Why K:D, Deaths, streaks and other stats are bad, and how PS2 can evolve the genre

[Malorn]

Its been discussed before, but it was the only thing that jumped out at me as concerning in PS2's recent footage.

Why It's Bad for the Game


What the developers elevate stat-wise is what players will strive to improve.

As it is, the game looks as though it was modernized successfully to a modern FPS. However it also inherited some facets that are counter-productive to a game like planetside. Emphasis on stats, kill-streaks, and dominations/revenges are one such mechanism. It is archaic and seemingly mindlessly moved forward without careful consideration of the value it provides the game.

The game that made stats and kill-streaks prominent in FPS games is Unreal Tournament. A deathmatch-focused game where the only real measure of how successful you are in the game is....kills and deaths, and how long you could go or how many headshots you could rack up. That's where it was born. Since then players liked those stats and they found their way into future evolutions of games, even Planetside. But does that mean every FPS game should have these things? Absolutely not.

Stats and score in a game is how players measure how successful they are at the game. If the game elevates a particular stat and features it and makes it prominent in the game, like Kill-streaks or K:D ratio, then that is what players will strive to improve. These are not good in a team-based game. They aren't good in Battlefield; they weren't good in Planetside. By elevating them and even showing them the makers of PS are saying to players "This is important, you should improve this".

The worst stat of all of the stats is the "Death" stat, which also derives K:D. Deaths as a stat do not send a good teamwork-oriented message. Anything that puts you at a risk of death without providing kills will harm your deaths, and thus your K:D. Flying a galaxy is a risk to K:D. Capturing an objective is a risk to K:D. Repairing someone or healing someone else is a risk to K:D. Reviving someone is a risk to K:D. This stat does not produce anything productive whatsoever. It is a carry-over from the days when deathmatch was the purpose and kills/deaths were the only measure of "skill" in the game. Planetside is different. Planetside has teamwork and objectives. It has many paths to success - one path should not be glorified over others.

Deaths should not even be tracked - at all, ever. Players should be encouraged to do whatever activities they are good at, and not be discouraged from taking risks by penalizing them with another tally in the "D" column. The stat serves no purpose other than to harm the game by negatively affecting player behavior.

To provide some more examples:
- Do you blow up that parked galaxy (respawn point) or do you farm it? K:D is improved by farming it, it is not improved by blowing it up.
- Do you drive a galaxy and park it for your team to help take the base? Or do you hop in a tank/reaver? Piloting the galaxy does not improve your K:D and only risks making it worse.
- Do you go revive that teammate out in the line of fire? K:D is put at risk, and you might give someone another kill on you contributing to your own domination.
- Are you the first to breach a door or do you sit back and snipe? K:D says not to risk the breach, sniping better improves the stat.
- Do you capture the tower or farm the spawn room? K:D says farm.
- Do you blow the base generator and cap it, or farm the kills? K:D says farm.

In all of the examples above, the best thing to do for the team and for the empire is not what K:D encourages. Quite simply it encourages the lamest and most counter-productive behavior. It takes the path of least-risk. It doesn't encoruage support roles. It doesn't encourage taking objectives. If the game elevates and promotes these stats then PS2 will not have a lot of team play or objective-taking. It'll just be deathmatch in an open world. That's epic fail to me.

What you promote matters - so don't promote things that are counter-productive.


So if not deaths and K:D, then what?

Fortunately Planetside has something much better than K:D - it has Score. Score is beautiful. Score is awesome. Because Score can be generated from just about anything. "Experience points" is effectively the same as score for all intents and purposes. Assists, captures, heals, spawns, defenses, kills, revives, etc.

Because score is awarded for any activity it becomes a universal stat capable of equalizing every type of play and encouraging team play. Someone spawns at your Galaxy spawn? More score for you! Get an assist-kill? More score for you! Capture an objective? Huge score bonus for you! Revive a teammate? More score! Repair a tank or max - yep, more score.

Score is purely results-based. That's why it must be the primary measurement in Planetside 2 for success. When I open up stats, that should be the stat bolded in large font that is shoved in my face. When I go to the leaderboard, the default and primary leader board should display score, score/min, score/day, score/session, etc. It's all about score.

Secondary leaderboards should exist for kills, revives, captures, repairs, assists, etc. People good at those things should be recognized too, but the one equalizing stat is score.

A player will ask the universal question "Am I doing well?" Score gives the best answer. Score is tweakable, giving the development team the ability to fine-tune and encourage specific behaviors over others. If some type of lame behavior awards a lot of score and you want to discourage it, it can be tweaked to award less score or have diminishing returns, etc. Score gives the developers power to incent players to do specific behaviors.

Instead of kill-streaks and dominations, award people for score milestones or support activities like having 50 people spawn out of your galaxy, or capturing 10 territories or other such things. Bounties for such activities are another great way to utilize score as the universal measurement of Planetside success. You could also use score to balance out things like teamkilling/wounding by providing a debuff of sorts that reduces your score generation. So many options here to utilize this universal stat to shape player behavior.


Evolve the Genre

Planetside is a game-changer, and one of the best ways it can change the game is to improve the genre - get rid of that archaic 1990's stats and move to something better. Make a better game. Encourage better behaviors.

Removing deaths as a stat and promoting Score will not cost you players. Nobody will stop playing Planetside 2 because they dont' get to see a stat with their deaths being tracked. What they will see will encourage success of their empire.

Move PS2 forward. Get rid of deaths as a stat. Get rid of kill streaks. Just take it out and see how it plays. Bury kill whore stats and put them at the same level of importance as any other activity, like heals, revives, captures, etc. You won't miss them and you'll see people doing new behaviors they might never have tried before. Evolve the Genre.

[BuzzCutPsycho]

KDR was one of the dumbest things they put into PS1. And they put a lot of dumb things in PS1.

[VioletZero]

Great googly moogly! I've never seen so much text I've agreed with :eek:

[Pozidriv]

S : D Ratio! (Score : Death). People would be comparing quite huge numbers :D.

[Raymac]

Malorn, I always love your posts, but this is just your opinion. There are a ton of modern gamers that love their stats. It's like trying to make the argument that stat tracking is ruining sports. Also, every press review I've read so far about the GDC demo has touted the stat tracking as being a great thing. It's what the people want.

The game itself will encourage cooporation over stat whoring. There will always be stat whores, but since we played PS1, we know you have much more success working as a team towards a goal, whether or not stats are tracked.

TL;DR Just deal with it. The people want their stats.

[Synapses]

Honestly it was TL;DR man. Try to put a summary at the bottom?

As for my thoughts on stats... I am not against it nor for it. I think it brings in that player base of "stat padders" that only care about there K/D and getting streaks.

However, if we as a gaming community can learn to just not bother with those people much like we have done in PS1, it shouldnt be too bad. If anything they will likely be solo or with a squad of scrubs that an organized squad will just steamroll. So I am not TERRIBLY worried about stats. I think its a great addition for PS1 players who wanted to just be able to look and see how they are doing and all the neat little things stats do bring.

Just a little worried about stat padders and it would probably only be a problem if they can look in real time in game. If they have to alt tab out to go check a website I dont think itll be as much of a big deal.

[EVILoHOMER]

It needs to go in because it's a feature that most of the potential new player base will want. Every new game is adding all these new features in as they're popular, even CS:GO has it.

I personally don't care, I just ignore them and get on with playing. I really don't think they're going to impact how Planetside 2 plays out because it isn't like BF3 where the battle is static in one small map. The battlefield is always moving in Planetside so you cannot camp back or you'll be left behind.

I think you'll find most people went solo in Planetside anyways like most online games. It has no impact on you as you can group and you'll wipe people going solo easily. I personally always solo'd because I hate someone telling me what to do or having to babysit people and just go do my own thing. The map tells me the objective and I go to help and I heal people along the way or give lifts to people.

[VanuMAXGuy]

I like K : D. It shows that I'm a better combatant and actually providing for my empire. You're not going to get anywhere without kills.

[EVILPIG]

You will find similar threads on the OF from me. I said no k/d, no leaderboards - pure play. It meets strong resistance.

[VioletZero]

S : D Ratio! (Score : Death). People would be comparing quite huge numbers :D.

Some professions involve dying more than others.

How about score per day?

[Bags]

It's a shooter. The vast majority of shooter fans love stats. I reaaaally don't think this is going to change.

[ArmedZealot]

To provide some more examples:
- Do you blow up that parked galaxy (respawn point) or do you farm it? K:D is improved by farming it, it is not improved by blowing it up.
- Do you drive a galaxy and park it for your team to help take the base? Or do you hop in a tank/reaver? Piloting the galaxy does not improve your K:D and only risks making it worse.
- Do you go revive that teammate out in the line of fire? K:D is put at risk, and you might give someone another kill on you contributing to your own domination.
- Are you the first to breach a door or do you sit back and snipe? K:D says not to risk the breach, sniping better improves the stat.
- Do you capture the tower or farm the spawn room? K:D says farm.
- Do you blow the base generator and cap it, or farm the kills? K:D says farm.


K/D doesn't say to farm or not. Tribes: Ascend uses "Score" as a metric and matches are often drawn out to farm more "Score". Just because your score is no longer tied to killers but to all roles just means medics/galaxy pilots/ support join in drawing out the combat for them to get more "Score" too.


Instead of kill-streaks and dominations, award people for score milestones or support activities like having 50 people spawn out of your galaxy, or capturing 10 territories or other such things. Bounties for such activities are another great way to utilize score as the universal measurement of Planetside success. You could also use score to balance out things like teamkilling/wounding by providing a debuff of sorts that reduces your score generation. So many options here to utilize this universal stat to shape player behavior.


This however is a good fucking idea. I would love for the developers to implement this in a new grief system. Or at least to elaborate on the current.

[Pozidriv]

Some professions involve dying more than others.

How about score per day?

Hmm, Score Per Minute?

[Eyeklops]

I disagree. Recording deaths makes people think about self preservation, like people do IRL.

[ThGlump]

The game itself will encourage cooporation over stat whoring.

How? All i saw was promoting statwhoring so far (stats, annoying streaks popups,...). Nothing that promote cooperation was shown.

[Raymac]

Plus K: D ratio is such a ubiquitous tracking stat that it is now as common as ammo. It's a standard feature at this point. I do like the idea of tracking other stats as well and letting the community give more weight to those other stats.

[VioletZero]

Just track a variety of stats. Kills and deaths is okay just as long as it isn't the main focus like in other shooters.

But no killstreaks pls.

[ArmedZealot]

How? All i saw was promoting statwhoring so far (stats, annoying streaks popups,...). Nothing that promote cooperation was shown.

How about having a persistent universe tied to group goals of taking over bases and objectives to make it easier for others to do so? Or you know.... what makes Planetside.

[Raymac]

How? All i saw was promoting statwhoring so far (stats, annoying streaks popups,...). Nothing that promote cooperation was shown.

You played PS1 right? You know how good teamwork wins the day over a group of individuals just farming kills? That is the soul of Planetside and tracking K: D didn't kill it in PS1 and so it won't in PS2.

[Malorn]

I like K : D. It shows that I'm a better combatant and actually providing for my empire. You're not going to get anywhere without kills.

Score tells you you are providing for your empire. Kills generate score, so if that's what you're good at, great.

I never claimed kills were not necessary, nor did I say they were not important. Capturing objectives is rarely possible without killing the enemy more efficiently than they are killing you. Kills are inevitable. And they generate score. In order to take territory you will have to kill. Kills award score. Thus, by contributing your score goes up.

Score is beautiful like that.

Deaths are naturally counter productive to score. Respawning at a base or dying means you aren't generating more score. So by being efficient and not dying you are indirectly improving your score.

Score remains the most important stat.

[Bags]

Just use your superior teamwork to stomp statwhorers~

[Hamma]

+25 Ownage points for Malorn. Agreed with through and through.

[Malorn]

Plus K: D ratio is such a ubiquitous tracking stat that it is now as common as ammo. It's a standard feature at this point. I do like the idea of tracking other stats as well and letting the community give more weight to those other stats.

Just because its always been done does not mean its a good idea.

MMORPGs used to have long xp grinds and people expected this. They even had xp loss on death. Modern MMORPGs have evolved and moved away from these things. This is no different. Just because they've done it and it is expected does not mean it is a good feature.

[MrBloodworth]

Team work and Goals need to be king in this game. Its Planetside, a war game. Session based thinking and design is about soloists playing alone, with others. Every design point is to remove the reliance on another. This has creeped into the current design of PS2.


Emphasis needs to be placed on Team objectives, not the individual.


I am personally saddened by PS2's erosion of the team play design that made PS1 awesome.


.

[VioletZero]

Score tells you you are providing for your empire. Kills generate score, so if that's what you're good at, great.

I never claimed kills were not necessary, nor did I say they were not important. Capturing objectives is rarely possible without killing the enemy more efficiently than they are killing you. Kills are inevitable. And they generate score. In order to take territory you will have to kill. Kills award score. Thus, by contributing your score goes up.

Score is beautiful like that.

Deaths are naturally counter productive to score. Respawning at a base or dying means you aren't generating more score. So by being efficient and not dying you are indirectly improving your score.

Score remains the most important stat.

That in itself will be unbalanced. There are some methods that will get more score than others despite not being as important.

While stats should definitely be available as a tool, it shouldn't be a focus. And at the end of the day, it really should come down to whether or not you own the territory you're standing on.

[Malorn]

Honestly it was TL;DR man. Try to put a summary at the bottom?


The TL;DR was the title. If you want to know "why" you'll just have to work through my wall of text. Sorry. It's a complex issue, and it is not within my power to make a compelling argument within the confines of a tweet.

Well I could summarize it to "Just because other games have it doesn't mean it's a good idea." But that in itself is a bit too vague.

[SUBARU]

+25 Ownage points for Malorn. Agreed with through and through.

Agreed

[Malorn]

That in itself will be unbalanced. There are some methods that will get more score than others despite not being as important.


The awesome thing about score is that it can be tweaked and is not a singular data point.

If something is important but not properly weighted by score then its a bug. And it can be fixed.

[ArmedZealot]

How do you prevent exploitation?

What keeps me from picking up and dropping of the same squad from a galaxy over and over again to farm to BR20 or whatever? What keeps some guy nading himself over and over again only to have a medic revive him over and over again?

[Malorn]

How do you prevent exploitation?

What keeps me from picking up and dropping of the same squad from a galaxy over and over again to farm to BR20 or whatever? What keeps some guy nading himself over and over again only to have a medic revive him over and over again?

Diminishing returns.

[Raymac]

Just because its always been done does not mean its a good idea.

MMORPGs used to have long xp grinds and people expected this. They even had xp loss on death. Modern MMORPGs have evolved and moved away from these things. This is no different. Just because they've done it and it is expected does not mean it is a good feature.

I agree with you that there are better stats to track for Planetside, however when people expect a standard feature, that feature better be included, whether or not the elite think it is good.

Using XP loss on death as an example is not a fair comparison because people hated that stuff except for the most hardcore of players. The reason K: D is so common is because soooo many people actually do like it.

[ArmedZealot]

Diminishing returns.


So you are going to punish someone for playing more?

[ThGlump]

You played PS1 right? You know how good teamwork wins the day over a group of individuals just farming kills? That is the soul of Planetside and tracking K: D didn't kill it in PS1 and so it won't in PS2.

Yea. Teams get things done, deciding battles, and moving them forward. But they get less kills and worse k/d over someone who ignore goal of battle and just killwhoring.
Core gameplay supports teamwork, but for new players is shrouded under shiny killstreak popups, and k/d stat tracking, that they will focus on that instead trying to discover and understand core gameplay.
Thats what i mean when i say that killwhoring is more promoted, and cooperation is hidden somewhere under not seen and not promoted (unless someone who know about it show it to you)

[Sifer2]

I totally agree with the OP here. As soon as Higby opened the stats in the GDC vid, and I saw Kill/Death ratio I face palmed.

They really are lifting too much from Call of Duty/Battlefield just because those gamers are popular rather than thinking about what is best for Planetside. If they change nothing else it should be removing the "Deaths" stat. Since that one stat alone discourages way too many playstyles. And makes you not want to go anywhere your faction isn't already winning.

But yeah OP put forth a good argument here, and I hope the devs take it into consideration as they go forward with designing the stats tracking. The game isn't Battlefield at the end of the day so you can't port everything over.

[MrBloodworth]

standard feature

Its a standard features. IN SESSION BASED SHOOTERS WHERE THE WIN CONDITION DOES NOT MATTER.

Ahem.

Planetside is a war game. Empire/squad goals need to take precedence over all.

[ArmedZealot]

Yea. Teams get things done, deciding battles, and moving them forward. But they get less kills and worse k/d over someone who ignore goal of battle and just killwhoring.
Core gameplay supports teamwork, but for new players is shrouded under shiny killstreak popups, and k/d stat tracking, that they will focus on that instead trying to discover and understand core gameplay.
Thats what i mean when i say that killwhoring is more promoted, and cooperation is hidden somewhere under not seen and not promoted (unless someone who know about it show it to you)

If you are so focused on playing as a team then why do you care about your K/D ratio?

If a newbie wants to join your team then you are going to have to train them to play as one. If you want your hardcore war realism then there you go.

Promoting shiny things is needed for Planetside to survive launch and to maintain through it's lifetime. The zerg will always exist and is a healthy component to Planetside. Removing features to keep people from zerging hurts the game as a whole to benefit the few.

[Malorn]

I agree with you that there are better stats to track for Planetside, however when people expect a standard feature, that feature better be included, whether or not the elite think it is good.

