man why can't you guys just let it go. examining kdr without examining the context of the kills and deaths doesn't tell you much about the state of the game. e.g. a skulk who is saving for onos could have had a better KDR if he was a fade, but which option would more often lead to the win (assuming this is b201 and onos are still goddamn imbalanced)? certain strategies will yield lower kdr's (relocate) but lead to an increased chance to win. i can't believe you guys are bickering over this. running into a hive and knifing it down but dying yields exactly 1 death, same as if you're killed by a lone skulk while building an rt. would it be better to have lived in both scenarios? Sure, but in one you accomplished something, and in the other you cost your team resources. I think the focus shouldn't be on how to get high kdr's, but rather how to approach many situations and accomplish a team-helping task. since doing so usually involves surviving the encounter, i find that you tend to increase your kdr WITHOUT having to post about it on the forums.
Everyone should looks at the story here. Btw kilgore was taking out structures left and right for 25+ min, and I did destroy many structures too. So look at the K/D ratios in comparison to the scoring!
<img src="http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/1771/2012040100001h.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /> By <a href="http://profile.imageshack.us/user/linuxkoss" target="_blank">linuxkoss</a> at 2012-04-01
Is the giant blurb and this entire discussion really necessary..
kills / deaths
:thumbsup:
Still though the numbers don't mean much unless the entire team has negative ratios - in which case you blame the person with the lowest KDR, not the most deaths, imo. That is my opinion because.. the person with the most deaths but still higher KDR than someone else could have those deaths because his/her teammates were not helping in the ambushes where the deaths occurred.
<!--quoteo(post=1920833:date=Apr 2 2012, 03:28 AM:name=Corpsey)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Corpsey @ Apr 2 2012, 03:28 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1920833"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Is the giant blurb and this entire discussion really necessary..<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Who cares? I liked writing it to organize my thoughts, and I'm sure some other people enjoyed reading it/arguing over it. Not every thread has to be about players pretending they're professional game developers.
How could this not be a joke? You take an arbitrary statistic that only applies to virtual worlds and focus on it as if it has something to do with the game.
KDR is a lot like BMI. It may give you a vague, general indicator of the subject, but it absolutely not to be focused on as it is simply not an accurate measurement of efficacy. Take a look at Natural Selection 2 and Team Fortress 2 and various other games and you will see that the per-game leaderboards rank according to "Score", not KDR. How the game determines score is based on the game objectives and measurable statistics that the game developers feel indicate a player is contributing to the team. Again, the game doesn't really care how many kills you have; the objective of the game is to destroy the enemy's command center or hive.
The condescension in the original post could never be matched by me. You disrupt the sense of community, the "working together" nature of this game with childish tantrums like this. Why do you need a metric by which to measure yourself as better than the rest of people who are engaging in a video game for the purposes of entertainment? We are not competing in a blood arena. This is a simulation.
<!--quoteo(post=1921104:date=Apr 2 2012, 07:12 PM:name=World Construct)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (World Construct @ Apr 2 2012, 07:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1921104"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->How could this not be a joke? You take an arbitrary statistic that only applies to virtual worlds and focus on it as if it has something to do with the game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The game is a virtual world. What are you talking about?
<!--quoteo(post=1921104:date=Apr 2 2012, 07:12 PM:name=World Construct)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (World Construct @ Apr 2 2012, 07:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1921104"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Take a look at Natural Selection 2 and Team Fortress 2 and various other games and you will see that the per-game leaderboards rank according to "Score", not KDR.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, I played TF2 competitively for years and I can tell you KDR is extremely important to that game, in all the ways I describe and more. Before you start frothing at the mouth, I played the <i>medic </i>- the class that is the least involved in combat, and yet whose effectiveness is measured the most by how little it dies. As I've explained a few times in the thread, 'not dying' is the more important half of having a good KDR. As I also mentioned, aggregate KDR across teams is a much better metric than individual KDR.
Coincidentally, effective medic play in TF2 is all about attrition and team KDRs. You can heal all day long but if you never kill enough enemies to capture something it probably wasn't worthwhile. In fact, staying alive with your team is so important that players often measure medic effectiveness by "ubers : deaths" instead of "kills : deaths", but the same ideas make that measurement useful. When you can uber effectively, you get map control, spend enemy resources and all the other stuff I talked about in the OP.
The "score" on the scoreboard is based on a constantly-evolving list of perks (like extinguishing a teammate, activating a backpack, touching a control point for a tenth of a second). Just like in NS2, the things that increase "score" do not always map to valuable in-game actions. For instance, you can get a lot of score right now by making a million drifters, but it's rarely useful unless you're trying to crash a server. The only way that "score" in TF2 ever made sense was to look at the points from medics' healing/ubers/assists, because most of the bonuses given to other classes were cheap ways of incentivizing things that don't actually affect the game in a big way. Like removing a sapper on a sentry for the tenth time in a row instead of killing the spy who put it there, or suiciding to block a capture point for half a second when it isn't useful (i.e. your team isn't back-capping or gaining from what you did in some way).
