The Scoreboard and what stats do we need there?
rebirth
Join Date: 2007-09-23 Member: 62416Members, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2007-09-23 Member: 62416Members, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
<div class="IPBDescription">Do we really need to track individual players deaths?</div>Hello there!
Imho NS is an game that's in it's very basic fundamentals about teamplay.
How an round ends up is always result of all the individual players actions over the course of the whole round.
And as such each individual unit on the field is always, no matter what, just part of an bigger overall entity: It's team.
In NS it's not individuals that win rounds, it's individuals coordinating for an bigger overall goal.
That is also why such an great and lively competitive community evolved around the original mod.
The game gives great options and opportunities for coordinated teamplay on a very high level. That's mostly because of the added RTS flavor that keys into the FPS gameplay.
Keeping all that in mind and the current state of Natural Selection 2 in terms of balance and feature completeness: Do we really need an deaths column in the scoreboard?
Does it add anything to the game, that we need right now? Do we as a community actually "want" an deaths column in the scoreboard?
From an game design point of view, having the deaths column has an advantage. It gives the player an additional goal to play for. Having a "good" k:d ratio is something many people interpret with "high personal skill" and know from other MP FPS games.
But it's exactly that kind of mindset and motivation for playing that leads to "rambo gameplay" on an very big level. And i think most people here agree that we don't want to play an "free for all deathmatch" game but rather an "teamplay oriented unique experience".
On the other side, having the deaths column can also be a disadvantage. Too often players try to interpret why a team lost or didn't lose by simply pointing at the end stats for that round and make statements like: "That fade has a k:d of 21:2! That's why we lost! Fade is OP!" while completely ignoring all the other things that happened during that round and led up to it's final outcome.
So i suggest one simple thing: <b>Let's remove the deaths column for the duration of the beta</b> Once the game is feature complete and final, we can put it back in.
But i believe overall it will drive people to getting an better understanding about the game and ALL the involved gameplay mechanics FPS and RTS alike.
And because of that it would greatly improve the overall quality on balance feedback and discussions for the whole community.
I know this whole topic is an sore point for many people who think that Counter Strike "ended this discussion forever".
But shouldn't we try to break new ground, instead of just imitating "what works for others"?
Imho NS is an game that's in it's very basic fundamentals about teamplay.
How an round ends up is always result of all the individual players actions over the course of the whole round.
And as such each individual unit on the field is always, no matter what, just part of an bigger overall entity: It's team.
In NS it's not individuals that win rounds, it's individuals coordinating for an bigger overall goal.
That is also why such an great and lively competitive community evolved around the original mod.
The game gives great options and opportunities for coordinated teamplay on a very high level. That's mostly because of the added RTS flavor that keys into the FPS gameplay.
Keeping all that in mind and the current state of Natural Selection 2 in terms of balance and feature completeness: Do we really need an deaths column in the scoreboard?
Does it add anything to the game, that we need right now? Do we as a community actually "want" an deaths column in the scoreboard?
From an game design point of view, having the deaths column has an advantage. It gives the player an additional goal to play for. Having a "good" k:d ratio is something many people interpret with "high personal skill" and know from other MP FPS games.
But it's exactly that kind of mindset and motivation for playing that leads to "rambo gameplay" on an very big level. And i think most people here agree that we don't want to play an "free for all deathmatch" game but rather an "teamplay oriented unique experience".
On the other side, having the deaths column can also be a disadvantage. Too often players try to interpret why a team lost or didn't lose by simply pointing at the end stats for that round and make statements like: "That fade has a k:d of 21:2! That's why we lost! Fade is OP!" while completely ignoring all the other things that happened during that round and led up to it's final outcome.
So i suggest one simple thing: <b>Let's remove the deaths column for the duration of the beta</b> Once the game is feature complete and final, we can put it back in.
But i believe overall it will drive people to getting an better understanding about the game and ALL the involved gameplay mechanics FPS and RTS alike.
And because of that it would greatly improve the overall quality on balance feedback and discussions for the whole community.
I know this whole topic is an sore point for many people who think that Counter Strike "ended this discussion forever".
But shouldn't we try to break new ground, instead of just imitating "what works for others"?
Comments
Points, Kills, Deaths, Structures destroyed, Structures built, Healing/Welding
in an UNORDERED list
There is a problem in a lot of games though where people will avoid combat in order to gain a higher K/D ratio, and to that end, I would support removing deaths from the stats. Points per minute in games like TF2 is usually the most important stat, though in NS2, dying does have the effect of losing an egg/whatever so it's not completely dismissable.
Points, Kills, Deaths, Structures destroyed, Structures built, Healing/Welding
in an UNORDERED list
There is a problem in a lot of games though where people will avoid combat in order to gain a higher K/D ratio, and to that end, I would support removing deaths from the stats. Points per minute in games like TF2 is usually the most important stat, though in NS2, dying does have the effect of losing an egg/whatever so it's not completely dismissable.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Of course it's not dismissable, but does it really help players to judge the overall course of an individual round?
Players have to die, rounds where a whole team has 0 deaths never happen and if they do then only because of special circumstances that shouldn't happen in an usual "Balanced round of Natural Selection".
Even in an organized competitive game, people know that sometimes sacrifices need to be made to turn the overall tide of the round, it's all about risk-reward choices. If you are playing against a team that is not able to kill any of you then the whole thing is an waste of time because nobody will learn anything. And as such dying is just an integral part of an NS round as respawning is.
