Winning/Victory in PS2 with statistics

[Graywolves]

Originally Posted by Malorn

The reality of people is that they are motivated by the things which the game and social influence tell them is important.

Statistics are just numbers of stuff that happened. By itself it is not particularly interesting. When statistics become interesting is when it is used to motivate by elevating certain statistics over others. It isn't the stats that are relevant; it's which stats the game elevates to the status of "important" that matters.

But not all stats are equal. Each stat promoted will affect gameplay because that's what the game is telling them is important. If the game promoted nothing but healing and reviews - no kills, nothing else, you'd see some pretty strange behavior no doubt of people working to improve those healing numbers. Likewise, when the game promotes a lot of killwhore stats - that is exactly what you're going to get.

If you want a game focused on results-based play, then there are some stats that reflect results-based play. To name a few...

• Facility captures
• Territory captures
• Facility Resecures/Defenses
• Territory Resecures/Defenses
• Resources gained
• Critical resources gained (stuff your empire direly needed)
• Resources denied (stuff the enemy direly needed)

These are all statistical measurements of various aspects of results-based play. If you want efficiency, then divide that by time-played. Players with high numbers of these stats are, without a doubt, contributing significantly to the advancement of their empire and leaving their mark on the persistent world.

If these things are featured prominently in the game then these will be what the players in general will strive to improve and the large measuring stick by which people compare themselves.

If you want a more personal measurement of productivity or how much you as an individual are contributing, there is but one calibrated answer:

Score / Min

Score/Min is also a results-based stat. Score/Min does not care how you got the score, whether it was by a kill streak of head shots or healing/reviving/repairing teammates, or a base capture. Score/Min does not care how many times you died (though you weren't likely earning points while dead). Score/Min is the great equalizing stat of Planetside 2. Score/Min promotes all walks of life in the game, not certain walks.

By promoting things like kill streaks, K, and other garbage stats all you are doing is discouraging teamwork and results-based play. Those stats work fine in a game without a persistent world or games revolving around deathmatch. Those aren't PlanetSide, though I understand the developer's desire to cater to the "modern FPS", but I do hope they grow a pair on this subject and do what's right for the game instead of carbon copying Modern Warfare and promoting all the terrible playhabits prominent in that game.


Promote results-based stats and you will see more results-based play.

I agree with this and especially what is bolded. Everything we need for "Victory/win" conditions is already here, the battle is just making it easy for players to identify and promoting the right kind of play. Even if the reward was just an achievement and another stat that was tracked on your record.

The only possible problem with score/min is making them equal enough so that kills don't trump everything. But I think this could be fixed or balanced out easily enough.