Poor Quality Scoreboard Information Is Misleading for New Players

CameraBeardThePirate

In the words of Nickelback: look at this photograph

Now imagine being a new player - your team is getting beat pretty badly, so you look to the scoreboard damage numbers to see which player is causing the most touble for your team.

Surely it's not the 250k damage Necro, right? They might have a lot of kills but with such little damage, they must just be getting a lot of lucky last hits. They don't have much healing either, so they probably aren't an important target.

False. The game is lying to the new player. The necro with only 250k damage and 60k healing on the scoreboard had the most damage and healing on their team. In fact, they had 1.1 million damage and about 400k healing. The game simply lies about builds that have a lot of pet damage and pet healing (as well as shielding).

This build is a bit of an extreme example, as I'm using Ritualist to buff my Blastbones damage to absurd numbers, a goofy meme ult that only works half the time but summons 3 Blastbones, and Order's Wrath to boost the solid healing of Intensive Mender. CMX showed that Blastbones alone accounted for over 850k damage this match, and Intensive Mender healed my teammates for over 400k healing.

None of this valuable information was shown on the scoreboard, misleading players about how active the necro (me) was in the match.

The same goes for shielding - on a full shielding build I've received hate tells from my own teammates because they see 0 damage and 50k healing and think "wow that guy isn't doing anything", not realizing I kept them alive the whole game with over a million shielding done.

ZOS, you need to fix the scoreboards to account for Pets and Shields. The already steep learning curve of PvP is further complicated by things like this. How is a new player ever supposed to understand how their team is winning or losing if nearly everything certain builds do is completely invisible on the metrics shown? I know for a fact that people are getting confused because I have received whispers claiming I am cheating by having this many kills with such little damage.

@ZOS_Kevin It's been brought up before, but the problem has only gotten worse with 8v8s and shielding becoming so prevalent.

CameraBeardThePirate

On the flip side of the coin, imagine how frustrating it would be, as a new player that doesn't understand these metrics are invisible, to play a Necromancer or a Shielder. You might look to the scoreboard metrics and think "Man, this build must not be very effective because I just can't keep up with the numbers of the other players!"

Joy_Division

What's frustrating is that I believe ZOS's own logs correctly take into account shielding, separating "over shielding" (i.e., shields that fall off without mitigating damage, from shielding which does absorb damage. It is even listed under healing IIRC.

CameraBeardThePirate

Joy_Division wrote: »

What's frustrating is that I believe ZOS's own logs correctly take into account shielding, separating "over shielding" (i.e., shields that fall off without mitigating damage, from shielding which does absorb damage. It is even listed under healing IIRC.

Yep, their own systems are capable of tracking this stuff correctly elsewhere, but they don't work on the scoreboard

Deimus

ZOS must be in league with Galerion and his Mages Guild's proliferation of anti-Necromancy rhetoric and necromancer erasure! It's a valid area of study and the data must be reported accurately if we hope to make advancements.

If they can't handle our Blastbones they don't deserve our Soul Trap!

Seriously this another longstanding issue that would be a wonderful QoL change. If addons can accurately recount our damage then there must be a way for them to display it on battleground scoreboards.

sans-culottes

Deimus wrote: »

ZOS must be in league with Galerion and his Mages Guild's proliferation of anti-Necromancy rhetoric and necromancer erasure! It's a valid area of study and the data must be reported accurately if we hope to make advancements.

If they can't handle our Blastbones they don't deserve our Soul Trap!

Seriously this another longstanding issue that would be a wonderful QoL change. If addons can accurately recount our damage then there must be a way for them to display it on battleground scoreboards.

It’s too bad that this and other Necromancer-related issues have gone unaddressed for so long.