46 replies to this topic

[Mister Blastman]

Whenever I see a thread like this about KDR, I always read the same thing, "KDR doesn't matter!" by players who want to justify not trying hard enough.

Whatever. Keep telling yourselves that.

[Deathlike]

The Lombardi quote referenced is used in a sport where each guy needs to beat their man (aka "do their job").

Sometimes when one guy fails to do their job, the play fails. In MWO, sometimes it can be just the thing that causes a roflstomp... because not everyone is willing to push into the enemy... when the situation says that they are sniping, but you're just peeking/poking and not trying to force them into an uncomfortable position.

The actual requirement of teamwork is to actually work with the team. The more people that completely deviate and do little to help to winning the match.. even if they are sniping/lurming from the back and not taking hits in an Atlas... well, that's how the cookie crumbles in MWO.

As long as people are on the same page and execute as a group, then the chances of success increase.

You don't have to have a great game... sometimes there are games where you don't have to carry. In the games you have to carry... sometimes it takes a few mistakes to honestly make the difference between winning or lose. So... it's always best to remain useful in the entire duration of the battle.

Focusing on pure K-D ratio isn't entirely helpful... nor it is pay attention purely on W-L ratio. You have to see the player in the entire context of how he or she plays, in order to see how useful that player will be when under pressure.

[Roadkill]

Mister Blastman, on 17 April 2015 - 08:57 AM, said:

Whenever I see a thread like this about KDR, I always read the same thing, "KDR doesn't matter!" by players who want to justify not trying hard enough.

It's not that it doesn't matter, it's that it isn't relevant to most discussions. There are far too many things that affect KDR besides simply skill for it to be generally useful as a comparison tool.

If you're comparing two people who have the same playstyle and are using the same Mech, then yeah KDR can tell you which one of them is better.

But if you're comparing two people, one of whom is a sniper in a meta build and the other is a brawler in very-non-meta rough-and-tumble build, then it's completely useless.

[Davegt27]

The OP said nothing about KDR so the thread seems to have gotten off track

The OP is talking about contributing to the team/win and being a low or non producer

The Pug area is very different then high ELO area

You might even say the PUG area is a dipper and bottle area


I recently had a chance to hang out with some Marik players on TS and I felt we were talking about two different games.

The next day I dropped with an 11 man team so I joined them on TS, the drop was a ghost drop so most of them left out of frustration

The rest of us dropped as group in a non CW match (I sort of knew it was a bad idea)

There on the other side I see Sean Lang, I started crying "man you guys pushed me into a higher ELO bracket I am going to get my ass handed to me"

They are like what are you talking about
I did 65 damage and had both arms shot off my TW in like 5 seconds (my best Mech with 3 CUAC5's); I had never had both arms shot off my TW before

I dropped with them one more time and again another low damage match I apologized and told them I am a pug I can follow orders and try to help out but that's about it.

The bottom line is I was not helping them

Some people want to use KDR as an indicator if you really worth your salt in this game some want to use damage

The question is where do you draw the line?

[Roadkill]

Davegt27, on 17 April 2015 - 10:48 AM, said:

Some people want to use KDR as an indicator if you really worth your salt in this game some want to use damage

The question is where do you draw the line?

The answer is neither. MWO is far too complex of a game to be distilled down to a single stat unless that stat is derived from the only thing that matters - winning and losing.

KDR and damage are reasonable relative measures of skill, but they only work when most other things remain constant. I.e. playstyle, Mech choice, queue. Comparing my KDR in an LRM-5 Stormcrow in the Solo queue to your KDR in a PPC Thunderbolt 9S in CW is meaningless. Comparing my damage in a missile support Raven (Tag, Narc, ECM, AMS, a couple of ML) to your damage in a ballistic-spam Dire Wolf is meaningless.

PGI wisely keeps such stats private. You can share them if you want, but they're not public because they're not meaningful without context.

