Remove KDR

[Dragonskin]

So, with the news that you can reset your KDR coming I think it is a good time to talk about simply removing this useless stat to begin with. I brought this up in another thread and felt it was worthy of it's own thread.

KDR changes your in game behavior so that you only worry about making sure you kill more than you die. It prevents you from effectively contributing to your faction.

So here is a vid also talking about it and I think TheKoolaidLine nails it. What positive behaviors does KDR promote in a game like Planetside? Why is it a stat worthy of being displayed in the game? Because like DrankTHEKoolaid... I can't think of a good reason to have it.

Kill Death Ratio

[Aurmanite]

Most people playing shooters will always do everything they can do avoid death.

Removing the statistical representation of that will accomplish nothing. People who champion this idea don't factor in human nature into the equation.

[Figment]

Since there's infinite respawn, there's no virtue to killing the enemy more than they kill you. The only thing of strategic importance is killing the spawn points and then whatever had spawned. Suicidal tactics do that best in this game.

[Elgareth]

Most people playing shooters will always do everything they can do avoid death.

Removing the statistical representation of that will accomplish nothing. People who champion this idea don't factor in human nature into the equation.

I tend to disagree. I know I hesitate more when doing something suicidal to help the faction with K/D in place... I guess others are like me ^_^
I'm for removing K/D, it does nothing positive for the game IMHO, so the worst that could happen is that everything stays the same, with a chance that people will act more team-based.
Worth it IMHO.

[Assist]

So, with the news that you can reset your KDR coming I think it is a good time to talk about simply removing this useless stat to begin with. I brought this up in another thread and felt it was worthy of it's own thread.

KDR changes your in game behavior so that you only worry about making sure you kill more than you die. It prevents you from effectively contributing to your faction.

So here is a vid also talking about it and I think TheKoolaidLine nails it. What positive behaviors does KDR promote in a game like Planetside? Why is it a stat worthy of being displayed in the game? Because like DrankTHEKoolaid... I can't think of a good reason to have it.


I think KDR is way overblown by this community. Most players with high KDR aren't the type of people who sit way in the back, they're just effective at using their surroundings. I personally charge in to every fight I'm at, I get to places unexpected and I try to work from an area that I can control. Most new players are not really playing to their KDR but more to the fact that in most games dying is considered a penalty. In Planetside 2, for some reason, it's not a penalty. You respawn and you're back in the fight. Once skilled players realize this they tend to be extremely aggressive because most normal players are very defensive to avoid the dreaded respawn screen. Defensive players are sitting ducks in Planetside2, though they don't seem to realize it.

Of all the stats that cause any sort of issues in the game, kills/hour and score/hour should be more of a concern effecting the play style Planetside wants to promote, not kills/death. If kills/death is effecting your gameplay than you're not maximizing the gains your character could be receiving. The only exception to this is Liberators, but that's because Liberators are ridiculously unbalanced to the rest of the game but that's another subject that Higby doesn't seem to want to deal with.

[MaxDamage]

It is a statistic.

It does not prevent you from doing anything.

This argument has been done to death.

Stop trying to dictate how others play and enjoy the game.

[Hamma]

So, with the news that you can reset your KDR coming

What?

[Assist]

What?

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/unscheduled-k-d-wipe-item.106330/

[Artorius]

Removing K/D without removing Death´s solves nothing. You will have external statpages like PSU who will bring the K/D stat back.

[almalino]

What is the reason to remove KDR?
People who doesn't care about KDR will not notice.
People who care will leave? So we will reduce PS2 population. Is it the goal?

[Gimpylung]

Removing K/D without removing Death´s solves nothing. You will have external statpages like PSU who will bring the K/D stat back.

What he said.

[Dragonskin]

Stop trying to dictate how others play and enjoy the game.

This is an interesting comment. So you do recognise that removing the KDR would alter how people play, but unlike you suggest it wouldn't be me dictating anything. The players themselves can still be kill whores if they wanted, but a lot of players might actually learn to be more objective oriented over time. How is that a bad thing? Or are you trying to protect a precious epeen number that doesn't actually tell people how good of a player you actually are?

Removing K/D without removing Death´s solves nothing. You will have external statpages like PSU who will bring the K/D stat back.

I agree and that is a good point. Remove total death count as well. Just keep the player kill board like the SOE version where it tracks the last 100 deaths and kills. That is all you really need to know and would give you a good idea how a praticular play session went.

[Hamma]

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/unscheduled-k-d-wipe-item.106330/

My bad, hadn't read the thread yet.

[satori]

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. A purchasable stat wipe? Let's call it what it is, a $$ grab for SOE. Removing K/D entirely is a different subject (one that I'm not in favor of) but this just silly. Please, SOE, focus on more important issues rather than people whining about their K/D ratio.

[Rolfski]

The problem of K/D ratio becomes even more apparent as people build up and tend to care more for their character and its stats over time.
If you invested 500 hours to build up a BR 70 character with a K/D of 3.0, it's only understandable that you want your stats like K/D you carefully build, to improve, not to diminish.

It's the nature of persistent MMO's and a serious problem in PS2 because I see around me how it negatively effects game play. With the lack of any meaningful goals/meta game in the current game, this problem becomes even exponentially bigger.
Kill farming/XP farming has become a disease in this game, because frankly, there's not much better to do.

Does that mean we should remove K/D stats altogether? I'm afraid that won't work. Some people are more completionist than others and challenge themselves by stats like K/D. Making the game less fun for them by removing these stats would probably only piss them off. Don't expect them to become suddenly better and more enthusiastic team players.

What should be done though is change the relationship between K/D and XP/certs/levelling up. Rewarding people for objective play vs just killing stuff is still completely broken in this game. No XP for following orders, no XP for capping/holding points, defense XP system doesn't make people defend. Who cares about capping and holding some outpost while killing off a few vehicles and players around the Crown will get you a shitload more XP and will level you up/gain you certs 10x faster?

Give people a choice: You can focus on just killing stuff/ improve your K/D, but it won't level you up as fast compared to playing the objective.

[MrVicchio]

K/D.. you can't get rid of it unless you stop tracking kills or deaths or both.

Pen, paper, calculator, spreadsheet.

Peeps will figure it out.

