145 replies to this topic

[Captain Midnight]

Agent of Change, on 19 November 2012 - 08:08 AM, said:

Good sir, you may need to re-evaluate your concept of "contribute" and also "teamwork"... maybe even "carrying". In reference to your premise I will put the TLDR here first. TLDR: Bwaaahhahahahahahahahaaha NO. That said my earlier post I feel covers most of my retort to this gem but let me delve deeper into several misconceptions. 1. Just because you don't like the raven doesn't make it crap, i'm doing just fine thank you. Of course i'm doing fine in my cicada and cat so y'know maybe it's the pilot. 2. Racking up a massive amount of damage doesn't actually help your team... In fact it actively reduces the pay off for salvage. Point in fact the best possible match would have a grand total of damage dealt for 8 kills of 256 (for all mechs combined) That is 8 head shots (more or less)... efficient kills are best for the team. 3. A teammate that scores 0 damage and solo caps the enemy base is in fact carrying everyone else on their team... because y'know who won that game for you. 4. I submit that proper teamwork requires so much interplay, sacrifice and active cooperation that the current numbers are just a silly way of even thinking about it.

Okay, you are exactly who I am talking about when I speak ill of bad players getting carried in premades and overestimating themselves. A raven is a terrible mech. It is the worst mech in the game right now I'd say.

Right now, mechanically, all we have is DAMAGE, ARMOR, and SPEED. There is nothing else in this game. A Jenner has more of all three things. Any scouting you could do in a Raven, you could do with a Jenner, and more effectively. The only Raven which MIGHT be worth using is the one with ballistics and turned into an AC2 sniper? Maybe? That's the only thing it can do that a Jenner can't. The other Raven variants are plainly inferior (less hardpoints, less speed, worse target profile on those legs). You are a what I call a "special snowflake" player, you want to drive something different from everyone else so you convince yourself that your special snowflake mech is good, when it isn't. None of your points that support a Raven are unique to that mech and in fact they work doubly to support my argument that a Jenner is a faster, better version of a Raven.

This is why I want stats. You are welcome to run your Raven all you want, but I don't want you on my team and I'd really prefer you weren't on the other team either because what I REALLY want is a challenge. When the Elo system and premade 8s come out I don't expect to see very many of you, because any team leader with a brain is going to tell his lights to run a Jenner D/F or to pick a different mech. I know this sounds extremely elitist but I'm an extremely elitist, competitive player. I'd rather play against other similarly minded players and put the people like you who really don't care about winning in their own bracket. Just like how League of Legends has a ranked mode and a normal mode, it lets people self-segregate and play with who they want to play with.

The main problem with people like you, though, is that you don't want to admit you are a normal mode player. You want to think you are a ranked pro when really you are not. You are scared of stats because you know in your heart that stats are going to reflect badly on you, because you ARE bad. The cognitive dissonance here is that you think the stats must not matter or must be misleading/inaccurate because if they accurately showed your performance, you'd have high stats. The truth is that you, and people like you, contribute nothing and the stats are not inaccurate. I'm sorry if this post sounds overly mean or negative but I'm really tired of people who think that every member of a winning team contributed evenly when usually it's 1-2 extremely good players with extremely high damage who win games.

The only thing a player with bad stats has to worry about being excluded from is groups that demand more of their members than he is capable of providing, and I don't see a problem with bad players being excluded from good groups.

Edited by Captain Midnight, 19 November 2012 - 02:28 PM.

[Gallowglas]

I have yet to see anyone give anything other than anecdotal evidence that stats, public or private, really detract from any sort of cohesive cooperative gameplay and/or that their exclusion magically promotes better team coordination and less elitism. What's particularly ridiculous is that you're trying to dictate to other people what THEY should be able to see about their OWN gameplay. That's behavior that I not only can't understand, but I absolutely and resolutely condemn.

Nonetheless, while not wanting stats in a competitive game completely baffles me, there's actually a great solution that would satisfy both camps: allow competitive matches where stats are tracked and non-competitive matches where they aren't. If you don't want your stats to be seen and you don't want to drop with people who are so-called elitists, you drop in non-competitive matches. If you don't care, you allow the game to drop you in either. Yes, that segments the player base, but it's the only thing which would put this ridiculous debate to bed.

