The fallacy of the scoreboard

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
184

as a hyper competitive person in general who doesnt have the time to consistently grind anymore, scoreboards like vt2 or similar titles are a turn off in most games that aren’t directly pvp.

im coming from a “casual” pov. most thriving games playerbases usually have more casuals than anything else, casuals keep games alive in a sense where incoming players aren’t immediately hit by a wave of high skill gap players slamming them to get gud, thus turning them away. this problem is amplified by the poor difficulty ramping in this game on top of a select few “veteran” players who expect everyone to play as if they had played vt2.

giving something to both sets of players feels like the right thing to do imo

my solution would be to have the full stats or maybe even more than vt2 showed of your last mission be viewable at a terminal in the mourningstar, perhaps placed in the armoury area or even near the meatgrinder for in depth analysis.
the second part of this would be a team focused aar scoreboard showing things like; allies saved from near death by special, incoming fire blocked/deflected, markers actioned by team (ie i mark ammo, you pick it up at low ammo), or things along that line highlighting good teamwork

i know thats a big ask though of a game already in its beta

185

Pushing, horde control, drawing aggro, buying space, CC.

If IB has circles for kills (especially special/elite kills) then something has gone wrong. And that can be due to the IB player misunderstanding their job, but thinking green circles means they did well.

Like the first thing that should come to mind if the Ironbreaker gets max kills is “what went wrong”, not “I definitely did well.”

A fundamental flaw of the green circle red herring mentality is that it obscures bad plays from players that hurt other players more than it hurts themselves, and misleads them into thinking its good plays.

Much like a shield Ogryn getting max kills for instance, or a Veteran getting green circle for kills but not actually focusing the sniper/gunners in the back that no one else can touch.

The Veteran that sees that is gonna think “Oh, I got max kills, clearly Im doing well and shouldn’t change my style, and its everyone else’s fault they got gunned down by the sniper that was chilling in the back and thus let the horde get to me.”

186

yeah, but we do have speed limits :wink:

personally i have nothing against people just wanting and liking the scores its fun to see i get that i like it to, i just wanted to dispell the notion you can divine anything useful out of those stats re ability or build quality or at least any more useful than the feedback you get just playing.
and that it is a negative influence in that its detrimental to team work and i acknowledge its a small impact.

i dont actually think a scorecard will have a big affect on the DT community, the meta behaviour is being imported from V2 you can see it already , what made the L4d franchise such a team work success was the specials they were lethal and they hunted in packs, you can shoot, dodge, stagger or just shove a pox hound, you wanted to evade a hunter pounce you had to to shoot it on the way in or hit a tiny frame window with a shove and it would happen just after a boomer and while one others being dragged off by a smoker.

DT’s specials just do not offer the same (imo enough) fear factor

187

Has it been suggested that we could at least have our personal stats only? (not displayed for other players)

We’d know how we’ve performed globally and specifically for personal goals and improvements (like dmg taken, elites killed, some coherency evaluation, etc.).
Possibly compared to the group total numbers.

It wouldn’t incentivize competition or toxicity and provide useful information to improve our skills?

1 Like
188

Everything has been suggested.
But I’m not ready for compromises.
I want the scoreboard back.

But guys you can stop trying to convince the anti-scoreboard people.
They’re not gonna change their minds.

We need to open like 10 new scoreboard threads in the forum every day or something.
Until the whole forum is only scoreboard threads.

189

Ultimately I’m just sick of people thinking they can force people to behave differently by censoring any hint of competition or individual performance and impact from the game.

I like the numbers, I like knowing if I killed more or less relative to other team members, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It’s called friendly competition, and it’s in most cooperative games, it adds joy and banter and simple human enjoyment.

Crap people will behave like crap no matter what numbers are on the screen. I don’t want the game compromised and wrapped in cotton wool and for the playerbase to be babysat for the benefit of a hypothetical minority who have no ability to view their relative performance without having their self esteem wounded. It smacks of the condescending and joyless mindset of the moral arbiter, or the fun police.

3 Likes
190

I just want a score board to gauge my own efficiency.

Just like in Vermintide when I mostly ran the Bounty Hunter, my specialization in this is Special sniping.

So I would very much like to know how many specials I took down in any given mission.

If you want to combat toxicity, make it a private match only option. I’m almost exclusively playing with my friends as it is.

191

i don’t like scoreboards
BUT
if they did a personal one i would not mind at all

But thats just me

192

I agree scorebord is absolutely not necessary and the game will be better off without it.

193

Scoreboard is necessary to keep the game friendly. Those who are abusive, which is very rare in a coop game with a scoreboard, are those who are bad players and keep going down.

Those who talk about removal of the scoreboard, putting things like ‘Coherency’ in game, they’re obsessed with other players, telling other players how to play and so on.

I’m not saying everyone, but a big part of this stuff is about being able to be nasty to other players. There’s a lot of Song and Dance, all sorts of nonsense, made-up stories about how someone was at the top of the scoreboard and then became abusive, nonsense about somehow people “chase green circles” (Darktide is full of complaints about people “running off”). But I think, conscious or unconscious, a lot of people have really suffered due to scoreboards because the scoreboard prevents them becoming abusive towards other players, they can’t vent towards others, and for bad players it hurts that they have to keep it in or just look very stupid when the scoreboard comes up.

Good players who score highly don’t want to be nasty to other people, aren’t frustrated by the game, don’t want to blame other people.

There’s a reason that coop games with scoreboards are friendly. Scoreboards keeps certain kinds of players quiet, in their place, in check, under control.

