You will nearly always get a mixture of player types and standards in a battle, and that is something I happily accept but when the "kills" total at the end of a battle shows a wide gap between the top two or three players in a team, especially in the losing team, I find it much harder to accept and wonder why they have few or in some cases no points.
The image below was taken from a battle which gave me the idea for this article. The red team won the battle quite convincingly 10 - 3 and the scores reflect that difference and highlights (to the experienced player) those that were catching the most flags and those who were making more of an impact in the battle than others.
I was in the blue team and joined the battle with 11 minutes to play (in a 15 minute battle) with my Come_on_Then account, one of my lower accounts using my M1 Railgun. In those 11 minutes I destroyed 24 tanks - nearly twice as many as any of my team mates, whom were in battle for the full 15 minutes - Why?
- Players come and go during a battle, so a new player may join in the last minute and not get a chance to get involved so get no kills.
- Some players that join the battle late on may hit some tanks but no destroy them, but still get awarded some points for their contribution in the later destruction of a tank.
- Some players join battles in the hope that one of the Gold Boxes will be dropped and are not interested in taking part in the battle as such.
- Some players might be just very unlucky
- and the final category is many players that just do not put 100% effort in their game.
That last category might appear a bit harsh and unkind but I cannot find another explanation when I can play just 2/3 of a battle and destroy more than double the number of tanks of nearly everyone else in the team. I even out-scored all of the opposing team and they were the team doing most of the killing to take our flag. I would make an exception for the flag catchers, although I would still expect a fairly high "kill" count as they take out the opposition defences.
I had another, very similar experience later in the day in a Control Points battle on the Polygon map, this time using an M1 Firebird. When I joined the battle on 25 minutes (of a 30-minute battle), the red team were winning by 6 - 0. Quite a low score considering 5 minutes had already elapsed. One the blue team started to gain control of the game, the top scorer in the red team decided to leave with about 10 minutes to go, putting me to the top of the pile. Other than one player that joined late in the game, all the red team and most of the blue team were in the battle for at least 23 minutes, and once again look at the difference in "kills".