K/D is a problem for the insecure. If you're worried about K/D... you're playing PS wrong, period.

[Shamrock]

It's a decent point, and worth paying attention to, I doubt SoE will remove it altogether. Other metrics for measuring a players skill/performance should be the center of discussion, if we could come up with a few that would encourage team based objective play that would have a real positive impact on player behavior.

[Silent Thunder]

See the problem is no matter what, people will find a way to hyperinflate their metrics. Remove K/D ratio? People will track by Score/Min and hyperinflate that by parking HE tanks on the side of the crown. Remove Score tracking? People will count by Battlerank. Remove Battlerank? People will count by certs. Et cetera, Et cetera. No matter what you do, people will find some sort of metric to hang onto and put above all else.

At the end of the day, nothing you can do will stop the people who care more about their ego than actually helping their team, so it's best to just sigh and move on to ideas that will actually help the game.

[Dragonskin]

See the problem is no matter what, people will find a way to hyperinflate their metrics. Remove K/D ratio? People will track by Score/Min and hyperinflate that by parking HE tanks on the side of the crown. Remove Score tracking? People will count by Battlerank. Remove Battlerank? People will count by certs. Et cetera, Et cetera. No matter what you do, people will find some sort of metric to hang onto and put above all else.

At the end of the day, nothing you can do will stop the people who care more about their ego than actually helping their team, so it's best to just sigh and move on to ideas that will actually help the game.

Score per minute is also trash. In BF3 it was a good stat unless you were a stat padder, but generally those people were easy to spot. In Planetside 2 it could have been a good metric, but was screwed over when they decided to put implants and membership boosts in the game.

My SPM is higher on my TR character because I have the new 50% alpha squad booster running. I play pretty much exactly the same as I did on my VS character which only had the 10% alpha squad implent until recently.

[Assist]

Score per minute is also trash. In BF3 it was a good stat unless you were a stat padder, but generally those people were easy to spot. In Planetside 2 it could have been a good metric, but was screwed over when they decided to put implants and membership boosts in the game.

My SPM is higher on my TR character because I have the new 50% alpha squad booster running. I play pretty much exactly the same as I did on my VS character which only had the 10% alpha squad implent until recently.

I think players use score per hour to compare to themselves, not to others. For instance, I judge whether or not I was successful that day based on my score per hour. While some would view that as wrong, with the current objectives of the game, it's the best judgement of whether or not I improved my character efficiently that day.
If you're using it to compare to others that's just the wrong way to use personal statistics. There's nothing in Planetside 2 that effectively compares your score to other players scores. K/D for instance is completely different from infantry to tanks to ESFs and finally Liberators. Score per hour is effected the same way (it's simple math to figure out what everyone's score per hour is based on their boosts, but vehicles dramatically changes that). Accuracy is effected based on the weapon(snipers are high, lock-on weapons, then you have stuff like shotguns over 100% and C4 detonations without them planted, etc). Same concept applies to Kills/headshots ratio. Kills per minute is also based on weapon/vehicle choice. If they had seperate stats from vehicles to infantry you may be able to come up with a more accurate idea of your skill in a specific vehicle to another players skill in that specific vehicle, but even then it's hard to judge because it's not an arena shooter.

I really can't think of a single statistic in Planetside2 that tracks how skilled a player is compared to another player, maybe you could argue accuracy of a specific infantry weapon(CARV). The only thing the stats are good for is tracking whether or not you improved from your previous session.

[MaxDamage]

It would be carebear everquesty bs to even consider it.

Accuracy doesn't necessarily mean anything either.
I think if we could reset specific stats, knowing that we'd been shooting around like imbeciles in warpgate for example (guilty) then sure.

At the end of the day the stats are there to measure your own progress.
If you want to compare them to others out of any relevant context then go for it.

[snafus]

I'm more worried about my vehicle timer then my K/d ratio. They just happen to coincide with each other in a way.

[Dragonskin]

I really can't think of a single statistic in Planetside2 that tracks how skilled a player is compared to another player, maybe you could argue accuracy of a specific infantry weapon(CARV). The only thing the stats are good for is tracking whether or not you improved from your previous session.

Right, and the point of this thread really isn't about comparing yourself to others. The point was that KDR negatively impacts players behaviors. On the other hand, while SPM is still kind of a trash stat it still mostly encourages positive behaviors.

The goal of the thread is to get more people playing the objectives instead of playing their stats. Removing a stat that is overall useless could help improve general game behavior.

How about this then?

Let's take KDR/Death count and make it a MLG content specific stat. MLG is all about competition and comparing yourself to others. So if people want to raise their KDR stats then they can be put in a position that might be better suited for it.

The core game can do without the stat completely though because no one has listed any positive behaviors that the stat actually promotes in the core game.

[Cats]

So, with the news that you can reset your KDR coming I think it is a good time to talk about simply removing this useless stat to begin with. I brought this up in another thread and felt it was worthy of it's own thread.

KDR changes your in game behavior so that you only worry about making sure you kill more than you die. It prevents you from effectively contributing to your faction.

So here is a vid also talking about it and I think TheKoolaidLine nails it. What positive behaviors does KDR promote in a game like Planetside? Why is it a stat worthy of being displayed in the game? Because like DrankTHEKoolaid... I can't think of a good reason to have it.

Kill Death Ratio (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB8-ROmbNQw)

And in the first two minutes he gets a generator down solo. Somehow I don't think he was going to accomplish that if he kept dying two times for every kill he got.

Since there's infinite respawn, there's no virtue to killing the enemy more than they kill you. The only thing of strategic importance is killing the spawn points and then whatever had spawned. Suicidal tactics do that best in this game.

You're completely wrong of course. Killing brings you closer to objectives. The spacemen are the obstacle. Piling your corpse onto them at gunpoint only prolongs their defense against you. Managing a favorable exchange rate will push them back though. That is the entire point of the MAX crash, they are made for pushing into defenses and killing every non-MAX class with a good exchange rate.

[sauna]

Yes, please remove the death stat.

I'm tired of people logging off instead of dying. This happens on Miller and the players doing it...well, not hard to figure out by looking at what people has the highest K/D.

Same people also deconstruct their vehicles instead of losing a fight, mid-air, ground..whatever.

So sad individuals...