So what? What happens if they don't include deaths as a tracked stat? You think any significant amount of players will stop playing?

What about all the added enjoyment of everyone else in the game becuase it doesn't degenerate into deathmatch?

Using XP loss on death as an example is not a fair comparison because people hated that stuff except for the most hardcore of players. The reason K: D is so common is because soooo many people actually do like it. They like it because its always been there and they like to measure their importance.

I'm not saying provide no measurement - I'm saying change it. Change it to something universal that takes many different factors into consideration, not just who can minimize deaths and maximize kills.

PS2 is free to play. I could make a VS character and go off into some remote part of a continent spawn him over and over again, and kill him with my NC character. I could pad the hell out of my K:D stat and appear all over a leaderboard. With dominations, kill streaks, etc. If I'm smart about and don't over-do it, nobody would be the wiser. Can't do that with score because diminishing returns is an obvious solution.

[Raymac]

Yea. Teams get things done, deciding battles, and moving them forward. But they get less kills and worse k/d over someone who ignore goal of battle and just killwhoring.
Core gameplay supports teamwork, but for new players is shrouded under shiny killstreak popups, and k/d stat tracking, that they will focus on that instead trying to discover and understand core gameplay.
Thats what i mean when i say that killwhoring is more promoted, and cooperation is hidden somewhere under not seen and not promoted (unless someone who know about it show it to you)

It's an MMO and therefore a social game. People will want to play with the "cool kids" in the good outfits just like every other MMO. Cooporation is promoted by every fiber of the game. It IS the game. K/D tracking won't kill that.

Its a standard features. IN SESSION BASED SHOOTERS WHERE THE WIN CONDITION DOES NOT MATTER.

Ahem.

Planetside is a war game. Empire/squad goals need to take precedence over all.

99% of shooters are arena "session based". So in turn, it's a common feature in shooters. It's a reality, for better or worse. That's why I said I like Malorn's idea of tracking other stats as well and let the players give more weight to the ones we want.

[duck]

I agree with OP. KDR is for games like BF3 and CoD, where the #1 goal is to kill enemies. PS2 should be more dynamic than that. It's about teamwork and variation in roles. Naturally, a heavy or MAX will have a higher KDR than say a support role like engineer. However, people will be biased and judge people based off their KDR rather than how much they contribute to the empire. This is something very crucial to the success and formation of the community in PS2.

Please PS2 developers, get rid of the DEATHS record feature. You can keep # of kills like in PS1 but do NOT record the # of deaths. It will only make things worse

[TESnake]

A system that came too late (and required a lot more tweaking) in PlanetSide 1, is the Support Experience system.

tl;dr - I agree with Malorn.

Kills can contribute to score, but are not the most effective way to raise score. Award more XP/Score for objectives, defense, and support-type roles. At the very least, rezzing someone with Advanced Medic should count as much as a standard kill. In an ideal setting, it should count way more.

If there has to be a FPS-type leaderboard system (there doesn't, but I doubt it will go away), go with something like this:

http://manual.americasarmy.com/index.php/Scoreboard

Kills aren't emphasized, and are only around 20% of the overall contributor to a person's Score.

[Furber]

/agree

[Malorn]

Yea. Teams get things done, deciding battles, and moving them forward. But they get less kills and worse k/d over someone who ignore goal of battle and just killwhoring.

That is untrue. Team play can be both efficient and get things done. My outfit in PS1 had some of the biggest killwhores in it who ever played the game, but they also accomplished objectives and got things done. If "Score" were the universal stat, they would have been kings. As it turned out they were kings due to their killwhoring, but their objective-based play went largely un-rewarded.

If people think moving to Score as the universal measurement of success would discourage killing they are just plain wrong.

If it did, there is a simple solution -give kills more score weight.

Score does not mean kills become useless. Kills are important. Kills matter. Kills generate score.

Deaths are what is useless - not kills. Deaths provide nothing in terms of skill value. As someone said earlier in the thread - some professions are more prone to death than others. It doesn't mean they are less important, it just means they're riskier. Promoting someone taking less risk is just bad game design.

[Raymac]

So what? What happens if they don't include deaths as a tracked stat? You think any significant amount of players will stop playing?

What about all the added enjoyment of everyone else in the game becuase it doesn't degenerate into deathmatch?


No. Obviously I don't think people will say "It doesn't track K/D? Forget it then." Just like people don't say, "That car doesn't have leather seats? Forget it." However, it is a feature that people expect, and it does get factored into their assessment of the game. Just look at how the press from GDC have praised it.

Also, I think it is pretty ridiculous to infer that Planetside will degenerate into a deathmatch just because k/d is tracked. You know better than that, Malorn.

[ThGlump]

If you are so focused on playing as a team then why do you care about your K/D ratio?

I dont care about my k/d and never will. I just feel it promote wrong aspect of planetside. And its sad to play with ppl that are randomly around, but are afraid doing something risky (like going through door into base). Thats even worse than mindless zerg, that dont mind being killed)

[ArmedZealot]

I dont care about my k/d and never will. I just feel it promote wrong aspect of planetside. And its sad to play with ppl that are randomly around, but are afraid doing something risky (like going through door into base). Thats even worse than mindless zerg, that dont mind being killed)

You mean like real life where people feel the fear of death?

[Gandhi]

I think it's pretty obvious at this point that the design goal for PS2 is much closer to BF3 than to the original. The empires and the scale are the same, everything else comes straight from BF3 and CoD. It'll be successful and it'll probably be fun, but it's definitely not the game I imagined when I heard "Planetside 2". Not at all.

Too bad. I think that could have been a really good game too.

You mean like real life where people feel the fear of death?
If I could respawn in real life I wouldn't fear death nearly as much as I do now, would you? Please stop comparing video games to real life, it never works.

[VioletZero]

I think it's pretty obvious at this point that the design goal for PS2 is much closer to BF3 than to the original. The empires and the scale are the same, everything else comes straight from BF3 and CoD. It'll be successful and it'll probably be fun, but it's definitely not the game I imagined when I heard "Planetside 2". Not at all.

Too bad. I think that could have been a really good game too.

Dramatic much?

Remember, still in alpha so it is subject to change.

[ArmedZealot]

I think it's pretty obvious at this point that the design goal for PS2 is much closer to BF3 than to the original. The empires and the scale are the same, everything else comes straight from BF3 and CoD. It'll be successful and it'll probably be fun, but it's definitely not the game I imagined when I heard "Planetside 2". Not at all.

Too bad. I think that could have been a really good game too.

You are going to pay SOE money for this game. Tell me you won't because kill streaks are included.

[ThGlump]

You mean like real life where people feel the fear of death?

If respawns was common IRL, there wouldnt be fear of death :)

But how many wars would have any progress if soldiers didnt do anything risky? And thats what we are in planetside.

[Malorn]

Also, I think it is pretty ridiculous to infer that Planetside will degenerate into a deathmatch just because k/d is tracked. You know better than that, Malorn.

I said its bad for the game and discourages team play. I didn't say the entire game degenerates to deathmatch, but if that's what the devs encourage, that's what people will tend to do.

I say again, just because games did it in the past does not mean it is right for THIS game to do it. This game is very different from other modern shooters. Its time to recognize that and challenge assumptions.

I claim that removal of death stat tracking and promoting score as a stat that can take almost anything into consideration will significantly improve the game by encouraging different and more team-oriented player behaviors and give the developers the power to encourage / discourage specific behaviors and shape the game. I believe this to be an incredibly good thing for the game both long term and short-term.

Do you disagree with that?

[EVILoHOMER]

I really hope SOE don't listen to any of us on these forums. You'll all ruin the game and turn it into some underground MMO no one plays if they do. SOE have been playing the game, they know better than any of us and until we're playing we shouldn't get much of a say.

I also think SOE needs to make the game for both old and new players, which means kill cams and stats, if you don't like them then ignore them or turn them off if there is an option to. This needs to be made into a modern shooter and not some call back to the past, tbh Planetside was never that great anyways. Most people I know quit in 2003 and 2004 because of all the issues and judging by how it has been doing ever since BFRs everyone else did but the die hard fans that are probably like 10,000 people.

So lets not turn Planetside 2 into some niche game because I'd like to actually be able to play with people 24/7 unlike Planetside where you got a short window at peak time and the game was dead the rest of the day.

[ArmedZealot]

If respawns was common IRL, there wouldnt be fear of death :)

But how many wars would have any progress if soldiers didnt do anything risky? And thats what we are in planetside.

Soldiers fear death, fear doing things risky and coordinate their operations around people not getting shot. How do you measure how successful your operation is done without having a death stat? Because it got done?

[Sifer2]

You mean like real life where people feel the fear of death?

In real life you wouldn't go through the door you would blow the building up. It's a Sci-Fi game world with its own rules. If pushing inside is what you need to do to take the base over, and win then that shouldn't be discouraged. If anything the guy brave enough to take the lead and finally start the charge that won the fight should be the one getting a medal not the Sniper that hid on a mountain top nearby farming safe kills that didn't really do anything.

[Gandhi]

Dramatic much?

Remember, still in alpha so it is subject to change.
They're not going to change the core design goals in beta. And no I don't find it dramatic at all, I find it a pretty obvious statement of fact.
You are going to pay SOE money for this game. Tell me you won't because kill streaks are included.
Probably will, and I even said as much when I said it would probably be fun. But that doesn't change how I feel about it.

[ArmedZealot]

They're not going to change the core design goals in beta. And no I don't find it dramatic at all, I find it a pretty obvious statement of fact.

Probably will, and I even said as much when I said it would probably be fun. But that doesn't change how I feel about it.

Why do you feel it is a bad thing for something to be fun?

[Effective]

Stats in general are absolutely fine, including K/D/A. I don't agree with killstreaks however.

[MrBloodworth]

The problem, EVILoHOMER. Is that they are asking the wrong questions.

They should not be asking how to remove dependance on others, or how to focus on the individual. But how to encourage the team based play that made Planetside one awesome.

They are removing everything team based to conform to a completely different kind of shooter. The kind that encourages soloists.

TL;DR They should be improving on the core design of Planetside one, not tossing the baby out with the bathwater.

[Gandhi]

Why do you feel it is a bad thing for something to be fun?
When did I say that?

[VioletZero]

They're not going to change the core design goals in beta. And no I don't find it dramatic at all, I find it a pretty obvious statement of fact.

That is assuming that this is their goal at all.

What they said is that they wanted a modernized Planetside. But they can always stop and realize "Wow, this isn't right for Planetside 2."

[Aurmanite]

The real solution here is not to remove K/D tracking, but rather adding stat tracking for other in game activities as well. Things such as revives, healing done, damage repaired, doors hacked, resupplies given, and so on.

There's a lot of theory in the OP that is purely conjecture. Even though we have two decades of shooter experience there is no proof that K/D's and tracking deaths changes the meta game... the way a game is played by the general player base. To claim that such proof exists in an argument to remove a feature many people enjoy is wrong.

Death is something players want to avoid as much as possible regardless of whether or not it is tracked. Players will go to extreme measures to avoid death and there is no way you can remove this behavior, or even significantly decrease it, because death will always be a negative consequence a player has to suffer. The negativity of death cannot be lessened by the removal of stat tracking because it is not the stat itself that a player wishes to avoid.

The fact is, playing strategically with like minded players is the best way someone can avoid death. Having balanced squad that will support itself increases the individual player's chance for success and greatly improve his or her survivability. This is something that the OP has not considered. Players will want to group up and support each other rather than getting killed over and over by players who do. This truth cannot be changed by the addition/removal of K/D tracking.

All of us are going to be playing with people we know and like. Outfits and squads will be filled with like minded players who understand that this game is not about padding your K/D ratio. These players will be the ones that make a difference in the game and they will be rewarded for doing so. They will crush individual K/D farmers, capture the base, and move on. If you find yourself in a group or outfit that does not understand that this is the right way to play, there will be plenty of others to join.

I like K/D tracking. I like domination and kill streaks. If I play a medic, I want to be rewarded for my ability to kill your ass dead in addition to keeping everyone alive, healed, and resurrected.

Planetside is a shooter, everything else you do within the game is your choice. When it comes down to it, being a soldier and murdering fools is what the game is about.

[ArmedZealot]

They are removing everything team based to conform to a completely different kind of shooter. The kind that encourages soloists.

What are they removing? 2 Man tanks? BFD. Thats about the only removal that has caused PS2 to encourage soloing.

[MrBloodworth]

I would rather see empire, outfit, or squad based tracking. The individual should be left to session based games.

[MrBloodworth]

What are they removing? 2 Man tanks? BFD. Thats about the only removal that has caused PS2 to encourage soloing.

You are joking?

[VioletZero]

I think what this comes down to is that there's no all important stat for PS2.

The stat tracking should be incredibly detailed and the kills should be an afterthought compared to everything else.

[Raymac]

I didn't say the entire game degenerates to deathmatch, but if that's what the devs encourage, that's what people will tend to do.

Yes you did say that, or rather, as I said, you inferred it.

What about all the added enjoyment of everyone else in the game becuase it doesn't degenerate into deathmatch?

But that is really just a side point and we can move past it.

As to your main point, I do totally 100% agree with you that other stats are much more important to Planetside and should be promoted, and the ideas you have put forward are great ones. However, we can do that without throwing out the K/D stat that nearly every gamer out there comes to expect. Let's not get too elitist now and remember the desires of the proletariat. :)

[Figment]

"K/D is everywhere so it should be in"

Argument ad numerum.

"Summer blockbusters should not have good plots, because all other summer blockbusters don't have good plots, even if it would make it a much better movie and a much better blockbuster, we should use the same formula as everyone else or risk failure."

Ballsy, isn't it.

Malorn is 100% correct. I've always been an opponent of the K/D stat. K I don't mind. When K/D was introduced, it literally changed PS1 combat for the worse, because suddenly people wern't prepared to risk getting shot. They stopped pushing together and started waiting for someone else to draw fire first.

I'm not saying that behaviour was never there in the first place, but it tripled if not quadrupled within a week of the K/D introduction in my experience.

Something similar happened when Merit Kill Streaks were introduced.

[ArmedZealot]

When did I say that?


Too bad. I think that could have been a really good game too.


You are implying that Planetside 2 is a game that you wont have fun. Because that is what a really good game is. Why would you play a game, and pay for one, that didn't make you have fun?

[Zhane]

I agree with everything Malorn said, but it's far from game-breaking and won't hurt a thing if it doesn't change.

[EVILoHOMER]

I think what this comes down to is that there's no all important stat for PS2.

The stat tracking should be incredibly detailed and the kills should be an afterthought compared to everything else.

Surely the kills are the main thing seeing as it is an FPS and if you kill no one you cannot win.

[VioletZero]

Surely the kills are the main thing seeing as it is an FPS and if you kill no one you cannot win.

But you can contribute a great deal to a win without killing.

And a lot of the time, the best way to win involves less kills.

[Figment]

Surely the kills are the main thing seeing as it is an FPS and if you kill no one you cannot win.

Base and facility capturing can be considered more important.

If you only think in terms of FPS, bases should not need to be captured at all. They should just spawn troops. Troops are in the way of your objective.

PlanetSide can therefore be considered to be more of a strategy game than a pure FPS. Obtaining strategic objectives can thus be considered more important than kills.


Obsessing over kills is something for simpleminded people anyway. I'll gladly get shot 10 times if it means I win in the long run and only need to kill them once before they realise they just lost.

[Gandhi]

You are implying that Planetside 2 is a game that you wont have fun. Because that is what a really good game is. Why would you play a game, and pay for one, that didn't make you have fun?
Then you misunderstood. I actually said it would probably be fun, but that the other game I was imagining would have been fun too. Even if it's not my dream game PS2 is still the closest to it.

[ArmedZealot]

You are joking?

No I really am not. The core of Planetside 1 remains in Planetside 2. This core play encourages team play regardless of stat tracking and K/D ratios. To remove "Everything that encourages teamplay" would be to remove all team objectives from Planetside 2.

You are getting your panties in a wad because you have rose tinted sunglasses when looking at Planetside 1. A game that wouldn't cut it in today's market and would leave us all with another dead husk in 4 years after people get bored and the only ones that remain are bittervets.

[Skitrel]

Deaths are not the problem, let's get this straight, it isn't the deaths part of the k:d ratio that causes stat whoring, it's the kills part.

Kills in arena based shooters like Call of Duty, Unreal, Halo, CS and so on, they are the measure of a battle, the goal is to kill the other side and therefore kills are the "goal".

In a game like Planetside, kills are not the goal. Objectives are the goal. That however does not mean that we should also remove the deaths portion of the equation. Not dying is something that we should definitely be promoting. I don't want people kamikaze running into impossible situations hoping to drop 1 enemy at a time with each attempt, it's just stupid and it's nowhere near as fun as the tactical, strategic combat you get from a group that is actively trying to preserve their lives as much as take the objective.

So, in regards to that there's an obvious solution to this problem. We replace the "goal" part of the equation to suit Planetside, an objective game.

Score : Deaths should be the new ratio. Make kills a very low importance metric, deep within stats pages where it's less in the player's face, place SCORE:DEATH larger, bolder and of the most eye catching prominence to the player.

You can positively reinforce this by showing the player their score:death in game when they take an objective as part of an assault, show their score:death increase with a pop up much like the xp pop ups. Provided this score is only considered over let's say a 50-100 hour history of the player's in game play time then it can be a strong metric for how well the player can earn score for their side while preserving their life.

