I think the "score" is somewhat balancing the negative influences that displaying deaths might bring. Balancing scores to be fair tho, that is another question.. Tho I do not think this is a serious problem to begin with.
I have happilly died 2-3 times as a skulk trying to nag at a powernode or extractor close to marine spawn several times while they send out a defender but without welding.
I never look at kills/deaths that much. It is maybe a little interesting when playing as a marine to track your gunplay, but totally uninteresting to me as Kharaa.
I understand where he comes from: you can win the game with 37 deaths and you can win the game with 0 deaths
imagine when there is a team of 4 marines and 1 hydra in a room in pub games they crap their pants and run back to reheal after the devestating 5 hp dmg While youself run in shoot the hydra, the gorge and get the harvester, if you are afraid of dying none of that would get done and team would loose in the long run. If you DO die atleast you maby got 90% damage on everything inside and someone else finish what you have started. sometimes you have to sacrefice to get things done.
I think the real question is why aren't you showing assists. In a team game where you frequently have to focus fire with your allies to score the important kills assists mark out players that are playing "correctly" and being helpful without necessarily getting the last hits. Kills and Deaths are fairly obvious as to the metric they show, but an assist can be as much or more damage than anyone else and you get no recognition for participating.
I think there is nothing wrong with displaying kills/deaths. As mentioned before, an actual team player will disregard the information, whether it is considered to be adding incentives for "poor play" or not. What showing deaths can do (at least for marines) is let you know approximately how much res you have starved an alien. No res while dead can really suck if you're alien, and if you know a certain alien player has a lot of deaths, that particular guy won't have an advanced lifeform for a while, whether he's team playing or not. That information, while quite situational, can be handy.
Showing score and kills incentivises working towards those goals (more points and more kills), they are the factors that make you win the game. Killing the enemy players/structures and taking the map is the goal.
"not getting killed" is generally not the main goal, it just encourages people to play in a personal-focused style. Just because you died does not mean you had no effect on the team goal. It shouldn't matter that you died, it matters that you made a step towards the team goal.
"Killing the enemy players/structures and taking the map is the goal."
When you get to a certain point, you realise just how detrimental focusing on that first part can be to a team.
You kill threats, not aliens. A gorge fucking around in a vent is no threat. Do not waste time trying to kill him.
Plz explain how showing deaths "deincentivises" team play in any way. If you play on servers where everyone runs around in a ball going the same direction, you probably just need to play with people that know what the fuck they're doing. They aren't running the same direction cause they're afraid to die, they're running in the same direction because they're bad. There's a difference.
People care about seeing players KDR, as clearly shown by how many people in this thread think showing deaths is a good feature. Yet there are very few arguments in here as to why it's a good idea to show deaths.
If you're the first skulk to jump out of a vent, or the first guy through a feedgate, or the first marine to rush a gorge with hydras you're the least likely to get any points and the most likely to die. Running to save lone RTs, skulks killing RTs or main base obs, if you focus completely on killing the structure you're giving away deaths for points, when you are not guaranteed to get the last hit on the structure and actually gain any points.
People look at the scoreboard more than they look at the state of the game (RTs, lifeforms, map control) when deciding if they want to concede or quit - especially on aliens.
FWIW I would rather have deaths and kills removed rather than keeping both.
Showing score and kills incentivises working towards those goals (more points and more kills), they are the factors that make you win the game. Killing the enemy players/structures and taking the map is the goal.
"not getting killed" is generally not the main goal, it just encourages people to play in a personal-focused style. Just because you died does not mean you had no effect on the team goal. It shouldn't matter that you died, it matters that you made a step towards the team goal.
"Killing the enemy players/structures and taking the map is the goal."
When you get to a certain point, you realise just how detrimental focusing on that first part can be to a team.
You kill threats, not aliens. A gorge fucking around in a vent is no threat. Do not waste time trying to kill him.
This goes against the what you say.
That's a good point, and I agree to some extent, but it seems like you are nit picking and missing my main point.