[Agent of Change]

Captain Midnight, on 19 November 2012 - 02:09 PM, said:

Okay, you are exactly who I am talking about when I speak ill of bad players getting carried in premades and overestimating themselves. A raven is a terrible mech. It is the worst mech in the game right now I'd say.

Right now, mechanically, all we have is DAMAGE, ARMOR, and SPEED. There is nothing else in this game. A Jenner has more of all three things. Any scouting you could do in a Raven, you could do with a Jenner, and more effectively. The only Raven which MIGHT be worth using is the one with ballistics and turned into an AC2 sniper? Maybe? That's the only thing it can do that a Jenner can't. The other Raven variants are plainly inferior (less hardpoints, less speed, worse target profile on those legs). You are a what I call a "special snowflake" player, you want to drive something different from everyone else so you convince yourself that your special snowflake mech is good, when it isn't. None of your points that support a Raven are unique to that mech and in fact they work doubly to support my argument that a Jenner is a faster, better version of a Raven.

This is why I want stats. You are welcome to run your Raven all you want, but I don't want you on my team and I'd really prefer you weren't on the other team either because what I REALLY want is a challenge. When the Elo system and premade 8s come out I don't expect to see very many of you, because any team leader with a brain is going to tell his lights to run a Jenner D/F or to pick a different mech. I know this sounds extremely elitist but I'm an extremely elitist, competitive player. I'd rather play against other similarly minded players and put the people like you who really don't care about winning in their own bracket. Just like how League of Legends has a ranked mode and a normal mode, it lets people self-segregate and play with who they want to play with.

The main problem with people like you, though, is that you don't want to admit you are a normal mode player. You want to think you are a ranked pro when really you are not. You are scared of stats because you know in your heart that stats are going to reflect badly on you, because you ARE bad. The cognitive dissonance here is that you think the stats must not matter or must be misleading/inaccurate because if they accurately showed your performance, you'd have high stats. The truth is that you, and people like you, contribute nothing and the stats are not inaccurate. I'm sorry if this post sounds overly mean or negative but I'm really tired of people who think that every member of a winning team contributed evenly when usually it's 1-2 extremely good players with extremely high damage who win games.

Not really, I want to run the mech I want to run. Because I happen to like the raven (for reasons that predate this game), I happen to like digitigrade mechs because of an irrational aesthetic bias , but mostly I'm playing the mech i want because i enjoy it. And yet... I'm also effective would it surprise you to hear that with my "inferior" mechs i'm often #1 or #2 on the board? Probably would because you are so convinced that YOUR way to play is THE way to play.

I think what bothers you is not only can someone be as or more effective with an "inferior mech" to a player with a "superior mech", the K/D ratio really mean nothing at all. You can't exactly infer anything about my stats because .... they are private, and i could really care less if they are better or worse than mine. The funny thing is you seem insecure about it because you are so eager to whip it out so we can measure, I'm not playing for any numbers but win and loss.

I am a great team player, I play for my team not myself. My K/D rating is a measley 2.5 why you ask because i am more than willing to play the sacrifice since I've been running fast mechs of late, many victories for my team would not have happened without my K/D taking a hit... who ******* cares. You can focus on the high damage and personal kill count all you want and it won't change the fact that organized team play is what wins games in MWO. Optimize away for maximum DPS and when you lose your match due to being capped out go ahead and tell me I'm what's wrong. Competitive players want to win, I will take my win however I can get it: if that means orchestrating a beat down and wipe on the other team good, if it means sneaky capping, hell I'm not picky. And if I don't survive to see the victory screen so what, but I will always always do it piloting what I want to pilot in support of my team... and that will make me a better player because I'm not relying on the tweaked build of the weak (call it a self imposed handicap).

Smart play and coordination make a good player not the mech they ride and not the skinner box stat numbers.

Edited by Agent of Change, 19 November 2012 - 02:42 PM.

