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

[Skitrel]

Originally Posted by BlazingSun

Ok so one last reply to this thread. Well no I don't think that the K/D tracking brings an actual benefit to the game per se, but I don't feel like the negative effects are anywhere close to what you guys fear they will be. Was PS1 unplayable all of a sudden when they patched in the K/D bar? I didn't notice a difference at all to be honest.

I guess I can only speak for my self here, but keeping K/D in mind doesn't stop me from going for objectives. I might not be the one who always places the charges in BF3 rush mode, or the one who is the first one to blindly enter a tunnel, but that doesn't mean I don't support my team. Carefull/passive playstyle =/= selfish playstyle.

What is emphasised in game won't affect experienced players, they already know what to do, they already know how they're supposed to be playing. With new players however they learn a game based on what appears to be emphasised to them as how they're supposed to be playing. Therefore, emphasis on how they should play should be where this is focused, and that is on the goal - taking Auraxis.

I guess it's a "the way is the goal" or "the goal is to reach the goal" kind of thing.

Not sure I understand what you're trying to say here.

[Death2All]

Originally Posted by Aurmanite

Are you going to play different if there is K/D tracking? I doubt it. Neither will hundreds of other like minded players. The notion that you have to discourage a completely valid gameplay choice is assinine.

I sure as shit will. I definitely played more selfishly when my K/D was at stake. I would never be the one to blindly charge down the staircase into my imminent and explosive death, I'd go in last also so I could secure all the kills to myself because I'm greedy like that. I plenty of times saw myself holding my Decimator back on a MAX so I could get the last shot in.

This has been beat over the head dozens of times in this thread but here goes again...

People will killwhore regardless if there's K/D ratios in the game or not, but not putting one in the game would PREVENT that sort of behavior in the game. If you're going to ask for proof refer to my previous post where I explained how K/Ds were removed from the scoreboard in objective based games in CALL OF DUTY of all games.

I know statistic are interesting. I love stats myself. I love the percentages of everything, how far I've run, my accuracy, how much sweat I've protruded, calorie intake. All of that. It's awesome.

HOWEVER, I don't think that the K/D statistic needs to be implemented in an objective focused like PS. It offers no benefit to the game, other than satisfying curiosity and encourages killwhore-like behavior for the masses.

Originally Posted by BlazingSun

Ok so one last reply to this thread. Well no I don't think that the K/D tracking brings an actual benefit to the game per se, but I don't feel like the negative effects are anywhere close to what you guys fear they will be. Was PS1 unplayable all of a sudden when they patched in the K/D bar? I didn't notice a difference at all to be honest.

I guess I can only speak for my self here, but keeping K/D in mind doesn't stop me from going for objectives. I might not be the one who always places the charges in BF3 rush mode, or the one who is the first one to blindly enter a tunnel, but that doesn't mean I don't support my team. Carefull/passive playstyle =/= selfish playstyle.

Edit:

I guess it's.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I'd log in PS again today. All that game is now is ToDs and stalemates until the base goes neutral. There's no pushing or tactical decisions in more. It's ALL killwhoring. The root of that is poor decision and updates from SOE, but that's whole different monster.

As you said, you're less reluctant to charge down the hallway blindly or plant the explosive because you want to preserve your K/D. You can call it careful/passive play-style but at the end of the day it's just killwhoring. People camp choke-points where it's impossible to be hit because of the hitboxes and they call it "smart" or "aera denial" but at the end of the day they're just sitting in one spot all day racking up kills and not contributing to their team at all.

[Gortha]

As an old school multiplayer shooter gamer (Doom, Duke, Quake[World] TeamFortress) i absolutely agree with Malorn/the OP.

Make the Multiplayer-Crowd better people by promoting some kind of score instead of Streaks, K : D and Deaths, Sony! Change the Genre!

[Gandhi]

Originally Posted by Skitrel

What is emphasised in game won't affect experienced players, they already know what to do, they already know how they're supposed to be playing. With new players however they learn a game based on what appears to be emphasised to them as how they're supposed to be playing. Therefore, emphasis on how they should play should be where this is focused, and that is on the goal - taking Auraxis.

Exactly. If the most prominent feedback is killstreaks, dominations, revenge kills and your K/D stats then that's what new players will play toward. And if they manage to blunder their way to a facility capture in the process, then that's icing on the cake. In reality it needs to be the other way around.

I don't think getting rid of K/D stats is the way to do this, but I really hope new players aren't given the wrong impression by having this information be the most prominent measure of how well you're doing.

