Kills, Deaths and Score

[GoodOl'Ben]

Hey guys!

I'm currently feeling very revolutionary and radical, so bear with me here.

One thing that I've come to notice with MB2 from time to time is that we've looked at this game with blinds on for so long that we've made some really wonky decisions and solutions. One of my favorite pet peeves is kills and deaths.

STORY TIME!

Right now if you kill a soldier with 3 lives, you will get 0.3333333 kills out of this. In turn the dead soldier will receive 0.333333 deaths. The reasoning here a long time ago was that we had soldiers give off a kill only when their last life expired. Then people didn't like this as people often rushed for the last soldier and killing the previous lives were meaningless. Then we introduced the system of giving 0.3333 kills for this and deaths would amount to 0.3333 as well. Sounds about fair right? Yeah kinda great!

Let's go forward a few builds. People felt it was unfair for deaths to be tracked like this for solds. You might be alive at the end of the round but you might've still accumulated a death this round due to dying once and filling up your fractional death pool. This sucked.

We changed it so that the sold would have to lose all lives to get a death. Fair since a Jedi won't get a death for losing 50 HP during a round right? This lead to solds camping with their last lives which could sometimes frustrate players. As of late we have returned back to the system we had years back.

Often from new players I've heard confused questions like: "I killed a player but I didn't get a kill?" This got me thinking if we should think bigger.

For years now we've had a scoreboard that tracks score earned by players and it's a decent measure of a player's input and ranks people based on their score/round ratio. The score earned for kills uses fractional kills to a degree: Killing a soldier will give you 4 points, killing a jedi will give you 12 points. Great! The score system seems to be the best way of tracking a player's impact on the round and K/D is more like a nice-to-have thing on the side. So now's the time for the big question: What if we made all kills count as kills and a player is counted as dead when their last life is killed.

There are some really cool things that would happen from this.

• No newbie confusion regarding hidden kill/death tally mechanics
• Your K/D stats would look far nicer as a single-lifer
• A positive K/D will not be nearly as hard to achieve

Technically all the important valuation for a soldier's life is handled in score, so we could turn K/D to match actual kills and deaths. In similar fashion we can bloat assists to match this since assists also were tallied in fractions.

I'll put this change in if people like it.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

They can be put into console messages too, doesn't need to be a pop-up.

Precisely.

 

[Hexodious]

To be semantic here we'd be talking about a Kill/Defeat ratio, not a Kill/Death ratio.

This sounds good to me. Essentially if you lose by objective or by time its a +1 to defeat, would certainly make people care about defending more. Need to sort any sort of /spectate or /recon(?) while in the middle of a round not giving a 'Defeat' as well. Stop people hiding or cheating the system to protect ego-scorez.

 

[Dra-Gon]

I believe they should count as full kills. Let's revise what a kd Is, it's your kill to death. If I kill a soldier 3 times, I get 3 kills, not 1. The current system definitely needs to change. Im kinda on the fence on deathes for solds though, 5 bad rounds and you have a 0/15 ratio. I think the last life for deathes should count as a solds death, and all 3 of his lives count as kills.

While what you write does make sense, I think it is important to also think about how that fits the game.
Soldier class is entirely based around having multiple lifes, it is not a matter of preference - the slow movement speed, slow get up, and the low hp and shield prove that.
Thus I think the design is flawed - if you base a class on being weak but having multiple lifes, then giving it death point for each death, when it is essentially a vital part of the class to have multiple lifes, is a bad idea.
On the other hand in games like battlefront a soldier is a pretty durable class, so it makes sense that killing a soldier awards him with death point.

It would be a different story for MB, IMO, if you could play a soldier with 1 life and had regular hp (meaning 100 hp) and moderate speed, with reinforcements being an option (and selecting multiple lifes would decrease your health pool and speed slightly, until you got to 50 hp and current soldier speed at 3 lifes). I still wouldn't be for the idea of 1 death point for 1 death for soldier, but it would be more bearable then.

It is also important to note that this change would not only affect soldiers (although they would suffer the most).
A clone, for example, is quite balanced when it comes to choosing a 2 life clone or 1 life CR3 clone. However if it became apparent that playing CR3 clone meant better score (since no change to clone would happen, except that 2 life clone would get 1 deaht point for each death), you may see uprising of the more annoying game styles, which would make the game less playable (I'm talking about cr3 vs flinch mechanic here).

 

[Eliwood]

THE CASE FOR SCOREWHORING

There are too many jedi/sith in MB2. You know it, I know it.

A simple way to incentivize the use of gunners without any nerfs/buffs would be to revert death counting so that ETs/Solds only get a death if they lose all their lives. This may not seem "fair" to many, but this is immaterial--what I propose is the direction of the energies of a few tryhards towards gunning as opposed to sabering.

