Compensation for joining late in matches

Why is there no form of compensation for joining in to a match that's already half over? Nothing is worse than joining in a game that's at the 7-8 minute mark with starting money/skills and facing people that have everything (or everything they need) maxed out. Everyone always seems to think this would be like free money for people and not fair to the rest...

1) Its not like you can browse through a list and pick games that are half over
2) Its not like it has to be "free money"

...just having skills, or even just say the passive skills, raised to 2 would make a difference. As it is I'm more inclined to quit games I join in late than face a fully upgraded team while trying to bank enough cash between deaths just to catch up to them.

I'm just not sure why I should stick around and be fodder for a team because some one rage quit....

I believe that players are awarded something like $50 every minute. It would make sense to at least give this to people that join late, so someone joining 10 minutes into the game would start with $800 instead of $300.

The one issue with this is that it could potentially be abused. Someone could repeatedly leave and rejoin to get the money and then spend it on turrets. Or someone could leave, rejoin, use the money to juice rush and then just repeat that process over and over. You would have to be able to make sure that money isn't awarded to people that rejoin a game late.

Look at it this way. If you join the winning team, that's a free $1000. It's happened to me a few times even as little as I play: I join a match and POOF! I win before I can even pick my class. I'm just THAT good. Oh, maybe it has something to do with skill...


PTT's suggestion was probably a better idea. Just give the person all the money that the elapsed time alone would've earned them had they been there the whole time.

That's what I always thought made sense too, but every time I bring it up people cry foul for giving free money to people.

We've considered doing this.
The biggest issue is how to plug this exploit:
Person X is in a game.
Person Y is a friend of Person X.
<Loc A>
Person Y joins Person X's game.
Person Y takes the money and builds a bunch of turrets.
Person Y leaves.
<Goto Loc A>

Would the bumping of skills to level two for games half over ever be considered as an option then?

:lol:
Oh that's a good one. People building turrets. :lol:

But seriously, I think Foxguy is right. If you join past near halfway point 7-8 minutes into it, you should probably already get your skills automatically upgraded to level 2. Gives you a sporting chance. Otherwise you're trying to play catchup to the Gunner's Double gatling, explosive rounds, swords, etc.

Turrets aren't much of an obstacle. I rarely ever build them in Crossfire, even. If I've got money in Crossfire and don't have an ability to upgrade, I'm going to spawn bots or save it for the Annihilator. Hostile Paradox has it right. Of course there would be those people that did exploit the system in such a way, but if they suck so bad that that's the best they can do they're going to be horribly annihilated anyways.

...And if a winning team does this? Given how one-sided most public Crossfire matches are, this wouldn't change a thing.

Well I build turrets all of the time, especially if my team is put on the defensive. As many other players have a high priority of using the Annihilator and I personally have a low priority of buying Juice, almost all of my excess cash from skill upgrades go into either bot spawns or building turrets. As a naturally defensive player in any kind of game, I put much more value into turrets and bots than most other players.

Of course turrets alone aren't much to Pros, but when combined with a competent player (or 2), they are a valuable distraction and deterrent to opponents. When you get a triple kill as a Sniper with only Headshots when said Pros are focusing on demolishing turrets, you can see how valuable turrets are. Yes Juiced Pros will wreck base defenses unless their opponents attempt to ring them out, but they would do much more damage to your base if you didn't have defenses.

As Scathis pointed out, the late joining compensation idea could be easily exploited to create hardened defenses with little effort. However, the idea of having your selected Pro's skills leveled up appropriately when joining late could be useful. Perhaps allowing a player to select which skills on each position to have upgrade priority upon initial class selection might be an idea.

This could be an extension of the Custom Classes menu, such as selecting Gunner to have a priority on his Passive skill, or selecting the Support to have a priority on his Hack skill. Upgrades to skills would only apply to the first class a player chooses, and only to the amount a player could theoretically afford at that point in the current game.

But here's the thing: We want turrets built. They're the main defense of the base and get wiped easily, and if someone wants to spend more time in the loading screen than playing just to build some turrets for a friend, then in MY opinion let them. I think this abuse will be far more rare than its playing up to be. People are going to abuse features that allow abuse if its EASY. If its more work than its worth, then they're not likely to do it. PLUS, there isn't a guarantee that jumping into a session in progress will result in the player being on the team of their friend.

Frankly I'd be more worried about people using that money to jump in and buy juice so the juice vendors are on permanent cooldown. Maybe plug THIS hole and we can consider this a fix.

There is actually a similar bug where one person can leave/join a lobby repeatedly to veto a map all by himself. Maybe you could plug both with the same hooks in the code, keeping track of who has been through the game already.