Regarding score
Deadzone
Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17911Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17911Members, Reinforced - Shadow
I don't really use twitter besides reading updates on stuff, but I did want to put my opinion on it somewhere.
Score is fine being in the game, and I agree that it's an FPS staple. The solution is really simple - get rid of the popups upon scoring points. Leave it as something that only shows up on the scoreboard when you hit tab.
Most other FPS don't have popups to show how many points you just earned. Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament, or even TF2 where you have varying point amounts per action don't show a number whenever you score. It's generally assumed a kill = one point, and anything beyond that is gravy. I think that will work just fine here.
Score is fine being in the game, and I agree that it's an FPS staple. The solution is really simple - get rid of the popups upon scoring points. Leave it as something that only shows up on the scoreboard when you hit tab.
Most other FPS don't have popups to show how many points you just earned. Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament, or even TF2 where you have varying point amounts per action don't show a number whenever you score. It's generally assumed a kill = one point, and anything beyond that is gravy. I think that will work just fine here.
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anyway, I dont really care about point either, but I'm pretty sure newer players play by them and it makes them useless in pub games.
Not having that people will most lilkely focus on killing (as they are used to K/D mattering the most in games) instead of doing crucial work like taking down harvesters.
So, in order to get a good point system the current one could be sightly tweaked to display people who are working on the team much better. This includes:
<ul><li>Rewarding points for healing/building as gorge</li><li>Rewarding points based on damage and amount built</li><li>Basing the reward for powernodes on the amount of buildings unpowered upon destruction (No points for powernode without buildings, 1 Point for one powering an extractor, much more points for node powering IPs)</li><li>Rewarding following orders</li><li>Killing Cysts sightly rebalanced (higher reward if you cut a huge chain off)</li></ul>
Maybe some more tweaks I can't renember right now
For the same reason kills and deaths should be invisible otherwise players can start trying to top the board when they should be supporting the team more generally (especially lerks spiking when the should be gasing to help cover skulks).
This was my experience as well, and it took many games before I realized that I was not earning resources for simple things like destroying power nodes. This also changes the player's strategy dramatically. I think the point pop-ups are unintuitive. In most action based video games anything that pops up on the screen should be important such as health lost, damage done, status changed, etc. A pop-up for score works great in arcade style games, but it is distracting from what the player should be focusing on in a team game.
Rather than discard it entirely, I would also rather see a Team Fortress 2 styled scoreboard.
I would also accede that people score-obsessed are also not too useful; I'd set a timer (five minutes or so, based on PT experimentation) so that the points gained by building a structure are nullified if that structure is destroyed, or recycled while under attack in that period. Alternately, only have it occur if they die while building it. The score-obsessed would be more interested in ensuring that they and their pet structure would stay alive for that (insert reasonable timeframe here) minute period, rather than copping out of a firefight to grab extra points. That or do not grant points for building while an enemy is within X meters (though that would potentially penalize guerrilla phase gates.. anyone building one of those would likely already be win-oriented, rather than pointless e-***** point gathering anyway).
This has probably been one of the few reasons that I have ever stayed with TF2 or been able to truly enjoy it. Players can insult each other, but they cannot cite the K:D as a fact that the object of their derision is a bad player. Players must rely on the in-game scoring system to evaluate each other beyond what they see occur in-game.
If you are decent you'll get top score all the time anyway :P Oh and dominate about 6 people and dominations are visble (allbeit showing a bugged number last time I played..)
I saw it in BFBC2: You have hordes of snipers and they do nothing for winning the round, only sitting in bushes and trying to get an good KDR.
A rework of the rewardsystem would be cool.
Chewing on an extrator to 3% HP and someone pass by then, bite it 1 time and get all the points is not very motivating.
And assistpoints for lerk and gorge are missing.
I like it how Team Fortress handles this.
Change The points for killing cysts to 2-3points
and i want a worldwide scoreboard for More Motivation.But only on UWE Servers
Things like removing k:d from the scoreboard is everything I hate about modern games in a nutshell. Instead of focusing on creating a satisfying gameplay experience, they waste time trying to re-invent the genre, typically by claiming they want to make it accessible for a wider range of players. This mostly just amounts to dumbing down the game in a vain attempt to make it more appealing to players who don't really want to play competitive multiplayer games in the first place -- all the while alienating their core audience, the hardcore FPS players.
NS1 even tried a modified version of k:d removal (teams couldn't see the other team's k:d) in version 1.0, but fortunately the devs had the foresight to remove that limitation for version 2.0. Implementing a TF2 style scoreboard would just be repeating that mistake -- something which has happened too often during the NS2 beta already.
As a clan-leader, I would find a detailed scoring system quite useful when assessing candidates. K:D happens to be the most important factor that I consider so it would be a shame to lose it from that perspective.
NS1 even tried a modified version of k:d removal (teams couldn't see the other team's k:d) in version 1.0, but fortunately the devs had the foresight to remove that limitation for version 2.0. Implementing a TF2 style scoreboard would just be repeating that mistake -- something which has happened too often during the NS2 beta already.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
+1 and especially "something which has happened too often during the NS2 beta already."
Personally I think k:d is one of the core things I associate with a good fps. I've always loved comparing k:d and stats and getting good scores when I'm playing well. To me, "score" like in tf2 is meaningless. I much prefer it as it is now, score being separate from k:d if it's going to be included.
Bull.
We're afraid of it, because it is without a shade of doubt, the #1 stat. Everyone knows it. That's why, when people like internetexplorer here, post threads to diss people dissing KDR, they turn into flamefests.
KDR makes bad teamplay enough AS IT IS. KDR is a good stat and should be used BUT THAT'S IT. It doesn't need people promoting it. At all. Zero. Nada. Zip.
The only way it can succeed, is if the game is very simple and the dev's can "figure it out" completely. This should, hopefully, be impossible with ns2.
So what we get is score that don't reflect correctly the meaning of their actions to the players.
I think having non-quantitative scores would be better, that is +1 for any action (killing skulk, killing onos or hive = +1). Also not in the center of the screen...