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

[Malorn]

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

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

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

[Bags]

Here's my thoughts;

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

[Espion]

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

[Aurmanite]

Originally Posted by Malorn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Espion

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

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

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Aurmanite

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

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

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

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

[Aurmanite]

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

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

You don't want K/D tracking.

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

Your score idea though, I dig it.

[Espion]

Originally Posted by Malorn

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

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

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

[MadPenguin]

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

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

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

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Aurmanite

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

Your score idea though, I dig it.

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

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

[Aurmanite]

Originally Posted by Malorn

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

Opinion.

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

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

[SKYeXile]

Originally Posted by Malorn

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

This

but seriously, it tracked alot of stuff like:
outfit points, updated daily.
cert breakdowns
you could then generate reports that showed weekly monthly, yearly or daily performance.
cert breakdown:


but yea this is a snippet of a daily report, shows daily kills, outfit points, kills of each empire, hacks.
it also tracks your top 10 kill/outfit points days(the ones in red with the number)



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

[SgtMAD]

Originally Posted by Espion

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

WINNER!!!!!!!!!!

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

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

[Malorn]

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

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

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

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

[Aurmanite]

Originally Posted by Malorn

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

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

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

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

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

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