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Seriously, get rid of K/D-Ratio in team based shooters

K/D-Ration is bad m'kay. I hate when you are on team that totally sucks ass and you pretty much can't do anything to improve your ration... Well okay there is something you can do and that's joining the winning team (WTJ) and that sucks.

K/D-ration must die.
 
MidiSurf said:
K/D-Ration is bad m'kay. I hate when you are on team that totally sucks ass and you pretty much can't do anything to improve your ration... Well okay there is something you can do and that's joining the winning team (WTJ) and that sucks.

K/D-ration must die.
Uh joining the winning team will only help your win/lose ratio. You can have a high K/D ratio and always be on the losing team.
 
deepbrown said:
Uh joining the winning team will only help your win/lose ratio. You can have a high K/D ratio and always be on the losing team.

Uuum, no. Even the best player can't have good K/D ration if he gets killed all the time and don't get any frags. And if all your team mates are crappy players in team based game you can't do shit, except you can die.
 
MidiSurf said:
Uuum, no. Even the best player can't have good K/D ration if he gets killed all the time and don't get any frags. And if al your team mates are crappy players in team based game you can't do shit, except you can die.
Not true in WH....I'm often on the losing team. And if my team are crap, I just get all of their kills.

But yes...it's true. Not even the best player can have a good k/d if he gets killed all the time...:lol
 
deepbrown said:
Not true in WH....I'm often on the losing team. And if my team are crap, I just get all of their kills.

WH ?

That is true that you might get more kills if all other players are bad in your team, but if the players in other team are all good it's kinda hard to get any kills.

CS match 8vs8 (dust) top3

CT:

40 kills 5 deaths
38 kills 7 deaths
35 kills 3 deats

Terrorists:

22 kills too many deaths <-- Me
5 kills too many deaths
3 kills too many deaths


Rest of the terrorists either had one or zero kills.
 
I rather they get rid of the time played stat in cod4, makes me feel bad looking at it

I dunno, I like knowing my kills and deaths. Would be nice to see more stats though that reflect how good of team member you are beyond that (besides assists). COD4 doesn't track for example whether you carry/plant bombs, capture HQ's/control points, etc.
 
MidiSurf said:
WH ?

That is true that you might get more kills if all other players are bad in your team, but if the players in other team are all good it's kinda hard to get any kills.
Warhawk. Well my Win/Loss ratio is 0.7 (my team loses more than we win) but my K/D is 1.7
 
I have no problem with the stat being there. If you play team games then just learn to ignore your ratio and win the match for the team. My Halo 3 ratio is something like 0.97 (I think it's about 20 kills away from 1:1) from memory, my CoD4 is about 0.9x as well. But I win a lot of matches because I don't care about dying for the team. If it stops the other side taking the Headquarters I'll gladly bumrush the whole lot of them to let a team mate take the kill from the blindside. I'll welcome the chance to throw myself in front of bullets to protect the VIP.

It's why I prefer team games to straight versus to be honest. And I'm English so the Dunkirk spirit allows me to take glorly in cataclysmic failure.
 
deepbrown said:
K/D ratio is very helpful for me to gage the usefulness of a player in a team death match, and even overall in Zones etc. If you're a player who kills a load more people than you get killed, then you are very useful for holding down bases, making us win etc. My K/D is 1.69 in WH (went down from 1.72 :( ) and I think I'm very useful - especially on the ground.

Generally, among other factors, this is how I gaged how good my team players were and how experienced they were.

When I started WH my K/D was 0.5 I improved. You've only just started...

I have a 1.3 Ratio in WH and I got many kills not because I'm so very skilled but because I know where the good weapons are (mines!). I think you really notice that in warhawk in all games 85% of the players are going out for frags and not for the objective. They even kill you if you take the better weapon, because they want it to get more frags. In the team-modes like zone the team-points would also show how good a player is. Maybe you have to slightly modify it, like give points for every second the player guards a zone...but just get rid of K/D.
 
cultofweaver said:
I have no problem with the stat being there. If you play team games then just learn to ignore your ratio and win the match for the team. My Halo 3 ratio is something like 0.97 (I think it's about 20 kills away from 1:1) from memory, my CoD4 is about 0.9x as well. But I win a lot of matches because I don't care about dying for the team. If it stops the other side taking the Headquarters I'll gladly bumrush the whole lot of them to let a team mate take the kill from the blindside. I'll welcome the chance to throw myself in front of bullets to protect the VIP.

It's why I prefer team games to straight versus to be honest. And I'm English so the Dunkirk spirit allows me to take glorly in cataclysmic failure.

