Prophunt - Can one be too good at it?

[LewandaSillyFeathers]

I had two ideas a while ago to help this issue but I just haven't have the time or really the desire to look into doing it.

Here are the two ideas:

1. Rework the rank system to give extra points to people who never move once they lock in their prop location. Give extra points to people who don't use !propmenu and stick with the random prop they are given. This would give people a reason not to run around and try to play the hide and seek game mode as it was intended to be played.

2. Create a script that will allow me to place props around each map. The placed props will be randomized each round so only a few of them show. This would make each map harder to memorize.

I love these ideas (mostly number 2), but I imagine some point hungry regulars would hate this change and be mega butt hurt haha. I would be glad if you added this though. :)

[Jasmine]

There always has, and always will be tryhards and good players.
I don't understand why people see this as such a big problem. I used to play with some of the best. Box, ocheu, bomber, duralmina, abra, leili, marshii, chiki, linkzz, jo, goats, jenkins, samba & corgi. A lot of them at the same time.
The problem is not the tryhards, the problem in my opinion is the overall prophunt environment.
People now a days just want to be friendly and save all of their friends. Which in turn in to not being very welcoming to new players, the players who is not "part of the group" instantly dies and then sees other props being allowed to live.
It's excluding players that could be new regulars. And if a server keeps scaring away new players, it's only going to be the good ones left.
I'm on the phone right now so it's hard to elaborate to get all of my thoughts out.
But prophunt goes in waves. And this is because, at some point the regulars grow tired of the game mode, and by that point, all new regulars are scared away. So there's no players to fill that gap.
3-4 years ago it was almost full 24/7 cause we had a strong European Base and then the Americans filled the evenings. And we made it a point to be welcoming, helping new players and overall giving a fun experience.
Even when the tryhards were on we focused on speaking, engaging new players and just being a community rather than plating the actual gamemode.

Abra is a perfect example of that. Fantastic player, but loads of fun and welcoming and fair playing. Some sees him as a tryhard because he kills everything, but he does it equally to everyone and at the same time talking to people.

Then we had people like myself, who most of the time just goofed around, trying to find new stupid spots to see how long I could survive. But I never minded dying because that meant I had more time to talk to people.
I don't consider the gamemode a problem, but the overall experience.

Add:
Reworking weapons and removing crits will make it even harder to chase down the good players. Without a well placed flare you'd be completely without a chance.
Increasing speed while on fire will also benefit good players if they get caught on fire.

I am a strong believer of that it depends on the community. When I started out, I constantly died. I was dead 90% of my playtime. But with the community I played with and the friends I made on the server is what made me stay. I played on GM at the time.
Later I switched to disc and met new people to talk to and play with and the community grew huge.

I'm not saying it will be easy, or that other changes are not needed. But it has been done before so I'm convinced it can be done again.

[Abraham]

Jasmine pretty much summed up my opinions regarding the changes. I dont think nerfing the weapons is a solution to this, for a day or two people will find it good but then one by one you'll start to realize that its just gotten harder for you to kill those good players.

As harsh as it may sound, the only suggestions I personally see helping this case are the ones Fire made, none other.

And just to reply to the topic, no, one can not be too good at it, at this time the skill level in prophunt is more balanced than it has ever been before, most of the old class players have quit, leaving more room for the new guys to step in. Every mod has these players that people who like to goof around somewhat hate, but without those players, the mod would cease to exist.

We get these suggestions few times a year, and year after year we come to the same conclusion either straight away, or after trying some of the changes, the conclusion has been that these suggestions unfortunately wont work on the server, I wish they did since it would mean a shitload of less drama, but they just dont.

[ConTroll]

People now a days just want to be friendly and save all of their friends. Which in turn in to not being very welcoming to new players, the players who is not "part of the group" instantly dies and then sees other props being allowed to live.
It's excluding players that could be new regulars. And if a server keeps scaring away new players, it's only going to be the good ones left.

A very good point made, I can't say I haven't been guilty of this myself. Perhaps we could enforce friendly players to treat everyone the same instead of just their friends. Too much friendlying can be seen as delaying, play or slay should be enforced. Perhaps rps will have to keep the friendlies satisfied.

Then we had people like myself, who most of the time just goofed around, trying to find new stupid spots to see how long I could survive. But I never minded dying because that meant I had more time to talk to people.

This is the playstyle I have been enjoying myself, surviving for a good amount of time in silly spots can be extremely satisfying. On some maps the feeling isn't the same as they are too small with too few interesting places to potentially hide in, the biggest example being farm feud. It's probably the favourite map to many strong players as they just clean the entire map very quickly both as a hunter and as a last remaining scout with weapons. Dying over and over every round with nowhere to hide from the same strong player gets boring for me, it's too repetitive. I can't enjoy hiding in silly spots on maps that rely on running for survival, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

The point you make about being social for entertainment, many average players are not. It's probably the reason why they don't stay. Some regulars I like to socialise with leave when they see tryhards join or when a tryhard map (farm feud) is the next map, and in turn I feel like leaving because I no longer have them to socialise with.

