TRAITOR

While talking about the "damage reflection" TK penalty, I came up with an idea that might solve issues with TKers in a more realistic and immersive fashion. The problem I have with the current system is how arcadey it is; it's almost like something you'd come across in an MMO or something. For a game going heavily for immersion, this mechanic just doesn't seem to fit. I want the game to allow the teammates to solve the problem, rather than having the game directly solve the problem by having Allah himself smite the TKer for continuing to shoot teammates.

As the title suggests, the idea I came up with is a Traitor system.

Upon doing too much team damage (maybe either 60 HP after the TK damage reduction is applied or after killing a teammate regardless of HP; also, fire support and explosive weapons might need differing modifiers) the player in question is marked as a "traitor". The mark itself is simple; the teammate indicator/icon's color is switched to the color of the hostile faction. The mark only lasts for a short period of time; maybe 10-15 seconds. The automatic kick after three quick TKs would still be in effect.

If a player is marked as a traitor, his teammates can shoot and kill him (within that 10-15 second window) with no friendly-fire damage reduction or TK penalty (i.e. killing him doesn't count towards the three-TK autokick). There is no extra reward or incentive for this, however, apart from possibly terminating a toxic player. The player marked as a traitor still has the steep friendly-fire damage reduction when shooting teammates, but can otherwise continue as normal. Gameplay is not affected for the player convicted of being a traitor (unless his teammates decide to take him out, obviously).

Essentially, the traitor is marked as an enemy to his teammates, but the traitor's teammates are still marked as friendlies to him.

In the event of an accidental friendly-fire or teamkill incident, the traitor would have to plead for his life. There still wouldn't be much of a point for his team to choose to kill another teammate unless the traitor is intentionally teamkilling, trolling, etc.

To add some icing on the cake, a few extra voice lines could really sell the betrayal:

Ex. Directly after a teammate shoots a friendly Insurgent and is marked as a traitor: "Backstabber! I'll take you down, brother!"

EDIT: A tagline for killing a traitor would be pretty neat, though. Actually, no, since that's kind of a reward.

EDIT2: Another possible mechanic is if a player accidentally shoots a teammate, but doesn't kill him, the teammate has a grace period of a few seconds to shoot and kill the teammate that shot him first with no penalty. The friendly-fire damage reduction would still be in effect for both parties the whole time.

The idea behind this is if a player shoots a teammate and the teammate kills said player with a twitch shot or something, they aren't penalized for teamkilling as they were shot first. Granted, this could create awkward situations where a player might fire at a teammate, miss, and then the teammate shoots them back and kills them, as then the teammate would be marked as a traitor. Accounting for teammate suppression might alleviate this problem.

The whole "traitor" system would then be in effect if a player actually kills said teammate.

last edited by MarksmanMax

@mefirst How about "providing a reason as to why" instead of leaving me with no information? That would help with the discussion.

I like it better than damage reflection. It's like a "forgive" system but more fun.

@marksmanmax

What I meant in the other thread was that when you take away lets say 60% or more of a teammates hp by friendly fire, you get tagged with "traitor" , "loose gun", "unstable" or similar and this feature should stay for longer than 10-12 seconds, maybe out that round/life so that you would need to rationalize with your teammates if it was an accident. This was your original suggestion ey.

Now if you hit your teammate with a onetap in the foot with a pistol or something he /she might loose only 20% hp or something like that, and I meant that in such cases the "marked" period should last only 10-12 seconds because this could be both trolling and reason for a quick payback or an accident.

Still we would need a votekick feature on top to deal with all kinds of shenanigans - A forgive/not forgive system is also a good solution.

Why I suggest two different cooldowns on the "marked period" is to prevent trolling. If there is only 10-12seconds no matter the damage inflicted, a troll could kill a teammate from distance,hide in cooldown period, expose himself to get hit after cooldown and kill another teammmate with no penalty as the teammate would now have the penalty right.

@mefirst I would like to hear your thoughts on the subject as well, why do you like the current damage reflection system, or why you don't like this alternative?

last edited by Pacalis

No... I think giving players the ability to forgive TKs is way better, and makes TKing less of a game.
I see a lot of trolling potential with your system.

@cyoce said in TRAITOR:

I like it better than damage reflection. It's like a "forgive" system but more fun.

Yeah, you forgive your teammate by not shooting him in the back of the head lmao.

@grumf said in TRAITOR:

No... I think giving players the ability to forgive TKs is way better, and makes TKing less of a game.
I see a lot of trolling potential with your system.

What exactly, though? The only thing I could think of is maybe someone purposefully running into someone's line of fire.

Interesting discussion. I kinda like this idea, getting the green light to retaliate under certain conditions, I can see it now... players chasing each other all over the map before the timer runs out lol.

What about this as an alternative/compromise?

A TK forgive system combined with your "traitor" / "trigger happy" tag possibly with appropriate icon change (char spraying wildly) for a time period. Team damage stats would appear on score board after meeting threshold so that victims can easily see whether their attacker has previous and make a more informed forgive/not forgive choice, as well as an incentive via embarrassing stat for the perpetrator to be more careful. This stat could also be used as the basis for a fairer vote kick and would only allow a vote kick to be initiated if the perpetrator met the minimum team damage.

@marksmanmax When you make a minigame out of TKing, some people will want to play, that's all I'm saying. Being a traitor can be fun if you manage to survive. You can even manage to make somebody kill you just after the time limit so he will have one TK and become the traitor himself. Plus, it's more complicated than a "do you forgive" system.

In addition to that, your system requires people to have a functioning mic and to speak English to work, which is far from ideal especially when it comes to UE servers on which people from various nationalities come to play.

@grumf Yeah, there's definitely ways to abuse it, although it would require a bit of finesse to pull off.

Of course, lack of mics or native English speakers could be a problem, as well.

Combine it with the votekick and a minigame wont be attractive, guess all changes would need a test time to see consequences, at least it would be way better than the reflection thingy imho

Anything would be better than reflection. One time the other day a teammate started shooting an enemy team gun he picked up behind me and I turned and shot him in the face with a shotgun. Even though I had never even sneezed on a teammate in that match, I instantly died.

last edited by cyoce

@cyoce said in TRAITOR:

Anything would be better than reflection. One time the other day a teammate started shooting an enemy team gun he picked up behind me and I turned and shot him in the face with a shotgun. Even though I had never even sneezed on a teammate in that match, I instantly died.

I actually intentionally tried to TK someone in one game (because he TK'd someone in our party for no reason). Hadn't TK'd or done any team damage yet.

Dumped about 15 bullets into his chest with an Alpha AK, didn't kill him. Team damage kicked in, dumped the rest of the map of the AK and I died first.

Now, it was intentional TKing, but what kinda bullshit is that?

@marksmanmax

Agree, sometimes an execution is needed to protect the team. That combined with a votekick feature gave trolls very few places to hide without throwing realism all away.

@marksmanmax said in TRAITOR:

Upon doing too much team damage (maybe either 60 HP after the TK damage reduction is applied or after killing a teammate regardless of HP; also, fire support and explosive weapons might need differing modifiers) the player in question is marked as a "traitor". The mark itself is simple; the teammate indicator/icon's color is switched to the color of the hostile faction. The mark only lasts for a short period of time; maybe 10-15 seconds. The automatic kick after three quick TKs would still be in effect.

Well, autokick after 3 TK is good, but it`s team kill 3 times in a row. Maybe it would be better to run an automatic vote to kick a player out of the game and give him a penalty to find new lobbies for an hour +-?