Medals and Awards

For those of you who have played Star Wars: Battlefront II, you'll know what I'm talking about.

There is already a sort of Medal system in play on Unreal Tournament 2004. Whenever you get a huge number of headshots, you get Head Hunter. Likewise, if you get a huge number of flak cannon kills, you get Flak Money. These are similar to the Medal system I want to bring into play.

Whenever you accomplish a feat, such as killing 60 monsters with a Shock Rifle (would be much more balanced if it were health- or hit-based, actually), you would get a Medal. Call it, say, Frenzy. Whenever you get a Medal, it increments a variable holding how many times you have ever gotten that Medal (consistent through games). You can only gain a given Medal once in a life. If you gain a Medal that increments your count to 4, you become a 'Veteran' of the Medal, and get the Award for that Medal. In Frenzy's case, you would probably get an upgraded Shock Rifle of some sort, and call it the Elite Rifle, or some such.

If you die, you lose any effects of an Award. However, there is a 30-second grace period after you gain an Award where, if you die, your following life will retain the Award.

When you gain a Medal 32 times, you advance to Elite status with the Medal, which lowers the requirements for getting the Medal. When you have gotten the Medal 64 times, you become Legendary, and automatically start with the bonus every time you spawn. Once you are Legendary, you may continue getting the Medal, but it will have no effect save increasing your Medal Count.

Off the bat, you could have Medals for each weapon (Upgraded Weapon), for each Monster (Monster-bane, you do extra damage to it), for general Score (Damage Reduction Bonus, Damage Bonus Bonus [lol]), Artifacts (Upgraded Artifacts [I can see it already]), and any number of other things.

This is all completely ripped from SW: BF2 (even the example stuff, like Frenzy and the Elite Rifle [the Elite Rifle *rocks*!]). What are the thoughts of the mass?

The RPG has an alternative reward system. You get xp, you go up levels, you get points to spend.

Rather than just having an 'elite rifle' bonus, you have the points to spend on whatever you want. This seems a lot more flexible and powerful than the SW:BF2 model.

I think to try and combine the two sets of awards would not work. The only real way would be to increase the number of bonus types in the invasion spree, so if you have any specific examples of things which could be logged to give bonuses it may be worth suggesting. But the bonus should still only give xp.

The only situation I can think of which might work differently would be Weapon Proficiency (originally suggested by emetakleze). If you logged long term the number of kills with each weapon, you could slowly increase the damage bonus on that weapon according to a sliding scale.

On the contrary, I think they would combine well. RPG has a way of getting better that is not necessarily logical. For example, if you're sitting around blasting away at monsters with weapons, why should you be given the option to increase your Adrenaline (combos aside)?

The way that BF2 does it is more logical, giving you help with things you try to accomplish. Why would you get an elite rifle if you perforated everyone with a shotgun, hm?

Two different ways of looking at character advancement, one being illogical (I didn't say it was bad) and permanent, the other being logical and (for the most part) temporary. I think a shot could be given without too much stress.

Any other views?

KohanX wrote:

Off the bat, you could have Medals for each weapon (Upgraded Weapon), for each Monster (Monster-bane, you do extra damage to it), for general Score (Damage Reduction Bonus, Damage Bonus Bonus [lol]), Artifacts (Upgraded Artifacts [I can see it already]), and any number of other things.

You could also have a problem with the amount of data you have to log - all damage done individually by each weapon, how many times you have killed each monster type, how many times you have used each artifact, etc. Plus how many times you have got each medal for each time you have got to the bonus point for each of them. Given the number of players on DC, it may be too much. Unless you could somehow use the stats that are already gathered?

But I believe Druid isn't interested in running BattleStats because it causes too much lag.

Well, do keep in mind those were only ideas, and you don't necessarily have to use all of them. But if you want something on data, think about how abilities are stored for each player. If that doesn't kill servers, I'm pretty sure the aforementioned data wouldn't. Again, this is not even in a planning stage, just an idea that I think would be pretty cool.

The assault game type has some additional awards, although I neither know how to give them, nor do I know what to do with them.

Does it? Where did you learn of this? It may be just easier to get awards due to specific situations you're put in (like headshots for the attackers in the beginning of AS-Convoy).

KohanX wrote:

Where did you learn of this?

Play a game of assault, you'll see you earn medals in the scoreboard. How that works? I have not a clue. Could it be ported? Also not a clue.

The AS awards are: (the awards are medal icons next to ur name when u press F1 and are viewable by everybody in the server.)

-u get an award for destroying a vehicle or a turret.
-u get an award for completing an objective.
-u get an award for completing the final objective.

Ah, yes, though those are specific to the gametype (not like it's a hallelujah when you blow up a vehicle in Onslaught). The enemies don't have vehicles or turrets, or objectives, so none of those would really work anyway.

I think the reason Druid pointed out the Assault awards is to show that you can in fact put tiny little medal icons next to people's names using a separate awards system that is built into the existing code for AS gametype.

I'm going to guess at this one here but chances are to make that work you would have to modify the current F1 screen to accept a new layout like Assault that supports medals next to the names.

Oh, well, I see where you're going. When I was talking about Medals, I didn't mean others had to see them. That's just what they're called. And as I said, when you get a Medal, you get its respective Award.

As far as keeping track of persistent weapon-damage data, I think it would be easiest if a variable was stored in a weapon-wrapper keeping how much damage it has dealt (as far as I know, that would be quite easy), and adding the variable's value to the player's RPGPlayerData whenever they die, or when the level ends.