There should be an effort to develop a set of handicap features to improve overall activity and to allow unseeded and divisionless tournament formats. The idea would be to figure out the handicap features that don't affect the game mechanics, just something to turn pure rape to semi rape. This would make better clans accessible to worse clans and vice versa thus increasing possible matchups in 4on4. For example there could be a handicapped divisionless 4on4 tournament running parallel with eql and the set of handicap features would be derived from eql for each matchup. Imho there are great possibilities here making the imbalanced matchups more fun and boosting overall activity but it will be a challenge to design features that don't break qw 4on4 mechanics, at the heart the game should stay the same. Read again, the game mechanics should not be messed with. We also could use the handicapped tournament to lure some new players and so on. I am not quite sure why the current handicap is not used but I have been told it sucks :Z I have no idea if this can be done but all in all it needs some thought. I'm quite sure it's impossible to find exactly one feature to accomplish this but perhaps with a combination of right features.

Discuss, flame, whine or chip in your ideas for handicaps.

For example the bright minds of cmt quickly came up with these:
spawndelay
weakening control by "dual" armors or weakening armors for the better team
no quad glow
dimishing h/a
funky features for powerups, for example killing the opposing team from pent
boosting taken damage
random player gets armor
sounds removed
teamoverlay d

Keep in mind these are just ideas that were thrown around.

Now for those who will write "buuhuu do you wan't to make the whole game noob friendly, change 1on1 to q3 and so on". Please do not draw the whole qw into this, 1on1,2on2 and ffa are a different ball game. The bullshit factor getting raped in 4on4 is _much_ higher than in any of these game modes, just admit it, there is no comparison.

Still, the teams that have put alot of effort and time into mastering 4on4 deserve to rape the teams that hasen't. If you end up giving handicaps during a game to the best team, the two teams wouldn't play the same game anymore, and competing against eachother would be quite pointless.

Yes, but you are missing the point. The point is to change pure rape to semi rape, make the game more playable for the losing team without changing the basic game mechanics. From 250-20 to 200-120! It's not about making the matchup winnable but playable. Just figure out something to increase the possible matchups in 4on4. Yes the game won't be the same . So what? Everyone knows that "bullshit" 4on4 games don't count but if handicapped 4on4 could boost overall activity I honestly wouldn't mind. Then again this could prove to be impossible or take too much effort to make it work or perhaps it just isn't worth it or or. Just throwing ideas around!

This discussion stem from the argument that 97% of the players would hate divisionless 4on4 tournament, ie. smackdown(?).

what if the losing team was invisible certain amount of seconds (3?) after the spawn. (if they attack/jump they get visible).

no

Regardless of the fact that someone might come up with a brilliant or just very sucky idea, there's noone to code this into a mod anymore, the development has halted serverside or is non-existing. Even getting the next release out is hanging in the air, so it might not even see a daylight. (yes, we lost the most active coder and there is noone left anymore except tonik, who has been anything but active lately)


Regardless of that, QW and handicap doesn't fit together. Go to a lower div if you are lazy/uninterested or start training more to actually improve your game.

The worse team could get more weapons when spawning. For example:

50 frags below = they get SSG
75 frags below = they get SNG
100 frags below = they get GL/RL

weakening armors for superior team + auto-GA on spawn for the noob team seems adequate to me (or possibility to choose auto-GA / auto-YA maybe, but nothing more)
- gives the noob team a bit more space/time to rush some place in attempt to get control
- exhausts rockets of the superior team faster
- doesnt add "weird" elements to the game that are irrelevant to "real" teamplay, your team has to use the same techniques as in real game
- is easy to implement (unlike some of the craziness suggested here already)

it's necessary to combine both, using only one doesn't help (as kt* handicap proves in practice)

The point isn't so much to allow worse clans to play better clans, as much as it's to allow better clans to play worse clans

In a perfect world there would be no need for handicaps of course. But there is a very limited number of QW clans, and it can often be hard to find a prac with a clan that you can have a meaningful game with. Especially for the top clans.

Guess what it comes down to, is whether the top clans would welcome the opportunity to play some weaker clans with handicap when they can't find a prac otherwise.

It's all about increasing the amount of clans that can play, have fun and improve together.

If there is interest in this, some good ideas and people ready to test them. I'm willing to do the coding.
So keep on coming up with ideas.

The main problem I have with most handicap features is that they take away some tacit knowledge skills.... I mean take spawning with armours, I just don't like the idea that a direct rocket hit won't always kill a fresh spawn, that's something players take for granted when playing. I know it could help to balance out mismatched games, but top players won't want to get into 'bad habits' like always using 2 rockets to kill spawns rather than 1 rocket and then maybe a hitscan weapon to finish if necessary as it is now. They will want to maintain their usual routine required for elite play.

The OP talks about not wanting to change the game mechanics, well, the only way you can really achieve that is via some kind of frag multiplier, e.g. weaker team gets x frags for every kill (and this still may not make the game fun for them).

Well, good point, but I think it's impossible to come up with something that doesn't change gameplay at all.
Anyway, some more random ideas:
- doubling the rockets consumption (superior team)
- limit maximum amount of rox to some very low number (10) (superior team)
- double boomstick dmg (noob team)
- prefer spawns in locations where most of your team is (noob team)
All my suggestions (especially this last one) are helping the noob team to rush some location to get control over it, which is something your team has to do when it's losing badly (even in "real" game). We're talking about 400:50 games (and more), games when the losing team is not in contol of anything. So helping it getting pent, or making enemy quad less important and so on are I think useless to them.

i agree with hangtime, even though the aim with this is great i think that players can get those bad habits that will affect "real" play and this will have an impact on their willingness to use the feature :/

I kinda like the "respawn" near mates idea and the other stuff, but that particular feature can instead boost the frag difference.

Say that the noob team rushes for quad at dm3. All of them are there in the event of a coordinated attack :p
Some member of elite team swipes pent and also takes quad (joink) killing off the noobs one by one.

According to the "spawn model" they have a larger chance of spawning close to their mates (i.e. where they just got killed) so it might become a bad situation after all :/

I do however think that shaft can be turned down damagewise as a handicap. The better player will have to aim even better to kill efficiently and that will be carried over as a "positive" experience when playing without the handicap.
Dunno if it's a good idea or not, but it seems good on paper.