[Wispsy]

Agent of Change, on 19 November 2012 - 02:38 PM, said:

many victories for my team would not have happened without my K/D taking a hit...

Well if you were a better player you would have pulled it off without dying and your stats would reflect this!

Edited by Wispsy, 19 November 2012 - 02:59 PM.

[Captain Midnight]

See, Agent, this is what I mean. You are having a blast and are enjoying the game! I really like to see that and I hope you continue to run your Raven and I hope you continue to have a great time with it. That's awesome and I don't have any problem with it.

However I want to play at the highest levels of competition, I want to play at such a high level that one mistake in build, mech selection, or opening strategy is all it takes to ensure defeat. I want to play against people so good that one mech with one less heatsink than he needs is all it takes to ensure defeat from the outset. Grandmaster at Starcraft level competition.

[Demoned]

i look at it this way over 500 XP
per match makes a good player in my eyes,
but i would like to see an "average damage per game" stat also.

i think these 2 combined will show the team players from the K/D hogs

hell most games i play with friends, i end up with 5-6 kill assists and, the other gits walk away with the kills.
just bad luck i guess,but it happens,
it would also be nice to have an average assist count as well

so in short add a
average damage stat and a
assist stat,

i would be very happy then XD

[Taiji]

Wispsy, on 19 November 2012 - 01:15 PM, said:

None of that changes the fact a very good player will have good stats regardless and a very bad player will have bad stats regardless.

Naive rubbish, on the face of it.

Wispsy, on 19 November 2012 - 01:15 PM, said:

Also weak and strong are matters of perspective....Now to be fair I was being overly critical of Kaijin's stats but that aside there are people with 100+ kill/death ratios and there are people with 0.001(I assume have never seen it but I am sure there are some people who are really dedicated with really bad pcs).....of course there can be weak and strong stats. :/

They just disconnect before death, play in a premade, and won't help their teammates if it's risky (etc. etc.).

Really high stats in the current game are nothing but a shameful joke.

Like a buddy of mine, with KDR ~70, he bought an A1 at launch and used it to molest noobs in lights while running in a premade 100% of the time - And ofc he made use of the op LRMs.

Sounds like a dumb stat-***** breaking the game for himself to me:

Can't pug.
Can't run a different mech.
Can't explore new builds.
Can't try out new tactics.
Etc.

But you think that's a good player of this game. You think he's 'doing it right'. And that's what's so amazing here.

In fact I suspect you're only pretending to believe this nonsense for the lulz, it's so stupid.

And that wouldn't bother me if it didn't work out that you were trying to encourage people to stat-***** themselves out for moron-praise. Which is fine if you do it in a game I don't play. But if you successfully encourage people to play worse, the way you are apparently attempting to, then it's bad for the game I enjoy.

Edited by Taiji, 20 November 2012 - 07:12 AM.

[Keijo]

Oh yeah, we need more stats. I mean, if we can't measure our epeens, how will we know who has the biggest one?

[Choombatta]

Keijo, on 20 November 2012 - 07:07 AM, said:

Oh yeah, we need more stats. I mean, if we can't measure our epeens, how will we know who has the biggest one?

Why the same way they do with Stats, make them up ( or inflate the size in this case ).
It is not like people are posting their stats in a form that cannot be edited.

[Tasorin]

Getting the killing shot on a mech means squat for piloting, especially with the stupid builds you can put together with broken critical slots and point of site click-n-kill right now. What matters is, are you having fun and does your team continue to win at a very high rate.

the OP's take on public stat boards is utter doodie..

Edited by Tasorin, 20 November 2012 - 08:06 AM.

[Athomahawk]

One Medic Army, on 18 November 2012 - 01:35 AM, said:

before making stats go public: disconnecting before a death should still count as a death for you and a kill for your killer. This is essential.

Agree with this and would like to see greater punishment for people that dc right before they esplode.

[Wispsy]

Taiji, on 20 November 2012 - 06:46 AM, said:

Naive rubbish, on the face of it.



They just disconnect before death, play in a premade, and won't help their teammates if it's risky (etc. etc.).