<!--quoteo(post=1921104:date=Apr 2 2012, 07:12 PM:name=World Construct)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (World Construct @ Apr 2 2012, 07:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1921104"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->How the game determines score is based on the game objectives and measurable statistics that the game developers feel indicate a player is contributing to the team. Again, the game doesn't really care how many kills you have; the objective of the game is to destroy the enemy's command center or hive.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Is that why you get as many points for destroying a hive as you get for destroying a resource tower? Which is worth more? Is that why I can topscore by spamming drifters? Do you think welding is useful? I've spent whole rounds making sure we don't lose res towers with my welder, and gotten no points for it.
Kills and deaths will always form a good metric because they always affect every facet of the game. If you take the scoreboard away, KDR is still important and so are other measures of efficacy. Like "number of resource towers built", "number of resource towers killed" ...there are many, but this thread is just about one. "Score" is not one of them.
That's one of the core ideas in this thread. The game <i>does</i> care about how many kills and deaths you have, because that's one of the ways it allows you to exercise your advantage and win. It just doesn't show you how much it cares on the 'score' tab of the scoreboard.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->I wouldn't write all these words if I was simply trying to show you how to read what's already on your scoreboard. Please wear your thinking cap in this thread.<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
<!--quoteo(post=1921104:date=Apr 2 2012, 07:12 PM:name=World Construct)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (World Construct @ Apr 2 2012, 07:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1921104"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The condescension in the original post could never be matched by me. You disrupt the sense of community, the "working together" nature of this game with childish tantrums like this. Why do you need a metric by which to measure yourself as better than the rest of people who are engaging in a video game for the purposes of entertainment? We are not competing in a blood arena. This is a simulation.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Where is the childish tantrum? I made a post teaching people about one of the ways you can analyze and approach this game. If there's a tantrum it's all you kids showing up to go "NO KDR DOESN'T MATTER I'M HELPING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" and try to make yourselves feel better about going 0 and 5 while you killed a res tower. Grow up.
Did you just tell me to "grow up" as punctuation to your 1000+ word response to my three little paragraphs? You obviously are emotionally invested in the idea that you are a lot better at the game and don't get enough recognition for it. That is the childish tantrum right there.
<!--quoteo(post=1921128:date=Apr 2 2012, 08:28 PM:name=World Construct)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (World Construct @ Apr 2 2012, 08:28 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1921128"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Did you just tell me to "grow up" as punctuation to your 1000+ word response to my three little paragraphs?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes. I don't mind taking 5 minutes to write something like that up - in fact it's good for me to organize my thoughts even if you don't read or understand them.
The goal in any game is to be an effective team member.
In NS that translates to:
1.) Killing the enemy 2.) Expanding your base 3.) Staying alive
All three are important and key to winning a game.
If achieving this holy trinity results in a good KDR then so be it. If it doesn't then so be it. The goal is the same, how you get there varies between individuals.
Edit: Do the ends justifies the means? If so then who cares how you won the game, as long as you did.
I agree with the OP completely, a player with a good KDR is a good player to have on your team because of all the reasons he stated, if every time your marines meet an alien in a hallway and they die you will lose ground, you will lose RTs, you will lose the game - good players that are able to stay alive longer and kill aliens they meet will save RTs, gain ground, and destroy enemy RTs
In my limited experience playing in the comm chair the game is MUCH more easily won if your marines are skilled and are able to kill aliens and not die, it's just that simple. I don't really know why people are "fighting" against this because it's just simple fact.
Internetexplorer, I appreciate the thought that went into the thread and lot of it makes sense (although I don't subscribe completely to your arguments).
A few points -- I admit that I didn't read all 13 pages, so hopefully these weren't all addressed before: -Sometimes dying is the most effective way to teleport yourself back across the map. This is of obvious strategic importance, especially for aliens since they don't have beacon. -The K part is obviously imperfect because an onos kill != a skulk kill. Also, (and I did see this mentioned) there's the whole issue with the kill being assigned to one player while 10 may be shooting together to take them down.
Unfortunately, I also agree with the people who have called you condescending. Maybe you feel it's justified because you've been on the defensive a fair amount in this thread, you've played professionally, or whatever. For me personally, one of the best parts of NS2 is the attitude of the community and how people who are good don't typically act stuck-up about it. In fact, they're often willing to spend the time helping newer players instead of acting like ######s to them. I've tried to pass this on myself when somebody new is in the comm chair.
And yes, I was in a game the other night where you directly insulted my KDR. It was a pretty ###### thing to do and I did feel like it disrupted the sense of community somewhat, but at least it made me think about dying less and treating my in-game life with a bit more respect. I get in the habit of zoning out and kamikaze-ing every once in a while.
