EDIT: See especially EmpIzza’s great post outlining proposed new fields.
In the beginning, there was the Left4Dead scoreboard, which was pretty much fine because the characters had no mechanical differences, so competing for best performance was totally reasonable.
Then, there came the rats, and the art of the scoreboard evolved:
We got to see some highlights, but you rarely had a chance to pore over every single data point. For the most part, it was still reasonable for players to care about their scoreboard performance, because there weren’t that many differences between different weapons: attack speed, stamina, armor-piercing ability, and ammunition. Getting top in every single category mostly corresponded to excellence, except on a couple of maps like Wheat and Chaff (where a ‘collect the objects’ game occupied the whole level.)
Now the rats are back, and Nurgle has gifted them with their most insidious plan to date to undermine the Heroes of Ubersreik: making them insecure about their performance.
Do you want to specialize in blocking and parrying? Too bad; there’s no field for that. Do you want to specialize in killing elites or specials? Your numbers will never be as high as everyone else’s. What this scoreboard prioritizes is how many hordes you can kill. That is, the useless, nearly-harmless rats and northmen who rarely cause problems for the team, require no coordination or skill to defeat, and can be woodchippered with a little knowledge of blocking, a good chokepoint, and a sharp blade.
This is absurd. Fatshark has spent years developing an involved game that has a diverse cast of professions with different specialities—and few of them are above-average at clearing out trash. This scoreboard sends completely the wrong message: that players need to get the most green circles in order to be the best. That kind of competition is why we’re now seeing threads where people are essentially arguing for the removal of the entire gear system, and to homogenize the game so much that it’s basically just a fantasy version of Left4Dead.
Developers: stick to your original vision. Get rid of this scoreboard so you’re not sending mixed messages to your players. Good teamplay must be the priority.
Suggestions for new fields:
- How much did you heal other players?
- How much damage did you block?
- How effective were you at using your profession’s active ability? (e.g. what is the ratio of Trueflight Volleys to specials killed with Trueflight Volleys? How many enemies did the Ironbreaker taunt on average? Not applicable to every profession ability)
- How many times did you attack an enemy and deal zero damage because you used a non-armor piercing weapon and failed to headshot?