Remove the kill counter?

[pr|Zer0]

Voted for end round score...squad round score if possible

[Kain888]

This thread is three years old. It's not going to happen.

If people still feel it's important for them to express opinion why not let them debate about their beloved mod though? :> Especially if it's related to both immersion and teamwork aspects of PR that are so wanted in community.

Let's not play necro card here, it's about valid points which I think are present in this topic.

[ExeTick]

The game will lose players if you remove the kill counter.

allot of players (even me) think its fun to see how many you killed.

[tankninja1]

Kill counter should be kept if only to keep morale up, it can also give a rough idea of how many tickets the other team has lost.

[sweedensniiperr]

ok how about this, you see your team's kills, deaths, score etc as usual. but you don't see the enemies score and kills, aswell as when someone is down or dead.

a compromise. this way the mortars can't tell if they hit something until they've got kills which is usually shows up after a few minutes.

[Mikemonster]

If people still feel it's important for them to express opinion why not let them debate about their beloved mod though? :> Especially if it's related to both immersion and teamwork aspects of PR that are so wanted in community.

Let's not play necro card here, it's about valid points which I think are present in this topic.

I agree there are a lot of valid points, I think me saying it was a road to nowhere was a valid point as well!

Although personally i'd prefer to see them removed, from a selfish POV, and shown as a Squad score.

[Mats391]

ok how about this, you see your team's kills, deaths, score etc as usual. but you don't see the enemies score and kills, aswell as when someone is down or dead.

a compromise. this way the mortars can't tell if they hit something until they've got kills which is usually shows up after a few minutes.

that woulndt be good compromise imo. the main problem when it comes to mortars are the score points you gain for just hitting, not the kills getting confirmed. shoot at FOB till you no longer gain points = FOB down, just stupid.
if you want to keep something for motivation sake keep personal deathscore for friendly team and total death count for enemys. that should be neough to tell who is doing good/bad

[Stryker Machine]

If im honest, after engaging an enemy contact I do hit Tab a few minutes later just out of curiosity.. Come on! We all do it, gives us that sense of achievment!

[PFunk]

I feel like kills are a valid piece of info to receive in this game. Unlike in real life when one dies one can be magically revived. Its part of tracking tickets lost and taken. Any smart person looks at team KDRs and decides if the team is doing alright or not. Be pretty hard to gauge how your team is doing on INS as REDFOR. If you look at the KDRs you can make all kinds of assumptions about your team. APC squad with few kills, many deaths, and your ticket count is low then you can assume they're useless and therefore plan around that fact. Knowing if your squad is making a positive or negative ticket contribution to the team is helpful as a leader as well.

Fact is that this contrived system of tickets and this totally unrealistic wounded/death system both create a kind of conceit that requires extra information to properly make it work. Its only sensible given how central tickets are to the game.

Any argument that KDRs are unrealistic should also argue that capping meters are also unrealistic. They are, but then the whole game isn't that realistic anyway. Its a hybrid and as such there are compromises that just make sense.

[Kain888]

I feel like kills are a valid piece of info to receive in this game.

The exact point of most people here is that kills and score are not only valid piece but like crucial, that's the point of hiding them during game.

Unlike in real life when one dies one can be magically revived.

IRL you don't know even if you have hit foe and if he is dead, slightly wounded, wounded or just relocated, etc. Unless ofc you will check personally, which I think (may be wrong here) doesn't happen that much if you are let's say fighting with Talibans in mountains or having some city firefights with insurgents. From all footage I've seen they usually go on patrols and check area after some time, checking bodies, equipment, etc. Even if someone is revived you can count is as reinforcements here, because irl there are more people than 6 vs 6 shooting each other across T buildings. My points is magical properties of revival were discussed by devs here tons of times (like the famous Fuzzhead summary)

Its part of tracking tickets lost and taken. Any smart person looks at team KDRs and decides if the team is doing alright or not. Be pretty hard to gauge how your team is doing on INS as REDFOR. If you look at the KDRs you can make all kinds of assumptions about your team. APC squad with few kills, many deaths, and your ticket count is low then you can assume they're useless and therefore plan around that fact. Knowing if your squad is making a positive or negative ticket contribution to the team is helpful as a leader as well.

That's the main negative side of it. It defeats purpose of commander, of intel and of communication (of course not entirely). I will risk hypothesis I'm quite experienced in game and when I'm SL at least about 25% of my time is spend on both squad screen (caps lock) and scoreboard (tab) from both you can gain insane amount of intel + communicating with your medic who sees who needs revival on map results in quite a bit ridiculous situation. And I don't see how KDR is useful information for leader, more like start ground for making judgments about others. Many people who contribute have no kills or points, be it logic truck drivers or trans choppers dropping supplies, etc. Also you don't get kills for wounded people which doesn't reflect your tickets lost / tickets taken too well. Or maybe there is sapper with civi that prepare ambushes for armor and most of time they die but finally hit some armor making it hard for enemy, not to mention tickets lost' or AA guy sitting on top of roof on Karbala? Usually on Mumble you hear only people with kills bragging and I don't think it's that reflect the nature of PR, especially for newcomers.

