This is why I don't play BGs

fred4

The scoring is utter BS. The score sheet of my team:

Player A: 3383 K13 D9 A10
Player B: 2472 K4 D13 A15
Player C: 2450 K4 D7 A17
Me: 1850 K6 D2 A6

This was a Deathmatch and it felt great. Our team was the middle-ranked team in a fairly even match. I played a tanky stamblade brawler (yes, such as thing exists). My teammates hung back a lot. I think two were bow players and a templar was spamming shards. One of the opposing teams ran a destro ult zerg train. Others were spamming Steel Tornado. I went into the middle of the fray with my single-target NB. It felt great. I didn't hang back at all, but I had to roll / block / LoS and cloak my way out of trouble, when focused. Or so I thought.

BGs appear to reward bad gameplay. Spamming Snipe, Steel Tornado, zerging, so you get credited an Assist, if not a kill. I am also mystified by Player Bs ranking over Player C. Obviously there are objectives to account for that, but why should those exist in a Deathmatch? Utter BS.

ChunkyCat

Assists get the same amount of points as Kills.

Looks like you were trying to go one on one and your team mates were using AoEs.

I wouldn’t want you on my team.

fred4

I don't know what kind of a response I was expecting. The feeling is mutual. I am an open-world player. I'm just baffled by the scoring system and flabbergasted that kill / death ratio doesn't factor into it. I think it should be scored more like a football match, e.g. by "goal" difference. All this time, in open world, you try to balance your build between doing damage and not dying. BGs don't make any sense to me.

Vapirko

There’s no denying that the AOE damage meta is as out of control as it is brainless, but that’s just what it is.

Edit: I think I misunderstood what you were saying. Though I stand by my original statement, some classes are simply not as capable of delivering lots of killing blows like stamblades or magsorcs can and those class still deserve reward for assists. But that’s not to be confused with OP skills like steel tornado, permafrost etc that let you brainlessly clean up kills especially in a premade vs pugs. Magicka DKs for example it’s much harder to close the KB. If assist points weren’t there such classes would have a hard time.

fred4

Vapirko wrote: »

There’s no denying that the AOE damage meta is as out of control as it is brainless, but that’s just what it is.

Edit: I think I misunderstood what you were saying. Though I stand by my original statement, some classes are simply not as capable of delivering lots of killing blows like stamblades or magsorcs can and those class still deserve reward for assists. But that’s not to be confused with OP skills like steel tornado, permafrost etc that let you brainlessly clean up kills especially in a premade vs pugs. Magicka DKs for example it’s much harder to close the KB. If assist points weren’t there such classes would have a hard time.

I don't mind people being rewarded for assists, though I have no idea how ZOS work that out. The killing blow could be the brainless sorc execute or a small DOT, when someone else did all the real work. Still, if assists count the same as kills, I guess it doesn't matter. Why list them separately, though?

What I have a problem with is a low number of deaths apparently not being rewarded. Going on defense consumes time. It seems it's better to get yourself killed, taking as many people with you as you can, then just respawn. This doesn't sit right with me. Neither do the superfluous medals that appear to grant you points.

Ironically BGs could facilitate more intelligent gameplay, whereas the lag in Cyrodiil forces you to brainlessly spam AOE. I have tried but, at prime time, combat in Cyrodiil literally does not function. It's not merely lag. It's abilities not firing / working at all, because the server drops events when it's overloaded. In a big keep battle, I am fortunate if a single jab of the 4 from Puncturing Sweeps hits the one and only target right in front of me, not a moving player, but a stationary NPC guard.

LordTareq

fred4 wrote: »

The scoring is utter BS. The score sheet of my team:

Player A: 3383 K13 D9 A10
Player B: 2472 K4 D13 A15
Player C: 2450 K4 D7 A17
Me: 1850 K6 D2 A6

This was a Deathmatch and it felt great. Our team was the middle-ranked team in a fairly even match. I played a tanky stamblade brawler (yes, such as thing exists). My teammates hung back a lot. I think two were bow players and a templar was spamming shards. One of the opposing teams ran a destro ult zerg train. Others were spamming Steel Tornado. I went into the middle of the fray with my single-target NB. It felt great. I didn't hang back at all, but I had to roll / block / LoS and cloak my way out of trouble, when focused. Or so I thought.

