Warning- possibility of some maths incoming.
Following my casual gamesthreat thread earlier I got to thinking about multiplayer FPS titles. Most of us would probably agree they are a festering pit as far as general player to player niceties go. As such things themselves probably disprove the existence of altruism as a general trait we move to incentives. Fortunately games have the ultimate one in the existence of points*, stats and numbers - they are free and people seem to enjoy them.
*
See also mario kart DS disconnects and DOTA/MOBA idiocy with regards to score requirements to join a team.
The perfect world answer would be have balanced teams but that would also require balanced people and that is not going to happen or possibly even be that viable in general, especially in games with different weapons for teams, different spawn points and/or maps that are not mirrors.
However there is a variation on the theme and that is to having every person capable of doing some good on the team; the example from the earlier thread being at least you can be a meat shield, provide cover/suppressing fire, drag the flag a little bit further or pull fire for the team. There are games like this but they are not all that easy to pull off and expecting it to happen in all games is asking for a bit much.
To this end the question of how such a system could be implemented. As it stands assists are already a thing so something thought of something somewhere.
My first thought would be weighted scores based on kill/death ratios- we see "kill the leader for great bonus" type games already. My next question there would be linear or exponentially rated.
Does this weighting go from session to session, game to game, round to round or would it be like "ranked" is today*? See also prestige.
Ratios might not work that well/render an apparent result quickly enough if you are only playing games with short rounds. Straight kills, straight deaths.... I have probably just kneecapped medic classes though and others- in the real world snipers are not as much of a killing machine as the average helicopter gunship but damned if you would want to leave either behind.
*not without issue as it means you can not let your friends have a go. Monthly rankings (I would probably favour dual servers that reset 15 days apart)?
Given I am thinking of maths to implement a system and using terms like incentives I also have to think about how to game the system (see also DOTA/MOBA games and the nonsense that goes on there). I would imagine time based multipliers (see multiplayer tetris and how much garbage you send) or some activity metrics would prevent the "perfectly timed hidden ninja" type play.
Thinking a bit further ahead would a perk based multiplier handicap work- you can have the mad ninja bonuses but if you get clipped then they score big or having mad ninja bonuses reduces your score capability. Balance possibly becomes an issue yet games are already designed with this sort of thing in mind. Something about "loadout points" (team and personal) is something I probably want to work in there. Flip it another way and you have things like high kill players gaining head wobble or something like that.
Going back to prestige you might even go so far as to weight a weapon either in score or other incentives (slower reloads, golden gun but regenerating ammo based on server time- I suppose you could also microtransact it as well) which might do well against accusations* of overpowered weapons. We already have stealth kill, knife kill and from behind kill type bonuses. Might also lower "ranked" players need smaller streaks to get things.
*a troublesome subject as the most vocal often seem to be the most clueless.
Now I have seen a variation on this sort of thing in Tetris on the DS- I actually used a flash cart because I was too bone idle to swap games (despite my mainly only playing tetris) and the one I was using would not store online data. To this end my score would start at 5000 every time I bothered to go online and when I would then proceed to beat someone with a score several thousand higher than my own theirs would drop considerably compared to when I beat those with one similar to my own. I also saw a variation on the theme where they would disconnect and the next few people I met in matchmaking would them be them again.
In general the idea would be to make more warm bodies a benefit in almost all situations rather than a liability so anything in service of that really.
Naturally the option to "turn it all off and go without" would probably want to be there, I would downplay it and make it slightly harder to set up though.
Following my casual games
*
See also mario kart DS disconnects and DOTA/MOBA idiocy with regards to score requirements to join a team.
The perfect world answer would be have balanced teams but that would also require balanced people and that is not going to happen or possibly even be that viable in general, especially in games with different weapons for teams, different spawn points and/or maps that are not mirrors.
However there is a variation on the theme and that is to having every person capable of doing some good on the team; the example from the earlier thread being at least you can be a meat shield, provide cover/suppressing fire, drag the flag a little bit further or pull fire for the team. There are games like this but they are not all that easy to pull off and expecting it to happen in all games is asking for a bit much.
To this end the question of how such a system could be implemented. As it stands assists are already a thing so something thought of something somewhere.
My first thought would be weighted scores based on kill/death ratios- we see "kill the leader for great bonus" type games already. My next question there would be linear or exponentially rated.
Does this weighting go from session to session, game to game, round to round or would it be like "ranked" is today*? See also prestige.
Ratios might not work that well/render an apparent result quickly enough if you are only playing games with short rounds. Straight kills, straight deaths.... I have probably just kneecapped medic classes though and others- in the real world snipers are not as much of a killing machine as the average helicopter gunship but damned if you would want to leave either behind.
*not without issue as it means you can not let your friends have a go. Monthly rankings (I would probably favour dual servers that reset 15 days apart)?
Given I am thinking of maths to implement a system and using terms like incentives I also have to think about how to game the system (see also DOTA/MOBA games and the nonsense that goes on there). I would imagine time based multipliers (see multiplayer tetris and how much garbage you send) or some activity metrics would prevent the "perfectly timed hidden ninja" type play.
Thinking a bit further ahead would a perk based multiplier handicap work- you can have the mad ninja bonuses but if you get clipped then they score big or having mad ninja bonuses reduces your score capability. Balance possibly becomes an issue yet games are already designed with this sort of thing in mind. Something about "loadout points" (team and personal) is something I probably want to work in there. Flip it another way and you have things like high kill players gaining head wobble or something like that.
Going back to prestige you might even go so far as to weight a weapon either in score or other incentives (slower reloads, golden gun but regenerating ammo based on server time- I suppose you could also microtransact it as well) which might do well against accusations* of overpowered weapons. We already have stealth kill, knife kill and from behind kill type bonuses. Might also lower "ranked" players need smaller streaks to get things.
*a troublesome subject as the most vocal often seem to be the most clueless.
Now I have seen a variation on this sort of thing in Tetris on the DS- I actually used a flash cart because I was too bone idle to swap games (despite my mainly only playing tetris) and the one I was using would not store online data. To this end my score would start at 5000 every time I bothered to go online and when I would then proceed to beat someone with a score several thousand higher than my own theirs would drop considerably compared to when I beat those with one similar to my own. I also saw a variation on the theme where they would disconnect and the next few people I met in matchmaking would them be them again.
In general the idea would be to make more warm bodies a benefit in almost all situations rather than a liability so anything in service of that really.
Naturally the option to "turn it all off and go without" would probably want to be there, I would downplay it and make it slightly harder to set up though.
Help Roms To Heal 
