you gotta know, neither having the most kills nor the most points in a match depicts your level of skill!
I mean getting the most points is quite easy - grab a big tank and respawn kill at a (in the worst case locked) node over and over again, with a bit of luck you even get healed while doing those despicable shenanigans... or grab the ion on OSR-Tanks-A-Lot and spam the tunnel, getting wicked sick in just over a minute... is that skill? no. does it help your team? vice versa! all this low-skill tank camping for "defending nodes" and some might call it won't ever get you a win unless you have others in the team who actually take the risk and attack enemy nodes (being killed quite often in the process)
another example: bunny-hop and link a node that is being attacked by a vehicle (=unlimited ammo) will get you alot of points. but does it help you team? not at all!
or grab a wgs nuke and shoot it at a locked node... you might kill a dozen enemies, but.... you know what.
by the way actually you could get 20kills and another person just has 2 - but he might inflicted way more damage and you just got the fragpoint for finishing him off with the minigun... that's why the scoring system is far from perfect, but it shouldn't matter if people would recognize that it's not about having 200+ score, but being victorious and earning it...
clever isolations (maelstrom-nv) and strategically brilliant moves, all that is far more valuable.
real
SKILL in UT in my opinion can be devided into 3 parts
a) mastery of movement
this not only includes dodge-moves, shieldjumps and stuff, but also being elusive and also reading the map correctly and being at the right place at the right time (e.g. seconds before a nodes becomes vulnerable) - eluding enemy fire of any kind.
b) mastery of weapons
skilled players can kill with EVERY weapon in their arsenal, even the assault rifle. I've seen guys that have sprees with shield gun only. being a rocketeer is fine, it's your choice after all, but it's mostly just spray&pray and you can't deny that.
a big part of the weapons game is to anticipate where an enemy will be/move to! with triple rox at close distance you can cover such a big angle that it's very hard dodge that - and no skill whatsoever is needed to kill the poor guy. that is also the reason why so-called "noobs" choose flak and rockets - because they actually kill guys quite easily with it! by the way a very underrated weapon is the link gun... if only more people knew its power... *sigh*
hitscan weapons are - for a reason - THE high-skilled weapons in the game, because it takes a lot of practice to master them (try to do a dodging combo compensating your ping!) but they also deal the biggest amount of damage.
C) mastery of vehicles
certain guys have wicked skills with some vehicles...
ebola for example - as much as I hate his lame-ass playing style - he has wicked skills with the manta.
bitchx and e.smellofdeath (who some of you might still know) are masters of the badger and can drive that thing almost anywhere, just to name 2 they can get it to the LG spot on tyrant or onto the buildings on MINUS - it's crazy! I mean I have done this, too - but I only get it right 1 out of like 10 times...
all flying vehicles are a whole other area.. always admired pegasus for his raptor and cicada skills, while captain'04 is just a beast with a wasp or the falcon...
a true 1on1 duell in the same vehicles (with the same amount of health) will most likely end bad for you - unless you surprise them from behind or get help by your team.
a vehicle master can kill raptors with a cicada and so on... I could go on with this for days, you see where I'm going with this.
and actually there is another part of the game - the "secret" (yet most important) fourth part TEAMWORK which I already mentioned earlier.
there are a few noble players that help out their teammates whenever they see some fellow player is in need. that is: healing vehicles, saving a guy's ass that is horrassed by 2 or 3 enemies (with minigun in the worst case), cover the back or just link up with others linkers (which is far more effective than linking individually but - again - alotta peeps just don't know the abilities of the link gun).
teamwork also means sharing vehicles and - in extreme cases - giving them to teammates they know can make better use of the vehicle.
do they get a high score or many kills? often not - but they contribute so much for the team and are an important reason for victory after all, all while gaining respect (we all like people that heal our wounded vehicle!) and more or less while making friends.
now, borg, I hope you made some notes and ideally a checklist
