Poorly designed anti-team kill system

I understand the need for an anti-team kill system. But the one that is currently implemented is garbage. Kill a teammate once, weather it be on accident or they walk into your invisible molotov you threw. You then after take damage from any team damage you deal. This is a seriously bad idea. Accidents happen, there are clear indications on what are accidents and what are not. Which is where a vote kick system would be needed. The team damage reflection is clearly broken, just play local play and toss a couple of flame grenades. You'll watch the bots walk right into them. Players are no different, especially when the flame is only noticeable with sound, something that new people won't be accustom to or that people won't notice. Even if the flame is visible, where you think would be safe to walk is the exact opposite, the molotovs are much better are representing where they would damage you. The incendiary grenades are horrible, you could be standing 3 feet from where it started and still get hurt, while the entire things take up less than 2 feet in diameter. There are way too many situations to warrant team damage reflection as a solution to the problem. Team deaths happen, it's not always on purpose. Though this method seems to treat it as such.

I think a couple of tweaks to the existing system could address some of these problems:

EXPLOSIVE DAMAGE

ONLY count the initial explosion as friendly-fire. Burn/Gas/whatever damage-over-time should NOT be considered friendly-fire.

The shooter does have control over where he triggers the explosives and thus can take responsibility to avoid friendly fire. However, he can NOT prevent people from entering (or failing to exit) the affected area and should not be punished for such.

PROJECTILE DAMAGE

Friendly fire is often only a fraction of full damage. In a short TTK game like Insurgency, this is presumably to give time for the shooter to register "blue on blue" warnings and have time to stop before killing the friendly.

I'd suggest lowering the friendly fire bullet damage even further and make it asymmetrical. Perhaps something like:

  • Friendly target recieves 10% of bullet damage.
  • Friendly shooter receives 15% of bullet damage.

Ideally, this would achieve a few things:

  1. It would give more time for the shooter to realize his mistake and stop shooting before anyone dies. Helpful for genuine accidents like when someone walks into your line of fire. This would also help prevent griefers from causing you to teamkill by intentionally walking into your line of fire as you'd have more time to avoid the unintentional TK.

  2. If he (either intentionally or unintentionally) doesn't stop in time, the HIGHER reflected damage would kill (and thus stop) the shooter BEFORE the friendly dies. So the target (while still getting wounded) wouldn't pay the "ultimate" price for the shooters mistake. Griefers who want to TK for the LOLZ would only kill themselves and be more obvious about it to teammates.

As this potentially would "only" require tweaking values to the existing system, I'd like to think that it also would have the advantage of being relatively easy to implement.

Once again, just my 2¢

I agree molotovs should deal friendly damage but only punish thrower with initial damage. Flames should be visible not only audible - Thats probably a bug that will be solved over time. About reflecting damage, I am not a fan of that because I like the stress/ptsd effect of not wanting to hurt friendlies with a tk - In other words, it feels a lot worse to get a tk than dying yourself and thus is an interesting stress factor - On the other hand, I agree measures should be taken against trolls, but I prefer the vote kick to handle those instead of removing the fearful tk feature. But I have no better solution than yours.

last edited by Pacalis

@jlx This certainly would help a lot, though I don't like the system at all especially since wall penetration is a thing and shooting an enemy with a teammate on the other side of said wall can still damage them. This would address a few issues, but I still believe there would be too many situations to consider to prevent all accidental friendly fires and not damage the shooter who's just trying to play the game.

last edited by diamondpumpkin

Reflective damage should be off for fire after it was initially ignited. Players run into my fire all the time even when I tell them clearly and well beforehand that they need to stay back and out of the fire.

I think reflective damage should be off all together. It is stupid and unrealistic in a game they boast as being a realistic highly lethal video game yet add “COD” features like this that totally take away from the immersion. Hey I want people who abuse the system and teamkill for no good reason to be punished with a good system in place for that as much as the next guy but im just saying reflective damage is stupid as hell. When I shoot a teammate by accident (happens very rarely) I always apologize and feel bad about it but if the damage is returned upon me it pisses me right off and makes me want to quit the match because that’s extremely silly and unrealistic in a game that is supposed to be such. I would also like to add that if a teammate shoots me by accident I do not get mad unless it’s obviously not a mistake but I do at least expect an apology. Only takes a second... Otherwise DEVS remove the “realistic” and “highly lethal” part of the games headline? Pretense? or what ever lol because we are and have been sadly stepping quite far away a from this. Im speaking in terms of a slightly less TTK then Ins source then things like less bullet damage to teammates (this one bothers me much less) but then we get to the addition of Reflective Damage and some people wanting FF to be removed all together (god forbid) etc... Just MO.

I think the Forgive system from Rising Storm would be a good idea.

I heard Rainbow Six Siege will have damage reflection in the future. Can't wait for the backlash they get from that big community.

@grabbinpeels1 Forgive systems have always worked well IMO. R6 Siege vanilla was amazing even the beta when you could play the damn thing was awesome in my eyes lol. Then they had to go make it all looney tunes looking with all the stupid Operators and gadgets I quickly could no longer stand the way the game felt. To me it just became extremely silly something I picture fortnite feeling like and makes me cringe. Sad because originally when it was more about the raw destruction and gun fights it was damn fun.

I've said it elsewhere too but let's add my 2cents here as well.

Damage reflect is a piss-poor way of discouraging team-killing and I have never in any game personally seen vote-kicking being abused (we all hear the same FUD-stories about it being abused and certainly it's possible, but who has actually seen it being abused at all, let alone in amounts that would outweigh it's utility ??)

It's not like there's not a whole bunch of other ways for griefers and trolls to piss people off.

vote kick can get abused and was abused by parties of three people in ins2
damage reflect is actually a good idea and I rarely get tked since they implemented it, it could get some changes like some of you said about molotovs etc but I like it