People care about seeing players KDR, as clearly shown by how many people in this thread think showing deaths is a good feature. Yet there are very few arguments in here as to why it's a good idea to show deaths.
The best argument is the one you gave yourself. Because people care. This is an FPS game where a lot of people like to test themselves and see how well they can perform, which includes avoiding death and killing other players. It's rewarding. Start taking that rewarding feeling out of the game and you start losing players. Those who value the the teamplay aspect of the game will continue to disregard the scoreboard, while those who do not value it will stop playing if you take away their rewards. You have to think about the little people.
Also, is this new posting box temporary or permanent? Because it's absolutely atrocious.
We need more information on the scoreboard, not less. Player damage, structure damage, assists, and healed damage would all be nice additions, in my opinion.
We need more information on the scoreboard, not less. Player damage, structure damage, assists, and healed damage would all be nice additions, in my opinion.
I would like to see a "amount of jumps "indicator :P
We need more information on the scoreboard, not less. Player damage, structure damage, assists, and healed damage would all be nice additions, in my opinion.
I would like to see a "amount of jumps "indicator :P
Why would you want to hide your deaths? I don't get it at all.. if you're dying a bunch you're doing it wrong. Team oriented =/= suicidal. If you don't show deaths then showing kills is kind of pointless, too. Think of it this way: Every time you kill someone, you get a point. Every time someone kills you, they get a point. Without being able to compare kills to deaths, the kills have no context and thus very little meaning. Who cares if you earned 20 points if you gave away 100?
But you don't actually lose anything from getting killed. As long as you are actually following the goals of the game then deaths means very little.
To OP:
I think that your intentions are to promote "self sacrifice" which is a fundamenal teamwork component, which I agree with, and please correct me if I am misinterpreting. The problem is that deaths (and kills) actually means a lot. When you die as a marine outside of base, you lose your position AND you take up a slot in the IP (which doesn't matter if you're the only one dying, but often is a problem). The commander also loses visibility and map presence if his most potent entity, a live marine. If you're an alien, you also consume an egg which is a limited resource, increase the risk of running out, a common way for aliens to lose. And while you're dead, you don't get p-res. So every second you spend dead, delays that lifeform or upgrade you were going to purchase.
So being dead:
- Decreases map control, which allows more rapid expansion for the opponent
- Delays lifeforms and upgrades
- Increases risk of being egglocked
- Consumes an egg that costs 2.5 t-res to replace
And of course this is assuming that you haven't alreay made a p-res investment or recieved a t-res investment. Public players tend to under estimate the loss of p-res investments, when a Fade dies it's a 50 res hit, when a SG+JP dies it is 10-35 res being destroyed. The winning-the-game-cost is of course relative, sometimes dying as an LMG marine is worse than dying as an EXO regarding how it influences the outcome of the game.
I think the idea to remove the information on the scoreboard actually could and would improve teamwork, but it would be at a cost. A lot of people wouldn't like it, and either they would stop playing or find a server with a mod. Decreasing or unneccesarily dividing the community is usually a Bad Thing (tm), and I don't think it would be worth it. It seems easy enough to try though, just get a server mod and set up a server announcing that there is no scoreboard (or whatever). If you want to play there, others probably do to.
On the other hand, I think the problem is that the instrument of Kills/Deaths is too blunt and sometimes creates bad incentives. The "score" is interesting, since it tries to evaluate your "contribution" resource wise. It's reasonably good at that, but not perfect.
If I look at my own play it is a pretty good example. I play lerk a lot, and will often have among the highest K:D ratio, but only average (or below average) score. If someone looked at just my KD they would think I was one of the top contributers to the team, but if they looked at my score they would thing I was average. Because as a lerk I never attack structures unless we have lots of life forms, but I often get cheap kills on weak or solo marines.
And say I'm a JP+SG marine chasing an Onos across the map getting him down to 10 hp and he runs over a mine and dies, I get killed by a skulk protecting him 1 second later. This would be -30 pres 0 kills and 0 score on paper, but a big contribution to the team in reality.