All support and objective based points should earn SIGNIFICANTLY more score than kills. Not just a little bit more, a LOT more, to reinforce that kills aren't the important thing.

In battlefield kills had SOME importance and thus the score earned for kills in BF3 wasn't too much less than other things you do, because of tickets. Planetside does not have tickets, therefore kills are of significantly less importance and the score kills earn as a result should reflect this.

TL;DR: Score : Death - The new metric that should be psychologically reinforced into players in a number of ways, to promote the activity and type of play that would be best for the game. Players make a game, manipulate them into playing it how it should be played through as many methods as possible, make kills worth very little score as they're really not the objective whatsoever.

[Gelnika]

Stat whoring comes in all forms, not just doing lame things like spawn camping. BF2 was known for its infamous stat padding where you'd literally just throw grenades and get people to resupplyyou, while someone on the other team conspired to come and shoot them and the medic would revive them all. Rinse and repeat and mega-score is sure to be yours.

This is not to try and refute the OP's main point, just pointing out that farming is not as simple as just racking up kills.

While I would certainly like to know my KD ratio and various others, I agree that there would be equal if not greater importance (visually and tangibly) placed on direct teamwork related stats such as how many people have dropped or spawned from your Galaxy and time spent defending bases under attack.

[Raymac]

"K/D is everywhere so it should be in"

Argument ad numerum.

"Summer blockbusters should not have good plots, because all other summer blockbusters don't have good plots, even if it would make it a much better movie and a much better blockbuster, we should use the same formula as everyone else or risk failure."

Ballsy, isn't it.



Yet another strawman argument from you, Figment. And I had been agreeing with you so much lately. :(

A better comparison would be "Summer blockbusters should have explosions because all other summer blockbusters have explosions."

Yeah, explosions don't make the movie, but people come to expect them, but lets not get too far off on the metaphor.

[MrBloodworth]

No I really am not.

You do know that the design of BF and CoD is to remove any dependencies on others. Like not having to stop to be healed, or rearmed.

Planetside and other Team based games like ET:QW, Brink, Tribes, and WWIIO are completely opposite. I'm all for modernizing the game, from the shooting model, to physics. But not at the cost of co-dependency and focus on the larger meta game.

If i wanted to run around and get lots of kills while someone happens upon a Control flag, I would play one of the 10000's of shooters out there.

If you do not understand the difference, I can't help you.

[Aurmanite]

You do know that the design of BF and CoD is to remove any dependencies on others.

Planetside and other Team based games like ET:QW, and Brink are completely opposite. I'm all for modernizing the game, from the shooting model, to physics. But not at the cost of co-dependency and focus on the larger meta game.

If i wanted to run around and get lots of kills while someone happens upon a Control flag, I would play one of the 10000's of shooters out there.

If you do not understand the difference, I can't help you.

Did you play the original?

Because I could heal and repair myself, wielding a chaingun and a heavy rocket launcher.

There was no co-dependency in Planetside.
Looks like there will be way more in Planetside 2.

[ArmedZealot]

You do know that the design of BF and CoD is to remove any dependencies on others.

Planetside and other Team based games like ET:QW, Brink, Tribes, and WWIIO are completely opposite. I'm all for modernizing the game, from the shooting model, to physics. But not at the cost of co-dependency and focus on the larger meta game.

If i wanted to run around and get lots of kills while someone happens upon a Control flag, I would play one of the 10000's of shooters out there.

If you do not understand the difference, I can't help you.

All four of the games you listed are currently equivalent to gaming wastelands. Brink died a horrible death post launch. They are not examples you want to be using for this argument.

[Saintlycow]

Promote other scores over KD, such as captures.

Make sure that these TEAM objectives give far more exp and score than kills

[MrBloodworth]

Did you play the original?

Because I could heal and repair myself, wielding a chaingun and a heavy rocket launcher.

There was no co-dependency in Planetside.
Looks like there will be way more in Planetside 2.

Yes I did. In the case of healing, even self healing. Its not he case where you just walk over a bag. But rely on squad mates to watch your back, because healing made you unable to move.

Ammo refresh also was the same.

[Aurmanite]

Yes I did. In the case of healing, even self healing. Its not he case where you just walk over a bag. But rely on squad mates to watch your back, because healing made you unable to move.

Ammo refresh also was the same.

In Planetside
Everyone could heal
Everyone could repair
Everyone could HA/AV

But because there's K/D tracking in Planetside 2 there will be less co-dependence?

What the fuck are you saying man?

[MrBloodworth]

You did not read what was written.

Its OK if you want to go with "lolz every one had certs".

There is a stark difference in the act of healing in PS1, as opposed to BF series. It is intentional that they changed it, to support those that do not wish dependence on others.

This is one element that erodes the team play aspects. Its part of the over all design philosophy of "Playing alone, Together", that is most prevalent in the modern shooters, and MMORPG's of late.

K:D Promotes the individual, not the Team. Shifts the focus from team based objectives, to individual goals.

antithesis to Planetside and team based games.

[Aurmanite]

K:D Promotes the individual, not the Team. Shifts the focus from team based objectives, to individual goals.

I plan to play exclusively with people who are focused on whatever objectives we feel like achieving. We will farm all the solo K/D farmers into oblivion.

Sometimes our objectives will be to capture that base or reinforce those guys.

Other times our objective will be to kill every-fucking-thing that moves.

Both are valid gameplay styles. Both require team work and support to achieve.

Playing with good players is what separated the chumps from the champs in the original. You played it, you should know it.

[Figment]

Yet another strawman argument from you, Figment. And I had been agreeing with you so much lately. :(

A better comparison would be "Summer blockbusters should have explosions because all other summer blockbusters have explosions."

Yeah, explosions don't make the movie, but people come to expect them, but lets not get too far off on the metaphor.

...Actually that was a pet peeve argument I had with the Micheal Bay fans over the TransFormers movies (which I predicted and found to be horrible tripe). People actually argued that the movie does not require a good plot and that it would actually be counter-productive if it had for the type of movie.

Go figure. :/

Either way, the argument in favour of them due to being expected, does not outweigh the negatives of behavioural influence from my point of view.


As said before, the kill stats and stats tracking diversity of kills etc is fine and should be in, but things like deaths are negative trackers. They don't reinforce positive emotions and don't contribute anything at all.

They have no actual meaning in a game that never ends. In a free-for-all deathmatch, K/D is different, sacrifice is not an issue, players are expected to optimise their K/D because it determines who wins the match directly (you die, you contribute to the other winning directly).

Just because a deathmatch or most deathmatches have it, doesn't mean everything should. Deaths and kills make sense in a casualty report of Total War as your next move depends on the number of troops remaining, but deaths do not matter at all in PlanetSide. :)

[ArmedZealot]

As said before, the kill stats and stats tracking diversity of kills etc is fine and should be in, but things like deaths are negative trackers. They don't reinforce positive emotions and don't contribute anything at all.

Why do you believe negative emotions can't contribute?

deaths do not matter at all in PlanetSide. :)

Yes they do. Otherwise the point for a medic is moot.

[MrBloodworth]

You didn't read what you wrote.

Really you don't have a leg to stand on here...but some motherfuckers always try to ice skate up hill...

Its stated rather clear. You refuse to acknowledge that anything other than direct actions constitutes co-dependance. The Difference is a mechanical action.

That's your prerogative. But when discussing design, you cant ignore it.

[Gandhi]

Yes they do. Otherwise the point for a medic is moot.
I'm actually wondering what the point of the medic class is, considering how fast people were dying and respawning in the GDC footage. Hopefully that was just sped up for the presentation, otherwise I don't see the medic contributing much at all.

[Malorn]

This what-you-could-do in PS1 is off-topic, but you could not always do everything in PS1. In the first couple years of PS1 cert limitations required you to work with others to to cover all your bases. As the certs increased and the certs got cheaper/packaged people started being able to do a lot more as individuals and not require anyone else. Eventually all the core abilities everyone could do by themselves and you didn't need specialization. This just shows the PS1 cert system did not scale well, which is part of the reason they moved to a class-based system in PS2.

What's on-topic is this - ask someone in BF3 how they did after a match. The vast majority of the time they will read you their K:D. BF3 also has "score" which tracks support activities, objectives, etc. The scoreboard is typically ranked by score not Kills, but that doesn't matter. Kills and deaths is the first two listed, score is the third. The culture has come to see K:D as the measure of success. It's a pathological situation. Take the death-stat out of the picture and everything changes. They could say "I got 10 kills" or they could read their score. Put score first and hide kills as a mouse-over function and people will report their score as how well they did, not K/D.

Suppose for a second that K/D is the primary measure of success. What does one do to improve this value? Well it's simple - you get in the most efficient killing machines, take the fewest risks, and take advantage of any situation that might pad your kill count. Does this make you better as a player? Does it mean you are a better asset to your empire? Sure it might in some twisted sense, but generally no, it doesn't.

Now suppose score or experience points earned is my measure of success. What does one do to improve this value? Well there are many things I could do. I could do all the things that I could do to improve K/D, like getting better at killing people, or getting in more efficient killing machines, but padding my kill count won't help me. I also have new and other things that can help, like capturing or defending objectives, assisting my teammates, or healing/repairing them. I can gradually improve my overall performance and impact to my team by improving on a number of axes. I could learn to shoot better (more kills), learn to use cover better (avoiding score lost while dead), pay more attention to wounded teammates and heal them, destroy spawn points, focus more on capturing objectives, providing my squad a spawn point, etc.

Over time, one could see their score/min and/or score/day improve as they get better at not only killing but also achieving objectives and helping teammates.

That's all goodness. It's innovative. It's productive. It makes for richer gameplay. By comparison, K:D is archaic, short-sighted, counter-productive, and completely unnecessary.

[Aurmanite]

Its stated rather clear. You refuse to acknowledge that anything other than direct actions constitutes co-dependance. The Difference is a mechanical action.

That's your prerogative. But when discussing design, you cant ignore it.

You edited your post so I had to edit mine.

[Figment]

Why do you believe negative emotions can't contribute?

Negative emotions such as rage, frustration, envy, fear, stress, derogatory elitism (towards those with a lesser score), etc?

In a game?

Let me think.

Yes they do. Otherwise the point for a medic is moot.

Context Zealot. We're talking about "Deaths" as a statistic. They do not matter one bit.

[MrBloodworth]

I'm actually wondering what the point of the medic class is, considering how fast people were dying and respawning in the GDC footage. Hopefully that was just sped up for the presentation, otherwise I don't see the medic contributing much at all.

Combined with full equipped spawn on squad leader ( Another session based mechanic to remove war game logistics ).


I'm not sure. Other than dropping med packs, or tossing heal grenades.

[ArmedZealot]

I'm actually wondering what the point of the medic class is, considering how fast people were dying and respawning in the GDC footage. Hopefully that was just sped up for the presentation, otherwise I don't see the medic contributing much at all.

Revival and Healing. To prevent or reverse death. To be a lynchpin in any team. They are even more important when you spawn far away or there are limited points to spawn from.

Unless its a one shot kill this does not change.

[Aurmanite]

This what-you-could-do in PS1 is off-topic, but you could not always do everything in PS1. In the first couple years of PS1 cert limitations required you to work with others to to cover all your bases. As the certs increased and the certs got cheaper/packaged people started being able to do a lot more as individuals and not require anyone else. Eventually all the core abilities everyone could do by themselves and you didn't need specialization. This just shows the PS1 cert system did not scale well, which is part of the reason they moved to a class-based system in PS2.

What's on-topic is this - ask someone in BF3 how they did after a match. The vast majority of the time they will read you their K:D. BF3 also has "score" which tracks support activities, objectives, etc. The scoreboard is typically ranked by score not Kills, but that doesn't matter. Kills and deaths is the first two listed, score is the third. The culture has come to see K:D as the measure of success. It's a pathological situation. Take the death-stat out of the picture and everything changes. They could say "I got 10 kills" or they could read their score. Put score first and hide kills as a mouse-over function and people will report their score as how well they did, not K/D.

Suppose for a second that K/D is the primary measure of success. What does one do to improve this value? Well it's simple - you get in the most efficient killing machines, take the fewest risks, and take advantage of any situation that might pad your kill count. Does this make you better as a player? Does it mean you are a better asset to your empire? Sure it might in some twisted sense, but generally no, it doesn't.

Now suppose score or experience points earned is my measure of success. What does one do to improve this value? Well there are many things I could do. I could do all the things that I could do to improve K/D, like getting better at killing people, or getting in more efficient killing machines, but padding my kill count won't help me. I also have new and other things that can help, like capturing or defending objectives, assisting my teammates, or healing/repairing them. I can gradually improve my overall performance and impact to my team by improving on a number of axes. I could learn to shoot better (more kills), learn to use cover better (avoiding score lost while dead), pay more attention to wounded teammates and heal them, destroy spawn points, focus more on capturing objectives, providing my squad a spawn point, etc.

Over time, one could see their score/min and/or score/day improve as they get better at not only killing but also achieving objectives and helping teammates.

That's all goodness. It's innovative. It's productive. It makes for richer gameplay. By comparison, K:D is archaic, short-sighted, counter-productive, and completely unnecessary.

The first couple of years? You must have meant weeks. It didn't take me or anyone I played with a couple of years to get to BR 20.

Read my post on the bottom page 4.

[ArmedZealot]

Negative emotions such as rage, frustration, envy, fear, stress, etc?

In a game?

Conquering the reasons for causing rage, frustratin, envy, fear, and stress can be the most exhilirating task a person can accomplish. It's why competition exists and why games like Starcraft 2 have such a large following.


Context Zealot. We're talking about "Deaths" as a statistic. They do not matter one bit.

True. But why would my hardcore leet outfit recruit someone with a KDR of .0001?

[MrBloodworth]

I plan to play exclusively with people who are focused on whatever objectives we feel like achieving. We will farm all the solo K/D farmers into oblivion.

Sometimes our objectives will be to capture that base or reinforce those guys.

Other times our objective will be to kill every-fucking-thing that moves.

Both are valid gameplay styles. Both require team work and support to achieve.

Playing with good players is what separated the chumps from the champs in the original. You played it, you should know it.

I do know this, and tip my hat to that dedication.

Now what about the masses? They have learned that team work does not matter, only kills.

Point being, the design needs to be focused on team play, not the individual.

Or we will have 24/7 tower farms again.

I played Planetside from beta to 6 years out. I watched the degradation as more session based design goals were implemented. If you only played after they added more BR's and certs. Please do not respond anymore.

The first couple of years? You must have meant weeks. It didn't take me or anyone I played with a couple of years to get to BR 20.


Wow guy. You have an issue with comprehension.

See you on the field.

[Malorn]

Why do you believe negative emotions can't contribute?



Yes they do. Otherwise the point for a medic is moot.


Deaths matter, but not directly. When you are dead you aren't contributing to your team. Dead people can't capture objectives. Thus, reviving people and healing people is important. Avoiding death is a good thing, but not to the point where it becomes a measurement of success - it isn't. Avoiding death helps success indirectly but is itself not a success indicator.

Achieving the objective is the success indicator. Not dying a lot generally helps that happen. Another way of putting it is that success is the success indicator. Things which contribute to success should be rewarded. Death doesn't contribute, but things you do while you are alive does. Naturally you want to avoid dying, but some professions are more prone to death than others, and tha'ts fine because someone has to go through that door, and when you do your team makes progress and if it results in you getting a cap - your death has helped achieve success. Someone attempting to minimzie death would not likely take that risk and thus success is less likely to be achieved.

[Gandhi]

True. But why would my hardcore leet outfit recruit someone with a KDR of .0001?
Because he's the most badass Galaxy pilot out there :D

Revival and Healing. To prevent or reverse death. To be a lynchpin in any team. They are even more important when you spawn far away or there are limited points to spawn from.
That's his intended function yes, whether it's actually useful in the game remains to be seen. I can see it being useful behind the lines where respawn possibilities are limited, but I didn't see any real need for him in the GDC footage. But again, maybe that's just due to the nature of the presentation at GDC.

[Malorn]

The first couple of years? You must have meant weeks. It didn't take me or anyone I played with a couple of years to get to BR 20.

Read my post on the bottom page 4.

BR 20 was not sufficient to get everything. You had to pick and choose your specializations. Alas, off-topic and not relevant to the discussion.

[wasdie]

K/D ratio won't really matter that much in the long run. It's a nice stat to have but unlike other FPS, people won't be farming for high K/D ratios.

I understand your concern, but this not the type of game where we are going to see the K/D ratio have a huge impact.

[MrBloodworth]

Sorry about that Malorn. I was trying to illustrate something, but got sucked into what i thought was going to be a constructive discussion.

[Figment]

Conquering the reasons for causing rage, frustratin, envy, fear, and stress can be the most exhilirating task a person can accomplish. It's why competition exists and why games like Starcraft 2 have such a large following.

However, it should not stop you from doing things that need to be done, like sacrificing yourself for the good of the empire.

So it's leading to you becoming a liability or at least less productive by dieing less due to something like fear or hurt pride.

If it frustrates too much, it means you stop playing. Also not good.

True. But why would my hardcore leet outfit recruit someone with a KDR of .0001?

Depends on if he is good for morale. Wouldn't you figure out if someone's suited for your outfit by testing him rather than relying on an obsolete statistic the moment he joined your group and is taught things?

