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Total War Arena Developers' Blog: ScoreboardWhat's new?New Scoreboard Design
The scoreboard has been refreshed with a new design and new functionality to show the statuses of friendly and (spotted) enemy squads.
All allied and enemy units and commanders are displayed on the scoreboard, even if they have been eliminated
If enemy units haven't been spotted yet, you won't see their information
Kills vs Deaths ratio is displayed for all players
Your personal Kills vs Deaths ratio is further broken down by unit
The scoreboard no longer re-sorts players based on performance, during the battle
All interactions that used to be in the chat interface (i.e. private message, mute etc.) are now accessible via the scoreboard
Why we changed
We noticed a trend where players would focus on grinding points instead of winning battles, even though winning is now the most significant factor in your post-battle rewards. This caused conflict in teams where some players would just grind certain actions to maximise their points, frustrating other players who were trying to achieve victory. Ideally, we want all players focused on working together.
We looked at a variety of similar games and how they give rewards at the end of a match, and noticed that they do not reveal which rewards you're earning during battle or how you're getting them. Players in those games usually focus on performing their best in the hopes of winning (with the exception of the usual griefers). Scoreboards in these games relate player status, kills and deaths, general performance, and other info to help you understand the state of the game and to plan team tactics. This is also our goal.
Our previous scoreboard was just relaying points. Showing how many points the enemy team has earned does not help you decide tactics; whether the best course of action is to hunt down remaining enemies, or capture the base. Whether it would be better to make a defensive stand near your own base, or attempt a series of hit and run attacks to whittle the enemy down. We hope that the new scoreboard will aid players in analysing the battle situation and formulate better strategies.
Rewarding Team Play
This update is a good time to re-examine how the Rewards System works in detail.
Total War: Arena is, at its heart, a team game. You control a squad of three units inside a larger allied army and battle it out in vicious 10vs10 combat. Team collaboration is one of our top developer goals. In battle, we want to encourage players to work together to win. We don't want to see players consistently behaving in ways that benefit themselves but hurt their team.
When it comes to scoring, we've made the single most important factor in post-battle rewards be the overall performance of your team. The better everyone does, the more points you get. This amounts to around half of where your rewards come from in a single battle. Additionally, we've put a strong emphasis on victory: if your team wins the battle, you receive 20% more rewards than if you had lost.
Finally, we still calculate each player's individual performance. This is broken down into the following general categories:
Damage: actions like damaging enemy units, preventing damage (through missile or armour block, for example), and total number of kills
Capture: capturing the enemy base or de-capping the enemy's capture on your own base
Morale: doing morale damage to enemies (flanking and routing them), and the effects of morale abilities, like buffing your allies and damaging the enemy's morale
Spotting: damage that allies do to units you are spotting. You receive a percentage of all damage done to enemies you've spotted.
This covers the majority of actions currently tracked, and we're always investigating more options to add. We of course know there are other behaviours that have an impact on battle. For example, you might put Pikemen in a narrow passage on the battlefield and prevent enemies from going that way without actually engaging anyone. Unfortunately, we can't reliably detect that you were defending and not just standing still (or were AFK). Fortunately, that defensive move could earn your team victory. We hope that by shifting big portions of a player's rewards to overall team performance, and to victory, we will sufficiently cover all types of individual player activities.
In summary: play together as a team, and play to win, that's how you'll get rewarded the most!
Thanks,
Arena Dev Team
The scoreboard has been refreshed with a new design and new functionality to show the statuses of friendly and (spotted) enemy squads.
All allied and enemy units and commanders are displayed on the scoreboard, even if they have been eliminated
If enemy units haven't been spotted yet, you won't see their information
Kills vs Deaths ratio is displayed for all players
Your personal Kills vs Deaths ratio is further broken down by unit
The scoreboard no longer re-sorts players based on performance, during the battle
All interactions that used to be in the chat interface (i.e. private message, mute etc.) are now accessible via the scoreboard
Why we changed
We noticed a trend where players would focus on grinding points instead of winning battles, even though winning is now the most significant factor in your post-battle rewards. This caused conflict in teams where some players would just grind certain actions to maximise their points, frustrating other players who were trying to achieve victory. Ideally, we want all players focused on working together.
We looked at a variety of similar games and how they give rewards at the end of a match, and noticed that they do not reveal which rewards you're earning during battle or how you're getting them. Players in those games usually focus on performing their best in the hopes of winning (with the exception of the usual griefers). Scoreboards in these games relate player status, kills and deaths, general performance, and other info to help you understand the state of the game and to plan team tactics. This is also our goal.
Our previous scoreboard was just relaying points. Showing how many points the enemy team has earned does not help you decide tactics; whether the best course of action is to hunt down remaining enemies, or capture the base. Whether it would be better to make a defensive stand near your own base, or attempt a series of hit and run attacks to whittle the enemy down. We hope that the new scoreboard will aid players in analysing the battle situation and formulate better strategies.
Rewarding Team Play
This update is a good time to re-examine how the Rewards System works in detail.
Total War: Arena is, at its heart, a team game. You control a squad of three units inside a larger allied army and battle it out in vicious 10vs10 combat. Team collaboration is one of our top developer goals. In battle, we want to encourage players to work together to win. We don't want to see players consistently behaving in ways that benefit themselves but hurt their team.
When it comes to scoring, we've made the single most important factor in post-battle rewards be the overall performance of your team. The better everyone does, the more points you get. This amounts to around half of where your rewards come from in a single battle. Additionally, we've put a strong emphasis on victory: if your team wins the battle, you receive 20% more rewards than if you had lost.
Finally, we still calculate each player's individual performance. This is broken down into the following general categories:
Damage: actions like damaging enemy units, preventing damage (through missile or armour block, for example), and total number of kills
Capture: capturing the enemy base or de-capping the enemy's capture on your own base
Morale: doing morale damage to enemies (flanking and routing them), and the effects of morale abilities, like buffing your allies and damaging the enemy's morale
Spotting: damage that allies do to units you are spotting. You receive a percentage of all damage done to enemies you've spotted.
This covers the majority of actions currently tracked, and we're always investigating more options to add. We of course know there are other behaviours that have an impact on battle. For example, you might put Pikemen in a narrow passage on the battlefield and prevent enemies from going that way without actually engaging anyone. Unfortunately, we can't reliably detect that you were defending and not just standing still (or were AFK). Fortunately, that defensive move could earn your team victory. We hope that by shifting big portions of a player's rewards to overall team performance, and to victory, we will sufficiently cover all types of individual player activities.
In summary: play together as a team, and play to win, that's how you'll get rewarded the most!
Thanks,
Arena Dev Team
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