them. The worst part is when they're asking for meds/ammo and are 2 feet from an armory, or they're spamming the request for orders while standing right next to multiple blueprints. Tried asking them to stop and explaining how they're making the commander's job a million times harder, but they just kept on spamming away.
Comments
silver - Pro Comm Badge: 100+ hours commanding
gold - Supreme Comm Badge: 500+ hours commanding
done.
That way bad commanders are unlikely to get the silver/gold badges, which would in turn make them more useful in identifying the good commanders.
Also why blue? Why not Bronze, Silver, Gold? Wouldn't that make more sense? lol
And were back to grinding hours.
I really, really don't like the idea of anything to do with grinding. You aren't asking the player to accomplish anything, just to sit there and put the time in. Plus once you get your 500 hour badge then what, make a 2000 hour platinum badge? How about after that, what then? The most important thing is to make the people who are good at commanding KEEP commanding indefinitely.
The person with that 500 hour badge is the one you want to command MOST, but once he has the badge there is literally no reason for him to keep going. You can make a badge with an unobtainable number of hours, but that won't motivate most people who can realize that it is unobtainable and is likely to backfire to the point of people no longer caring about working for the lesser badges because they know they can't get the best one.
That's to say nothing at all about people sitting in the chair in a private server AFKing until they get their badge. It might be more complicated than just starting a server and sitting there, but it will still get done.
current commander badge is blue.
The bold and underlined : Hell no!!
If a player has a badge (whatever the theme) doesn't mean he should do it forever. It wouldn't help get new commanders and making bigger and bigger the gap between experienced commander and field unit. This logic forbid new comers to develop and get great a commanding.
Commanders :
-(even commanders at heart) also enjoy a good game on the field.
-should rest a little from time to time because it is stressful enough. Especially when they provide a service nobody is willing to do (= the curse). Meaning half the team will do the necessary while the others are "playing" (not to say jerking around).
-Should be able to learn and progress with proper tool. No badge will teach anything.
The point is to have a good com in the chair as often as possible, not to have the same person in the chair every game forever and/or force one person to com every game. Just to motivate someone who is good at it to keep doing it.
This is why I was for the 2hours/3wins per week system. It's far from being "required every game", it just keeps people coming back regularly.
Yeah that is just the GENERAL IDEA, i dont mind if the hours are:
25, 50, 100 or
100, 200, 300
as long there is 3 distinct badges to tell them apart i am happy
the bronze is maby a bit hard to read on the alien side so maby keep format BLUE, SILVER, GOLD? blue being plastic first until we move on to the metal medals hehe
Ask ppl to choose between a SUV with full options and an old Honda Civic... You get the point. Leave the commanders alone. It's NOT because one has a better badge that the whole team will play better. If no one told you (all ppl): A commander is as good as his men !.
This badge types will never encourage people to get in the chair and get better at it. Grinding maybe. Making the whole thing better not really.
Because commanders:
1/ Don't have the same motivations. A badge ? ... whatever man. On public servers, commanders are starving from teamwork scarcity. In fact it would be better if it was commanders to distribute points to players who did well. I'm sure i would see only one row, bellies sucked in, and people willing to do as told.
2/ As said the commander is as good as the team. If they don't want to do it other than being bored, or exhausted, is probably they don't trust their own team. Which leads to 1.
With what is proposed; it would be the same all over again. I quote the usual stuff: "Hey you got 3 commanders badges on your team and one is gold, get a com already!".
You want good commander in the chair ? (General you)
-Make some. Help some new guys to try, test to get the necessary things understood.
-Play better to help them not pouring a medpack rain on you which could be used on other things.
-Look at your map. You will see where the commander wants you to go. So he won't loose time check and say it.
-Get in the chair yourself. 1 This game needs commanders. And Segundo, look at the 3 bullets above with the commander point of view after a game (eventually lost). You will probably understand why commanders are reluctant to go in.
Teamwork is above any commander badge IMO. There's no badge for it... unfortunately.
So you know there's an experienced commander in the chair?
I know many commanders that are experienced but completely incompetent.
At the moment it's more like, if you see someone without a badge in the chair, your finger hovers over 'eject' until the RTs and the arms lab comes down.
