The topic of teamwork in games is something that fascinates me. And the incentives for teamwork as well.
I wrote:
No amount of coercion will make people work in a team – look at L4D as a PvP team-based game which can either deliver an incredibly fulfilling experience as a team meshes together (on one or other sides; being ambushed well is just as good as winning sometimes) or an incredibly frustrating experience as the guy with 45% health heals himself really slowly while every other team member is being punded/pinned/constricted.
So, by all means reward team play but don’t think for a second that there won’t be bad players. And when all is said and done, maybe someone wants to play as the superhero lone killer? It’s not really BadWrongFun. Sometimes these loners save the day, sometimes they doom the team.
Now, TK trolls, that’s another matter entirely.
But the issue is that there remain too many rewards for solo play.
Someone else wrote:
CoD is the biggest culprit of this, the entire “Killstreak” chain kill system entices people to be individual, to try to rack up as many KILLS as possible even if those kills are not directly related to the goal. CoD, being a successful franchise from a monetary standpoint, has then been copied by other games to mimic that succes, and bring that “individual” mentality with it.
Left4Dead still represents the best team game I’ve seen so far.