[RSphil]

i play Aces high with is a WW2 combat aircraft simulator. there is no K/D in this and none cares how many times you die. and we die a lot. with up to 600 aircraft and vehicles on the huge battlegrounds there are a lot of bullets heading for your squadrons. we fly into air battles that we are out numbered and still love it.

i think if K/D was removed more people would fight instead of hiding behind doors. bases would flip more as people would rush in and attack.

this is only my opinion from what i have seen when playing games with no K/D.

we shall see what soe chooses but i for one dont care about k/d as this game is too big not to die. it should be more about ground control and tactics then how many times you died.

i still love the game and play either way.

[Pella]

The only people that moan about the K/D stat are the people with a terrible one.

FPS culture, and competitiveness evolves around that very stat.

Win/Lose ratio.

[Babyfark McGeez]

I see a prominent k/d ratio not as the disease, but as a symptom of the overarching "disease" that is a (progression) system focused too much on personal performance in a faction (team) based game.

And together with flawed base design the result is rewarding cheesy gameplay.
I had my best k/d ratio (and xp/hour which is the REAL measurement of personal performance in ps2 - and is just as silly) when i was suicide bombing with c4 inside biolabs my faction was attacking; Jump out of teleport-spawnhut, fly high throw some c4 down, detonate it, die, repeat. I didn't even go for the cap points (like apparently EVERYONE ELSE TOO when i asked in /yell...), because well, it would end the killfarm...

That's why i have been saying you have to think this shit through before you go and build your game upon a progression system that undermines the actual idea of the game.

And we haven't even touched the "story" subject of how stupid it is for the military to intentionally put their troops at such a disadvantage untill they are deemed "worthy" enough to protect themselves better.

Sigh...i'm getting off track here...the point is: This whole progression (cert,xp) system is hindering the game(play). And making k/d ratios a prominent thing is adding to that problem.

[Assist]

The core game can do without the stat completely though because no one has listed any positive behaviors that the stat actually promotes in the core game.

I guess I see it differently, I don't see how they negatively impact a game. The reason people don't play the objectives in PS2 is because the objectives are meaningless. Once again, I think you guys are really giving the K/D stat far too much credit. It doesn't determine what players do, the players decide that and I think they decide that based on what is fun for them. Taking out a generator at a base means nothing in PS2, because it takes 15s to repair it back to full.

Your complaint seems to be that players are not playing the objectives in Planetside 2. I think you're wrong to correlate that to the K/D stat, as that is not the cause of the issue. The cause is the objectives have very little meaning or even impact on the game, other than for a few seconds(or a base cap, sometimes up to a whole big hour! :eek:)

[DrankTHEKoolaid]

1. Removing KD would obviously imply removing the death stat as well, I thought that kind of went without saying lol.

2. For those saying you use KD to track your progress... really? You need a stat to tell you that you're improving? And again getting a higher KD doesn't necessarily mean you're improving. It could mean you just simply decided to play a different class that day, or started using tanks more often.

3. Many people said to me after this video that camping hundreds of meters from the fight is because of certs not KD, look at games like Battlefield, (closest thing we have to PS2) there are no certs yet people still take a tank and sit on a hill hundreds of meters away. It's because they want a better KD.

4. Some of the best shooters of all time never had a KD or any stats for that matter, you played them because they were FUN, not because of a number.

Bottom line is that I don't think KD by itself is a bad thing, but when a number starts altering how you play, it can negatively affect games as a whole. It promotes camping, not just in PS2 but in every FPS. Furthermore it's not a true indicator, especially in a game like PS2, of how much you're actually helping your game.

[RSphil]

The only people that moan about the K/D stat are the people with a terrible one.

FPS culture, and competitiveness evolves around that very stat.

Win/Lose ratio.

not always true. mine is 2.88 or something and im for it being removed. i think in a game of this sort it hurts it more then anything. but again only imho

[Pella]

not always true. mine is 2.88 or something and im for it being removed. i think in a game of this sort it hurts it more then anything. but again only imho

Who decided that 2,88 wasn't terrible?

Your perception of what is good and what everyone else thinks is good for themselfs is totally different.

That is the point.

[p0intman]

Remove k/d entirely. I agree fully.

[DrankTHEKoolaid]

The only people that moan about the K/D stat are the people with a terrible one.

FPS culture, and competitiveness evolves around that very stat.

Win/Lose ratio.

Not true at all. FPS culture and competitive play started with games that never had a KD ratio. You also have to remember that this is an MMO also, not just an FPS. And because of that there are incredibly lopsided fights, not to mention horrible performance issues that set people back. PS2 is not a competitive E-Sports type game, even if they want it to be.

Also every other MMO I've played doesn't have a KD and they can be just as or more competitive than PS2. Granted they are mostly MMORPGs but still even in their most competitive/controlled PVP forms most don't have stats.

[Snydenthur]

This is one of those topics, where you can't blame stats. It's up to what people want to do. Others, who are probably on outfits, that actually try to play objectives, are there for a reason. They want to play objectives. Then there are those, that aren't interested in playing objectives and they tend to just try to kill as much as they can. And of course anything from between, but those are the main categories of players, as I see it.

Removing some stat from the game just doesn't help in any way. People will still want to kill more people than they want to die. And it's not actually very beneficial to just run and die at the objective either, so even the most hardcore objective-only-players care about their kd-ratio, in a way.

There is only one way you can promote objective playing a tiny bit and it's to do something to snipers. I don't mind someone sitting at a hill out of battle waiting for the enemy to stop for few seconds (as you can't really make someone play the game like you want), but they are worse to objective playing than anyone that only thinks about kd-ratio. Tanks sitting at the hill pounding enemy are at least taking some attention from the enemy, but snipers only attract other snipers and that way they are pretty useless. And I do see too much snipers, especially the newer players. And I did say snipers, not infiltrator, since sniping isn't infiltrating. :)

[Assist]

1. Removing KD would obviously imply removing the death stat as well, I thought that kind of went without saying lol.

2. For those saying you use KD to track your progress... really? You need a stat to tell you that you're improving? And again getting a higher KD doesn't necessarily mean you're improving. It could mean you just simply decided to play a different class that day, or started using tanks more often.

