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While Toke created CTF elements in Odamex, he also started developing a points system, which would strengthen the link between teamwork (flags before frags) and individual score.

Currently the system works like this:

You get no points for frags, deaths, betrayals or suicides.
You get 1 point for connecting. (I don't think this is supposed to happen)
You get 3 points for a flag grab.
You get 5 points for a flag return.
You get 25 points for a flag capture.

This system is a good start, but it needs to be refined. Personally, I'd like to see points and frags/betrayals/suicides linked. Manc would like to see a penalty for flag drops (so that people don't boost score by suiciding+flag grabs). We would like to hear what you think! Post a comment. Now.

EDIT: The points system has been improved in a recent update (revision 618):

- You no longer get 1 point for connecting. (You need to earn the points now!)
- You gain 1 point for frags.
- You lose 1 point for betrayals.
- You do not lose any points for suicides, but it is still -1 in your frag count.
- You gain 1 point for taking a flag, whether it's the enemy flag or your dropped team flag. (when ctf_manualreturn is enabled)
- You gain 2 bonus points for grabbing the enemy flag while it's on the pedestal. (The initial grab)
- You gain 2 bonus points for killing a flag carrier.
- You gain 2 points for returning the team flag, whether it's running over your dropped flag (when ctf_manualreturn is disabled) or putting your flag back on its pedestal. (when ctf_manualreturn is enabled)
- You gain 10 points for capturing the flag.

This is not a permanent solution, but it's good for now.

Suicide should definately take points away, perhaps 5. If you get a point for connecting you could easily spam connect for points++.

Perhaps it should be 3 points for killing the person that has your flag and 2 for actually returning it.

Other than that, yeah that's cool.

My ideas:

Picking up flag at its starting point: +4
Team-killing/suiciding flag carrier: -4
Picking up a flag anywhere else in the map: +1

And just because it really pisses me off,
Firing more than 10 rockets without moving at least 64 mappixels from starting position: -5

Heh, interesting idea =)

plus a life-long ban if that happens twice in a game, but seriously, i'm gonna edit this post when i get home and i'll try to give some real input

in the meantime, i'm hoping there will be raw stats available as well, points are nice(or are they ?) but stats is all that really matters and even that doesn't tell the whole story, but some basic stats like frags/flags capped/returned should be there for sure

EDITED

Ok i gave it some thinking and here goes a couple of ideas, it may sound complicated, but i belive it would not be that hard to code

first thing we need to reckognize with a scoring system is that we can never get it right....

offense(option 1)Flag pickup(anywhere in the map, regardless of how many times it's been dropped before) +3 points - if that leads to a flag score anywhere in the process(not scored by the same person) additional +5 points, flag pickup(even off a drop)+cap by the same person +15 points - so basically you will reward everyone who played a part in scoring the flag

offense(option 2)there would be say 20 potentinal points to be had for a flag capture and you would give a portion of the points to anyone who helped in capturing, so if the flag gets dropped and picked up 3 times in the scoring process, you take those 20 points and divide it up among everyone who had a pickup on the same flag,regardless of who touched it first or who was capping it, you could also award say +2 or +3 points for grabs/pickups which don't lead to a flag capture



defense: frag carrier kill +3 leading up to flag being returned by anyone or by itself additional +3, returning the flag +3, frag carrier kill+return by the same person +10 points total.
Here i wonder if time could be taken into account, if a flag has been off the platform/pedestal(or whatever it's called) for say longer than 5 seconds, we should give more points for return etc..

frag would stay at +1 point , suicide would not add nor deduct any points

the problem in this situation is that a good defender who doesn't allow any flag grabs wont get rewarded other than by frags, unfortunatelly since every map is different with  different dynamics, there just cannot be a universal solution, you could try giving defenders more points for those couple of returnes they get in say zdctf map07, but if you keep the very same system and try to apply it to map01, you would see some crazy numbers - and this is why i think a point system might not be such a hot idea in the first place

Since defensive and offensive positions are both much different, I think it's important we reward defensive players as much as offensive players, possibly through the use of frag multipliers (in score).

So here are some of my point suggestions:

These points are about fragging. Each set of frags you can reach without dying will boost the amount of points you get for the next five frags. This rewards players for keeping a high k/d ratio.

1 Frag - 1 Point per frag
5 Consecutive frags without death - 3 points per frag
10 consecutive frags without death - 5 points per frag
15 consecutive frags without death - 10 points per frag
20 consecutive frags without death - 20 points per frag

Killing yourself - 0 points
Being killed - -1 point

Killing an opposing flag carrier - 3 points
Killing your flag carrier (FF on) - -10 points


FLAG RELATED POINTS

Grabbing enemy flag from spawn point - 4 points
Grabbing enemy flag from non-spawn - 2 points
Scoring enemy flag - 20 points
Returning the flag - 2 points

I personally believe that someone should get better rewards for capturing the flag rather than killing, since some people (myself inclusive) usually delegate themselves to solely focusing on capturing the flag and not caring much (if at all) about fragging.

And some people (myself inclusive) usually delegate themselves to solely focusing on defending their flags.

Ralph, that's an alright idea, but I disagree with it. Consecutive frag points will not reward defensive positions at all. It will just reward hallway-spam positions and spawnkilling.

I'm also against the idea of penalties for death (not via suicide) as it could lead to negative scores for unskilled players. Nothing worse in joining an Odamex game than having a negative score because you're not so good.

I think it's important to get off of the "anti-camping and anti-spam" bandwagon. These are all parts of the game and are easily counterable. While I think you're taking a step in the right direction, I still think there should be some type of bonus for great defense man who sometimes are even more critical to a game than the flag runner.

Is it fair to say that the defensive player should only get roughly 50-60 points while the best flag runner on the team might net over 125 in a standard 5-flag game? Though flag running is certainly the more "star-powered" position defensive players are often the unsung heroes. Awarding them with their own point bonuses, of some degree, sounds like a good idea to me.

I don't really like the idea of having a global stats system (in my experience it just encourages stat-spamming), but on the other hand I think it'd be nice to have an option in the game server to dump stats to a file in some machine-readable format and let the server admins do what they want with it.

what exactly is a stat spamming ? or rahter how would you stat spam on flag pickups, flagcarrier kills, flag scores etc. other than by actually doing those things and helping your team in the process ? trying to touch the flag is not as easy as picking up up the RL and unloading it into enemy base

i think giving raw stats is way safer than giving points, in a point system, one can find a way to crank up overall points easier than by acutally doing what's right, while a stat system gives you only the reflection of what actually happened in-game and the interpretation is up to you

but since this is a topic on points, i edited my earlier post to give some ideas