This really is wrong. If you are doing a great job keeping the enemy team dead, that means your team can plant the bomb/escort the thing/hack the computer/whatever. Every objective in brink is easier with the other team in the respawn queue.
This will be controversial.
tokamak
(tokamak)
#82
The notion that killing is the most important thing to do is completely unfounded. At the end of the day it’s either the team that completed the objective or the team that defended it successfully. The bodycount on each side is completely irrelevant.
Even supposing killing players is the most important thing to do; The K/D ratio doesn’t show whether you’re doing a good job of killing people. It only shows how much you’ve killed relative to your own deaths. It also doesn’t account for the amount of damage and of the priority of the kills you dealt to the opposing team.
You could have a high K/D ratio by simply killing very players and not dying, or you could have a low K/D ratio by killing swathes of players (while dying a lot) and you could have a low K/D ratio but having made high priority kills (players being close to, or doing an objective).
It’s absolutely useless, utterly unrepresentative of a player’s value, it only favours one perverse playing style and it’s easy to manipulate.
If you want an accurate indicator, use XP per minute. It incorporates the most amount of useful actions in a a game within a relevant context.
Bridger
(Bridger)
#84
I agree that K/D isn’t necessarily the best way to represent how good you are at killing the enemy team (there are situations where you could be 3:1 and only have killed 3 guys and died once), but if you compare players who are actually fighting on the front lines, K/D is a very good indication of who is doing the best in that department. Which of these players is helping the team more?
A guy with 3 Kills and 21 deaths (kills being defined as doing the majority of the damage to an enemy, not getting the last hit).
A guy with 21 kills and 5 deaths.
You could try to argue that maybe the guy with only 3 kills could have helped the team by being a medic and reviving people and healing his team etc., but at the end of the day he certainly could have gotten more than 3 kills AND done all those support jobs. He also spent so much time in spawn he probably didn’t help too much as a medic.
There are edge cases where K/D is not a good representation of skill (someone hiding so they never die, etc.) but in general, you do in fact want to kill the enemy team and stay alive yourself. Those two objectives are inherent in pretty much every shooter ever, and that’s what is represented by K/D.
If you think showing XP instead of K/D is going to stop people bitching about a weak player…have you met the internet? Instead of bitching at the lowest K/D player, they’ll complain about the guy with the least XP, with no care that he’s only been in the server for 3 minutes. What’s important to this kind of player is that he has someone else to blame for the team’s loss. Just mute the guy and move on. Changing the scoreboard isn’t going to magically make him not-an-asshole.
tokamak
(tokamak)
#85
That’s a huge ‘if’ that can’t be measured by the KD.
A guy with 3 Kills and 21 deaths (kills being defined as doing the majority of the damage to an enemy, not getting the last hit).
A guy with 21 kills and 5 deaths.
Just look what you’re doing here. You’re now starting messing with the definition as well ‘Doing the most damage to an enemy’ is not the conventional definition of the kill, which is ALWAYS the last hit in every shooter. Even if it was, the value of ‘doing the most damage’ is highly situational. You could do the most damage, but your target could have racked up a killing spree on his own, or completed an objective or two in the mean time before he was finished of.
On top of that, that’s not just the ratio that’s the body and kill count. The body count would be 0.14 and 4.2. Highly useless numbers which only would start to mean something in a team deathmatch.
You could try to argue that maybe the guy with only 3 kills could have helped the team by being a medic and reviving people and healing his team etc., but at the end of the day he certainly could have gotten more than 3 kills AND done all those support jobs. He also spent so much time in spawn he probably didn’t help too much as a medic.
You don’t know that. Maybe he just picked the priorities really well. I any case you would certainly not be able to derive that out of a K/D ratio. However you WOULD be able to derive his value during the match from the amount of xp he racked up during the match (and over a longer period of time the xp per minute would be useful).
There are edge cases where K/D is not a good representation of skill (someone hiding so they never die, etc.) but in general, you do in fact want to kill the enemy team and stay alive yourself. Those two objectives are inherent in pretty much every shooter ever, and that’s what is represented by K/D.