Consider this: if I'm concerned about scorewhoring, and I can't contain by going ET and playing my last life super safe, then I, have no reason not to go Jedi (especially considering that most real-world gameplay is currently being done on Deathstar, a map heavily favored towards Jedi). Jedi is the easiest role with which to protect your life. Therefore, it attracts every tryhard currently playing mb2, and this is as sad as it is boring.

Furthermore, as has been stated in this thread, this change would likely give rise to more ET/soldier squads and objective play which, again, is good.

Those who argue that all kills/death should represent "whole" kills/deaths are denying score as a factor which influences the way people play the game. Barely anyone plays soldier now, they're weak. Are you telling me if we make it so that every time you play soldier you get THREE deaths, that's not going to further decrease desire to play that class?

 

[Hexodious]

I think soldier is a super strong class. But reading through the discussion - Ben has recently been talking about each kill counting as a kill and deaths wouldn't even exist, it would simply be defeats (round losses), so dying with lives wouldn't matter unless it was your last, just like you describe.

Either way I am in favour of every kill just being a kill and not having any sort of deaths tracked, [Kills/Rounds] is a more impressive stat than [Kills/Deaths]. Someone going all out and killing 5-6 people a round but dying > someone with a 4:1 ratio because they are hiding/playing ultra safe after getting a kill.

But yeah I agree, this would make people worry less about what class they can survive best with and just play whatever.

 

[FRANK LAMPART]

Ben has recently been talking about each kill counting as a kill and deaths wouldn't even exist, it would simply be defeats (round losses), so dying with lives wouldn't matter unless it was your last, just like you describe.

I'd be down for that. Changed my vote to yes.

 

[Manyo]

I think i'd like that too. You could show how many rounds your team won and lost while you were personally playing, plus your kills and maybe a support score (assists could be within this or extra). All values together add up to your total score which ranks you within your team.

 

[Vizino]

can we not be so ego about score and just play obj/general?

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

Said no one ever.

Just put it all on-screen. Kills, deaths, reinforcement deaths, assists, objectives won, lost, dmg dealth, hos slapped, pimps slapped, I've lost track....

Which is precisely why we need a tracker for all things track-worthy!

How many pistol kills?
E-11?
Whats my hit rate/Accuracy?

How many times have I killed Lando, a black man?
Wait, we got that already.

Strange to be tracking that.
Totally not racist

Woohoo!

 

[KaineMAF]

hos slapped, pimps slapped

 

[yoinkboink]

I vote no, because it will encourage players to go single-life classes and aim for kills

This definitely already happens

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

I think a general good spec is roughly this:

• All kills are equal: kills count as +1 kill
• Death repurposed to Defeat: losing your last life counts as a +1 Defeat
• Add better indicators for score earning: You killed Padawan (+12) (console feed only)

After this would be implemented, further patches can explore potential additions such as:

• Give score from damage dealt
• Give score from knockdowns caused
• Give score from stuns caused
• Give score from grouping
• Give score from denying objectives
• Give score from blasterfire blocked
• Give score from unique kills (melee, special move, kata, mario, air snipe, headshot, air blob, mblock)
• Give score from sprees (double kill, triple kill, quad kill, mega kill, MOMOMOMONSTERKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLkillkill...)

I think a direction like this could give some nice positive reinforcement. A good game rewards its players when they succeed. Providing some light indicators for these would go a long way.

Have the following people voted based on the discussion direction or based on the intial post? Can you give reasoning as to why the current system is more encouraging to players compared to the one suggested in this post?

• @eezstreet
• @Gumba
• @Gargos
• @Dra-Gon
• @Noob
• @Preston
• @Jeob
• @Eliwood
• @AaronAaron
• @IKilledVongsOnce
• @Penekowski
• @Smee
• @Jameson
• @Hessu
• @S o l d i e r
• @Templar
• @Apelsin
• @-D1-

 

[S o l d i e r]

I voted no cos you wanted to give 1 death per 1 soldier/et/com/clone life.
I still think that giving kills for each life, but not deaths would make a disbalance in K/D, there will be more kills than deaths and much more people will have positive scores than negative. It's like a false satisfaction system, but the satisfaction will still be the same, as the bar for it would be higher - it won't be only to get positive score, but more than it. Plus, then everyone will rush multiple life classes cos they are easier to kill than 1 life classes and give the same reward.
So I am still against this.

 

[-D1-]

(deleted)

 

[Apelsin]

Can you give reasoning as to why the current system is more encouraging to players compared to the one suggested in this post?

i found the idea of having multiple deaths per round very discouraging, but that new defeat concept is a step in the right direction (it wasn't there when i made my choice)

However, i still won't change my opinion, because i'm afraid that new kill system potentially may change priorities in players' heads: at very important moment they may choose to hunt down easy targets instead of top priority few to farm their precious score.