[Death2All]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

But I do have to say the mainstream audience will burst if there is no k/d of any kind, just like they did that with Brink.

It probably wont hurt the game too much, I mean who wouldnt play simply due to that? (i guess some might) but still, it will be QQed about if its out.

You really think thousands of people would suddenly stop playing because there's no K/Ds in the game. If the game is fun and enjoyable they'll play the game. Sure some people care about stats, but if you're not going to play a game because stats aren't in it then good riddens I say. You're playing for the wrong reasons.


Again, I'm not saying there should be NO stats in the game, merely that the K/D should be left out because it's an objective based game and a K/D ratio is meaningless and detrimental to the game.

[Death2All]

I guess I should emphasize that this all goes towards killstreaks, dominations and revenges as I sort of left them out of my points.

Anything that distracts the player from the objective and promotes killing is detrimental to the core concept of Planetside.

[BlazingSun]

I shouldn't say "last reply" when I can't hold back ...

Originally Posted by DeeTwoEh

As you said, you're less reluctant to charge down the hallway blindly or plant the explosive because you want to preserve your K/D. You can call it careful/passive play-style but at the end of the day it's just killwhoring. People camp choke-points where it's impossible to be hit because of the hitboxes and they call it "smart" or "aera denial" but at the end of the day they're just sitting in one spot all day racking up kills and not contributing to their team at all.

I don't play passiv because of the stats, but because I want to avoid a death for the sake of avoiding the death. That's a difference. But anyway .. the thread is about the playerbase in general and I stick to what I have said.

[Aurmanite]

Originally Posted by DeeTwoEh

People will killwhore regardless if there's K/D ratios in the game or not, but not putting one in the game would PREVENT that sort of behavior in the game.

Are you even reading what you're saying?

The first half of your sentence is in direct conflict with the other.

If you play differently when there's K/D then perhaps you should re-evaluate what type of player you are. There's 1000's of people like me who are not so easily influenced by such inconsequential things.

Track everything. Let the people decide what stats are more valuable than others. Don't censor my stats because you have strange ideas about how players react to seeing them. Don't force your concepts of how people should play this game on me. You do your thing, let me do mine. If you don't want to know how many deaths you have you can ignore it. I want to know.

You're asking for the removal of something that is one of the most fundamental statistics in FPS's. Leaving it out would come across as a huge mistake. No one would understand it, and if you tried to explain it using this drug store psychology you would get laughed at.

The general person is smarter than you're giving them credit for. The only reason you generalize and make these sweeping blanket statements is because of your own vanity. You think you aren't the general population. You are.

[Eyeklops]

What if the game doesn't have K/D on by default, but instead lets you pick 1 or 2 stats from a large pool to watch on-screen. I would personally pick K/D & accuracy, but others may want bullets fired, revives, whatever. Make the default off and mix K/D in with all the other stats making it appear to be no more important than the others.

[Aurmanite]

Originally Posted by Eyeklops

What if the game doesn't have K/D on by default, but instead lets you pick 1 or 2 stats from a large pool to watch on-screen. I would personally pick K/D & accuracy, but others may want bullets fired, revives, whatever. Make the default off and mix K/D in with all the other stats making it appear to be no more important than the others.

I'm totally down with this. A player would be able to choose what stat tracking appears on the in game HUD.

[Skitrel]

Originally Posted by Aurmanite

Let the people decide what stats are more valuable than others. Don't censor my stats because you have strange ideas about how players react to seeing them. Don't force your concepts of how people should play this game on me. You do your thing, let me do mine. If you don't want to know how many deaths you have you can ignore it. I want to know.

Just to clarify. I'm not suggesting the removal of K : D within stats tracking, I'm saying it should be buried away, with something else being the primary emphasis, particularly this is of importance in teach new players what they're supposed to be doing, versus chaos.

A game that teaches players how to play properly is a game that removes the annoyance and burden newbies put on the core player base. Assimilating them from newbie into being a productive member of the war as fast as possible is key. K : D and whatever else people can think of should be in game, just not prominent. Score : Death ought to be the most prominent.

I however feel there's a place for the K : D whores. Give base defenders higher points for their kills, they don't have an objective to play other than defend. Balance this using the mass amount of stats that will accumulate throughout beta to average out at being roughly equal to what objective attackers will earn, on average of course, over many hours of play. This gives both types of players a role on the field and takes what many perceive to be a burden and turns them into an asset as part of the defensive front.

