The fallacy of the scoreboard

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
83

Even DRG, which is held to be a paragon of co-op and a lowpoint of community “toxicity,” still shows individual stats. Just a bare-bones enemies killed, minerals deposited, allies rezzed, and times downed but it’s enough to give you an idea of individual performance and perhaps encourage someone to do better in the future.

In any case, VT2 already had a mode without an ending stat screen and everybody hated it. One of the reasons I would hear often was the lack of a stat screen to tell them where they were lacking and what needed improvement. All you got was a go-no go result and that’s not particularly helpful especially on cata3.

84

I see no reason why we shouldn’t show stats. People being toxic is not an excuse, toxic people will always be toxic people whether there are stats shown at the end or not. I would like to see how the run went please?

85

One shining reason for a scoreboard is that people like summary statistics. Its nice to be able to see how many kills there were in certain runs, which lets you compare the other statistics more fairly against other runs. Oh, you took more damage on a run where you killed 3x as many enemies, makes sense. Sure none of these indicators are quantitative or particularly meaningful, but they’re delightful insights into how each run went overall, what the director decided to throw at you and generally how you responded.

Vague statistics are far better than no statistics. I’m completely down for a revamped scoreboard that gauges team contribution or dynamics, say % of time in coherency with 1, 2 and all 3 other players, toughness healed through coherency, etc.

86

Well, if we were to have a board, let us at least have a useful board. I think such a board should have aggregate values that represent the gameplay loop. The board should be an indicator of performance and it should automatically inform the player on where to improve. If I were to design a board, it would display:

Offensive Score
Defensive Score
Team play Score
Total Score

Team’s total score for each section and the total would be 1000 and personal score would be a fraction of it. A player could for example receive:

Offensive Score: 295
Defensive Score: 235
Team play Score: 245
Total Score: 258

If a player received a total score between 200 and 300, they would know they are pulling their weight in a match. Less than 200 would mean they should try to improve a bit or lower the difficulty. More than 300 would mean they should move to a higher difficulty, if possible, since they are carrying. The game would inform the player of this in Hints-section of the board.

Each score component would be calculated as: PersonalValue / TeamTotal * 10. The aggregate would be calculated as ComponentTotal / ComponentCount. Then we would end up with a score board like above and component scores would be displayed in a tooltip, when a score is hovered over.

The components could be:
Offensive: damage, monster damage, kills, specials, elites, head shots, etc.
Defensive: damage blocked per damage taken, dodges per damage taken, mob aggro (time being targeted), monster aggro, etc.
Team: time spent in coherence, saves, revives, time alive when a player is downed, time spent carrying objectives, etc.

The game could then fairly easily inform an underperforming player on how to improve, if component scores are well below 200. Score screen could have a hint section that displays useful information like “Try to engage enemies more” or “Try to stay with the team” or “Try to dodge more in melee”.

Finally: Mourningstar could have an Adeptus Administratum scribe, who displays long term player statistics.

87

Why do we have to justify wanting to have the scoreboard back in the first place?
It was in vermintide and we’re used to it.
It does convey a lot of interesting information if you’re willing to look into it.

You don’t want a scoreboard so nobody else is allowed to have it either.
That’s the zeitgeist nowadays, I guess.

People don’t have to explain themselves as to why they want the same scoreboard they had in the previous game for years.
Why should they have to explain themselves? That’s ludicrous.
Does fatshark have to explain why they put it in the game in first place?
Does every game developer have to explain why they have a scoreboard now?

We just want to see some kind of summary about the game we just played so we can see how helpful everyone was.
How does that not get into your head, man?

As for the supposed toxicity it promotes:
I’ve played over 2100 hours vermintide 1 and 2900 hours vermintide 2.
I can count instances where anybody got bullied because of a scoreboard on one hand.
Either I’ve magically never seen it in all that time or the people that are affected by this are asking for it.

So, no, I can’t understand the reasoning that it must be removed to prevent toxicity at all.
Because as far as I can see there is no toxicity going on.

Maybe there’s plenty of toxicity going on with console players, because I only play on PC.
I don’t want to rule that out. But then they should just remove the scoreboard from the console versions.

I understand that the scoreboard doesn’t show every little thing that might be interesting or has been the key to winning a round.
But you have to understand too, we’re not blind until we’ve seen the scoreboard.
We can see who is helpful during the game perfectly well.
But sometimes it is concealed how much somebody actually did until you see the scores.

But my main point being: There is nothing inherently wrong with people wanting to compare their performance to others.

88

Damage dealt, total enemies killed and specials killed tends to be fairly informative in VT2 as they die quickly and there tends not to be much bleed damage involved. I’ve found it helpful to compare performance on different classes/different weapons. It also makes it apparent when your team has lots of ranged damage that the melee build’s kills drop like a rock.

Damage taken can vary a lot depending on how I’m playing and helps to let me know whether I should be changing how I’m tackling a class.

I’ve not really noticed issues tied to the scoreboard.

