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How to make individual "score" fair and relevant for all classes...
ayroux
Member Posts: 4,271 Arc User
PREFACE:
I had a match this morning and had a teammate afk/quit out of the match, ironically so did a member from the other team. This lead to atfirst what appeared to be a pretty intense 4v4 matchup. I was on my GWF who is pretty geared and was rushing to points, often killing 2v1 and no dying (final K/D was 18-0).
Why am I writing this? Well about halfway through the match I noticed something. I would cap mid, just as my teammates would cap our home point (2 of them there - not sure where the 4th was). As I finish capping mid, I stall an enemy running to our home node, Well, we have two guys just leaving home node so no problem right?
Well as the enemy rushes past both of them, they keep running past him and dont even try and stall, knock off, or follow him to the home node. seeing they have their home node ticking points I leave to backcap that. As I cap, I see that our home node is now theirs, and the 2 pugs at mid got destroyed by some respawns and so now we lost mid AND our home node... If they would have followed that guy back to our point, they could have held him off in time and then we would have their home node, and our home node... their respawn would have only taken mid...
I start trying to communicate with the pugs about how they cant just "trade caps" to win, and they call me a "****" for not having as many individual points as them, as I am around 13-0 at this point and about 4th on the score board while my teammates are like 3-17 with more points from "node swapping" like this.... They proceed to tell me domination isnt about "K/D ratio" which its not... but when you jsut cap trade, it doesnt help anybody but your individual score.
Now I know, pugs be pugs and you cant talk to people who play stupid, but the question I was asking myself is why does the score system support this type of thing?
Problem
The current individual score system is really out of balance. DCs who cant get kills, will rarely get the +150 points for a kill and node defended and also (unless with a group) will rarely get a "node capture". The current system also promotes "node swapping" in its a really easy way to get a high individual score giving a misleading impression to players who havnt played "high level" pvp who dont really understand how to play the game properly. It gives high kill players a very large advantage (like TRs or GWFs) who can typically top the kills and also are great node holders.
Solution
Dont award extra points for "node defender" or even +300 points for a node capture. I would even suggest not even awarding points for kills, since this is really a team game, you want to give points for what the objective is here. What is the objective? Nodes!
Once a node is captured, every point the team as a whole gets from that node, gives the players who captured the node 1 point.
So players A,B,C on Team 1 capture the "middle node" when the team gets a point tick, players A,B,C also get an individual score of 1 point for each tick. Say team 1 gets 100 points from that middle node and then its "contested" by an enemy team, players A,B,C would have gotten 100 points from that node. and would cease to get points until it stops being "contested".
Why does this solve the problems?
Now players are NOT given incentive to "trade caps" or even to zerg nodes since even if you capture the node, if it doesnt tick for points you dont get points. It rewards that teammate for the effort put into the match that actually benefits the team, rather than kills, assists, or node swaps.
This also gives a correct "standard" for how well you participated and assisted your team. If this scoring were in the match I noted in my preface, my PUGs would have had almost zero contribution to the team and their individual scores would have reflected that. Now you can also remove the "minimum score for points" issue since now with matchmaking there should not be a ton of "blowout" games... If there are, their elo increases and next match is harder. Which brings me to my next point.
Elo rating NEEDS to be visible
This can be done almost anywhere in your character tab. I know you have alot going on right now, but just having a matchmaking system in place wont fix the pvp issue. Yes we are having more balanced games, and yes people are not leaving due to the penalty BUT! It still isnt providing a ton of incentive to pvp.. I know personally I only log in to do my dailies and maybe GG if its there to get seals and log off.
We cant premade anymore, cant set up 1v1s, cant even test things out against eachother in a "test match". Ontop of all that, we cant even SEE how good we are doing... On my GF I have won over 20-25 games and lost 2x, well what is my elo versus my GWF I have won about 8 and now (story above) lost 1.... If I meet a person in PE, how do I know they are good in pvp? Whats my motivation to log in and play each day if there is no "ranking" aka visible elo rating....
