Why K:D, Deaths, streaks and other stats are bad, and how PS2 can evolve the genre - Page 16

Death2All · 2012-03-08, 11:20 AM

Originally Posted by Coreldan

The problem is, it's been like half a decade since it's been in any other way before K/D was implemented.

Is there any guarantees that even if K/D meter wasnt there that anything would be different? People dont like dying regardless cos it takes them several minutes to get back to the action.

On the other hand it might not be just the implementation of the K/D. Since the early days the population has done a crash landing. The amount of kill whoring people in ratio might be fairly the same, but cos you dont have so much people zerging anymore as you had back in the day, others don't really wanna zerg alone with so few people either, deciding it's better to camp teh door than go in with 2 guys and die.

I really doubt it's as simple as you make it out to be.

CoD Black Ops is one example I have. There is a game mode called "Domination" where there are three points on the map that you have to control, you get points by capturing objectives and holding them. It's essentially like Conquest in BF.

Treyarch actually patched Domination so that the KD ratio stat was removed from the scoreboard because too many people were going after kills instead of playing the objective.

Jesus Christ, some of you people. I know personal attacks are against the rules but I think it needs to be said...Some of you people must have little to no experience with online gaming or have a severe form of autism because ANYONE with ANY experience with online gaming KNOWS that killwhores are the bane of objective games.

Since PS goal centralizes around capturing territories (an objective) doesn't the K/D stat seem a little detrimental towards that goal?

Do you really need to sacrifice the better of the game to satisfy your curiosity? You can't see your deaths tracked? Tough shit. Deal with it. You can't always get what you want, that's life. There's no need to bring the entire infastructure of the game down because you want to look at some meaningless stat that has no value towards the actual game so you can stroke your E-Peen.

Eyeklops · 2012-03-08, 11:23 AM

Originally Posted by Skitrel

The tracking of deaths isn't what's bad, it's the kills part of the KD equation that falsely sets the wrong goal. KD exists in Cod because the goal is kills. KD exists in Battlefield because the goal is diminishing tickets, of which a kill diminishes 1. The K is the goal in that equation, for planetside it should be replaced and emphasised with the goal in Planetside in order to spur people towards that goal. The closest way to do that is with a well incentivised score system. You replace the goal part of KD with that and you get Score : Death

So at what point did "killing" not become the primary objective in any shooter game? Bf3, COD, MOH, PS1, and soon to be PS2, killing the enemy is the primary objective, period. How these games differ is in what killing the enemy does for you. Do you really think that PS2 has no purpose for kills? REALLY? How about the most important one of all, removing a strategic asset from the playing field so that friendly units can advance.

As I have said before, the killwhores move up the front line. They push the enemy to the spawns so that support players can fall in behind and set up defenses on captured territory. The demonization of killwhores is not needed. They provide a service to your empire, respect them.

BlazingSun · 2012-03-08, 11:26 AM

@ D2A: I hope that this was not adressed at me as well. You'd be quite wrong in my case.
Anyway .. got more important things to do now.

Death2All · 2012-03-08, 11:29 AM

Originally Posted by BlazingSun

@ D2A: I hope for you that this was not adressed at me as well.

It was directed towards anyone that think putting K/D stats in an objective game is going make it benefit any, so I guess you got caught in the crossfire.

I don't deny your gaming background. You were an amazing player in PS who topped the leaderboards, as I can see by your signature you obviously are a very skilled BF3 player. That said, you cannot deny with your extensive gaming background the killwhoring is detrimental towards objective based game types.

WarChimp130 · 2012-03-08, 11:29 AM

Originally Posted by TekDragon

What we have here, gentleman, is someone who has never played a FPS.

Take a look at what's become of PS1, or take a look at Tribes Ascend. K/D tracking destroys teamwork, and these are both games where, at one point, there wasn't K/D tracking and then there was. Those of us who actually played the games saw the difference.

I will personally vouch for Eyeklops being an awesome teammate in FPS games and a monster to play against.

TekDragon · 2012-03-08, 11:34 AM

Originally Posted by WarChimp130

I will personally vouch for Eyeklops being an awesome teammate in FPS games and a monster to play against.

That's refreshing to know, but this isn't CoD or BF. This is an objective based game. Anyone who has played an objective based game that has implemented K/D tracking knows how it has a deleterious affect on teamwork.

Tribes Ascend was a great example of this. There was a direct and measurable decrease in teamwork after they started tracking it. People just stopped cooperating and switched to kill-whore mode.