3. Many people said to me after this video that camping hundreds of meters from the fight is because of certs not KD, look at games like Battlefield, (closest thing we have to PS2) there are no certs yet people still take a tank and sit on a hill hundreds of meters away. It's because they want a better KD.

4. Some of the best shooters of all time never had a KD or any stats for that matter, you played them because they were FUN, not because of a number.

Bottom line is that I don't think KD by itself is a bad thing, but when a number starts altering how you play, it can negatively affect games as a whole. It promotes camping, not just in PS2 but in every FPS. Furthermore it's not a true indicator, especially in a game like PS2, of how much you're actually helping your game.

2. You seem to think using a stat to show progress is a bad thing? What exactly do you think statistics are for? The entire point is to show how well you play, rather than just assuming you played better.

3. In Battlefield you gained XP from sitting far away at a more consistent rate than charging into a fight. The XP gain is what causes this playstyle, not the K/D. More XP = More Weapons and attachments.

4. The Quake series is my ultimate FPS game. I love all of them, I've played them since the day they were released and still play them to this day. I remember, a week after Quake 1 released, loading the software to the server to allow stat tracking. That was back in 1996. Name me a single great FPS out there that didn't have stat tracking.

You guys seem to think since this stat is shown it's a problem. It's not, it's been shown in game after game for years. It doesn't alter playstyle at all either. The guy farming from his Liberator isn't doing so to improve his K/D, he's doing so for the ridiculous amount of XP.

You guys really should go look at the K/D stats of players rather than assuming everyone is just farming for K/D. No one that I know on Waterson farms for their K/D ratio. I know plenty who farm for XP, and even I can be accused of this. But to farm for K/D? lol K/D is meaningless. Certs, XP, score per hour is not meaningless. But all of these things come back to only one thing - The lack of a reason to not sit at a place farming(XP or K/D). There is essentially no 'end-game' in PS2, so people treat it like an arena DM server. They don't do that because they want to improve their K/D, they do it because there's nothing else worth doing in the game.

[Sturmhardt]

They should just never show the deaths, not even on external sites.

.sent via phone.

[DrankTHEKoolaid]

2. You seem to think using a stat to show progress is a bad thing? What exactly do you think statistics are for? The entire point is to show how well you play, rather than just assuming you played better.

3. In Battlefield you gained XP from sitting far away at a more consistent rate than charging into a fight. The XP gain is what causes this playstyle, not the K/D. More XP = More Weapons and attachments.

4. The Quake series is my ultimate FPS game. I love all of them, I've played them since the day they were released and still play them to this day. I remember, a week after Quake 1 released, loading the software to the server to allow stat tracking. That was back in 1996. Name me a single great FPS out there that didn't have stat tracking.

You guys seem to think since this stat is shown it's a problem. It's not, it's been shown in game after game for years. It doesn't alter playstyle at all either. The guy farming from his Liberator isn't doing so to improve his K/D, he's doing so for the ridiculous amount of XP.

You guys really should go look at the K/D stats of players rather than assuming everyone is just farming for K/D. No one that I know on Waterson farms for their K/D ratio. I know plenty who farm for XP, and even I can be accused of this. But to farm for K/D? lol K/D is meaningless. Certs, XP, score per hour is not meaningless. But all of these things come back to only one thing - The lack of a reason to not sit at a place farming(XP or K/D). There is essentially no 'end-game' in PS2, so people treat it like an arena DM server. They don't do that because they want to improve their K/D, they do it because there's nothing else worth doing in the game.

2. Again. You really need to look at a number to tell how good you're doing?

3. In Battlefield people don't camp on a mountain for EXP, if you wanted EXP there is a million ways to get it faster. I could play an entire round of conquest and not shoot a single person and finish higher on the scoreboard than people who do this. THEY DO IT FOR KD, it's obvious.

4. So did the stats software make Quake good? It wasn't a good game until they came out? Also Quake was actually a competitive game, Planetside 2 has a ton of variables that make it not so.

[Assist]

2. Again. You really need to look at a number to tell how good you're doing?

3. In Battlefield people don't camp on a mountain for EXP, if you wanted EXP there is a million ways to get it faster. I could play an entire round of conquest and not shoot a single person and finish higher on the scoreboard than people who do this. THEY DO IT FOR KD, it's obvious.

4. So did the stats software make Quake good? It wasn't a good game until they came out? Also Quake was actually a competitive game, Planetside 2 has a ton of variables that make it not so.

The stats didn't change it at all, that's the point. The stats are completely irrelevant to the game. Like you just insinuated, the game play is not effected at all by the statistics of the individual players but by how good the game actually plays. There's no reason to capture a continent right now, so why the hell would I go out of my way to do boring shit for an hour? It's much more fun for a player to go play in a Bio Lab and enjoy their arena-style shooter setting than it is for them to go complete the worthless objectives that this game is supposed to be designed around.

Stats don't change anything with the player mentality. I can give you a perfect example from Quake, and most other FPS games. Capture the Flag - The entire point of the game is to gain more flag captures for your team. That's the ONLY measure of success in the game. Statistics in Capture the Flag meant nothing, yet they are tracked in nearly every current shooter. Your K/D is readily available in BF3 for CTF(or Domination, same shit), but it means nothing to anyone because the game ends based on flag captures.
In Planetside 2 - No one gives two shits if you capture Esamir or Amerish. It means nothing, you didn't accomplish anything by taking it. You don't receive anything worthwhile. It's not a measure of success. The only measure of success in PS2, and the only thing most players care about, is what they're going to spend their certs on and what items they can purchase, or how long until they can purchase the next item. K/D doesn't even come into the equation at all. No one cares about K/D, they care about having 1000 certs saved up for when those Empire Specific Launchers come out.

[RSphil]

Who decided that 2,88 wasn't terrible?

Your perception of what is good and what everyone else thinks is good for themselfs is totally different.

That is the point.

in a game where size matters k/d should not be a thing bothers real planetside players as you may be shot from any angle from any place. k/d for smaller games like battlefield ect is ok. them games i had very high k/d. id say my k/d is good considering i actually fight on and behind the front lines. imo a game of this size k/d should be the deciding factor on how people play.

i have seen too many people standing around door ways instead of pushing the fight and taking out the enemy.

as i have said in all my posts this is my opinion. having played fps games for many, many years i have seen how k/d effects gameplay and for planetside i see it effecting it in a negative way.