Really high stats in the current game are nothing but a shameful joke.

Like a buddy of mine, with KDR ~70, he bought an A1 at launch and used it to molest noobs in lights while running in a premade 100% of the time - And ofc he made use of the op LRMs.

Sounds like a dumb stat-***** breaking the game for himself to me:

Can't pug.
Can't run a different mech.
Can't explore new builds.
Can't try out new tactics.
Etc.

So to keep his stats as high as possible he plays as smart as possible looking for every advantage he can get in the game, including teammates who will support protect him/each other, because come on you cannot get that without a little protection esp as you go up against other premades.....

That is his choice, to maximize his stats by only playing smart....whilst clearly still contributing as he is getting kills and you do not get all that many kills per game when you play with all good people. Not supporting teammates who have put themselves in bad positions? Welcome to damage control.....you see one ***** charge stupidly you do not just follow him to their death. :/ Hell plenty of people enjoy their loadouts so play with them almost exclusively and many people refuse to play in pugs given any choice at all. I see people using "cheesy" builds all the time and dying all over the place, the fact that he killed a number of light mechs in a streak cat does not mean all the lights he killed were noobs nor does it make him a bad player....infact he is doing his job and apparently doing it right...
All in all sounds like somebody I would be ok with having on a more competitive team then some 4medlas 2srm4 Jenner who averages 100 damage and a death a game but apparently "helped" by holding up 2 people for 10 seconds after running randomly around the map for 4 minutes "scouting"...

Now playing to win may not be what you enjoy about a game but some people do. I myself run pugs and random builds and still have decent stats, not up in the 70s obviously because when you go in unsupported in a stupid build you are asking to die occasionally....but that does not mean my stats drop to stupidly low because I am having fun, even when I mess around they remain acceptable (to me, I do like to set own little goals). There are a number of people I have seen run only ever in premades in streak cats and still cannot get past a kdr of 2/3....They do the same thing as your friend....they just are not very good...their stats reflect it.

I am not saying that the stats are a total representation of skill, but a good player will have good stats no matter what they do (bar suicide farming, which imo is bad and pointless play anyway) and a bad player in all but a small minority of cases will have bad stats. Just because there are exceptions does not change the fact that as a general rule of thumb they can tell you quite a bit about how people play even with the extremely limited ones we have right now.

Edit: Every time I have disconnected it has counted as a death

Edited by Wispsy, 20 November 2012 - 09:05 AM.

[Taiji]

Wispsy, on 20 November 2012 - 09:05 AM, said:

So to keep his stats as high as possible he plays as smart as possible looking for every advantage he can get in the game, including teammates who will support protect him/each other, because come on you cannot get that without a little protection esp as you go up against other premades.....

That is his choice, to maximize his stats by only playing smart....whilst clearly still contributing as he is getting kills and you do not get all that many kills per game when you play with all good people. Not supporting teammates who have put themselves in bad positions? Welcome to damage control.....you see one ***** charge stupidly you do not just follow him to their death. :/ Hell plenty of people enjoy their loadouts so play with them almost exclusively and many people refuse to play in pugs given any choice at all. I see people using "cheesy" builds all the time and dying all over the place, the fact that he killed a number of light mechs in a streak cat does not mean all the lights he killed were noobs nor does it make him a bad player....infact he is doing his job and apparently doing it right...
All in all sounds like somebody I would be ok with having on a more competitive team then some 4medlas 2srm4 Jenner who averages 100 damage and a death a game but apparently "helped" by holding up 2 people for 10 seconds after running randomly around the map for 4 minutes "scouting"...

Now playing to win may not be what you enjoy about a game but some people do. I myself run pugs and random builds and still have decent stats, not up in the 70s obviously because when you go in unsupported in a stupid build you are asking to die occasionally....but that does not mean my stats drop to stupidly low because I am having fun, even when I mess around they remain acceptable (to me, I do like to set own little goals). There are a number of people I have seen run only ever in premades in streak cats and still cannot get past a kdr of 2/3....They do the same thing as your friend....they just are not very good...their stats reflect it.

