Why K:D, Deaths, streaks and other stats are bad, and how PS2 can evolve the genre - Page 34

Tatwi · 2012-07-24, 12:57 AM

Originally Posted by Malorn

The stats for this game are horribly skewed towards cultivating selfish killswhore stats and do nothing to promote teamwork stats or objective-based-play. These stat screen is a perfect example of everything wrong with gaming culture right now. The only thing that keeps it from being a complete pile of shit is the prominence of "Score per minute" in a few places, and score in others. The rest of it just encourages people to play solo, ignore objectives, ignore teammates, and find the most efficient way to kill people, regardless of everything else going on. Encouraging that type of player behavior will doom planetside.

The way PS2 handles stats is the biggest mistake they are making in the game. Depraved disregard of the power of stats and the impact it will have on player behavior.

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.

**Malorn** · 2012-07-24, 01:01 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.

I think this may be the most beautiful, elegant, and insightful post I have ever seen on these forums. Thank you for this!

BuzzCutPsycho · 2012-07-24, 01:01 AM

I am also willing to bet there will be better games for kill farming and KDR tracking.

GreatMazinkaise · 2012-07-24, 01:18 AM

Originally Posted by Malorn

I just did.
http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...&postcount=493

The prominence of stats reinforces what is important, and what is important shapes behavior.

To put it in simple terms so you can understand - the death stat makes you look bad. You will avoid that stat. In avoiding that stat you change the way you behave in the game. If the stat didn't exist, you would behave differently.

The problem is exacerbated by the stats the devs choose to elevate and display prominently, as illustrated in the post you quoted, so you must not have read it.

I did read it... I just drew different conclusions. If you're paying so much attention to K/D that you fail to play aggressively or to the objectives, then you're an idiot and you will not ultimately be victorious in the grand scheme of things. If you ignore it entirely you're committing a similar error; if your K/D isn't getting better then you're not getting better and you've become a burden to your team.

You can't force players to be useful to their team by de-emphasizing K/D. They'll decide that for themselves.

Jakkar · 2012-07-24, 01:47 AM

Simple agreement. As a PS1 vet I know we will rely upon a solid flow of reinforcements to hold a point or push into a base effectively - when a kill to death ratio is recognised and tracked players feel shy of the risk of dying, and will refuse to be the first man through the door, while specialising in long range weapons that keep them out of the shit.

Game design is essentially understanding and manipulating player psychology - there's more than enough evidence to be certain k/d ratio recognition influences players to more self-protective, less team-oriented attitudes to combat.

Kezz · 2012-07-24, 01:49 AM

Originally Posted by GreatMazinkaise

Actually, the combination of the two is required; if your K/D is > 1 in 1v1 fights you're a better grunt than someone that has a K/D significantly less than 1.

While that's true, it's emphatically not what a K

in PS2 will show, since there is no conceivable way to determine whether any given kill or death is in a "1v1 fight". The metric is representing something entirely different to what the people who haven't played PS will be expecting, and there is a high chance they will interpret it incorrectly in that light. This will lead to:

Players doing things that don't (and declining to do things that do) help secure the win-condition, in order to preserve/boost their K/D ratio.
Players quitting because they get killed all the time and their ratio doesn't get over unity, because even if they're a good average and 1v1 would be at unity or higher, the other sources of death simply drown out their "combat" victories.

Of course, a better KD is some measure of how good a fighter you are, but a dedicated GAL pilot (say) is gonna have a crappy K/D, and people new to the concept of the game aren't going to be able to recognise that judging people by their K/D is a suboptimal way of vetting applications for your squad.

And it remains that the metrics that are prominent will shape people's perceptions of what they're "meant" to be doing, so should be carefully selected to promote the USP of the game.

A squad of K/D 1+ is gonna be able to better take and hold points and repel forces of greater size. 1v1 K/D marks the difference between elites and zerglings.[/QUOTE]

Mepper · 2012-07-24, 02:50 AM

I totally agree with you, Malorn. Being usefull should be rewarded, not having a good k/d.