Coreldan · 2012-03-08, 11:34 AM

Originally Posted by DeeTwoEh

CoD Black Ops is one example I have. There is a game mode called "Domination" where there are three points on the map that you have to control, you get points by capturing objectives and holding them. It's essentially like Conquest in BF.

Treyarch actually patched Domination so that the KD ratio stat was removed from the scoreboard because too many people were going after kills instead of playing the objective.

Jesus Christ, some of you people. I know personal attacks are against the rules but I think it needs to be said...Some of you people must have little to no experience with online gaming or have a severe form of autism because ANYONE with ANY experience with online gaming KNOWS that killwhores are the bane of objective games.

Since PS goal centralizes around capturing territories (an objective) doesn't the K/D stat seem a little detrimental towards that goal?

Do you really need to sacrifice the better of the game to satisfy your curiosity? You can't see your deaths tracked? Tough shit. Deal with it. You can't always get what you want, that's life. There's no need to bring the entire infastructure of the game down because you want to look at some meaningless stat that has no value towards the actual game so you can stroke your E-Peen.

As I've said several times before, I'm not pro-K/D or anything, I just like to bring up other perspectives.

That said, Brink was a game with no K/D and very obj focused. Yet people still killwhored. That's sorta why im argueing here to begin with. It didnt seem to make any difference whatsoever.

They are the bane yes, but I really doubt showing k/d vs. not showin k/d changes that.

As for my gaming, I've played "realistic damage model online shooters/tactical shooters/whatever" since early 2000s mainly starting off with Tom Clancy titles.

Aurmanite · 2012-03-08, 11:38 AM

'kill whoring' is a valid gameplay choice. Its not for any of us to tell someone else how they should spend their time playing.

Death2All · 2012-03-08, 11:40 AM

Originally Posted by Coreldan

As I've said several times before, I'm not pro-K/D or anything, I just like to bring up other perspectives.

That said, Brink was a game with no K/D and very obj focused. Yet people still killwhored. That's sorta why im argueing here to begin with. It didnt seem to make any difference whatsoever.

They are the bane yes, but I really doubt showing k/d vs. not showin k/d changes that.

As for my gaming, I've played "realistic damage model online shooters/tactical shooters/whatever" since early 2000s mainly starting off with Tom Clancy titles.

Oh, I'm not arguing at all that people won't kill whore if K/D is not in the game. People have been killwhoring before there's ever been K/Ds. Shit, there's no stats website for PS1 and people still spawncamp to pad their KDs. Why? Because they're assholes I guess..I don't know..

But the point is, is that a lack of K/D discourages that kind of gameplay. People are less likely to cower back and spam grenades if they know that their precious K/D isn't at stake.

Malorn has an excellent point about evolving the current state of FPSes. It's too centralized on kill/stat whoring. It's less about capturing objectives. That needs to change. At the very least for an objective based game it HAS to change.

TekDragon · 2012-03-08, 11:42 AM

Originally Posted by Aurmanite

'kill whoring' is a valid gameplay choice. Its not for any of us to tell someone else how they should spend their time playing.

K/D tracking does not tell anyone how to play. It simply encourages it.

I'm not even arguing against K/D tracking. I just think it should be buried in the statistics. Focus should be, instead, on objective scores. Following squad leader commands, meeting objectives with your squad, defending under-attack objectives for extended periods of time, etc.

Skitrel · 2012-03-08, 11:43 AM

Originally Posted by BlazingSun

But in order to take objectives you have to defeat players of the opposite team, or not? The combat part of this game is why we play it, or do you play the game just to flip the colors of bases and on the map?

Of course, but the combat is just something that you need to do in order to get those objectives. The story and lore drives the gameplay, that story is that the empires are fighting for control of Auraxis, therefore we should be fighting for control, not for kills. In order to take control of objectives you are going to HAVE to fight people, therefore fighting people does not need to be an incentive. The incentive needs to be on telling players to go and take those objectives, on the way to getting those objectives the enemy is an obstacle to overcome, not the goal.

The goal should always be the focus and what the players have incentive to achieve. If you give emphasis and incentive to kills then you'll find less people pushing the objectives, less people playing for the goal and ultimately that's not what Planetside is about, it's about team based strategy to control the world. Telling people to go and control that world is important, the fighting is the emergent part of people attacking objectives.