It's great that you are one of the players that can ignore K/D. But like you say, you HAVE to ignore it and many players can't do that. So why not get rid of it completly so no one has to ignore it because it's not there anymore...
 
People take things too seriously. I am always the first person on my team to volunteer to run into certain death if it helps the team objective. Since I mostly play headquarters on CoD4, I die a LOT trying to help the team, and it shows in my K/D ratio (currently lvl 20, K/D is 0.55). In Halo 3, though, I mostly play Team Slayer and my K/D ratio is a much better (but certainly not spectacular) 1.11.
 
My thought is that they should track stats in so many categories that no one could possibly hope to be the best in more than one.

They should track EVERYTHING--headshots, even crouch / prone time, miles ran, cars exploded, suicides, etc.
 
Proposal: team k/d ratio. At the end of the game, this stat will be the same for all players on the same team, and will be factored into their player stats in a manner proportional to their "fair" share of kills (number of kills divided by number of players on team, which is != their actual kills). People who don't care about their stats can continue to not care about their stats, and for everyone else, it promotes playing toward the optimal team result, whatever that entails in the particular game.
 
IMO, k:d is a holdover from deathmatches, which were the first MP aspects of fpses. Once stat-tracking came into effect, that was the obvious stat everyone would want tracked. But it makes no sense in this time of evolved MP games. The team-based aspects don't require any sort of stat-tracking TBH. Maybe wins/losses as a team, but that's about it. I don't know if devs keep k:d such a high priority b/c gamers will ignore their game without it, or b/c they are themselves stuck in old habits. PEACE.
 
Thrakier said:
It's not the problem that I'm bad, neither is my friend, I have a positive K/D ratio. But I had to play in a certain way to get it and that was certainly not teamplay...
Get better @ playing other ways.

I'm completely run and gun on every FPS game. In SnD(cod) I was always the 1st to die, shot sometimes I still am. You need to learn to adjust in certain situations.
Regardless of how I play its teamplay, I try to take the leadership role each time. Most times I try to do everything. I have a 2.8kd as well.
 
knee said:
My thought is that they should track stats in so many categories that no one could possibly hope to be the best in more than one.

They should track EVERYTHING--headshots, even crouch / prone time, miles ran, cars exploded, suicides, etc.
Warhawk does this, and it still comes down to k:d. Shit, BF2 players should know this all too well also. PEACE.
 
Thrakier said:
I talked with a friend last night and we both agreed that team-based shooters like Warhawk or Call of Duty (except Deathmatch of course) would work a LOT better without K/D-Ratio. I just can stand it if my K/D ratio is negative and it gets worse when it's not only for one match but for the whole game-stats. We both agreed that the would work much more for a team if there wasn't the K/D ratio. I know that it's stupid in a way but I think that much online-gamers are this way and that hinders teamplay because everything is just looking for frags and not for helping the team...do you agree?

The ratio exists whether or not they display it.

The problem is you.



IF it bothers you that you care, then stop caring.
 
Evander said:
The ratio exists whether or not they display it.

The problem is you.



IF it bothers you that you care, then stop caring.
If a team was a single player, it wouldn't matter at all. Unfortunately, not everyone is a team player.

I can only assume the people that don't mind k:d being tracked have had nothing but steller online team-based experiences in such games, right? I mean, BF2 and Warhawk aren't full of selfish stat-whores, right?

Meh, it would even be better if it was a tracked stat, but one that was listed privately. Give us an option to hide stats or something, the best of both worlds. As it is, k:d is an individual stat, which hold little to no meaning in a team-based situation. PEACE.
 
I'm a selfish stat whore, what can I say. My 2.83 KDR in Warhawk belies the fact that I can't win a one-on-one ground or air encounter to save my life. I just really enjoy the rush of playing a cowardly, cheap, self-preservationist game game. *shrug
 
Pimpwerx said:
If a team was a single player, it wouldn't matter at all. Unfortunately, not everyone is a team player.

If someone is a shitty teammate, the availability of a single number to them after a match isn't going to be the factor that makes the difference there.



Folks need to learn to control themselves, and stop making excuses for why they run out and steal other people's kills, etc.
 
Evander said:
If someone is a shitty teammate, the availability of a single number to them after a match isn't going to be the factor that makes the difference there.



Folks need to learn to control themselves, and stop making excuses for why they run out and steal other people's kills, etc.
Without that single number, what reason is there for someone to run around playing deathmatch in a team game? Out of curiousity, what team games do you play?

