76 replies to this topic

[Chill Bill]

Just looking to get an idea on the populations view on the importance of 'good' k/d. It seems some view it as the gold standard, most don't.

I have two mechs with k/d's well into the green. But I enjoy playing others that I am quite 'challenged' in which kill my k/d. They are still much fun. Which is the whole point of playing, right? It's not like a pro athlete playing for his salary, etc...

Still..........

[Zolaz]

Dude, just do whatever makes you happy and keeps you playing. Yes, you should be doing over 200 pts of damage a game, even in your fun mech. Doing less damage means you over extended and got killed early. Unless, you see around 3 or 4 deaths on your team before you.

The only reason K/D is the golden unit is because PGI's MM isnt trying to deliberately tank it.

[Bront]

Can you contribute? Are you being useful to your team? Are you helping them win?

If the answer is yes, you're doing well. Regardless of the K/D ratio.

For example, I would expect a DDC pilot to have a lower K/D ratio than some other mechs because part of what the DDC does is damage soak and ECM. Kills and damage are nice, but you can have a preductive DDC round dying while only doing 200 points of damage, but soaking a ton of damage during a push so your team mates can effectively push along with you.

[The Great Unwashed]

I am very much interested in my K/D because it tells me that I need to play better. This while being at the front line as being away from it is bad for the team and that is bad for your K/D.

Edited by The Great Unwashed, 19 March 2014 - 10:32 AM.

[saagri]

I just try to shoot for doing my own armor in damage. If I am in a jenner I will try to get over 200 damage. If I am in a highlander I will shoot for over 500.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Chillbill, on 19 March 2014 - 10:15 AM, said:

Still..........

If it helps...

When I squirrel half the enemy team in a light mech (Locust! woo!) my K/D ratio tends to plummet - but very few doubt I helped win (and have even had people in later drops cheer when they saw me in it again )

But no one really expects a Locust to contribute much to the K/D ratio of the team.


On the other hand - for a high-damage, low armor mech like the Jagers, a poor K/D ratio is a fair indication you could be performing much better with it
(IE, you should have stood a little further back, and let that Thunderbolt on your team soak the damage while you blasted the people spending forever to take him down)

In the end, if you feel like you contributed (better if you did contribute ) and had fun - then I wouldn't sweat it to much.

[Triple Patte]

I don't try to have a positive K/D as much as try to kill at least my own tonnage if I'm actually piloting a mech who's primary job is killing people. If I play a scout or ECM mech I'm happy if I get lots of spotting assist or see their LRM boats get low damage, for example.

[Acierocolotl]

I have mixed feelings about K/D, and it's not a useful stat unless you look at win/loss ratios as well.

Consider the light outpost-capping mech. You don't get to fight much in Conquest mode, you're busy trying to flip points. Your role is utterly critical in securing the team's victory. Your damage output, kills and overall payouts will be poor. You do it because you like winning. Your stats beyond win/loss ratio will be terrible, though.

There's also people who hang waaay back in their massive alpha heavies, not even fighting, just waiting for the resulting survivors of the 11-on-12, so they can descend like a vulture on the survivors for some easy kills. They lose a lot, despite having a massive K/D. If I were prone to fits of fury, I'd hate these guys so much.

Ultimately, for every chump who's got a K/D over 1, there's one who doesn't. Statistically, it all averages out to 1. A dude who only fights cripples has a massive K/D ratio, whereas I'd rather have a pilot with more deaths than kills but a good ELO or win/loss ratio, because you know which of these two knows what teamwork is.

Therefore, wrapping up this bit of a ramble, I don't pay much stock to K/D ratio. In a heavy or assault, it's, at best, a very coarse metric to a player's performance. If it's more than one standard deviation beyond normal, then I'd be interested.

[Lukoi Banacek]

K/D is one stat among many and contextual in its usefullness. Fixating on it singly is useless. Ignoring it completely however is a bad idea as well.

Consider in context or dont waste the angst on it. Its a videogame.

[Eximar]

Kills/game is more interesting to me, since it's less dependent on whether the team is any good.

[Chill Bill]

Lukoi, on 19 March 2014 - 11:20 AM, said:

........ Its a videogame.

It is!?!? I thought the wife and kids were the ga.....

Kidding. Thanks all for replies.

[Gtbuck]

Mostly just piling on. While I do notice the number of kills at the end of a match there are many other ways a player can impact a game. What follows is just how I rate myself mostly.

First, I try to keep my K/D above 2, some of my mechs are well above because they're built to do that, some I play because they're really fun and don't really care if I get a kill or not.

As far as a number I use to know if I had a good game or not is c-bills earned followed by damage. I can't give an exact number of c-bills, but it does let me know if I was useful to my team by earning assists, spot bonuses, and component destructions etc.

On damage, I strive to get above 500, anything less and I feel like I didn't do my job. I don't hold other players to this number because I don't know how experienced they are.

Just one note to why I don't think KD is the ultimate number. I've reached a point now that I'm more concerned with winning a match than getting the most kills, when I'm in battle, if I manage to knock off all or most weapons from a mech but they still have an armored CT I switch to another target. Sure, it costs me some kills but it is more useful to the team.

[Dunning Kruger Effect]

The MW:O community seems much more relaxed about "To KDR or not to KDR" than other gamer groups, which is great.

Also, unlike WoT, "win ratio" is not the be-all and end-all either. The community is very good about it, I think. In fact the only snobbery is about near mythical "ELO" which seems to have no way to be accurately measured.

However I like stats and debate, so here's my 10c:

Is KDR useful?
Whilst global KDR do not tell the whole story, individual mechs have individual stats, so it provides "context" i.e. Locust vs Highlander, unlike other games.