Mythoclast · 2012-07-24, 03:05 AM

Originally Posted by Plunkies

An opinion is something that varies based on a personal views. Example: Apple tastes good, flower smells bad, game is unfun. A fact is truth originating from experience, observation and evidence. "Death stats discourage teamplay" is a fact.

First I'd like to say I can see you are fairly intelligent. This was a well though out post and is a good analysis. I'm not being sarcastic. However, in the absence of actual statistics and such we are left to use our experience and our own judgment which we clearly are using differently and see different outcomes. Our experience, observation, and gathered evidence lead us to different opinions, not different facts, as that is impossible.

Originally Posted by Plunkies

what could deaths do? OVERALL, they could have no effect, they could promote teamplay, or they could discourage teamplay. These are the three things that could happen. These are not opinions that vary from one person to another, like whether an apple tastes good or a flower smells funny. These are actual consequences resulting in a persistent death display. An individual may be effected differently, but the overall change can only be one of these.

This is all true. It CAN only be one of these over all. Maybe a bit of variance player to player but yes, over all there can only be one.

Originally Posted by Plunkies

So looking at the first option, it could have no effect on every single person. Meaning no change. We know from this thread alone that the overall effect will not be neutral.

This is an opinion. Prove it can't be neutral without using your subjective experience in this thread but by using statistics or other hard facts.

Originally Posted by Plunkies

And finally, how does the death count discourage teamplay? Well the closer you get to an objective, the more likely you are to die. I've already posted my 4.8 k/d battlefield profile with minimal objective points. Objectives are meatgrinders with highly concentrated fighting often requiring a high risk of death to attempt to achieve the victory conditions or deny them from the opposing team.

1. Logically, someone avoiding deaths would avoid these situations. Also, all support roles suddenly become less attractive as well. Only repairing or healing, driver seats with no guns, transport vehicles, etc. Not much of a KDR when your role never get kills.

2. These are typically very team oriented tasks and anyone wanting a higher KDR would be wise to avoid them. In addition to this, KDR also promotes more SOLO activities that don't involve teamplay and might not help much at all.

3. Vehicle pad camping, spawn camping, sniping. In BF specifically, most mortar and MAV abuse was a direct result of people trying to pad their stats. I can go on and on with more... Spawning on a squad is a very high risk of death often with little pay off. Switching to a class that your team needs more but you're less effective with is discouraged. Playing AA or AV if your weapons are more likely to only be a deterrent rather than something that will actually get a kill.

4. Here's a very important one. If you're losing, go somewhere else. Fighting losing battles gets you killed. Fighting outnumbered gets you killed. When your team needs you the most you have the least incentive to be there. Once again, persistent death stats actively discourage teamplay. It is not an opinion. It is a fact based on observation and logic. If you disagree with this then please give some reasoning behind it, because I've heard none so far.

Indent 1:

1. Having KDR makes people only care about KDR. This is not true. It may increase the likelihood of useless self preservation but this effect is debatable and mainly where we disagree. The debatableness of this point is what makes this an opinion.

2. People care about a death stat also only care about KDR. This isn't true either. A medic may care about heals per death or an infiltrator may care about hacks per death or maybe a transport pilot would care about deaths in his vehicle per minute of piloting a vehicle.

Indent 2:

1. Caring about KDR does not necessarily mean you will value getting kills over getting objectives. Again, this effect is debatable as is KDR's causing of people to go lone wolf.

Indent 3:

1. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU. Spawn camping sucks. First, blowing up vehicles is more satisfying to a lot of people than blowing up doodz. This stat should be tracked too. And again, you are only using your opinions and experience to determine what showing KDR would do, as am I. We don't have any statistics or hard evidence.

Indent 4:

1. Dying and spending time dead is the discourager to fighting losing battles, not a mounting death score in the stat screen.

Thanks for giving me something to do. And yes, I know we will never convince each other.

