Malorn's Stats Thread Reborn - Page 2

KnifeGun · 2012-07-31, 07:04 PM

I completely agree with what Totalbiscuit said.

I'm the type of person that loves looking at stats. (The more the merrier) It gives me an idea of the areas I need to improve my game at. Hey my base captures are kinda low I need to improve on that or damn my k/d is kinda low i need to improve on being more aware and keeping my reflexes sharp when I'm trying to approach a capture point etc.

In alot of FPS's that are objective based that I have played (CS, TF2, Some gametypes in CoD, etc.) Communication sways peoples' playstyle more than anything. I have never had a problem going for a higher Kpd and helping my team plant the bomb in CS. Same goes with TF2. I can try to kill the most people without dying while still encouraging capturing points and pushing the cart.

Communicating with your team about the current objective at hand will sway more people into joining that type of play rather than removing kpd stat. Adding in a VOIP in PS2 is a fantastic idea. So the people who dont want to join outfits and are going rogue can be yelled at over a mic.

ZaBa · 2012-07-31, 07:14 PM

As much as Malorn is a horrible obsessive with some terrible opinions, I've got to agree on this one, at least as far as elevating score-per-minute to being the most prominent efficiency stat goes.

Everything else should still be tracked though, even k/d, since score by itself is somewhat ambiguous ("SPM: 842" doesn't really say much about what you've really accomplished or how much better you could be doing).

QuantumMechanic · 2012-07-31, 07:15 PM

K/D ratio is only imortant to some people, and maybe not all the time.

In reference to games like CoD and Battlefield, you have only points and K/D to guage how well you did.

In Planetside 1 you had your K/D, plus also not only battle XP but support XP (which was a great addition). However I found that whenever I was running "special ops" in PS1, doing things like resecures mostly, I was getting little BEP, no SEP and never had a positive K/D ratio.

Despite all of that I knew that I was doing the right thing for my empire, so I didn't mind. However it would be nice if PS2 rewarded that type of gameplay in some tangible way.

brighthand · 2012-07-31, 07:53 PM

In a game like PLanetside, k/d says nothing about you as a quality player and contributor to the team.

My k/d in bf3 is .7, and that is because I attack and defend objectives, and fly helicopters alot. You get killed ALOT doing those two things regardless of how skilled you are- and I consider myself rather skilled, especially in my favorite vehicle, the transport helicopter, where I have done over 70 hours of flying- and in those hours, your gunners are doing the killing, while you just get shot by tanks, Javs, rpgs, and rammed by jets. -but I love capping flags and flying helis TOO much to give it up just for a more polished k/d.

Expect to see me flying a Galaxy and dumping squads all over the rest of you Vanus and Terrans.

Those who enter planetside and care so much about their k/d should want to rethink their approach to team-based gaming. Even the ones who run solo.

K/d is irrelivant in this universe.

Tzitzimitl · 2012-07-31, 08:25 PM

Yea I agree with score being prioritized and it being highlightled/bolded/underlined/glitterfied so that players pay attention. However it should display the activites that earn you your total score when you check it.
Also to interject even if this was implemented you would still have your population of players that focus on K/D but hopefully the majority would be focusing on score rather than K/D

Flaropri · 2012-07-31, 08:28 PM

TB (and many others) are basically what I've been saying as well (albeit I say it less effectively), I really hope that K/D is in and in the background, but I ALSO hope that they include assists on the same screen(s) as K/D. Though really I don't think Score (or any specific stat) needs to be prioritized.

Actually, better yet: Let people customize what stat is "prioritized" on their screens. With none by default.

MorioMortis · 2012-07-31, 08:28 PM

Originally Posted by brighthand

K/d is irrelivant in this universe.

This is the essence of the topic; we don't need to remove the k/d completely, but it needs to have it's importance relegated to "just another stat with little meaning", compared to things like Base Captures and Base Defenses (or any stat that can be a players prime objective), which refer to things that are central to the objective of the game.

Furthermore, there needs to be heavy incentives for support roles; support players should earn at least as much xp, if not more, for their actions than combat players do for a similar level of play and skills. Indeed,all the little things that are, in the end, essential (like flying people in a Galaxy) should be rewarded, sufficiently so they are a valid and desirable roles, not a sacrifice for the good of the empire.