I think some specialties, like boss killing, wouldn’t be very apparent to people who don’t go on forums without the damage to monsters stat. Ultimately though team stats tend not to be terribly useful unless I’m playing with friends and would then be offering advice. You can see people who are contributing very little for their class (which seems rare) or people who are dying all the time (which tends to be obvious), but that doesn’t matter too much while pugging.

89

not quite what i meant. im saying the scoreboard is the result of so many variables that any information it does give is more likely to lead you in the wrong direction, im saying using the scoreboard is less accurate than just guessing based on how it feels.

prime example if you want to raise your stats the best way to achieve is to play worse group with 3 bad players and struggle , this is where high kill score records are set. as you get better your numbers will drop you will be faster and more efficient.

and then you have the issue of one kill does not equal another and you can not know the value of a kill unless you can record and analyse each outcome , of which there are orders of magnitude less stars in the sky . you can kill 100’s of elites and have none of it matter or kill the one elite that mattered but they all score the same . its bunk

it is the metaphoric equivalent of dipping an egg cup in an ocean and proclaiming it a usefull indicator of the whole contents.

90

believe it or not i do get that it makes perfect sense , but the point is the scoreboard doesnt achieve that, the biggest impact i see it have is to make people play poorly because they focus on the wrong things.

91

Yes that’s the second argument I keep seeing.
People apparently go out of their way and do supposedly stupid things in order to get higher scores.
You think without a scoreboard these players who go for maximum carnage will just go like “no, I’ve had my share of elites. I’m good”?

Enemies that have seen you have to be killed.
Most enemies see you or are alerted to you sooner or later.
If my weapons can take down elites especially well I’m gonna focus elites.

What are we talking about here?
People playing especially risky? Is that the complaint?

They couldn’t be playing just as risky regardless of the scoreboard?
Then again without the scoreboard you may not even see that somebody took 4 times the damage of other players.

Everything you say happens solely because of the scoreboard could still be happening just that you don’t see it in numbers now.

92

The argument could be made that the scoreboard incentivises more players to reach for the highscore and thus follow a playstile that is detrimental to the team, instead of the few that would just do it because of fun.

93

But the playstyle we’re talking about would be to just kill as much as possible as fast as possible.
And I will definitely do the same with or without a scoreboard.
I’d still like to see the numbers though.

94

After reading through quite a few of the comments, it looks like having a scoreboard comes down to personal preference. Important stats in horde games, IMO, would be things like accuracy, precision kills, ability kills, assists, revives/rescues, maybe even a blocking stat or damage taken stat. Have the scoreboard be optional, toggle it on or off in the options, if that would make more of the community happy. Have the scoreboard only show your personal stats matched up against the total of the team. Say you got 250 kills and the team in total got 1000, so you know you got the last shot on a quarter of the horde. Show your accuracy versus the average accuracy of the team.

I think more stats the better. Basketball doesn’t just have “Points scored” but also assists, rebounds, blocks, steals, etc. Nobody said Shaq was the worst player on his team because he didn’t have the most points. There is more to a game than just one stat line, in almost any game you play, but that doesn’t mean that the scoreboard should be taken out.

95

Instead of a scoreboard the win screen should just say “All Glory to The Emperor!” who was the real MVP.

96

There may be confusion about the playstiles we are talking about. Of course its best to kill threats immediately and as fast as possible, but the general “green circle hunter” that was eventually complained about in Vermintide 2 and is most likely the reason for the toxicity meant by Fatshark is the one who rushes ahead completely solo without looking after the team at all, often times getting killed in the process and sometimes rage quitting, which is of course frustrating for people if that guy was the host.

That is not quite compareable to a PUG carry, which i was myself, who stayed with the team and still got the green circles because of fast reaction and experience. But as a PUG carry, you should also know that the team is usually filled with different kinds of skill levels and letting everyone having fun should be more of a priority than hunting for the highscore.

But as i said many times, from my end you guys can have a scoreboard. I dont think its necessary, because it doesnt do anything for me in particular. I dont need the validation or the competition, but rather detailed informations how to build my character to reach specific breakpoints.

97

well im sure there is a core of people that just wont play as part of a tem no matter what that will be doing this sort of thing score board or not, but the score card incentivises it and in my opinion that does have an affect.

i dont class people running off ahead killing everything as part of this issue, thats someone playing on too low a difficulty thats something else.

to boil it down to base concept someone playing competively is just concerned with what they can kill a co operative player is considering what needs to be killed.

things like the waystalker ulting through you to kill the stormvermin your exe sword would decapitate in a fraction of a second , now for the competitive player thats a deliberate choice done to get as many kills as possible. for a co operative player that would be a mistake.

98

I don’t mind a bit of friendly fire if it takes out 4 stormvermin at once.
The faster things die the higher your chances.

Yes, it happens occasionally that the weakness of a team is that nobody looks for where the other people are.

I’m pretty sure the reason for this is not the green circles though.
In most cases it’s probably people who are used to a faster pace with other teams.

This happens to me as well sometimes.
I played a bunch of games with a good team, join a different one and I’m used to this speed now.
But the team I joined is slower. So I have to adapt. Sometimes this takes a round or two.

Sometimes the opposite happens to me. I’m not warmed up and join a team that is rushing through the level and I get stuck killing small enemies groups in the back while they are already miles ahead.
And nobody notices that I’m still fighting back there.

