The fallacy of the scoreboard

[grasmann]

@LeoWubs

I mean… The Psykhanium exists. So if you want to test stuff just take it there? There’s no outside variables messing with you in there so if you want the most stable environment you can find, I can’t think of a better one. Better yet, you can even adjust difficulty of enemies in there so you can figure stuff out.

Well, but that is the whole issue in my eyes.
It’s too encapsulated.
I don’t want to know how I perform in a seperated sandbox where enemies don’t move.
Literally the only thing of value in the meat grinder is you can check how your weapon performs against various armoured enemies or which enemies you can one-shot with your skill.

@LeoWubs

A scoreboard doesn’t really mean much in the long term. If you take 2 veterans for example with the exact same loadouts, builds becomes ultimately irrelevant as someone above me stated that circumstance of the run can have a major impact on your performance. Player skill also contributes to this fact. You could have a VT2 Legend/Cata player and then a casual Veteran/Champion player with the same builds but it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out who on average would perform better. But then again, s*** happens and this VT2 vet gets launched off the map by an unfortunate barrel and so the casual player ends the game with a higher kill score.

Yes, that’s exactly right.
I want to see my scores in an actual game with all it’s circumstances that make the score interesting.
Because after a while you get a sense for an average value, which is either good or bad.
Some people can get used to the weapon some people can’t.
But with the scoreboard they see that maybe they should try a different one.
And stupid shid will most likely always happen here and there. So, what?

PS:
And now that I’ve written an extensively long text, with a whole bunch of arguments and examples, that everyone can ignore again or give the same counter arguments of variance and unreliability and how the scoreboard is useless, we can go back to name-calling, insults and ad hominem.

[Ensrick]

@grasmann

I think the anti-scoreboard people are actually the toxic ones who shid talk in the chat because they think they know better and then they can’t back it up with a good score.
So, they look stupid.

Almost every pro-scoreboard guy rolls into this discussion and immediately gets immediately irate and claims the people who want to take away scoreboards are using ad hominem then uses ad hominem constantly as they actively taunt everyone who doesn’t want a scoreboard. It’s a game man, relax, I’m sure we all “look stupid” and your scores are always higher than mine. If your self-esteem is good now, perhaps we can have a respectful discussion.

While I don’t appreciate all the attitude over a simple game mechanic, I think in your case we do want the same thing: a useful metric that provides feedback on performance, and it doesn’t have to be perfect. There are a few key differences I’ve already gone over that I think we might be able to agree would make a better scoreboard.

@grasmann

There were no problems with cooperation.
Because it’s very important if you’re playing cataclysm twitch and deeds and whatnot.
Occasionally there might have been somebody who played really selfish.
But very rarely.

Yes, even on Cata, Twitch Cata, or Twitch Deeds in VT2, I’ve still run into players who selfishly seek to grab kills and supplies at the expense of the team and use the score to justify themselves; especially when we lose. If you never have issues with players like this, I envy you but I also question if it’s not you that’s doing that stuff and then saying it never happens. Luckily, now I’ve got a group of friends that play VT2 and I don’t have to deal with random players who struggle not to play selfishly.

@grasmann

Yes, that’s exactly right.
I want to see my scores in an actual game with all it’s circumstances that make the score interesting.

Well, the VT2 scoreboard definitely didn’t do a good job of that. A post-game stats page could for the team without any highlights or scoring gives you feedback.

Rather than highlights, I’d like a scoring system that places emphasis on cooperation.

First,
I want a see a lot more metrics than kills, damage, saves, and revives. Things like stagger, how many times downed, the value team buffs (in terms of how much extra damage the team did to enemies or had mitigated due to my buffs), damage avoided by dodging/blocking, etc.

Second,
no highlighting who got the most of anything since, instead for competitive purposes, it is better to use a ‘total score’ that weighs cooperative actions more highly, that way competitive players seeking a higher score prioritize team play.

Here are some measurable cooperative actions that could factor into the ‘total score’: tagging ammo when a teammate is low, tagging specials, using the ammo/healing crates to good effect by tracking the amount of ammo and healing used by the team, reviving/saving team members, staying in coherency while many enemies are present.

Anti-cooperative things that can be a negative for ‘total score’: going down, taking health damage, taking ammo / using health station when a nearby ally is low and you’re close to full, leaving coherency for a long time while far ahead of the entire team.