I've found that in every team game since Quake CTF, there's been k:d used as a means of assigning points. As a result, more often than not, you'll end up with a team of 16 that has maybe 4 or 5 people focused on the objective. In a game of Warhawk, this is seen with those persistent same-colored dots that sit around a flag in CTF, or tow-spam in Zones. I can't say this will stop altogether with no k:d tracking, but it will certainly diminish the need for people to do so. Most people sitting back at a base are just trying to avoid dying a lot. That's why I did it when I first started playing CTF back in Quake1. PEACE.
 
Pimpwerx said:
Without that single number, what reason is there for someone to run around playing deathmatch in a team game?

If some one is going to be an inconsiderate asshat, they're going to be an inconsiderate asshat. One number at the end of the match isn't going to do a 180 on some one's personality.

The folks complaining in this thread either need better friends, or better self-control.



Stop making excuses for your own bad behavior, and just grow up, and quit kill-stealing, etc.
 
Evander said:
If some one is going to be an inconsiderate asshat, they're going to be an inconsiderate asshat. One number at the end of the match isn't going to do a 180 on some one's personality.

The folks complaining in this thread either need better friends, or better self-control.



Stop making excuses for your own bad behavior, and just grow up, and quit kill-stealing, etc.

in the case where people don't try to defuse the bomb because they're afraid of getting killed, I think that without a K/D ratio stat, people would actually try to defuse the bomb. The only thing preventing them now is the fear of getting killed. But without that stat, there really isn't a fear of getting killed.
 
woodchuck said:
in the case where people don't try to defuse the bomb because they're afraid of getting killed, I think that without a K/D ratio stat, people would actually try to defuse the bomb. The only thing preventing them now is the fear of getting killed. But without that stat, there really isn't a fear of getting killed.

Or stealing the flag, or using your body as a bullet shield for the flag carrier, etc. etc. I really hate this stat in Objective/Skirmish-type games but am all for it for strict Deathmatch/Slayer, etc.
 
Honestly if you want to play in a game where k/d doesn't matter, play with friends or join a clan and play in scrims or official matches in online leagues. Expecting any real sort of teamwork in a public server with random people is kinda silly. People aren't going to meatshield you while you diffuse the bomb because the win doesn't mean anything so why bother?
 
woodchuck said:
in the case where people don't try to defuse the bomb because they're afraid of getting killed, I think that without a K/D ratio stat, people would actually try to defuse the bomb. The only thing preventing them now is the fear of getting killed. But without that stat, there really isn't a fear of getting killed.

Again, the issue isn't the stat, the issue is that they care more about the stat than they do about the team.

You will ALWAYS have a ratio of deaths to kills, regardless of whether it is displayed or not. Even if the game doesn't track it, the folks who really care will still keep track themselves.



People need to learn that their stats, while fun, are entirely worthless, and that they need to work for the good of the team. The fact thatthe game shows you a number after a match is no excuse for being an assclown.
 
Fuck the people that think that kill counts are the #1 priority in objective based rounds.

Those people are assholes, but they are assholes with or without the game keeping count of kills and deaths...it's not something that removing a stat will fix.

edit: Evander sums up my argument better than I did. Agreed 100%

edit2: The simple fact is that most players do not care about the objective. It doesn't matter how in depth the stat tracking is or even if the game doesn't track stats at all...most players think that every Objective based game mode is an extension of Team Deathmatch.
 
Confidence Man said:
TF2 still tells you how many deaths you have vs. kills. It doesn't spit out a ratio but it's still there on a game by game basis.
The important part is that the relevant stats are wiped every time you disconnect from the server. (Or when a new game starts, I forget)
Evander said:
You will ALWAYS have a ratio of deaths to kills, regardless of whether it is displayed or not. Even if the game doesn't track it, the folks who really care will still keep track themselves.
No one's arguing that point. The main thing that turns people into raging assholes is the inclusion of a publically viewable ratio.
 
Perhaps a better solution would be for games to recognize (or recognize more accurately) heroic deaths, such as from guarding a flag, capturing a flag, defending a flag-runner, defending an objective, etc.
 
epmode said:
The main thing that turns people into raging assholes is the inclusion of a publically viewable ratio.

No, it doesn't.

Those people aren't turned into assholes, they ALREADY ARE assholes.

They just use the ratio as an excuse. If there was no ratio displayed, they'd come up with another excuse.



Don't play games with assholes, and if you find yourself caring about the numbers, then exercise a bit of self-control. It's like opening an emergency exit door in the middle of a flight, and then blaming the airline company for not having locked the door.
 