I am not saying that the stats are a total representation of skill, but a good player will have good stats no matter what they do (bar suicide farming, which imo is bad and pointless play anyway) and a bad player in all but a small minority of cases will have bad stats. Just because there are exceptions does not change the fact that as a general rule of thumb they can tell you quite a bit about how people play even with the extremely limited ones we have right now.

Edit: Every time I have disconnected it has counted as a death

Sorry, TL;DR.

If you're still saying that the current stats people have in this game are a useful indicator of player ability then I still disagree for reasons noone should need pointing out.

[Wispsy]

Taiji, on 20 November 2012 - 09:22 AM, said:

Sorry, TL;DR.

If you're still saying that the current stats people have in this game are a useful indicator of player ability then I still disagree for reasons noone should need pointing out.

Ignorance is bliss

[AlexWildeagle]

Garrand, on 19 November 2012 - 12:11 AM, said:

Winners are never scared of stats. Only people with something to hide want to hide stats or move the goalposts.

Logical fallacy. I don't give a crap about stats, they are meaningless. Any stat they use to demonstrate whose the best can be manipulated and most the times that manipulation has a negative affect on the team and the game.

You want a solo stat to prove your best, then they need to have a side game or tournament. In a team game individulas stats kill the game because you need your epeen to be bigger then everyone elses.

[Taiji]

Wispsy, on 20 November 2012 - 09:33 AM, said:

Ignorance is bliss

Then remain ignorant.

[Wispsy]

Taiji, on 20 November 2012 - 09:40 AM, said:

Then remain ignorant.

Says the one who refuses to read a detailed explanation from a different point of view on the subject in question....

[Taiji]

Wispsy, on 20 November 2012 - 09:33 AM, said:

Ignorance is bliss

Says the one who believes the current stats are a useful indicator of player skill.

[Gallowglas]

AlexWildeagle, on 20 November 2012 - 09:38 AM, said:

You want a solo stat to prove your best, then they need to have a side game or tournament. In a team game individulas stats kill the game because you need your epeen to be bigger then everyone elses.

You talk about a logical fallacy and then you offer a generalization like this. I personally don't use stats to brag about to anyone. I use them as a measuring stick about personal progress. As such, the more detailed the stats, the better. Heck, add some team stats too while we're at it.

Honestly, trying to dictate or define how people are going to use INFORMATION about game performance is arrogance of the highest order. I find it absolutely ironic that these are the very same people screaming "elitist" because they themselves are being elitist by pretending they know better than everyone else how they are or should be using information about their in-game performance. And I have yet to hear anyone offer any evidence of a game that doesn't have stats/combat logs/whatever that is somehow less elitist or self-centered than a game that has them. News flash: a lot of people suck. Many are self-centered jerks. You're not going to change that by showing them how they did in a match.

Edited by Gallowglas, 20 November 2012 - 09:52 AM.

[RedHairDave]

Commodus, on 18 November 2012 - 01:23 AM, said:

Please! No official stats. They ruined so much games i played in past.
This e-peen comparision is so annoying and unnecessary.

I´m playing with the 12th Donegal Guards. We won 100% of the matches with 8 - premades against pugs and even 95% of the matches in clanwars.
And now with the smaller 4men/women groups we still win more than 75% of the matches (btw. a lot more fun and excitement).
How should we compare this to pug- players? And why should we do that?

Solaris arenas with 1 vs 1 or groupfight competitions are the place for ladders and e- sport. But that is future.

unrelated, but odd. just thought i would ask. i am with the robinson rangers, before with 8 man, we won 90% of games, now with 4 man, we win 90% of games. i was wondering how you did better with a full group, but not as good with 4 man. just an oddity. although we did drop 8v8 more than against puggers back in the day. now the 4 man groups are all against puggers, we dont even try to get with eachother anymore.

Taiji, on 20 November 2012 - 09:45 AM, said:

Says the one who believes the current stats are a useful indicator of player skill.

the current stats are as close to meaningless as they can be. damage and kills are kinda something, but not the whole story.