How about a system where players are rewarded for killing other players of higher rank. Strong players may prioritise checking spots where other strong players usually hide instead of clearing the map with their usual routes. If that does become the case, that would mean stronger players will be found earlier, which means they would start running earlier. If they are good at dodging shots, it would mean the weaker players will be more likely to survive as the hunters (especially the strong hunters going for the high reward kill) would be distracted for longer.

[Jasmine]

A very good point made, I can't say I haven't been guilty of this myself. Perhaps we could enforce friendly players to treat everyone the same instead of just their friends. Too much friendlying can be seen as delaying, play or slay should be enforced. Perhaps rps will have to keep the friendlies satisfied.

Correct me someone if I'm wrong but I believe we used to have a rule about this. I don't know if the rule was removed or just not enforced though.
This however created a chainreaction of that when a player killed a prop they didn't want to kill, they suicide. Leaving their team with one player down and it would be even harder for that team to win.
Or the fact that props started to kill themselves in the beginning of the round.

The point you make about being social for entertainment, many average players are not. It's probably the reason why they don't stay. Some regulars I like to socialise with leave when they see tryhards join or when a tryhard map (farm feud) is the next map, and in turn I feel like leaving because I no longer have them to socialise with.

How about a system where players are rewarded for killing other players of higher rank. Strong players may prioritise checking spots where other strong players usually hide instead of clearing the map with their usual routes. If that does become the case, that would mean stronger players will be found earlier, which means they would start running earlier. If they are good at dodging shots, it would mean the weaker players will be more likely to survive as the hunters (especially the strong hunters going for the high reward kill) would be distracted for longer.

I'm not a huge fan of farm feuds. But a map is only 30min. The way I saw it on that map is that fine, I'll die a lot. But that would give me more time to talk to people.

I thought that system was already on place, or maybe I'm confusing it with something else. But getting more points for killing a higher ranked is familiar to me so it's either dodgeball or prophunt that its implemented on.

[Abraham]

A very good point made, I can't say I haven't been guilty of this myself. Perhaps we could enforce friendly players to treat everyone the same instead of just their friends. Too much friendlying can be seen as delaying, play or slay should be enforced. Perhaps rps will have to keep the friendlies satisfied.

Correct me someone if I'm wrong but I believe we used to have a rule about this. I don't know if the rule was removed or just not enforced though.

This still is a rule, and should be enforced. I personally only enforced it when it was last few props alive, but it really should be enforced.

[Marshii]

As an RTS player and caster, I can safely say that weapon nerfs will do absolutely nothing to solve the problem of 'good players'.

It's the concept of Meta; the strongest strategy will be the most widely used, regardless of what that strategy is.

So if you take off the flaregun/degreaser/axtinguisher combos, you'll end up with something else that comes along which becomes the predominant strategy.

For example I remember people getting so good at rocket jumping that they would just fly through even indoor/enclosed maps hoovering everything up in their path.

Explore those rank tweaks if you like, but personally I don't think that is going to do a huge amount because ultimately it will still be more efficient to get as many kills as possible in a blue round and survive for a long as possible in a red round, regardless of whether you move or not, and so I do not see these as being particularly effective, but of course give it a try, I can only be proved wrong.

The other thought I've had on this for years is that it is simply to do with the mindset of the player themselves and the way prophunt communities are often tied around the better players of the game - typically you see a correlation between skill and popularity (though of course there are other variables). Therefore, the better you are the more popular you may become and being good has a reward of that popularity. Entering a server and hearing "Oh s*** 'X' is on the other team" is rewarding - it shows your dominance. The parallel to this is that good players, and I mean the best players, know when to let off the gas. Too often recently in prophunt that kill all mentality as is alluded to here has dominated to the point that good players have forgotten that they can goof around and have a laugh, they don't have to hoover all the kills each round in order to be popular and seen as 'good'. Many times I came across players who would see people RPSing and see it as an opportunity for a free kill, rather than letting players have their fun. This IMO is a perfect exemplar of the problem, not weapon balance, but simply player mentality.

Good players just need to learn to better acknowledge that there are other people on the server trying to have fun in their own way that isn't necessarily "Hide for longest, run for longest, kill most".

[Ian225]

How about a system where players are rewarded for killing other players of higher rank. Strong players may prioritise checking spots where other strong players usually hide instead of clearing the map with their usual routes. If that does become the case, that would mean stronger players will be found earlier, which means they would start running earlier. If they are good at dodging shots, it would mean the weaker players will be more likely to survive as the hunters (especially the strong hunters going for the high reward kill) would be distracted for longer.

That's how GameMe ranking works, and it's the only ranking tryhards care about. However, they only care about kill per death ratio, not points. Don't worry about server ranking honestly, tryhards will still always kill whomever they can, regardless of the point system.