heroes The Case for Removing the Scoreboard in Heroes of the Storm

[Odinn 95]

 

Heroes of the Storm has - like many of its MOBA counterparts - an in-game stat screen that you can bring up to see things like your damage dealt or experience contributions. This information is extraordinarily useful to players in learning to understand how to play Heroes - but not during the game.

 

Before diving in to the argument, here is a quick example of the current scoreboard (screenshot taken August 27, 2015):

 

Things are going... poorly... for my team.

 

You can break down a lot of information about the state of the game from this screenshot - our Illidan has gone too deep and died several times, I've been focused on wave clearing and pressuring the enemy team's Immortal on Jaina, and our Li Li has had sub-optimal use of her Jug of 1,000 Cups (she's been out-healed by Uther, who does not have a healing ult). The enemy team's Valla has done a lot of successful poking and chasing, taking down the targets that the Butcher has initiated on (and died trying to start engagements with).

 

So why would I want to take that information away from players? There are a few reasons:

 

1. Players already know the game state.

 

This is fairly obvious, when you think about it - looking at these numbers now, you as a third party can reconstruct the state of the game. In the game, none of us needed to look at this to know that our Illidan had died a lot, or that our Li Li was using her ult too late - playing the game told us those things. You don't figure out how your team is doing by looking at the scoreboard - you already know.

 

 

2. You can't get any new information from the scoreboard.

 

Up until the release of the Eternal Conflict patch, players could see increases in siege damage when their opponents were missing in action on the map, allowing them to determine if an opposing team was capturing a mercenary camp. When the Butcher patch landed in June, this functionality was disabled - meaning players needed to be aware of the game state and the map, rather than using the scoreboard, to catch their opponents capturing mercenaries. This was hailed as a broad improvement to the game, because it asked players to focus on the game itself and understand those timings and nuances.

 

Finally, one major quality of life improvement...

 

3. Players justify toxic behavior and poor play using the scoreboard.

 

Be really, really honest with yourself here - you don't open the scoreboard to see "how you're doing". Without sitting and doing meaningful replay analysis or comparisons across multiple games, you can't evaluate performance in a vacuum like that - it's impossible.

 

Players open the scoreboard to get mad at people for things they're doing wrong.

 

Now, removing the scoreboard isn't going to prevent that behavior - people who are insistent on behaving that way are going to do so regardless - but it relieves them of the option. It also leads to a general game improvement, in that it forces players to spend the time they would have spent looking at the scoreboard observing the ongoing game and staying aware of what's happening.

 

 

 

Getting players to stay engaged with the game would help people to learn the game and see what impact their absence while dead has, and also to get a sense of the flow of games - both in terms of how they play when you're ahead, but also how quickly a comeback can be mounted (which the players whining about the scoreboard never seem to remember!).

 

Now, in this theoretical, players would still be able to open up the board to see their teammates'/opponents' talent choices, because that's relevant game play information. The only identifiable drawback I've arrived at is that you would need some way on the main game HUD to see each team's total kills, since those affect experience gain (and, therefore, something you want to have visible information access to). Players would still be able to see the complete scoreboard at the end of the game to evaluate, as well as during spectating or replay review.

 

Thoughts? Would removing the scoreboard change your Heroes of the Storm experience?

[Nomsidious 1]

In my opinion, the scoreboard should be available after the match. I would like to view it alone or during a replay where I can see the affect of decisions or deaths on the overall outcome of the match. I feel this would be a good teaching tool for not only seeing which Hero you are playing, but looking at how other people are playing other Hero's as well. But I do at least agree, during the match, seeing the score board should not be a option.

[briala 6]

I remember playing WoW at launch, when damage meters didn't exist yet or at least were uncommon. The lack of hard information then was in no way an impediment to players sharing their "advice" as to who was doing what wrong. The only thing that changed when they became common was at least the "advice" was backed up by data.

 

I still remember how relieved I was the first time I finally had one installed and learned for the first time that my dps class was far from "useless" as one particular blowhard in my guild had enjoyed claiming up until that day.

[mnime 17]

This score screen tool is really helpful for teams looking for new members.

For example you want to test your new team member, you constantly look at his/her xp contribution during the game, you check his/her damage before and after a team fight to see how he/she did. So removing the score screen might harm teams. Specially pro teams gather a lot of useful information from the score screen to see where the problem is, some of this information is impossible to figure out at the end of the game, like how much xp contribution we had before lvl 10, can we actually outheal the enemy team in the next objective or should we use another approach. Or even more important things, the guides you write here, how can you figure out what talents should be used if you don't have the numbers available to you?

The toxic behavior as you've mentioned is there and it won't go! I once asked my team kindly not to engage team fights 4v5 without me and they started flaming me. So behavior couldn't be the reason to remove score screen either. 

Edited August 29, 2015 by mnime

[Archimage 98]

IMO they can remove the scoreboard INGAME, and just show what YOUR current percentage is compared to the highest.

 

For example it will show:

Siege Damage: 30%, Hero Damage: 100%, Role: 0%, XP: 70%

 

Looking at this you will see that you are roaming the field alot and killing heroes and maybe hitting a building before rotating lanes. You are also the person with the highest hero damage.

 

When the game is done, you can display the entire scoreboard with some timeline graphs. On these graphs you can clearly see when group battles have taken place and how much everyone's damage/healing/tanking output was.

Edited August 31, 2015 by Archimage