Stat Wars, time for some honesty

Helwyr · 2013-01-10, 04:56 PM

Can we start speaking honestly for once about the whole Stat discussion in PS2?

* Stats can be fun and informative, no stat is a problem in itself. It's how stats are used that can lead to problems.

* No Statistic is going to be universally accepted as a measure of a players skill or lack of skill in PS2.

* Most of the people claiming one stat or another is the best one for showing player skill are doing so because it favors the way they play or want the game to be played. They want their favored stat to be the primary one displayed so that they can claim it as official SOE endorsement of their playstyle as being the most or only legitimate one.

* SOE has cornered themselves into having to have some primary stat to compare players because of their desire to integrate Esports into PS2.

* None of this is going to help make PS2 a better game like PS1 was with more deep gameplay. You could even remove stats altogether and it wouldn't alone bring back the focus on Faction vs Faction objectives because players will always be chasing EXP/Certs in PS2 as it unlike PS1 does not have any cap on Battlerank/Certs.

What's the solution?

The community needs to ask that what stats are shown is configurable by the individual player and for SOE to remove the leader board.

This will allow players to decide for themselves which stats are important to them without getting any SOE endorsement of any particular view point, which will be very diverse. It will also force SOE to move away from trying to fit PS2 in with Esports which from these threads arguing over stats that determine who's a good player already demonstrates that such a pairing is dysfunctional.

Most importantly it will hopefully help both players and developers refocus on what Planetside is really about Massive persistent Faction vs Faction warfare and focus on making that a reality in PS2. Which for the developers is to give PS2 the deep meta game it currently lacks.

NewSith · 2013-01-10, 05:09 PM

I have mixed feelings about this one.

First I thought - yeah, so a guy removes the whole base captures, XP, deaths and Support categories from his stats and goes Zephyring the heck out of spawnrooms and then claims to be an uber killwhore...

...and my second thought was - but on the other hand it's his right isn't it?

So I

/cautiously support

ShadetheDruid · 2013-01-10, 05:17 PM

The easiest way to deal with the stats would just be to not give any prominence to any particular stats, and then just give us big stat sheets with everything they record no matter how inane.

Not just things like number of revives/amount of HP healed/amount of HP repaired, but like how a lot of games record weird things like "distance travelled". Whether they record things that obscure I don't know, but it's still fun to look up all the weird stats and see where you're at.

K/D would definitely be shown to be less important if it was on the same stat sheet as the number of times you've been run over.

SKYeXile · 2013-01-10, 05:39 PM

I think stats i this game are pretty meaningless, everybody plays the game differently with different goals and its impossible to put 2 players next to eachother in stats and say who's better at this MMO's, just as it would be just as futile to have them duel it out by the count of a jammer grenade.

As iv said score per hour could be the be all and end all stat, but its broken now because of boosts and sub and it doesn't reward all playstyle equally currently, but it does have the potential to be the "one" stat. but since not everybody is in the mindset of staying active and keeping the XP rolling in, its never going to be an accurate measure of another skill.

I agree having alot of stats available and customisable filters would be best, you can then choose if you want to chase a certain statistic or not. Also with enough statistics you could probably get a good vibe if somebody is a good player or not or atleast get a feel for their playstyle. playtime despite its problems caused by how the person playing is still a key statistic though and something all other stats should be measured off, by that i mean things like total kills are meaningless, kills/playtime is a far better measurement of a players skill at killing.

If we had all stats available to us, you could perhaps build a rating stat by finding the mean and average stats of each vehcile and weight their skill according eg: lib .8 coefficient, Assault rifle 1.2 coefficient. see if the player is offensive, defensive or support and account for KDR and KPH accordingly to make one displayed rating stat. eg: http://wot-news.com/index.php/stat/calc/en/us (type in "skyexile" or somebody you know who plays and click load data) though again...all these stats can be manipulated by playstyle for a better rating.

Bloodmode · 2013-01-10, 05:41 PM

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Helwyr · 2013-01-10, 06:43 PM

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

[...]
I agree having alot of stats available and customisable filters would be best, you can then choose if you want to chase a certain statistic or not. Also with enough statistics you could probably get a good vibe if somebody is a good player or not or atleast get a feel for their playstyle. playtime despite its problems caused by how the person playing is still a key statistic though and something all other stats should be measured off, by that i mean things like total kills are meaningless, kills/playtime is a far better measurement of a players skill at killing.

If we had all stats available to us, you could perhaps build a rating stat by finding the mean and average stats of each vehcile and weight their skill according eg: lib .8 coefficient, Assault rifle 1.2 coefficient. see if the player is offensive, defensive or support and account for KDR and KPH accordingly to make one displayed rating stat. eg: http://wot-news.com/index.php/stat/calc/en/us (type in "skyexile" or somebody you know who plays and click load data) though again...all these stats can be manipulated by playstyle for a better rating.

I think it would be perfectly reasonable to have all the stats available in a way that people could make up their own leaderboards within their own communities of PS2 players. The Folly is in SOE doing it.

SixShooter · 2013-01-10, 06:53 PM

Originally Posted by Helwyr

I think it would be perfectly reasonable to have all the stats available in a way that people could make up their own leaderboards within their own communities of PS2 players. The Folly is in SOE doing it.

That is already the plan with releasing the API data. People can make their own apps/leaderboards with whatever data they choose.