Sometimes teams are brutally slow with seemingly no good explanation.

Some hosts force all other players to camp in certain positions during a horde because they think that’s the only way to win.

Sometimes people just run off, yeah, but sometimes they have good reason for it.

Sometimes people just have a bad day and are not really in the mood to play, which results in ragequit if the team is too slow for their taste.

Sometimes people just quit after they die so they can start the next round faster.
Which is a bit annoying, especially if they’re the host, but that’s what they do.
You can’t really do much about it, if you join a host you’re at their mercy.

Sometimes it’s just different philosophies.
Some people retreat when a horde attacks, some people engage the horde directly.
I’ve seen this many times where the team basically splits up for every horde because they have different playstyles.
In the worst examples everyone was effectively fighting alone with their own individual groups of enemies, which can work but often doesn’t.

There are many reasons for this.
Why would you think it’s the scoreboard?

In my experience the people who get the green circles aren’t chasing them for the most part they just get them.

It would seem to me that sometimes you just play with people and you absolutely dislike their playstyle, but they happen to be really good at it and get the green circles.
So, you bring it context somehow.

99

Most important line of reasoning in this thread imo.

Competition is the biggest driving force for improvement.
The devil is in the details: What kind of competition we’re talking about?

  • Is it about who gets the most kills?
  • Or is it about who’s the most helpful, reliable for the team and the mission?

2nd one’s metrics can be improved. It just needs a redesign of the scoreboard.

Strip everything about damage dealt or kills, leave only Boss Damage in % (by each player).

  1. Damage Taken - first stat on top. (Towards white health. Don’t count the damage when downed because that makes it pointless. Don’t count overkill damage).

  2. Number of Downs and Deaths

  3. Damage Avoided (blocks, dodges, interrupts) - all amount of damage you would get hit by, if you didn’t make an action. Count DMG of every attack aimed at you, that you either dodged, blocked, or interrupted with your attack. That is the metric of how active you were in the fights. So that frontliners who risk more, have something to show for their effort.

  4. Healing received (number of med stations used + number of HP recovered from med-packs).

  5. % of Combat Time spent in coherency (with at minimum 1 other player). Combat time is a condition that is active when there’s a sum of >5 enemies that are aggroed (dont count specials).

  6. Number of Revives (including from ledges)

  7. Ranged Accuracy in %, and Ranged Headshot Accuracy in % (from all shots fired). (higher accuracy means you waste less ammo resources)

  8. Boss Damage in %

  9. Friendly Fire (if FF would be on at all)

100

If you strip everything with damage and kills the MVP on your scoreboard could be a dude who does a single ranged headshot to get that 100% accuracy and then proceeds to walk through the level constantly blocking never attacking any enemy.
Is that really better?

101

That’d be funny and a complete opposite to the typical “green circle hunter for most kills” that makes some people wary.

Still thats a bit hypothetical and who would want to be so passive in a game about slaying?

By doing nothing that dude increases the chances of a wipe in a difficulty spike, so he and everyone else could just not get the mission done, not get the loot.

On 100% accuracy - they can add the number of fired shots next to the accuracy stat.

And hey, if he stayed in the coherency, then he did something useful - adding toughness regen, and other players can use him as a shield to trade aggro.

Also, the end scoreboard shouldn’t pick an MVP, its just a data set to help people understand how well they performed, not the final judgement.
If one guy goes through mission doing nothing but blocking - that’d be obvious to everyone around.

102

Most of these arguments only make sense if you’re only using the scoreboard and no other information, to determine if a build is good I would look at:

  • Positioning of teammates
  • How often the Battle Wizard spams range
  • How often the FK is abandoning frontline to kill a Special around a corner
  • How smooth it makes the match
  • How efficient it feels
  • Which weapons they’re using, especially if they’re the same as mine

The scoreboard becomes useful in when you see the downsides of the build too:

E.g. Waystalker with Longbow, I kill 80% of the Specials but how good was my damage outside of that?

Oh it does good Elite damage and Boss damage. Thanks scorecard.

Block, kick, play with people you know.

I have 5.5k hours and have seen 2-3 people ever care about being highest on scoreboard. I blocked them all.

As I argued in the other thread, where the guy made the same argument about it being toxic (before implying I wasn’t an experienced player and mocking me for “not knowing how to use 1H Axe on elf” in one way or another lol :crazy_face:), you don’t have to play with people who do this.

There should be more numbers, not less. And an option not to see it.

Seeing certain stats in the game is fun and enjoyable. When I do Vanguard Twitch Tzeentch Twins and my friend plays Engi with the rocket launcher build and we see how ridiculous his damage was, it’s funny.

It also informs balance opinion. E.g. That Zealot played solo for the entire match, I bet his damage is low because he was stuck blocking… jk he did 60% of the total damage and took more than the other 3 of us combined. :smiley:

If you could see how much THP Heroic Intervention was generating, for instance, you could think to yourself “Wow, 5 years in and they still haven’t changed this?”, and never play it again.

You can just play with people who think like this anyway.