Evander said:
No, it doesn't.

Those people aren't turned into assholes, they ALREADY ARE assholes.

They just use the ratio as an excuse. If there was no ratio displayed, they'd come up with another excuse.
While I agree that there are quite a lot of people that fit into this category, I also feel as though there are a lot of others who are influenced into playing stupidly due to such a ratio.

I just don't think the overwhelmingly positive experiences I've had playing in TF2 pubs is a fluke. It's easily the most friendly environment of any major multiplayer shooter I've played in several years.
 
Thrakier said:
I talked with a friend last night and we both agreed that team-based shooters like Warhawk or Call of Duty (except Deathmatch of course) would work a LOT better without K/D-Ratio. I just can stand it if my K/D ratio is negative and it gets worse when it's not only for one match but for the whole game-stats. We both agreed that the would work much more for a team if there wasn't the K/D ratio. I know that it's stupid in a way but I think that much online-gamers are this way and that hinders teamplay because everything is just looking for frags and not for helping the team...do you agree?


The trick is to be able to have a good K:D ration while achieving whatever 'goal' your team needs.

Unless you hate teammates, or think they suck, much like I do. In that case... try and kill as many people as you can without dying. Being at the top of the list is far more satisfying than having your whole team win.
 
epmode said:
The main thing that turns people into raging assholes is the inclusion of a publically viewable ratio.
I disagree. I feel that in objective based games unless the game is catering to a small niche (dystopia, shadowrun) there will always be assholes that think that every mode is team deathmatch. It doesn't matter if the stats are visible or not. This problem has existed since CTF in Quake 1.
 
epmode said:
While I agree that there are quite a lot of people that fit into this category, I also feel as though there are a lot of others who are influenced into playing stupidly due to such a ratio.

I'm not saying that doesn't happen; what I'm saying is that you are solving the wrong problems.

These aren't "perfectly great teamates who happen to see a number and turn bad." These are people who lack self-control, and use any little thing as an excuse.

It's the people that are the issue, not the number.
 
epmode said:
The main thing that turns people into raging assholes is the inclusion of a publically viewable ratio.

Hmmm. I never made fun of people for having way lower K/D ratio's than me. Is it fun? Does it really make people cry and feel insignificant about themselves like people are making it sound? I should do that one of these days and see for fun.

It's just a freakin' game, who cares what people think about your stats? Not everybody is as good as the next player, and someone out there is probably as good or better than you anyways.
 
KD is only good for DM's and TDM's because the sole purpose of these maps are to kill more than you die and if you kill a lot more than you die you are helping the team more. Any objective based games and KD's cease to function.
 
besada said:
Shadowrun's scoring is probably the best I've seen, in regards to rewarding treamplay. Everyone gets a bonus per kill, so heavy hitters score highly, but you also get bonuses for resurrecting (percentage of money received on each of your resurrectees), bonus for healing people with trees, big bonuses for running the artifact.

I'm not close to being the best shot, but I routinely score in the top two or so, just from my facility at running the artifact and rezing people. It's the best game I've played in terms of really rewarding teamplay.


Yes, Shadowrun handles this aspect adeptly.
 
Since warhawk has been mentioned a few times in this thread:

Having played quite a few Warhawk ranked games, eliminating KDR and substituting stats that count in team play might not be a bad idea at all. In ranked games there is no communication, almost no teamwork towards objectives whatsoever and very little in the way of strategy aside from randomly run around and shoot people from the other team. And this occurs in all game types when it should only be the case in Deathmatch.

I've gotten to the point of just giving up on my teams many times and going only for personal scores after failing to get any cooperation or teamwork when trying to secure critical spawn points or set up flag captures. The lack of teamwork becomes so frustrating when you want to achieve a specific goal that it's not worth it and you're better off just spending the whole match going for KDR and ignoring base captures and flag captures.

Yes, it is possible to have a good KDR and contribute to a team, but I find that I see a majority of people running around aimlessly with no idea of what's going on in the larger scope of the goal of the mode and they think all they have to do is shoot people of the opposing faction when they could be helping by aiming their KDR attempts at killing enemy flag campers while others on their team try to secure the flag or by helping kill enemies at a base that needs to be secured.

Sorry, but hiding by some random batch of rocks and trees and waiting for someone to kill to appear is not useful and in these cases in Warhawk I wish friendly fire was still active in ranked games since that might get through to these types of players more since 97% of the time they probably aren't using the headset and probably aren't listening if they do have one.
 
knee said:
My thought is that they should track stats in so many categories that no one could possibly hope to be the best in more than one.