Anyway, just organizing my thoughts... I don't expect to change the way you act towards others. Thanks for the ideas though.
<!--quoteo(post=1922271:date=Apr 5 2012, 03:49 PM:name=Gravity Grave)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Gravity Grave @ Apr 5 2012, 03:49 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1922271"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->-Sometimes dying is the most effective way to teleport yourself back across the map. This is of obvious strategic importance, especially for aliens since they don't have beacon.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I suppose there are cases where this is true, but it seems like a bit of a hazy topic. I'm not sure how to really approach this because both arguments come down to hypotheticals ('you could gain more by staying alive far away', 'you can help defend at home by coming back sooner' etc)...the stuff I'm getting at about KDR is so basic that it's true in any situation you can concoct.
<!--quoteo(post=1922271:date=Apr 5 2012, 03:49 PM:name=Gravity Grave)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Gravity Grave @ Apr 5 2012, 03:49 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1922271"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->-The K part is obviously imperfect because an onos kill != a skulk kill. Also, (and I did see this mentioned) there's the whole issue with the kill being assigned to one player while 10 may be shooting together to take them down.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is true, and it's part of why a bunch of us decided that 'team KDR' is a way better metric than the KDR of individual players. It's still useful for the same analysis, but it's less prone to being disrupted by the things you mentioned. It even accounts for killing valuable targets, because if you don't take out an onos/fade/shotgun/whatever, it will start tipping the scales in its team's favour pretty fast.
<!--quoteo(post=1922271:date=Apr 5 2012, 03:49 PM:name=Gravity Grave)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Gravity Grave @ Apr 5 2012, 03:49 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1922271"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Unfortunately, I also agree with the people who have called you condescending. Maybe you feel it's justified because you've been on the defensive a fair amount in this thread, you've played professionally, or whatever. For me personally, one of the best parts of NS2 is the attitude of the community and how people who are good don't typically act stuck-up about it. In fact, they're often willing to spend the time helping newer players instead of acting like ######s to them. I've tried to pass this on myself when somebody new is in the comm chair.
And yes, I was in a game the other night where you directly insulted my KDR. It was a pretty ###### thing to do and I did feel like it disrupted the sense of community somewhat, but at least it made me think about dying less and treating my in-game life with a bit more respect. I get in the habit of zoning out and kamikaze-ing every once in a while.
Anyway, just organizing my thoughts... I don't expect to change the way you act towards others. Thanks for the ideas though.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm not concerned with whether I come off as condescending or not. When I have to shoo away people making terrible arguments and the people going "yeah! this! +1!" it's impossible not to condescend. The entire reason I wrote this thread up and continue to post in it is that I want to help players. It's not a contest to see who can be the bigger stereotypical gamer nerd - it's about explaining to people why/how KDR is important, and how it can be one of the ways you improve your game. Some other people thought I was asking for arguments against what I said (I wasn't), but I'm more than happy to answer them. After all, the purpose of internet forums is to refresh 5000 times a day and feel better about yourself when your superfriends quote you.
As for the game where I 'insulted your KDR', the phrase I used was "we have people going 5 and 9" - you happened to be the one with that exact score, but as I mentioned there was another guy with 5-10 and some others who were doing badly. That included me - our whole team was getting stomped. The reason I was saying it in the first place was to answer someone who was crying about imbalance, when the simple truth was that our team was losing fair and square (to a better performing aliens team). I probably picked a stupid way to say it, but that's half the fun of chatting in a video game server, right? There are people who will insult players based on KDR, but I'm not advocating for that. Your KDR (or any other statistic) shouldn't be a source of shame, because you're just playing a video game. You probably have tons of fun whether you meet my lofty expectations or not, but the hope with this thread is that people get some idea of how to improve, how the game works and so on.
As far as action items from this thread I would suggest that UWE implement team Score/K/D tallies at the top of each side of the tab menu. It would be interesting to see how often the team with superior aggregate KDR actually wins. I also think this would be in line with the whole teamwork philosophy.
Also, I wonder if this discussion should have any impact on the number of points they allocate for each action. Should they also divide points proportionally among all players who did damage to someone / buildings before they die / blow up? They still need to implement points for things such as welding -- I think Nuclear Dawn does a good job of allocating points for supporting actions (particularly for commanders). Probably a topic for another thread though.
I'd definitely like to see things done so that 'score' matters and isn't an excuse in discussions like this.
It honestly bugs me when I dilligently weld tons of stuff and nothing reflects that, but someone setting off drifter flares in their hive to pass the time gets a big boost. It would be nice to maybe have end-of-round stats on aggregate KDR, total resources mined/spent etc (like the replay view in Starcraft 2).
<!--quoteo(post=1922356:date=Apr 6 2012, 11:32 AM:name=internetexplorer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (internetexplorer @ Apr 6 2012, 11:32 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1922356"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'd definitely like to see things done so that 'score' matters and isn't an excuse in discussions like this.