I had a match this morning and had a teammate afk/quit out of the match, ironically so did a member from the other team. This lead to atfirst what appeared to be a pretty intense 4v4 matchup. I was on my GWF who is pretty geared and was rushing to points, often killing 2v1 and no dying (final K/D was 18-0).
Why am I writing this? Well about halfway through the match I noticed something. I would cap mid, just as my teammates would cap our home point (2 of them there - not sure where the 4th was). As I finish capping mid, I stall an enemy running to our home node, Well, we have two guys just leaving home node so no problem right?
Well as the enemy rushes past both of them, they keep running past him and dont even try and stall, knock off, or follow him to the home node. seeing they have their home node ticking points I leave to backcap that. As I cap, I see that our home node is now theirs, and the 2 pugs at mid got destroyed by some respawns and so now we lost mid AND our home node... If they would have followed that guy back to our point, they could have held him off in time and then we would have their home node, and our home node... their respawn would have only taken mid...
I start trying to communicate with the pugs about how they cant just "trade caps" to win, and they call me a "****" for not having as many individual points as them, as I am around 13-0 at this point and about 4th on the score board while my teammates are like 3-17 with more points from "node swapping" like this.... They proceed to tell me domination isnt about "K/D ratio" which its not... but when you jsut cap trade, it doesnt help anybody but your individual score.
Now I know, pugs be pugs and you cant talk to people who play stupid, but the question I was asking myself is why does the score system support this type of thing?
Problem
The current individual score system is really out of balance. DCs who cant get kills, will rarely get the +150 points for a kill and node defended and also (unless with a group) will rarely get a "node capture". The current system also promotes "node swapping" in its a really easy way to get a high individual score giving a misleading impression to players who havnt played "high level" pvp who dont really understand how to play the game properly. It gives high kill players a very large advantage (like TRs or GWFs) who can typically top the kills and also are great node holders.
Solution
Dont award extra points for "node defender" or even +300 points for a node capture. I would even suggest not even awarding points for kills, since this is really a team game, you want to give points for what the objective is here. What is the objective? Nodes!
Once a node is captured, every point the team as a whole gets from that node, gives the players who captured the node 1 point.
So players A,B,C on Team 1 capture the "middle node" when the team gets a point tick, players A,B,C also get an individual score of 1 point for each tick. Say team 1 gets 100 points from that middle node and then its "contested" by an enemy team, players A,B,C would have gotten 100 points from that node. and would cease to get points until it stops being "contested".
Why does this solve the problems?
Now players are NOT given incentive to "trade caps" or even to zerg nodes since even if you capture the node, if it doesnt tick for points you dont get points. It rewards that teammate for the effort put into the match that actually benefits the team, rather than kills, assists, or node swaps.
This also gives a correct "standard" for how well you participated and assisted your team. If this scoring were in the match I noted in my preface, my PUGs would have had almost zero contribution to the team and their individual scores would have reflected that. Now you can also remove the "minimum score for points" issue since now with matchmaking there should not be a ton of "blowout" games... If there are, their elo increases and next match is harder. Which brings me to my next point.
Elo rating NEEDS to be visible
This can be done almost anywhere in your character tab. I know you have alot going on right now, but just having a matchmaking system in place wont fix the pvp issue. Yes we are having more balanced games, and yes people are not leaving due to the penalty BUT! It still isnt providing a ton of incentive to pvp.. I know personally I only log in to do my dailies and maybe GG if its there to get seals and log off.
We cant premade anymore, cant set up 1v1s, cant even test things out against eachother in a "test match". Ontop of all that, we cant even SEE how good we are doing... On my GF I have won over 20-25 games and lost 2x, well what is my elo versus my GWF I have won about 8 and now (story above) lost 1.... If I meet a person in PE, how do I know they are good in pvp? Whats my motivation to log in and play each day if there is no "ranking" aka visible elo rating....
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
I think I've somewhat answered my own question in that not everyone's PvP ranking would give them a place on the board... but!
Since they've announced that leaderboards are a feature planned for module 3, it seems to me that rankings are currently not viewable more because there's no interface in place for viewing them than because they're purposely hiding them.
