The "everyone wins" solution to KD

KD does some bad things to this game, the main issue being that it punishes risk taking/ discourages objective focused play - particularly pushing out of spawns and pushing points.

Some players still want to track for their own reasons and see it as a meaningful metric of their performance, and don't want it removed. That's understandable I suppose.


I think a decent middle ground is to allow players to tell the game to simply not track their deaths. Maybe even have it be default for new players, and have people choose to turn KD tracking on once they've gotten through their noobery phase. Their KD would be N/A basically, and they could play without worrying about it. Kills would still be tracked for auraxiums and so on, so no issue there.


It's not a perfect solution but hey, more people not worried about KD = more certs for everyone, right?

How about the folk who care about their K/D are allowed to care about it, and those who don't... don't?

LIVE FREE IN THE NC!

So people can run around aim botting with 100KD and you'll never know for sure, sounds like a great solution.

Not everyone falls neatly into these two categories. I don't. I always drift toward KD padding when the stat is there for me to worry about, even though I'd like to not worry about it. Part of why I've lost interest in the game, really. It gets boring farming all the time, but then when I play "normally" I just feel like I'm ruining my precious KD for nothing.

100KD doesn't mean someone aimbots. KD isn't actually much help in determining whether a player is cheating.

Meh, I just slowly jet packed up a mountain in Indar over the course of 6 minutes to sneak up on a pack of VS skyguards. I felt they were a little too comfortable with their position (and denying us helpful air support). So I spent a good six minutes jetting up there, sneaking around slowly under cover, and planted some bricks on one and blew him up. Scared the others, that's for sure.

I killed a whole bunch of people in a Biolab scrum later. None of that brought me nearly as much joy as stalking those skyguards.

If K/D brings people joy, who am I to tell them no? The stat is there. If people want to care, then let them care. It doesn't really affect my game all that much.

Some days, I think there are more people who care about removing K/D than there are people who care about it in the first place.

The game when factoring k/d does not actually track all "deaths". If you run with medics and get revived constantly you'll gain a positive k/d almost all the time.

Stats websites like Dasanfall or tools like Recursion are not blind to this and track actual KD.

Don't see SOE going for something like this even though I think it'd be good for the gameplay. I'd certainly play tanks less and infantry more if I didn't have a little number telling me how bad I am for dying way more.

I think they want people to feel like buying upgrades will help them improve their KD though. It's a strategy lots of advertisement goes for: tell people they have a problem, offer them your solution for $$$.

They even considered selling KD resetting items lol:

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/may-tentative-honorable-mentions.169394/

Not even close.

The lower portion of the graph in game tracks actual KD...the one at hte bottom...with the graph...thats your actual KD...

The last good chance of this happening was probably:

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/soe-plans-to-monetize-kdr.106679/

If SOE wasn't going to listen to a 300+ liked post by one of the most popular players about how ruinous the KD stat is to player behavior back then, I don't think there's any hope now.

And anyone who doesn't think a significant % of players care about KD is kidding themselves, BTW. And many people who claim they don't are also lying.

It's debatable whether that stat is any more meaningful, though. Half the time, when you get revived, you'll be instantly killed again before you can react. Does that death deserve to go on your record? And if you're actually turning down revives to preserve your K/D, you're probably a less helpful player than if you just took them.

Nobody technically even dies in PS2. They had a lore-ish reason to get rid of the stat and they didn't make use of it. Kinda sad. Oh well, most people know the situation by now though and PS2 isn't gonna turn into the grand strategy some people hoped for. It's a fun/silly free for all KDM with lots of cheesy overpowered farming tools that's slowly dying off because let's face it, it's repetitive for veterans and brutal to noobs.

They should set it up like you can in EQ2.

you set under options enable PS2 Player Updates, defaults to on. when you select it to off your data is not displayed on the player site to anyone but yourself and does not update character stats to external data streams.

I want other metrics to become more important. People talk about KD as if it's the most wonderful and accurate stat in the game, while it's easy to get into a tank or ESF, head to a friendly Zerg and just farm kills with barely any risk of death.

Better metrics should be developed. Vehicle kills, objective support (tries to take defend points + successful take/defend points, overloading generators etc), "David vs Goliath" (destroy something big and powerful as something weaker/not intended to destroy it, such as using HE against MBT's), kill assists, kill steals, solo kills where you dealt 100% of the damage, accuracy. Maybe they could create a less arbitrary number from these metrics that shows your overal usefulness to the team.
I hate KD so much. When I play the game I can get frustrated over it despite knowing that it doesn't matter. Get the right tank and you can boost your KD in no-time. Is that fair? Is that fun? No, it's not fun. You want to be able to have fun regardless of the weapon or vehicle you are holding, and the completely inaccurate KD either needs to go or needs to be supported by other stats.

Bull... you care about it.

The problem is it makes people NOT PTFO... and in this game that's cancer.

K/D is the only stat that matters in the game so stop whining about it.

K/d is a worthless stat when you have so called 'pros' who do nothing but use cheese and styles of play with little risk to themselves (lib hovering over small fights anyone?)

*find small fight
*farm infantry
*get hurt, leave
*repair
*come backs
*wut an actual threat of dying to AA?
*get outta dodge
*find some other small fight to ruin.
*stroke your ego about your leet 40 kill streak with no deaths against weak opposition.

I love how quick Smed was to turn away Buzzcut, yet Buzzcut was the most honest man in this game because he told it as it was.

Definitely sounds like the ego of the airjocks in this game. Yet they will be so quick to defend themselves as being 'contributors' to the fight and that ESF is the 'greatest asset' in this game.

I have mixed feeling towards KD.

I dont really care about it that much, but like it when my KD goes up as it shows that im "improving" a bunch of other things, like awareness, positioning, accuracy etc.
And i dont think getting rid of it is going to solve 3rd party programs and websites tracking it anyway.
I also dont mind people who really like KD. Just let them imo. Is removing it going to stop people from staying in spawns and shooting at things? Probably not, because people like shooting at things that cant fight back, KD or not.
And at the same time, im not a big fan of how KD is used as a base stat on how "good" a player is, though i can understand it.
This is a FPS PVP game afterall, so naturally killing things wihout dying is something people like.