[Shogun]

i would agree on removing deaths from the character summary stats.
as a supporter my k/d ratio sucked all the time and i wouldn´t want to see on my leaderboards, that i was killed 200000 times but only killed 60000 enemys ;)
all other stats are nice to have. but a alltime deathcounter is counterproductive and might indeed discourage supportroles

[Top Sgt]

agreed the game would be so much better with Total score, Squad score, objective score (pts earned in surrounding immediate area of objective), how many objective caps, revives etc.

leave Kill death out because that just get's players to not want to rush objectives and just camp somewhere because they have been COD A'lized and think their K/D is important.

[SKYeXile]

Stats including are apart of all FPS games, without them PS2 wont be up with the times.

K/D or even score/death needs to be taken like a grain of salt though, they're meaningless on there own. So much determines K/D, ofcourse skill, but also play style, class, latency, if you run grouped or not, if you play like bitch or you're aggressive. with enough stats tracked though you can kinda determine how good a player is though. atleast in a game like WOT, in an MMO where battle sizes vary and you could be fighting against the odds all the time, its going to be alot harder.

I dont think it should be a stat thats focused on, it should certainly be there, but i think SPM/SPH(score per hour/Min) tracked by class is a better method.

or we could just go by K/D to determine whos better...so which player is better?

http://www.battlefieldheroes.com/en/heroes/193470196
http://www.battlefieldheroes.com/en/heroes/203688377

[Aurmanite]

BR 20 was not sufficient to get everything. You had to pick and choose your specializations. Alas, off-topic and not relevant to the discussion.

Healing, engineering, heavy assault, rexo, anti-vehicular, and still room for more.

That is everything you need in Planetside.

It's also plenty relevant to the discussions I was having with Bloody, as his point was about needing greater co-dependency.

K/D tracking does not impede teamwork. Show me some real numbers correlating K/D tracking and the decline of teamwork. Such a thing doesn't exist which immediately makes most of your points conjecture and theorycrafting.

The fact that you could one man army in Planetside didn't discourage teamwork as every player who was in a good outfit here will attest. Neither did K/D tracking. In Planetside 2, you won't be able to one man army.

Your argument that having K/D tracking and stats is archaic is complete rubbish. This is the 2012. I want to know everything. I want to know how many people I've run over, how much damage I've repaired, how many bullets I've fired. It would be archaic for this game to lack that informaiton.

[Malorn]

Stats are good, to boil down what I am suggesting...


1) Remove "Deaths" as a tracked stat (and as a result, K:D also gets retired)
2) Promote "Score" as the primary/most important stat, and make all others secondary stats.


Kills, revives, etc, all relevant and should be tracked, but the main measure of "am I being successful at Planetside 2?" answer should come from the "Score" stat.

And to be clear "Score" and experience points are effectively the same thing. Might be some cases where they differ but effectively the same. If its productive and nets you lots of experience points, it's a good activity to encourage. Support xp, capture xp, etc same thing as score.

Score/min becomes the relevant productivity stat - how many points are you generating per unit time?

[SuperSchnecke]

Great post Malorn !

Everything you posted is absolutly right and supports teamplay.

There was so many supportstuff to do in PS1 that you didnt get anything for . Like repping Gen, spawns , turrets hell even medterms and ofcourse
helping your Empiremates. Its just a shame that those guys doing the dirty work didnt get nearly anything for it. Even thou these things made PS1 the Game it is .... i honestly hope the devteam think about there plans with the stats and it more and take some of Malorn´s ideas into the final game and dont supports the selfish K/D stats only .

[SuperSchnecke]

WE NEED SCORE !

[wasdie]

Healing, engineering, heavy assault, rexo, anti-vehicular, and still room for more.

That is everything you need in Planetside.

It's also plenty relevant to the discussions I was having with Bloody, as his point was about needing greater co-dependency.

K/D tracking does not impede teamwork. Show me some real numbers correlating K/D tracking and the decline of teamwork. Such a thing doesn't exist which immediately makes most of your points conjecture and theorycrafting.

The fact that you could one man army in Planetside didn't discourage teamwork as every player who was in a good outfit here will attest. Neither did K/D tracking. In Planetside 2, you won't be able to one man army.

Your argument that having K/D tracking and stats is archaic is complete rubbish. This is the 2012. I want to know everything. I want to know how many people I've run over, how much damage I've repaired, how many bullets I've fired. It would be archaic for this game to lack that informaiton.

The only place I've seen K/D ratio break teamwork is in Battlefield 3 on one map where people farm for their K/D ratio.

What that tells me is that if you don't have the right setting and mentality for K/D ratios, it's not a problem.

The size, scale, and pacing of Planetside 2 will mean that lone wolves fighting for K/D ratio will find themselves dead a lot of the time.

K/D ratio would be a problem if you could complete objectives by yourself. That is impossible in Planetside 2. Here you need to work together to get anything done. It's not going to have any effect on the gameplay. Those fighting just for K/D will not be working together and thus will be dead far more often.

[Malorn]

Your argument that having K/D tracking and stats is archaic is complete rubbish. This is the 2012. I want to know everything. I want to know how many people I've run over, how much damage I've repaired, how many bullets I've fired. It would be archaic for this game to lack that informaiton.

I'm not asking for that information to be denied - only deaths. I'm also advocating for an aggregated stat that takes all of those things into account as the primary measure of success. That's not rubbish. It makes sense.

[ArmedZealot]

Depends on if he is good for morale. Wouldn't you figure out if someone's suited for your outfit by testing him rather than relying on an obsolete statistic the moment he joined your group and is taught things?

The game is supposed to have thousands of players. You are going to test everyone that applies to your exclusive and top notch outfit?

[Aurmanite]

Stats are good, to boil down what I am suggesting...


1) Remove "Deaths" as a tracked stat (and as a result, K:D also gets retired)
2) Promote "Score" as the primary/most important stat, and make all others secondary stats.


Kills, revives, etc, all relevant and should be tracked, but the main measure of "am I being successful at Planetside 2?" answer should come from the "Score" stat.

And to be clear "Score" and experience points are effectively the same thing. Might be some cases where they differ but effectively the same. If its productive and nets you lots of experience points, it's a good activity to encourage. Support xp, capture xp, etc same thing as score.

Score/min becomes the relevant productivity stat - how many points are you generating per unit time?

Score is something they could implement and I think it would be a great idea.

Removing K/D tracking is not a good idea. These are things I want to know. Don't take them away from me because you have some completely theoretical ideas about how players react to having this information.

EDIT:

In one sentence you managed to say "I don't want to remove information, but I want to remove information."

That makes no sense chum.

[Malorn]

Score is something they could implement and I think it would be a great idea.

Removing K/D tracking is not a good idea. These are things I want to know. Don't take them away from me because you have some completely theoretical ideas about how players react to having this information.

Thanks for the support of score, it does make a lot of sense.

The fact that deaths as a stat exists will affect player behavior as they try to minimize that negative mark on their stat sheet. It isn't theoretical. People do it today. You ask them how they did in a match they give you their K/D, they typically don't say "I helped us win and got the last cap!" or "I kept my teammates alive and we got victory" - instead they tell you their K:D. Even having it degenerates gameplay.

[Figment]

The game is supposed to have thousands of players. You are going to test everyone that applies to your exclusive and top notch outfit?

Are you going to assume thousands will apply? Typically we let people join our outfit squad first, get an initial impression of behaviour and capacity to learn from basic comments and judge the maturity of reactions to in game situations.

If they were too quiet (even when approached friendly) they were unsuited. If they were immature, they were unsuited. If they started whining about hackers fast, they were unsuited. If they misbehaved in any other way or towards other people including enemies (humping corpses, spawncamping), they were unsuited.

Within the hour you'd know if someone was outfit material or not, tbh. We didn't take on a lot of players, even though we wern't a 1337fit. Most of the players that joined us in the later stages were familiar to us already. If you look for 1337 players, you can built up a reputation in game as well through actions without someone having to check your stats. Over time, you'd get noticed.

You think infils like Mightymouser or me would get asked based on actions in game through sabotage etc, or based on stats?

Besides, those that care most about stats, are forumwhores trying to protect an advantageous balance in the name of 'skill' vs 'non-skill'. Bit like the aren't-you-a-real-patriot-argument. Stats are abused by skewing their meaning all the time.

[Aurmanite]

I had a long post written up and copy pasted, then the site went down and I linked the gameplay footage to my buddy. Lame.

When I talk to my friends about BF3, K/D is the absolute least interesting conversation we can have. It almost always revolves around the crazy shit we did.

Do you play these games with your friends? If you do, I seriously doubt you talk very much about your K/D.

[Malorn]

I had a long post written up and copy pasted, then the site went down and I linked the gameplay footage to my buddy. Lame.

When I talk to my friends about BF3, K/D is the absolute least interesting conversation we can have. It almost always revolves around the crazy shit we did.

Do you play these games with your friends? If you do, I seriously doubt you talk very much about your K/D.

Its not about what individuals value; it is about what behaviors the game generally encourages via its metric for success.

Right now PS2 is actively encouraging kills, kill streaks, domination, and K:D. These are all fine for session-shooters, but not a rich dynamic world like Planetside which has many more objectives and more intricate teamplay.

[SKYeXile]

Its not about what individuals value; it is about what behaviors the game generally encourages via its metric for success.

Right now PS2 is actively encouraging kills, kill streaks, domination, and K:D. These are all fine for session-shooters, but not a rich dynamic world like Planetside which has many more objectives and more intricate teamplay.

Yes, but the difference is in those games, K/D and EXP is prettymuch the only motivation or goals for players, planetside 2 will have resources to unlock weapons, so people will want to help fight over land for advancement, not just pad K/D.

[Malorn]

Yes, but the difference is in those games, K/D and EXP is prettymuch the only motivation or goals for players, planetside 2 will have resources to unlock weapons, so people will want to help fight over land for advancement, not just pad K/D.

Sure, doesn't change the fact that it is a counter productive stat that shouldn't be encouraged.

[Aurmanite]

Its not about what individuals value; it is about what behaviors the game generally encourages via its metric for success.

Right now PS2 is actively encouraging kills, kill streaks, domination, and K:D. These are all fine for session-shooters, but not a rich dynamic world like Planetside which has many more objectives and more intricate teamplay.

I disagree. I think it has even more of a place in Planetside considering the fact we have hundreds more people to shoot.

The "Planetside has objectives and therefore is more than just a shooter" line is tripe. All shooters have objectives and intricate teamplay.

I want to be rewarded for the days I hop on and just feel like killing everything that moves. Sometimes I don't give two shits about completing the objective or being the MVP for my empire. This is a valid gameplay choice and should not be hindered.

People will play how they want.

The game has everything you want. Intricate gameplay and objectives and flower sniffing. It should have everything I want too, which is comprehensive stats for everything I do. Dying included.

I'm hardly interested in your theories on how people play games because they aren't based upon fact, they're based on your opinion. History has proven one indisputable fact about gamers, and that is they will do what they want. Stats and numbers aren't going to change what people enjoy doing.

You are a person that will play Planetside and dig its objectives and team work. Sometimes I'm that dude too. Stat tracking isn't going to change how we play, and there are thousands of other people that will play the same way we do.

Who cares if people aren't playing the way you consider optimal?

Crush them.
Drive them before you.
Enjoy the lamentation of their women.

It's not up to us to determine for someone else how they should play the game.

[Malorn]

I'm not advocating for any particular style of play, only that all are represented.

Your "I just want to log in and kill as many people as possible" is included in my advocacy. Like I said before. Kills generate score. They contribute to success like many other things, and kills are a stat that should be tracked. Don't know why this is so hard for people to understand.

Deaths - who cares? What does it matter? Why is this important? If you die a few more times but kill more people, are you not being more productive by your own estimate? Released from the shackles of having your kill count divided by your deaths, you will get more kills. People will take more risks, and you will have more targets unafraid to risk being in your crosshairs to go for whatever it is they are going for.

[Bags]

Here's my thoughts;

I'm fine with KDA, but they need to track other stats too on those pages.

[Espion]

psstats not tracking deaths was one of the best things that ever happened to planetside.

[Aurmanite]

I'm not advocating for any particular style of play, only that all are represented.

Your "I just want to log in and kill as many people as possible" is included in my advocacy. Like I said before. Kills generate score. They contribute to success like many other things, and kills are a stat that should be tracked. Don't know why this is so hard for people to understand.

Deaths - who cares? What does it matter? Why is this important? If you die a few more times but kill more people, are you not being more productive by your own estimate? Released from the shackles of having your kill count divided by your deaths, you will get more kills. People will take more risks, and you will have more targets unafraid to risk being in your crosshairs to go for whatever it is they are going for.

It's important because I want to know. Who cares? I do.

You keep talking about what people will do if you remove stats like it is a fact. It isn't. People will do what they want.

Besides, why is it better for someone to take more risks? Wouldn't it make sense for tactical teamplay that people take less, or at least more measured risks?

I see where you went wrong. People are not dumb, nor are they all e-peen waving braggarts.

[Malorn]

psstats not tracking deaths was one of the best things that ever happened to planetside.

I'm not familiar with what happened there, would you mind elaborating on that and explain how it improved Planetside?

[Malorn]

It's important because I want to know. Who cares? I do.
I want a pony, but I can't have one. It just isn't good for me or my family in our current economic state. Similarly, its not good for planetside 2 to have death tracking, even though some may want it. You could track it yourself if its super important to you.

I see where you went wrong. People are not dumb, nor are they all e-peen waving braggarts.

No, but most of them are. And all it takes is most of them.

[Aurmanite]

I want a pony, but I can't have one. It just isn't good for me or my family in our current economic state. Similarly, its not good for planetside 2 to have death tracking, even though some may want it. You could track it yourself if its super important to you.

This is an extremely weak analogy. You're a smart fellow, you should have thought about that a little longer.

You don't want K/D tracking.

It's currently in game. It's a big part of SoE's plan for user interactivity. I doubt they'll remove it which makes me happy. At least some part of this game should cater to hardcore murderers. There's plenty of room for the "Planetside is a strategical war sim and I'm going to be a non-combative desk clerk which will serve my empire just as much as the soldiers out kicking ass!" crowd too.

Your score idea though, I dig it.

[Espion]

I'm not familiar with what happened there, would you mind elaborating on that and explain how it improved Planetside?

planetsidestats.com didn't track player deaths. You could see total kills and outfit points earned in a day, and those were the major highlights. This drove people to do whatever it took to earn the most kills/OPs even if it meant dying in the process, rather than put the focus on turtling to preserve a low death count or high KDR.

So if you were needed elsewhere on the cont most people had no issues with suiciding to get there faster, where as those that wanted to preserve high KDRs for forum screenshots or whatever would go through the trouble of running/hiding so they could recall and fly to wherever they were needed, which was pretty much useless in every way.

[MadPenguin]

What i would say is just join an outfit who work as a team (which i assume is what you were going to do anyway). If someone refuses to do something because he wants to preserve K/D, he'll get booted the fuck out of there.

So some people that are fighting on the same team as you are being arses, you will be surounded more by your outfit members who arent.

And remember, the other side has to put up with it as well. I just cant see it being a major issue.

[Malorn]

At least some part of this game should cater to hardcore murderers.

Your score idea though, I dig it.

Deaths has no bearing on whether you are a hardcore murderer.

The rate at which you kill and the volume of kills tells that you're a serious business killer. Kills and kill/min are a stat I like. Should be there. Not as important as score though, but you should be able to go to a leaderboard and list out the people that are the most efficient killers. Deaths really has nothing to do with that.

[Aurmanite]

Deaths has no bearing on whether you are a hardcore murderer.

Opinion.

The rate at which you kill and the volume of kills tells that you're a serious business killer. Kills and kill/min are a stat I like. Should be there. Not as important as score though, but you should be able to go to a leaderboard and list out the people that are the most efficient killers. Deaths really has nothing to do with that.

Efficient killers are the ones that kill more and die less. I'm also down with a KPM stat. Like I said, I want to know everything.

[SKYeXile]

I'm not familiar with what happened there, would you mind elaborating on that and explain how it improved Planetside?

This (http://future-crew.net/images/lb.JPG)

but seriously, it tracked alot of stuff like:
outfit points, updated daily.
cert breakdowns
you could then generate reports that showed weekly monthly, yearly or daily performance.
cert breakdown:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v629/SKYeXile/VS.jpg

but yea this is a snippet of a daily report, shows daily kills, outfit points, kills of each empire, hacks.
it also tracks your top 10 kill/outfit points days(the ones in red with the number)
http://future-crew.net/images/skyexile/br23.jpg


so...yea im SKYeXile...stat whore.

[SgtMAD]

psstats not tracking deaths was one of the best things that ever happened to planetside.

WINNER!!!!!!!!!!

in PS it was hard enough to get ppl to push into bases and actually fight,you add in deaths tracking and you won't ever get anyone to push inside.

tracking kills doesn't hurt, it went on for years and everyone knew about Dicepoint and the other sites,tracking deaths will end up being counter-productive

[Malorn]

Now I'm just getting trolled. Time to move in a productive direction - SkyExile and Espion's posts.

Sky & Espion - Thanks, it's a good illustration of how deaths and K:D is not a necessary stat. I assume people weren't rioting when deaths wasn't put on there, though I expect it was intentionally omitted for the reasons Espion mentioned. It would be interesting if the creator of psstats would weigh in on the subject. Anyone know if that person is still an active community member?

Since it didn't track deaths people gravitated to other metrics, like kills and outfit points, which is effectively the "Score" metric I've been discussing since outfit points were a fraction of experience earned (which was obtained from many types of activities including support and base captures).

This is the direction I would like to see PS2 go.

[Aurmanite]

Now I'm just getting trolled. Time to move in a productive direction - SkyExile and Epsion's posts.

