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

[FriendlyFire]

Originally Posted by Raymac

OK, so it was just a matter of semantics then. So for the sake of clarity, we'll call it the K/D whores. In any case, just replace what I said about "killwhores" and substitute "K/D whores".

Essentially, let people play the way they want to play. Through stats and XP you can encourage the more "correct" way to play i.e. giving more XP for mission completions and objective captures and give less XP for kills.

The bottom line really is, scoring kills AND deaths will not destroy the moral fiber of the game. I'm all for giving much more value to other "scores" but let the K/D whores have their fun too. Let's not exclude a certain type of player because we feel they are unworthy.

Pretty much all of this.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by FriendlyFire

I am saying:

People will play in ways you will not like. (those players love K&D ratios)
Those people will be playing with you.
When those people are playing with you, they will kill players.
The way those players play the game, is in no way breaking the game.


and to expand further on the part you quoted:
When a player kills another player, it is normally for a reason (i.e. objective.) This doesn't mean the area/time has a giant stamp labeled "OBJECTIVE."

I dont' care what other players value as a stat, that's up to them.

I care about what stats the game elevates and makes salient to players, which will affect the behavior of the general population.

Currently Deaths and K:D are elevated by the game and made salient. I've made a compelling argument in this thread that this is bad, and many agree with it. People who object generally fall into three categories

1) People who want to track every stat and take offense when any stat is denied to them.

2) People who do not believe the problem is actually a problem. People didn't think the world was round either so not much to say here.

3) People who misunderstand the point of the thread and think its about countering killwhoring or not liking certain playstyles. It's not about that.



There's no making the folks in the second category happy, and I don' think they need to be made happy. The problem and solution would have no impact on them either way (although they may not like devs spending any time whatsoever on it).

The third category folks I think really are first category folks that are worried that I'm attacking their playstyle (I'm not, and I'll continue to assert that).

The solution that seems to be the best compromise that makes folks in the first category happy is the one where the game doesn't promote any stats, doesn't deny any stats, but lets players choose which stats are shown to them AND which stats are shown to others who view them.

Basically it's like merits from PS1 where there's a huge list of stats, and you as a player get to decide which of those stats get displayed for yourself and others.

Its a good solution that may have gotten diluted in this discussion. It was proposed by a few different folks throughout the thread, though I believe Eyeklops first proposed it.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Raymac

The bottom line really is, scoring kills AND deaths will not destroy the moral fiber of the game. I'm all for giving much more value to other "scores" but let the K/D whores have their fun too. Let's not exclude a certain type of player because we feel they are unworthy.

I feel like a broken record here. Its not about excluding a playstyle; it's about that playstyle being imposed on every player.

Not trying to exclude a certain type of player; but I absolutely don't want certain playstyles imposed on the general population. If you want to KD whore, great, go for it. That is no reason why it should be the primary stat that every player sees.

Read the compromise solution I detailed in my post above this one about players choosing the stats important to them like they chose Merits displayed in PS1. I think you'd like it.

[Aurmanite]

The main reason why some people feel like the thread has been derailed is because the OP's position flip-flops between "I'm not discouraging a playstyle." to "This playstyle is corwardly and should be discouraged."

People who have written thousands of words discussing this topic have had their views summed up in a single sentence, and in one case outright insulted and dismissed. That is condesending and unnecessary.

The thread is about stats, and which stats should display on the HUD while the gamer is playing. In most cases, there's no way to have these somewhat intangible and somewhat abstract actions represented by an onscreen popup. You cannot reward the heroic act of sacrificing your killstreak by charging down a hallway to buy your group more time. So unfortunately for the higher thinkers out there, you will have to deal with killstreaks and K/D information on your HUD.

No one in this thread is against giving players the ability to choose that stats they value.

The OP's score stat is fantastic.

There hasn't been one good reason to remove K/D tracking in this 20+ page thread.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Aurmanite

The main reason why some people feel like the thread has been derailed is because the OP's position flip-flops between "I'm not discouraging a playstyle." to "This playstyle is corwardly and should be discouraged."