BGs appear to reward bad gameplay. Spamming Snipe, Steel Tornado, zerging, so you get credited an Assist, if not a kill. I am also mystified by Player Bs ranking over Player C. Obviously there are objectives to account for that, but why should those exist in a Deathmatch? Utter BS.

Like you I play a stamblade in heavy armour, and your score is typical for what I see as well. Thing is in deathmatch, getting kills should get you more points as that is what is actually winning the game. And dying should substract points.
Case in point, the effectiveness of all characters on your team was

Player A: 3383 K13 - D9 = 4
Player B: 2472 K4 D13 = -9
Player C: 2450 K4 D7 = -3
Me: 1850 K6 D2 = 4

A very different score!

However in ESO mindlessly spamming AOE like a muppet gets you points, tactically picking fights does not.

I also really miss a 'damage taken' tab, to see how effective the tank was at distracting the enemy teams.

Iskiab

Dying should absolutely not subtract points. There’s something to be said for survivability, but players who run away too quickly leaving the rest of their team in a lurch aren’t good PvPers.

Vapirko

Iskiab wrote: »

Dying should absolutely not subtract points. There’s something to be said for survivability, but players who run away too quickly leaving the rest of their team in a lurch aren’t good PvPers.

Yeah it’s fine as is, don’t fix something that ain’t really broke.

Bashev

For me what matter is: "Did my team win? If yes, then I am fine if not then something should be improved." Scoring is not important at all, even I think that DM scoring is the best if we exclude the healers (it sucks for them). There are some mods that you can just stay the whole game on the flag with a tinky character and earn the most points in the game.

Garack

Scoring means not much to me, the fun is all. And the Team Win.

vamp_emily

I don't really care about individual scoring. I know I did my job if we won the battle.

As far as assists/kills. If it wasn't for me some of my teammates would never get the kill. Example would be, as soon as the battle starts, I try to be the player in front. When I see the enemy I snare them or knock them off balance and when they focus on me my team mates kill them.

In vet my kills are pretty low unless I'm playing against bad groups; however, my assists are very high. I'm not a tank, or a very high damage dealer. If this was basketball I would be the person who throws the ball in the air to my team mate for a slam dunk.

jediodyn_ESO

Almost certain deaths actually do affect scoring (some) in deathmatch games. Ofc would be nice if ZoS created a webpage or post somewhere that explained exactly how points are scored in each mode.

That being said while I don’t agree with the initial rude response to the OP (why is it so hard to be polite and respectful to the people who share love of combat with you) I do agree that the reason the OP was at the bottom of the scoreboard rightfully was because it didn’t look like he/she was fighting together with the team. K/D isn’t everything. Heals, support, CC, pre-death damage, buffs, even taking hits to save others is all part of the game.

exeeter702

Well having zero deaths could mean a player simply avoided confrontation and did not get involved. While aoe soin to win and assist farming are issues, unfortunately simply getting in the thick of it with a tanky build and not really sealing the deal on any kills or pushing meaningful damage that has to be responded to, does not really mean much in TDM.

On the further extreme you have super tanky setups that are trying to disrupt, deny space or otherwise just become an obstacle and these builds get more mileage out of domination and chaosball for example. But if you are going to play a brawler setup, you still really need to make sure you have some form of lethal, or queue for game modes that reward tanky builds that buy time for capping or whatnot.

Or you can just slap caltrops and an execute on your bar and collect.

fred4

There is an undercurrent of people saying that I scored low, because I didn't contribute, or you say it outright.

Point 1: This was a random group. I tried to stay with them, but could not, because they were mostly spread out.

Point 2: People implying I didn't pull my weight, because I was merely tanky is utter BS. Did you note the class I was playing? I was still a nightblade, after all, and the kills were mosty outright solo kills.

