Why K:D, Deaths, streaks and other stats are bad, and how PS2 can evolve the genre - Page 36

Dart · 2012-07-24, 09:32 AM

Let's try and keep this civil kids. Don't want to force Hamma, Goku etc to clean up any more threads than is absolutely necessary.

Originally Posted by Mepper

This is beta. Everything is WIP and subject to change. That is the whole meaning of it.

I would really love to see at least the option to not track my deaths.

With k/d tracked there will always be a little voice in your head telling you to be carefull, egoistic, and only focus on killing.

If someone would be constantly healing and reviving teammates in a firefight he helps his team a lot. But a focus on k/d discourages you to do so. That is just bad.

You gain exp from healing and reviving allies. Trust me, if a medic can heal you, he will.

GreatMazinkaise · 2012-07-24, 09:47 AM

You'd like to force a playstyle on people with social engineering in a sandbox game... that's not gonna work. K/D's what the public wants, and it'll remain highly visible regardless; people will make of that stat what they will and there's nothing to be done for it.

You want teamplay? You've got your outfits/zergfits for that and VOIP to coordinate your puggies. Outside of that, if someone wants to take a tower in the middle of nowhere and farm ToD kills, they can, and they will. They might even distract a bunch of other dumb pubbies from a more useful objective.

Also:

I deploy AMSes and Lodestars. As a driver I can't wear rexo. Without rexo I have one long holster. So, I carry a glue gun and not a weapon.

Where the fuck is your Sweeper in that loadout? You've got enough inventory space to swap between gluegun and shotty in an Agile loadout, and I'm pretty sure that both the AMS and Loadstar have trunks. The other support whores I know don't have as good a K/D as a pure grunt, but they still actually kill other players.

MrKWalmsley · 2012-07-24, 09:53 AM

Originally Posted by Dart

You are throwing your toys out of the pram having never played the game or even experienced what you're attempting to argue with me about. Getting this worked up over a feature that you haven't even experienced yet is ridiculous. Please try to keep an open mind when you play the game; there might be some aspects to these features you have not considered yet.

What I am arguing with you specifically is your choice of wording in your comments here, and your impression that once something is in game it cannot be changed, no matter how trivial. All I need to be able to argue against that is to look at your comments.

You seem to be using your experience in game as some sort of be-all-end-all authority in something which is regarding this forum.

Also we do not need to play PS2 in order to comment on what having a K : D statistic causes, unless you are going to try and tell us that there is some drastically unique aspect about the way K : D is displayed that totally knocks all of our criticism of the psychology of having a K : D statistic in general. We all know what a K : D statistic is, that's all we really need to know for this subject to be valid.

Please stop thinking that your access to the game is a counter to every argument, no matter what it is, even if it is against a concept which everyone has first hand experience with.

And trust me, I am open minded, but having seen this mechanic in hundreds of games I think we have all had a fair bit of experience in how it works, unless, once again, it is vastly unique to the point were it is not even recognisable as a K : D statistic mechanism!

Edit: Nice to know you removed that entire section from your post. Funny how you should replace a part which is trying to divert attention to me rather than my argument with a part calling for people to be more civil.

feuerdog · 2012-07-24, 09:57 AM

Its a difficult subject if you look into it.

The reason why Kills

eath works is becuase it's simple to understand. It's a well established record of comparison that everyone is familiar with.

Is it important to people who understand the deeper aspects and sacrifices of cooperative teambased play, not so much, but it can still be a useful reference.

In order for it to be replaced with another stat, we would first have to establish which stats(s) are more important. Compounding the issue without even really exploring it, we can be fairly sure that each and every class and style of play can be valued in a different manner, or at least with differetn priorities.

The sheer number of potential variables for stats is staggering due to the potential combinations of what may be viewed as valueable to the individual player.

Lives, deaths, repairing, healing, destruction, distance, captures, defends, hacks, rounds fired, weapons used, assists, resources, etc.

If it were me I would present the player with a customizable interface for them to setup as they see fit and prioritze the stats that they themselves felt were most appropriate.
Will the PS2 devs institute such an interface?.....
Maybe, but I doubt it. Why?....

Because K

is easy to understand and a well established stat.

You can never have enough stats, but they are only as relevant as you make them to be.

Mepper · 2012-07-24, 10:21 AM

K/d works very well for other games, where the only thing you do is killing. This game is about what you do for team, and just like what the OP says, score is representitive for how good you are at this game. K/d isn't necessarily important in PS2, not at all. Score is.

