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

[Coreldan]

Originally Posted by DeeTwoEh

Reading this thread =

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]

Originally Posted by DeeTwoEh

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]

Originally Posted by 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?

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.

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by BlazingSun

KD loves his KD.

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]

Originally Posted by Eyeklops

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]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

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]

Originally Posted by Skitrel

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]

Originally Posted by Figment

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.