[Dragonskin]

The only people that moan about the K/D stat are the people with a terrible one.

FPS culture, and competitiveness evolves around that very stat.

Win/Lose ratio.

Most FPS games focus around TDM and variations of that. COD and Halo are MLG games... Battlefield isn't why?

It's not that type of game. Planetside 2 is also not that game. Wins/Loses don't really matter in games that have so many variables outside of the players personal control. KDR doesn't matter because you are supposed to want to capture the objectives like in the BF series.

I don't care about my KDR. In my signature I have one character that is negative and the other is positive. That mostly boils down to the outfits I am running with because they both operate differently and approach things differently.

I am fully aware of how to increase my stats. I have upgrades on my lib, MBTs and ESFs that could allow me to farm up to my hearts content. I don't really enjoy kill whoring so I mostly attack the objective... again even though I have played almost every FPS under the sun since Doom... Battlefield is more my game type that arena style Halo/COD.

[Assist]

i have seen too many people standing around door ways instead of pushing the fight and taking out the enemy.
.

Why should they push through that doorway? If they stand inside that shield barrier and shoot out they're going to gain a lot more than the 1000 XP you get for the base capture. Has nothing to do with death, has nothing to do with dying, has everything to do with XP gain.

You think people bought rocket pods to get a high K/D? Zephyr to get a high K/D? No they buy them to get more XP so they can buy more items, get closer to BR100, feel like they've accomplished some sort of advancement in the game. Taking that base, gaining 1000 xp, means nothing when they can sit inside that shield and get 2x the amount of XP of those tards running out of that shield dying before they do any damage to get XP.

Make that base worth 10,000 XP, may change things(and open up other issues). Might be worth those few deaths to try to get that generator down. Right now, there's no reason whatsoever to charge to your death to get that generator down - the reward simply isn't there compared to the alternatives.

But people are really driving home on the wrong subject, it's not KDR that is the issues - It's XP/Hr that is the issue and it's not an easy fix.

[DrankTHEKoolaid]

The stats didn't change it at all, that's the point. The stats are completely irrelevant to the game. Like you just insinuated, the game play is not effected at all by the statistics of the individual players but by how good the game actually plays. There's no reason to capture a continent right now, so why the hell would I go out of my way to do boring shit for an hour? It's much more fun for a player to go play in a Bio Lab and enjoy their arena-style shooter setting than it is for them to go complete the worthless objectives that this game is supposed to be designed around.

Stats don't change anything with the player mentality. I can give you a perfect example from Quake, and most other FPS games. Capture the Flag - The entire point of the game is to gain more flag captures for your team. That's the ONLY measure of success in the game. Statistics in Capture the Flag meant nothing, yet they are tracked in nearly every current shooter. Your K/D is readily available in BF3 for CTF(or Domination, same shit), but it means nothing to anyone because the game ends based on flag captures.
In Planetside 2 - No one gives two shits if you capture Esamir or Amerish. It means nothing, you didn't accomplish anything by taking it. You don't receive anything worthwhile. It's not a measure of success. The only measure of success in PS2, and the only thing most players care about, is what they're going to spend their certs on and what items they can purchase, or how long until they can purchase the next item. K/D doesn't even come into the equation at all. No one cares about K/D, they care about having 1000 certs saved up for when those Empire Specific Launchers come out.

To me taking a base is with my outfit/team/friends is a success. I don't need a stat telling me that I won something either, that's kind of my entire point. Taking a hard fought base in PS2 is much more gratifying to me than winning a 10 minute round of (insert other FPS here).

I can't really talk about Quake since I never played it but are you really gonna try and tell me that nobody camps in FPS because they want to improve their KD? Seriously?

[typhaon]

LOL!

Call me crazy - but it doesn't sound like they are de-emphasizing it...

By adding a consumable item to refresh your KDR - that I assume will cost $$$ - it sounds like they are actually emphasizing the stat and trying to capitalize financially on how much players care about this stat.

* For the record... I don't think there is anything wrong with the stat.

[DrankTHEKoolaid]

Why should they push through that doorway? If they stand inside that shield barrier and shoot out they're going to gain a lot more than the 1000 XP you get for the base capture. Has nothing to do with death, has nothing to do with dying, has everything to do with XP gain.

You think people bought rocket pods to get a high K/D? Zephyr to get a high K/D? No they buy them to get more XP so they can buy more items, get closer to BR100, feel like they've accomplished some sort of advancement in the game. Taking that base, gaining 1000 xp, means nothing when they can sit inside that shield and get 2x the amount of XP of those tards running out of that shield dying before they do any damage to get XP.

Make that base worth 10,000 XP, may change things(and open up other issues). Might be worth those few deaths to try to get that generator down. Right now, there's no reason whatsoever to charge to your death to get that generator down - the reward simply isn't there compared to the alternatives.

But people are really driving home on the wrong subject, it's not KDR that is the issues - It's XP/Hr that is the issue and it's not an easy fix.

LOL!

Call me crazy - but it doesn't sound like they are de-emphasizing it...

By adding a consumable item to refresh your KDR - that I assume will cost $$$ - it sounds like they are actually emphasizing the stat and trying to capitalize financially on how much players care about this stat.

Ya basically, and by being able to reset it, it becomes more meaningless.

[Silent Thunder]

LOL!

Call me crazy - but it doesn't sound like they are de-emphasizing it...

By adding a consumable item to refresh your KDR - that I assume will cost $$$ - it sounds like they are actually emphasizing the stat and trying to capitalize financially on how much players care about this stat.

* For the record... I don't think there is anything wrong with the stat.

In all honesty, if you're the type of person who gets so worked up over K/D that you're willing to spend actual money on resetting it... well you deserve to have that money taken away from you. :rofl:

[Assist]

To me taking a base is with my outfit/team/friends is a success. I don't need a stat telling me that I won something either, that's kind of my entire point. Taking a hard fought base in PS2 is much more gratifying to me than winning a 10 minute round of (insert other FPS here).

I can't really talk about Quake since I never played it but are you really gonna try and tell me that nobody camps in FPS because they want to improve their KD? Seriously?

