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

[Hydra]

Originally Posted by Raymac

I just want to touch on this point real quick. I think this quote is a very elitist point of view. You obviously don't like killwhores. That's fine and I can respect that. However, Planetside is an open-world game with thousands of players all battling at once. I think that it should encourage and support ALL kinds of players, from the 40/0 K/D whores, to the methodical tactical squads, to the non-shooter support players.

Your way to play the game may be the best way, but it is not the ONLY way. One of the great things about Planetside should be that it is accessable to all kinds of playstyles. I believe that will add to the logevity and success of the game and a large thriving community. Norrowing the "acceptable" players down to only a certain type of person is wrong.

That's a really good point, I like that you mentioned that there are many types of play-styles, that's something I haven't considered. I suppose Killwhores will make viable meat-shields with the newbies. Touche, Touche. I suppose I was being elitist, I guess its one of those subjects that's irks me the wrong way, I'll calm down for down.

Originally Posted by Eyeklops

Hydra, let's not take this thread farther off topic. If you want to continue to debate over opinions create a new thread in the appropriate area and send me a pm linking to it.

How about No.
I'm done talking to you.

[Duddy]

Originally Posted by Skitrel

Everything in terms of stats tracked by the game already has to be tracked by the game in order to facilitate gameplay. Bullets hit, bullets fired from your gun, and so on. Adding all of the stuff you do in game to a database really isn't taxing on the game, it's just a matter of instead of throwing away the log of everything you do in game it is passed on to be parsed for a database. Stat updating probably won't happen in realtime.

You are of course entirely correct, so thank you, but I'm already aware that this could be (and probably is) the case.

I still believe that you'd be updating this to a server other than the ones hosting the game. It's not that the process is particularly CPU intensive its the potential for bandwidth consumption which could spoil things.

As you rightly state, this wouldn't be done in real time, but any large number of open DB connections at once will have a meaningful performance impact.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Hydra

That's a really good point, I like that you mentioned that there are many types of play-styles, that's something I haven't considered. I suppose Killwhores will make viable meat-shields with the newbies. Touche, Touche. I suppose I was being elitist, I guess its one of those subjects that's irks me the wrong way, I'll calm down for down.

Plus, how much fun is it to take down a killwhore using superior tactics and making him rage for losing his kill streak?

I say bring on these primative killwhore savages and we will convert them to the true path with the light of righteousness.

[Hamma]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Please stay on topic.

This.

Guys please stay on topic.. do not derail threads.

[Raymac]

I thought discouraging killwhoring was at the root of the topic?

[TacKLed]

Originally Posted by Eyeklops

Do people really think that adding or removing a live K/D meter REALLY changes the way people play?

Yes.

[Aurmanite]

Originally Posted by Hydra

[Opinion: No logical grounds provided to support this statement]
Obviously you never played the original planetside or you just sucked at it, zerging into a tower or base in my years of playing never won the day it took strategy and perseverance, my facts lie in my experience in the god damn game. Why would I even mention this if it wasn't proof already?

[Biased: Somewhat true, but you left out killwhores to shift the statement toward your own opinion]
Again Kill whores don't really contribute anything to the team, there is such a lack of team effort from their part because the only thing they are interested in their "domination" and kill streaks which unsurprisingly has been implemented in planetside 2. There is a difference between a teamplayer and a killwhore I seriously hope you know this fact, A teamplayer doesn't care about getting 20-0 in which case a killwhore does. Kills whores are useless pieces of shit.

[Opinion,unfounded claims of ownership & ability to delegate importance]

So you are saying a K/D ratio is more important then improving? Or do you like think your intelligent by stating your opinion?

Future prediction of other players abilities* using a non quantitative* term (ALOT), nice..yea, opinion

Because a K/D ratio doesn't encourage solo play and Kill whoring ok.

Opinion, speculation, how do you know that's all they have?
Ah yes, because most of current FPS's on the market DOESN'T encourage kill whoring and encourages more team-play.

Name me one game like Planetside.


[Opinion, with name calling, bravo!]




There's that word again, you seem to forget everything you also say is an opinion as well constatly repating the obvious does not make you look any smarter.
Fact of the matter is and I'll repeat it; Kill whoring does not belong in planetside due to the fact it never had a place in the first one, this isn't fucking battlefield or Cawwaduty I understand that the original will have to be brought up to meet certain FPS standards but fuck off with that garbage. There's a variety of outfits in Planetside for example DT, an excellent well coordinated group that I have seen turn the tide of battle, not once did I ever see their members zerg in a base without their team and attempt to get as many kills as they can before they die. You think anyone gives a shit about that other VS guy running out of the base by himself to find the ams and get kills? No. Because he doesn't contribute anything to the team, hell you don't even get that much experience for killing someone who just spawned.

You are truly a piece of shit player if the only thing you care about is your "K/D ratio" and not improving your skill for the glory of your empire. Yes I'm fucking pissed that this shit is even in the game in the first place, yes a K/D ratio was in the first one but half the people I know didn't even know it existed, it was in the background where it belong something - that should be personal and not fucking advertise.

