Rogue Genocide

[Duane Dibbley]

You perhaps know of my aversion to the Genocide flag but I'll set out my reasons.

1 It is action-at-distance, no need to get shot to die; no need to shoot a tank to kill it. All other flags and shots require a direct connection between victor and victim. There is no real-world correlation, no speculative physics to account for geno. Laser is action-at-distance but with a clear connection between combatants. ShockWave can give multiple kills with one shot but requires skill to get close. Shield, QuickTurn, Agility, Tiny, etc. all straightforward. Guided Missile can be very powerful but its physics are obvious and it has limitations. Stealth isn't hard to understand, nor Cloak despite no real-world counterpart. Then the weird ones, Masquerade, Oscillation Overthruster, and most weird, Phantom Zone. They're imaginative and fun, and can be used strategically to get you out of a fix but they're hardly power flags. And then, in ctf, the team flags. No direct connection between combatants there you may say, but there is! That team flag is the lifeblood of every tank on the team! It's capture is symbolic of victory or defeat for the team, that battle decided and over. It's what makes ctf a team game. Every tank should know where the flag is and defend it or be prepared to die. And I am. I may feel disappointed to have lost but I don't feel cheated. Cheated is what I feel when, in the midst of a well-fought dogfight, my opponent dies without me hitting him. Or I die just as I'm about to. And that's geno. What is that all about? What is it emulating? A nuclear devastation of the enemy? But that would kill your forces too, and we've got ShockWave. What then? Avian flu? And your team has gas masks? It's not symbolically decisive, it's just random.

2. It is an elitist flag which by it's nature favours experienced players over noobs, more so than just learning the game. Just one severely limited flag in a known, difficult to access location - and a fresh incomer trundling in the open while learning the controls - whatever anyone says about not targeting noobs it's inevitable that they get exponentially more than their share of geno hits. And then their team is angry with them. Not very encouraging, is it?

3. And the points, the positive incentive to seek and use geno. Why should you get multiple points for one kill? There is no more skill in using geno than with any other flag. Ok it may be hard to get, ok you may be limited to one shot - but it's still just shooting. Isn't the mass death of the opposition reward enough? You didn't seek, fight, and kill those other tanks, they died by default. And you got a whole bunch of points.

(A related issue - What do points mean? What does that score actually mean? It seems obvious to me that points mean kills. Kill a tank, get a point. If points don't mean kills, what DO they mean? Nothing else stacks up. And further, if the idea of ctf is to capture the flag, why no reward? Get a bunch of points for shooting one tank, but win the game and you get nothing? Surely it would make sense for the capping tank to get the points or, my preferred option, every tank on the winning team get one point. Because it's a team effort. Mofo has instituted the former in amongst a mass of bizarre innovations. This is essentially a game of skill rather than luck, agreed? It's sharp-shooting, not roulette. Stray ricochets and lag are luck enough, why spoon in extra dollops of luck? I can almost see triple-barrel and the unfortunately named "ass canon" (rear turret?), but triple point? What for? Fifty point!? Come on, enough luck already.)

One argument put forward for geno is that it kills campers. "Camping" is a vague term. If it means dominating for a while from a good position then a certain amount is part of the game. I might do it myself a bit but it's boring, and skilled use of Stealth, SW, Laser puts a stop to it. Proper camping is possible on some maps by staying in a virtually unassailable position pressing fire without hardly looking. That is a map-making failure that needs to be put right, not patched with a "kill all" flag.

So far so yada yada. On the flip side I can see a place for geno. The opposition have your flag. You and teamies are chasing, he's on his own without backup. We're closing in, he's close to the pad but not going to make it, you see where you will shoot him when he lands then wham! you're dead. So are your mates. He just has time to recover and he caps, you're dead again. Great tactical teamplay with skill and strategy. Unfortunately, in most ctf, geno use is far more frequent than capping. I'd like to see it the other way around and, then, ok.

But I like Free-For-All. I like to play rogue. I have no team mates, everyone is fair game and I'm fair game for anyone. I can't accidentally tk but I can't expect any help either. I'm the Lone Ranger without Tonto, I have only my wits and skills and steamroller flag. I engage another tank, he's good, we dance and jump, another tank fires at him, I squash the newcomer but I'm under fire. I dodge, he misses, I line him up, and I'm dead. Rogue Genocide. Some rogue somewhere else has been shot, and I died. WTF? Why? Where's the logic, the reason, the gameplay? I'm not affiliated with that other tank, I was not part of his fight, I'd kill him and he me. Why should I die in someone else's fight? Doesn't matter what skills I have, I can't avoid a bullet aimed at someone else halfway across the field. If my neighbour crashes his car, I don't get whiplash! Even worse is those maps that allow geno suicide. Rogue can get a load of points for suicide. Get to the top with the extraordinary feat of hitting a wall square-on. Shouldn't it be skill that's rewarded? Is it right that there be incentive to piss off a bunch of players? Is this the way forward? Chess is skillful but kinda old, maybe it could be improved if you could win by kicking the board over?

