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Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/01/21 in all areas

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    For the purpose of this discussion, I shall define "teamwork" as situations where multiple players are required to perform some action in the game in order to complete objectives, and that said objectives will be failed or require more time to complete if the players fail to perform their actions. Note that the objectives do include tasks outside of matches, and might not be shared across different players. With that said, let's break down the illusion of teamwork being important in AW, and explore how the game mostly revolves around selfish play. Why Teamwork Doesn't Matter An example of the illusion held by average players. Imagine you receive a task to obtain 10 Blue Star medals, whereby you will be rewarded by completing the task. The requirement for Blue Star medals is to earn the most XP out of all players in a winning PvE match, so not only do you have to perform well enough to win the match, but you also have to perform better than other players in the match. At some point, your performance become heads and shoulders above all the other players to the point where you can secure victory and top XP by yourself very reliably, regardless of how the other players perform. Is there teamwork involved in this task, in that other players need to help you to get Blue Stars? Arguably not, if you can win matches by yourself and outperform other players. The only actions required from the other players is that they perform worse than you do, such as inflict less damage or gain less kills/assists. Would the task to obtain 10 Blue Star medals be easier if other players are not present to compete against you? Most definitely, assuming your performance alone is sufficient to win matches. If the performance of other players cease to become a determining factor in being victorious, then their presence becomes only an obstacle for you to overcome, to outperform them in order to secure top XP in matches. In other words, there is barely any teamwork involved in the task, the lack of teamwork in fact makes it easier for you to complete your objective. You'd actually need to obtain 30 Blue Star medals, 10 for each mission set in the Battle Path. There are many instances in the game where teamwork is not only unnecessary, but even actively discouraged if some objectives require you to perform better than other players. Take the Battle Path repeatable missions of racking up damage and kills/assists and XP for example, in order to complete them as quickly as possible you will want to perform very well in matches. At the same time, you would also want other players to perform as poorly as possible in order to leave more damage and kills/assists for you. Completing the objectives do not require teamwork or the presence of other players at all. Examples of possible repeatable missions in Battle Paths. Even officially promoted events and contests will often discourage teamwork, since the goals of such contests will usually be to outperform other players. It can be further argued that the game simply doesn't promote teamwork at all, and actively discourages teamwork at higher skill levels. The only "teamwork" involved here would be other players refusing to deal any damage in order to leave more for the competitor. Teamwork By Coercion For there to be instances of good teamwork, there must also be instances of poor teamwork. This not the same as unnecessary teamwork as described above nor about poor execution of teamwork, but rather about poor concepts and implementations of situations where teamwork is forced upon players. Specifically, situations where you are explicitly required to rely on the actions of other players in order to complete objectives. Assist damage has a notorious reputation for its criteria of relying on other players to damage your desired targets. The better your own performance in dealing damage by yourself, the less potential assist damage you can rack up due to you own performance depriving other players opportunities to deal assist damage for you. In order to accumulate assist damage effectively, you must intentionally limit your own performance in ways that force other players to deal damage. For a better explanation, please consult the assist damage guide located here: https://armoredlabs.net/index.php?/topic/78-how-assist-damage-works-or-doesnt-work/ Assist damage demonstrates poor teamwork in that aside from preparing specific targets for other players to shoot at (by spotting, detracking, designating), you are at the mercy of other players to deal assist damage for you. Even with careful positioning of the targets so that they present their vulnerable aspects to other players, the rate and quantities of assist damage you accumulate is limited by the performance of other players, therefore intentionally handicapping your own damage dealing becomes essential as you play a waiting game to see how long it takes for others to damage your targets. In this instance, teamwork is forced upon you and other players, and not necessarily in a good implementation. This mission is the nightmare of many players, especially good players. Assist crediting (as opposed to kills) also falls under this category due to the reliance on other players to secure kills for you, and thereby crediting you with assists instead of kills. This is commonly not too problematic as there is only one task in the game requiring assists only, the Support Fire medal. Other players will also likely be inclined to shoot at targets, therefore the limiting factor would rarely be on other players, as opposed to personal performance. The Teamwork medal has a simple requirement of no players are allowed to be destroyed even once in a PvE match. On paper that seems easy, but in practice it requires decent performance on your part as well as relying on other players to also be proficient. The game itself on the other hand do not properly emphasize the downsides of being destroyed and respawning, and sometimes even actively encourage the practice of intentionally respawning through ammo resupplying and advantageous respawn locations. This commonly lead to players simply not caring about being destroyed, thus the Teamwork medal can on occasions become frustratingly difficult to obtain if not all players in a match are proficient enough to not get destroyed, or if they don't care at all. It's not so much about actual teamwork in that players must perform some sort of action in support of each other, but rather a general issue with lack of skill and experience of players. Ironically there is another method to obtain Teamwork medals, but one that can be counterintuitive to the general notion of teamwork. Arguably the worst PvE medal to efficiently obtain. Teamwork and Personal Performance As was said at the beginning, the definition of teamwork here is that multiple players in a match must actively contribute to an objective. On the other hand, if one player performs overwhelmingly and carry the other players to a common objective (ie. victory), but at the expense of other players not being required to anything at all (thus getting low rewards), can this still be considered teamwork from the perspectives of the other players? Returning to the earlier example of Blue Star medals, it hardly qualifies as teamwork if the presence of other players become irrelevant to the desired objectives. This can either be due to other players not having the necessary skill and experience to compete, or certain vehicles in the game massively overperforming compared to others (ie. XM247 York, Terminator series). Therefore this lack of teamwork may not be due to a lack of effort on the other players' part, but rather one player or few players performing so well that others have no opportunities to contribute. In an ironic twist, players would have to perform worse in order for actual teamwork to be present. "Teamwork". The Teamwork medal fall under the same problem: players can either perform equally well and avoid being destroyed in the match, or the players who want the medal specifically can perform overwhelmingly well and prevent others from being destroyed by virtue of removing all threats fast enough. The latter method in essence disregards teamwork altogether in favor of personal performance, much to the irony of the Teamwork medal. Lastly... Actual Teamwork in AW There are few cases in AW where teamwork is actually required, either explicitly or implicitly. A lot of the PvP and Special Operations content will belong to these two categories owing to their general difficulty, making it improbable for single or few players to overwhelmingly carry others to the desired objectives, assuming said objectives do not have selfish requirements (ie. individual damage) that discourage teamwork. Examples of these include various Special Operations achievements, and Heroic Special Operations. Peacemaker is a test of how well players can survive under fire and stress, while defending multiple locations on the map, without destroying enemies. In short, the best way to promote teamwork is to have objectives that are sufficiently difficult and require all players involved to perform with some level of skillfulness. If you've made it this far, thank you for reading my overly long essay.
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