Kills on the scoreboard

Cr4zyb4st4rd

This was something people brought up while I lerked (no pun intended) on the forums.

however now the game is released and full of players (which is great) many of the people refuse to acknowledge their commander or teammates over voice comms. Telling a group of aliens to take out a Power node or PG first, results in them just running around the base killing the two marines that are shooting them. It's not like this happens with just skulks, it happens with multiple oni late game (which happens a fair bit because people are too scared of running in, because people don't listen to each other aka the guy with the mic, and attack together)

What it results in is people competing for kills on the scoreboard, sometimes killing people is a requirement, yes. I understand that, however there are new players ignoring tactics and strategy in favor of kills. It's not a small amount of people either.
Gorges are running into groups of marines and trying to kill them, even after explaining it's a support class they continue to try for the kills, not realizing their job, because lets face it gorges don't get points for half the valuable stuff they do in the game to keep structures alive or get hives up quicker. So why bother?
People do not heal exos, they would much prefer to stand around with a gun and shoot at things, the result one onos can clean up 3 exos at times because people just don't heal.

Today's gamers are all about top scores and big numbers, and the system NS2 has isn't rewarding for the things that matter in team play.

Because of no assist points it makes the whole killing system very competitive to these people, they HAVE to get the kill to look good, right?

If people are ignoring their commander and veteran players and going for kills the system isn't working. I don't know whether removing K/D entirely from the scoreboard is the best option, but at least assists for both player and structure kills plus points for healing and welding should both be added. It's at the point where pre-release games could go either way, with or without playing with friends, however now if you have a few friends in a game and you have 2 or more on one side your teamplay wins every time (while I am happy with winning 100% of my games but it's stupid)

greenpee

I feel like this is just an instinctual reaction. Where experience steps in later on and allows you to prioritize targets vs threats, without experience you just react to threats and tunnel vision onto them. With tunnel vision comes loss of hearing. As the playerbase general experience level increases, the prioritization of targets should get better. For now, just bear with it and keep explaining stuff. Also, try to explain to people what targets should be before and after the fact, it'll help them to understand.

azurescorch

Hey, remember that game we was in last night? Where the aliens just stood around IPs waiting for marines to spawn so they could get a kill? Not even attacking the IP itself? You alone had to take out power?

Yeah. I remember that. Was virtually the whole team trying to spawn kill for a k:d raise.

BVKnight

I'm sorry, but you're not going to get a favorable response to this thread because this is something that's been debated for months before the game's release. We've had 30+ page threads about it.

Long story short, the kill/death display will probably stay because it is a significant competitive incentive for many players, and also a valuable metric for measuring combat effectiveness. The "score" number helps ameliorate this somewhat, by giving points for useful actions. The scoreboard is ranked by score, not kills.

There are some servers that run mods which display an assist score. It sounds like that's what you're looking for.

Part of the problem is where you are playing. Pub games will always have less of a degree of teamwork and more of rambo-ing, and this is the first week of the game. Wait for people to become better players and actually have to start competing against each other, then you will see more teamwork.

Alternatively, go play on veteran servers or start following gathers or clan matches, where the team win becomes more of a priority.

Guspaz

It might sound a bit dismissive, but they'll get over it. People are just used to games where k:d ratio matters, and as they become more acclimatized to NS/NS2, they'll stop caring as much.

I'd rather not see it removed, the ratio can be a nice tool to gauge how badly I'm sucking, but for me (and others who have been playing in the NS universe for long enough) it doesn't change our actual behaviour.

Except in combat mode. There, your K:D ratio is almost all that matters, because killing the enemy gets you res/xp, and dying gets them res/xp ;)