That’s because pretty much every shooter ever only had killing as the main objective. A K/D ratio is also pretty useless in a CTF game, but not as useless in a game with different classes and abilities on top of that.
If you think showing XP instead of K/D is going to stop people bitching about a weak player…
I honestly don’t give a hoot about what people bitch about. I care about how the game asses the player’s value at the end of the match.
Instead of bitching at the lowest K/D player, they’ll complain about the guy with the least XP, with no care that he’s only been in the server for 3 minutes.
A player who has been on the server for 3 minutes can’t have contributed much to the match now could he? The xp per match is the best indicator for the contribution during the match. But once again, like I said at the start, it’s the XP PER MINUTE that truly shows his skill.
What’s important to this kind of player is that he has someone else to blame for the team’s loss. Just mute the guy and move on. Changing the scoreboard isn’t going to magically make him not-an-asshole.
People with the lowest xp per match generally have been the least useful players, the ones with the lowest xp per minute are generally the ones with the worst approach to the game in general. It’s a pretty objective and relatively accurate way of judging players.
And you know what, if people truly have incredibly low xp per match, then that means they really have been keeping the entire team down. That would mean they deserve scorn as much as the people with high xp deserve praise.
Apples
(Apples)
#86
Mmmmm I can have the highest xp/min by farming deployables with an anansi, does that makes me the most usefull player?
Killing is important when people know how to kill, as usual, if you cant kill the enemies there are really low odds that you can win (if your whole team cant kill a cow, you wont be able to do the obj regardless of how hard you try, except if you are a filthy ninja)
Peace
Bridger
(Bridger)
#87
We can play with words all day, I don’t care about the exact definition of K/D ratio. The truth is that killing an opponent is absolutely essential to any FPS that I can think of, including Brink. Trying to argue otherwise seems very naive. If the other team is in the respawn queue, our team completes the objective.
Killing the opponent is at least as important as any other job in a game like Brink. I’m not arguing that it’s the most important, but the comments here saying it’s not important/useless is what bugs me.
tokamak
(tokamak)
#88
Brink has a better tuned xp distribution system. But even in your example a high xp/min by farming deployables would make you more likely to be more useful than someone with just a high K/D ratio.
Killing is important when people know how to kill
That made no sense whatsoever.
as usual, if you cant kill the enemies there are really low odds that you can win (if your whole team cant kill a cow, you wont be able to do the obj regardless of how hard you try, except if you are a filthy ninja)
Peace
If you can’t do objectives it would not be low odds, it would be impossible to win. Killing the enemy is just a part of it, and K/D even poorly reflects that particular part. It’s just that useless.
You obviously don’t, or we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
The truth is that killing an opponent is absolutely essential to any FPS that I can think , including Brink. Trying to argue otherwise seems very naive.
Acting like killing is the only factor is naive. Which wasn’t your point in the first place. Your point was that K/D is important which you’re backpedalling from.
Killing the opponent is at least as important as any other job in a game like Brink.
It absolutely isn’t. Doing the main objectives is the most important job in a game like brink. Without it you can’t win. When the match is done, all that matters is the objectives, everything else is just a means to an end.
It’s similar to chess. If you can’t capture the king then it doesn’t matter how many other pieces you captured.
I’m not arguing that it’s the most important, but the comments here saying it’s not important/useless is what bugs me.
Nobody is saying that. Nobody. I am saying that K/D is a useless indicator and a bodycount is only slightly more useful (but still pretty useless). This doesn’t mean the act of killing isn’t useful, but it does mean that the indicator only reflects a small part of the much bigger picture.
The original comment I responded to even suggested that such a stupid thing as K/D needed to be factored in matchmaking. Ridiculous!
You’re arguing against using xp as an indicator which is the only indicator that encompasses ALL traceable actions and killing as well as damaging players is part of that.
Weeohhweeohh
(Weeohhweeohh)
#89
Wat? I’ll have to reread the whole thread, but I’m sure there isn’t anyone saying that killing is useless. What are we…a bunch of fracken hippies!!! K/D ratio is useless, killing is important but not as important then completing objectives.