Essentially, this solves all the problems.

[Figment]

Let's consider the stats in World of Tanks, a game where winning the battle gets you more exp than killing the enemies, exp for kills AND NON-kills are shared by the amount of damage you do.

The "death" stat is portrayed as a fraction of battles you survived, rather than those you did not survive (around 60-70% of the matches, even if you win, you will die before the end). The death stat is quite meaningless. In fact, it is often frowned upon if you have a low death ratio. Why? Because people FIRST look at another ratio: wins vs losses. Then at how many matches you played. Then EXPERIENCE gained per match. Then DAMAGE per match (per unit type). Then kills and scouted enemies per match. THEN they look at your survival rate, to see if you aren't some camping twat who costs other people the match by being too passive. Basically they look at the overall picture of efficiency and try to establish that in another way than mere kills (which never tell the whole story).


Unfortunately, World of Tanks does not encourage community building itself very well as you cannot determine who you play with or against and can only team up with two buddies. However, by making wins more important than kills, they broke the traditional and erroneous way of looking at what a good player is.


A good PlanetSide player is more than a good killer. Statistics should reflect what a good PlanetSide player entails. K/D does not depict anything relevant for a PlanetSide player. Unfortunately, because it's the first thing mentioned in the bar, it's perceived as the most important thing.

It's funny that the "Assisted Kills" stat in PlanetSide, is usualy overlooked. I may get 9 kills in an hour, but get 300-500 assisted kills and a relatively lot of real estate, while dieing a whole lot more than the average player: I'm an infil. Stats should reflect THAT. Not compare me to the nearest Vanguard or Aircav gunner. It would IMO be much more interesting to track the amount of hexes, bases and resources captured in PS than the amount of deaths.


And if people start screaming about deaths, we'll just need to potty train them.

[FriendlyFire]

It doesn't have to benefit the game play to be fun.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

But I do have to say the mainstream audience will burst if there is no k/d of any kind, just like they did that with Brink.

Right, but it doesn't matter. They'll get over it like they get over every 24 hour news cycle. Should do what is right for the game, not pander to what they think people might or might not complain about.

It probably wont hurt the game too much, I mean who wouldnt play simply due to that? (i guess some might) but still, it will be QQed about if its out.

Not a single person would actually sit out PS2 due to it not having K:D tracking. Might see idle threats of account cancellation (for a f2p game, lol), but it's too insignificant and ridiculous. They'll adapt to it not being there and gravitate to another stat, just like they did with psstats. They'll focus on kills, score, and stuff like territory captures instead. Which is good for the game.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Eyeklops

What if the game doesn't have K/D on by default, but instead lets you pick 1 or 2 stats from a large pool to watch on-screen. I would personally pick K/D & accuracy, but others may want bullets fired, revives, whatever. Make the default off and mix K/D in with all the other stats making it appear to be no more important than the others.

I would settle for this approach because it places no more emphasis on it than anything else and puts the player in control over what is important to them. It effectively solves the problem provided deaths and K:D are not in the default. The default should be carefully chosen though, I have a recommendation below.

Let the user choose which stats other than the core Planetside metrics (score, territories, medals) are important. This is similar to how players in PS1 got to chose which merits they displayed. If bomber piloting was something I liked to do, then that's the merit I could display on my shoulder. Similarly, if Vanguard kills are the stat I'm proud of and the stat I work to improve every day, that should be the stat I see on my screen, AND it should be the stat others see when they view my profile online. It's like a highlight reel - I'm a vanguard driver, that's what I do.

I think some stats should be in-your-face and always there, because those are stats that people should be encouraged to improve and are good for the game. If I were to pick 3 for that, they would be:

Score/min (or current score), territory captures, and medals should always be shown in that order. Two of those are already featured on the stats page, the "territory captures" one isnt', but I really think it should be.

Then give the user at least 3 stats they can customize, which would include almost every other stat, revives, repairs, whatever.

The default for these other 3 stats should definitely not include deaths or K:D, but I think the default should include:
- Facility captures
- Kills
- Assists (including assists from driving, healing, etc)

If the person doesn't care about one or more of those they could change them, like swapping Facility Captures for Revives, or Kills for repairs or something like that.

And one other thing - the 3 stats the user picks are not just what the user sees on their screen; they are also what other people see when they view the character. That way a person can promote the stats that they care about and show them off, like you could show off merits in PS1.