+1 (Destiny)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Thursday, April 14, 2016, 20:12 (3239 days ago) @ Korny
edited by Cody Miller, Thursday, April 14, 2016, 20:16

Why are points better? Because Cody's suggestions take teamwork out of the equation. Last night I told Funk and Stabbim that I was going to go for zero kills, and I worked to get nothing but assists and damage on the boss (the "no kill" thing didn't last too long once people started dying, but I was still contributing to the score with the assist points).

And why couldn't you do that without scoring? Your assists make it easier for your teammates to kill enemies. It's the same thing.

The boom line is that scoring is a considerable detraction to immersion, since you are focusing on some external number rather than the game world at hand. In every case, you can create something functionally equivalent without the need for score, that preserves immersion.

Want to encourage assists? Make enemies killed with assists drop more ammo, and decrease ammo drops from non assists. Any way of scoring can be encouraged with a cool, integrated game mechanic instead. Simply take an action that gives you extra points, and reward it through the game mechanics rather than score.