And I don't agree any smart person looks at KDR, any person looks at KDR. That's the problem. Good leader and smart person should be able to judge the information of progress, loses and overall outcome of situation from the squad, team and map awareness and communication with other SLs.

Fact is that this contrived system of tickets and this totally unrealistic wounded/death system both create a kind of conceit that requires extra information to properly make it work. Its only sensible given how central tickets are to the game.

I doubt we need information about kills to make "system" work. Doesn't really follow you here to be honest. It's better to have some informations hidden in games like here, where immersion is quite important.

Any argument that KDRs are unrealistic should also argue that capping meters are also unrealistic. They are, but then the whole game isn't that realistic anyway. Its a hybrid and as such there are compromises that just make sense.

The main argument is that scoreboard (not KDR) is unrealistic, because you may get too much information from it and it defeats in certain ways the main features of game (which I doubt realism is tbh) - immersion and teamwork/communication. I think that scores like here but shown after round and only summed to squad general outcome would work better (so kills from all people that are part of squad are summed).

[ShockUnitBlack]

Could we get a Dev statement on this? I'm curious to hear what the team has to say on the issue.

[Arnoldio]

Could we get a Dev statement on this? I'm curious to hear what the team has to say on the issue.

Let me be a dev for a few seconds.

"This suggestion has been looked into and we havent forgotten about it since it pops up from time to time. But since we are discussing things far more important at the very moment, we put this matter aside. It will be considered in the future."

[Qadis]

And I don't agree any smart person looks at KDR, any person looks at KDR. That's the problem. Good leader and smart person should be able to judge the information of progress, loses and overall outcome of situation from the squad, team and map awareness and communication with other SLs.

The main argument is that scoreboard (not KDR) is unrealistic, because you may get too much information from it and it defeats in certain ways the main features of game (which I doubt realism is tbh) - immersion and teamwork/communication. I think that scores like here but shown after round and only summed to squad general outcome would work better (so kills from all people that are part of squad are summed).

I voted "No", but I agree with most of your post and could easily change the vote to "Only show the scores at the ending". I would never agree to sum the scores of the squad, though. People who understand the game will know KDR doesn't say everything about a player's contribution, and that it depends on the role he plays etc., but monitoring one's KDR over a period of time certainly tells you about his skill level and about your own improvement if you look at it each game. You could also say that getting kills and dying the least (including not getting wounded) takes the most skill, and roles that are kill-oriented take the most skill (here I include drivers of armor and CAS pilots together with gunners).

Anyway, you can also extend that logic of summing up a squad's performance and sum up the scores of all the squads to the team as a whole. After all, a certain squad's performance is also a product of other squads helping them out, so why not sum up EVERYTHING ? The answer should be obvious.

Yes, KDR doesn't give you all the information, but summing it up will give you LESS info. I'm mainly talking about the end of the game here btw, I'm still unsure about showing it during the game.

There's also these players that think that removing KDR for individuals would somehow entice people to cooperate more. Here's the thing. The main objective of the game is to drain the enemy team's tickets to zero before the same happens to your team. How do you achieve this? By killing the enemies, or capping flags - which also happens to include killing people unless the other team is somehow always outnumbered in cap range.

If Project Reality is a game that requires teamwork, that means that people will get better KDRs if they work together - both individual and team KDR. This indicator actually helps teamwork. If players are smart enough to see that they will beat the other team with teamwork, they will start playing various roles that also include support roles that don't necessarily get kills. Long term (over a period of many games), their KDR will be better than without teamwork, and they will sometimes recognize the need for support roles (because their and other people's KDR is suffering), fulfill them, and have their efforts manifest in other people's KDR and even their own. If you don't know what I mean by this, a simple example is the driver/gunner combo - driver doesn't get the kills, but his efforts manifest in the gunner's amount of kills.

This doesn't always have to be case ofc - if the gunner is telling the driver exactly EVERYTHING he needs to do, or if it's the other way around, one of them should get more credit. In any case, you can't get exact info on this unless you know the players. But I digress.

Point is, if the game requires teamwork to win, there will be teamwork and removing KDR won't change much.

Anyway Kain, most of my post wasn't directed at you, and sorry if I've reiterated some points from before, but I didn't feel like reading the whole thread and I wanted to make sure these points are heard.

[Moonlight]

I'm gonna add my 5 cents:
I really don't mind people seeing how good they're doing. Keeping and eye on some progress bar is what make people happy. That prolly the main reason all those xp points have been added to FPS shooters like CoD and others.

