Kill the K/D Statistic. It's killing Planetside. Seriously. It's time to Reevaluate The Effect.

/signed

This. I wish all the KD padders would leave for CoD....

A fear of less then 1.0 K/D?!?!?!

OP... seriously... more like 4.0 K/D

At the end of the day, play the game the way you like it. You wanna rush face first and "die for the greater good" go ahead. If you wanna camp and get bunch of kills why not?

But don't hate on the K/D players, cause honestly, I can't speak for all of them, but we play shooters for KILLING and not dieing. You play the game your way, and I'll use you to up my K/D. =)

Kills are an objective.

Just about everything that can be said already has, but here's my two cents.

As a primarily Engineer-playing Vanu, I would rather see my stats in repairs, mine kills, stun grenades, and base captures than in my K/D ratio. I'm not the worst at fighting anyone on foot, but it's not what I feel I'm best at when I'm part of a much larger assault.

Please, if nothing else, we need stat-checking on just about everything BUT K/D. Look at Battlefield 3 as an example. As an Engineer or Assault, I can track and even be rewarded for how often I repair and medicate the vehicles and people around me. I feel much less obligated to focus my fire on enemies that I could take down faster if my team had running vehicles. It just makes sense.

If we have a game based on team play, then we need to have team-play-based stats being checked and rewarded more than simply killing everyone in sight. At this point, it's almost worth just camping in a Lightning or Scythe while everyone else just gets stuck behind a hill. I can reign kills in that way so much easier and it's the fastest way to improve my Cert count. (I don't do this, but I could.)

Also, on another note, it would be great to actually be able to wear the medals and badges on our characters as part of our outfits, especially if we wind up being able to track and improve on more stats than we currently do.

Its from another Thread, but i thought it might fit into the Discussion as an Example of K/D Ratio and its Effect on Players:

I still see KDR as having its uses in game and out. First off life in an fps, your characters life has to have some meaning. KPD is the invisible force that keeps most everyone just relentlessly zerging everything over and over without any care except what? A useless base hack? Players will throw all caution to the wind and then death in Planetside will have absolutely 0 meaning. That is a deterioration of gameplay. When death has absolutely no meaning then you have hit rock bottom in gameplay. It now is a non competitve fps games even in comparison to MMO battleground games like WoW that also count kpd for the matches. Planetside 2 would be in new territory, complete uncompetitveness and that's not even a word.

I see taking out KPD as having far more detriment to gameplay. KPD makes people who care about it play like they care about their lives! that is the base of fps games and real life, to want to live!

Someone said send the kpd guys back to CoD??? You meant back to Quake, Unreal Tournament, Tribes, CS, TF2, BF3 and just about every fps made? Maybe they should send you back!

Do you play on Connery by any chance? If so then i can add you to the list of evidence that supports hypothesis, that the majority of players who hate KDR generally have well below average KDR themselves.

If you removed KDR then in the situations where not dying was relevant, players would still care about dying. If I'm trying to hold a point somewhere, I don't want to die because we might lose the point, not because I don't want my K/D to be bad.

Also, to all those saying it's an FPS game therefore KDR applies; no, it doesn't. No other game has combat of this scale. If you were on top of an amp station for example, you could theoretically be killed by in excess of 100 people at any one time. You will die so much more because there are hundreds of grenades, rocket pods, bombing libs, etc. There's none of this of this scale in a regular FPS game. Thus, the argument is void. All it does is make people play like *****.

K/D does not "make you" do anything. This is a war game, and the majority of players use and enjoy features like the K/D count. It is a useful gauge for those whose primary goal is to kill as many opposition as is possible. I see arguments from people saying they would prefer more recognition for support work. That's fine but how in the almighty **** does that then mean regular soldiers should be penalised through the REMOVAL of a useful utility?

Think before you type.

I honestly don't understand why they implemented a KD/R system in the first place for this game. Developers are too used to Call of Duty now-a-days, it's a damn virus.

Which has what to do with the importance of recording a K/D statistic which lasts that player's lifetime and not one single battle over a comparatively minute period of time? I made the other ridiculous point because it's actually far less ridiculous than the one you meant.

I would wager if you were to look at an unsuccessful prolonged defense of a Bio Lab, you would find many instances where the defenders had a higher K/D than the attackers. Battles largely revolve around neutralising the SCU and/or trapping the defenders into their spawn room. If the attackers kept throwing bodies at the task, their K/D could be significantly less than the defenders but still won the battle. K/D is not necessarily a measure of success in battle. Your example above could well have resulted in the 10x better K/D losing the battle.

I would like to see the "assist" statistic go away, and instead all assists be treated strictly as Kills. The Kill to Death thing isn't a huge issue on it's own, it's that people who are 100% front line infantry classes REALLY struggle to stay above 1:1 KD Ratio.