Point 3: People who are saying deaths should not subtract 1 don't get the difference between a Kill / Death ratio and a goal difference. The former would severely disincentivise action, because after a single kill and zero deaths, you have the best possible score. A goal difference (borrowing this term from soccer) is fundamentally neutral. Yes, if you do nothing, you might end up in the middle of the pack, but you will never excel. It neither encourages action, nor inaction. You just have to trust that people want to play the game.

Point 4: You can equivocate all you want about scores not mattering, only the team win, but at the end of the day the individual scores do add up to produce the team score, do they not?

I know it's far too late to say any of this. Some of you have obviously gotten used to how the scoring works or were, perhaps, happy with it from the beginning. For me, however, it is completely at odds with my goal in open world. I've spent 3 years becoming good at balancing damage with survival. Procuring kills without dying has always been the goal. It seemed so obvious, I never even thought about it.

fred4

Iskiab wrote: »

Dying should absolutely not subtract points. There’s something to be said for survivability, but players who run away too quickly leaving the rest of their team in a lurch aren’t good PvPers.

Your response isn't particularly relevant. Perhaps you missed the fact that I was a melee (aka brawler) nightblade. I had to run into the fight and, yes, I had to drop in and out to survive, because I thought that should be part of my goal. Just to be clear, I didn't play a ganker. I had very little magicka sustain and used what little I had for Double Take as much as cloak. Shade not levelled yet. I stayed in the middle of the zerg ball as much as possible. I literally threw myself into the fight, while the others were mostly firing into it from range. You had to be there, I guess, but that's why the score felt so disappointing.

wheem_ESO

fred4 wrote: »

Point 4: You can equivocate all you want about scores not mattering, only the team win, but at the end of the day the individual scores do add up to produce the team score, do they not?

No, they don't. You could have a team where everyone had very high personal score due to assists and/or healing, but the team score could be 0 if all their kills got stolen.

Every killing blow in a death match will earn that team 15 points. Assists and heals only matter for personal score, which is only really relevant for the weekly leaderboards. There may also be some interaction between your personal score and MMR, but that's just speculation unless ZOS puts out more info on how it's calculated.

Building in survivability is good, and basically required for some classes to have any real chance of success, and I'd include Nightblades in that for Battlegrounds. Cloak simply won't be reliable enough for non-archers in most high MMR games, what with all the AOE that's out there right now. Just be sure that you're not lowering your damage/utility too much when building up your defenses.

The best way(s) for you to increase your personal score would be through some extra AOE damage and/or healing. Be sure to hit teammates with Vigor, and make use of some combination of Caltrops, Steel Tornado (will be enough to add some assists even if it doesn't land all the killing blows, especially since it can proc bleeds), Dawnbreaker, and tagging extra people with Rending Slashes.

ChunkyCat

I think you take this too personal and way too seriously.

If you have fun playing your brawler blade, hey man, have at it. But if your team mates are all ranged and you’re the only melee in the fight, then you’re just running away or feeding the other teams.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case.

Can’t win em all.

fred4

ChunkyCat wrote: »

I think you take this too personal and way too seriously.

Maybe. However:

ChunkyCat wrote: »

I wouldn’t want you on my team.

What is that comment about?

ChunkyCat

It means I wouldn’t want you on my team. >.>

fred4

ChunkyCat wrote: »

It means I wouldn’t want you on my team. >.>

Yep. There it is. Repeating the personal attack.

brandonv516

Two very different builds, both effective. Assists play a huge role in both.

One is a heavy armor Magplar with primarily AoE. The other is a light armor MagNB with single target skills only.

The NB has to play much harder than the Templar in my opinion.

Sometimes I feel so useless to my team on my NB though. My Templar supports the team so much better, can take so much pressure, and still puts out easy damage that shouldn't be possible in heavy armor.

JobooAGS

brandonv516 wrote: »

Two very different builds, both effective. Assists play a huge role in both.

One is a heavy armor Magplar with primarily AoE. The other is a light armor MagNB with single target skills only.