I think the score system, where player's goodness will be defined by overall impact rather than k/d (like in team fortress 2, where score is the only visible thing to everybody and personal k/d is fully devaluated and even hidden from anybody but player), is the right way to go

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

First post and poll updated with the adjustments.

I voted no cos you wanted to give 1 death per 1 soldier/et/com/clone life.
I still think that giving kills for each life, but not deaths would make a disbalance in K/D, there will be more kills than deaths and much more people will have positive scores than negative. It's like a false satisfaction system, but the satisfaction will still be the same, as the bar for it would be higher - it won't be only to get positive score, but more than it. Plus, then everyone will rush multiple life classes cos they are easier to kill than 1 life classes and give the same reward.
So I am still against this.

The K/D's role as the player efficiency meter would diminish while score would be propped up more as the go-to for player success measurement. K/D would largely serve as satisfaction more than anything. Score is already the superior mechanic as it measures in assists and objectives.

Key goals for this change are to de-emphasize K/D by uncomplicating it and make it more into a general statistic.

 

[Manyo]

Sometimes it's better to go for the easy target, sometimes it's not. Players who do know when to focus on a deka (etc.) first will do so anyway because it pays off in the long term.
Still voting 'Yes'.

 

[Hexodious]

Sometimes it's better to go for the easy target, sometimes it's not. Players who do know when to focus on a deka (etc.) first will do so anyway because it pays off in the long term.
Still voting 'Yes'.

Agreed, and sometimes the easy class is not the easy target/player. There are a lot more newer players in the game, and every time they kill me as sold they deserve a full kill and not "wtf I killed the guy with top score and got nothing!". Solds can deny kills and trade very hard at the moment, even if they lose all 3 lives by spreading their deaths across multiple enemies.

This may also make single use weapons like Primary Grenades/TDs/Rockets gain ''value'' as each time you detonate someone you at least get a full point and don't just trade your 15 point investment for 0.33/4 points.

I think a general good spec is roughly this:

• All kills are equal: kills count as +1 kill
• Death repurposed to Defeat: losing your last life counts as a +1 Defeat
• Add better indicators for score earning: You killed Padawan (+12) (console feed only)

Also in the short term add more value to assists in score, from 6 to 8-10 points to lessen the gap between K/D and top score. With an improved assist system later.

Like when I am playing with my buddy @FRANK LAMPART he will not have many kills but a ton of assists and I'll have a ton of kills but hardly any assists but the system puts me waaaaay ahead on score because Kills > Assists way too much in the scoreboard. He is helping setup my kills he deserves more credit in that scenario. A lesser difference will make playing a support role more favourable.

 

[Apelsin]

Key goals for this change are to de-emphasize K/D by uncomplicating it and make it more into a general statistic.

I think I found the way to make k/d purely statistical thing without even changing it: you should align scoreboard rating by top score!

Current alignment seems strange: Score/Rounds data seems useless visually and the only reason to look there is to find that TK guy by checking out negative score. But K/D ratio seems like a thing. Why? Because it explains alignment perfectly from visual perspective. The only way to get on the top is to gain bigger K/D ratio than your teammates.
Alignment logic should follow top score logic: gain score, gain higher place. That will devalue the impact of K/D and solve the problem from UI perspective.
And you could count every kill/death, because they will no longer manipulate player's vision of the game.

And once this will be done, you could concentrate on improvement of score system. Every new applied score rule will be noticeable because of that simple alignment rule.

 

[Hexodious]

Well score/rounds already determines the placement. Kills just give too many points compared to anything else, assists and objectives are comparatively worthless and which I'd like to see changed

Of the top of my head I think it is:

Objective: 12
Kill: 12
Kill 1/2: 6
Assist: 6
Kill 1/3: 4
Assist 1/2: 3
Assist 1/3: 2

As mentioned only damage and knockdowns give kills at the moment:

• Grip someone and they get sniped before it ticks for hp damage, no assist.
• Mblock someone and they get shot, no assist.
• Domino someone and a jedi kills them all, you get 1 assist for the primary knockdown and nothing for the domino.
• Drain all fp and someone else snipes them, no assist.
• Drain all bp and someone else sabers them, no assist.

I am sure there are more examples of this as well. And this are things that should be changed but in the short-term without changing what gives assists a:

Objective: 14
Kill: 12
Assist: 10
*Multi-kill: +2/4 bonus points per additional consecutive kill in <5 seconds.
*Style-kill: +2/4 points for air-snipe, air-blob, thrown-to-death, crushed, mblock-kill, back-slash, kata, dfa, etc.

Would be much nicer and better portray whats going on, the guy getting killing blows will still be ahead on average, but they still also need a lot of assists.

*Example stuff I'd like to see later.