StumpyTheOzzie · 2013-01-10, 08:36 PM

Originally Posted by NewSith

...and my second thought was - but on the other hand it's his right isn't it?

So I

/cautiously support

Originally Posted by ShadetheDruid

The easiest way to deal with the stats would just be to not give any prominence to any particular stats, and then just give us big stat sheets with everything they record no matter how inane.

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

I think stats i this game are pretty meaningless, everybody plays the game differently with different goals and its impossible to put 2 players next to eachother in stats and say who's better at this MMO's, just as it would be just as futile to have them duel it out by the count of a jammer grenade.

-snip-

Exactly right all three of you. There's the guy who Roleplays a pacifist medic/doctor type, the guy who roleplays a rambo-with-syringe type and the lib gunner/engineer who is different to an anti-tank combat engineer.

We need stats to compare rambo medics with rambo medics because comparing rambo medics to pacifist medics is apples and oranges. Engineer lib gunners are not comparable to AT engineers or ammo-resupply engineers.

The only way I can see to progress is to have every single thing ever tracked. not just rounds fired, but rounds fired in and out of the warpgate (non-combat weapon testing vs field combat)
Rounds fired in the crown.
Shotgun rounds fired in the crown.
Shotgun Slug ammo rounds fired in the crown.
Shotgun Slug ammo rounds fired in the crown that hit TR.
Shotgun Slug ammo rounds fired in the crown that hit TR medics.

see where I'm going?

igster · 2013-01-10, 08:47 PM

Completely agree with the O/P. Removing any of the stats will do nothing to improve the gameplay. It's a side show. The main attraction is the gameplay - Play the game how the hell you want... maximise whatever stat you want.

Stats are the deckchairs on the Titanic. Arrange them how the hell you want. It won't help keep the ship away from the icebergs.

Address the real big issues to deliver truly involving gameplay and we'll be playing this game for a long time. Waste time pissing about with froth that makes little or no real difference and the great game we've been looking forward to for such a long time will be held back from where it should be.

DirtyBird · 2013-01-10, 09:19 PM

Hotspots should be included as well as in where a player camps the most or where others are constantly moving around.

With the upcoming changes and probably more changes down the track I'd also agree that most stats are meaningless.
If you change the mechanics of the game ie. dynamic XP, HE rounds, Pod dmg radius etc, then the first month is different to the second and to the third.

They might as well overload the stats available and include every tiny detail, even AFK in warp gate.

Originally Posted by SkyeXiLe

...kills/playtime is a far better measurement of a players skill at killing.

Questionable.
You'd need to look at other stats on how that time was spent farming those kills.
If they are predominately vehicle based and at range (stats for that?) then is it classified as a skill?

Nade spamming in Metro24/7 didnt require any skill yet you could farm thousands of kills and that was with out a vehicle. But you could throw in the MAV if we need a vehicle comparison of cheap kills and it got changed anyway.

On the other hand if the player was rarely in a vehicle then yeah I can see your point.
But otherwise the two are totally different player styles and only one requires what your average educated gaming community would call skill.

It could help keep like minded players together though.

SKYeXile · 2013-01-10, 09:32 PM

Originally Posted by DirtyBird

Questionable.

no, its not questionable, you took what i said entirely out of context, when i said in my post the same thing what you're saying that in a system of rating killings with things eg libs would get a negative coefficient to rating and assault rifles and likely anything infantry based would be positive.

In context, what i said though:

Playtime despite its problems caused by how the person playing is still a key statistic though and something all other stats should be measured off, by that i mean things like total kills are meaningless, kills/playtime is a far better measurement of a players skill at killing.

kills/playtime is clearly a better measurement of skill that just kills by themself doesn't show efficiency or anything, KPH does, but you know this already. Obviously it would be preferable that they display playtime in each vehicle/infantry weapon and kills with it.

Ghoest9 · 2013-01-10, 10:38 PM

THERE SHOULD BE NO RECORD OF DEATHS.

This one stat encourages farming and non-tactical game play.
I dont care if you blame the players or the devs - the reality is that as long as you record deaths people will try to keep their k/d ratio high and they will implement warped game play and farming to protect it.

For the record my k/d is not impressive.

Wahooo · 2013-01-10, 10:48 PM

More stats the better. More personal configuration the better, so you can go find the ones you are personally aiming for.

Leader boards are kinda for epeen stroking anyway so where is the harm in keeping them K/D centric? It doesn't CHANGE peoples play style it just is a bit of a bragging point for those who are going to play that way anyway, and often enough keeps those people in the game.

Helwyr · 2013-01-10, 10:58 PM

Originally Posted by Ghoest9

THERE SHOULD BE NO RECORD OF DEATHS.

This one stat encourages farming and non-tactical game play.
I dont care if you blame the players or the devs - the reality is that as long as you record deaths people will try to keep their k/d ratio high and they will implement warped game play and farming to protect it.

For the record my k/d is not impressive.

You're doing exactly what I was criticizing only additionally in CAPS for extra obnoxiousness. You came in here to wage Stat Wars. Do you even understand what this thread is about Ghoest?

Ghoest9 · 2013-01-10, 11:40 PM

Originally Posted by Helwyr

You're doing exactly what I was criticizing only additionally in CAPS for extra obnoxiousness. You came in here to wage Stat Wars. Do you even understand what this thread is about Ghoest?

Basically the tread is about you being wrong.

I said why you were wrong.

You cried.