Point Allocation

[Alexander SquidLord Williams]

Took a day or so to actually spend time with the relationships. Humans. Not nearly as interesting as blowing things up.

Regardless, however, I had something pointed out by my girlfriend as she peered over my shoulder, watching me drop mines and sensor jammer deployment bases around a recently captured AA emplacement.

"What are you doing?"

"Uh, creating a forward deployment base. I can't exactly just have my team falling down in plain view of the enemy without some defense, right?"

"Do you get anything for it?"

"Well ... my team thanks me. I help push my folk to victory. You know, like in First Clash on Saturday."

"So, no."

"No points, as such, no."

"That guy just ran into your mines! He blew up! You score that, right?"

"Well ... not so much, honey."

"This isn't nearly as cool as you playing Battlefield 2." (Where I've recently found myself, with my battle-buddy Eric, gaining top billing on some servers purely from leaving mines at base entrances and using DropTeam / Steel Beasts-derived skills to blow stuff up real good in armour.)

So, all that to say this -- yes, I think the girl has a point. Playing a deliberate support role in DropTeam doesn't really get you much "hero recognition" as even the bots get for suicidally dropping Thors into places they are just going to die in. Maintaining rear defenses, building emplacements, even being commander and bot wrangling while calling arty, none of these rather essential things show up on the scoreboard anywhere.

In that sense, this is something Clay's previous request about AAD replays would help with. Folks reviewing the bout could then at least see you weren't just sitting around while they were pushing on the enemy bases.

I don't think there's an obvious solution for this, save possibly to keep stats for more things. Vehicles damaged / killed by deployables you dropped, taken out by called arty, etc. Basically a bit more "team contribution" architecture.

Thoughts?

[yllamana]

I like the idea of not having any unified "score" field. If there is one then people will feel obliged to chase after it.

It'd be cool to see lots more statistics, though. I just don't think any of them should be presented as "the" score. For example, in World of Warcraft, say, the scoreboard is sorted by the number of killing blows a player has. Sometimes that causes players to chase killing blows instead of doing more productive things to actually win (because in a way, getting the most killing blows is presented as winning on an individual level).

I think it'd be good to take conscious steps to avoid that sort of thing. It also subconsciously devalues players who want to try things that aren't directly rewarded in the "win" score.

[B0nes]

Well I hate seeing that I've died 45 times just because I took the trouble to drop the deployables.