It honestly bugs me when I dilligently weld tons of stuff and nothing reflects that, but someone setting off drifter flares in their hive to pass the time gets a big boost. It would be nice to maybe have end-of-round stats on aggregate KDR, total resources mined/spent etc (like the replay view in Starcraft 2).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Something similar to <a href="http://youtu.be/tVOtDMB5qKE?t=21s" target="_blank">the score screen at the end of a round of Tribes Ascend</a> would be wonderful. Not the experience/levelling stuff of course.
NS is the kind of game in which, if you are good, people will know you are good. Why do you need everyone to be shown how good you are using arbitrary numbers which will never mean anything?
It's not that - it's that the game shows you a 'score' measurement for each player which is calculated in a completely idiotic way, and people try to inform their play based on it. Why not change things so the score value actually represents all the valuable things players do, or just remove it?
From my perspective, if it wasn't for people failing to fix uneven teams in pubs, I would never need a scoreboard to even exist. If they need to have a way to incentivize things like killing RTs (by showing people gigantic "+30" markers and stuff), it shouldn't be an incomplete and arbitrary system - people WILL build their understanding of the game around it at some level, and they can have flawed ideas if the metric they're looking at is silly.
<!--quoteo(post=1922377:date=Apr 6 2012, 12:25 PM:name=Imbalanxd)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Imbalanxd @ Apr 6 2012, 12:25 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1922377"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I've never understood this need to be noticed.
NS is the kind of game in which, if you are good, people will know you are good. Why do you need everyone to be shown how good you are using arbitrary numbers which will never mean anything?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Because by changing what the "arbitrary numbers which mean nothing" are actually reflecting into something relevant that encompasses the wide range of useful actions a player can be taking part in, they then begin to mean something.
It's also a useful feature to quickly reference while casting games, as a lot of the kind of things we're talking about often won't be getting much screen time themselves, it's good to know how these players are actually spending their time.
I would be fine with that. However, I think the scoreboard is a pretty standard feature that a lot of other people would complain about being gone. The realistic goal is to make it so the numbers on it make sense (so that someone who kills really efficiently, but also spends the entire game saving res towers doesn't end up with a lower "score" than someone who never gets a single kill and builds 1 res tower at the start).
<!--quoteo(post=1922295:date=Apr 5 2012, 05:52 PM:name=internetexplorer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (internetexplorer @ Apr 5 2012, 05:52 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1922295"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm not concerned with whether I come off as condescending or not. When I have to shoo away people making terrible arguments and the people going "yeah! this! +1!" it's impossible not to condescend. The entire reason I wrote this thread up and continue to post in it is that I want to help players. It's not a contest to see who can be the bigger stereotypical gamer nerd - it's about explaining to people why/how KDR is important, and how it can be one of the ways you improve your game. Some other people thought I was asking for arguments against what I said (I wasn't), but I'm more than happy to answer them. After all, the purpose of internet forums is to refresh 5000 times a day and feel better about yourself when your superfriends quote you.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is an asinine discussion. You have no right to be abusive to strangers in a public forum, and it certainly will not bring about the kind of productive discourse that you claim to desire.
This is an asinine discussion. You have no right to be abusive to strangers in a public forum, and it certainly will not bring about the kind of productive discourse that you claim to desire.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's unfortunate, because he seemed to be okay with my response. What are you trying to prove?
Please don't post in this thread on topics that aren't KDR. Thanks!
<!--quoteo(post=1922417:date=Apr 6 2012, 01:13 AM:name=internetexplorer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (internetexplorer @ Apr 6 2012, 01:13 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1922417"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->That's unfortunate, because he seemed to be okay with my response. What are you trying to prove?
Please don't post in this thread on topics that aren't KDR. Thanks!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
All right.
You are completely dismissive of any ideas that aren't in line with your theory that the entire scoring system needs to be changed to accommodate your perception of how the game world operates and how players in that world should operate. Counterpoint? You are wrong. The game prioritizes score for a reason. Kills add to that score, and deaths do not subtract from it. Other in-game events add to score because they are more important, in the theory of this particular game, than simply killing players. It doesn't really matter if you kill a random skulk. It does matter if you kill two skulks trying to eat your buddy while you are headed to a power node/resource point. These two specific situations are two in a myriad that are difficult for which to logically justify coding more points being given to a particular player.
<!--quoteo(post=1922379:date=Apr 5 2012, 09:30 PM:name=internetexplorer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (internetexplorer @ Apr 5 2012, 09:30 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1922379"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It's not that - it's that the game shows you a 'score' measurement for each player which is calculated in a completely idiotic way, and people try to inform their play based on it. Why not change things so the score value actually represents all the valuable things players do, or just remove it?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How is the scoring system "completely idiotic" because it grants points for doing the right things? Destroying/building power nodes, destroying/building resource towers, and so forth, are integral to the game. It would not operate as anything other than a death match without these mechanics. Every single argument in the original post is predicated on the assumption that killing things is the sole point of the game. It is one of two major components, and <u>only</u> dying a lot means the player is ineffective.