And that a lot of other games use it, and it easy to understand, is no reason to have it as most important stat in PS2. PS2 is different, and don't tell me score/minut would be hard to understand (or any better way of tracking score, this way being afk would harm your stats ofc.)

And stats give you a "Big brother is watching you" feeling. You should have a button like "don't track me" or "track me as anonymous player".

Timithos · 2012-07-24, 11:19 AM

Originally Posted by Tatwi

This is true. It's just human nature (operand conditioning in action). You're right that they are playing into a counter productive part of our nature by displaying narcissistic stats with such emphasis.

It's the problem with most of these computer games these days, where every player is supposed to be "the great hero" of the universe. Makes me want to puke.

I have no idea why the SOE folks would want to jeopardize the "combat on a massive scale" aspect of PS2 by slanting the emotional feedback toward antisocial killwhoring. Especially considering that without players there isn't a game to play at all. Eventually the majority of people will get bored of being farmed by the killwhores and they'll stop playing. Welcome to Planetside 1's tiny population.

There are just too many other games (and things to do) out there to NOT emphasize community building game play over all else. Planetside 2 needs a strong community more than it needs any other aspect of its development. Period.

Why?

Because 100% of the game play requires other people.

Well, I agree with the both of you.

I'm hoping PS2 has certain stat defaults turned on, and others like K/D turned off to set the stage for proper PS2 behavior. It'll be up to the player to open up their options and turn K/D on. Then an added touch would be that you couldn't place K/D in the #1 positon of a string of stats. It would appear on the end of the string of stats that the game devs have deemed most crucial for the class you deploy. (Of course you can turn them all off in any interface worth it's salt.)

What I did like in latest video was Braddock getting only +10 pts for a 3-streak kill, yet +100 for destroying an empty enemy vehicle! (By the way Braddock seemed a little incompetent to me, but he was getting decent kills.) I also enjoyed the sparse troops on each side in this engagement. I think there won't be as many concentrated zerg battles in PS2, because you'll have hex-sector to hex-sector conflicts all along a battle line with flanking and pincer strategies used, which we really haven't gotten to see because everyone is coraled into a couple sectors to keep the fighting together. I believe a K/D kill-whore will have a tougher time finding farming spots then they did in PS1.

feuerdog · 2012-07-24, 11:24 AM

Kill/death isn't specifically important in PS2, it's merely prominant.

It could be argued that score is irrelavant since there are no victory conditions set forth in PS2. We only have moment-to-moment comparsions of our stats and the changes in status quo to derive our levels of success and failure.

Kill/death IS an important stat only for the purposes of self comparison.
The basic component of all actions performed in the game is via a player character. The ONLY way to deny a player characters potential for performing actions is to kill them.

Where this topic gets tricky is when someone who is focused on only the stat of killing compares his stat to someone who is not focused on killing. And the measures of success in PS2 are varied and diverse.

Again, stats are just numbers,.....it's how people interpret them that can lead to unjustifiable/unwarranted feelings, comparsions, and obligations.

AzureWatcher · 2012-07-24, 11:39 AM

Since people don't want me to know my KDR, I will instead change how I play my game completely. Before I was going to go out with my squad, get kills, capture objectives, and not die.

Now, I am only going to kill Terran Republic and ignore the New Conglomerate. I am going to adopt a popular EVE Online policy of "NRDS" which stands for Not Red, Don't Shoot. Because there is a stat for knowing how many of each faction you have killed. Guess I should focus on it because I am unable to care about the objective and stats at the same time.

maradine · 2012-07-24, 11:50 AM

Good idea, except EVE is almost universally NBSI ("Not Blue, Shoot It"). I guess that works out pretty well for the NC . . .

**Malorn** · 2012-07-24, 01:01 PM

Originally Posted by Dart

Look guys, without breaking the NDA there is only so much we can say here but Hamma is right, you aren't going to win this one. Rail against me if you like but you're just shooting the messenger. This discussion had nothing to do with PS2 development any more but if none of you have anything better to do today than discuss it; more power to you! Enjoy the ideological debate. Just expect to be confronted by a number of stats, including k/d when you receive your beta invites.

It absolutely has to do with PS2 development - the stats they promote in the game. It is a feature of the game to which we are providing feedback. This isn't an ideological debate. More precise analysis of the development problem, is in this post:
http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...&postcount=493

And this isn't about ALL stats, so stop strawmanning it that way.

This is about three things.

