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

[Aurmanite]

Originally Posted by Malorn

BR 20 was not sufficient to get everything. You had to pick and choose your specializations. Alas, off-topic and not relevant to the discussion.

Healing, engineering, heavy assault, rexo, anti-vehicular, and still room for more.

That is everything you need in Planetside.

It's also plenty relevant to the discussions I was having with Bloody, as his point was about needing greater co-dependency.

K/D tracking does not impede teamwork. Show me some real numbers correlating K/D tracking and the decline of teamwork. Such a thing doesn't exist which immediately makes most of your points conjecture and theorycrafting.

The fact that you could one man army in Planetside didn't discourage teamwork as every player who was in a good outfit here will attest. Neither did K/D tracking. In Planetside 2, you won't be able to one man army.

Your argument that having K/D tracking and stats is archaic is complete rubbish. This is the 2012. I want to know everything. I want to know how many people I've run over, how much damage I've repaired, how many bullets I've fired. It would be archaic for this game to lack that informaiton.

[Malorn]

Stats are good, to boil down what I am suggesting...


1) Remove "Deaths" as a tracked stat (and as a result, K:D also gets retired)
2) Promote "Score" as the primary/most important stat, and make all others secondary stats.


Kills, revives, etc, all relevant and should be tracked, but the main measure of "am I being successful at Planetside 2?" answer should come from the "Score" stat.

And to be clear "Score" and experience points are effectively the same thing. Might be some cases where they differ but effectively the same. If its productive and nets you lots of experience points, it's a good activity to encourage. Support xp, capture xp, etc same thing as score.

Score/min becomes the relevant productivity stat - how many points are you generating per unit time?

[SuperSchnecke]

Great post Malorn !

Everything you posted is absolutly right and supports teamplay.

There was so many supportstuff to do in PS1 that you didnt get anything for . Like repping Gen, spawns , turrets hell even medterms and ofcourse
helping your Empiremates. Its just a shame that those guys doing the dirty work didnt get nearly anything for it. Even thou these things made PS1 the Game it is .... i honestly hope the devteam think about there plans with the stats and it more and take some of Malorn´s ideas into the final game and dont supports the selfish K/D stats only .

[SuperSchnecke]

WE NEED SCORE !

[wasdie]

Originally Posted by Aurmanite

Healing, engineering, heavy assault, rexo, anti-vehicular, and still room for more.

That is everything you need in Planetside.

It's also plenty relevant to the discussions I was having with Bloody, as his point was about needing greater co-dependency.

K/D tracking does not impede teamwork. Show me some real numbers correlating K/D tracking and the decline of teamwork. Such a thing doesn't exist which immediately makes most of your points conjecture and theorycrafting.

The fact that you could one man army in Planetside didn't discourage teamwork as every player who was in a good outfit here will attest. Neither did K/D tracking. In Planetside 2, you won't be able to one man army.

Your argument that having K/D tracking and stats is archaic is complete rubbish. This is the 2012. I want to know everything. I want to know how many people I've run over, how much damage I've repaired, how many bullets I've fired. It would be archaic for this game to lack that informaiton.

The only place I've seen K/D ratio break teamwork is in Battlefield 3 on one map where people farm for their K/D ratio.

What that tells me is that if you don't have the right setting and mentality for K/D ratios, it's not a problem.

The size, scale, and pacing of Planetside 2 will mean that lone wolves fighting for K/D ratio will find themselves dead a lot of the time.

K/D ratio would be a problem if you could complete objectives by yourself. That is impossible in Planetside 2. Here you need to work together to get anything done. It's not going to have any effect on the gameplay. Those fighting just for K/D will not be working together and thus will be dead far more often.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Aurmanite

Your argument that having K/D tracking and stats is archaic is complete rubbish. This is the 2012. I want to know everything. I want to know how many people I've run over, how much damage I've repaired, how many bullets I've fired. It would be archaic for this game to lack that informaiton.

I'm not asking for that information to be denied - only deaths. I'm also advocating for an aggregated stat that takes all of those things into account as the primary measure of success. That's not rubbish. It makes sense.

[ArmedZealot]

Originally Posted by Figment

Depends on if he is good for morale. Wouldn't you figure out if someone's suited for your outfit by testing him rather than relying on an obsolete statistic the moment he joined your group and is taught things?

The game is supposed to have thousands of players. You are going to test everyone that applies to your exclusive and top notch outfit?

[Aurmanite]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Stats are good, to boil down what I am suggesting...


1) Remove "Deaths" as a tracked stat (and as a result, K also gets retired)
2) Promote "Score" as the primary/most important stat, and make all others secondary stats.


Kills, revives, etc, all relevant and should be tracked, but the main measure of "am I being successful at Planetside 2?" answer should come from the "Score" stat.

And to be clear "Score" and experience points are effectively the same thing. Might be some cases where they differ but effectively the same. If its productive and nets you lots of experience points, it's a good activity to encourage. Support xp, capture xp, etc same thing as score.

Score/min becomes the relevant productivity stat - how many points are you generating per unit time?

Score is something they could implement and I think it would be a great idea.