I have not flip-flopped. I've been quite consistent. And I'll summarize it yet again.

The game currently encourages a specific playstyle by promoting deaths and K.

I want it to not encourage any specific playstyle beyond something that is universal to planetside, like Score.

I also happen to believe the playstyle being currently encouraged is particularly bad for the game.

I do not feel that playstyle should be excluded from the game.

I don't see how I could be any more clear or concise about that.


To once again be absolutely clear, I don't want anyone to not have their killwhore or whatever playstyle. But it should not be imposed on every player. If you want to just killwhore and not play for any objectives - great, go for it. That doesn't mean every player needs to be encouraged to do it.

The stat doesn't have to be in every player's face for you to enjoy your killwhore playstyle.

[Aurmanite]

The in game and website stat pages have to include kills/deaths/ratio. But I'm all for being able to change the HUD display to promote objective based gameplay. How would you solve the difficulty in having tactical gameplay displayed on the HUD? What sorts of mechanics can be created to give these abstract notions a visual representation?

[Eyeklops]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Basically it's like merits from PS1 where there's a huge list of stats, and you as a player get to decide which of those stats get displayed for yourself and others.

Its a good solution that may have gotten diluted in this discussion. It was proposed by a few different folks throughout the thread, though I believe Eyeklops first proposed it.

Thanks for the credit

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Aurmanite

The in game and website stat pages have to include kills/deaths/ratio. But I'm all for being able to change the HUD display to promote objective based gameplay. How would you solve the difficulty in having tactical gameplay displayed on the HUD? What sorts of mechanics can be created to give these abstract notions a visual representation?

They don't have to include those things. They could include a set of stats that a player choses. It might always show somethign like "score" since its universal, but the rest of the stats, revives, captures, territories, kills, deaths, defenses, etc shoudl be in a big menu of choices that the game is always tracking.

You as a player could view these for yourself, and then select a subset that appear on your character screen and that appear on the website.

The ones other people see are the ones you chose to make visible.

The ones that appear on your tracking HUD (if they exist there) are the ones you chose to put there.


You decide what you care about. You decide what accomplishments are advertised to others who view your profile.

There are no defaults. If you haven't chosen a stat, there's a button that says "Choose a favorite stat" - you click it and it brings up that big menu. Select one from menu, now it displays. If you never set your defaults, you never see any stats (and nobody else does either).

Simple solution that gives the player complete control.

No playstyle is encouraged that the player didn't choose himself.

I don't see how anyone could really argue with that. It's a good design. Maybe this thread has gotten too long and diluted for that message to come clear. I'll extract out this design and put it in the idea vault or something like that.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Eyeklops

Thanks for the credit

Credit where credit is due - now help me sell it!

[HalfManHalfGod]

Great post Malorn I 100% agree. K/D does promote 1 type of game play and I've seen first hand how it affects game play. I think you've nailed the problem but what are some of the design ideas that we can come up with to solve it and make most people happy.

1 idea I've had is to display stats on the character selection screen with relevant stats to that particular class. None of the stats on character selection screen would display deaths. I think it should be provided but in some sort of overall stats page buried with other ancillary stats.

MAX/HA/LA would have your basic kill stats but much deeper. Kills/min,assists, total kills, headshots, body, arm shots, vehicles destroyed, grenade kills, total damage done etc...

Medic would have, revives, healing done, maybe some way of tracking stats of people who got revived by you giving you some sort of credit for reviving that person who otherwise would be hitting the respawn button.

Engineer: repairs, turrets deployed, kills of not only you using the turrets but of other people using "your" turrets, mines deployed.

Infiltrator: Cloaked kills, assassinations, knife kills, sniper kills, headspots, bases hacked

I think this would go a along way in promoting each classes abilities.

[Duddy]

Originally Posted by Malorn

"snipped"

2) People who do not believe the problem is actually a problem. People didn't think the world was round either so not much to say here.

There's no making the folks in the second category happy, and I don' think they need to be made happy. The problem and solution would have no impact on them either way (although they may not like devs spending any time whatsoever on it).