-Get new players doing com
-Get good coms
-Motivate any people to go com
With combadges we may can motivate some players. The other points are problems of the community you can't solve with badges or progress. Get a mic if u wanna cause u need to teamplay, be willing to learn, be nice to beginners and give them a chance as long they comunicate with you and allready played against bots. And over all players need to understand it's a teamplaygame. When the team doesn't listen they need to learn it the hard way and loose within 10mins.
What kinds of abuse?
If you mean people getting all their friends to commend them, or creating fake accounts to commend themselves... You could hardcap it.
Orrrr even: Make it so in any one match, players can commend the commander. Only if a certain number of players (half the team? something like that) commend the commander will a +1 be added to their commendations counter.
You could also cap the number of times any particular player can commend any other individual, so people playing regularly with a group of friends dont rack up >9000 commendations because their whole team commends them every game.
Think I'm onto something here... This idea needs to be given more air-time fo sho
Sounds like good advice regardless of whether they have the badge or not. If the badges help the team coordinate an eject vote a little bit faster than that's a big help.
And don't even start on "give the newbie some time". There are plenty of ways to figure out com controls (even click controls) and if you haven't had the importance of RTs (and their locations) drilled into you by the time you step in the chair you haven't spent enough time on the ground yet. It's after that first step that a bit of patience is allowed to come into play. I wouldn't be so harsh about the arms lab though, any of the available choices (arms lab, armory, robo, IP) is fine for a pub.
I'm not trying to be hard on someone who is learning, but they need some kind of starting point before we can teach them.
If you're that afraid of being yelled at you probably shouldn't com. Even if you are good, you are still going to get yelled at.
On our server it's not because they don't have a com badge. When we have someone in the chair with no combadge we ask him if he had gathered some experience by commanding bots or watching some videos. In 90% of all cases there is not even a response --> Eject.
I don't have a problem with loosing a game cause we have a newbie com, but i hate it when it's because he had no idea what to do and don't communicate at all. I commanded about 8 games against bots (set marine difficulty to easy, it will be harder for you) to have some preparation and don't f*ck up everyones game. And the best at all is when u have a Mic. Use it!
It should be a vote thing! Your team can vote if you did good or bad even if the team lost. Your team will judge Commander if he should receive a point or a point should be taken.
Points should not be less then zero. Second thing the icon should be changed NS2Stats have Steam Cards icon which are identical with the comm badge! Thats why i made a new one.
And this is how the vote system should look in my opinion.
Good/Bad/Neutral and average would say if a comm received a point (+1) or not...
Commander should get a feedback on votes to.
If you can neg other people, that just simply provides too many opportunities for being an asshole.
It might be worth weighting "was this comm good?" votes based on the skill rating of the voting player. Rookies are going to upvote commanders that are slightly better than them, but decent players might straight-out eject the comm for doing 'rookie strats'.
Will some people grind the gold badge? Perhaps, but IMO those people would grind stats / achievements / badges / whatever anyways, and it's not like the badge confers any advantage if they do.
I think that while voting is a good idea on paper it would just complicate things, and grading would differ quite a lot depending on the result of the game (win or loss) and the experience of the voter when compared to the experience of the comm. It could dissuade people from going in the chair and right now I'd say that this is the last thing we want. Getting good comms in pub games, that communicate and actively try to do something on a team level, is already hard enough.
On a separate note, I remember seeing a video by Riot Games concerning how they approached player psychology in their games, trying to use tips in loading screens to explain players how a positive and teamworking mindset helps their team mates and themselves. They had great results. Loading times are already long enough in this game. Perhaps we could use this as a chance to give important tips, I.E.:
"When commanding try to call people by their names, they'll respond better."
"When comanding it's better to tell people in a specific room to do something instead of just saying 'some one go do this'"
"When playing on the field and regardless of the outcome remember to give some words of encouragement to your commander"
"Use voicechat to call out enemy movement and structures on the map, your team will love you for it"
"Don't spam the medpack / ammo request key. Help your commander be focused where he's needed!"
I suck at giving tips but I think you guys get the point. Other playtips could be used. "Check out the tutorial to learn how to walljump with the skulk to travel up to three times as fast! It's one of the key skills in the game". Etc.
Sorry for the long post.
Amirite?