There is one huge drawback though. The scoreboard, when you understand a few basics, gives you far, far too much intel. I'm gonna think of few. Ones I usually exploit:

• Using it you may check whether the enemy team has already build an fob (Imagine yourself rushing the docks of muttrah as a MEC at round start. Check the enemys' score! If a few guys have over 200 points at the round start they MUST'VE built a fob, most likely in the DOCKS, most likely in the hangar. Chances are they are still digging it.
• Muttrah again - round start, you're the mec. You noticed that enemy has 5-8 deaths and the round has just started, it clearly means one of their choppers crashed. An unskilled pilot? Maybe. Still - you now KNOW they have -6 ppl for some time and a chopper less.
• You just had an intense firefight. There are 2 of your squad still alive, the building seems clear. You look at the scoreboard and notice some guys with a [enter tag here] tag greyed-out. ( the rest of the enemy team is pretty much alive) All but one. You're still not getting kills for the guys your squad has just killed. Chances are he's waiting for your squad to either start reviving each other and then kill you or wait for you to move away and try to save his fellows. Now you know that you must be extremely careful when reviving or search for that last guy.
• Pretty much same situation as before, only that you practically owned the enemy squad. Still- not getting kills. Should your squad push? You (again) notice the single [enter tag here] guy alive, and rest with the same tag greyed out. Your reaction will be simple. Hold the ground. Keep an eye for the bodies until they give up or their comrade tries to revive them... and fails.
• Insurgency mode. You've been assaulting the cashe for some time now. One of the squads have reported they destroyed an enemy hideout. You keep killing the insurgents from a safe position. After a few minutes you see that almost half of the enemy team is grayed-out. They must've run out of the places to spawn! Majority is too lazy to spawn @main or someone is just setting up a new hideout. Regardless - now it's the time to move in for the cashe!
• You're playing mortars. Some squad has marked an enemy FOB location on the map. You fire there but receive no points. It clearly means you hit nothing. Either the marker is off or your fire is.
• Same situation as before only that you got some points after the first 2 salvos. You keep firing and shortly afterwards the enemy whines on the allchat that your mortars are ridiculously effective.
• You just hit with an AA a most deadly cobra you've ever seen on muttrah. It went for the carrier smoking. Will it explode midair? You look at the scoreboard and notice that some guy with kd 30-1 has just grayed out. So has his mate with a lot of points, a few kills, 0 deaths and a same tag. The cobra is most likely down.

Shall I continue?
The scoreboard provides far too much intel. Especially the red/gray indicator for members of the enemy team. The end of the round info should be sufficient. And maybe personal points refreshed say every 5 minutes.

[AquaticPenguin]

Good points made, especially things like knowing if they've built an early fob/chopper crashed because they can really affect the start of battle.

[Moszeusz6Pl]

I think that the best way is to leave scores, at is is, but increase latency and don't show who spawned in enemy team.

[mat552]

Moonlight, if someone is that bent on metagaming and exploiting game mechanics to perform better, nothing and no one is going to stop them from doing it. They'll find some other way to gain information they shouldn't have, and if that way is blocked, they'll still find more ways. Players are nothing if not resourceful about getting around attempts to code out behavior.

[Kain888]

Players are nothing if not resourceful about getting around attempts to code out behavior.

Quoting your sig: "Players might be hardcoded, but that sure doesn't seem to stop anybody from trying".

I would say game is by definition some fake environment that shapes people reactions. So if we are getting rid of stuff like crosshair, indicator of ammunition in magazine, grenade crosshair and other things from HUD why not obscure even more artificial stuff - score visible DURING game. Is it that different to see your kills at the end of game? Yet it helps a lot.

And code is main weapon that shapes behavior. Devs get rid of paratroopers mentality - it's only because of coding it out. In PR we have had a lot of smart and keen developers that made the game more in favor of teamwork and immersion, so it's certainly possible.

I would really, really love to see some spotter that work for mortars instead of plain "we are hitting my score just went up! keep firing!" or checking bodies after firefight.
Heck! I remember my first rounds, I had read manual before playing, so I thought that kills show with great delay (unfortunately it's not like that). Was so exciting to scout areas where we were shooting at to conform kills. Now I use TAB for confirming.

[Moonlight]

nothing and no one is going to stop them from doing it.

I dare to disagree with you. Should we/the devs do nothing to enhance the game then? Why does this mod exist at all?
Why are there patches released for pretty much any competitive game one can think of? To balance them and get rid of the bugs. You say people will find a way - probably. As in any other game. It does not however allow the game developers to just sit and watch as the game's flaws are being exploited to the limits.

Saying that I'm aware that it's nothing critical making the game unplayable and such. Still - the fact that you can spy on the enemy team's progress with as little effort as pressing TAB will be considered a flaw by me. You even seem to share this opinion.

The question now is why wouldn't we want a flaw to be removed? Why wouldn't we want to enhance the experience from the game and its realism? Why wouldn't we want to make people seek for other ways of getting intel, hopefully less ridiculous?

People tend to bring up an argument about seeing their progress in a game - heck, I said once I do understand it. I myself as somebody who likes to stack up gazillions of kills wouldn't want that to go away. That's where a 'way around' should be found.

A simple x min delay between action and the score change(including the kills/deaths count) would do the trick. With removing the gray-out thingy (or simply making the dead/alive ppl of the same color) would pretty much solve the issue without hurting those eager to rack up kills much.

With all that in ming a friend of me has already started trying to improve the game.

(https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f388-p ... score.html)
Having little to no previous experience in python he has already made a first step. I, frankly, have no idea how hard it will be. Just can't agree to sit and watch.

[ShockUnitBlack]

I agree with Moonlight, and the fact that players will invariably find ways to abuse the game to get the upper hand is not a reason to give up trying to stop them from doing so.