Community Question: Measuring Player Skill

(Humate) #301

No hes saying given the chance, players wont vote based on their criteria.
Besides its not necessary anyway. The game should just list the stats, and the players can extrapolate the rest.

(ailmanki) #302
(DarkangelUK) #303

I love your innocent naivety but unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. Players would vote for friends or clan mates, if the best player happens to be a douche on VOIP or says junk on global chat then he won’t get voted for… hell they may just not like him because of the mood they’re in at the time.

(.Chris.) #304

Think that’s the most sensible suggestion yet.

(SockDog) #305

Stat chasing was one of the reasons we’re in this mess. Given the options and associated negatives I think I prefer Sponge’s idea to just have a series of random objective that the game picks, compiles and the promotes at the end of a match.

(Humate) #306

The associated negatives with playing the game for fun are exactly the same as stat chasing.
We just assume everyone that does play the game for fun, plays it the way the developer intended.

[video]http://www.own3d.tv/Seanza/watch/11136[/video]

(SockDog) #307

But playing a game for fun, in a negative sense, isn’t reinforced with a scoring, xp and unlock system. Sure people can goof off and consider that their “right” despite it impacting 15 other people but at least they’re not doing so with some game mechanic justification. That of course brings me back to the whole persistent community voting on player interaction… but another time.

Again, I’ll just mention a better focus for SD would perhaps be addressing pub team imbalances and assessing rewards on a team level rather than individual.

(Humate) #308

Its reinforced by the enjoyment of playing contrary to the expected norm; and its often done as a group over vent :slight_smile:
Theres plenty of examples on youtube and twitch that demonstrate this. The solution to both stat farmers and goofballs, are admined servers.

(SockDog) #309

That’s not what I said. In no way is goofing off or greifing legitimised by additional systems within the game.

The admin line is also a big cop out, if that’s what you believe is the solution then SD should make an admin login compulsory for any server open for connections. Which of course will never happen. You’re talking about putting more policemen out there but ignoring the underlying motivational reason why it’s done in the first place.

(Humate) #310

I’m giving you a counter example of how players can ruin the game for others by simply enjoying the game, without the stat mini-game.
The objective of additional stat systems is to steer that goofball into positive action. The stats themselves though, can still be used in a goofball way, but due to the way SD’s spectate system works, its very easy to spot and vote kick (you dont need to be an admin). :slight_smile:

In a competitive mp, the associated negative aspects of stats, arent a good enough reason not to have them.
I could understand how they would they would get in the way of other types of games though.

(.Chris.) #311

I don’t remember it been that bad in ET though, it wasn’t till you had medals/ranks in ET:QW where people weren’t been as useful as they could be as they were trying to get X amount of pistol kills or whatever.

(DarkangelUK) #312

Going from RtCW to ET made it obvious that there were players who were clearly there to rack up the XP as fast as they can, especially on XP save servers. Agreed though it was worse in ETQW. The small amount of goofers in RtCW were taken care of very quickly with a kick vote, the votes didn’t seem to pass as much in ET as some didn’t see the harm in rambo medding etc.

(BioSnark) #313

I’ve been reading more of this thread including the most recent tangent of posts and believe there should be multiple distinct measures of skill because there are multiple reasons to measure it:

[ul]
[li]The Experience skill measure displayed in game should be skewed toward how well players perform and support objectives and teamplay. This is the tutorial and rewards candy dispenser.[/li]
[li]The Key Performance Indicators skill measure used for what exedore is describing should remain under the hood so people don’t try to mess with it. It should have a mix of accuracy and k/d multiplied against the quotient of your opponent’s KPI divided by your KPI score, as well as k/m and w/l. This, again, is purely for automated balancing and is not displayed[/li]
[li]The Statistics should be separate from all the above and might be displayed on an end-game scoreboard and statistics website. This is for epeen flaunting and personal skill measurement.[/li][/ul]

(Humate) #314

Yes the thread deviated into skill scores on the leaderboard.
That was fun! :wink:

The KPI’s imo are - KPM / Accuracy / Headshot Ratio or % / Damage Given & Damage Taken / KDR - all of which should be done on a per weapon or class basis. It should also take into account whether the player is attacking or defending and the actual map.

Also it should ignore damage vs deployables, or vehicles. cough

(SockDog) #315

[QUOTE=Humate;403719]I’m giving you a counter example of how players can ruin the game for others by simply enjoying the game, without the stat mini-game.
The objective of additional stat systems is to steer that goofball into positive action. The stats themselves though, can still be used in a goofball way, but due to the way SD’s spectate system works, its very easy to spot and vote kick (you dont need to be an admin). :slight_smile:

In a competitive mp, the associated negative aspects of stats, arent a good enough reason not to have them.
I could understand how they would they would get in the way of other types of games though.[/QUOTE]

I’m not disagreeing it happens, only stating that one is a consequence of people willingly not playing towards an end goal and the other is, in many eyes, a justified action due to the stat/award existing in the first place. An example may be that people who TK would in all likelihood be encouraged even more if there was a stat showing TKs at the end of a match.

