Mutator Request : Vote Specialist

[UN17]

Intro
Hi! I've been waiting ages for that Statboard idea to become a reality, but I'm not certain if the person who said they were programming it ever finished. In the meantime, here's a less-contriversial mutator request from me:

Problem
Specialist gamemode is a great addition to INF 2.9. The problem is that a good many people dislike or even HATE being the specialist, while others, like myself are dying to get a chance, because we love doing the "hide in shadows" thing. Why is this a problem? Because several times, people who are the specialist run off, die three times, use profanity and leave, wasting 11 minutes of everyone's life as the round resets. Some of the nicer people leave immediately if they are specialist so they waste less time.

Solution
I'm no coder, but would it not be possible to have a simple mutator that puts a message on screen: "Press Fire to Request Specialist Position." Then when the round starts, those who pressed fire, are put into a list and a Spec is chosen from that pool, instead of everyone. If no one votes, then it chooses randomly from the entire Attackers side, like normal.

Conclusion
Please, mighty coders, don't you think this is a worthy task?

 

[keihaswarrior]

Excellent idea. This would be a nice addition.

I would like to add one more thing: If the spec leaves mid-round, then the vote message should appear on the screen. Of the people that vote, one gets chosen and gets respawned as the new replacement spec. Also, make sure that they respawn with the same number of deaths as the spec who left.

 

[DarkBls]

Really good idea IMHO

 

[Beppo]

not that bad actually ...

 

[w00p]

Well, its good, but has one little dodgy feature.
Namely the "press fire". I would really appreciate if you'd have to press another button you'd assign yourself, or something in the QA menu, since the more nervous twitchy kind of poeple have probably already pressed fire 3 times, scrolled their mouse wheel 5 entire turns, ...
Why's everybody looking at me?

Anyway, I've been at some friends home, and I notice almost everybody does it, quite unconsious.

And the voting would be unnecessary, since there now is a pool of volunteers, and a random between volunteers isn't anyhting that anybody would mock about.
No need to do the extra coding work for the vote, though I do want to stress the fact that I highly disadvise the "press fire".
Heck, I'd even be happy if there was more keyboard-aimed volunteering system like "press jump" or "press crouch".

 

[Cleeus[JgKdo]]

not that bad actually ...

I remember you saying something different

 

[(SDS)benmcl]

Great idea but lets do something other than fire because as stated their will be complications.

Need a mutator that detects the twitchy people and have them spawn the hell away from me to avoid said complications.

So whos going to code this?

 

[DamienW]

I remember you saying something different

1) Back then, Spec hadn't been played on public servers.
2) I remember this debate too. What you were asking for is "attacker team votes who the specialist is". It's quite different from what's debated here.

 

[NTKB]

I remember you saying something different

The man has a right to change his mind doesnt he?

 

[DamienW]

He didn't, NTKB. What Cleeus is refering to is a request he did a while ago, asking that the attacing team would vote who the specialist is. In other word, if you were playing on a server, say, JgKdo server, and were in the attacker team with 5 JgKdo, you wouldn't have the slighest chance to be a specialist.

What is suggested here is a system where only people who want to become specialist can become one, yet retains the original "random" element that keeps things fair for everyone. Best of both worlds. And most importnatly, it's totally up to you if you're specialist or not, your team mates don't get involved in it.

In other words, Beppo didn't change his mind. A new solution has been suggested here, and it sounds like the best of all 3.

Edit : it's not a attack on you, NTKB. I'm just informing you that Cleeus' statement is false.

 

[Beppo]

The 'old' issue we had with Specialist was that the gametpye is designed to get one man that is not really trained to be a Specialist to be the Specialist. This way the Specialist has some sort of natural disadvantage that the real guy would have too.
So, the purpose of the gamemode itself is to grab one guy out of the whole team that then switches roles and so the whole team has to be set up in a way that everyone is 'replaceable' or anyone can fill out the job the 'choosen one' normally would do. So even in clan matches there would be noone that can be 'trained' to be the Specialist all the time cause this would destroy the natural disadvantage this guy should have. So the team would be forced to protect this poor guy... else a 'trained' Specialist would not need so much cover and you could choose one team member that carries some extra equipment within his loadout for the Specialist for example that is dropped on startup. So you get a pretty specialized team this way with roles set in stone and the extra careful 'VIP' stuff would be not that difficult anymore.

The suggestion here would end up the same if only one guy would actually 'vote' for taking the Specialist role... but that is not what I saw in this suggestion. A minimum setting of ie 3 players should be ok to let the little randomness and disadvantage stay in the game and force the team to protect their Specialist a bit. In addition it gives the 'nonononooooo' sayers that do not want to become the Specialist a chance to get around this job. Same for newbies of course that want to learn the game before being put on the first priority job. So if ie the 3 guys are not 'ready' then we can fall back to the 'standard' without any kind of a problem and doing it totally random this way. Sure some players will never become Specs this way but for a medium to full public server this would be quiet a good setting that allows 'non-Specialists' to take part in a Specialist match without any 'risk' to be forced to play as the Spec.

Long text.. I hope you see the difference here

 

[FieldMedic]

A mutator that should be interesting, while keeping the random choice of a specialist would be:
-At the beginning , a random choice is made by the mutator , selecting a specialist
-On the user selected as the specialist , something like this is displayed:
*You are choosen as the specialist, if you agree press the JUMP key*
*If you dont want to be the specialist , press the RELOAD key*
After 5 seconds maximum, if no keys are pressed , the mutator will select somebody else with the same question.

If no one has the guts to take the specialist role by pressing the JUMP key after the whole attackers reject the offer , one is randomly choosen as the specialist without possibility to refuse.

Dont know if it is possible as a mutator , but sounds good in my opinion

 

[keihaswarrior]

Beppo has a good point. The random element is important to the gametype. Therefore:
----------
At load screen (press Reload to accept Specialist role)
If 3 or more press reload then 1 is randomly selected from that group.
If less than 3 vote, 1 is randomly selected from the whole group.
----------
If the Specialist leaves mid-round, the message: (press Reload to replace Specialist role) is displayed.
If 3 or more press reload, 1 of them will respawn with the next wave as the Spec.
If less than 3 press reload, 1 person is randomly respawned as the replacement Spec with the next wave.
When the replacement Spec spawns he has the same number of deaths the Spec who left mid-round did.
Whoever is selected as replacement Spec will be notified immediately and the wave timer will be displayed to let them know when they will respawn and become Spec.
-------

 

[UN17]

\\ Reply

I'm glad my mutator request is well recieved. I prefer it the Positive way instead of the Negative way that Fieldmedic wants it. I don't like the idea of wasting 5 seconds per player denying the Specialist role. On GD's 20/20 server, that could be 50 seconds of zzz....

I agree with the setup KW posted above me with one addition: There should be a MinSpecialistVote variable that is set by the server. They can set it to any number they want, like 3. If set to 0 or 1, then the mutator works just like I suggested in the first place, with only those voting, being selected from.

This extra variable is just forsight into 5v5 games where only 2 want to be spec or other contingencies like in pre-arranged matches where both teams actually have agreed to choose their spec.

\\ Conclusion

Someone, please make this a reality!

 

[keihaswarrior]

with one addition: There should be a MinSpecialistVote variable that is set by the server. They can set it to any number they want

Ya, that would be a nice feature to allow some customization for different types of games. For instance, on the TeamMuf server the players are never going to be organized to have specialized loadouts to help the Spec and such. So a setting of 1 would be better to only have people who want to be Spec. On the other hand, a higher number would be better for clan matches to make the gametype play as it should.