The NB has to play much harder than the Templar in my opinion.

Sometimes I feel so useless to my team on my NB though. My Templar supports the team so much better, can take so much pressure, and still puts out easy damage that shouldn't be possible in heavy armor.

Damn, highest dmg I got in a bg was 1.2M on my bowblade with 150k healing

fred4

I made a thread to rail against ZOS, but that can only offend those of the forum community who enjoy BGs for what they are. For that, I apologize. If you like BG gameplay, fair enough.

Stupid though this may sound from a fairly hardcore PvPer, I do have a role-playing streak and prefer my characters to survive, rather than racking up kills and dying equally. It also seems to me that playing the odds with AOE is rewarded by the scoring system and I disagree with that. We have enough of that already with the lag in Cyrodiil.

I would prefer a scoring system that has one single objective, with everything else being ancillary. Examples of this are scoring a goal in soccer or being the last person standing in a Battle Royale mode. That there is apparently no ZOS' published information on the exact system is strange.

@wheem_ESO, I appreciate your insight for being good at BGs. Should I go back, I will keep it in mind.

brandonv516

fred4 wrote: »

I made a thread to rail against ZOS, but that can only offend those of the forum community who enjoy BGs for what they are. For that, I apologize. If you like BG gameplay, fair enough.

Stupid though this may sound from a fairly hardcore PvPer, I do have a role-playing streak and prefer my characters to survive, rather than racking up kills and dying equally. It also seems to me that playing the odds with AOE is rewarded by the scoring system and I disagree with that. We have enough of that already with the lag in Cyrodiil.

I would prefer a scoring system that has one single objective, with everything else being ancillary. Examples of this are scoring a goal in soccer or being the last person standing in a Battle Royale mode. That there is apparently no ZOS' published information on the exact system is strange.

@wheem_ESO, I appreciate your insight for being good at BGs. Should I go back, I will keep it in mind.

Please see my post above. What I was trying to point out (poorly at that lol) is that a single target build is capable of the same output as an AoE build.

Now I don't know your build, playstyle, or level of experience but of course results vary based on these.

But I do agree that it is stupid easy for an AoE build to put up big scores in games (like the one above).

NightAngel690

Tbh, and this is coming from a fellow nb so don’t take this the wrong way, nbs don’t really belong in bgs anymore.
First off, although a stamblade hits really fn hard and a magblade has crazy burst and heals, all their abilities are single target skills.
Secondly Bgs is all about group synergy and who has the most cancer. By that I mean which team is running the most cancerous sets, spamming the most aoes and staying together the most. 9 times out of 10, these groups are going to win. This is why werewolves and pet sorcs are the new plague bgs is seeing. Even though they themselves are single target damage, they can run pets which turns your 4man pre-made group into a 12 man *** which makes it practically impossible to single a target out. It doesn’t help that these ww builds are all running 50k health....
Lastly, no cp makes it that much easier for people to cheese it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve died to proc sets. Even though they are openly shunned in duels and open world pvp, proc sets, cancer poisons, all of that good stuff is used by everyone and anyone. There is really no sense of honour in bgs and as a result, anything is free game to use. In fact, I myself refused to use procs or poisons for the longest time until I finally gave in and joined the rabble

In short, it’s no longer about personal skill and more about cheesing it together

brandonv516

NightAngel690 wrote: »

Tbh, and this is coming from a fellow nb so don’t take this the wrong way, nbs don’t really belong in bgs anymore.
First off, although a stamblade hits really fn hard and a magblade has crazy burst and heals, all their abilities are single target skills.
Secondly Bgs is all about group synergy and who has the most cancer. By that I mean which team is running the most cancerous sets, spamming the most aoes and staying together the most. 9 times out of 10, these groups are going to win. This is why werewolves and pet sorcs are the new plague bgs is seeing. Even though they themselves are single target damage, they can run pets which turns your 4man pre-made group into a 12 man *** which makes it practically impossible to single a target out. It doesn’t help that these ww builds are all running 50k health....
Lastly, no cp makes it that much easier for people to cheese it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve died to proc sets. Even though they are openly shunned in duels and open world pvp, proc sets, cancer poisons, all of that good stuff is used by everyone and anyone. There is really no sense of honour in bgs and as a result, anything is free game to use. In fact, I myself refused to use procs or poisons for the longest time until I finally gave in and joined the rabble

In short, it’s no longer about personal skill and more about cheesing it together

In a manner I can see what you are saying. NB excels outside of the group while a class like Warden excels inside the group (if that makes sense). This is why the Warden does much better in groups in BGs and the NB does better against potatoes.

