May 2020
Playing with people of similar skill to you can be enjoyable. But you know what's more enjoyable? Playing with a team that actually works like a team. So I suggest a credit system that determines who you get paired up with on your team. A system that rewards credits based on positive teamwork. The credits aren't some sort of currency. It's just a point system that would be used to help match you with other players of a similar point value. Keep in mind, all of these values are what I feel they should be. If you think I gave something too many or too little points, that could always be tweaked for balancing. Use the point allocations as just examples of how it could work. Now here is how I suggest it works;
The 3 Guidelines;
Each method has a max amount of points you can gain from it per game. This is to help prevent abuse of the system.
Each method has a max amount of points you can gain from it per day. This will be 5x it's "per game" amount. This way someone can't get all of their charitable actions out on a single Saturday, just to be a bad teammate for the rest of the week. Gotta spread the love. It also helps prevent abuse of the system. Forcing players to try multiple methods of being a good teammate, instead of just, say, pinging items each game for their points.
Points earned expire after one week. This way your credit score stays relevant.
Gaining Points;
Pinging Blue or Higher items. Max Points per game: 3
Being the first to ping an item a teammate requested. Does not count against the "Pinging Blue or Higher items" counter. The teammate must pick up the item for it to count. Max Points per game: 3
A teammate hitting dibs on an item you pinged. Undibsing then dibsing again won't give another point. The teammate must pick up the item for it to count. Max points per game: 5
Reviving a teammate. Only if they died by another player. This is to help prevent abuse of the system. You can revive both teammates at the same time to get 2 points. Max points per game: 2
Recovering a teammate banner. Sometimes you're not the one that revives the teammate, but you are the one that risked your life getting their banner. Same rules from above apply here. Max points per game: 2
Picking up a knocked down teammate. Only if they are knocked by an enemy player, not by them throwing a grenade at their own feet. Max points per game: 4
Giving heals. Dropping a health item and a teammate using it within 1 minute of picking it up. This is to help prevent abuse of the system. Max points per game: 4
Using Legend abilities to help teammates. This would be pinging tracks as Bloodhound, healing an ally as Lifeline, your team using your zipline as Pathfinder or portal as Wraith. Max points per game 5
Gaining assists. Not kills, assists. This would prove you helped take down a foe as a team. Both the person who got the kill and the one that assisted get a point. Max points per game: 3
Staying near your team for a set duration of time. This would only work in trios and goes by majority. If two team members are staying together and a third runs off, those two will each get a point, while the third wouldn't. If nobody stays together, nobody gains points. A point is distributed for every 2 minutes you stay within 100m of your team. Going past that distance will reset the timer for you, personally. I think 100m is enough. if not, 200m should work. Tried to figure out a value that would still give you freedom to explore a wide area, or still give opportunity to flank enemies, while limiting those who go halfway across the map and leave their team in the dust. Max points per game: 5.
