Problem: players who join a 10 minute old combat game find themselves facing high level opponents. they end up feeding the enemy team and not helping their own team at all.

Solution: After the game time reaches 5 minutes, any NEW players who join will start the same rank as the lowest person on the team they join.

why do i think my solution is better? In no instance will a player be able to gain more ranks then they already have by rejoining the game. In no instance will a new player be able to join with a higher rank than any other player on his team.

Correct me if i'm wrong here, i honestly don't play combat much at all, but i like fixing things that need fixing. A player who types "retry" or "reconnect" in the console will rejoin the game with the same experience level and upgrades that he had when he left? that has been my experience. I mention this because if the LOWEST person on the team were to reconnect, using my fix, they would be able to rejoin as the rank of the person above them, thus possibly gaining ranks unfairly. If the servers retain levels, which i've seen them do, then this won't happen.

combat is all about speed and action. the team needs every player in the fight, helping out. new, level zero players hurt the team by being killed by the enemy easily and filling up the spawn line. a change like this would solve the problem, make the game more fun for late joiners, and furthers the idea of rapid action.

alright, now you get to tell me what i overlooked

~~~ EDIT: Solution updates
Solution v2: New players that join after 5 minutes of elapsed time will be the same rank as the lowest non zero ranked player on their team. Level zero AFKs would be ignored. thanks to Theki11er for spotting this problem.

This idea is as good as any of the others.. Better than some in fact..


And while hanging out by high level team mates will help in getting levels, this is a valid idea to add..

i was hoping i'd thought it out pretty well...

teammates do help you level, but it still takes a very long amount of time to go from zero to say, 4, when working off nothing but exp leech. granted, you'll probably aim for the other low level opponents and get some kills, but those usually occur once every 5 deaths to a high level opponent. that's feeding the enemy team while not helping your team very much at all.

i know you weren't arguing for or against the idea zunni, i just wanted to point out that while exp leech is an excellent reward for team work, it just isn't enough to get new players up to speed.

I see a problem with this- the lowest ranked person could be hiding in a corner the whole game and be lvl 1.

"OMG NOOB!!! Leave the game so I get more levelS!?!1"

I think that the exp you get should be the average score -2.

AFKs would ruin it, good point Theki11er.

your average idea sounds pretty good, but AFKers hurt it as well: Suppose the actual playing team average is 5. There is an afk who is bringing that down to a 4. take away 2 ranks and new players start with 2.

although, new players starting at 2 or 3 is still better than players starting at zero, which is what would happen with my solution.

it isn't very often that a player will pick a team in classic or combat, and then immediately go afk... unfortunately it isn't unheard of...

Solution v2: I wanted to keep this simple, ce'est la vie. New players that join after 5 minutes of elapsed time will be the same rank as the lowest non zero ranked player on their team. Level zero AFKs would be ignored. This makes sure the fix would work on servers that use forced auto-assign yet don't have an idle kicker or many admins(in other words, bad servers).

ill suggest something that calculates the average level of the team and assigns you like 75% of that

the only problem i could see with this, is how the server retains levels... i guess if you made it just set a little log or something with thier steam id, and then little whatevers to remember what they had, otherwise, people could reconnect with the XP, but then get different sets of upgrades.

i dont know how this could be done, and if the server remembered levels and stuff, it wouldnt be a problem, but its something that should be considered.


i do like this idea. i like the servers with the auto xp plugins that will give your a lvl or two if you joined late.


but, what about 10+ minute games? many servers have that. should it just be halfway, or what?

i like this idea.

What i meant was, the system would kick in 5 minutes into the game and remain in effect.

Also, in my limited combat experience, i have been on servers that DO already retain upgrades for those that rejoin. I'm 99% sure it's possible and has already been done.

Assume that the server does not remember upgrades. Lets say the worst person on the team decides to exploit my fix. He rejoins, his new rank is that of the person who was just above him. He has "caught up" to the next lowest person on his team. That doesn't seem like a very serious exploit.

As far as granting new players ranks based on the average... I just don't like any solution that would spawn new players in with a rank higher than people who have been playing. A rank equal to the lowest non afk player just seems more fair, in my opinion.

There is a plug in that does this.

do the servers remember it for the duration of the round/map, etc? because if so, thats good.

