Roland, on 21 April 2014 - 02:49 PM, said:
That's why you are misunderstanding the point, bishop.
The point isn't that kd is important on its own, or that a statistic somehow makes you a better person, or even a better player.
But if someone doesn't see how kd is in fact measuring something important, and that performance in this game ultimately boils down to killing enemy mechs while preserving friendly ones, then that person is missing a really fundamental aspect of the game.
And you can see a lot of misunderstanding in this thread, where people are making ridiculous claims such as thinking that getting kills is pure luck, or is all based on somehow "kill stealing".
That isn't true bishop. That is fantasy.
Getting kills isn't luck, which is why the same folks tend to to the scoreboard over and over again.
Folks who are running a sub 1 kd ratio, and then tell themselves that they are playing fine and that their "role" demands it are fooling themselves. They have a low kd because they are doing things wrong. Unless they recognize this, they won't improve.
Improvement doesn't just come from repetition. Improvement comes from analyzing our mistakes and learning how not to repeat them. This is the key element that separates the good players from the bad. This ability to objectively analyze their own play, recognize mistakes, and correct them.
Some good players may be real cocky, but they also tend to be much more critical of themselves than bad players. A good player will analyze a loss (or even a win) and identify every mistake, and try to trace its cause. A bad player will attribute the outcome to luck, or other external causes out of their control.
And you see that mentality here. People saying that high kd ratios come from kill stealing, or hiding, or luck. But that is not the case. Yet, as long as people use such excuses instead of reflecting upon the mistakes they make which results in their poor kd ratio, then they will continue to make those mistakes.
And I think that is where YOU are misunderstanding.
I believe, what is being said, is the reliability of KDr as a stat is questionable, because it is gameable. Not that it is totally irrelevant, not that any good KDr is based off kill steals, and gaming. But that enough happens, that the stat itself is not the end all be all of epeen that many in this self same thread think it is. BOTH extremes are dead wrong.
You note that I stated I use KDr as a measuring stick. Against myself. Because it allows me to know what I do better in than not. But to compare one person's 4.0 to another persons is fallacious, because their roles could be vastly different. Heck. I can have a 4.0 KDr by having 40 kills to 10 deaths. That is NOT the same as a person with a 4.0 where they have 4000 kills to 1000 deaths, because the latter shows sustainability. Also, as the match numbers grow, the difficulty of the ratio become exponentially more difficult. Heck had a 14 to 1 KDr in my Orion for a hot minute. Then got my second loss in the mech and had a 7 to 1. A person running a Scout will almost always have a lower KDr than a player playing a Stealth Sniper, or a LRMBoat, because he is more in harms way, and if played right, has substantially less firepower than a Raven dedicated to combat. There are too many things that impact KDr to make sweeping statements. I do agree that if one is consistently running under a 1.0 KDr in a chassis, one should probably rethink their choice, but beyond that, I simply can't put much stress on KDr as a "serious biznez" stat. It sure the heck would not pass any "burden of proof" in a legal case.
Also, as stated, KDr in a PUG match and KDr in premades are affected by vastly different influences, as rolling with voice comms ALWAYS improves one person's success rate.
What people, at least what I believe most people are saying is that KDr is NOT the end all be all of talent. It can be affected by a number of things. The arguments are largely to your sweeping statements that "dying never benefits anything" which I categorically disproved.
If we want stats to be TRULY meaningful, they need to be far more in depth than the laughable dreck we have now.
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