Tzitzimitl · 2012-07-31, 08:33 PM

Another possible solution or addition to the score system could be points gained by being near teammates. This would encourage/reward sticking together

Disillusioned · 2012-07-31, 08:39 PM

The size of Planetside will negate the effect of a few killwhores only playing to juice their stats- in games such as BF3 or CoD where half your team won't come within 500m of an objective for fear of ruining their precious stats, it's obviously a major problem. A few of these types in a fight with 500+ ppl isn't going to have an impact.

Added to which the stats for PS2 look like they will be extremely detailed, so when xl33t boasts of his godlike k/d it will be easy to roll your eyes at the 2 facility captures in 300 hours of play.

Captain1nsaneo · 2012-07-31, 08:41 PM

It's circumstantial evidence but I know that K/D definitely impacts my gameplay and what I do. It's made me far less favorable to support roles and much more timid for fear of getting another tick on my death counter. Anything less than perfection is like mental sandpaper and the inbuilt desire to brag is boosted by being able to quickly compare k/d. At the same time I'm going to always have the statistic up because I believe more information allows for better decision making.

Drakkonan · 2012-07-31, 08:41 PM

Time to copy and paste the main points:

1.) /time doesn't work in a game like Planetside 2. Only in round-based games like Battlefield.

2.) There's no way the designers are going to take out death count, despite the arguments for it, and how much it would benefit the game. Not only do the CoDers they want to attract expect it, but they've been running with "The more stats, the better" argument since the game's announcement. What they should, and may do, however, is allow players the option to make their stats only visible to all/guild/friends/none. This would permit all the benefits of benchmarking your own performance while preventing most of the problems statistics introduce.

3.) Another approach would be to make 'Score' the primary stat and K/D totals and ratio minor stats a la Battlelog stat pages. While it wouldn't represent player skill, as it shouldn't be divided by time, it would incorporate support actions. It could also be used to determine other stats (i.e. % of points from support actions, % of points from kills etc...)

darkfiretwofive · 2012-07-31, 08:45 PM

They need to have he K/D in, but not so I can hit Tab and see it, maybe sift through a couple of menus to see it.

Synapse · 2012-07-31, 08:49 PM

Let me be very clear: Stats are not bad.

My main priority is that we get as much data as humanly possible.

We need stats on every tiny little action we make, where, and to who.

I agree points are going to be more important than kills, just like in Eve Online the value of damage done to damage recieved is more highly regarded than number of kills, but I dont want that overriding the fact that we want loads of stats to play with, and then we will take care of coding the rest.

Just get us all the numbers, all of them.

OnexBigxHebrew · 2012-07-31, 09:02 PM

I think the effect of K/D in gameplay is being drastically overstated. It's just a staple statistic that makes sense with shooters, and is both fun to check out and useful.

Not to mention, K/D CAN be relevant and useful as a stat outside of deathmatch games without making a player change playstyles to accomodate it, such as in this scenario. Let's call our player 'John':

'John' has decided on a playstyle that is an aggressive infantry capture support style. He typically has used "Gun A" for this purpose. His K/D is 1.55. Now, Gohn has unlocked a new gun - Gun B - and would like to know, without changing his playstyle, how the new weapon is performing. It is important to note the John has only changed weapons, and is still playing the same role within his outfit. After two weeks John's K/D ratio has gone down to 1.03. Now John can deduce that because the only variable that has changed is his weapon and his K/D has gone down significantly, the gun that suits his playstyle more is Gun A. This approach works well for anything from attatchments to weapons. The major factor here is that John is still playing the same team support role, but is using the K/D statistic to understand performance in battle.

See? It's not all about padding and self gratification. K/D can be used as an over-time indicator of a specific variable's performance with playstyle being the control in the experiment. Besides, is some guy going to ruin your 100-man outfit charge if he is just hanging out with friends online and killing people? No. K/D is fine.

Ieyasu · 2012-07-31, 09:35 PM

if you care what your kdr is outside of a team deathmatch style of play youve got some funny priorities.

kdr in games like COD where people play alot of tdm does make sense to care about as if youre going around sporting a .48 kdr youre hurting your team far more than helping it as the object is to get points by killing the other team and someone with a kdr of under 1.0 is usually giving more points to the other team than they are contributing to their own.

Im all for kdr being included in PS2, but anyone who thinks its goign to help them get laid on a saturday night or on the other end of the spectrum that everyone is going to point at them and laugh are both sporting a cod mindset.

as OnexBigxHebrew stated above me quite nicely, there are valid reasons for tracking kdr other than inflating ones epeen or laughing at the small size of anothers.