It’s not perfect but I think tracking more stats is better. Scoring has to penalize people who abuse resources, get downed a lot, run ahead, and scoring has to reward players who help the team.

[Sulphuric_Glue]

If a guy only cares about their post game numbers it does not matter what happened in the gameplay

Nobody thinks this way.

a bunch of random people come together in a match and the metric of their success is counted in simple numbers and not how well you think the run went

Nobody thinks this way.

I’m done with you.

[J_Cato]

@Sulphuric_Glue

Nobody thinks this way.

It must be a powerful feeling to speak for everyone. The Ordo Hereticus would like to have a word with you.

[grasmann]

Alright, so, it’s been a few hours now.
But I guess people will understand now why I don’t write arguments anymore.
Nobody specificly adressed anything I’ve written that you would need a scoreboard for.

Back to the circus, boys.
Unfortunately we only have sad clowns, otherwise it would at least be laugh.

@Ensrick

Anti-cooperative things that can be a negative for ‘total score’: going down, taking health damage, taking ammo / using health station when a nearby ally is low and you’re close to full, leaving coherency for a long time while far ahead of the entire team.

It’s not perfect but I think tracking more stats is better. Scoring has to penalize people who abuse resources, get downed a lot, run ahead, and scoring has to reward players who help the team.

What do you mean by total score?
I’m all for adding more things to the scoreboard but I don’t want it to just be a singular number.
And I want to see the differences between players.

[Sarumane]

Amazing, earned a like. If people after this still don’t get why the toxicity argument is dumb, they are really just insecure about their own skill period.

[Ensrick]

At the end of a match, a full range of stats shows each player’s performance, but instead of just having DPS circles, there’s also a total score that uses weighted values for each measurable part of a player’s performance.

This way you have a competitive value to look at and feedback on your performance vs. that of the team. And when I say stats on each individual and each performance factor, I mean a lot more than the VT2 scoreboard shows.

[grasmann]

Yeah, sure, I would be fine with that.

[Sarumane]

Man I feel for you. You are really fighting the uphill battle here. Props for your patience though, cause Lord knows I don’t have it in me.

[grasmann]

@grasmann

How many headshots do I make with this weapon?
How much damage does that weapon on a boss in a full team of good players?
How much boss damage does every class do on average? Who do I protect so they can focus the boss?
How much damage do I do with this weapon compared to other weapons on average?
How many elites do I kill with this weapon or that weapon?
How much damage did I take? How much do others take?
How many heals does everyone use? Do I use too many?
How much friendly fire did I do? How much the others?
How many specials did I kill? How many the others?
Did someone do an outstanding job with a certain class?
Who killed the most horde enemies and kept them away from other people during boss perhaps?
How many enemies did I stagger or throw to the ground? That would be a new one I guess.
Did someone do loads of damage but has a low kill score? Speaking of bleeding, fire and stuff.
Who spent the most time outside of cohesion? That would be new as well.

@grasmann

Alright, so, it’s been a few hours now.
But I guess people will understand now why I don’t write arguments anymore.
Nobody specificly adressed anything I’ve written that you would need a scoreboard for.

I really want to emphasize this again though.
Because I’m actually curious if anyone will adress any of the points.

Or maybe I’m simply crazy for wanting to know this.

[Ensrick]

Sounds like some good stuff to have on for end-game stats. It’s just a bunch of questions though, not sure what you want. Feedback?

Also, scoring isn’t what VT2 did, it actually just circled who did the most of something which isn’t necessary. If you want an actual score, that requires weighting individual factors and quantifying their values.

[Astronomer]

Stop trying to know things grasmann, you’re going to bring the whole temple of illusion down on our heads! Everyone is equally skilled and the learning curve of the game is a flat circle. Everybody gets a medal for participating, and that is the only medal.

And for god’s sake, stop asking for NUMBERS. Don’t you know how much gamers hate numbers? It’s a well known game design fact that the more numbers there are in a game, the less people get into it.

[grasmann]

@Ensrick

Sounds like some good stuff to have on for end-game stats. It’s just a bunch of questions though, not sure what you want. Feedback?

The point is without the scoreboard you don’t see any of it.
That’s all valuable information that you can use to improve, or chase green circles, depending on your vocabulary.
Claiming the scoreboard is useless is just plain wrong, objectively so.
And if it is not useless but imperfect then it’s fine.
We can have imperfect things and hold them dear.

