Disable some information in the leaderboard in COOP

Hi devs !

Coop mode is unfortunately full of people trying to be "the best" player of the team, which leads to them adopting a suicidal behaviour, or trying to plant explosives at all costs even though someone on the team has explosives to deal with it quickly.

While I do get the presence of a leaderboard in PVP modes, I think that it's quite useless in COOP mode. It does not encourage teamwork. It makes (almost) every team member act in an individualistic and self-centered manner, often going lone wolf, instead of sticking with the team.

Maybe a "team" leaderboard would be better. A leaderboard that would show how many kills and objectives the team managed to get as a whole, and suppressing the individual stats that are useless in COOP anyway.

What do you think about it ? Wouldn't it encourage people to play as a team instead of trying to be the first one to get to the objective, or killing the most enemies ?

Agreed, coop is a bit of a mess right now and the way many people are playing this mode reflects this ... there is almost no teamplay at all! I really hope NWI will make changes to the current coop implementation, it's basically who can run to the next objective the fastest (completely ignoring teamplay) to blow up the weapon cache for the points so they will be on top of the scoreboard at the end of the round. Problem is worse in Sandstorm because everyone can now blow up a cache by just holding the Use key for a short time! This was a bad idea ... everyone can do everything now in Coop, so why the difference in classes then? Again, this is not good for teamplay. Besides, it was fun to see people having to backtrack and search for explosives in INS2014. Also, I've seen people get into fights because they ran of to the next cache first and were working to blow it up feeling all entitled and another player (from the Demolition of Breacher class) then throws an incendiary nade to also blow up the cache and is then accused of teamkilling them, it's a mess.

If the situation stays as is then at least make blowing up caches without explosives take much longer and let it initiate a respawn of enemies that will try to prevent it from happening. Using an explosive should be the preferred way to blow up caches (or remove the Use-key method completely). Also it should be made much more difficult and or dangerous for players to run off alone to the next objective. In coop the focus should lie on teamplay, teamplay and teamplay so yes, coming back to OP's post, if it also takes changing the scoreboard information to further stimulate teamplay I'm all for it.

last edited by Valerian

This makes a lot of sense to me. Co-op shouldn't be about individual stats.

I don't know what the answer is but they need to encourage team play and discourage the "lone wolf" mindset some folks have. IME, when you publicly promote or reward individual achievement, some folks will focus on their record rather than the team or the gameplay experience.

Something i already demand on many other games: REMOVE K/D, ADD TEAM SCOREBOARD

@valerian

I don't think that the use button for blowing up caches is a bad thing. Having the last guy of the team alive in Ins:Source with no explosives whatsoever would more often than not result in a tedious search around the map, and even sometimes force players to restart the round through voting.

Then again, I believe it is possible to blow caches up in Sandstorm by shooting them. Never tested that out, but if it works, then you're 100% right and the "use" mechanic needs to go away.

The way I handled this in the Source version was to increase the amount of points given based on certain actions.

If a kill was suppressed or assisted by another player, each received double points.

On a capture, every tick was given a multiplier based on how many players were on point, up to 100% bonus if at least 80% of the remaining living players were on point.

For demolition, all players received the same amount of points regardless of who blew it up.

I wasn't able to account for things like overwatch and defense, because I sort of gave up on the mod given that player behavior was already baked from playing on non-modified servers. But I think that structuring point rewards to encourage team coordination is a good start, and focusing on that should give us some better incentives to make players want to work as a unit.

@jballou

Sounds like you were off to a good start though. ....but yeah, these are elements that should be in the game by default (IMO) to help encourage team participation.

@jballou
I don't know about that. As you said, people's behaviour is already baked by standard servers. Besides, the ammount of points you get is not the only thing to take into account. K:D and number of objectives taken are more important for these people than points.

I think it needs to be removed from the game if we want to see an efficient long term effect.

Yeah I'd way rather see everyone get the same XP as long as they were actively playing. Otherwise, it becomes a score fest where people are competing against teammates instead of working as an actual squad.

I think the way xp is awarded should be completely changed. People are exhibiting these behaviors because they want more points. If the whole team got points for say blowing up caches regardless of who did it (especially since anyone can rig a cache now), people wouldn't be tossing mollys at caches with a person actively rigging it.

@thehappybub I even believe that now that everyone can bring a molotov/thermite grenade with them, rigging caches should not even be a thing. It's really annoying when a guy stares at the cache, setting explosives, while three of his teammates are looking at him, molotovs, RPGs and IEDs/C4 in hands, like "Dude... Are you blind ? Go away... Let us do our fucking job..."

last edited by Grumf

@grumf more often than not the people don't stare at the guy rigging, they chuck their molly anyway. I like the mechanic just because you don't have to go scower the map for despawning nades and mollies if you happen to be last man and have to blow a cache. Still, that doesn't change that points should be awarded teamwide more often. Versus is where you try to be top of the leaderboard, that shouldn't be how coop works and point distribution should reflect that.

@thehappybub Yes, indeed. I was one of those guys who planted explosives, and I saw two teammates looking at me. Fortunately, I was not enough of a dick to keep on planting. I ran away and let them do what they were supposed to do.

But that's not the point. The leaderboard should be team-based, not team members based.

@grumf said in Disable some information in the leaderboard in COOP:

The leaderboard should be team-based, not team members based.

Yes brotha. You know de wey.

last edited by thehappybub

I disagree with removing the info until I see evidence it will change the way those people will play.

I like to see how I am going as a game is progressing so I can improve and decide who to spectate etc.

In fact, disabling info will probably make the players who want to be at the top just rush the caps and caches even more because they know that's a surefire way of getting those extra points.

I think better allocation of points would be better, like extra points for defending the planter etc.

I agree team play needs to be buffed but I don't believe that will happen by obscuring the leader board.

I think better allocation of points would be effective because it rewards team work and by your logic it's reward points that is what is motivating these players anyway right?

Totally agree with this!!! X10000000 upvotes!

@focusaf What extra points ? There would be no points at all, you wouldn't earn "extra points" by doing whatever to begin with.

The leaderboard would only show this (just imagine that with the ingame interface) :

Security Team (or Insurgent Team) : 67 kills ; 19 deaths ; 11 objectives.

Individual players' stats would not be displayed. Plus, one would have to test removing member-based leaderboard in coop for at least a few months in order to know whether or not it can change people's attitude, so I don't get how you want anyone to bring you "evidence" that it works when you don't want anyone to try it...

A better allocation of points is bullshit. Insurgency Source already does that and it serves no purpose. People still are rushing through the map, often getting killed, just to be the one to blow all caches and be the MVP.

If there can not be an MVP and if nobody can display their points/K:D/objectives in the leaderboard as a kind of hubris trophy, why would they rush through the map getting killed over and over again ? No one will see that they are top. Only that they keep dying because tey rush too much. They would only be seen as shitty players.

last edited by Grumf

@grumf

Totally agree with every word. PVP!? sure pile those stats on.

Co-op? - no, just no!

I support that proposal to disable the leaderboard in Coop games.
It´s totally unnecessary.

@jballou said in Disable some information in the leaderboard in COOP:

Yeah I'd way rather see everyone get the same XP as long as they were actively playing. Otherwise, it becomes a score fest where people are competing against teammates instead of working as an actual squad.

Removing individual stats from in game- tab menu is really the best way to do it. Have a profile or area to access your stats from “last game played” or overall in main menu would be best.