Or to say it simple: Death will happen, no matter what.
The important message for NS in that regard is simple: Dying is not THAT bad. You may have lost that <b>battle</b>, but is an <b>war</b> and those get decided by who is still standing in the end.
I think the real problem with this whole suggestion is usually the community. Too many people just want to see their deaths because they use it as some kind of measure on how well they are doing. But doing so ignores all the other players individual skills on the server, so using it as an measure for the own "performance" is kinda useless and often just misleading.
But your idea about not ordering the scoreboard and adding more non-combat stats is also kinda cool, that would be an alternate way to "fix" the k:d focused gameplay behavior.
Having all these different stats and the players not ordered in any specific way would also signal very clearly that the game is not just some kind of team deathmatch where highest k:d wins.
Avoding dying is not a bad thing as long you don't sit around in main base which I don't see happening at all (because of KD anyways).
Also, it's quite the opposite actually, it should discourage ramboing, because rambos die very fast in NS2 (though this mostly applies to skulks and marines).
But deaths are a valid part of statistic and personal judgement. But first of all, you maybe should thinking about changing the design of the scoreboard so that the Kill/Death relationship is not as visually present as it is now, like in most multiplayer shooters.
(And in the future, maybe redesign the scoreboard as a whole.)
At some point, UWE will have to come up with a different scoreboard-system and how a player's performance will be captured in numbers. Possibly something that does not even exist already in the FPS genre. Adding assistance(kill) points are only the beginning.
Charlie will have to sit down eventually and design a clever system to reward players with this kind of numbers-feedback that is highly supportive of teamplay. (And maybe even punishes this 'rambo'-gameplay.)
Avoding dying is not a bad thing as long you don't sit around in main base which I don't see happening at all (because of KD anyways).
Also, it's quite the opposite actually, it should discourage ramboing, because rambos die very fast in NS2 (though this mostly applies to skulks and marines).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Avoiding dying is of course not a bad thing, but NS is a game where you often have to shut off the sense of self preservation to get a job done.
Too often the opposite is happening: Marines sit in a room next to a hive and will just sit there in the corners until somebody actually charges ahead, but if they see that guy dying they will panic and fall back again.
As a Commander this can be quite funny to watch but also very frustrating, because overall the player behavior in NS2 is pretty similar to NS player behavior in that regard.
You either need to lure them with medpacks/ammo or shout at them trough voice. Shouting often does the trick, but that can also backfire because then they will follow the order like a bunch of robots and just "do it" while ignoring everything else.
And imho you underestimate "the mind of an rambo", sure they will die but usually that won't stop them from trying again. If you are new to the game and the only thing you understand is k:d ratio then the natural instinct of "going alone" kicks in, because you don't want anybody to steal your kills. These players also still have that urge of "exploration" so they rather want to go alone as it allows them to pick their own route and pace.
The other issue is good players that end up as an role model, these experienced players are not scared of going alone when RT's need to be recapped or an ninja PG to be build.
Usually they end up with an high k:d, so people try to imitate that style of playing but are too inexperienced to actually make it work. So they end up sneaking too much, hiding too much, running away too much and in general are mostly concerned about their own survival for that nice k:d.
Sure, the final version is gonna have to have a death counter, but right now it feels like too many people are making k:d ratio an way too important thing. I would understand that whole mindset if the current build would have any RfK. But too often it feels like people rather lose a whole round/ragequit instead of ending up with an negative k:d ratio.
@Wolpertinger
Quite a few good points! Personally i really like the way Battlefield 3 handled the whole assistpoints thing. How many assistpoints a player gets depends on the amount of damage he did. But getting that to work in NS2 with the current point/scoring system and the different health numbers on lifeforms seems like a lot of work. But i certainly would love to see getting players rewarded for dealing damage to help with a kill.
With the current system you often end up feeling cheated out of kills, because you deal a lot of damage and then somebody else get's the final hit.
If everybody would get some kind of point reward for such kills, it certainly would help to underline the advantages of sticking together and make players feel way better about it, instead of always thinking "Damn he stole my kill, again!".
Heh, the more i think about this the more i like this whole idea! Because it's really something that has been nagging at me for quite a while. This also could help to remove a little bit of the k:d ratio bias. With something like this in place, players can always go "Well he has a high k:d ratio, but i did way more damage overall!". It gives players another goal to play for if they are not good enough to get high k:d ratios.
Question is: How to count it? I would really love for the assist points to be equal the amount of damage a player did. That would lead to nice high numbers and everybody likes high numbers. Should it also count damage on structures? But i guess that would inflate the numbers too quickly when a marine uses an GL/Flamer inside a hive. So making it an strict "lifeform kill assist" score would probably be better and make the number more useful overall.
Some people may argue that deaths don't matter "because what if I die to kill an RT or save a phasegate?" In the same thought, deaths do matter because what if your death means you lost a phasegate or lost an RT?
The actual "score" metric should be revamped, though. It is pretty bad. In the end, you should have an overarching score metric that perhaps includes various weights of player damage/structure damage/kills/assists/healing/building/welding. NS2STATS has taken the first step to this by adding in 'ASSISTS' to the scoreboard.
That in b conjunction with kill, destroy, heal and build assist points would encourage more team play IMO.
I would also give out a couple of points for following way point orders too.
Deffo....
Or perhaps just scrap deaths/kills all together and have Damage (player/npc/structure) and deaths.
Let a person see their own kills and deaths, but a pissing contest over it serves no point other than in the combat mod.