Rogue should mean rogue. Rogue is not a team. Rogues stand and fight alone, that's the point of playing rogue. I don't like it but I concede that the rare and skilled use of geno can have a place in hard-core ctf, although imho the team flag should be the whole point of ctf. But Rogue geno? It's a contradiction in terms and should have no place in the game.

And lastly, please don't take this personally. My only interest is the game and how it can be better. I have been accused of telling people not to use geno, I have never done that. I have only expressed my reasons for not using it myself. I see people saying "I hate flag x" when they mean they hate being killed by that flag but are happy to use it themselves. I don't like geno, and I never use it (except the pseudo-geno team flag at Apocalypse if no other maps are available). I accept that geno maps are popular and some players make a beeline for it and use it repeatedly and almost exclusively. But if you take nothing else from all this, at least ask yourself if ffa Rogue geno can be justified, and, mapmakers, if it should be on your map.

Thanks

[joevano]

Yep, I definitely hate the rogue geno. A well placed and difficult to get geno isn't such a big deal to me, but "geno" maps do not help to attract new players.

[blast]

I just hate geno in general. It's one (if not the only) flag in the game that doesn't have any way to defend against. Having run Missile Wars 2.3 for quite some time, I did see excessive predation on new players that would wander out into the middle of the field unaware of the danger.

[Green Manalishi]

i'm writing this in hope of making my point about geno clear to duane, one of my longest time bz friends, whom i hate to see sign off after a rogue geno, especially when the geno'er is myself.

suicide rogue geno certainly is a joke and it should not be a part of the game anywhere (and i don't remember seeing it in a long time), but rogue geno, beside looking like an oxymoron, in any case is a tricky issue whether you implement it as a server owner or not. if you don't, rogues are still allowed to geno teams, which gives them an advantage. if you do implement it, then it is usually unfair for the rogues, since they most of the time outnumber any team's members. if there were a way to prevent rogues from using geno whatsoever, then we could speak of balance and fairness in that respect. maybe a plug-in could be created for that? it is beyond me to judge the possibility of this.

while i agree that geno flag should always be hard to access on the map, or be very few in number compared to other flags and/or have very few shots, i don't understand the total aversion to it. when you think about it, the game itself is a silly online game of jumping and flying tanks, with a lot of randomness and luck factors (lag, good/bad spawns, good/bad teammates etc) inseparable from it. why does it really make a difference if you 'totally' deserve a point or not? we are not playing for money or trophies, unlike league players our scores vanish after each bz session, and i don't think of us as knights of medieval times dueling each other either. for me geno is just another thing that adds to the randomness, silliness and fun of the game. as long as it's usage is duly limited by server owners, let's just try to tolerate it.

[blast]

It would be trivial to make a plugin that prevented Rogue from using Geno. You'd just alter their shot flag to nothing if the type was geno.

[Green Manalishi]

so it's even easy to do. server owners reading this: please prevent rogues from getting geno'ed and alter rogues' shot flag to nothing if the type is geno. rogue fairness ftw..

It would be trivial to make a plugin that prevented Rogue from using Geno. You'd just alter their shot flag to nothing if the type was geno.

[Cruel dog]

I do agree that Rogue Genocide is kinda stupid.

The point in being a rogue is that you are on your own..
Rogue Geno can get annoying.. But you know.. If the server owner has loaded the plugin, it's cause they want it:P
If you are not happy, there is a huge selection of servers to choose from.

It's a gameplay modification, and I agree it sucks when someone kills themselves with the geno

Happy Tanking!

[joevano]

Rogue Geno can get annoying.. But you know.. If the server owner has loaded the plugin, it's cause they want it:P
If you are not happy, there is a huge selection of servers to choose from.

Agreed and I usually avoid playing those servers.

[blast]

I'm playing around with some plugins. One is NoRogueGenocide and the other is PointlessGenocide. The NoRogueGenocide will prevent a rogue player from using or holding a genocide flag. PointlessGeno will add a new flag type (PG) that will work like geno, but award points differently for a kill (such as either just giving one point, no points, or subtract points). The PointlessGenocide actually feels familiar, so maybe someone had made something like that before.

[Jacko H]

Hey Duane and all.

Noticing this issue (or players dislike) of the rouge genocide situation, I confronted Alezakos about the issue and writing such a plugin.
To his applause, he has made the plugin.
He specifically made the plugin to our liking for the particular map he is hosting.

We decided to use this option:
Rogues can take the genocide flag, but their shots are just regular shots and with the option Rouge Genocide off.

You can see how it works at Firing Range by Just Be Simple. At ports 5170 (fast shot) or 5171.

Many thanks to Alezakos for his work!

[ACEofSpace]

i don't think of us as knights of medieval times dueling each other either.

That's all I think of when I play BZ Flag.