They should track EVERYTHING--headshots, even crouch / prone time, miles ran, cars exploded, suicides, etc.

agreed. I'd rather have more stats than just the k/d ratio. More developers need to take an example from rockstar and overload us with stats. If you're going to have game types that stress teamwork objectives like capturing control points then you need to keep stats for that, because most people tend to only focus on what will increase the size of there e-peen.
 
knee said:
My thought is that they should track stats in so many categories that no one could possibly hope to be the best in more than one.

They should track EVERYTHING--headshots, even crouch / prone time, miles ran, cars exploded, suicides, etc.

That's my problem with Call of Duty. They don't track ENOUGH STATS and it's very difficult to see them after the game because it's up for like a second and then gone. In addition they don't designate an MVP. Shooters should treat their stats systems like sports games for those of us that enjoy parsing data.

Every game should store the stats page for the most recent game so you can go check them out after the game if you desire. Not to mention I like to see my life time stats but I would like to be able to see them in smaller chunks like last 5 games. Last 10 games. Last 20 games, etc so I can see how I've been playing recently rather than just lifetime. Or how about stats based on distance like short range, medium range, long range. Or stats based on each weapon.

A really robust stat system would be able to give you true feedback on how you are playing and theoretically help you improve.
 
Kite said:
Honestly if you want to play in a game where k/d doesn't matter, play with friends or join a clan and play in scrims or official matches in online leagues. Expecting any real sort of teamwork in a public server with random people is kinda silly. People aren't going to meatshield you while you diffuse the bomb because the win doesn't mean anything so why bother?
This is why some of us are in favor of dropping the stat. It's been an albatross around the neck of team-based games for a ling time. It's a legacy, and serves no real purpose in modern CTF/Zones/etc matches where there is a team objective. It only counts towards stat-padding. PEACE.
 
Gattsu25 said:
Fuck the people that think that kill counts are the #1 priority in objective based rounds.

Those people are assholes, but they are assholes with or without the game keeping count of kills and deaths...it's not something that removing a stat will fix.

edit: Evander sums up my argument better than I did. Agreed 100%

edit2: The simple fact is that most players do not care about the objective. It doesn't matter how in depth the stat tracking is or even if the game doesn't track stats at all...most players think that every Objective based game mode is an extension of Team Deathmatch.
I disagree. I do so b/c I was very worried about k:d in fpses for a long time. Hell, I spent a good amount of time dogfighting and tow-spamming in Warhawk to pad that stat. But it's not a useful stat at all. And as someone who started out being a Q1 camper, I can tell you that the stat is a hindrance to people like me.

I used to be a rox camper in Q1 CTF. Find a nice hiding spot near your exit and frag the carrier to your heart's content. Many kills, many points and few kills. Why? B/c I wasn't as good with a kb+m back then. I was switching from kb-only, like a lot of people, and was getting slaughtered by circle-strafing. Only once I got comfortable did I finally adopt my run-n-gun style. I was much more effective running around a map and engaging opponents on the run, than sitting and waiting. My k:d went down, but I was earning more consistent points and more importantly, having a hell of a lot more fun.

The best game I had in Warhawk were when I died like 10 times grabbing the center base in Badlands or Archipelago, but then leading a convoy of tanks on a death march the rest of the way down the map. But there were a lot of times (especially early-on while I learned the ropes) that I would die a bunch of times on-foot in five minutes, but then spend the rest of the time doling out retribution kills in my Warhawk. Yeah, I was a hell of a pilot, but there's a time when air support is needed, and a time when it is just a useless distraction.

When learning the ropes, it's hard to ignore as the loss column is usually the higher total. Who wants to stare at mounting losses? I can ignore it, or I can keep playing the game I bought, but in a totally cheap way so I make a team game a personal vendetta. I think it's abundantly clear that some stats are merely legacies from eras past. Some stats are relevant to deathmatch and slayer and others are relevant to CTF. If the number wasn't displayed, I think you change a lot in the human response. I don't know too many team games that don't still track this redundant stat. PEACE.
 
dork said:
Lets just get ride of the entire scoreboard and not know who won the game, because losing sucks
Why not find a more meaningful metric for determining winners, losers and valuable contributors? This isn't some PC bullshit, this is about directing the focus of the game on the gameplay. Team-based games are supposed to be about fulfilling and objective AS A TEAM. What roles do personal stats play in that? PEACE.
 
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