So you don't need rewards for taking anything then? Just taking the base is enough? What about when you lose the base 30 minutes later when your outfit moves on? Did it matter then? Did you feel like you needed to go defend it? No - because that base itself was completely meaningless. You enjoyed the fact that you were involved in a great fight. You didn't accomplish anything that will matter the next day, you simply won a fight. Similarly, you would of enjoyed the same fight on open ground in the middle of no where, as long as it was an even hard fought encounter. The idea that your team beat the other team is enough for you, if it was hard fought. I agree with you on this point too, and I think most PS2 players feel this way as well, the problem is where that fight is or what is gained by the result of that fight doesn't matter.
What if it wasn't hard fought? Do you still enjoy taking that base? Ghost capping is boring as shit and completely unrewarding. Just like defending against it is completely unrewarding. It's simply not fun to go somewhere that a fight doesn't exist. Even though there's 50 objectives out there, all easily attainable, no one wants to go do them because it's not rewarding. It's far more rewarding to kill the same people over and over for hours on end, because the alternatives suck.

No one goes to sit at the Crown or to Bio Labs or anywhere to gain a high KDR. They go to gain XP. XP is what drives this game, gaining certs is the only objective in the game that lasts day to day. I could make a character today and sit somewhere for 6 hours and maintain a 60:1 KDR, but what's the point if I only kill 60 people in 6 hours? I'll have a stat to show for it, and that's it. Whereas if I go kill 600 people in 6 hours, but have 600 deaths, I'll have gained a shitton of XP and certs to go with it. I can use that to actually purchase a new weapon or new attachment. But taking that empty base in the corner? Defending a base solo for hours to get a high KDR? That stuff doesn't matter the next day, it didn't improve me as a player or my character at all.

[Rolfski]

I just came across this idea and I kinda liked it. It draws inspiration from Tribes where they kept the kill stats but removed the death stats in favor of something more objective based: http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/statistics-what-could-be-tracked.106667/

[DrankTHEKoolaid]

So you don't need rewards for taking anything then? Just taking the base is enough? What about when you lose the base 30 minutes later when your outfit moves on? Did it matter then? Did you feel like you needed to go defend it? No - because that base itself was completely meaningless. You enjoyed the fact that you were involved in a great fight. You didn't accomplish anything that will matter the next day, you simply won a fight. Similarly, you would of enjoyed the same fight on open ground in the middle of no where, as long as it was an even hard fought encounter. The idea that your team beat the other team is enough for you, if it was hard fought. I agree with you on this point too, and I think most PS2 players feel this way as well, the problem is where that fight is or what is gained by the result of that fight doesn't matter.
What if it wasn't hard fought? Do you still enjoy taking that base? Ghost capping is boring as shit and completely unrewarding. Just like defending against it is completely unrewarding. It's simply not fun to go somewhere that a fight doesn't exist. Even though there's 50 objectives out there, all easily attainable, no one wants to go do them because it's not rewarding. It's far more rewarding to kill the same people over and over for hours on end, because the alternatives suck.

No one goes to sit at the Crown or to Bio Labs or anywhere to gain a high KDR. They go to gain XP. XP is what drives this game, gaining certs is the only objective in the game that lasts day to day. I could make a character today and sit somewhere for 6 hours and maintain a 60:1 KDR, but what's the point if I only kill 60 people in 6 hours? I'll have a stat to show for it, and that's it. Whereas if I go kill 600 people in 6 hours, but have 600 deaths, I'll have gained a shitton of XP and certs to go with it. I can use that to actually purchase a new weapon or new attachment. But taking that empty base in the corner? Defending a base solo for hours to get a high KDR? That stuff doesn't matter the next day, it didn't improve me as a player or my character at all.

Look I agree with you on the meta game for the most part. I don't need a huge reward for capturing something or a pat on the back but I won't disagree that changes need to be made to the overall winning/losing aspect of the game.

But for the KD thing though, you are helping me prove my point. People do camp for hours in stupid spots for KD. This is not new, I gave you the Battlefield example and it's not people who want exp, half the time it's battle rank 100s. You can make any argument you want but KD DOES change how SOME people play. If you won't admit that then I don't know wht else to say.

[NotTheMomma]

I skimmed through the thread, and I think you have all completely lost focus on the point. No matter how you feel about KDR, this is what is the issue: SOE wants to sell the ability for players to directly manipulate their statistics without playing the game. WHAT KIND OF REVISIONIST BS IS THAT?!

[bpostal]

I skimmed through the thread, and I think you have all completely lost focus on the point. No matter how you feel about KDR, this is what is the issue: SOE wants to sell the ability for players to directly manipulate their statistics without playing the game. WHAT KIND OF REVISIONIST BS IS THAT?!

It's the capitalist version of the Ministry of Truth?

[Assist]

Look I agree with you on the meta game for the most part. I don't need a huge reward for capturing something or a pat on the back but I won't disagree that changes need to be made to the overall winning/losing aspect of the game.

But for the KD thing though, you are helping me prove my point. People do camp for hours in stupid spots for KD. This is not new, I gave you the Battlefield example and it's not people who want exp, half the time it's battle rank 100s. You can make any argument you want but KD DOES change how SOME people play. If you won't admit that then I don't know wht else to say.

I'm sure it changes how someone out there plays. There's no high BR's on Waterson that I know of who just pad their K/D stat. Plenty of farm XP to get more certs though. Plenty who will go out of their way to maintain a high XP/Hr, all of which completely avoids accomplishing objectives. The root of the problem is the lack of incentive to complete objectives. It's simply too rewarding on a personal level to do other things and there are no real team goals in this game as the rewards for doing so are not worth it.
The only exception to it is people who play for pride - for winning that empty base or taking over that continent. But those people are in the same ballpark as the KDR guys, it's pride that drives them and anything else in the game is irrelevant.

I just don't understand the fuss over KDR. It's not a driving force in this game. XP/Hr definitely is, but KDR is just a stat and it doesn't impact the game at all.

[Assist]

I skimmed through the thread, and I think you have all completely lost focus on the point. No matter how you feel about KDR, this is what is the issue: SOE wants to sell the ability for players to directly manipulate their statistics without playing the game. WHAT KIND OF REVISIONIST BS IS THAT?!

Actually his point was to remove the KDR stat, which we're still focusing on.