Kick system works as long as it’s enabled on the server, in many cases it’s switched off because people want to stack teams. Yet another consequence of the emphasis on scores over experience?

Competitive MP I don’t see any issue with because ultimately each team is responsible for it’s capabilities. I wonder if top clans would field a team based solely on stat scores rather than actual reviews of a player’s performance during a match. I’m thinking the latter and maybe that’s all that needs to be said about the value of “scores” in regards to skill, they’re there to inflate egos and to hell with the damage they create in the interim.

But this seems to be a progression or as I’d like to call it a corruption of the whole score system. Each iteration adds more, rewards more and IMO gets further away from the whole point of playing in the first place. If you need a progression system, base it on the team performance and then as a consequence the team needs to function better to be rewarded.

(Humate) #316

Kick system works as long as it’s enabled on the server, in many cases it’s switched off because people want to stack teams. Yet another consequence of the emphasis on scores over experience?

Ive never played on a server that didnt have votekick in etqw, so I cant really comment on that specifically.
But what I can say is Ive never seen it used for the purpose of stacking. Is it possible? Sure I’ll concede that its possible… :slight_smile: If I was to see something like that though, it would probably just prompt me to switch to a different server though.

Competitive MP I don’t see any issue with because ultimately each team is responsible for it’s capabilities. I wonder if top clans would field a team based solely on stat scores rather than actual reviews of a player’s performance during a match. I’m thinking the latter and maybe that’s all that needs to be said about the value of “scores” in regards to skill, they’re there to inflate egos and to hell with the damage they create in the interim.

Stats are like bikinis, they dont give you the full picture.
That doesnt mean they arent looked at though. :wink:

As for the ego stuff - If it was say a social based game, where competition takes a back-seat for the betterment of sharing and enjoying the experience together, then yes stats would be really inappropriate.

(SockDog) #317

[QUOTE=Humate;403748]Ive never played on a server that didnt have votekick in etqw, so I cant really comment on that specifically.
But what I can say is Ive never seen it used for the purpose of stacking. Is it possible? Sure I’ll concede that its possible… :slight_smile: If I was to see something like that though, it would probably just prompt me to switch to a different server though.[/quote]

Sure, valid points but in this respect I’m coming at this from a point of view of making the online experience more enjoyable. Which should mean design to reduce the occurrence or impact of such behaviours. Thing is, though I think we both agree someone griefing or openly manipulating the server is easily spotted. Someone playing to score off some stupid XP target or stat can be a lot harder.

I also acknowledge that pub games are not 100% competitive or team based, but this is also why I feel the whole XP/Stat stuff just provides another distraction. One that actually legitimises the behaviour. Again, make the rewards team based and balanced again both teams and then it’s in everyone’s interest to work together.

Stats are like bikinis, they dont give you the full picture.
That doesnt mean they arent looked at though. :wink:

LOL. Some people only ever get to see bikinis! :slight_smile:

As for the ego stuff - If it was say a social based game, where competition takes a back-seat for the betterment of sharing and enjoying the experience together, then yes stats would be really inappropriate.

My point was if a competitive team doesn’t select players based on stats then what value do they actually have other than giving people an opportunity to boast?

(Humate) #318

My point was if a competitive team doesn’t select players based on stats then what value do they actually have other than giving people an opportunity to boast?

If I was to take your example, and pretend for a moment I was recruiting for a team in a game that didnt record stats at all, then I would need to watch 100’s of matches of a player in spectator mode. Then I would need to play against them, and then I would need to play with them. With the aid of stats, in conjunction with direct experience - I would be able to determine the calibre of a player pretty quickly.

KPM / KDR / Accuracy / Headshot % / Damage Taken & Damage Received - for me is a solid start. A player cant really hide with these stats, but they can be inflated due to poor competition, and that is why direct experience is important.

As for boasting - doesnt bother me. Ive always seen it as a sign of scarcity.
As for other purposes - player improvement is a big one in competitive games.

(tokamak) #319

I’m not going to hog this thread again yet but I like where this is going.

(DarkangelUK) #320

[QUOTE=Humate;403777]If I was to take your example, and pretend for a moment I was recruiting for a team in a game that didnt record stats at all, then I would need to watch 100’s of matches of a player in spectator mode. Then I would need to play against them, and then I would need to play with them. With the aid of stats, in conjunction with direct experience - I would be able to determine the calibre of a player pretty quickly.

KPM / KDR / Accuracy / Headshot % / Damage Taken & Damage Received - for me is a solid start. A player cant really hide with these stats, but they can be inflated due to poor competition, and that is why direct experience is important.

As for boasting - doesnt bother me. Ive always seen it as a sign of scarcity.
As for other purposes - player improvement is a big one in competitive games.[/QUOTE]
You’re obviously a young gamer. This is actually quite sad to look at. Do you think recruitment never actually happened at all in the ‘good ole days’? Back in the day, recruitment began with making sure the player wasn’t a total dick head. Average players can be trained into good players, arseholes will always be arseholes. For some reason I’m not surprised that tok likes the fact that the arsehole level is superseded by stats in this day and age.