On the flipside there is however another possibility here. Increase the score people get from earning kills while defending something they already control. Incentive to fight off the enemy from taking a base. Low kill score for attacking but high score for taking the objective, higher kill score on defence but obviously no points for an objective because you can't take what you've already got. This covers both bases, ensures pushing on attack and gives cause to defend.

In fact, utilising this, you can cause all the killwhores to play the defence part of the war effort and all the focused tactical players to play the offence part. Win win. Get the balance right for the defenders points earned from kills so it roughly equals (on average) the points people get from taking objectives and you've got the right balance of offence and defence. That's something that can be worked out in the beta based on the immense amount of statistics they'll get, they can do the math based on average time to take objective, number of kills in the sector per player, etc etc. Then it can all be properly balanced to balance the points earned by players participating on both sides of the war and successfully give both the killwhores and the objective players a role within the story of the world that all comes under the metric of score:death.

The math won't be a fun thing for the devs to do, to get the balance right it'll be necessary though. Won't be particularly difficult with the immense number of stats they'll have to toy with during beta and the transition to launch.

Skitrel · 2012-03-08, 11:46 AM

Originally Posted by Eyeklops

So at what point did "killing" not become the primary objective in any shooter game? Bf3, COD, MOH, PS1, and soon to be PS2, killing the enemy is the primary objective, period. How these games differ is in what killing the enemy does for you. Do you really think that PS2 has no purpose for kills? REALLY? How about the most important one of all, removing a strategic asset from the playing field so that friendly units can advance.

As I have said before, the killwhores move up the front line. They push the enemy to the spawns so that support players can fall in behind and set up defenses on captured territory. The demonization of killwhores is not needed. They provide a service to your empire, respect them.

That's simply not true. Killing is not the primary objective of a game where the story and goal behind the war is control of Auraxis. In order to control Auraxis one has to take land and continents and so on. Killing isn't the goal, taking land is. Killing is just something that has to happen because the enemy also have the same goal, thus - conflict.

EDIT: And I double posted. Apologies.

Aurmanite · 2012-03-08, 11:48 AM

Originally Posted by DeeTwoEh

Oh, I'm not arguing at all that people won't kill whore if K/D is not in the game. People have been killwhoring before there's ever been K/Ds. Shit, there's no stats website for PS1 and people still spawncamp to pad their KDs. Why? Because they're assholes I guess..I don't know..

But the point is, is that a lack of K/D discourages that kind of gameplay. People are less likely to cower back and spam grenades if they know that their precious K/D isn't at stake.

Malorn has an excellent point about evolving the current state of FPSes. It's too centralized on kill/stat whoring. It's less about capturing objectives. That needs to change. At the very least for an objective based game it HAS to change.

Are you going to play different if there is K/D tracking? I doubt it. Neither will hundreds of other like minded players. The notion that you have to discourage a completely valid gameplay choice is assinine.

BlazingSun · 2012-03-08, 11:49 AM

Originally Posted by DeeTwoEh

It was directed towards anyone that think putting K/D stats in an objective game is going make it benefit any, so I guess you got caught in the crossfire.

I don't deny your gaming background. You were an amazing player in PS who topped the leaderboards, as I can see by your signature you obviously are a very skilled BF3 player. That said, you cannot deny with your extensive gaming background the killwhoring is detrimental towards objective based game types.

Ok so one last reply to this thread. Well no I don't think that the K/D tracking brings an actual benefit to the game per se, but I don't feel like the negative effects are anywhere close to what you guys fear they will be. Was PS1 unplayable all of a sudden when they patched in the K/D bar? I didn't notice a difference at all to be honest.

I guess I can only speak for my self here, but keeping K/D in mind doesn't stop me from going for objectives. I might not be the one who always places the charges in BF3 rush mode, or the one who is the first one to blindly enter a tunnel, but that doesn't mean I don't support my team. Carefull/passive playstyle =/= selfish playstyle.

Edit:

Originally Posted by Skitrel

That's simply not true. Killing is not the primary objective of a game where the story and goal behind the war is control of Auraxis. In order to control Auraxis one has to take land and continents and so on. Killing isn't the goal, taking land is. Killing is just something that has to happen because the enemy also have the same goal, thus - conflict.

I guess it's a "the way is the goal" or "the goal is to reach the goal" kind of thing.

Coreldan · 2012-03-08, 11:52 AM

But I do have to say the mainstream audience will burst if there is no k/d of any kind, just like they did that with Brink.

It probably wont hurt the game too much, I mean who wouldnt play simply due to that? (i guess some might) but still, it will be QQed about if its out.