SoE selling a meaningless object shouldn't matter to anyone. It's no different than someone buying camo. If someone wants to pay the money to change their appearance than more power to 'em.

[PredatorFour]

Plenty who will go out of their way to maintain a high XP/Hr, all of which completely avoids accomplishing objectives..

..I just don't understand the fuss over KDR. It's not a driving force in this game. XP/Hr definitely is, but KDR is just a stat and it doesn't impact the game at all.

Both stats are not great really. A high KDR is quite easy to get and so is XP/Hr... Both avoid objectives most of the time. If someone has a high one or the other it doesn't mean they're great planetside players at all. But i guess it's down to personal opinion.

[Rothnang]

I disagree. KDR should not only be a stat, it should also be useful.

The game shouldn't reward people for suicidal behavior, because that destroys the risk vs reward mechanic.

Something like doing a C4 run on an enemy tank should be a high risk / high reward strategy, but since the risk is made non-existent by free respawning it becomes a no risk / high reward strategy, and that is stupid.

KDR is the only thing that currently tells people that high risk strategies even exist.


I used to be firmly in the KDR leads to cowardly players camp, and I still think trying to stay alive for the sake of a stat is stupid, but I do applaud people who actually measure the risks they take, because they are the people that make deeper strategy possible.

That said, fuck spawn room shields, people who camp behind them are vermin.

[AuntLou]

If you remove it in game it'll still be easy for stat sites do just to the math. It'll exist until they get rid of kills and/or deaths.

Just leave it alone. Is it really that bad???? If you get rid of it it'll encourage the exact opposite behavior, everyone just Leroy Jenkinsing all over, suicide killing and such.

[AThreatToYou]

Most people playing shooters will always do everything they can do avoid death.


If my KDR isn't being tracked, this is 100% untrue for me. My game behavior is drastically altered by the game having a KDR and I wish the game wouldn't track how many times you've died, period.

[satori]

KDR is my own personal metagame (something the game lacks)

[Dragonskin]

I'm sure it changes how someone out there plays. There's no high BR's on Waterson that I know of who just pad their K/D stat. Plenty of farm XP to get more certs though. Plenty who will go out of their way to maintain a high XP/Hr, all of which completely avoids accomplishing objectives. The root of the problem is the lack of incentive to complete objectives. It's simply too rewarding on a personal level to do other things and there are no real team goals in this game as the rewards for doing so are not worth it.
The only exception to it is people who play for pride - for winning that empty base or taking over that continent. But those people are in the same ballpark as the KDR guys, it's pride that drives them and anything else in the game is irrelevant.

I just don't understand the fuss over KDR. It's not a driving force in this game. XP/Hr definitely is, but KDR is just a stat and it doesn't impact the game at all.

I like how you try to talk for everyone when you have people in this very thread that do worry about their K/D and mostly only because it is a stat that is shown.

Also I have seen streams of people that if they die repeatedly they go somewhere else... not because they want a challenge... no, they want to get easy kills. Just because you claim that KDR doesn't affect you doesn't make it true for the other 99% of the people playing the game.

[psijaka]

I didn't like K/D being prominent in the in game profile page and leaderboards as it was a while back, but now that it is buried fairly inconspicuously on the stats page I've no real objection to it. Like it or not, many players will look at their K/D (even though it means very little in PS), so why not let them if that is what they want?

I'm no K/D whore, but I do like to kill and I don't like to die!

[Sturmhardt]

Guys... It's to affect, not to effect. With an a. It means to influence something. Has nothing to do with the effect. I read that a lot lately. Thank you ;)

.sent via phone.

[Sturmhardt]

Damn double post... Wanted to edit, sorry...

[SternLX]

Too be completely honest. The most important metric to me is my Damage given vs Damage received. That gives me a better idea of how I am performing personally. Also the K+A/D metric to some extent.

Looking at my stats recently I feel accomplished in knowing I have caused more damage and destruction than I have taken.

One could say I live for the assists. :) Assists being team oriented and all.

[camycamera]

K/D ratio does heavily influence some people from say, the CoD crowd, as they claim it is a measure of skill. fucking idiots, it is all of their faults.

AND OMG LOOK AT MAH K/D I MUST SUCK WHY AM I PLAYING THIS GAME

that is the reaction they get when their K/D is low.

[Assist]

I like how you try to talk for everyone when you have people in this very thread that do worry about their K/D and mostly only because it is a stat that is shown.

Also I have seen streams of people that if they die repeatedly they go somewhere else... not because they want a challenge... no, they want to get easy kills. Just because you claim that KDR doesn't affect you doesn't make it true for the other 99% of the people playing the game.

K guess I should just give up then. Clearly I'm the 1% who doesn't give a fuck about KDR because as I've made my argument over and over that it has very little to do with gameplay I still seem to be ignored. I'll be sure to add in my signature that I speak for myself, but I assumed that was a given on these forums.

Your complaint is that people are not effectively contributing to your faction and I'm trying to get to the real root of the problem that they HAVE NO REASON TO CONTRIBUTE.
They gain absolutely nothing from contributing to their faction compared to just killing people. The only gains you can have in Planetside 2 come from expierence and certification gain. Those come faster and more consistently from farming (XP, KDR, whatever) than contributing to your faction.

If people don't understand that than whatever. It's a shame because most people on here do nothing but bitch about the lack of metagame, which is the only reason this KDR discussion is even brought up. Yet in this thread people say "COD KIDS" rather than just continuing to point at the true problem of PS2, the lack of incentive to complete any objective.

You shouldn't be concerned with why people care about their KDR, you should be concerned with why they don't care about the objectives of PS2.

[Ghoest9]

The reset ability is a defacto removal of K/D


Thats good enough.

[Climhazzard]

Removing K/D without removing Death´s solves nothing.

In all the discussions I've seen about K/D, someone inevitably proposes removing Deaths, too. Oddly, nobody proposes removing Kills. Why is that?

K/D is a problem for the insecure.

It's amusing how well that statement works against both sides of the argument.

Score per minute is also trash. [...] In Planetside 2 it could have been a good metric, but was screwed over when they decided to put implants and membership boosts in the game.

SOE realizes this. They have plans to remove boosts and member benefits from affecting a character's Score.