If they're adding a feature to the UI for displaying a PvP leaderboard which could very possibly include viewing your own character's score, then patching something into the character sheet now or however they'd have to have implemented it for the short term seems like it would ultimately be wasted effort.
I suspect it's more a matter of a necessary interface update being slated to ship with the module, even though the other PvP stuff was pushed sooner.
Neverwinter Census 2017
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Oh I see your point, I guess I forgot to add a further recommendation (one that I have pitched many times) and that is to remove "contesting" from the game. The point either ticks for team A or team B. The reason is, this removes alot of the "cheese" builds that are extraordinarily good at domination currently because they can contest for so long - like the perma build that doesnt even try to deal damage just stay cloaked and run around on the node. Or the Ultra tank/turtle builds who dont try and do anything but stay alive.
Part of the game has even become who can just stay alive 1v2 or 1v3 the longest to contest the node and waste enemy time. Typically this means just a perma TR dodging around not doing anything but staying on the point. Thats a pretty lame mechanic IMO...
I completely agree with you though that one of the most important rolls on a team is someone to defend nodes and I can tell you MANY times I have been the node defender, been one of the least scoring members on the team but most crucial rolls.
So if they created a new system awarding individual score based on points that tick for your team, remove contesting, that would be completely fair now, since a node holder would get many points for holding that node. Now it would require a team to head to that point, clear and capture it and THEN send someone to "hold it" but you cant just send a cheese contest build to completely negate points from that team...
Once those two things are added, they can then award more glory to losing teams based on individual score (aka contribution to the team) since BOTs/AFKers wont get any glory at all, while players who stay and fight will earn something... The contesting issue currently makes it impossible for even bad PUG teams to get ANY team points, remove contesting and now if a PUG can cap a node, it will keep ticking for their team regardless of any super tank GWF or perma trying to contest it, they have to clear the node and capture it for themselves.
This all also reduces the time for each game which would be nice too. Creates a much faster paced game since now each encounter really makes a difference.
Sounds decent. Or perhaps make it so that a contested node only gives the owning team points at half the normal rate.
Would make it worthwhile to contest a node while trying to win it, but a waste of time for builds that just aim purely to survive for as long as possible.
Even better make perma-stealth not count towards contesting a node in either case (with a timer to prevent abuse).
So say at the beginning of a match everyone is worth 200 points, if you kill someone in a 1v1 with no help you get all 200. If you kill someone and do 75% of the dps while a teamate does 25 you get 150 and they get 50. If you kill someone but need a DC to restore 100% of your morale while doing it to survive then you get 100 points and the DC gets 100 points. And then reduce the total by 5 points or so for each death, so once a person has died 20 times they are only worth half as many points per kill, that way there is more reward for killing hard targets than there is for farming a total **** all match.
As far as ELO rating being visible I think that is coming with the leaderboard next module, but it's just win/loss as far as I know and won't have anything to do with anyone's personal match scores.
Yeah I could see an argument made for half points if contesting. PVP gets really boring quickly when on both far/home nodes the entire game just because "who can contest versus who"
If you changed the contest rules, this game would require MUCH more skill. I still think just removing contesting would be awesome, then the game becomes more about who can capture a node and keep it.
You would still have players take a team to say "far node" take over the node and THEN stick a perma on the node to "hold it" or prevent the other team from capturing it back, however, CURRENTLY you just have to send over a GWF to "contest" it. Now you would have to urgently send over 2 or 3 players to try and win the node back and not just throw one person to contest the node.
Youll still have "best defender classes" like the perma and GWF, but youll need team coordination first and foremost to first capture the node.
I guess AN option would be, if two people from a team are on the node against only one person from the other team, they would slowly capture like it is now, OR you could just make it something you need to "channel" cast for say 4 seconds to "capture it". This could lead to interesting situations where a CW or GF could "prone" lock or CC someone while another "captures".
Either way it would take alot more skill/team work to play versus now, one really geared player can almost completely lock down a node (like a GWF on their home point) and it not only drags the game out, its really boring and just a bad play mechanic.