@Astronomer

And for god’s sake, stop asking for NUMBERS. Don’t you know how much gamers hate numbers? It’s a well known game design fact that the more numbers there are in a game, the less people get into it.

I’m aware of that.
Usually the games where you can min-max the most out of numbers are the ones with the least dedicated community, right?

[Ensrick]

All that’s just an absurd strawman circlejerk, nobody’s asking to remove stats or hide feedback for fear their performance is being judged.

Scoring players’ performance vs. one another isn’t good for the co-op game team cohesion unless it’s based more on how well they contributed to the team than how much DPS they did or individual stats.

@grasmann

The point is without the scoreboard you don’t see any of it.

There’s a difference in what we call a scoreboard. The way I see it, there’s just a bunch of individual stats and nothing is scored. The green circles in Vermintide 2 don’t actually tell you much about overall performance, they’re just highlights.

I think it’s limiting when it’s mostly DPS values, so it should include everything you mentioned and more, no need to circle anything. Instead, just quantify a player’s contribution to the team by giving them an overall score.

[solariz]

You are soley talking about the VT2 Scoreboard style. Who said this is what is neccesarry? It’s not.

But not giving the player anything is not the answer.

I do like to see home much Crits / Headshots / enemy of a certain type I killed. Give me anything in numbers not like this, this is just pointless. Let’s say dont call it a scoreboard, call it some Mission Statisitcs. I more interested in my own than any other player stats.

But also other playerstats can help to find if a person is just jumping on the train and let others do their job or not. In VT2 this brought me to the most fun parties ever. Because the Matchmaking is not as good as it should be you have often different “skilled” or “not so skilled” mixed which can lead (at least for me) to frustration. Not just to blame others but to see for my self where I need to improve.

So I do not talk about bringing back VT2 Scoreboard, I want some Statistics not Green circles.

[Astronomer]

All that’s just an absurd strawman circlejerk, nobody’s asking to remove stats or hide feedback for fear their performance is being judged.

Scoring players’ performance vs. one another isn’t good for the co-op game team cohesion unless it’s based more on how well they contributed to the team than how much DPS they did or individual stats.

Ensrick I really want to agree with you my friend, I just wish you would pick a side, I can’t tell which of these opposing things you believe to be true!

Damage and kills are pretty irrelevant to team contribution in this game though so maybe it’s not as completely contradictory as it looks.

Hmmm, food for thought huh? This topic is so much more complicated than I thought!

[Ensrick]

Nothing about what I said conflicted, you can show players’ stats without scoring them or highlighting any individual’s stats. If players are scored and you want them to compete without degrading cooperative gameplay, then do so by creating a total score that weighs cooperative gameplay actions more highly than selfish ones.

[grasmann]

Just for the record I have no problem with having stats on a scoreboard like mission progress.
How many mission objectives did this player do?
Did one guy kill all the corrupters in the level?
Did 2 players scan all the things?
Who hacked the computers?
Who carried the things to their destination?

Or damage prevention.
Roughly how much damage did the player prevent on themselves or others by blocking, dodging, pushing and whatnot.

Or how many enemies did the player damage by shooting barrels in the mission?
Using barrels means ammo conservation.

How many healing things did the player drop and how much did that heal?

Who kept a boss busy longest, like who had the boss aggro?

There’s a lot you can add that reflects teamplay but the damage and kills are just as important.
The game is about killing enemies after all.

The circles are just to give a very quick overview imo.

[Ensrick]

The circles accross the team’s stats compare players’ performance vs. one another. That’s not very useful if it only includes DPS and in Darktide particularly, your weapons, curios, etc. can speced much more for things other than dealing damage or just be inferior to that of your teammates.

I think lots of detailed stats on the entire team are good. Perhaps it could be a menu option to view detailed stats, and just show an overall score based on the ‘end of mission’ screen that weighs your stats to give you a number to compare to your team. If that score is weighs cooperative actions more heavily than competitive or selfish actions then it shouldn’t encourage toxic behaivor like hogging kills and stealing ammo, though some players will do that anyway.

[Nisverah]

I don’t know why you’re hung up on the fact it’s called a scoreboard.
You seem to agree that seeing stats are good but you’re arguing against it being called scoreboard?

The green circles don’t have to stay, it’s not a necessary part of the board, as well as the idea of a weighted aggregate score which you presented yourself as being a part of V2 which you acknowledged isn’t there in a later post.