Use the pinging system. Every five pings gains a point, but excessive pinging will not count. Only 1 ping per 30 seconds will count towards the five pings. And it can be any ping, from enemies, to "Looting here". The exceptions are pinging loot (since that was already covered above),pinging your own banner or pinging revive stations. Neither of those would gain points. Max points per game: 3
Landing in the same area as the majority of your team. This could work in duos or trios. As long as two of you are landing in the same spot, you get points. The third one that went somewhere else, wouldn't. And notice how I didn't say this requires you to land with the jumpmaster. Sometimes you can have a bad jumpmaster, who chooses to go somewhere really far where they won't be able to reach or somewhere really late where people have already landed, risking their team being spawn killed. So I didn't want to tie this point to the jumpmaster. If the two other teammates notice they have a bad jumpmaster and both choose to go somewhere else, that makes more sense, they will still get points. Max points per game: 1
Losing Points;
Note: I wasn't sure about adding a way to lose points. I think the system works well enough without the ability to lose points since points have an expiration on them. But there are some toxic behaviors I think should be discouraged. And there is no cap on how many points you can lose per action. But they do have varying amount of points you lose per occasion. So here are my suggestions;
Constantly pinging your banner or revive beacons. Pinging more than 5 times every 30 seconds would cause you to lose a point. I know there is a way to mute pings, but a player shouldn't be forced to do that, especially if they're in the middle of a fight and the pinging is interfering with their fight. If they hit their 5 pings within the 30 seconds and are able to hit another 5 pings within the same 30 seconds, that would count as two occasions. Loss of points per occasion: 1
Dying more than 400m away from the majority of the team. Like the similar way to gain points mentioned above, this would only apply to trios, and only if your other two teammates are together. This is, again, to help prevent the people who are trying to turn a team game into a solo game and going out, doing 1v3s, jeopardizing their team's success. I know you might want solos in the game, I kind of do too, but there isn't solos. So don't treat it like there is. Loss of points per occasion: 5
Taking an item that was dibs'd by another player. Loss of points per occasion: 3. If the item was purple or gold, the loss of points will go up to 5
Now there are some other toxic behaviors that I didn't list, but that is because sometimes those actions are justified and I don't believe there would be a way for the game to register the difference. Like looting a teammates death box instead of reviving them and letting them get their stuff back. Sometimes the survivability of the last one alive is dependent on them grabbing the ammo from their dead team's box. Or replacing their depleted shield with their dead teammate's shield. Or getting the verbal permission from their teammate to loot what they want because they're not going to be able to go back and get their stuff. The game wouldn't be able to register the difference.
Final Thoughts
With a system like this, the max amount of points you could earn on a rotating 7 day schedule would be 200 points. I actually did not plan that out in any way, but I'm pretty pleased it landed on a round number like that. And that is if you hit the cap on every positive objective every day and never lost any points. But hitting the max wouldn't matter. I would just suggest everyone to play how they normally play. If the max amount of points anyone ever gets is, let's say, 90, then the players in the 90 range will be the best teammates you can find in the game. The system wouldn't be designed to max out every week. It only has a lot of different ways to earn points so there are a lot of opportunities to be a good, supporting teammate. I also tried to keep the point caps somewhat low, so as to not hurt players that don't play as often as others.
And I know, the main concern someone might have is if they go a week without playing, then what? They would just go down to 0 points? I have three solutions for this;
Yes. You would go down to 0 points. So you would get matched with bad players, that's the downside of this option. However, that wouldn't last long. After a couple of games of pinging items, staying with your team, etc. your point score would slowly rise, and you would start getting put in those better pools of players. This could also be used as a way to encourage bad teammates to be better, after seeing how cooperation can actually be good.
The base amount of points would be 20, so you could never go below 20 unless you did something to make you lose points. And points that you lose don't have expirations, meaning you could stay below 20 if you never gain points to get back above it. But once above 20, it would stay as your ground level.
The 7 day expiration only goes down on days you play. Meaning, if you play on Monday, you gain 10 credits, they will expire by the end of Sunday. BUT, if you don't play that following Tuesday, the counter wont go down, pushing the expiration of those credits ahead another day, to that next Monday. Don't play Wednesday either? Now they're pushed back to that next Tuesday. But you launch the game and play a single match Thursday? That just counted 1 day against your expiration, keeping the expiration at the next Tuesday, instead of pushing it back a day.
I know, all of that was a lot. But I think a system like this could really pave the way for better gameplay. Pair the bad teammates with other bad teammates, and leave us good teammates with a squad that actually enjoys working together. And remember, bad teammate doesn't mean bad player. You can be very skilled, carry your team to victory, but still have bad cooperation. And that's what this system would be for. Which is why none of the credits are rewarded based off of skill, unless it involves cooperation.
So let me know what you think. I know there is a lot to this system, but it's really supposed to just be background noise. Not something the player would focus on. The cooperative actions you do for other players would end up matching you with players who would do the same cooperative actions for you.
May 2020
\Very interesting writeup, thank you.
I do take issue with some factors (point loss on "stealing" a dibsed item could be abused by serial malicious dibbers), and I think such a system would need to be opaque (maybe hide gains until post-match, and have a number of randomised factors in play during a matc) but I like the base idea of explicitly incentivising existing good behaviour patterns.
May 2020