Nexuiz Ninjaz - Practicing the Ninja Art of Nexuiz

I posted this on the Nexuiz forum as well.

I was thinking about what would be ideal for CTF clan vs clan matches and I came up with this idea. Let me know what you think.

Pro CTF

The assignment of a "captain" for each team. That captain doesn't play, but has the ability to spectate their own team and communicate to their own team, or to individual players of their team directly.

- So if it were a 5 v 5 match, there would be a 6th person acting as captain of each team.

- This would be similar to popular sports which have a coach on the sidelines helping the players know what to do and what is going on. The "captain" could help facilitate strategy changes and improve communication.

- The captain could not be in fly mode. As soon as the match starts, they would be spectating one of the players.

- The captain could have three chat modes. 1. chatting with everybody. 2. chatting with their team. 3. Chatting directly with an individual player (whichever player they are currently spectating). So a new message mode would have to be created.

- There could be a .cfg file setup for special binds for the captain. So someone would only have to type exec ctf_captain.cfg in the console to get those binds. Those binds would have some essential message binds setup, and someone could customize their as needed.

- One of the binds could be to assign numbers 1 - 6 (on the top row of the keyboard) to spectate individual players (since the captain won't need weapon binds). That would allow them to quickly change who they are spectating without having to left click through the whole team.

- For message binds, there could be a variable for [current_spectated_player], and other variables specific to Pro CTF mode. So the captain could be spectating the player who has the flag and then he/she could say "[current_player] has the flag near [location] with [current_health] health and [current_armor] armor", which would display the information for the player being spectated.

That is all I have worked out so far, but let's go through some scenarios of how this might work.

- Assblaster2000 grabs the blue flag.
- He is being assisted by his fellow player, JoeNutsack
- Someone attacks the flag carrier.
- JoeNutsack defends him and gets killed
- The captain switches through the other players and sees who is closest to the flag carrier's path.
- The captain sees that Mr Hemorrhoid is ahead of Assblaster2000
- The captain switches to spectate Mr Hemorrhoid and presses the "chat_current" bind and says to him, "The flag carrier is behind you. Turn around and assist"
- "No, the other way. He's around the corner."
- Captain then switches to VoteRuPaul08, who is currently defending the base, and sees that he is being attacked by two enemy players.
- Captain switches back to Assblaster2000 and says "base is not secure. head to the left wing outside the base and hang out near the health and armor"
- Captain then checks to see where JoeNutsack respawned and he instructs him to go to the base to help clear it out.
- The captain could also help to keep a mental note of when the strength respawns (if that is enabled).

There are other considerations for a "pro ctf" mod, but I think this is a good start.

Thoughts?
Ideas?
Money?

:-)

It's a good idea, yet I would think that communicating with teammates in that volume in Nexuiz would be nearly impossible, given that Nexuiz is such a fast-paced game. One thing I would suggest for all clans would be to have TeamSpeak or Ventrilo. Both of which are methods in which members can communicate in real time by voice. While not all members always have the ability to talk, the captain would usually be picked to be someone with a mic.

That would reduce the sheer number of binds the captain would require, and would allow for much smoother communication. Also, by using Teamspeak, this is an example of a game: (Messages in Teamspeak are marked with *'s)

Attackers 1, 2, and 3 in red base
*Captain: Guys, attack blue.
*Attackers 1 and 2: I'm in.
*Attacker3: Me too.
*Captain: 2, you take the flag, 1 will take your right and I'll take your left.
Attackers approach blue base, 3 gets sniped and dies.
*Attacker3: Guys, I'm hit. 2, don't get the flag yet.
*Captain: Defender1, take his position
*Defender1: Roger. I'm on my way. Protect yourselves attackers.
Defender1 takes attacker3's position
Attacker2 takes flag, gets out of base
*Attacker2: Guys, stick behind me and stay turned around. Make sure nobody touches me. I'ma rocket fly to our base.
Attacker2 returns Blue flag in XX:YY.

All of this could occur within 30 seconds, unlike your method which would require scrolling, instantly picking up situations, instantly designing plans, and executing these plans.

I agree fully with the idea of having a captain, just I wouldn't suggest modding the game to implement this feature. Just allow clans to have a captain with them in scrims, and the clans can communicate using TeamSpeak.

-Bull

As I said in the alientrap forum, I don't think text binds should be dropped just because of voice chatting. You can follow the thread here

I think there should be options for communication, perhaps a combination of voice and text chat. Also, I would think the text-based communication would be easier to implement at this point.

And as far as your scenario...I can type pretty fast. If I didn't have to do any movement with my mouse and all I had to do was type, I would have no problem typing multiple messages within a 30 second period, especially if some of those messages are from pre-set binds.

I think having the captain is a very good idea. This mod will probably have to wait until nifrek's proposed team lock is complete as it would make creating this mod (somewhat easier) but I think it's a great start.

I don't like this whole captain idea.

Games happen too fast, no way you can give that detailed information / set up attacks like that, and this is coming from 6 years of CTF experience at clan level at various games.

But kojak, with all of that experience, did you ever get an opportunity to try utilizing a captain? I'm assuming not, so how can you know if it's doable or not?

i'm not fond of the captain idea myself. i'm not sure if it'd add much to so fast a game. good binds by your team should be comparable to anything the captain would say. second if you have a 6th guy show up from both clans you should just play a 6v6. arguably the captain should be a pretty competent guy... i'd rather have that guy playing. if you adhere to a 5v5, and the game is at such a serious level to warrant having this captain, the least skilled and/or capable player is getting benched. the bencher will be the person who, imo, is least capable of understanding the big picture of what's going on, making him the least effective to be a captain... which may not be an issue when your clan is full of super-duper 24-7 irc dwelling, nexuiz addicts but for some of us it's a concern. :)

In my opinion, voicecom is the only way to go, text is too distracting and slow to have a decent conversation in the middle of a game... Once a team has a set of names for specific corners, dark spots, etc etc, voicecom is critical to their ongoing progression. Voice communication is needed, because the 1-2 second lag for voice communcations is too slow many times, and you're already getting old information, which is a problem of text, exacerbated by having to change gears and routine to reading text, not paying attention to what's going on ingame.

Also, another 'captain' player is not required, and would just be a hinderance to competition, requiring more people and complexity. Having more players just make it mor elikely for forfeits, and scheduling issues on a large(even 15-20 team basis). Look at MLG, CGS, CPL, etc etc... MLG uses Halo(4v4 IIRC), as well as a recently announced tournament series for CS1.6, using 5v5, CPL was(is? current status seems vaporwarish as to Severity) using CS1.6, CGS uses CS:S(5v5). Arguably, the TFC community died because 7v7 and 8v8 tournaments were hard to organize, which was another hinderance to DOD's 6v6(after years of 9v9/8v8/7v7) lan-ability.