What I am getting at is that it would be interesting to come up with a scoreboard that had more detail or nuance. Damage dealt and assists are both interesting, but not perfect. Damage dealt could be super high even if you've contributed very little, if you keep attacking things without destroying them or causing a setback. That one shotgun blast on the damaged skulk may have been more important than the 1000 damage dealt in another situation. It all breaks down into very subjective parameters and complex Expected Value calculations on different outcomes.
Anyway... back on topic. My point is that staying away from dying can be detrimental to the teams success and thus bad teamwork, but so can not staying away from dying. Since there is no way to seperate the meaningful deaths from the meaningless, the "incentive effect" on the game can be both negative and positive. My personal opinion is that currently Aliens play too recklessly, and Marines play cautiously. When I am commanding Aliens I try to convince them to play safe and not die, when I command Marines I usually have to convince them to be more aggressive (unless they have Exos or Onos of course, then it is the other way around). So please Aliens, stop dying if I am commanding. And if you're a Marine, run out there and try to find something to shoot at!
easy way to assess strength of team, leave it in... that being said, I'd personally want it gone because on low res, some columns are cut off the scoreboard. I gotta guess at my teams res when comming. but if they just swap the order I'd be happy too.
Why would you want to hide your deaths? I don't get it at all.. if you're dying a bunch you're doing it wrong. Team oriented =/= suicidal. If you don't show deaths then showing kills is kind of pointless, too. Think of it this way: Every time you kill someone, you get a point. Every time someone kills you, they get a point. Without being able to compare kills to deaths, the kills have no context and thus very little meaning. Who cares if you earned 20 points if you gave away 100?
This is NOT a Team Deathmatch. Giving away points doesn't matter at all, that's why deaths don't matter at all.
ritualsacrifice said:<br />
Why would you want to hide your deaths? I don't get it at all.. if you're dying a bunch you're doing it wrong. Team oriented =/= suicidal. If you don't show deaths then showing kills is kind of pointless, too. Think of it this way: Every time you kill someone, you get a point. Every time someone kills you, they get a point. Without being able to compare kills to deaths, the kills have no context and thus very little meaning. Who cares if you earned 20 points if you gave away 100? <br />
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This is NOT a Team Deathmatch. Giving away points doesn't matter at all, that's why deaths don't matter at all.
yes, deaths matter, in so much that it seriously.hampers res growth and slows down redrawn. points don't matter, but deaths do.
Comments
you can win the game with 37 deaths and you can win the game with 0 deaths
While youself run in shoot the hydra, the gorge and get the harvester, if you are afraid of dying none of that would get done and team would loose in the long run.
If you DO die atleast you maby got 90% damage on everything inside and someone else finish what you have started. sometimes you have to sacrefice to get things done.
If you're the first skulk to jump out of a vent, or the first guy through a feedgate, or the first marine to rush a gorge with hydras you're the least likely to get any points and the most likely to die. Running to save lone RTs, skulks killing RTs or main base obs, if you focus completely on killing the structure you're giving away deaths for points, when you are not guaranteed to get the last hit on the structure and actually gain any points.
People look at the scoreboard more than they look at the state of the game (RTs, lifeforms, map control) when deciding if they want to concede or quit - especially on aliens.
FWIW I would rather have deaths and kills removed rather than keeping both.
It's a good point, but I think the best way to see how well a team is performing is better shown by map control and RTs.
That's a good point, and I agree to some extent, but it seems like you are nit picking and missing my main point.
The best argument is the one you gave yourself. Because people care. This is an FPS game where a lot of people like to test themselves and see how well they can perform, which includes avoiding death and killing other players. It's rewarding. Start taking that rewarding feeling out of the game and you start losing players. Those who value the the teamplay aspect of the game will continue to disregard the scoreboard, while those who do not value it will stop playing if you take away their rewards. You have to think about the little people.
Also, is this new posting box temporary or permanent? Because it's absolutely atrocious.
yes, deaths matter, in so much that it seriously.hampers res growth and slows down redrawn. points don't matter, but deaths do.