if the server does that, then i cant really think of a whole lot of ways this could be exploited, abused.

it could be some teams saving grace, as well. maybe the marines just need one more person with a welder or gl or something, maybe the aliens need a web gorge, but nobody wants to die, and the marines have spent all their points (this really works more for marines than aliens)

so, therefore, the guy doesnt have to sit around and mooch while the onos stomps and the newly joined person bites, or you dont have to follow the jp around while dying over and over.


again. i like it =P

The servers would remember what you had for the current round. If servers are running that plugin, then there really is no way to exploit the solution. Simply put, new players that join would be given a rank equal to the lowest non zero ranked player on their team.

The server I'm an admin on runs the latejoin plugin, and AFKs have never been a problem. The way the plugin works is simple: every time you spawn in, your total experience is compared to the average XP of all the players on your team. If your XP is less than 75% of the team average, you level is boosted to 75% of the team average. If you have an AFK, he would slow the team some, but unless it's a very small match it would hardly be noticeable. Also, it wouldn't afftect the higher-scoring players. The plugin also lets you customize things like the maximum level you can be raised to.

This would make an excellent server variable:
sv_latejoin 1/0
sv_maxlevel 2-10

The only people that get repeatedly killed after joining late in combat are the people that wouldn't be doing good anyway. It is quite easy to get levels in combat no matter what time you join the game.

As long as you play smart and your team isn't already losing horribly there is no reason why you should not get easy levels joining late. All that you have to do is stick with teammates of higher levels and leech exp. You just have to make sure that you get good upgrades quick like armor 1 and resupply or regen and leap on aliens.

Sorry MrGunner, i'm going to have to disagree with you. Combat is suposed to be about fast paced games where you fight against the clock as well as players.

If you join in at 10 minutes time, by the time the game ends you'll have racked up many, many deaths and very few kills.

You will have fed the enemy more exp than you've gained for yourself or the team. It simply hurts your team to have you there.

Dragon_mech. It sounds like a succesfull plugin, but i'm against giving players, who have had the same opportunity as everyone else, free exp. Especially so much of it. As a kind of "catchup" plugin that works great, but that's not what i want. I want something that helps out people who have just joined only.

That's a pretty good plugin then.

There are many solutions to this problem... some, like that plugin, are already being implimented. I guess what we really need is to see what the community wants so that we can get something more standard.

Do they want to join with a rank equal to the lowest player on their team, or do they want a rank based off of the team's average? I think most people will lean toward the average approach that the plugin takes.

The server I play on uses this plugin, and it works pretty well...It makes it possible for someone handling base defense to keep up with the rest of the team, as their job is equally important but they're not always in the thick of combat...Only problem is, if I'm just not playing well and I get a level this way, I dont feel that I've really earned it ...There've been games where I just couldnt seem to kill anything until i get my shottie...I've come back from last place on the scoreboard this way

That's funny because even if I join 10 minutes into the game I still end with with at least even kills to deaths, unless the marines are about to lose.

Plain and simple : If you play smart you shouldn't have to worry about it.

I think servers stopped remembering experience because people could choose mines, put a mine down, f4 rejoin, put another down etc etc, and put up heaps of mines with 0 deaths, and by heaps, I mean carpeting marine start heaps.

I'm sure however, a more elegant fix rather then killing the server's ability to remember experience could fix that problem. e.g. mines disappear if you leave a game.

that is a pretty bad exploit pheus, and probably easily fixed like you suggested. having servers implement any kind of solution to this problem would be made a lot easier if they could remember exp and so prevent a lot of other exploits.

MrGunner... do you WANT me to insult you or something? you aren't bringing anything to this discussion. I made some points about late joiners, from your post i can't tell that you've bothered to even read them, let alone understand or refute them. instead you just go on about how you did just fine in your last game...

tell me how it would be unbalancing to have given you maybe 2 levels when you had joined. It wouldn't have been unbalancing. You would have caught up to your teammates a lot sooner, and have fed the enemy less kills. This works for both sides equaly.

late joiners provide free kills for higher level enemies. it's that simple. yes, there are plenty of people who can catch up within a few minutes, but there's a large majority that NEEDs some help in the form of a couple free levels. this post and the MANY like it wouldn't be around if there wasn't a percieved problem.