Sky & Epsion - Thanks, it's a good illustration of how deaths and K:D is not a necessary stat. I assume people weren't rioting when deaths wasn't put on there, though I expect it was intentionally omitted for the reasons Epsion mentioned. It would be interesting if the creator of psstats would weigh in on the subject. Anyone know if that person is still an active community member?

Since it didn't track deaths people gravitated to other metrics, like kills and outfit points, which is effectively the "Score" metric I've been discussing since outfit points were a fraction of experience earned (which was obtained from many types of activities including support and base captures).

This is the direction I would like to see PS2 go.

I'm not trolling you dude, it's just we've gone as far as the conversation can take us.

I probably shouldn't have made that last post, I was going to leave it at my post before that...and now I'm writing another one.

[SKYeXile]

Now I'm just getting trolled. Time to move in a productive direction - SkyExile and Epsion's posts.

Sky & Epsion - Thanks, it's a good illustration of how deaths and K:D is not a necessary stat. I assume people weren't rioting when deaths wasn't put on there, though I expect it was intentionally omitted for the reasons Epsion mentioned. It would be interesting if the creator of psstats would weigh in on the subject. Anyone know if that person is still an active community member?

Since it didn't track deaths people gravitated to other metrics, like kills and outfit points, which is effectively the "Score" metric I've been discussing since outfit points were a fraction of experience earned (which was obtained from many types of activities including support and base captures).

This is the direction I would like to see PS2 go.


basicly yea, us stat whores would go for a high amount of daily/weekly/monthly, kills or outfit points...and you can track outfit the same, with avg kills/points per member per week or something.

Some people also payed attention to kills per hack, since there was no time frame to how long a player played per day.

WOT is a game where there are alot of stat whores, deaths while they're tracked. there is no leader board for it, because really...its kinda meaningless in determining a players worth. when there are better stats like avg damage per match or avg XP per match.

[Espion]

It would be interesting if the creator of psstats would weigh in on the subject. Anyone know if that person is still an active community member?

He doesn't plan on playing

[JHendy]

Just use your superior teamwork to stomp statwhorers~

But what if my team mates are filthy stat whores too?!

The horror...

I completely agree with Malorn. K/D ratio should NOT be the primary stat that sits on the front page of your profile, score should be.

Please be aware that he's not saying that K/D ratio should be completely removed from the game and something you cannot look at, just that it should be an ancillary stat, instead of a prioritised one, seeing as this is a teambased game.

Also, killstreaks make me sick...

And the GUI stinks of BF3. Other than that I'm quite amazed by the potential of what we have here.

[JHendy]

If you are so focused on playing as a team then why do you care about your K/D ratio?



Clearly he doesn't care about HIS k/d ratio. He cares about the negative impact that prioritising a self-serving stat like K/D ratio will have on the playstyles of everyone else playing the game.

Removing features to keep people from zerging hurts the game as a whole to benefit the few.

How would removing K/D ratio DISCOURAGE zerging? It's the other way around.


How do you measure how successful your operation is done without having a death stat? Because it got done?

Uhm.... Yes? What's wrong with that? Nothing is as important as the capturing of territory in this game. If you 'got it done' then you're doing it right.

[Figment]

It's the difference between a self centered zerg of individuals with a personal, hidden agenda (survival) and a zerg willing to die for the others.

[Malorn]

The "timeout" caused by death is its own discouragement. Even if not a tracked stat, people still want to avoid it. You aren't earning points if you're dead or returning from a spawn point.

Death has another effect - it weakens the fighting force of those around you. If you're dead, that's more guns turning on fewer allies. Lose too many and you get overwhelmed and pushed back. So too much death leads to less success.

It's natural, you don't need to explicitly punish death or try to discourage it through stats. It discourages itself.

[ArmedZealot]

How would removing K/D ratio DISCOURAGE zerging? It's the other way around.

This was more in response to getting rid of killstreaks and such. Zerg like shiny things like killstreaks/monster kill/headshots as small rewards for casual play.

Getting rid of K/D wouldn't impact it much if you had the above things still. But if you don't then a K/D isn't bad to have. Having none would discourage zerg play.

[Khellendros]

I disagree.

Keep K/D and add a buttload of other stats, there is no reason it has to be either/or. The more stats the merrier!

[MonsterBone]

Lets just remove the K/D ratio from the stats thats all I want.

[JHendy]

Lets just remove the K/D ratio from the stats thats all I want.

Just to highlight:

Most people aren't advocating the complete removal of K/D as a stat, rather that it be replaced with a stat that is more meaningful and relevant in a team game like Planetside.

Switch out the emboldened K/D with something like Score/D on the most viewed stat pages. Relegate K/D to a sub-window (or something), so that it sits in line with other general stats like accuracy-per-weapon etc.

Everybody wins. Right? :evil:

[SKYeXile]

Just to highlight:

Most people aren't advocating the complete removal of K/D as a stat, rather that it be replaced with a stat that is more meaningful and relevant in a team game like Planetside.

Switch out the emboldened K/D with something like Score/D on the most viewed stat pages. Relegate K/D to a sub-window (or something), so that it sits in line with other general stats like accuracy-per-weapon etc.

Everybody wins. Right? :evil:

anything/death means people still care if they die...its the same shit.

[Malorn]

Ya I think deaths just needs to go as a stat. It serves no useful purpose other than to sate a few people's curiosity. Negative stats are just bad. Hiding the stat/burying it is better than prominently featuring it, but still think its best to simply not have it.

Measurements of time are more useful. Like Score/Min and Kills/min. That way whether you play for 10 hours or 2 hours, your contribution/productivity is accurately captured. Overall score, overall kills, kills/day are also useful to highlight super active people. It goes back to the kills/hack thing that Sky mentioned some people looked at because it was an attempt to measure score per unit time played and that was the closest thing there was.

Kills / Time is way better than Kills / Death.

[Kurtz]

Death goes against the very lore of the game.
I do like knowing that I have killed someone, unlike PS1 lol.

[JHendy]

anything/death means people still care if they die...its the same shit.

It isn't the same shit. You can't consciously avoid dangerous situations if you want your Score/D to improve, assuming you gain the most score from teamwork actions.

Avoiding getting stuck in will be counter-productive for anyone who wants a good ratio if the dangerous situations you put yourself in are the ones that benefit your Score/D the most.

You're going to have to put yourself in harms way to improve that stat, (unless you're performing non combat roles such as transportation.)

The same is not necessarily true of K/D, which improves the most when you avoid high risk situations.

There's a big difference. One encourages people to get stuck in, and rewards them for doing so, the other does not.

[Khellendros]

Kills / Time is way better than Kills / Death.

But why must it be either/or? I don't understand why we cannot just have both?

Honestly, I don't see any actual harm in having more stats.

[VioletZero]

But why must it be either/or? I don't understand why we cannot just have both?

Honestly, I don't see any actual harm in having more stats.

I agree.

The problem is that they are played up as a priority when there's far more to Planetside than kills. Especially compared to other shooters.

[DaddyTickles]

Having read the entire mofo thread, score AND K/D. I mean, its not rocket science is it? Give the people the tools and let them choose the relevance to them.

[noxious]

I agree with the OP. I dislike achievements in multiplayer games for the same reason. People play for the stats/achievements, and not for the success of their team. It's not enough that I ignore these things to focus on success because it is frustrating to see my team fail when people are not focusing on our team's success before the success of whatever objective that they want to accomplish.

Unfortunately, statistics and achievements are a necessary evil. I think everyone, even the developers, realize that team-based gameplay in team-based games, from Battlefield 3 to Tribes Ascend, is hurt by the inclusion of statistics and achievements, but they're extremely successful at incentivizing players to play; the importance of getting people hooked is even more important in a free to play model where you need to get players involved enough that they want to spend their money on the game.

[SKYeXile]

It isn't the same shit. You can't consciously avoid dangerous situations if you want your Score/D to improve, assuming you gain the most score from teamwork actions.

Avoiding getting stuck in will be counter-productive for anyone who wants a good ratio if the dangerous situations you put yourself in are the ones that benefit your Score/D the most.

You're going to have to put yourself in harms way to improve that stat, (unless you're performing non combat roles such as transportation.)

The same is not necessarily true of K/D, which improves the most when you avoid high risk situations.

There's a big difference. One encourages people to get stuck in, and rewards them for doing so, the other does not.

well as you mentioned, you could simply do nothing but support and get an extremely high score/death, so it would be kinda meaningless.

[ThGlump]

This is pointless. There cant be number of death stat as there are no deaths in ps. You just destroy body that will be recreated in spawn tube. You cant die on Auraxis.

[Aurmanite]

This is pointless. There cant be number of death stat as there are no deaths in ps. You just destroy body that will be recreated in spawn tube. You cant die on Auraxis.

lol...come on.

[Malorn]

Stats and achievements are indeed powerful, but they can be used for good.

One reason I like having a unified "score" stat is because it gives the developers the power to encourage or discourage behaviors when that is the primary measure of success. If there is a behavior out there that they want more poeple to do, they can give it a higher score value. If the risk and reward are right then more people will start doing that activity. Likewise they can also discourage certain behaviors by lowering their score value through a variety of mechanisms.

It actually gives the developers power to shape how we play the game and what activities we value.

They could factor in deaths too by subtracting score or giving you a buff after you spawn that lowers the score you create for a period of time. That is one way they could counter graveyard-rush type tactics if people are concerned about zergging and it becomes a problem.

It's passive, but it does work to encourage and discourage behavior, which is all the more reason why it should be the primary stat we see and things which encourage poor behaviors like death stat tracking should not be prominent or simply not exist at all.

[Aurmanite]

Stats and achievements are indeed powerful, but they can be used for good.

One reason I like having a unified "score" stat is because it gives the developers the power to encourage or discourage behaviors when that is the primary measure of success. If there is a behavior out there that they want more poeple to do, they can give it a higher score value. If the risk and reward are right then more people will start doing that activity. Likewise they can also discourage certain behaviors by lowering their score value through a variety of mechanisms.

It actually gives the developers power to shape how we play the game and what activities we value.

They could factor in deaths too by subtracting score or giving you a buff after you spawn that lowers the score you create for a period of time. That is one way they could counter graveyard-rush type tactics if people are concerned about zergging and it becomes a problem.

It's passive, but it does work to encourage and discourage behavior, which is all the more reason why it should be the primary stat we see and things which encourage poor behaviors like death stat tracking should not be prominent or simply not exist at all.

How about they leave us alone as much as possible? Give us the playground and let us determine whether we like the monkey bars or the slide.

The less the devs try to influence behavior the better. With in reason of course.

[Malorn]

How about they leave us alone as much as possible? Give us the playground and let us determine whether we like the monkey bars or the slide.

The less the devs try to influence behavior the better. With in reason of course.

Can't un-ring that bell.

As some folks have pointed out, people expect stats these days and its an important thing in games as a measuring stick.

What we can do now is be careful how it is used, be judicious in which stats get tracked, and even more judicious about which stats get promoted.

Which is pretty much the topic of this thread.

[JHendy]

well as you mentioned, you could simply do nothing but support and get an extremely high score/death, so it would be kinda meaningless.

Well, there needs to be a separate stat for supportive actions anyway, since K/D ratio doesn't represent how well a support player is doing.

I think Score/D would work perfectly for everything else.

One thing's for sure though, and that is that K/D ratio is most definitely not an appropriate primary stat in a game like this. This needs looking in to. And I need sleep. Two things.

[Graywolves]

I can't wait for the flame wars and hate tells when people look each other up on the site and make fun of how many times another person has died.

[Malorn]

I can't wait for the flame wars and hate tells when people look each other up on the site and make fun of how many times another person has died.

Another reason why negative stats are bad.

Stats should cover accomplishments, not anything that could be construed as a failure.

[Aurmanite]

Can't un-ring that bell.

As some folks have pointed out, people expect stats these days and its an important thing in games as a measuring stick.

What we can do now is be careful how it is used, be judicious in which stats get tracked, and even more judicious about which stats get promoted.

Which is pretty much the topic of this thread.

Right...I'm not sure what this post is saying. There are words but put into context it's just the same exact thing you keep saying over and over. You didn't actually address my point.

Don't censor my stats, bro.

[Malorn]

Well, there needs to be a separate stat for supportive actions anyway, since K/D ratio doesn't represent how well a support player is doing.

I think Score/D would work perfectly for everything else.

One thing's for sure though, and that is that K/D ratio is most definitely not an appropriate primary stat in a game like this. This needs looking in to. And I need sleep. Two things.

The question I would ask you is what is score/D measuring? What meaning does it have to the player?

What does Score per Death offer that Score per Unit Time does not? Your ability to stay alive? What value does that have? Why is it relevant?

[Aurmanite]

The question I would ask you is what is score/D measuring? What meaning does it have to the player?

What does Score per Death offer that Score per Unit Time does not? Your ability to stay alive? What value does that have? Why is it relevant?

This thread has become nothing but you gratifying yourself. In public too.

You've been given all of these answers by a number of people. You aren't accepting the fact that people want to have this information. Leaving it out would almost look like a mistake, a glaring oversight that most people would not understand.

"Why don't they record my deaths?"

"Because we didn't feel like you could handle the negativity that is associated with your in game failure and we thought it would lead you to behavior we didn't approve of."

"What...the...fuck?"

[StumpyTheOzzie]

True. But why would my hardcore leet outfit recruit someone with a KDR of .0001?

Can't believe it took till page 7 to come up. "1337 h4rdc0|23 killa ninjaz" isn't going to be an outfit I'll want to join. I want to be respected for what I've done, not for my kewl sik name: "D34th-sh4d0wz-ninj4"

In order to make sure an outfit knows if I'll make a good addition to their team/playstyle/objectives, there's only 1 solution.

Track EVERYTHING! Stats for EVERY SINGLE THING.

Number of kilometres walked
Number of kilometres run
Number of K's driven
number of k's flown
number of 9mm rounds fired.
number of 9mm rounds hit.
number of shotgun rounds fired
number of shotgun rounds hit

Then, break that down: Number of k's flown in gal. Number of k's flown in ES fighter, Number of k's flown in [whatever]

number of AMSes deployed
number of AMSes deployed in enemy SOI
number of AMSes deployed in enemy CY
number of spawns from your AMS
number of non-squad spawns from your AMS
number of non-outfit spawns from your AMS
number of kills resulting from people spawning from your AMS

# hacks. # door hacks, outpost hacks, vehicle hacks (if applicable)


This is the only way I can prove my worth in any reasonable way. Me, personally, I don't care about K/D. Never have. To me, it's about capping bases. To cap bases you need AMSes nearby and zerglings.

If there was an "AMSes pulled" stat I honestly think it would match my kill stat. I regularly end up playing for 3 hours with less than 20 kills and more than 60 deaths. I always have assists in the thousands.

Would my outfit kick me because my K/D ratio is so crap? No, because I'm SINGLE HANDEDLY responsible for most of the caps my outfit makes. My AMSes, Lodestars, Gals, GGs and Engineering support mean the knuckledraggers can go and do the shooting. If my AMS wasn't around, they would have to spawn far far far away and would never make it back to the CC.

/rant

Anyway, if every last detail is tracked you could show off whatever is your particular strength. Mine is to have the first and closest AMS deployed. Which is WAY WAY WAY more important than how many kills I personally get because my assists are way over 1000 in a 3 hour session.

[Malorn]

"Why aren't don't they record my kills?"


I've never said that kills shouldn't be tracked. In fact I've said numerous times that they should and its an important and relevant stat. You're misrepresenting my message, and I'm not going to respond to your trolls or personal attacks.

[Aurmanite]

Can't believe it took till page 7 to come up. "1337 h4rdc0|23 killa ninjaz" isn't going to be an outfit I'll want to join. I want to be respected for what I've done, not for my kewl sik name: "D34th-sh4d0wz-ninj4"

In order to make sure an outfit knows if I'll make a good addition to their team/playstyle/objectives, there's only 1 solution.

Track EVERYTHING! Stats for EVERY SINGLE THING.

Number of kilometres walked
Number of kilometres run
Number of K's driven
number of k's flown
number of 9mm rounds fired.
number of 9mm rounds hit.
number of shotgun rounds fired
number of shotgun rounds hit

Then, break that down: Number of k's flown in gal. Number of k's flown in ES fighter, Number of k's flown in [whatever]

number of AMSes deployed
number of AMSes deployed in enemy SOI
number of AMSes deployed in enemy CY
number of spawns from your AMS
number of non-squad spawns from your AMS
number of non-outfit spawns from your AMS
number of kills resulting from people spawning from your AMS

# hacks. # door hacks, outpost hacks, vehicle hacks (if applicable)


This is the only way I can prove my worth in any reasonable way. Me, personally, I don't care about K/D. Never have. To me, it's about capping bases. To cap bases you need AMSes nearby and zerglings.

If there was an "AMSes pulled" stat I honestly think it would match my kill stat. I regularly end up playing for 3 hours with less than 20 kills and more than 60 deaths. I always have assists in the thousands.

Would my outfit kick me because my K/D ratio is so crap? No, because I'm SINGLE HANDEDLY responsible for most of the caps my outfit makes. My AMSes, Lodestars, Gals, GGs and Engineering support mean the knuckledraggers can go and do the shooting. If my AMS wasn't around, they would have to spawn far far far away and would never make it back to the CC.

/rant

Anyway, if every last detail is tracked you could show off whatever is your particular strength. Mine is to have the first and closest AMS deployed. Which is WAY WAY WAY more important than how many kills I personally get because my assists are way over 1000 in a 3 hour session.