...UNLESS YOU CONDUCT AN EXPERIMENT. Gogogo! For the good of the nation!

Accuser · 2012-07-24, 04:52 AM

Originally Posted by Mythoclast

1. Having KDR makes people only care about KDR. This is not true. It may increase the likelihood of useless self preservation but this effect is debatable and mainly where we disagree. The debatableness of this point is what makes this an opinion.

Plenty of people won't care about KDR. But many people will only care about KDR because that's what they've been trained to do. If even just one person prioritizes KDR over the success of their empire, then teamplay has been negatively effected.

Originally Posted by Mythoclast

2. People care about a death stat also only care about KDR. This isn't true either. A medic may care about heals per death or an infiltrator may care about hacks per death or maybe a transport pilot would care about deaths in his vehicle per minute of piloting a vehicle.

It's also irrelevant because there are no other x per death ratios displayed as stats. Only Kills Per Death is given special treatment. Not Revives Per Death, not Hacks Per Death, and not anything else per death. Only Kills Per Death is tracked specially and that indicates to players that it is special.

FireWater · 2012-07-24, 05:55 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.

Narcissism is a pretty rough Personality Disorder, I'm not sure how displaying KDR is reflective of that honestly. It just shows how many kills deaths and assists a player gets. Combined with other stats it gives a total picture of what a player is capable of.

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.

Well not every player, but to address your point a lot of gamers play games to escape for a little while, to be something more than they are regularly. Like reading a book to feel like you are the main character, or watching a movie with a great story line. The only difference with video games is that the player gets to interact with the content, instead of just consume it.

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.

Is it possible that Killwhores would exist just for the sake of Killwhoring regardless of any stats that are shown or not shown? If killing is a great way to get "score" up, would players behave in a way to maximize said score? As far as PS1s tiny pop, the game is 8 years old. Outside of Valve games, SC, and WoW, I'm not sure of a game that has still has a community from 3 years ago.

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.

I agree that PS2 needs a strong community to survive, especially if its F2P. Players wont want to monetize. But I think ignoring KDR isn't going to facilitate community. I think the more stats that SOE can offer the better, since there are so many roles that are available to contribute. As with my basketball example, one would think he/she who doesn't score points is bad, if people just looked at that stat. But if you looked at the other stats, the player becomes a beast of a sudden.

I also reject the notion that because I am focused on efficiency that now I'm a "killwhore" or a "brainless monkey". With proper interpretation, high KDR might be seen as a bad thing for outfits, as they might see low objective points or other stats that contribute to their respective faction. A smart outfit would reject a player soley based on KDR, and perhaps another outfit might have value for said player.

Why?

Because 100% of the game play requires other people.

And tons of stats are a way to keep people engaged. Remember, SOE has to look at the game population as whole, and will make decisions based on that. That may mean that they will make decisions that players will disagree with said decisions from time to time. I don't think KDR is as catastrophic as some players make it out to be.

StumpyTheOzzie · 2012-07-24, 06:08 AM

Originally Posted by GreatMazinkaise

I did read it... I just drew different conclusions. If you're paying so much attention to K/D that you fail to play aggressively or to the objectives, then you're an idiot and you will not ultimately be victorious in the grand scheme of things. If you ignore it entirely you're committing a similar error; if your K/D isn't getting better then you're not getting better and you've become a burden to your team.

You can't force players to be useful to their team by de-emphasizing K/D. They'll decide that for themselves.

And round and round the mulberry bush we go.

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.

Without my AMS - usually the first on site - OUR ENTIRE EMPIRE often has no forward spawn till the rest of the support players get their shit together.

Without my Lodestar my outfit's armour (and anyone else nearby) gets shredded.

Short supply lines = win. Lots of spawning bodies = win. Without AMSes and Lodestars you have long supply lines. So you lose.

My Kills often are less than 5, most of them coming from driving over cloakers.
My deaths are often in the 50s.