1) The death stat. It's a negative stat which people will avoid because it makes them look bad. As a result, the general population will be less inclined to take risks, which leads to all sorts of really lame behavior so people can pad their K/D stat and wave their epeens around.

2) The promotion of selfish and kill-related stats. K/D is prominently displayed in the stats, as I have shown in a post yesterday. It is one thing to have these stats available to players, and it is another to have these stats shoved in our faces telling us that these are the important stats in the game. Prominence of stats primes us to care about them subconsciously. If you don't believe then there isn't any harm in promoting different stats then is there?

3) Lack of teamwork stats. From what we've seen of the stat screen and stat summaries (identified in the linked post above), there are very few teamwork-oriented stats. Territory captures, captures per day, consoles hacked, facilities/territories defended, resources earned, resources denied, healing-per-whatever, repairing-per-whatever, heal assists, repair assists, revive assists, etc. I haven't seen any of those stats on the stat screens. If they want people to play the objectives in the game then the best way they can do that is not only have these stats, but also promote them.

The danger of not taking stats seriously and respecting their power is that it will shape PS2 into nothing more than a session shooter in a bigger world. The sense of persistence, the sense of conquest, the rich gameplay that evolves from that will be discouraged and the game will not be nearly as good as it could be, simply because the developers chose to encourage selfish killwhore stats over teamwork stats. It looks like they half-assed it and copied battle log without consideration for the impact that their stat choices will have on the game.

Dart · 2012-07-24, 01:10 PM

Originally Posted by Malorn

The danger of not taking stats seriously and respecting their power is that it will shape PS2 into nothing more than a session shooter in a bigger world. The sense of persistence, the sense of conquest, the rich gameplay that evolves from that will be discouraged and the game will not be nearly as good as it could be, simply because the developers chose to encourage selfish killwhore stats over teamwork stats. It looks like they half-assed it and copied battle log without consideration for the impact that their stat choices will have on the game.

The game doesn't feel that way to me right now. I'll be interested to see your opinion when you get hands on it with. Personally my 'stats' would never stop me doing anything to help my Empire in game. But as I say, this is academic until all of the stat-tracking (and all of the players who feel so strongly about this) are included in testing.

Edit: I also feel a little like this entire concept is rather condescending. I'd rather give all players access to all stats and allow them to prioritize whichever ones they feel. To offer an analogy to PS1 vets - this feels rather like early PS1 when certain CR5s used to go around TKing friendly Generators to force their Empire to move to bases which they felt were more tactically valuable.

**Malorn** · 2012-07-24, 01:12 PM

Don't go there Dart. Enough has been revealed that we can comment on it and give feedback without hands-on, as I demonstrated in the post I linked.

Originally Posted by GreatMazinkaise

You'd like to force a playstyle on people with social engineering in a sandbox game... that's not gonna work.

OK, there's two ways to look at it.

1) You don't believe that stats influence behavior. If that is true, then you have nothing to fear from this discussion or any "forced gamplay" that would result from removing some stats from prominence and replacing them with other stats. Because it doesn't matter, right?

OR

2) You do believe that stats influence behavior, in which case a playstyle is already being forced on people - the playstyle of a killwhore with no emphasis on objectives and team play.

So which is it? Do you believe stats presented to players regularly influence player behavior or do you not?

Dart · 2012-07-24, 01:25 PM

Originally Posted by Malorn

Don't go there Dart. Enough has been revealed that we can comment on it and give feedback without hands-on, as I demonstrated in the post I linked.

Sorry Malorn but stat tracking isn't even in the game yet! There is no way you can give an objective opinion on what SOE are doing with the game. All you can do is reiterate what you don't want which, after 33 pages, I think has been done fairly effectively.

There is also a third option to your slightly disingenuous question above; players should be able to view whatever stats THEY believe are important and it should be left to the individual to choose the ones they wish to prioritize. Or put another way, everything possible to track should be tracked. Personally that's what I'd like to see. Freedom of information.

Purple · 2012-07-24, 01:29 PM

i would like there to be the option to take a look at you stats when your playing solo or in a squad. it would be fun to see how your stats change.

Sirro · 2012-07-24, 01:32 PM

Stats are different for everyone, I try to make sure i have a positive overall KDR but it's not priority. I care more about SPM and my Score for any given period, that's what I shoot for in TF2 and BF3.

I don't care whether I have 2 kills, 40 revives, 5 caps, or 15 kills 10 caps etc as long as I think I am doing good the round.