77 replies to this topic

[Ph30nix]

Davegt27, on 26 July 2014 - 04:19 PM, said:

I have died over 1000 times I my first month that has to be a record

LOL thats cute

[Heydiddly]

Be Rough With Me Plz, on 26 July 2014 - 02:57 PM, said:

They're the ultimate selfish gamer and generally ruin the group experience because they're sitting somewhere safe taking potshots at people without really adding anything to a line fight. The moment those players face any sort of danger they tuck tail and run leaving their teammates in a numerical (read: firepower) disadvantage. If such a player were on a coordinated team then it wouldn't really be much of an issue, but in PUG matches it generally hurts more than helps.

That being said, you can't change someone's mentality when all they care about is their KDR. A KDR player is going to play like a KDR player whether or not they can see their numbers. I liken the KDR mentality with the people who pilot an Atlas and equip LL's and LRM's.

Sorry, but that is just arrogant, naive BS. I'm interested in k/d, I make a point of holding each mech to a 1.0 ratio or better, it's a personal standard I hold myself to (Yup, even Locusts!). If I can't manage it, I take it as a sign that I probably need to re-evaluate my build or playstyle with that mech. It's a useful metric to me.

Does that mean I'm always "sitting somewhere safe taking potshots at people without really adding anything to a line fight"? No. Does that mean I "tuck tail and run" when facing any sort of danger? No. Have I ever hidden as last man to avoid dying? No.

When you start baselessly stereotyping large groups of people, you become no better than the people you're ranting about. Grow up.

[Roland]

One of the biggest problems with discussions about K/D is that many folks, especially those with low K/D's, don't really understand how one goes about getting a high K/D ratio.

The reality is, if you're always playing like a coward, you tend to NOT have a high K/D ratio. Folks with the highest K/D ratios are the most aggressive players.

[Lukoi Banacek]

Lefty Lucy, on 26 July 2014 - 01:19 PM, said:

I personally think it would be good for the game. We'd have less players "falling back" after taking a single AC5 hit, or refusing to get in the square to stop a base cap. I'd be willing to bet that if a lot of players stopped caring about their KDR their W/L would go up, and IMO in a team game that's the stat that's important.

More stats rather than less.

Part of the reason KDR is a fixation for some players is because there are not enough ways to reasonably track performance that are helpful. This game needs to be more granular like the BF series, not less.

[Felicitatem Parco]

I think that hiding the K/D ratio will reduce the frequency of extreme rudeness when someone hides and shuts down in an Assault match when their team is down 4-11.

I have reported too many people to Support@mwomercs.com about that issue. It's sad, because those people have fraudulent K/D ratios, which means the precious statistics that they are trying so hard to inflate is just a worthless, irrelevant value. It's like bragging about how many partners you've slept with when you're counting the ones what were drugged and passed-out.

[Roland]

Prosperity Park, on 26 July 2014 - 04:56 PM, said:

I think that hiding the K/D ratio will reduce the frequency of extreme rudeness when someone hides and shuts down in an Assault match when their team is down 4-11.

I have reported too many people to Support@mwomercs.com about that issue. It's sad, because those people have fraudulent K/D ratios, which means the precious statistics that they are trying so hard to inflate is just a worthless, irrelevant value. It's like bragging about how many partners you've slept with when you're counting the ones what were drugged and passed-out.

Just hit F9, and read the coordinates to OpFor so they can go kill them.

[Lukoi Banacek]

Roland, on 26 July 2014 - 04:50 PM, said:

The reality is, if you're always playing like a coward, you tend to NOT have a high K/D ratio. Folks with the highest K/D ratios are the most aggressive players.

Take notes here people. This is closer to the truth.

People who hide, they are just screwing their team and changing at what point in the match they die....not surviving. Aggressive but situationally aware players, push the enemy, force confusion, catch their opponents in localized isolation (so it becomes a match within a match of 8-12 on 4, then 12 on the remainin 8 etc), and kill their strung out foes.

Being aggressive is not necessarily forming into a line and trying to roll through one's opponents, like many fear....it's about forcing the engagement to occur on your terms than your enemy's.

[Pjwned]

I wouldn't care a whole lot, but there should be some way of measuring overall performance.

[Greyboots]

Lefty Lucy, on 26 July 2014 - 01:19 PM, said:

I personally think it would be good for the game. We'd have less players "falling back" after taking a single AC5 hit, or refusing to get in the square to stop a base cap. I'd be willing to bet that if a lot of players stopped caring about their KDR their W/L would go up, and IMO in a team game that's the stat that's important.

I once made a very similar comment and since I did I've done a fair bit of looking into this issue.

KDR is a useful stat for players to monitor their own performance, that can't be denied. It's not what I was ever trying to say. that being said, it's also fairly useless at the same time.

Wjile a lot of people will argue that killing the enemy is one of the most important aspects of the game, and they're right, who actually gets the kill is NOT. I've certainly got a bunch of kills that I don't actually "Deserve" because I've walked into a fight to support a team mate, poured on the firepower and ended up with the kill. I've also done 99% of the damage to a mech, had it run around a corner only to have a light chase it down and finish it with a zap from a medium laser or two.

This, to me, makes sense. The mech is dead and SOMEONE put it down making my team one step closer to a win. All is good. Not everyone feels the same though and you'll get both complaints of "you stole my kill" (never mind we just saved their backside from certain death) and people not shooting just so they can Alpha the kill at the last second instead of putting down the enemy as fast as possible.