<!--quoteo(post=1922356:date=Apr 5 2012, 08:32 PM:name=internetexplorer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (internetexplorer @ Apr 5 2012, 08:32 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1922356"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It honestly bugs me when I dilligently weld tons of stuff and nothing reflects that, but someone setting off drifter flares in their hive to pass the time gets a big boost. It would be nice to maybe have end-of-round stats on aggregate KDR, total resources mined/spent etc (like the replay view in Starcraft 2).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Again, you are simply stating that you do not get enough recognition for being that much better at the game than the majority of players you play with on public servers, in your perception. I really don't care about the recognition I get in the game. All team games should be played for the good of the team. Recognizing individuals who are good is relatively easy for anyone who is playing the game, and relying on advanced statistics so that you have hard evidence of how good you are is completely superfluous. The Tribes: Ascend screen is information diarrhea and not a good model for any team game, especially as the relevance of much of the information presented is dubious at best.
For reference, these are your first two replies to people who posted in the thread. You took the time to personally reply to each of them in separate posts.
<!--quoteo(post=1914829:date=Mar 18 2012, 10:30 PM:name=internetexplorer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (internetexplorer @ Mar 18 2012, 10:30 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1914829"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You already have 2 threads to cry about the fade in. Use those.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1914832:date=Mar 18 2012, 10:32 PM:name=internetexplorer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (internetexplorer @ Mar 18 2012, 10:32 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1914832"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Read the post before replying to it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Your rationale is that other people's ideas are terrible, and you have to "shoo" them out of your thread. This is quite a disruptive, belligerent behaviour to display that is in stark contrast to the idea that you are posting a topic to invite discussion, and that is what I am trying to prove.
<!--quoteo(post=1922423:date=Apr 6 2012, 04:46 PM:name=World Construct)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (World Construct @ Apr 6 2012, 04:46 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1922423"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Your rationale is that other people's ideas are terrible, and you have to "shoo" them out of your thread. This is quite a disruptive, belligerent behaviour to display that is in stark contrast to the idea that you are posting a topic to invite discussion, and that is what I am trying to prove.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
In the post above this I believed you called my idea "diarrhoea".
Comments
Best thing for the team: Kill the skulk
Best thing for KDR: Kill the skulk
Doing the right thing, usually gives you a good KDR at the same time.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wrong, rather just kill the hive, then you win.
<img src="http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/1771/2012040100001h.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
By <a href="http://profile.imageshack.us/user/linuxkoss" target="_blank">linuxkoss</a> at 2012-04-01
kills / deaths
:thumbsup:
Still though the numbers don't mean much unless the entire team has negative ratios - in which case you blame the person with the lowest KDR, not the most deaths, imo. That is my opinion because.. the person with the most deaths but still higher KDR than someone else could have those deaths because his/her teammates were not helping in the ambushes where the deaths occurred.
Who cares? I liked writing it to organize my thoughts, and I'm sure some other people enjoyed reading it/arguing over it. Not every thread has to be about players pretending they're professional game developers.
KDR is a lot like BMI. It may give you a vague, general indicator of the subject, but it absolutely not to be focused on as it is simply not an accurate measurement of efficacy. Take a look at Natural Selection 2 and Team Fortress 2 and various other games and you will see that the per-game leaderboards rank according to "Score", not KDR. How the game determines score is based on the game objectives and measurable statistics that the game developers feel indicate a player is contributing to the team. Again, the game doesn't really care how many kills you have; the objective of the game is to destroy the enemy's command center or hive.
The condescension in the original post could never be matched by me. You disrupt the sense of community, the "working together" nature of this game with childish tantrums like this. Why do you need a metric by which to measure yourself as better than the rest of people who are engaging in a video game for the purposes of entertainment? We are not competing in a blood arena. This is a simulation.
Flayra himself wrote it...
The game is a virtual world. What are you talking about?
<!--quoteo(post=1921104:date=Apr 2 2012, 07:12 PM:name=World Construct)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (World Construct @ Apr 2 2012, 07:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1921104"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Take a look at Natural Selection 2 and Team Fortress 2 and various other games and you will see that the per-game leaderboards rank according to "Score", not KDR.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, I played TF2 competitively for years and I can tell you KDR is extremely important to that game, in all the ways I describe and more. Before you start frothing at the mouth, I played the <i>medic </i>- the class that is the least involved in combat, and yet whose effectiveness is measured the most by how little it dies. As I've explained a few times in the thread, 'not dying' is the more important half of having a good KDR. As I also mentioned, aggregate KDR across teams is a much better metric than individual KDR.
