Team killer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A team killer (or TK) is a player who intentionally attacks and kills his or her own teammates in a multiplayer computer game. Team killers are scorned by most gamers. Since many team kills are accidental, the term team killer is usually reserved for those that repeatedly or deliberately TK. Team killing usually happens in first-person shooters from friendly fire.
[edit] Concept
In team-based multiplayer games, administrators are usually provided the option of whether or not friendly fire should be on. Having friendly fire enabled makes the game more realistic and often slows the tempo forcing players to think more about what they do before they actually do it, but it allows TKing to happen. Having friendly fire enabled is more common on private or LAN servers where it is less likely to be abused.
Many TKs are accidental, often committed by or against newbies. In first-person shooters, hand grenades are a classic source of accidental team kills. Grenades have a delay before they detonate and cause splash damage, often affecting teammates that unknowingly run towards the resulting explosion. Grenades can also be thrown into areas that the player cannot see, which may contain teammates. Other weapons besides grenades do not discriminate between friend or foe either, and it is possible for a player to accidentally stray into an ally's line of fire or vice versa. In FPS games that include vehicles, such as Unreal Tournament 2004 or Halo 2, it is also possible to accidentally kill a teammate by running them over when they run in front of your vehicle. This can often happen at spawn points: poorly placed spawn locations can result in teammates appearing right in front of a moving vehicle. Occasionally a teammate will quickly appear from around a corner or other object previously blocking the view of them, startling an unskilled or trigger-happy player and causing him to shoot without thinking. Another common cause is mistaking your allies for the enemy.
Other players TK intentionally: the most scorned ones are those that do it for the fun of it, or just to cause problems for other players. Another common reason for this would be if a player was using a particular weapon, in which case a teammate would kill them to acquire said weapon for their own use; however some players commit TKs against cheaters or hackers to try and get them to leave the game and to show their disapproval of their activities.
Many games implement punishments in order to prevent TKers from doing more damage and possibly stop them from playing the game. One of the most common punishments is to give the server administrator the ability to kick (and possibly ban) a player from the game server. Another is to deduct points from the TKer's score. One of the more unusual methods is "mirror damage", which inflicts all damage that the player does to a teammate back on themselves. Some more sophisticated methods include programs that record how much damage players deal to their teammates and how many times they TK, and automatically kick them from the server if the number reaches a certain threshold. Since most punishments are imposed for actually killing a teammate, some persistent TKers only wound teammates in order to avoid the repercussions. Often vigilante "anti-TK" players take it upon themselves to team kill the team killer, but usually end up getting penalized for TKing anyway.
Some games do not allow team killing, and for most it is an option which can be turned on or off depending on the server. For example, the default setting for Team Fortress Classic allows teammates to damage each other's armor, but not actually diminish their health or kill them. Simply disallowing TKing is not always a perfect solution to the problem, though. Once again, in Team Fortress Classic, players can become infected (causing them to gradually lose health points until they die or are cured) and pass on that infection to teammates. Sometimes players pass the infection on to many teammates. Similarly, players might use their natural invulnerability from teammates in order to aid the opposing team, something that is more common in strategy games and computer role-playing games than in player versus player combat games. In recent custom maps for strategy games, such as for Warcraft III, players play a Team Fortress style game. An example of such maps would be Defense of the Ancients and the Aeon of Strife maps. Team killing would be possible in that context, as a player can TK his/her own teammate's character (in some maps, the designers have TK-preventive measures such as disabling the TK-er from combat).
In many first-person shooters, a player can die (and often lose points) as a result of fall damage, which is the damage to a player's health caused by the impact of a big fall. This allows for another type of team killing where the offender can "push" team-mates off a building or into any kind of deep valley, causing them to hit the floor, die, and potentially lose score. This is a common form of team killing in games like Unreal Tournament, where the impact circles of high-explosive weapons can cause players to be pushed a long distance when hit, even if friendly fire is disabled. Snipers are particularly vulnerable due to their lack of movement, and can quite easily be pushed off the edge of a building or off the edge of the map by team killers using weapons like the ripper or shock rifle. Because this form of team killing is more aiding the suicide of a team mate rather than directly killing them, the team killer receives no penalty and the game does not even acknowledge their involvement in the team mate's death.
Another form of teamkilling is intentionally stepping in a friendly player's line of fire when they are using a weapon with splash damage, such as a rocket launcher. This causes the player firing the weapon to die and lose points, as well as being punished for teamkilling the teamkiller.
A particulary annoying way to be teamkilled is being shot off ledges. In games where teamkilling has been disabled, players on games such as Star Wars: Battlefront have been known to shoot rockets near the feet of players, causing them to fly through the air, and many times off ledges causing death. Unfortunately, team kills aren't awarded for this because the player "jumped off" the edge, so it technically counts as a suicide.
Some games like the Firearms mod for Half-Life allowed more subtle methods of team killing. For example one could set remote triggered explosives on ammunition boxes and wait for teammates to pass by or come to replenish their ammo stock. The explosion of the remote triggered mine would not harm the player but the blast of the ammo box dealt more severe damage. It was possible to harm or kill several players in one shot. TKers could also exploit bugs like the 'Grenade bug', also in the Firearms mod. It consists of throwing a grenade near a teammate then quickly switch team. Since the grenade exploded when the thrower had become a member of the other team, the explosion did kill his former allies. This team killing opportunity was fixed in the next release of the mod.
TKing can be helpful, however. For example, if a player is either stuck (in terms of movement ability) or weaponless (having a bad weapon with the ability to restock their arsenal at respawn), they may ask to be killed by team-mates and then wait for an ally to come along and kill them so they may return to the spawn point (though most games allow for a suicide command that kills the player for situations such as these). Other instances include glitches, where a unit finds itself suddenly in a place it can't usually access or leave (isolated mesa, crevasse or large body of water). At this point, the player sends chat messages such as "Tk my unit plz at XY coordinates" and awaits an ally to locate the unit and eliminate it so the player can continue the battle as normal. Such eventualities were not uncommon in Shattered Galaxy. At which a stranded ground unit would find itself in a lake, because this unit is technically alive, the player cannot send reinforcements (and sends messages for a team aircraft to come and incinerate the stranded unit).
[edit] See also
- TKC's Heckling FAQ covers the motivations and justifications seen from the cheaters' point of view. The Teamkill and Cheat Community (TKC), 2004.
- Teamkill Cheat Community is a large game community dedicated to all manor of teamkilling.