You move faster if you completely turn around and then run…backpedaling gets people killed
aaarrm
(aaarrm)
#90
Alright guys, I guess I’ll just have to ‘deal’ with the matchmaking system not being to my and only my wants (obviously). But can we get off the subject of K/D ratio, it IS nearly useless, it’s NOT in the game, which was one of the FIRST things I learned about this game probably about a year ago. Ratio’s are obnoxious and cause bad things, I think spreads would be alright (Kills minus deaths), but again: No lifetime career stats for spreads, or else people will play it like they did ratios. But if it only shows the spread for that game (which you could just figure out yourself) it’d be fine.
But seriously, let’s forget about useless K/D ratios and address the other things in this thread so someone doesn’t have to make ANOTHER thread just for that issue… or… wait… is there anything else to talk about here?
V1cK_dB
(V1cK_dB)
#92
This made me laugh.
There seems to be quite a bit of people totally against any type of tracking for kills. Even only after rounds. I don’t understand. Killing absolutely matters. I remember playing Objective in RTCW and our team not trying to do anything other than kill the other team until time ran out. As hard as the other team tried playing together to get the objective they just couldn’t. Why? Because we were better shooters. All of the teamwork in the world wasn’t going to help them. We used to do that on purpose when we would get bored. Don’t tell me that killing plays a “minor” role. What are we playing? Super Mario? This is still a shooter right?
Wraith
(Wraith)
#93
Speaking of controversial. Certain people online and off have been telling me that Brink needs other game modes like TDM or capture the flag in order to be successful.
Care to comment?
Bridger
(Bridger)
#96
If you define Killing as making the “last shot,” it will likely be less useful in brink due to the higher HP, but I would bet that 80-90% of kills are going to be made by the guy who did the most damage recently. That 80-90% is still pretty accurate as to who was making it count.
So if we agree that kills by this notion can somewhat-accurately represent who is responsable for the killing, the Kills/Deaths ratio measures how efficient you are. If you kill 5 people in a single life, you are being more efficient than the guy who only manges to kill 1 guy every 2 lives. That guy who’s only getting 1 kill for every 2 lives needs to do a LOT more to help the team to make up for such a decifit. In fact they are spending so much time in the spawn queue, they probably can’t hep the team much.
The only issue which would throw this off is someone who is playing super-defensively and not opening themselves up to death, but taking opportunistic shots every once in a while.
I find these kinds of players to be rare, but to account for that, you can say anyone who has at least 15% of the kills on the team AND has a great K/D ratio is clearly a credit to team. Even without that caveat though, a good chunk of the time it will be accurate. Someone who is near the top of the kill chart who also has a good K/D ratio is helping the team a lot. To say that such a measure is “useless” is incorrect. It may not be able to tell you who “single-handedly won the match” but it can still tell you the more efficient killers in the game.
That being said, I don’t care if it is in the game.
Weeohhweeohh
(Weeohhweeohh)
#97
[QUOTE=Bridger;273196]So if we agree that kills by this notion can somewhat-accurately represent who is responsable for the killing, the Kills/Deaths ratio measures how efficient you are. If you kill 5 people in a single life, you are being more efficient than the guy who only manges to kill 1 guy every 2 lives. That guy who’s only getting 1 kill for every 2 lives needs to do a LOT more to help the team to make up for such a decifit. In fact they are spending so much time in the spawn queue, they probably can’t hep the team much.
The only issue which would throw this off is someone who is playing super-defensively and not opening themselves up to death, but taking opportunistic shots every once in a while. [/QUOTE]
What about medics that avoid fire fights and focus on healing/reviving/escorting?
Bridger
(Bridger)
#98
What the hell are they doing avoiding a firefight? So your team should fight a 4v5 because you’re too busy reviving? Reviving takes 2 seconds. A medic who does his job (heals/revives/etc.) AND has a high K/D ratio is going to be a much better credit to team than one who does his job but dies a lot because he can’t hit anything.
Didn’t we just get done talking about how lame it is for people to avoid fighting so they don’t hurt their K/D ratio? Now you are saying medics should avoid fighting? That is certainly not credit to team.