Using this K/D ratio, everyone thinks I suck. If you add in my assists (often over 2000) all of a sudden you can see I'm one of the most useful people on my EMPIRE.

Not my squad. Not my outfit. My EMPIRE.

Ok, now please find for me in planetside 2 any stats at all anywhere relating to:
Armour repaired.
Ammo spawned.
Assists.
Spawns from my vehicles.
Resurrections (I'm med+ too)

Now, IF you manage to find these stats, how prominently are they displayed? Why aren't they the number one stat? Why can't I delete, remove or bury Kills and deaths because they are not important to me?
Why can't I promote myself as doing a different job to the gunmonkeys?
Why must I be measured in areas of performance that are irrelevant to winning the game?

EisenKreutzer · 2012-07-24, 06:16 AM

Originally Posted by StumpyTheOzzie

Now, IF you manage to find these stats, how prominently are they displayed? Why aren't they the number one stat? Why can't I delete, remove or bury Kills and deaths because they are not important to me?
Why can't I promote myself as doing a different job to the gunmonkeys?
Why must I be measured in areas of performance that are irrelevant to winning the game?

And, more importantly, why should there be a stat that encourages people to judge you based on criteria that are non-essential to being good at the game?

MrKWalmsley · 2012-07-24, 06:38 AM

Originally Posted by Raymac

Malorn, I always love your posts, but this is just your opinion. There are a ton of modern gamers that love their stats. It's like trying to make the argument that stat tracking is ruining sports. Also, every press review I've read so far about the GDC demo has touted the stat tracking as being a great thing. It's what the people want.

The game itself will encourage cooporation over stat whoring. There will always be stat whores, but since we played PS1, we know you have much more success working as a team towards a goal, whether or not stats are tracked.

TL;DR Just deal with it. The people want their stats.

If you didn't even bother to read it don't bother replying to it. At no point did he say that people hate stats, in fact his entire post relied on the opposite. And not every player is a PS1 vet, in fact I would wager that the majority of PS2 players would not have played PS1 at all. Most will be carry overs from CoD, BF3 ect, and so WILL have that mentality of caring about your K/D score.

Please, before stating your opinion on a thread make sure you actually read the fucking post you are responding to, otherwise don't waste our time with an un-informed response.

Reading through this thread I've realised most of the people disagreeing with it didn't even bother to read the whole thing. Shows a lot about them really, instant gratification for one, typical CoD kiddy mentality. And shows that they are willing to disagree with you and respond to you without even listening to you, and are therefore untrustworthy in any discussion.

Dart · 2012-07-24, 06:42 AM

Seriously guys, I can't put this any more plainly; stats are in the game. Get over it.

If you find their existence upsetting and they somehow devalue your own self worth within a computer game then those are issues you ought to work on privately - or perhaps give PS2 a miss?

They are currently pretty prominent - when you open the menu (from where you access every non-gameplay UI in the game - the first page you see is your 'Summary' page which will give you all sorts of interesting stats.

So in case you missed, statistical tracking of your performance is in the game; start preparing mentally.

MrKWalmsley · 2012-07-24, 06:47 AM

Originally Posted by Dart

Seriously guys, I can't put this any more plainly; stats are in the game. Get over it.

If you find their existence upsetting and they somehow devalue your own self worth within a computer game then those are issues you ought to work on privately - or perhaps give PS2 a miss?

They are currently pretty prominent - when you open the menu (from where you access every non-gameplay UI in the game - the first page you see is your 'Summary' page which will give you all sorts of interesting stats.

So in case you missed, statistical tracking of your performance is in the game; start preparing mentally.

Here's another person who seems to be strawmanning! Through dishonesty or through the fact they didn't even read! Hardly anyone here is saying that we should remove stats, in fact most of us (INCLUDING THE OP) are discussing WHICH stats should be the most prominent. Once again, read the post or don't bother giving us you're misguided opinion. The bane of this world is people so arrogant they think that they should just go ahead and comment with knowledgeable authority on a subject they didn't even bother to listen to.