It's also why you get berks running away, hiding somewhere and shutting down in the hopes that the timer will run out before they are found and killed.

It's a simple cost-benefit analysis. The down sides to tracking KDR are less than the upside.

Except to profit. People who care about KDR are driven to buy the "currently OP" mechs in an effort to maintain a high KDR. This is one of the realities in F2P games and one of the reasons why you'll see the "meta" in games like this rotate; To force players into buying new mechs and mechbays. Yes, most will just use cbills but many will buy premium time and/or mechbays (or mechs themselves), swap XP for GXP and so on to accelerate the process of obtaining and training up new mechs.

So yes, you are 100% correct that if KDR were removed tomorrow the game would be better for it. The reality is that it's also not going to happen.

And no, this isn't a condemnation of PGI. They have families that need things like a place to live and even Developers need to eat occasionally. For it to change players would have to stop caring about KDR and until that day it will remain one of the carrots dangling off the end of the MC stick.

[Greyboots]

Roland, on 26 July 2014 - 04:50 PM, said:

The reality is, if you're always playing like a coward, you tend to NOT have a high K/D ratio. Folks with the highest K/D ratios are the most aggressive players.

That, my friend, is complete rubbish. My highest KDR mech ever (KDR of about 14 to one) was a twin gauss + 1 ERPPC sniper and I spent the whole match hiding from the enemy. I just found it as boring as hell to play.

Pop tarts weren't being played a lot for a reason. Lots of kills for not many deaths if you were decent at it. Poptarting is "playing like a coward" even if you're being aggressive. Nothing against it mind you, it's a valid tactic in the game, but sometimes calling a spade a spade is needed even if it bruises a few egos.

LRM boating from cover. My BLR 1-S was running at about 8 to one there at one stage, many of the kills gained by indirect fire. The guys out there in the lights are the ones who were being aggressive, I just brought the rain..

Need I go on?

[Scratx]

The "why can't they just hide KDR" is a red herring.

KDR is just the number of kills divided by the number of deaths. You can compute it yourself with the windows calculator if you wish.

The only way to hide KDR is to hide the number of kills and number of deaths. At which point you may as well hide all stats entirely from the players.

[Alistair Winter]

I would rather have everything public, including ELO.

I really loved the public rankings in CS:S, where you could keep a track of your own ranking. Getting killed by a pr0 didn't sting so badly if you could see that he had 10 times your score. But it certainly felt great when you were able to take out someone with a high ranking.

[ShinobiHunter]

Davegt27, on 26 July 2014 - 04:19 PM, said:

I have died over 1000 times I my first month that has to be a record

Haha I may not be too far off. I think it's just part of learning. At least I hope so.

[Greyboots]

Scratx, on 26 July 2014 - 07:57 PM, said:

The "why can't they just hide KDR" is a red herring.

KDR is just the number of kills divided by the number of deaths. You can compute it yourself with the windows calculator if you wish.

The only way to hide KDR is to hide the number of kills and number of deaths. At which point you may as well hide all stats entirely from the players.

/facepalm. Yes dude, to hide the KDR they would also be hiding the number of kills and/or deaths.....

These are fairly useless stats all things considered. Weapon stats and module stats are FAR more crucial as a guide to your best performance. Taking out kills and deaths will NOT make these other stats redundant.

There is also ZERO correlation between KDR and WLR so that remains a valid stat too.

Edited by Greyboots, 26 July 2014 - 08:17 PM.

[Piney II]

Hiding KDR would result in much rage and QQ. Stats are important to some players and they are private, so there's no harm in keeping it.

There are some KDR warriors playing, but I doubt hiding the stat would change the way they play.

As for stats being public, I don't think that would be a good move at all. The e-peen waving would be rampant and toxic. The light and medium drivers would mostly be seen as lesser pilots just by the nature of the role their mechs play - they're usually supporting the fight, not carrying it.

[Henree]

with no kdr it would be totally pointless.

[Roland]

Greyboots, on 26 July 2014 - 07:56 PM, said:

That, my friend, is complete rubbish. My highest KDR mech ever (KDR of about 14 to one) was a twin gauss + 1 ERPPC sniper and I spent the whole match hiding from the enemy. I just found it as boring as hell to play.

Pop tarts weren't being played a lot for a reason. Lots of kills for not many deaths if you were decent at it. Poptarting is "playing like a coward" even if you're being aggressive. Nothing against it mind you, it's a valid tactic in the game, but sometimes calling a spade a spade is needed even if it bruises a few egos.

LRM boating from cover. My BLR 1-S was running at about 8 to one there at one stage, many of the kills gained by indirect fire. The guys out there in the lights are the ones who were being aggressive, I just brought the rain..

Need I go on?

What's your K/D

[Joseph Mallan]

Henri Schoots, on 26 July 2014 - 08:36 PM, said:

with no kdr it would be totally pointless.

How so?

[Soulscour]

I'm not interested in seeing other players stats in public. I am interested players seeing thier elo privately. Then you can choose to share that information with other people if they ask or compare with players that you play with privately. I do not think K/D ratio or elo even determines skill in this game. There are too many uncontrollable game variables that nullify this.

[Piney II]

My impression is ELO would be such a moving, fluid target as to be useless for personal measure. Its not a fixed value.