A low KDR tends to indicate you are dead more often then average, leaving your team shorthanded more often. I.e. a ECM Spider with a 2:1 kdr would suggest he is likely more useful to the team then one with a 1:2 kdr.

A player with a high KDR is often very good at targeting weak points on enemy mechs, A player with huge damage but no kills might be spraying lasers all over their target - whilst the enemy mech remains in action, damaging their team mates.
Removing enemy mechs from the battle is a VERY useful piece of team work.

The inference (already made in this thread) is people with a high KDR are "snipers" and "killstealers" - cowards in superior mechs who prey on damaged mechs - is just as stupid as claiming people with low KDRs are "selfless" "brave" "teamplayers."
"I have a low KDR therefore I am a good team player?"
A low KDR is just as (if not more) indicative of someone who make bad choices for staying alive or killing enemy mechs - i.e.a low KDR is more likely to be someone who will simply banzai charge into the enemy and die stupidly at the start of the match than a selfless heroic flag capper.

Or is it for teh winz?
Neither is "win" ratio the be-all and end-all. It is more reliant on your team - difficult in PUG play. Anyone else had a 10-game losing streak where they averaged 300-500 damage and their team-mates 100-150?

Win loss ratio is also skewed by how often you play pre-made groups.

ELO, it's all about ELO
When I see some concrete stats on this, it may be useful but at the moment is seems a bit nebulous. "They always aim at my legs as a light - so I know I'm a high ELO" is merely opinion.

Is there a factual way of knowing who is "high ELO" and who is not? What I WOULD find useful is high "ELO" players have a different icon so I know what mechs to "follow" after I am dead, to learn improve my gameplay.

[Sug]

The stat reset completely freaked me out. I'm toying with the idea of starting a "fun" account where I can experiment and use gimmicky trash builds and then using my main account for serious builds/playstyles.

[Goldmember]

I could not care less about my statistics. If I am having fun I need no number to confirm it.

[Mazzyplz]

in a game where 12 people shoot 12 people dead, and it goes on and on, then yes

K/D is an indicator of how many times you were ballast and how many times you did what you were supposed to do.
moreso than win/loss because unless you're doing all the capping... that win probably wasn't on your shoulders alone.



that being said, some people will steal your kills, sometimes you'll do great and go with 0 kills.

damage also can't be trusted, because LRM will do lot of unnecesary dmg, where as a build with ppcs will probably hit center torso and kill a mech with 160 dmg.

so that's the reason K/D or DMG are not golden units or perfect indicators.
if you take into account K/D, DMG and W/L altogether... then you will get a very good sense if you're doing well.


if you get low K/D you're dying a lot and that's not conducive to victory.
if you get low DMG then you're probably dying early unless you have sniped CT or cockpit.
if you get low W/L it means you probably shouldn't worry too much and just need to pay attention to caps. unless you play commander role. (like me) - in which case it means you're a poor commander

[Appogee]

"Good Piloting" is such a nuanced thing, and the stats fail to reveal so much because so much can't be measured...

Did I intelligently flank, disrupt enemy lines, manoevre the team to good firing line, relay crucial information about the enemy's whereabouts, pop a useful UAV, take out the LRM boat. Did I personally take out the most threatening opponent? All of this is good piloting, yet doing it can actually reduce your stats.

In terms of stats, I tend to focus on:

Average damage per match, per weight class. >200 for Lights and Mediums, >300 for Heavies, >400 for Assaults.
K/D ratio ... though I bear in mind that it's very subject to "un/lucky last shot".
Highest damage/kills for your team in a given match.

The other thing to bear in mind is that the stats are inflated for those who only play in teams, vs those who also PUG. Teamwork is OP, and members of teams benefit from that.

So, I tend to compare my stats only against my own stats. I've seen guys so proud of their 8:1 k/d ratio, and consider that this makes them the best Mechwarrior out there. However, I know they are their team's sniper. Their job is only to deliver the killing blow to targets designated by their 12-man's Commander. Their team has made those targets 80% dead before the sniper even engages. In my view, the guys who consistently make the target 80% dead, ready for the kill shot, are the actual good players on that team. Landing a 30 point dual Gauss sniper shot on a weakened target, using advanced zoom from afar, is relatively easy in comparison.

I also know someone who has a k/d of 3, yet his entire approach to the game is to build crazy loadouts... and make them work regardless. I consider him a better pilot than me - or the 12 man's sniper - because he is just so versatile, thoughtful and accurate. I can only imagine what kind of stats he'd rack up if he only used optimised meta builds.

Edited by Appogee, 21 March 2014 - 01:30 AM.

[Parappaman]

Just 6 games since the reset. Just 1.00 KDR, but a 5/1 win/loss. This is a much more important stat for me.

[BOWMANGR]

Let's be a little blunt here. K/D ratio is for kids. If your mech has a support role, then you need to support not kill as much, if your mech has an ECM role then you don't need to kill as much, if you're a scout you don't need to kill as much, if you are NARCing you don't kill you play stealthy, if you soak damage you don't need to kill as much.

There are so many things that someone can do in this game, that I laugh when someone actually thinks that having a big K/D ratio in any mech regardless of role automatically means that they are good players. I have a Dragon that can steal kills all day long, its K/D ratio is huge but I do not feel a good player when piloting it that way. Heck, I'm NOT a good player for my team when doing that.

Let me say that again, K/D ratio is for kids.

Edited by BOWMANGR, 21 March 2014 - 01:58 AM.

[The Great Unwashed]

And when you are not supporting, ECMing, scouting or NARCING and not doing the killing, then I suppose it's left to the kids to actually take out kill-steal the enemy mechs?

Edited by The Great Unwashed, 21 March 2014 - 02:32 AM.