I completely agree with the spirit of this post. Track EVERYTHING.

[Aurmanite]

I've never said that kills shouldn't be tracked. In fact I've said numerous times that they should and its an important and relevant stat. You're misrepresenting my message, and I'm not going to respond to your trolls or personal attacks.

Ah shazbot. That sentence was supposed to be "Why don't they track my deaths"

I'm not trolling you, but I may at times attack your position. This is a discussion thread.

[Graywolves]

I don't think any outfit is going to care about your K/D. Outfits in Planetside usually want people who can squad up, will learn how the outfit operates, and work as a team.

Your personal stats will do little to sell yourself to a good outfit.

[Malorn]

Sure while we're at it, lets track...

Bases we've failed to defend.
Vehicles we've lost.
People we've failed to revive.
Territories we've failed to hold.
Times we've been teamkilled.
Friendlies we've killed.
Bases we've failed to capture.
Vehicles we've failed to destroy.
Encounters we've failed to escape (also known as "deaths")
Times we've been run over by tanks.

Lets have a whole stats page devoted to our failures.

I'm being sarcastic, but all of the above stats are negative stats just like deaths. Generally they aren't tracked because they are a measure of failure, not accomplishment. Deaths are the same way. Focus on accomplishments, not failures. Not everything should not be tracked. Positive things should be tracked, like Galaxies deployed, people you've carried into battle, etc. Negative things shouldn't be tracked.

[Aurmanite]

Sure while we're at it, lets track...

Bases we've failed to defend.
Vehicles we've lost.
People we've failed to revive.
Territories we've failed to hold.
Times we've been teamkilled.
Friendlies we've killed.
Bases we've failed to capture.
Vehicles we've failed to destroy.
Encounters we've failed to escape (also known as "deaths")
Times we've been run over by tanks.

Lets have a whole stats page devoted to our failures.


A number of these aren't really conducive to being tracked. But yes, I agree that a lot of these should be tracked. Specifically: TKs, number of times TK'D, deaths by specific weapons, vehicles destroyed, number of owned vehicles destroyed.


I'm being sarcastic, but all of the above stats are negative stats just like deaths. Generally they aren't tracked because they are a measure of failure, not accomplishment. Deaths are the same way. Focus on accomplishments, not failures. Not everything should not be tracked. Positive things should be tracked, like Galaxies deployed, people you've carried into battle, etc. Negative things shouldn't be tracked.

Why the hell not? I'm a grown ass man, I can handle the information. Not only that, but its information I want... information I expect from a shooter in 2012.

[StumpyTheOzzie]

Bases we've failed to defend. - yes
Vehicles we've lost. - yes
People we've failed to revive. - yes
Territories we've failed to hold. - yes... maybe
Times we've been teamkilled. - yes, and the names of who did it
Friendlies we've killed. - yes and the names of who it was (payback from above)
Bases we've failed to capture. - how would you measure that? yes, depending. Ghost hacks no. failed to capture if more than 50 enemies in SOI, yes.
Vehicles we've failed to destroy. - impossible. Spawning on the other side of the continent counts against me? track # vehicles damaged and not killed, yes.
Encounters we've failed to escape (also known as "deaths") - yes.
Times we've been run over by tanks. - yes.

And also add in "amount of damage inflicted that did not result in kills"
amount of damage done to vehicles by non-AV weapons.

Amount of damage to shields
amount of damage to flesh.

umm...

and more.

[Lord Cosine]

Ok, I think I get the real issue. Other players will go to your profile and be like lol this guys sucks, and then pm you in game with his find.

Yeah that's lame. I've heard that WoW has had some similar issues with Armory Profiles being public.

I guess the best solution would be to default all of those stat pages to private, and then allow you the option to make your stats private /friends only/ outfit only / empire only/ public.

That would pretty much solve all the issues methinks. I personally would like to know how many times I've failed and in what ways, but if it brings about a crappy community as a result than its not worth it.

[Tom Peters]

Can't believe it took till page 7 to come up. "1337 h4rdc0|23 killa ninjaz" isn't going to be an outfit I'll want to join. I want to be respected for what I've done, not for my kewl sik name: "D34th-sh4d0wz-ninj4"

In order to make sure an outfit knows if I'll make a good addition to their team/playstyle/objectives, there's only 1 solution.

Track EVERYTHING! Stats for EVERY SINGLE THING.

Number of kilometres walked
Number of kilometres run
Number of K's driven
number of k's flown
number of 9mm rounds fired.
number of 9mm rounds hit.
number of shotgun rounds fired
number of shotgun rounds hit

Then, break that down: Number of k's flown in gal. Number of k's flown in ES fighter, Number of k's flown in [whatever]

number of AMSes deployed
number of AMSes deployed in enemy SOI
number of AMSes deployed in enemy CY
number of spawns from your AMS
number of non-squad spawns from your AMS
number of non-outfit spawns from your AMS
number of kills resulting from people spawning from your AMS

# hacks. # door hacks, outpost hacks, vehicle hacks (if applicable)


This is the only way I can prove my worth in any reasonable way. Me, personally, I don't care about K/D. Never have. To me, it's about capping bases. To cap bases you need AMSes nearby and zerglings.

If there was an "AMSes pulled" stat I honestly think it would match my kill stat. I regularly end up playing for 3 hours with less than 20 kills and more than 60 deaths. I always have assists in the thousands.

Would my outfit kick me because my K/D ratio is so crap? No, because I'm SINGLE HANDEDLY responsible for most of the caps my outfit makes. My AMSes, Lodestars, Gals, GGs and Engineering support mean the knuckledraggers can go and do the shooting. If my AMS wasn't around, they would have to spawn far far far away and would never make it back to the CC.

/rant

Anyway, if every last detail is tracked you could show off whatever is your particular strength. Mine is to have the first and closest AMS deployed. Which is WAY WAY WAY more important than how many kills I personally get because my assists are way over 1000 in a 3 hour session.
QUOTED FOR ADDITIONAL TRUTH. TRACK EVERY STAT KNOWN TO MANKIND.

[Corax]

TL;DR
Stat-driven people need love too. If you dont like the stat system....then ignore it and continue to play with people that are like minded to you. Or take advantage of the tactical opportunities it provides. Your choice.

My personal opinion on this is that it serves a purpose. It encourages more people to play the game. Which is something we all want. And it does provide a tactically useful group of players to the Empires and the game.

If you have players that do only focus on their stats. Then you have a nice group of cannon fodder grunts. They will actually provide a vital aspect of the game. Players who are there to push and fight in the front lines. They provide a continual pressure on the enemy which allows the more specialized Outfits and teams to do all the special forces and co-ordinated squads and platoons.

Instead of focusing on OMG stat whores suck at teamplay. Think of it as another tool for commanders to use.
A Good Commander can use any type of person to achieve a goal.
A Great Commander puts the right person in the right place.
A Crappy Commander complains that people wont play they way he wants them too.

And honestly I am looking forward to all the nice modern stat stuff that is coming along. Kill-streaks, stat tracking, I completely agreed with and enjoyed everything stat related in the GDC demo. But in turn I am not a Stat-whore. I prefer to guide/lead/co-ordinate fights and work behind enemy lines while also providing support via spawning points.

Every fight needs the zerg if you want to have those huge battles. There is nothing wrong with having a modern stat system and killstreak system. It does appeal to a whole 'nother fanbase.

Furthermore as the stat-chasers start to see the success of the more co-ordinated outfits then they will start to apply and join in with the people who expect and demand teamwork to squad up with them. Then they will see their stats start to skyrocket as they learn what Planetside is all about.


Every player in planetside that has joined outfits started out the same way from their first day of logging in.

You were part of the zerg, just killing whats in front of you.
You joined a squad. And started to understand working together.
You spotted an outfit rolling together or heard an advertisement somewhere.
You joined an outfit. And plunged headfirst into teamplay, and found out just how much fun it really was when approached properly.

Basically, there is a place for the stat-focused people in PS2. Its called the frontline troops. They provide the battle and other people to kill.

TL;DR
Stat-driven people need love too. If you dont like the stat system....then ignore it and continue to play with people that are like minded to you. Or take advantage of the tactical opportunities it provides. Your choice.

[Whalenator]

QUOTED FOR ADDITIONAL TRUTH. TRACK EVERY STAT KNOWN TO MANKIND.

http://forums.gametrailers.com/thread/my-brother-is-a-brony--how-can/1232786

[Eyeklops]

Why only look at the bad side of stats tracking? These stats provide "offline" PS2 interactvity, advanced tactics, and can help outfit leaders.

Offline Entertainment:
The fires of the battle have worn down, and the base is finally flipped. It's nice to check your stats. Most effective gun, average accuracy, facility captures, all entertainment while your grab a bite to eat. Stats are good, information is good. Please don't take away my late night snack entertainment.

Tactics (Future):
Advanced intel says the your outfit base is the target for GOTR's for raid night. The truly dedicated leaders will gather intel. They will seek to know what type of outfit they are up against. Stats provide another layer of strategy on the battlefield.

Outfit Management:
Once outfit's get so large, the leaders need to know who performs best.
Yes, I am talking about a report card for virtual murders. Stats can help pick training officer candidates, flight leaders, or even your personal guard. Why campaign against something that a command structure could use to become more efficient?

That is all.


P.S. I was going to place Delta Triad or Future Crew in for GOTR above, but it wouldn't work. Targets don't get advanced warning with the likes of DT or FC. The door gets busted down the door, faces get ripped off, and the base gets pillaged. Every night is raid night for them and their targets are not safe.

Ohh, and by the way :vsrocks:

[SKYeXile]

P.S. I was going to place Delta Triad or Future Crew in for GOTR above, but it wouldn't work. Targets don't get advanced warning with the likes of DT or FC. The door gets busted down the door, faces get ripped off, and the base gets pillaged. Every night is raid night for them and their targets are not safe.

Ohh, and by the way :vsrocks:

Good move, FC is versatile, while we have our preferred play style we will come at you with anything when the situation arises.

they thought in outfit wars we would zerg with aircraft, they pulled skyguards, WE PULLED MAGS!

[Malorn]

Yeah I think people missed my sarcasm with tracking the fails, but the amount of support it has is truly disturbing.

[Aurmanite]

Yeah I think people missed my sarcasm with tracking the fails, but the amount of support it has is truly disturbing.

We caught your sarcasm, chum. This is part of your problem. You think we don't understand what you're saying. We get it, we just disagree.

[Corax]

We caught your sarcasm, chum. This is part of your problem. You think we don't understand what you're saying. We get it, we just disagree.

This^

[StumpyTheOzzie]

Yeah I think people missed my sarcasm with tracking the fails, but the amount of support it has is truly disturbing.

Not missed. Ignored. Because tracking of fails is important too.

[Corax]

For the record too, if the "negative" stuff is tracked too, it gives you a full view of how your playing the game. If you see only the "good" then you cant objectively have an understanding of what is happening.

Basically the more information you have access too, the better you will be for it. And you should also try to stop making giant sweeping catch all statements about people and their play methods. Kinda makes ya look like a bit of a ponce when ya do.

Simple scientific method and what not. Gather all the info then make an objective call.

Personally if given the option to have more information over less information regarding statistics in a game. I will always be one for the fore rather then the later. But then again that is just me and how I approach the situation.

If YOU dont want all that info, then just ignore it. Overall it should literally have no impact in how you actually play this game from an individuals standpoint eh?

[deltase]

++++++++++1

Man that's a lot of text but everything is true as light! I don't like stats and kill streaks cause in games they block part of my screen with stupid announcements and kill achievements. For me they mean nothing at all, only real in-game skill matters.

[Ragotag]

Honestly, I don't see KDR stat tracking as either a terrible pro or a con. Some players are stat whores, other are not; I'm sure the two groups will find each other and enjoy the game in their own way.

That said, I do agree that any stat based on deaths (or per life) is a stat that focuses on solo performance more than team support. While score-based stats are an improvement over death-based stats in this regard, I don't think that they are the solution in that such a system will still likely focus more on solo performance over recognition for team support (as in, find the activity that gives the most score and just do that to farm a higher score per minute).

If we truly want a stat system that promotes a focus on team support, then one idea might be to base stats on missions. Any activity that contributes to a mission, success or fail, ought to be tracked -- not just kills -- as well as a missions accomplished verses missions attempted ratio (a mission success ratio) for each type of mission. In example, instead of KDR (Kill Death Ratio), we could track Infantry kills per mission, or Armor kills per mission (could throw in Air kills and Transport kills as well). Additionally, the game could track things like hacks per mission, or captures per mission, or revives per mission, etc.; maybe even a high level Score per Mission. IMO, these kinds of stats are much more representative of team support performance verses solo performance.

[Tehroth]

I think kdr really make a big difference in fps, even though I don't like the fact that people who willed be worried with their kdr won't charge in to die as often. I guess to balance this out give people special titles or something that are hard to obtain and leave out the kdr sytem?

[Malorn]

If YOU dont want all that info, then just ignore it. Overall it should literally have no impact in how you actually play this game from an individuals standpoint eh?

I see this argument a lot in this thread. It's not relevant to the discussion. It isn't about what I as an individual value; it's about the behavior encouraged on the general population.

[Figment]

Looks to be a very vocal minority that likes K/D. Malorn, many of those that say put it in apparently are indifferent to it themselves, but think "the masses" expect it.

Screw "the masses", they may play bf and cod which may have it, but that does not mean they like it, it does not mean it is vital and it does not mean you cannot ever have a game without it anymore. Do what is best for PS2, do what is best for teamwork promotion: no death stats. End of.

[Coreldan]

When Brink didn't have kills and deaths, the masses sure complained, though.

I don't need or care for it myself, but the CoD/BF players sure complained hard for not having it :D

Majority don't give a shit if it's out to promote more teamwork, at this day and age they want to see their k/d.

[Figment]

Does it ever occur to people that just because they whine about getting it, it's still not always good idea to listen to immature little children?

What you need to do is convince them otherwise. Then they'll support that once they realise why and will call everyone else idiots too. :p It's how fanboys work. Make them PS2 fanboys.

[Coreldan]

It's not always immature kids whining. More importantly, why would your opinion weight more than theirs?

Disclaimer: I still dont care about K/D either way, just dont like the type or argumenting where the people opposing your opinion are whining little kids or optionally fanboys :D

Also, I can tell you that Brink not having a K/D visible didnt do a squat in terms of encouraging teamwork in comparison to game with K/D visible. Hell, I've done more teamwork with pubs in BF3 than I ever managed to do in Brink :D

Or do it like America's Army 3 did it. You get like one point for a kill, but two points just for being in a line of sight to a friendly who is medicing another friendly. That game really encouraged and rewarded working as a squad, much more than it did killing. If you wanted to get any real scores in that game, killing wasnt the way to do it, it was just the "necessary evil" on getting the shit done :D

Such a shame, AA3 had so many fresh and unique things to it, but the Army cut the budget short and fired most of the devs halfway there leaving the game still in a horrible state. The gunplay and netcode are totally horrible. Even more so than PS1 :D

[Figment]

It's not always immature kids whining. More importantly, why would your opinion weight more than theirs?

Actually the ones in favour are portraying them that way: "but we MUST have it cause THOSE GAMES have it, WAAAAH." That's whining. :)

Bit done with the topic. We gave our opinions, not much more to say on it. Up to the deaths, I mean, devs.

[SKYeXile]

seems the leaderboard might just before score and kills anyway

look at the bottom...just a summery though.
http://i.imgur.com/ts57Lh.jpg

[Coreldan]

Actually the ones in favour are portraying them that way: "but we MUST have it cause THOSE GAMES have it, WAAAAH." That's whining. :)

Bit done with the topic. We gave our opinions, not much more to say on it. Up to the deaths, I mean, devs.

Yeah well that is sorta whining yea. Then again, often the opposing camps arguments are equally shallow, although perhaps made in a more sophisticated manner :D

[Manitou]

Finally got the chance to read through this thread. For me, the OP has nailed it. Great post Malorn--I hope someone on the dev team has read your idea and has grasped your philosophy on this.

[Therion I]

Completely agree with OP!

[WarChimp130]

I personally don't mind K/D, but it definitely shouldn't be THE stat of the game. I think if a player plays in a support style roll they should definitely be recognized for those actions also. A big problem with K:D in PS was that everyone expected everyone to play in a mainly combat roll with some support stuff added in. I think PS2 is going away from that.

I hope the community and game evolve to recognize players who play in different rolls. I imagine in most outfits it won't be straight assault players. Medics should be rewarded for keeping the attackers alive, Engies should be rewarded for keeping vehicles running, drivers should be rewarded for successfully getting a team to an objective, scouts should be rewarded for successfully spotting enemy movements, etc. And beyond all this community of players should be focused on acknowledging players who want to do those things.

It shouldn't be just "OMFG DIS PLAYER HAZ A SIIIIIICCCKKKKK KD LOL LOOK AT DIS NOOB THO ITZ SAS LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!" If a player plays in a mainly Infantry roll, yes, K/D should be a big thing. But they should also be saying "holy crap, look at all the healing points and rez's this dude has, thats some sick med skills." Or, "Wow, that's a lot of freaking Gal drops."

Acknowledge each player according to what they provide to the team.

[wasdie]

Reading this whole thread makes me realize how disconnected small communities like the one here are from the rest of gaming.

Others have said it yet you ignore it, and i've ever mentioned how little it actually matters.

I guess you'll only need to see for yourself. They aren't going to remove it because a small amount of people here are speculating how it's going to ruin the game.