And before you shout any meaninglessness garbage in a attempt to make yourself look smarter then you really are, why don't you play the original planetside right now and join in one of the battles and tell me your K/D ratio contributes to the team and wins the battle.

I don't see the point of the graph if they have that ratio, but you know what? lets face it. I mean look at your sig, you are a shitty troll and exactly the kind of problem why these fucking idiotic features have been added to this game. I've been playing planetside since 05, and I'm pretty fucking sure I know what hell I'm talking about don't start preaching to me about fucking facts- I KNOW THEM.

Kill whoring is a valid gameplay choice.

Even the term is ridiculous... it's offensive and juvenile. It's a phrase that people who are high on themselves use to demean other people for playing the game the way that is fun for them.

The whole idea of the game is to log in and kill some people. If you're killing people to capture a continent, or killing people to kill people, what the hell is the difference? You can be a super ninja spec ops glorious master of tactics and strategy, I'm happy that Planetside can offer you that experience. I dig it too... it's awesome to play with people who just want to cap the base, re-secure the tower, run the LLU, and so on. But sometimes, I just want to kill people. I just want to log in, find a fight, and let my whims guide me.

Also, lets be honest. There's only a few goals in Planetside. It has all of the same exact game modes as every shooter, including the ones everyone hates to compare it to. It has domination, capture the flag, bombing run (deliver the package) and that's it. Let's try not to romanticize and make it up to be more than it is just because it's special to us.

It is impossible to say that there is no place for in Planetside someone that just wants to jump on, have some fun, and jump off. Even if occasionally the period between jumps can some times be...several hours >.>

I can understand if you want your profile to be private, or choose what stats you want to display. If SoE does it right, the stat site could even have a social networking aspect, where your web profile operates like your Planetside facebook. Having control over your profile is important.

Stats should be tracked. All of them. This is the history of our time spent playing the game we're talking about. Maybe now at this point in time you think this is information you don't need, or want to know. But if you play Planetside 2 for as long as you played the original, in 9 years you will probably want to know how many times you died, how many times you got ran over by a Magrider, or headshot by a sniper.

[SKYeXile]

Originally Posted by Raymac

I thought discouraging killwhoring was at the root of the topic?

Lol nah, just their posting apparently.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Raymac

I thought discouraging killwhoring was at the root of the topic?

No. There's a lengthy post at the beginning of this thread that details the root of the topic.

[Saintlycow]

This is my point of view:

Streaks. I'm okay with giving a SMALL bonus for achieving a streak. After all, you're preventing them for doing important things. Make it small so that people have a greater incentive to take the base then to farm the kills.

No kill streaks. This isn't COD.

Stats. Kinda mixed on this one. Stats may be good, but not necessarily important. It gives something to achieve, but that thing may be wrong.

K/D : Show K/D, but not as the most important stat. This has been said time and time again in this thread. How about more fancy ones, such as Scoreeath.

Kill whoring : Not a fan. Camping the base is no fun in any game. However, having a few guys covering/camping the spawn room door while the rest of the outfit goes to town and clears out the outpost and takes it IS BENEFICIAL. might not be fun for the people, but interdiction is a tactic used by the military. Anyhow, like Raymac said, it feels good to kill the killwhore.

TLDR : Make kills worth very little in the grand scheme of things, and you should reply to my post because no one ever does.

[Aurmanite]

The OP is all about discouraging certain behaviors, and encouraging others. right?

This has been one of the main talking points throughout the thread.

Why should one style of enjoying the game catered to more than another?

We're talking about things like getting extra XP for killing people in a row. You seriously don't want that? You don't want faster XP?

[SKYeXile]

Originally Posted by Saintlycow

TLDR : Make kills worth very little in the grand scheme of things, and you should reply to my post because no one ever does.

That never works, its a PvP game, you need to encourage fighting eachother, kills need to be the primary method of advancement, if not people will simply avoid combat and rotate bases or something else equally lame...see WAR and Aion...in WAR people avoid fighting and rotate BOs between eahcother to get renown, in Aion everybody plays the one faction and fights the NPC mobs at the forts for GLORIOUS "PVP" GEAR.

[Aurmanite]

Originally Posted by Saintlycow

This is my point of view:

Streaks. I'm okay with giving a SMALL bonus for achieving a streak. After all, you're preventing them for doing important things. Make it small so that people have a greater incentive to take the base then to farm the kills.

No kill streaks. This isn't COD.

Stats. Kinda mixed on this one. Stats may be good, but not necessarily important. It gives something to achieve, but that thing may be wrong.

K/D : Show K/D, but not as the most important stat. This has been said time and time again in this thread. How about more fancy ones, such as Scoreeath.

Kill whoring : Not a fan. Camping the base is no fun in any game. However, having a few guys covering/camping the spawn room door while the rest of the outfit goes to town and clears out the outpost and takes it IS BENEFICIAL. might not be fun for the people, but interdiction is a tactic used by the military. Anyhow, like Raymac said, it feels good to kill the killwhore.