Removing K/D tracking is not a good idea. These are things I want to know. Don't take them away from me because you have some completely theoretical ideas about how players react to having this information.

EDIT:

In one sentence you managed to say "I don't want to remove information, but I want to remove information."

That makes no sense chum.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Aurmanite

Score is something they could implement and I think it would be a great idea.

Removing K/D tracking is not a good idea. These are things I want to know. Don't take them away from me because you have some completely theoretical ideas about how players react to having this information.

Thanks for the support of score, it does make a lot of sense.

The fact that deaths as a stat exists will affect player behavior as they try to minimize that negative mark on their stat sheet. It isn't theoretical. People do it today. You ask them how they did in a match they give you their K/D, they typically don't say "I helped us win and got the last cap!" or "I kept my teammates alive and we got victory" - instead they tell you their K:D. Even having it degenerates gameplay.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by ArmedZealot

The game is supposed to have thousands of players. You are going to test everyone that applies to your exclusive and top notch outfit?

Are you going to assume thousands will apply? Typically we let people join our outfit squad first, get an initial impression of behaviour and capacity to learn from basic comments and judge the maturity of reactions to in game situations.

If they were too quiet (even when approached friendly) they were unsuited. If they were immature, they were unsuited. If they started whining about hackers fast, they were unsuited. If they misbehaved in any other way or towards other people including enemies (humping corpses, spawncamping), they were unsuited.

Within the hour you'd know if someone was outfit material or not, tbh. We didn't take on a lot of players, even though we wern't a 1337fit. Most of the players that joined us in the later stages were familiar to us already. If you look for 1337 players, you can built up a reputation in game as well through actions without someone having to check your stats. Over time, you'd get noticed.

You think infils like Mightymouser or me would get asked based on actions in game through sabotage etc, or based on stats?

Besides, those that care most about stats, are forumwhores trying to protect an advantageous balance in the name of 'skill' vs 'non-skill'. Bit like the aren't-you-a-real-patriot-argument. Stats are abused by skewing their meaning all the time.

[Aurmanite]

I had a long post written up and copy pasted, then the site went down and I linked the gameplay footage to my buddy. Lame.

When I talk to my friends about BF3, K/D is the absolute least interesting conversation we can have. It almost always revolves around the crazy shit we did.

Do you play these games with your friends? If you do, I seriously doubt you talk very much about your K/D.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Aurmanite

I had a long post written up and copy pasted, then the site went down and I linked the gameplay footage to my buddy. Lame.

When I talk to my friends about BF3, K/D is the absolute least interesting conversation we can have. It almost always revolves around the crazy shit we did.

Do you play these games with your friends? If you do, I seriously doubt you talk very much about your K/D.

Its not about what individuals value; it is about what behaviors the game generally encourages via its metric for success.

Right now PS2 is actively encouraging kills, kill streaks, domination, and K:D. These are all fine for session-shooters, but not a rich dynamic world like Planetside which has many more objectives and more intricate teamplay.

[SKYeXile]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Its not about what individuals value; it is about what behaviors the game generally encourages via its metric for success.

Right now PS2 is actively encouraging kills, kill streaks, domination, and K. These are all fine for session-shooters, but not a rich dynamic world like Planetside which has many more objectives and more intricate teamplay.

Yes, but the difference is in those games, K/D and EXP is prettymuch the only motivation or goals for players, planetside 2 will have resources to unlock weapons, so people will want to help fight over land for advancement, not just pad K/D.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

Yes, but the difference is in those games, K/D and EXP is prettymuch the only motivation or goals for players, planetside 2 will have resources to unlock weapons, so people will want to help fight over land for advancement, not just pad K/D.

Sure, doesn't change the fact that it is a counter productive stat that shouldn't be encouraged.

[Aurmanite]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Its not about what individuals value; it is about what behaviors the game generally encourages via its metric for success.

Right now PS2 is actively encouraging kills, kill streaks, domination, and K. These are all fine for session-shooters, but not a rich dynamic world like Planetside which has many more objectives and more intricate teamplay.

I disagree. I think it has even more of a place in Planetside considering the fact we have hundreds more people to shoot.

The "Planetside has objectives and therefore is more than just a shooter" line is tripe. All shooters have objectives and intricate teamplay.

I want to be rewarded for the days I hop on and just feel like killing everything that moves. Sometimes I don't give two shits about completing the objective or being the MVP for my empire. This is a valid gameplay choice and should not be hindered.

People will play how they want.

The game has everything you want. Intricate gameplay and objectives and flower sniffing. It should have everything I want too, which is comprehensive stats for everything I do. Dying included.

I'm hardly interested in your theories on how people play games because they aren't based upon fact, they're based on your opinion. History has proven one indisputable fact about gamers, and that is they will do what they want. Stats and numbers aren't going to change what people enjoy doing.

You are a person that will play Planetside and dig its objectives and team work. Sometimes I'm that dude too. Stat tracking isn't going to change how we play, and there are thousands of other people that will play the same way we do.

Who cares if people aren't playing the way you consider optimal?

Crush them.
Drive them before you.
Enjoy the lamentation of their women.

It's not up to us to determine for someone else how they should play the game.