Coincidentally, effective medic play in TF2 is all about attrition and team KDRs. You can heal all day long but if you never kill enough enemies to capture something it probably wasn't worthwhile. In fact, staying alive with your team is so important that players often measure medic effectiveness by "ubers : deaths" instead of "kills : deaths", but the same ideas make that measurement useful. When you can uber effectively, you get map control, spend enemy resources and all the other stuff I talked about in the OP.
The "score" on the scoreboard is based on a constantly-evolving list of perks (like extinguishing a teammate, activating a backpack, touching a control point for a tenth of a second). Just like in NS2, the things that increase "score" do not always map to valuable in-game actions. For instance, you can get a lot of score right now by making a million drifters, but it's rarely useful unless you're trying to crash a server. The only way that "score" in TF2 ever made sense was to look at the points from medics' healing/ubers/assists, because most of the bonuses given to other classes were cheap ways of incentivizing things that don't actually affect the game in a big way. Like removing a sapper on a sentry for the tenth time in a row instead of killing the spy who put it there, or suiciding to block a capture point for half a second when it isn't useful (i.e. your team isn't back-capping or gaining from what you did in some way).
<!--quoteo(post=1921104:date=Apr 2 2012, 07:12 PM:name=World Construct)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (World Construct @ Apr 2 2012, 07:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1921104"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->How the game determines score is based on the game objectives and measurable statistics that the game developers feel indicate a player is contributing to the team. Again, the game doesn't really care how many kills you have; the objective of the game is to destroy the enemy's command center or hive.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Is that why you get as many points for destroying a hive as you get for destroying a resource tower? Which is worth more?
Is that why I can topscore by spamming drifters? Do you think welding is useful? I've spent whole rounds making sure we don't lose res towers with my welder, and gotten no points for it.
Kills and deaths will always form a good metric because they always affect every facet of the game. If you take the scoreboard away, KDR is still important and so are other measures of efficacy. Like "number of resource towers built", "number of resource towers killed" ...there are many, but this thread is just about one. "Score" is not one of them.
That's one of the core ideas in this thread.
The game <i>does</i> care about how many kills and deaths you have, because that's one of the ways it allows you to exercise your advantage and win. It just doesn't show you how much it cares on the 'score' tab of the scoreboard.
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->I wouldn't write all these words if I was simply trying to show you how to read what's already on your scoreboard. Please wear your thinking cap in this thread.<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
<!--quoteo(post=1921104:date=Apr 2 2012, 07:12 PM:name=World Construct)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (World Construct @ Apr 2 2012, 07:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1921104"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The condescension in the original post could never be matched by me. You disrupt the sense of community, the "working together" nature of this game with childish tantrums like this. Why do you need a metric by which to measure yourself as better than the rest of people who are engaging in a video game for the purposes of entertainment? We are not competing in a blood arena. This is a simulation.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Where is the childish tantrum? I made a post teaching people about one of the ways you can analyze and approach this game. If there's a tantrum it's all you kids showing up to go "NO KDR DOESN'T MATTER I'M HELPING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" and try to make yourselves feel better about going 0 and 5 while you killed a res tower. Grow up.
Yes. I don't mind taking 5 minutes to write something like that up - in fact it's good for me to organize my thoughts even if you don't read or understand them.
In NS that translates to:
1.) Killing the enemy
2.) Expanding your base
3.) Staying alive
All three are important and key to winning a game.
If achieving this holy trinity results in a good KDR then so be it. If it doesn't then so be it. The goal is the same, how you get there varies between individuals.
Edit: Do the ends justifies the means? If so then who cares how you won the game, as long as you did.
In my limited experience playing in the comm chair the game is MUCH more easily won if your marines are skilled and are able to kill aliens and not die, it's just that simple. I don't really know why people are "fighting" against this because it's just simple fact.
A few points -- I admit that I didn't read all 13 pages, so hopefully these weren't all addressed before:
-Sometimes dying is the most effective way to teleport yourself back across the map. This is of obvious strategic importance, especially for aliens since they don't have beacon.
-The K part is obviously imperfect because an onos kill != a skulk kill. Also, (and I did see this mentioned) there's the whole issue with the kill being assigned to one player while 10 may be shooting together to take them down.
Unfortunately, I also agree with the people who have called you condescending. Maybe you feel it's justified because you've been on the defensive a fair amount in this thread, you've played professionally, or whatever. For me personally, one of the best parts of NS2 is the attitude of the community and how people who are good don't typically act stuck-up about it. In fact, they're often willing to spend the time helping newer players instead of acting like ######s to them. I've tried to pass this on myself when somebody new is in the comm chair.
And yes, I was in a game the other night where you directly insulted my KDR. It was a pretty ###### thing to do and I did feel like it disrupted the sense of community somewhat, but at least it made me think about dying less and treating my in-game life with a bit more respect. I get in the habit of zoning out and kamikaze-ing every once in a while.
Anyway, just organizing my thoughts... I don't expect to change the way you act towards others. Thanks for the ideas though.