1. Removing KD would obviously imply removing the death stat as well, I thought that kind of went without saying lol.

But why just Deaths? Why not Kills, too?

2. For those saying you use KD to track your progress... really? You need a stat to tell you that you're improving?

Businesses and professional athletes compare their most recent performance numbers with past performance numbers to figure out whether what they're doing now is better or worse than what they were doing before.

Regular people do this, too, by, for example, comparing their finances now to their finances in the past. If you have less money now than you did in the past, it's wise to figure out why that is and what you can do to correct it, if necessary.

3. Many people said to me after this video that camping hundreds of meters from the fight is because of certs not KD, look at games like Battlefield, (closest thing we have to PS2) there are no certs yet people still take a tank and sit on a hill hundreds of meters away. It's because they want a better KD.

I don't play BF3, but don't they also get XP for various things? Why do you assume that bettering their K/D is the sole, or even primary, reason that these people were engaging in those tactics?

I have to concur with others that K/D is a red herring, a scapegoat. People understand that the more time you spend dead, the less time you spend gaining XP and, therefore, CP.

Playing the objective is less rewarding than sitting back and killing the enemy when XP/CP are the primary means of advancement.

I skimmed through the thread, and I think you have all completely lost focus on the point. No matter how you feel about KDR, this is what is the issue: SOE wants to sell the ability for players to directly manipulate their statistics without playing the game. WHAT KIND OF REVISIONIST BS IS THAT?!

It's revisionist bullshit that has no meaningful impact on any human endeavor. If K/D is meaningless, why are people so upset that others can simply reset it? Let people type in their own K/D for all I care...

[maradine]

It's revisionist bullshit that has no meaningful impact on any human endeavor. If K/D is meaningless, why are people so upset that others can simply reset it? Let people type in their own K/D for all I care...

Precisely.

[Assist]

From the PS2 official forums:

Risk / Reward needs to come from a meta-game with meaning not some COD K/D bull sh*t.


What sort of person would pay for this?

oh wait...

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/soldier/BuzzCutPsycho/stats/234889457/


lols, always those damn CoD/BF kids ruin PS2! This is what happens when people stereotype a group, they look like tools while they do it and look like even bigger tools when they're exposed for being a giant fraud :D

[Neutral Calypso]

I am not sure whether K/D needs to be removed or not.

It would be nice to see a "health healed/repaired" stat though. Is that there? I haven't checked stats in a while. :D

[ChipMHazard]

I couldn't really care any less. You can never truly remove K/D from the game, even if you remove the stat.
If they want to make some money off of people who care about their K/D, be my guest.

[Vashyo]

I don't understand why this is loathed so badly, it's yet another source of income for the welfare of this game...don't people want this game to succeed? :huh:

It's a vanity item anyway, it's not gonna affect anyone expect the people who look at other people's stats and get all jelly and complain about it and the person that feels insecure about himself and has to buy it so he can try again to be the "L33T pwnz0rz 4 LyFe!". :lol:

[Helwyr]

If they remove K/D they should remove all player performance stats. Likewise if they make K/D something you can reset all the player performance stats should be able to be reset.

Odds are some third party will come in and fill the gap and provide player stats like K/D somehow if it's removed anyway.

[Ghoest9]

Guys... It's to affect, not to effect. With an a. It means to influence something. Has nothing to do with the effect. I read that a lot lately. Thank you ;)

.sent via phone.

"to effect" can be correct.
Its also a verb meaning "bring about" or "cause."

I have no idea what specific use you were referring to since you didnt quote it. Im just talking about what you said.

[Dragonskin]

"to effect" can be correct.
Its also a verb meaning "bring about" or "cause."

I have no idea what specific use you were referring to since you didnt quote it. Im just talking about what you said.

Players are affected by KDR displays.

Kill whoring is an effect of KDR displays.

[Ghoest9]

Players are affected by KDR displays.

Kill whoring is an effect of KDR displays.


Player feedback effected a change in KDR displays.

[Artimus]

So, with the news that you can reset your KDR coming I think it is a good time to talk about simply removing this useless stat to begin with. I brought this up in another thread and felt it was worthy of it's own thread.

KDR changes your in game behavior so that you only worry about making sure you kill more than you die. It prevents you from effectively contributing to your faction.

So here is a vid also talking about it and I think TheKoolaidLine nails it. What positive behaviors does KDR promote in a game like Planetside? Why is it a stat worthy of being displayed in the game? Because like DrankTHEKoolaid... I can't think of a good reason to have it.

Kill Death Ratio (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB8-ROmbNQw)

About the OP, I feel you about KDR. PS1 was really about the contributing factor and dying was of least importance, however I enjoy knowing my KDR as I check it periodicaly when I play. Does this effect my playing? Nope. If my KDR is shit I really don't care, but honestly there is to much to kill for it suck. Even if this "stat" was taken out of the game it's not going to.change shit. You might as well take out your kills/deaths in a play period stat, but that is just stupid imo.

[Assist]

Players are affected by XP displays.

Kill whoring is an effect of XP displays.

Fixed it for you -_-

[almalino]

I vote to keep KDR in game. I do not really care about it but some times I check it out in case I manage to kill a lot of guys in a short period of time just to be proud of myself.

[Baneblade]

PS1 didn't track deaths and it was fine. Could be why farming got to popular thought.

[Dragonskin]

Fixed it for you -_-

Killing a single vehicle now is worth 4-10x more exp than killing a single player. Are you telling me that people are going last hit crazy for killing vehicles now? no. Sure some people like to kill vehicles slightly more than before, but people would rather just slaughter infantry to rack up kills. Killing vehicles and taking objectives flash much bigger exp numbers than killing players does. Especially players spawning at the spawn room.. which are still being camped by tanks, liberators and ESF so they can rack up kills.

[KodanBlack]

Give people a choice: You can focus on just killing stuff/ improve your K/D, but it won't level you up as fast compared to playing the objective.

I like where that thought process is going. The rewards for capturing and defending should be higher than the rewards for meaningless farming of enemy troops. Killing troops, vehicles, etc. should be relegated to what it is in war: a way to clear all resistance to an objective. Not some major XP bonus.

Keep the rewards for killing stuff, but make them smaller IN COMPARISON to taking and holding objectives.