TLDR : Make kills worth very little in the grand scheme of things, and you should reply to my post because no one ever does.

heh

You have a lot of great points, friend.

[RavenUSC3]

I didn't read all seven pages so someone may have already mentioned something like what I'm proposing, and if so, my apologies.

I did read Mal's post though and agree with his points that K/D ratio shouldn't be a main focus. I also agree with a few of the other initial posts where they mention that K/D is a stat that some people look at and may quite frankly not give the game a chance if it isn't there. The point of this game is to be a MMO, and to be a true MMO, you need as many people as possible. I do believe there is a compromise.

You mention score and I believe that should be the ultimate prize. Leveling up has proven to be a key to any MMO and score is the way to do that....not a great K/D ratio. K/D can help you with that, as kills did in Planetside, but in my opinion where Planetside messed up is the ratio of score. Planetside wants to be a game for various different roles and calls for various different roles to truly be successful as an empire. K/D meant something to a few people in Planetside, but not most in my opinion. What did mean something was the score you mentioned. The problem was that the best way to score? Kills...especially later in the game.

Early on in the game I remember you'd get 5,000 points for nearly every base capture. Clearly that was wrong as an empty base shouldn't get you many points. I agree totally with that. Kills seemed to get you what, 100-200 points though, if that? To me that ratio makes sense. If capturing territory/bases is one of the main goals of the game, it should be rewarded with a ratio similar to that; 50 kills should give you the same score as capturing a heavily defended base. Now in Planetside, if you killed a Sunderer with four people in it, you could get upwards of 1800xp. The base you spend so much time capturing, the same one where you killed that sunderer, nets you 1200xp. That's basically saying you would have been better off not capping the base at all, rather waiting on those enemies to reload in a sunderer, hide, and kill them again and again. It doesn't make sense.

XP, or score, is whats going to drive everything, or it should be. Territory and bases need to ultimately be the driver of XP, by far. Support roles need to be a distanct second, followed closely by kills. Support roles should also have some kind of residual XP. Guys that spawn at your galaxy should get you a little XP, but then everything they do from then on out until they die (within a given time frame, say 10 mins maybe) should net you a percentage of that xp. If they kill five guys for 600 xp, you get 60xp. If they heal a guy for 10xp, you get 1xp. Sure that seems complicated and probably would be very hard to implement and is probably stretching it a bit, but if you can imagine 20 guys spawning at a galaxy, racking up 2000xp each.....40,000 xp, 10% is 4,000. Maybe that's high? I don't know what the ratio should be, but that's just an example. It rewards that galaxy driver, or that medic, or that engineer who isn't in there racking up kills.


Another issue I'd bring up while we're on the subject is defense vs offense. In Planetside I don't think they had the ratio right. I think defense should be worth four times what offense is to encourage it. So often its all about following the zerg rather than staying and defending, slowing down, or occupying the opposition to benefit your empire. Imagine defensive specialists who can be outnumbered 10 to 1 yet still deter the enemies because its what they do. It may not be a glorious role and at times boring and a headache, but they're rewarded for their efforts. If a kill on offense is 50, a kill on defense should be 200. Again, maybe that proves to be too much and encourages defense for everyone which would promote no movement at all....but I think offense will be natural in the game and defense needs more incentives. Maybe the ratio is 2:1. I don't know.


Here's a breakdown of how I see some scoring going:


Kill on offense: 100 points

Kill on defense: 200-400 points dependent on ratio outnumbered

Assist: 20 points

Full or Maximum base capture: 5,000 points

Minimum base capture: 1,000 points

Base resecure: 1,000 to 5,000 dependent on ratio outnumbered

Someone spawning at your galaxy: 100 points (same as a kill)

XP for someone who spawned at your galaxy within ten minutes: 10% of what they earn until their death

And so on with other support roles......In the scenario above, the galaxy driver has the potential to earn as much or more XP than the assault characters depending on their performance. They depend on him to get them there...he depends on them to succeed in the fight he brought them to.

I truly do believe this might be the most important debate issue that will make or break this game. The game is player driven, and if the scoring system is flawed, its going to drive players into a game that its not supposed to be. There has to be something that keeps driving people to play, and keeps driving them to play for years. I believe leveling is part of it. I believe K/D has its small part of it. I believe achievements is part of it, and being in an outfit you enjoy, and being able to play the role you want to play. I believe content updates are a huge part of it to keep the game fresh. All that being said, if the scoring system is messed up, the rest might not matter.

[duck]

I'm surprised Higby and no other developer wanted to comment on this particular thread (20+ pages btw), yet they are all over some pointless threads (looking at VIP tracker). Yes, they've been great with providing answers to our questions and that they look at our feedback to "improve" the game but if they are true to their word they should scrap this idea in its entirety. The HUD and guns look and shoot like CoD already, but KDR is such a **** idea for a game as large as Planetside 2.
They should at least keep KDR private for one's viewing and not public.

They should really ask themselves, are they trying to evolve the FPS genre or follow in the footsteps of CoD and BF3?