And then when stupid assholes start to give bad point when they can't even understand that : RT up equals upgrades, i doubt these commanders would be willing to command these kind of teams. You totally reverted the thing. It should be commander to give evaluations on players not the contrary.
I would be willing to accept that from another commander. But you know what? When 2 commanders are talking it's never about that. It's about tips or something like: "i guess you couldn't beacon coz you end up throwing medpacks on these loons trying to kill a fade.".
Unless the commander is a total rookie and do nothing.
How on earth a field unit can have the same understanding of the game while the two points of view are different ?
First person Vs hovering the map. A player with only the first person view do not have all the information to evaluate the commanders decision. He doesn't have any clue about what is doing the commander and can be hateful about a medpack delivered too late. But guess what ? He was doing the same thing with other players on other targets.
How a field unit can judge (it's all about evaluation, isn't it) if he's not a commander in the first place ?
Usually the kind that avoids entering the chair is the kind that is clearly not aware about what the commander do and how he does that... And a commander that is providing a service for everybody should accept an evaluation from this guys ? Thank you but no thank you.
We all make mistakes, why should it be the commander to suffer alone from bad evaluation ?
If CDT would include that, i tell you, i'm not even entering the chair EVER. And i'm sure i'm not gonna be the only one. It's not difficult to see that it doesn't encourage AT ALL to do commander stuff. The thing is; it's one of the critical role in this game. No commander, no start.
The best we can do is to train commanders to make them progress in order to make sure they have the minimum required knowledge to ensure proper games (at least). No "Scoring" can do that.
@bleu:
Well; you already have some advice in the loading screen. Reading isn't the gamers thing. Videos could help though.
It's nothing mythical, no shiny halo, and currently all it stands for is: "That person spent 10-20 hours in the command chair already." - And that's as informative as you can possibly get. It just means that they're not new to commanding - it doesn't mean they're good at it.
If you want to measure and express the 'quality and skill' of a commander through points given by other players you may as well start considering the number of Facebook likes on an individual topic to be a trustworthy indicator of what's good and what is not. And we all know Justin is a talented and great singer based upon those numbers, right?
l like the idea of just using the time spent in the com chair to give out a different badge at certain levels; it's simple, it doesn't try to give the badge any deeper meaning that's open for dispute anyway, and it's easily measurable, including all the edge scenarios when your awesome commander has a connection issue 30 minutes into an epic game, and someone else takes over.
~Luchs
(KISS) Keep it simple stupid! at the most have 3 tiers of badges like others have suggested based on the amount of hours,
Blue
Silver
Gold
It brings a healthy variation into the mix without bloating it all down with all of this "commander has to keep commanding to retain his badge", "point based solutions", "player feedback upvoting and downvoting" and unnecessary complications.
Sometimes too much insight and complex solutions is given to something that needs expanding if only by alittle.
Stick to what works and don't think too hard into it.
BTW: What about using the existing colors (Reinforced Colors, like WC Badges did)?
Blue, Silver, Gold, Diamond, Shadow?
(Commanding) Many games where you have done everything you possibly could do to instruct and guide the team but if you lose the team will blame you anyway (unless they are honest lol) which will result in being downvoted even though you done the right thing.
Sounds absurd that having free choice will have possible negative outcomes but this is the modern age we live in so having such a system will be open to abuse and sadly as such alternatives have to be presented.
The team at L*ckyf*ckers servers have a bot implementation if there are less than 5 players on the server. Only applies for marines though. Maybe implement it as a mod for newbies?
tired of seeing horrible commanders with commander badges just because they sat in chair long enough
Yet it motivates them to try, and the game is lacking commanders. If all you get are horrible coms, you may want to switch to a server with a higher skill average, or - at the very least - acknowledge that the team is accountable for winning and losing games just as much as the commander is.
OMG yes, this is hands down the #1 tip that ALL players need to have drilled into their heads. Really it's so important it's the sort of thing that should be posted on the loading screen. I very rarely command, but every time I try to command Marines I am met with NONSTOP requests for meds, ammo, and orders.
Game I played yesterday had people constantly spamming requests so much I just gave up on trying to respond to any of them. The worst part is when they're asking for meds/ammo and are 2 feet from an armory, or they're spamming the request for orders while standing right next to multiple blueprints. Tried asking them to stop and explaining how they're making the commander's job a million times harder, but they just kept on spamming away.