[Figment]

Reading this whole thread makes me realize how disconnected small communities like the one here are from the rest of gaming.
You make "gaming" sound as if there's only one game and one way to execute stats etc.

That's not disconnected, that's protecting diversity. Everyone here is FULLY aware of what else is going on in rest-of-gamer-land and a lot of it means they know EXACTLY what they DON'T want from it!

To be exact: more of the same.

[TheRagingGerbil]

As long as the K/D isn't popped up on the hud by default I think it will be fine. The issue with PS1 was they added to the players view by default, so you had this huge glaring percentage showing how much you sucked or how awesomesauce you are.

Having to hit a key to bring up a menu then browse through some tabs is fine.

I do see some whining bitches screaming at me over the vivox proximity chat for ruining their kill streak when I team kill them for stepping in my line of fire. That shit is going to be annoying as hell.

[WarChimp130]

Even if people do have good K:D's people will just accuse them of hacking, or using an over powered weapon, or exploiting something, or whatever.

[WarrantOfficer]

Remove KD, this isn't a death match game; It is a team-work oriented game and if dying is part of your role's MO you shouldn't be considered bad because of it.

This is one of the reasons that we have come to associate dedicated healing and other support operations as boring, because it doesn't change a number on our statistics page.

GUYS, you're all stupid just cause and I'm either a really terrible troll or a really big dumby.

Oh man, it begins.

In all honesty stats, k/dr ect are popular now a days and will entice more people to try PS2, which in the end will give you more to shoot at. Be happy!

There are 537 different ways to ruin a good game, this is #536.

[Shogun]

deaths should not show on a permanent player stats site.

because it´s a stat you cannot work on to improve!
if you got killed 10000 times, it´s done and you can do nothing about it.

if one of your other stats is too low, you can work to improve it, like too little terrans killed, go and get some!
the only thing you can do about your deaths count is to delete the char and start over. and this sucks.

you can blow out as many stats as you want, but it should all be stats that can be improved. so only positive stats.

[johnflenaly]

Personally I don't care either way, I play how I want to play. Changing k/d whoring to state whoring isn't really changing anything. You can try and persuade or encourage people to use teamwork in game but people are still going to do what they want to do. In all honesty stats, k/dr ect are popular now a days and will entice more people to try PS2, which in the end will give you more to shoot at. Be happy!

[DaSwede]

I am fine with K/D and Killstreak stats as long as they are not flashed on the HUD.
They can be hid among other stats but not flashed in the face as they happen.

[FriendlyFire]

This is not game breaking.

I do like it when, in modern FPS games, I get a bonus for killing the the Stat Whores.

[TekDragon]

Keep K/D statistics and the rest. Bury it at the bottom of the pile. The front-most statistics should be ones based on teamwork. Objectives taken, objectives defended.

[Wakken]

Agreed.

[Death2All]

Reading this thread = :bang:

I commend you for your patience, Malorn.


I encourage anyone who doesn't think that K/D ratios are detrimental to an objective game to log into Planetside in it's current state. I dare you play for even an hour and bear witness to the legions of Vehicles camped outside towers, the hordes of people camped outside spamming grenades inside never once pushing in, the bunches of outfits and players that specifically target that generator as top priority instead of attacking the base the preserve their K/D.


Play the game, I guarantee your views on the subject will change. Malorn has done an excellent job getting his point across, unfortunately I think it falls on deaf ears. K/D is a great stat for round based, kill-oriented games such as CoD/BF. However it should have absolutely no bearing on a persistence territory capture control such as Planetside. Absolutely nothing is gained from it (save for increased blood pressure and grenades spammed in your face) and so much potential is lost.


This may be a little bit of angry rant/tangent, but I'm tired of all these people who no longer play/only played PS for a months in the early days only to suddenly jump on the band wagon because there's a sequel being made. This may sound incredibly elitist of me, in fact I'm sure it does, but I'm tired of people who've hardly played the original game weighing in on how they think it play and cater towards them.

Play the game in it's current state before you make an assessment of how the game should play. See how it's evolved and degenerated into. Do that, and maybe your post will have a little bit more merit.

[Coreldan]

Reading this thread = :bang:

I commend you for your patience, Malorn.


I encourage anyone who doesn't think that K/D ratios are detrimental to an objective game to log into Planetside in it's current state. I dare you play for even an hour and bear witness to the legions of Vehicles camped outside towers, the hordes of people camped outside spamming grenades inside never once pushing in, the bunches of outfits and players that specifically target that generator as top priority instead of attacking the base the preserve their K/D.


Play the game, I guarantee your views on the subject will change. Malorn has done an excellent job getting his point across, unfortunately I think it falls on deaf ears. K/D is a great stat for round based, kill-oriented games such as CoD/BF. However it should have absolutely no bearing on a persistence territory capture control such as Planetside. Absolutely nothing is gained from it (save for increased blood pressure and grenades spammed in your face) and so much potential is lost.


This may be a little bit of angry rant/tangent, but I'm tired of all these people who no longer play/only played PS for a months in the early days only to suddenly jump on the band wagon because there's a sequel being made. This may sound incredibly elitist of me, in fact I'm sure it does, but I'm tired of people who've hardly played the original game weighing in on how they think it play and cater towards them.

Play the game in it's current state before you make an assessment of how the game should play. See how it's evolved and degenerated into. Do that, and maybe your post will have a little bit more merit.

The problem is, it's been like half a decade since it's been in any other way before K/D was implemented.

Is there any guarantees that even if K/D meter wasnt there that anything would be different? People dont like dying regardless cos it takes them several minutes to get back to the action.

On the other hand it might not be just the implementation of the K/D. Since the early days the population has done a crash landing. The amount of kill whoring people in ratio might be fairly the same, but cos you dont have so much people zerging anymore as you had back in the day, others don't really wanna zerg alone with so few people either, deciding it's better to camp teh door than go in with 2 guys and die.

I really doubt it's as simple as you make it out to be.

[Eyeklops]

Wow, so much hate over something so insignificant. Do people really think that adding or removing a live K/D meter REALLY changes the way people play? Killwhores will be killwhores regardless. The fact that a gauge exists or doesn't exist has no effect on most of them.

And ANOTHER thing. Why do people think that "killwhores" are bad? The bottom line is if you are good at killing people in a WAR game, you are progressing your empire. I can't tell you how many times the "killwhores" came to a hot base and "rescued" it. "Killwhore" is just a derogatory title with a lame definition made up by the haters to make them sound like the bad guys. Half of the time the front lines make any progress is because the "Killwhores" showed up and schooled you people on how to do things.

[Skitrel]

This may sound incredibly elitist of me, in fact I'm sure it does, but I'm tired of people who've hardly played the original game weighing in on how they think it play and cater towards them.

Play the game in it's current state before you make an assessment of how the game should play. See how it's evolved and degenerated into. Do that, and maybe your post will have a little bit more merit.

It is elitist, not because you're ragging on people that only played the original in the early days, but because you're making the assumption that people that haven't played the original or have only played it a little can't use their common sense and a little critical thinking.

This is the most simple argument in the world and anyone, even those that haven't played PS before can understand it. In a game where kills have no effect towards the GOAL (Cod goal= more kills than enemy) (Battlefield= take away tickets) then kills shouldn't be part of the equation that is emphasised..

Score : Death, as I've mentioned previously, is a perfect metric for getting people to play alongside their team, reservedly (not spaz rushing - SPM causes this) and focused entirely on objectives. Ensure that kills earn a significantly low amount of points compared with objective/support/team play and it is obvious what players will gravitate towards doing.

I'm going to assume here that they're taking their influence on Score from battlefield, if we're going to draw an equivalent, Kills should be worth 20-40pts each while everything else remains similar in a Score : Death system. Enforcing the focus on getting on those objectives, but doing so in a none-spaz-rush fashion.

The very fact that people can't understand this and think that K : D is a good idea is just silly. K : D emphasis will cause 100 snipers lined up on the mountain ridges, a la Battlefield, trying to earn kills with 0 deaths. That's 100 people no being fodder in the epic meat grinder of fun and taking away from the potential experience by wasting player space.

[TekDragon]

Wow, so much hate over something so insignificant. Do people really think that adding or removing a live K/D meter REALLY changes the way people play?

What we have here, gentleman, is someone who has never played a FPS.

Take a look at what's become of PS1, or take a look at Tribes Ascend. K/D tracking destroys teamwork, and these are both games where, at one point, there wasn't K/D tracking and then there was. Those of us who actually played the games saw the difference.

[Figment]

Coreldan, the difference is it's not rubbed in extra. Certainly not on forums or elsewhere by people who deem themselves 1337 that you have a worse K/D than they do.

It's peer presusre more than anything else that makes people "behave like the others". Even if they don't recognise it or want to recognise it. People's behaviour is changed. People killsteal more, people judge each other by it, even if there's absolutely no reason to do so.

I don't really understand why people need to be so judgmental about others in the first place based on out of context stats. If you get zerged 8 to 1, you will die more. If you are an infil, you will die more. If you are a light infantry unit in the frontlines, you will die more. Simple as that. K/D has no bearing nor reflects on your effectiveness in PS at all.

[BlazingSun]

KD loves his KD. :groovy:

The concern you guys are having is that the tracking of kills and especially deaths influences the playstyle of the playerbase. Do you really think that the tracking of those stats alone is the cause of the mentality of many FPS players that you seem to dislike? You come across a player of the opposite team and you try to defeat him before he defeats you. That's the basic concept of an FPS, or is it not?

The only thing that I can see happening is that the stats amplify this mentality a bit, but that's about it. Everyone plays for a different goal. If you take away the stat tracking you won't change the playstyle of those who try to avoid beeing killed. Besides I don't see why you think that someone with a higher K/D ratio must be less of an asset to a team than someone who doesn't care about that at all.

[Coreldan]

Coreldan, the difference is it's not rubbed in extra. Certainly not on forums or elsewhere by people who deem themselves 1337 that you have a worse K/D than they do.

It's peer presusre more than anything else that makes people "behave like the others". Even if they don't recognise it or want to recognise it. People's behaviour is changed. People killsteal more, people judge each other by it, even if there's absolutely no reason to do so.

I don't really understand why people need to be so judgmental about others in the first place based on out of context stats. If you get zerged 8 to 1, you will die more. If you are an infil, you will die more. If you are a light infantry unit in the frontlines, you will die more. Simple as that. K/D has no bearing nor reflects on your effectiveness in PS at all.

That's something I've been thinking about lately, killstealing. Isn't complaining about killstealin killwhoring all the same?

When I play APB, my teammates fairly often apologize me for stealing my kill. There's no such thing as my kill in a team. As long as the guy is dead, we're good. I'm also gonna shoot at your target just the same, cos I rather prefer that theres two of us alive and one dead enemy, opposed to waiting for him to kill you and then finish him off.

Just a random thought of the day, but for me when I play with my clan anyone who complains about killsteals can GTFO and learn to play as a unit.

[Skitrel]

KD loves his KD. :groovy:

The concern you guys are having is that the tracking of kills and especially deaths influences the playstyle of the playerbase. Do you really think that the tracking of those stats alone is the cause of the mentality of many FPS players that you seem to dislike? You come across a player of the opposite team and you try to defeat him before he defeats you. That's the basic concept of an FPS, or is it not?

The only thing that I can see happening is that the stats amplify this mentality a bit, but that's about it. Everyone plays for a different goal. If you take away the stat tracking you won't change the playstyle of those who try to avoid beeing killed. Besides I don't see why you think that someone with a higher K/D ratio must be less of an asset to a team than someone who doesn't care about that at all.

The tracking of deaths isn't what's bad, it's the kills part of the KD equation that falsely sets the wrong goal. KD exists in Cod because the goal is kills. KD exists in Battlefield because the goal is diminishing tickets, of which a kill diminishes 1. The K is the goal in that equation, for planetside it should be replaced and emphasised with the goal in Planetside in order to spur people towards that goal. The closest way to do that is with a well incentivised score system. You replace the goal part of KD with that and you get Score : Death

[Figment]

And ANOTHER thing. Why do people think that "killwhores" are bad? The bottom line is if you are good at killing people in a WAR game, you are progressing your empire. I can't tell you how many times the "killwhores" came to a hot base and "rescued" it. "Killwhore" is just a derogatory title with a lame definition made up by the haters to make them sound like the bad guys. Half of the time the front lines make any progress is because the "Killwhores" showed up and schooled you people on how to do things.

Farmers hurt the empire more than they help them. They "rescue" a base only when it helps their K/D. They have no interest in the merit to the empire and their skills and talents are usualy wasted on a grander level on low, priority backwater (tower)farms.

They don't see it that way, of course, but they're often thinking the game is not much more than an instanced FPS and enemies are only there to pad their kills. Fair enough, but that's not what the PlanetSide spirit is all about. There's room inside the gameplay for the mentality, but it's not the core intended gameplay. The core gameplay is to capture territory. Killing is a tool, a means, a method. Not the be all end all.

The people that are annoyed with the K/D are those that see the game from a completely different perspective: grand strategy and combined arms teamwork.

[Figment]

That's something I've been thinking about lately, killstealing. Isn't complaining about killstealin killwhoring all the same?

When I play APB, my teammates fairly often apologize me for stealing my kill. There's no such thing as my kill in a team. As long as the guy is dead, we're good. I'm also gonna shoot at your target just the same, cos I rather prefer that theres two of us alive and one dead enemy, opposed to waiting for him to kill you and then finish him off.

Just a random thought of the day, but for me when I play with my clan anyone who complains about killsteals can GTFO and learn to play as a unit.

By killsteal, I don't mean firing at the same target and someone getting the kill, I mean someone deliberately waiting (and not helping and thereby being a liability) for the other to wear someone down and to get the final shot.

People who apologise for killstealing think in who gets credit. Teamplayers don't consider it at all. In PlanetSide, who gets the kill was far less important than say in CounterStrike. It's always those type of players that get upset about "stealing" their kill, busting their streak, etc.

[BlazingSun]

The tracking of deaths isn't what's bad, it's the kills part of the KD equation that falsely sets the wrong goal. KD exists in Cod because the goal is kills. KD exists in Battlefield because the goal is diminishing tickets, of which a kill diminishes 1. The K is the goal in that equation, for planetside it should be replaced and emphasised with the goal in Planetside in order to spur people towards that goal. The closest way to do that is with a well incentivised score system. You replace the goal part of KD with that and you get Score : Death

But in order to take objectives you have to defeat players of the opposite team, or not? The combat part of this game is why we play it, or do you play the game just to flip the colors of bases and on the map?

[Figment]

Some do KD. :)

I don't care how a base flips, my objective is to flip the base. Players you have to kill are obstacles in reaching that goal. The goal is not to kill as many as possible before reaching the finish line. Otherwise, the base would flip at X amount of kills. It does not.

[Coreldan]

By killsteal, I don't mean firing at the same target and someone getting the kill, I mean someone deliberately waiting (and not helping and thereby being a liability) for the other to wear someone down and to get the final shot.

People who apologise for killstealing think in who gets credit. Teamplayers don't consider it at all. In PlanetSide, who gets the kill was far less important than say in CounterStrike. It's always those type of players that get upset about "stealing" their kill, busting their streak, etc.

Well yea, that would indeed fucking lame to just wait for others to wear em down deliberately.

[BlazingSun]

Well. My main enjoyment in playing an FPS game comes from defeating other players and nothing can change that. But that doesn't mean I don't work towards other objectives as well.

[Figment]

Of course, but it's just one way of defeating an enemy. I like to think of taking the base or tower as defeating 50 enemies at once. :)

To me it's more like an outsmarting, than outgunning way of winning. But there has to be labour performed to make it satisfactory, it shouldn't just be the simplest way of getting the job done (as in blowing gen and keeping it down at all times for instance, that's just boring and lame). In other words, it should be fun.

[Death2All]

The problem is, it's been like half a decade since it's been in any other way before K/D was implemented.

Is there any guarantees that even if K/D meter wasnt there that anything would be different? People dont like dying regardless cos it takes them several minutes to get back to the action.

On the other hand it might not be just the implementation of the K/D. Since the early days the population has done a crash landing. The amount of kill whoring people in ratio might be fairly the same, but cos you dont have so much people zerging anymore as you had back in the day, others don't really wanna zerg alone with so few people either, deciding it's better to camp teh door than go in with 2 guys and die.

I really doubt it's as simple as you make it out to be.

CoD Black Ops is one example I have. There is a game mode called "Domination" where there are three points on the map that you have to control, you get points by capturing objectives and holding them. It's essentially like Conquest in BF.

Treyarch actually patched Domination so that the KD ratio stat was removed from the scoreboard because too many people were going after kills instead of playing the objective.


Jesus Christ, some of you people. I know personal attacks are against the rules but I think it needs to be said...Some of you people must have little to no experience with online gaming or have a severe form of autism because ANYONE with ANY experience with online gaming KNOWS that killwhores are the bane of objective games.

Since PS goal centralizes around capturing territories (an objective) doesn't the K/D stat seem a little detrimental towards that goal?

Do you really need to sacrifice the better of the game to satisfy your curiosity? You can't see your deaths tracked? Tough shit. Deal with it. You can't always get what you want, that's life. There's no need to bring the entire infastructure of the game down because you want to look at some meaningless stat that has no value towards the actual game so you can stroke your E-Peen.