I suppose there are cases where this is true, but it seems like a bit of a hazy topic. I'm not sure how to really approach this because both arguments come down to hypotheticals ('you could gain more by staying alive far away', 'you can help defend at home by coming back sooner' etc)...the stuff I'm getting at about KDR is so basic that it's true in any situation you can concoct.
<!--quoteo(post=1922271:date=Apr 5 2012, 03:49 PM:name=Gravity Grave)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Gravity Grave @ Apr 5 2012, 03:49 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1922271"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->-The K part is obviously imperfect because an onos kill != a skulk kill. Also, (and I did see this mentioned) there's the whole issue with the kill being assigned to one player while 10 may be shooting together to take them down.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is true, and it's part of why a bunch of us decided that 'team KDR' is a way better metric than the KDR of individual players. It's still useful for the same analysis, but it's less prone to being disrupted by the things you mentioned. It even accounts for killing valuable targets, because if you don't take out an onos/fade/shotgun/whatever, it will start tipping the scales in its team's favour pretty fast.
<!--quoteo(post=1922271:date=Apr 5 2012, 03:49 PM:name=Gravity Grave)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Gravity Grave @ Apr 5 2012, 03:49 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1922271"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Unfortunately, I also agree with the people who have called you condescending. Maybe you feel it's justified because you've been on the defensive a fair amount in this thread, you've played professionally, or whatever. For me personally, one of the best parts of NS2 is the attitude of the community and how people who are good don't typically act stuck-up about it. In fact, they're often willing to spend the time helping newer players instead of acting like ######s to them. I've tried to pass this on myself when somebody new is in the comm chair.
And yes, I was in a game the other night where you directly insulted my KDR. It was a pretty ###### thing to do and I did feel like it disrupted the sense of community somewhat, but at least it made me think about dying less and treating my in-game life with a bit more respect. I get in the habit of zoning out and kamikaze-ing every once in a while.
Anyway, just organizing my thoughts... I don't expect to change the way you act towards others. Thanks for the ideas though.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm not concerned with whether I come off as condescending or not. When I have to shoo away people making terrible arguments and the people going "yeah! this! +1!" it's impossible not to condescend. The entire reason I wrote this thread up and continue to post in it is that I want to help players. It's not a contest to see who can be the bigger stereotypical gamer nerd - it's about explaining to people why/how KDR is important, and how it can be one of the ways you improve your game. Some other people thought I was asking for arguments against what I said (I wasn't), but I'm more than happy to answer them. After all, the purpose of internet forums is to refresh 5000 times a day and feel better about yourself when your superfriends quote you.
As for the game where I 'insulted your KDR', the phrase I used was "we have people going 5 and 9" - you happened to be the one with that exact score, but as I mentioned there was another guy with 5-10 and some others who were doing badly. That included me - our whole team was getting stomped. The reason I was saying it in the first place was to answer someone who was crying about imbalance, when the simple truth was that our team was losing fair and square (to a better performing aliens team). I probably picked a stupid way to say it, but that's half the fun of chatting in a video game server, right? There are people who will insult players based on KDR, but I'm not advocating for that. Your KDR (or any other statistic) shouldn't be a source of shame, because you're just playing a video game. You probably have tons of fun whether you meet my lofty expectations or not, but the hope with this thread is that people get some idea of how to improve, how the game works and so on.
As far as action items from this thread I would suggest that UWE implement team Score/K/D tallies at the top of each side of the tab menu. It would be interesting to see how often the team with superior aggregate KDR actually wins. I also think this would be in line with the whole teamwork philosophy.
Also, I wonder if this discussion should have any impact on the number of points they allocate for each action. Should they also divide points proportionally among all players who did damage to someone / buildings before they die / blow up? They still need to implement points for things such as welding -- I think Nuclear Dawn does a good job of allocating points for supporting actions (particularly for commanders). Probably a topic for another thread though.
It honestly bugs me when I dilligently weld tons of stuff and nothing reflects that, but someone setting off drifter flares in their hive to pass the time gets a big boost. It would be nice to maybe have end-of-round stats on aggregate KDR, total resources mined/spent etc (like the replay view in Starcraft 2).
It honestly bugs me when I dilligently weld tons of stuff and nothing reflects that, but someone setting off drifter flares in their hive to pass the time gets a big boost. It would be nice to maybe have end-of-round stats on aggregate KDR, total resources mined/spent etc (like the replay view in Starcraft 2).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Something similar to <a href="http://youtu.be/tVOtDMB5qKE?t=21s" target="_blank">the score screen at the end of a round of Tribes Ascend</a> would be wonderful. Not the experience/levelling stuff of course.
NS is the kind of game in which, if you are good, people will know you are good. Why do you need everyone to be shown how good you are using arbitrary numbers which will never mean anything?