A solo queue would go a long way to making NBs happier.

Bone_Demon

So out of AT LEAST 23 kills on your team, you were present only on 12 of those. Hmmmm... why is your score so low...hmmm i better ask the scientists at the lab.

kypranb14_ESO

fred4 wrote: »

The scoring is utter BS. The score sheet of my team:

Player A: 3383 K13 D9 A10
Player B: 2472 K4 D13 A15
Player C: 2450 K4 D7 A17
Me: 1850 K6 D2 A6

This was a Deathmatch and it felt great. Our team was the middle-ranked team in a fairly even match. I played a tanky stamblade brawler (yes, such as thing exists). My teammates hung back a lot. I think two were bow players and a templar was spamming shards. One of the opposing teams ran a destro ult zerg train. Others were spamming Steel Tornado. I went into the middle of the fray with my single-target NB. It felt great. I didn't hang back at all, but I had to roll / block / LoS and cloak my way out of trouble, when focused. Or so I thought.

BGs appear to reward bad gameplay. Spamming Snipe, Steel Tornado, zerging, so you get credited an Assist, if not a kill. I am also mystified by Player Bs ranking over Player C. Obviously there are objectives to account for that, but why should those exist in a Deathmatch? Utter BS.

Methods of earning score:
- Dealing damage even without getting kills/assists will earn you medals, which will give you score.
- Soaking lots of damage without dying will earn you medals, which will give you score.
- Healing your team will get you score, though this can be harder to do if they die too fast.
- Participating in the objectives will also earn you extra score, though in Deathmatch that is simply killing people.

What this means is:
- Spam AoE abilities and lay ground targeted DoTs in choke points and on objectives.
- Build tankier or have incredible healing to tank through permafrost/shalks and the Dawnbreaker/Spin2Win stack that follows.
- Slot and cast AoE heals not only when you need them, but to help your team.
- Move with your team and PTO.

Algorax

Ad if this was the problem in a BG.
Join a random BG and you may end up with a cp 30 player with no Gear, no experience, no awearness, no knowledge od what all classes may do.
I have 15 max lvl characters, and they are all pvp characters. I am the kind of player that plays a good game even with a score of 0/10 Just because i know what i am doing and i always proactively work towards the objective, even against my score. The kind of player that May most likely make the difference in a team where ppl are either inexperkenced or simply misplaced (meaning that they should never join a pvp activity).
Despite this valute, i still may join a group where i am the only player above cp 160 while the 2 enemy team have a full group of 810.
Not to mention matches that stats with my team with only 3 members and the 2 enemy teams with a full group of 4 and that continue without providing a single replacement (Yes, i managed to win that kind of match too).
I won't even talk about the bugged matches 'cos that's ridiculous.
THESE are the problems, not a petty score on a scoreboard so badly designed that it does not even show the damage you withstand.

NordSwordnBoard

Do they have K:D ratio medals? Start with a small one for 2:1, and increase with the ratio. Paragon is a title based on this principle, it must mean something.

kypranb14_ESO

NordSwordnBoard wrote: »

Do they have K:D ratio medals? Start with a small one for 2:1, and increase with the ratio. Paragon is a title based on this principle, it must mean something.

The closest thing you will get to this are multi-kill medals. They are worth 111 points per kill chained. So a quadruple kill will earn you 444 points, while a double kill will earn you 222 points.

There is also a title unlocked for achieving your first quadruple kill. "The Merciless"