"snipped"

Malorn, I know you to be an intelligent guy, but was that really necessary?

It's quite clear that, as you state, these stats may have an impact on play. But I'm not wholly convinced it is as dire as you lead us to believe.

I think this comes down to perception, allow me to explain.

How does each player perceive having fun? For some it is global domination, for some it is playing efficiently and effectively as a team, some value individualistic performance and some just want to dick about.

Anyway you look at it, each player will determine how they wish to play based upon what they perceive to be fun. Now while some may be influenced by numbers or ratios, this isn't going to be the case for everyone.

You'd be right to point out that this is only conjecture, and I freely admit I don't have any numbers to back that up. But you can't honestly tell me you have information to show us that stats such as K/D were the key influencing factor as opposed to a players own preconceptions and, as a result, perceptions?

So hide the K/D by default, sure, I agree with you here and would rather see a more meaningful statistic. Preferably, as has been stated, the option to choose what is shown. Heck plenty of player options, in all facets of the game, should be the paradigm.

But honestly, it seems you want to change human nature by changing what stats are shown to a player. That would be a bold feat for any person.

TL;DR - I agree and support concept from OP, just remember some people enjoy that stuff and should be allowed to do so.

[Malorn]

This discussion has had some great ideas, one of which I discuss on this very page.

Right here.

Some asked how we could fix it, well we can fix it without completely removing K/D. See link above.

Take a page from PS1, take a page from Eyeclops. Put 'em together and I think we have a pretty darn good solution that would make even me happy. Then again I'm fairly easy to please.

But what I bring up here isn't me high on drugs, it's real shit yo.

[DownloadFailed]

I like the way you think, Malorn. I typically don't like seeing K/D ratios anywhere, least of all on myself or that one really good guy at the top of the enemy leaderboard. Honestly, one of the reasons I stopped playing call of duty (besides the fact that it's extremely repetitive, the community sucks, and I just sucked at it) was seeing my deaths pile up past my kills. It may not sound like much, but this really dissuaded me from playing the game anymore. I don't like to see how badly I've done in ONE aspect of the game, even when I've done well in other aspects like playing the objective. The only thing CoD players really look at when determining the skill of a player is their K/D ratio, which shouldn't be. A player's worth should be measured by what they do for their team first and what they do for themselves second.

So I wholeheartedly agree: Either remove deaths as a stat altogether, or tuck it away as a much less important stat. Let me choose to never look at it if I want it that way.

Score is also such a good medium to work in because it only accumulates. There's no negative to gaining score, and doing things that don't promote killing people will still add to it (as you have already stated many times) so making that the primary stat is, in my humble opinion, the best course of action.

[Baneblade]

I agree with the OP, with one exception. Mowing stats MUST be recorded.

[vVRedOctoberVv]

Well, in a lot of ways, I see where Malorn is coming from, and I agree with many of the principles he is presenting. On the other hand, I like to be able to see ALL my stats, as a means of judging my progress.

Example, I started playing PS1 with a 1:15+ K/D. Now it's more like 1:2 or 1:1 (much better).

Although stats encourage both bad and good behavior, I'm afraid there is nothing to be done on this matter. Douchebags are going to be douchebags, regardless. Also, many, MANY people would reject a game without stats, because they would say 'what's the point?'. A "completionist" culture has already been established.

A good example that I ran into is CoD:MW (I never played UT or Quake to any extent, CoD was my first online "shooter" really) where every 100 levels you can reset, get a medal, lose all your guns and start all over again. Me, I hit 100 the first time and stopped, because I didn't want to lose my guns, I was there to play the game, not to acquire achievements or tags on my name. Many people, however, reset. I'm not saying this is good or bad, my point is that the emphasis is on stats, and shiney things, etc.

If the only "progression" the game offered was feeling good about yourself for helping your faction... Most people have a very thin form of loyalty in REAL life, much less a virtual world. And simply replacing K/D with Score would not change anything, as others have mentioned. People inclined to farming/poor play are going to do it, no matter what. Just like hackers and cheats are gonna hack and cheat, no matter what.

It's a paradox, really, with no way out.