[Torgun]

Frankly if we're talking about Skirmish I think damage is a pretty good indicator of whether you've contributed. If you do a good amount of damage like say 400 points, odds are you have softened up a target or two considerably even if it's spread over several targets. Whenever you lose fast and badly, it's almost always a couple players that can't aim and die with less than 100 damage. Damage doesn't tell the whole story, but in the end it does tell a lot.

On topic, rewards are really a joke for anyone doing an average showing with 1 kill 5-6 assists and 2-300 damage. You have to be a top 3 scorer doing way above what an average player would do to get halfway decent rewards. That of course will make all the less good or new players feel they don't matter, as they are rewarded really poorly for doing a decent game.

Edited by Torgun, 17 April 2015 - 02:21 PM.

[Trashhead]

I - technically - agree with the statement that you should try to raise your K/D-ratio above 1.

There are two issue though, that i would like to highlight:

Issue #1: your deaths are someone else's death and vice versa.
So far, so normal for an online shooter-game where humans play vs. humans.
But remember: when ever your K/D-Ratio is higher then 1, someone else's needs to be lower then 1.
Its the same as with "rich" and "poor" - you can't have one without the other.

This is not a big deal if the players who are at the loosing side of the K/D-ratio have something else they can achieve.
Unfortunately, this is not the case in MWO - at least not often, because of issue #2:

Issue #2: Since this game revolves MOSTLY around the fact that the team with a higher kill-count will usually win.
More Kills = win.
Yes, there are exceptions, since (unless you play Skirmish) there are other ways to win.
But this rarely happens, especially when one team has significantly lower numbers of players still alive.

I remember the times when i was playing CounterStrike.
(If you are unfamiliar with that game:
- you had 2 teams - Terrorists vs. Counter-Terrorists;
- the maps were mostly tailored to one of two game modes (there where more then 2 game modes, but those where not very popular);
- in the CounterStrike Mode the good guys had to rescue hostages;
- in Defuse-Mode the bad guys had to plant a bomb (good guys could still defuse it though, if they were quick
- you were playing one and the same map for what ever time the server was set to (usually about 5 minutes per match, and about half an hour total time on that particular map; sides where not switched after each match).
- you had no respawn; death was permanent until the match was over and a new match begun.)

In short, the game modes were always asymmetrical, plus you could win even if your team was down to one single player.

I am not a very good shooter, and had a hard time getting kills at all.
However, i was very focused when it came to fulfill the primary objective of each map:
rescuing the hostages (or preventing their rescue), or planting the bomb (or defusing it, if i was in the Counter team).

When i was able to win the game for my team - despite being a mediocre shooter - it was a good match for me.


Mechwarrior Online currently lacks this kind of experience for me.
Role warfare could help this a lot.
I do like running around as a scout, finding the enemy and reporting what i found; maybe even shadowing them or working as a spotter for friendly LRM's... stuff like that.

Capturing the enemy base or capturing resources are a welcome change to the every day experience, but unfortunately in the end it's all a big brawl, just like in skirmish.

Fulfilling the primary goal literally does not pay off here.
When ever a team manages to win a match via the primary objective (capping) to early in the game, this is considered lame... while it shouldn't, because you were able to out-smart your opponent.

Community Warfare is a step into the right direction.
However, since there is not much balance, and the underachieving team often ends up being spawn-camped for cash and EXP, it can be quite a horrible experience.
Not only for beginners.
I dislike it as well (especially the spawn camping; and yes, i also don't like DOING it, it feels completely wrong).

On that note, i still wonder what would happen if all the CW-maps and modes would become part of the Public queue, just without respawn.
Yes, you would need to tweak them a bit, remove the turrets maybe, maybe reduce the number of generators or even remove the gates.
And you could still end up with rofl-stomps.
But those are still less painful then getting spawn-camped, which effectively IS a rofl-stomp... 4 times in a row.


So do not underestimate this: unhappy players will sooner or later leave.
And not all of them will go to the forum and provide feedback before they leave.


Mechwarrior Online was marketed as "a thinking mans shooter".
This is - at the very moment - not quite true, imho.
But there is still unused potential.