From my perspective, if it wasn't for people failing to fix uneven teams in pubs, I would never need a scoreboard to even exist. If they need to have a way to incentivize things like killing RTs (by showing people gigantic "+30" markers and stuff), it shouldn't be an incomplete and arbitrary system - people WILL build their understanding of the game around it at some level, and they can have flawed ideas if the metric they're looking at is silly.
NS is the kind of game in which, if you are good, people will know you are good. Why do you need everyone to be shown how good you are using arbitrary numbers which will never mean anything?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Because by changing what the "arbitrary numbers which mean nothing" are actually reflecting into something relevant that encompasses the wide range of useful actions a player can be taking part in, they then begin to mean something.
It's also a useful feature to quickly reference while casting games, as a lot of the kind of things we're talking about often won't be getting much screen time themselves, it's good to know how these players are actually spending their time.
<!--quoteo(post=1922295:date=Apr 5 2012, 05:52 PM:name=internetexplorer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (internetexplorer @ Apr 5 2012, 05:52 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1922295"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm not concerned with whether I come off as condescending or not. When I have to shoo away people making terrible arguments and the people going "yeah! this! +1!" it's impossible not to condescend. The entire reason I wrote this thread up and continue to post in it is that I want to help players. It's not a contest to see who can be the bigger stereotypical gamer nerd - it's about explaining to people why/how KDR is important, and how it can be one of the ways you improve your game. Some other people thought I was asking for arguments against what I said (I wasn't), but I'm more than happy to answer them. After all, the purpose of internet forums is to refresh 5000 times a day and feel better about yourself when your superfriends quote you.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is an asinine discussion. You have no right to be abusive to strangers in a public forum, and it certainly will not bring about the kind of productive discourse that you claim to desire.
This is an asinine discussion. You have no right to be abusive to strangers in a public forum, and it certainly will not bring about the kind of productive discourse that you claim to desire.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's unfortunate, because he seemed to be okay with my response. What are you trying to prove?
Please don't post in this thread on topics that aren't KDR. Thanks!
Please don't post in this thread on topics that aren't KDR. Thanks!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
All right.
You are completely dismissive of any ideas that aren't in line with your theory that the entire scoring system needs to be changed to accommodate your perception of how the game world operates and how players in that world should operate. Counterpoint? You are wrong. The game prioritizes score for a reason. Kills add to that score, and deaths do not subtract from it. Other in-game events add to score because they are more important, in the theory of this particular game, than simply killing players. It doesn't really matter if you kill a random skulk. It does matter if you kill two skulks trying to eat your buddy while you are headed to a power node/resource point. These two specific situations are two in a myriad that are difficult for which to logically justify coding more points being given to a particular player.
<!--quoteo(post=1922379:date=Apr 5 2012, 09:30 PM:name=internetexplorer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (internetexplorer @ Apr 5 2012, 09:30 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1922379"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It's not that - it's that the game shows you a 'score' measurement for each player which is calculated in a completely idiotic way, and people try to inform their play based on it. Why not change things so the score value actually represents all the valuable things players do, or just remove it?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How is the scoring system "completely idiotic" because it grants points for doing the right things? Destroying/building power nodes, destroying/building resource towers, and so forth, are integral to the game. It would not operate as anything other than a death match without these mechanics. Every single argument in the original post is predicated on the assumption that killing things is the sole point of the game. It is one of two major components, and <u>only</u> dying a lot means the player is ineffective.
<!--quoteo(post=1922356:date=Apr 5 2012, 08:32 PM:name=internetexplorer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (internetexplorer @ Apr 5 2012, 08:32 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1922356"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It honestly bugs me when I dilligently weld tons of stuff and nothing reflects that, but someone setting off drifter flares in their hive to pass the time gets a big boost. It would be nice to maybe have end-of-round stats on aggregate KDR, total resources mined/spent etc (like the replay view in Starcraft 2).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Again, you are simply stating that you do not get enough recognition for being that much better at the game than the majority of players you play with on public servers, in your perception. I really don't care about the recognition I get in the game. All team games should be played for the good of the team. Recognizing individuals who are good is relatively easy for anyone who is playing the game, and relying on advanced statistics so that you have hard evidence of how good you are is completely superfluous. The Tribes: Ascend screen is information diarrhea and not a good model for any team game, especially as the relevance of much of the information presented is dubious at best.
<!--quoteo(post=1914829:date=Mar 18 2012, 10:30 PM:name=internetexplorer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (internetexplorer @ Mar 18 2012, 10:30 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1914829"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You already have 2 threads to cry about the fade in. Use those.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1914832:date=Mar 18 2012, 10:32 PM:name=internetexplorer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (internetexplorer @ Mar 18 2012, 10:32 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1914832"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Read the post before replying to it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Your rationale is that other people's ideas are terrible, and you have to "shoo" them out of your thread. This is quite a disruptive, belligerent behaviour to display that is in stark contrast to the idea that you are posting a topic to invite discussion, and that is what I am trying to prove.
In the post above this I believed you called my idea "diarrhoea".