42 replies to this topic

[Zordicron]

IMO, K/D is a mostly worthless thing in this game, it can have some minor value as a general measure for your own purposes to judge certain loadouts/mechs. For instance, one would not likely give a flying fart about the ratio on a team support/scouting/cap mech. On the other hand, if you create a loadout designed to be a brutal asskicker death dealer, and you get some abysmal ratio, your loadout needs work. Overall ratio IMO is only a very loose picture of overall performance, to be used in junction with W/L ratio.

that said, if you have a stout K/D and a fairly solid positive W/L, you are doing something good, in any mech over time.

To me, the closest thing we have as a measure in a match is match score, and that still removes all team communications from the picture.

here is what I see as "skills" for MWO:

1. Field awareness. this is greater then all other combined, it is how you win, knowing where everyone is friend and foe alike lets you respond positioning wise, targeting wise, well anything really in optimal ways.
2. Aim- yes a general skill, no clear measure in game of it other then your ACC stats in profile, and those are iffy due to nature of weapons. I tend to think it is a pretty easy thing to tell if you are doing it right, if you see an exposed componant on your foe, and destroy it, nice shot. if you win a dual with something somewhat even ground with your mech, you out-shot(mostly, could be heat etc too though) the other guy. but in general, if you miss a lot of duff the ground etc, well....
3. Piloting skill- goes with aim, but this is stuff like torso twisting, shooting on the run, using cover effectively, elevation changes, etc. pretty well on par even in importance with aim IMO.
4- sort of a general one, but team communication skills- this goes mostly hand in hand with the first point, but timely chat messages, or even targeting something so the team can see it on radar- I think it deserves a little of its own spot as this is a team game, no ECM YOLO raven is going to win on it's own, nobody will, despite the egos of some.

Of those 4 major skills, you can only derive indirectly your performance in them through the stats, like KD ratio, WL ratio, acc stats, etc. match score factors in stuff like spots and comp destructs, dmg, kills, etc. I have seen kill snipers get matches with 4 kills and 4 assists and get a 45 match score because they were just running in for the final small laser hit. I have seen matches with players hitting match scores of 110 with one or two kills because they murdered most of the enemy team's mechs to bits, spotted for missile boats, countered ECM, etc.

All in all, I usually look at match score, weigh in the events of said match, with the base line of some general K/D and W/L and acc stats for the mech I was using and the purpose I built it for to decide if I need to change a loadout or playstyle in that mech to improve. it is not an easy answer to get, and nothing is really definitive.

really, thats how I like it to be. Infer your own take on the game and your skill based on what you want out of the game. i think the stat system we have is perfectly adequate for that purpose.

[YueFei]

W/L is the only thing that matters. The objective of the game is to win matches.

When you lose a bunch of battles and lose your planet, is it going to help your team/faction/merc-corp at all to point at your high KDR?

Here's an example of behavior that benefits your KDR but can lower your W/L:
Continuing to shoot at neutered enemy mechs that are walking sticks, rather than ignoring them and swapping to a more dangerous target. Doing stuff like that helps you net a few more kills in the long run, raising your KDR. But if you consistently take shots like that only to overheat and shut-down, and unable to fire at a critical moment at much more dangerous enemy mechs, that kind of thing will also cost you a few close-run games, lowering your W/L.

[MischiefSC]

KDR favors LRM boats and snipers even though neither of those roles help drive wins very well - mostly what they do, honestly, is scavenge kills and support their teammates. By NOT being on the front line what they're really doing is reducing the number of targets the enemy has to shoot at in any given match - this literally adds to the damage load your teammates take per match. More mechs on the front line means more damage spread among more people and more direct fire available on point.

Snipers and LRM boats can help a win go over-the-top and they can help on some specific maps turn a game around. In general though they drive kills, not wins.

Actually, because of all the good reasons listed by Deathlike, Roadkill, Joseph and others, I think the best metric would be overall Win/Loss. Probably by Chassis, though weighclass could work.

See, this would indicate how good you are on average of helping drive a win. The cool concept behind it is that it doesn't matter HOW you do it, just that you do it - we all get derp teams and play against good teams. Law of averages though shows that over time all the other people you play with average out with who everyone else plays with and you get a decent indicator of your skill.

What we need is some sort of system for that. Hmm.... but who can we turn to? Where can we look?