Fatshark by putting in absuridity like ‘Coherency’ which goes against the gameplay and by removing scoreboards have pandered to those who can’t get other players out of their mouth and who are obsessed with controlling how others play.

And it goes both ways because not only the scoreboard keeps bad players who are frustrated and want to blame others mostly quiet but when they sometimes do become abusive, which also they’ll then quit before the scoreboard comes up so it’s empty words, good players don’t need to respond as the scoreboard will show the truth.

When there isn’t a scoreboard not only bad players are enabled to be abusive towards other players but good players then can feel the need to respond and get a back-and-forth as there isn’t a scoreboard to show the truth.

I’m going to say things as I think it simply is

  • Talking about how others should play
  • Talking about how players are bad despite them simply carrying and higher scores
  • Talking about how there should be mechanics like ‘coherency’ to try and manipulate others into playing a certain way
  • Talking about how there shouldn’t be a scoreboard
    This is a pattern which is very telling to me. This is like abusers who want to remove the freedom and defenses of those who they prey upon, and they often have a pretense of being nice and reasonable around others, even acting like they’re the victim, making up fantastical stories of how they were abused because of the scoreboard, but it’s all about getting their victim alone where they can abuse good players, blame good players, criticise how good players play etc.

And I’ve seen it in Darktide, it’s very noticeabel that in Darktide there’s quite a few control freaks off the leash because of the lack of scoreboard. Scoreboard keeps things friendly and keeps these people in their place. The underlying nature of things like ‘Coherency’ and removal of Scoreboards are very ugly things.

4 Likes
194

then there is all the bad behaviour this sort of competitive scoring promotes. which is an entire other thread by itself.

Where?

This is the biggest flaw in this argument, both from Fatshark and players defending it. Where is this fabled toxicity that the endgame scoreboard generates?

I have 716 hours in VT2 and I have only encountered toxic players maybe 3-4 times. Not a SINGLE time was this toxicity ever related to endgame stats. I know plenty of long-term VT2 players, including people who have played several times longer than me, who have had the same experience.

People do not suddenly become toxic because of endgame stats. Saying that the scoreboard “promotes toxicity” is a fundamental misunderstanding of human behaviour, especially how we behave in co-op PvE games. People who are rude, mean and take satisfaction from being cruel to others are that way because of an uncountable number of factors in their life, not because they saw individual performance in a game of Darktide.

Scoreboards don’t make nice team players into rude assholes, and removing them does not make those rude assholes into nice team players. They just continue to be assholes but can now hide behind a veil of anonymity, because they can no longer be embarrassed by talking smack and then finding out they’re not actually as good as they thought they were.

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195

A scoreboard would definitely add value, from the perspective of making people feel recognized!

Having a build that’s good against specials, it’s rewarding to see you shot a lot of specials.
Now of course, not everyone is chasing a certain clout or stat, some actually do the opposite.
Being in a ‘support’ role and not having a high amount of kills feels just as rewarding because you know you still added value.

Especially in premade teams, scoreboards are great banter and a way to have fun. It’s unrewarding to not see what you have been up to in the 30 minutes you spent the round, in my humble opinion.

3 Likes
196

There is no correlation between toxicity and a scoreboard, and you have provided zero evidence to support your claim.

People want to know if they’re doing well or not, and you’re preventing that because you’re afraid someone might make a sad face somewhere in the world.

Be stronger, be better.

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197

If people feel like being toxic, they won’t wait until the scoreboard pops up. They will be harassing you during the game to tell you to play the way they want you to.

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198

If they dont add a scoreboard, a lot of people will straight up refund or stop playing after a short while. Period. This type of game genre will only have a long life if there are a few things in place, and one of them is a scoreboard.

PLUS, dont know why all the discution, its a waste of time, the devs already said the scoreboard is coming right after launch. Case closed.

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199

This is great news, I didn’t know this. Thank you.

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200

Me and my wife are hoping here is a scoreboard soon. Even if it’s just private to only you the player about your own stats it’s just good fun to see the stats for your labor on a mission. Plus me and my wife can harass each other about our kills. privately lol

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201

how can the scoreboard even be relevant with all this variance?

You’re right – it should be post game stats. And there should be a lot of them.

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202

lets be clear here , i have never once said the scoreboard causes toxicity , i doubt it does to any great degree. this is something FAT SHARK said, NOT ME!

the issues i have raised AFTER fs removed it are further arguments to why it is a bad idea to have one, and i have freely admitted at several points there are valid reasons to having them, the one does not preclude the other.

the issues actually raised in this thread are to how usefull the scoreboard actually is to the job peopel give it.ie showing skil and build quality

  1. the amount of variables combined with the single sample =stats of lower clarity than the lived experience of being there.
  2. Worse runs have higher stats, as your team gets better your numbers drop.

3.most of the time your simply measuring speed ie performance not capacity.

so if you want to “improve” based on stats you should
1.group with complete noobs
2.play a difficulty you can carry
3.stack movement speed

Also it being a competitive score in a co op game can only promote competitive play.

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203

The scoreboard doesn’t directly cause toxic behavior. Instead, it encourages competition over cooperative behavior. Then things get a little toxic.

We all know it feels good to see some green circles in VT2, so this pretense that the scoreboard “doesn’t affect toxic behavior” is too thinly veiled. It’s clear some of you value competition over cooperation the way you play.

Now, that said, I’m not against adding personal metrics at the end of each mission. Or having a total score where cooperative actions give you a lot more score than just doing damage.

3 Likes