:rant:

[Eyeklops]

The tracking of deaths isn't what's bad, it's the kills part of the KD equation that falsely sets the wrong goal. KD exists in Cod because the goal is kills. KD exists in Battlefield because the goal is diminishing tickets, of which a kill diminishes 1. The K is the goal in that equation, for planetside it should be replaced and emphasised with the goal in Planetside in order to spur people towards that goal. The closest way to do that is with a well incentivised score system. You replace the goal part of KD with that and you get Score : Death

So at what point did "killing" not become the primary objective in any shooter game? Bf3, COD, MOH, PS1, and soon to be PS2, killing the enemy is the primary objective, period. How these games differ is in what killing the enemy does for you. Do you really think that PS2 has no purpose for kills? REALLY? How about the most important one of all, removing a strategic asset from the playing field so that friendly units can advance.

As I have said before, the killwhores move up the front line. They push the enemy to the spawns so that support players can fall in behind and set up defenses on captured territory. The demonization of killwhores is not needed. They provide a service to your empire, respect them.

[BlazingSun]

@ D2A: I hope that this was not adressed at me as well. You'd be quite wrong in my case.
Anyway .. got more important things to do now.

[Death2All]

@ D2A: I hope for you that this was not adressed at me as well.

It was directed towards anyone that think putting K/D stats in an objective game is going make it benefit any, so I guess you got caught in the crossfire.


I don't deny your gaming background. You were an amazing player in PS who topped the leaderboards, as I can see by your signature you obviously are a very skilled BF3 player. That said, you cannot deny with your extensive gaming background the killwhoring is detrimental towards objective based game types.

[WarChimp130]

What we have here, gentleman, is someone who has never played a FPS.

Take a look at what's become of PS1, or take a look at Tribes Ascend. K/D tracking destroys teamwork, and these are both games where, at one point, there wasn't K/D tracking and then there was. Those of us who actually played the games saw the difference.

I will personally vouch for Eyeklops being an awesome teammate in FPS games and a monster to play against.

[TekDragon]

I will personally vouch for Eyeklops being an awesome teammate in FPS games and a monster to play against.

That's refreshing to know, but this isn't CoD or BF. This is an objective based game. Anyone who has played an objective based game that has implemented K/D tracking knows how it has a deleterious affect on teamwork.

Tribes Ascend was a great example of this. There was a direct and measurable decrease in teamwork after they started tracking it. People just stopped cooperating and switched to kill-whore mode.

[Coreldan]

CoD Black Ops is one example I have. There is a game mode called "Domination" where there are three points on the map that you have to control, you get points by capturing objectives and holding them. It's essentially like Conquest in BF.

Treyarch actually patched Domination so that the KD ratio stat was removed from the scoreboard because too many people were going after kills instead of playing the objective.


Jesus Christ, some of you people. I know personal attacks are against the rules but I think it needs to be said...Some of you people must have little to no experience with online gaming or have a severe form of autism because ANYONE with ANY experience with online gaming KNOWS that killwhores are the bane of objective games.

Since PS goal centralizes around capturing territories (an objective) doesn't the K/D stat seem a little detrimental towards that goal?

Do you really need to sacrifice the better of the game to satisfy your curiosity? You can't see your deaths tracked? Tough shit. Deal with it. You can't always get what you want, that's life. There's no need to bring the entire infastructure of the game down because you want to look at some meaningless stat that has no value towards the actual game so you can stroke your E-Peen.

:rant:

As I've said several times before, I'm not pro-K/D or anything, I just like to bring up other perspectives.

That said, Brink was a game with no K/D and very obj focused. Yet people still killwhored. That's sorta why im argueing here to begin with. It didnt seem to make any difference whatsoever.

They are the bane yes, but I really doubt showing k/d vs. not showin k/d changes that.

As for my gaming, I've played "realistic damage model online shooters/tactical shooters/whatever" since early 2000s mainly starting off with Tom Clancy titles.

[Aurmanite]

'kill whoring' is a valid gameplay choice. Its not for any of us to tell someone else how they should spend their time playing.

[Death2All]

As I've said several times before, I'm not pro-K/D or anything, I just like to bring up other perspectives.

That said, Brink was a game with no K/D and very obj focused. Yet people still killwhored. That's sorta why im argueing here to begin with. It didnt seem to make any difference whatsoever.

They are the bane yes, but I really doubt showing k/d vs. not showin k/d changes that.

As for my gaming, I've played "realistic damage model online shooters/tactical shooters/whatever" since early 2000s mainly starting off with Tom Clancy titles.

Oh, I'm not arguing at all that people won't kill whore if K/D is not in the game. People have been killwhoring before there's ever been K/Ds. Shit, there's no stats website for PS1 and people still spawncamp to pad their KDs. Why? Because they're assholes I guess..I don't know..

But the point is, is that a lack of K/D discourages that kind of gameplay. People are less likely to cower back and spam grenades if they know that their precious K/D isn't at stake.

Malorn has an excellent point about evolving the current state of FPSes. It's too centralized on kill/stat whoring. It's less about capturing objectives. That needs to change. At the very least for an objective based game it HAS to change.

[TekDragon]

'kill whoring' is a valid gameplay choice. Its not for any of us to tell someone else how they should spend their time playing.

K/D tracking does not tell anyone how to play. It simply encourages it.

I'm not even arguing against K/D tracking. I just think it should be buried in the statistics. Focus should be, instead, on objective scores. Following squad leader commands, meeting objectives with your squad, defending under-attack objectives for extended periods of time, etc.

[Skitrel]

But in order to take objectives you have to defeat players of the opposite team, or not? The combat part of this game is why we play it, or do you play the game just to flip the colors of bases and on the map?

Of course, but the combat is just something that you need to do in order to get those objectives. The story and lore drives the gameplay, that story is that the empires are fighting for control of Auraxis, therefore we should be fighting for control, not for kills. In order to take control of objectives you are going to HAVE to fight people, therefore fighting people does not need to be an incentive. The incentive needs to be on telling players to go and take those objectives, on the way to getting those objectives the enemy is an obstacle to overcome, not the goal.

The goal should always be the focus and what the players have incentive to achieve. If you give emphasis and incentive to kills then you'll find less people pushing the objectives, less people playing for the goal and ultimately that's not what Planetside is about, it's about team based strategy to control the world. Telling people to go and control that world is important, the fighting is the emergent part of people attacking objectives.

On the flipside there is however another possibility here. Increase the score people get from earning kills while defending something they already control. Incentive to fight off the enemy from taking a base. Low kill score for attacking but high score for taking the objective, higher kill score on defence but obviously no points for an objective because you can't take what you've already got. This covers both bases, ensures pushing on attack and gives cause to defend.

In fact, utilising this, you can cause all the killwhores to play the defence part of the war effort and all the focused tactical players to play the offence part. Win win. Get the balance right for the defenders points earned from kills so it roughly equals (on average) the points people get from taking objectives and you've got the right balance of offence and defence. That's something that can be worked out in the beta based on the immense amount of statistics they'll get, they can do the math based on average time to take objective, number of kills in the sector per player, etc etc. Then it can all be properly balanced to balance the points earned by players participating on both sides of the war and successfully give both the killwhores and the objective players a role within the story of the world that all comes under the metric of score:death.

The math won't be a fun thing for the devs to do, to get the balance right it'll be necessary though. Won't be particularly difficult with the immense number of stats they'll have to toy with during beta and the transition to launch.

[Skitrel]

So at what point did "killing" not become the primary objective in any shooter game? Bf3, COD, MOH, PS1, and soon to be PS2, killing the enemy is the primary objective, period. How these games differ is in what killing the enemy does for you. Do you really think that PS2 has no purpose for kills? REALLY? How about the most important one of all, removing a strategic asset from the playing field so that friendly units can advance.

As I have said before, the killwhores move up the front line. They push the enemy to the spawns so that support players can fall in behind and set up defenses on captured territory. The demonization of killwhores is not needed. They provide a service to your empire, respect them.

That's simply not true. Killing is not the primary objective of a game where the story and goal behind the war is control of Auraxis. In order to control Auraxis one has to take land and continents and so on. Killing isn't the goal, taking land is. Killing is just something that has to happen because the enemy also have the same goal, thus - conflict.

EDIT: And I double posted. Apologies.

[Aurmanite]

Oh, I'm not arguing at all that people won't kill whore if K/D is not in the game. People have been killwhoring before there's ever been K/Ds. Shit, there's no stats website for PS1 and people still spawncamp to pad their KDs. Why? Because they're assholes I guess..I don't know..

But the point is, is that a lack of K/D discourages that kind of gameplay. People are less likely to cower back and spam grenades if they know that their precious K/D isn't at stake.

Malorn has an excellent point about evolving the current state of FPSes. It's too centralized on kill/stat whoring. It's less about capturing objectives. That needs to change. At the very least for an objective based game it HAS to change.

Are you going to play different if there is K/D tracking? I doubt it. Neither will hundreds of other like minded players. The notion that you have to discourage a completely valid gameplay choice is assinine.

[BlazingSun]

It was directed towards anyone that think putting K/D stats in an objective game is going make it benefit any, so I guess you got caught in the crossfire.


I don't deny your gaming background. You were an amazing player in PS who topped the leaderboards, as I can see by your signature you obviously are a very skilled BF3 player. That said, you cannot deny with your extensive gaming background the killwhoring is detrimental towards objective based game types.


Ok so one last reply to this thread. Well no I don't think that the K/D tracking brings an actual benefit to the game per se, but I don't feel like the negative effects are anywhere close to what you guys fear they will be. Was PS1 unplayable all of a sudden when they patched in the K/D bar? I didn't notice a difference at all to be honest.

I guess I can only speak for my self here, but keeping K/D in mind doesn't stop me from going for objectives. I might not be the one who always places the charges in BF3 rush mode, or the one who is the first one to blindly enter a tunnel, but that doesn't mean I don't support my team. Carefull/passive playstyle =/= selfish playstyle.

Edit: That's simply not true. Killing is not the primary objective of a game where the story and goal behind the war is control of Auraxis. In order to control Auraxis one has to take land and continents and so on. Killing isn't the goal, taking land is. Killing is just something that has to happen because the enemy also have the same goal, thus - conflict.



I guess it's a "the way is the goal" or "the goal is to reach the goal" kind of thing.

[Coreldan]

But I do have to say the mainstream audience will burst if there is no k/d of any kind, just like they did that with Brink.

It probably wont hurt the game too much, I mean who wouldnt play simply due to that? (i guess some might) but still, it will be QQed about if its out.

[Skitrel]

Ok so one last reply to this thread. Well no I don't think that the K/D tracking brings an actual benefit to the game per se, but I don't feel like the negative effects are anywhere close to what you guys fear they will be. Was PS1 unplayable all of a sudden when they patched in the K/D bar? I didn't notice a difference at all to be honest.

I guess I can only speak for my self here, but keeping K/D in mind doesn't stop me from going for objectives. I might not be the one who always places the charges in BF3 rush mode, or the one who is the first one to blindly enter a tunnel, but that doesn't mean I don't support my team. Carefull/passive playstyle =/= selfish playstyle.

What is emphasised in game won't affect experienced players, they already know what to do, they already know how they're supposed to be playing. With new players however they learn a game based on what appears to be emphasised to them as how they're supposed to be playing. Therefore, emphasis on how they should play should be where this is focused, and that is on the goal - taking Auraxis.

I guess it's a "the way is the goal" or "the goal is to reach the goal" kind of thing.

Not sure I understand what you're trying to say here.

[Death2All]

Are you going to play different if there is K/D tracking? I doubt it. Neither will hundreds of other like minded players. The notion that you have to discourage a completely valid gameplay choice is assinine.

I sure as shit will. I definitely played more selfishly when my K/D was at stake. I would never be the one to blindly charge down the staircase into my imminent and explosive death, I'd go in last also so I could secure all the kills to myself because I'm greedy like that. I plenty of times saw myself holding my Decimator back on a MAX so I could get the last shot in.

This has been beat over the head dozens of times in this thread but here goes again...

People will killwhore regardless if there's K/D ratios in the game or not, but not putting one in the game would PREVENT that sort of behavior in the game. If you're going to ask for proof refer to my previous post where I explained how K/Ds were removed from the scoreboard in objective based games in CALL OF DUTY of all games.

I know statistic are interesting. I love stats myself. I love the percentages of everything, how far I've run, my accuracy, how much sweat I've protruded, calorie intake. All of that. It's awesome.

HOWEVER, I don't think that the K/D statistic needs to be implemented in an objective focused like PS. It offers no benefit to the game, other than satisfying curiosity and encourages killwhore-like behavior for the masses.

Ok so one last reply to this thread. Well no I don't think that the K/D tracking brings an actual benefit to the game per se, but I don't feel like the negative effects are anywhere close to what you guys fear they will be. Was PS1 unplayable all of a sudden when they patched in the K/D bar? I didn't notice a difference at all to be honest.

I guess I can only speak for my self here, but keeping K/D in mind doesn't stop me from going for objectives. I might not be the one who always places the charges in BF3 rush mode, or the one who is the first one to blindly enter a tunnel, but that doesn't mean I don't support my team. Carefull/passive playstyle =/= selfish playstyle.

Edit:

I guess it's.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I'd log in PS again today. All that game is now is ToDs and stalemates until the base goes neutral. There's no pushing or tactical decisions in more. It's ALL killwhoring. The root of that is poor decision and updates from SOE, but that's whole different monster.

As you said, you're less reluctant to charge down the hallway blindly or plant the explosive because you want to preserve your K/D. You can call it careful/passive play-style but at the end of the day it's just killwhoring. People camp choke-points where it's impossible to be hit because of the hitboxes and they call it "smart" or "aera denial" but at the end of the day they're just sitting in one spot all day racking up kills and not contributing to their team at all.

[Gortha]

As an old school multiplayer shooter gamer (Doom, Duke, Quake[World] TeamFortress) i absolutely agree with Malorn/the OP.

Make the Multiplayer-Crowd better people by promoting some kind of score instead of Streaks, K : D and Deaths, Sony! Change the Genre!;)

[Gandhi]

What is emphasised in game won't affect experienced players, they already know what to do, they already know how they're supposed to be playing. With new players however they learn a game based on what appears to be emphasised to them as how they're supposed to be playing. Therefore, emphasis on how they should play should be where this is focused, and that is on the goal - taking Auraxis.
Exactly. If the most prominent feedback is killstreaks, dominations, revenge kills and your K/D stats then that's what new players will play toward. And if they manage to blunder their way to a facility capture in the process, then that's icing on the cake. In reality it needs to be the other way around.

I don't think getting rid of K/D stats is the way to do this, but I really hope new players aren't given the wrong impression by having this information be the most prominent measure of how well you're doing.

[Death2All]

But I do have to say the mainstream audience will burst if there is no k/d of any kind, just like they did that with Brink.

It probably wont hurt the game too much, I mean who wouldnt play simply due to that? (i guess some might) but still, it will be QQed about if its out.

You really think thousands of people would suddenly stop playing because there's no K/Ds in the game. If the game is fun and enjoyable they'll play the game. Sure some people care about stats, but if you're not going to play a game because stats aren't in it then good riddens I say. You're playing for the wrong reasons.


Again, I'm not saying there should be NO stats in the game, merely that the K/D should be left out because it's an objective based game and a K/D ratio is meaningless and detrimental to the game. :evil:

[Death2All]

I guess I should emphasize that this all goes towards killstreaks, dominations and revenges as I sort of left them out of my points.

Anything that distracts the player from the objective and promotes killing is detrimental to the core concept of Planetside.

[BlazingSun]

I shouldn't say "last reply" when I can't hold back ...


As you said, you're less reluctant to charge down the hallway blindly or plant the explosive because you want to preserve your K/D. You can call it careful/passive play-style but at the end of the day it's just killwhoring. People camp choke-points where it's impossible to be hit because of the hitboxes and they call it "smart" or "aera denial" but at the end of the day they're just sitting in one spot all day racking up kills and not contributing to their team at all.

I don't play passiv because of the stats, but because I want to avoid a death for the sake of avoiding the death. That's a difference. But anyway .. the thread is about the playerbase in general and I stick to what I have said.

[Aurmanite]

People will killwhore regardless if there's K/D ratios in the game or not, but not putting one in the game would PREVENT that sort of behavior in the game.

Are you even reading what you're saying?

The first half of your sentence is in direct conflict with the other.

If you play differently when there's K/D then perhaps you should re-evaluate what type of player you are. There's 1000's of people like me who are not so easily influenced by such inconsequential things.

Track everything. Let the people decide what stats are more valuable than others. Don't censor my stats because you have strange ideas about how players react to seeing them. Don't force your concepts of how people should play this game on me. You do your thing, let me do mine. If you don't want to know how many deaths you have you can ignore it. I want to know.

You're asking for the removal of something that is one of the most fundamental statistics in FPS's. Leaving it out would come across as a huge mistake. No one would understand it, and if you tried to explain it using this drug store psychology you would get laughed at.

The general person is smarter than you're giving them credit for. The only reason you generalize and make these sweeping blanket statements is because of your own vanity. You think you aren't the general population. You are.

[Eyeklops]

What if the game doesn't have K/D on by default, but instead lets you pick 1 or 2 stats from a large pool to watch on-screen. I would personally pick K/D & accuracy, but others may want bullets fired, revives, whatever. Make the default off and mix K/D in with all the other stats making it appear to be no more important than the others.

[Aurmanite]

What if the game doesn't have K/D on by default, but instead lets you pick 1 or 2 stats from a large pool to watch on-screen. I would personally pick K/D & accuracy, but others may want bullets fired, revives, whatever. Make the default off and mix K/D in with all the other stats making it appear to be no more important than the others.

I'm totally down with this. A player would be able to choose what stat tracking appears on the in game HUD.