Anything you can do, I can do better!

by: Kiara

Scoreboarding.

What is it? I had NO idea. I had to ask.

Evidently that's the name they've given to the practice of tracking accomplishments. Kill vs. death ratio, richest on the server, world wide and server firsts.

I don't think I'm even ranked on any of this. If I am, I'm so low I should be crushed under several tons of pressure cause I'm like at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

More importantly, I don't particularly care. My gameplay and enjoyment thereof has nothing to do with competing with other people for who has the most money or who has found the most brand spanking new items.

I play to have fun. To be the best healer I can be. (I'd say any class, but let's face it, I don't have the attention span to be anything but a healer.) When I was hardcore, it was always about having the best gear in the game for my class, beating everyone else to the contested mobs, and basically owning the server.

I'm obviously not much of a numbers person. When I'm not in hardcore raider mode, I don't pay a lot of attention to stats and the rest. I choose my gear by what looks good. Well, for the most part, that is. I look for the best stats AND what looks good. Two pieces with really good stats, I'll choose the prettier one. Every time. Sue me, I'm a girl.

On the other side of the spectrum you've got folks who live by their rankings. They freak out when they die because it affects their kills vs deaths ratio. People who go out of their way to accumulate as much wealth as they can, rush to the end of every new bit of content so they can get it FIRST.

To each their own, I say. I play the way I do and have fun, and they play the way they do and have fun.

That having been said...

Is it really responsible to contribute to that kind of freakish sickness? You see the poor min/maxers twitching over every little number that goes past their screen. Compulsively refreshing the stat page. Emailing the company because the site hasn't updated it's information in 3 minutes.

It's like setting a bottle of Jack in front of an alcoholic. The poor things don't stand a chance.

I am, of course, exaggerating here. It isn't really that bad. There's a lot to be said for incentive to compete. Competition is a great thing and it helps people to excel.

For people who care about being the first in everything, it's a good way for them to gauge themselves against the rest of the game. For those of us who don't care, well, we just pretty much ignore it.

Competition can be taken to the extreme though. So the question is... Is it a good thing to let everyone know exactly where they rank? I guess it all depends on how you feel about competition. I personally could care less. It doesn't affect my gameplay.

It makes no difference to me one way or the other if I'm the first or the five thousandth in something. I'm sure there is a sense of accomplishment to being number one. And if that is what makes the game worth playing, then more power to you. It doesn't appear to take a whole lot for games to provide this information. So why not? It hurts no one, and it makes a lot of people happy. After all, that's what games are all about, isn't it?

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Jeff joined the Ten Ton Hammer team in 2004 covering EverQuest II, and he's had his hands on just about every PC online and multiplayer game he could since.

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