I play a mix of everything, but have avoided tanks for the most part because my first few days in the game were very tank-centric and it bored the ever-living crap out of me (despite being great for the KD ratio, which I didn't even know existed at the time).

This is a team game, if someone gets an assist, make it count as a kill, or better yet, even give full kill certs to promote teamwork instead of this "last hit" bull-s*** we see on sunderers (I -HATE- when I dump all my rockets into a sunderer and on the last reload someone else takes a pot shot and rakes in what should be MY points for MY efforts, for example).

Team fortress does a great job of treating assists as actual kills, even the kill-screen shows both primary damage dealers who contributed to a kill (which is very rewarding when you and a friend's name are the only names flooding the screen when you are dominating mid uber etc), rather than Shafting the medic who is in the fight just as much as the person he's healing.

For me, I'll often have nights as infantry where I go 20 kills 2 deaths, and then suddenly find myself trapped in a well of tanks and sheer zerg-numbers flooding in. After a few tank fights where I go 1:3 on kills to deaths (but eventually get them down) I usually find myself engulfed in liberators and am forced into a crazy hellish 1:10 KD ratio if I want to actually put up a fight (most people just bail or stay in spawn when a zerg comes, so that hurts a LOT - partially because of the stupid KD being tracked in the first place). I'll be lucky if I end the night at 1:1 despite a great start or long kill streaks simply because I don't run from every single fight where I'm outnumbered (since I'm not a part of a huge outfit on 2/3 of my characters, and don't really enjoy playing on the one that was, I would end up running from almost every single fight if this were the case).

This whole thing creates a major problem where we have a war game that encourages Zerg or Run ( largely in part because of the KD ). I don't know, maybe huge XP bonuses for people who kill in a particular hex-area based on the number of enemies occupying that area would help, so we aren't punished for being some of the few who actually "stick around and fight". It's just no fun watching an entire group of armed "tough guys" tuck tale and run, this isn't real life where you "run away to live to fight another day", this is an imaginary world where you nearly-instantly respawn while retaining all memories and are better off than the moment you died with full health and ammo to try again provided you are willing to push forward instead of chicken-out and bail... but people certainly don't play like that.

Yes. Removing K/D will make all the zergs suddenly realize they've been doing it all wrong - and they'll start pushing chokes/charging into defended positions. Yep.

If you don't like your KDR:

Don't look at it. It's that simple. Stop posting your whining threads arguing against visible K/D ratios. They are useful for, and desired by, the majority of players. No amount of whining is going to remove this necessary FPS related feature.

What credibility this game has as a shooter would be tarnished by a retroactive exclusion of such features.. We need to be encouraging more good players to invest in the game, not carebear catering to sensitive types who feel intimidated when they see someone with larger genitals than them.

Sorry girls and boys, they're here to stay.
Get used to it.

/Signed

Try actually reading the thread-starter's post before replying. It isn't just about us, it's how the KDR statistic directly affects the entire game's playerbase.

So remove the "Deaths" stat but keep the "Kills." That alone would make a huge difference.

I know, it's weird. I wanna kill people in a fps.

I guess I'm a bit weird like that.

I'm a support Engi. I repair stuffs, drop ammo, repair more stuffs, kill a few people, repair more stuffs.

I'm 40 and have terrible carpel tunnel in my Right wrist. No college kiddie am I. My K/D is terrible (and I'll prove it), I average 24 Certs/Hr with a K/D of .65 (I think). But not very realistic as when I'm active and hunting, I get more like 50. Stats are skewed like that.

I support keeping both K/D and Assists in game. They are a nice reminder as to when I need to stop chasing MAX/Mags and start killing again. But KDR isn't the only stat. You can look at my facilities defended...yes, it counts, thankfully!

I'm "bad" and I support KDR!

http://www.planetside-universe.com/character.php?stats=Acuta73

(hasn't updated in a while, blame the host)

My only gripe to date? Friendly fire counts toward K/D....really?

F***ing Magmowers....

They should organize how the KD:R is given. If it shows that they were a gunner in a liberator, no one will really care.
Then they cannot brag about being so awesome and leetsauce while everyone is a scrub.

Anyways, no reason to remove it, it has no affect on anything. I don't even give a shizzle if I kill myself within the game. It has no affect on anything. To even say that KD:R has a lot of meaning is just wrong. I could get high KD:R, but why?

This isn't CS:S where I would like to impress myself. As the highest I had was 54:1
But the average against good players is 3:1
Against bad newbies it's even higher...
But I haven't played that game for a couple of years or 3.... So I know I am prolly not as good, but it's all in your mouse.
I now play on my bed, which is significantly worse. however, I do have fun but playing this game, my laptop cannot handle it.
I have to put everything on low and 50% render. And it's horrible. I still try to enjoy it.

On the 8th, I'll have a better gaming rig (laptop) than nearly all gamers, even with their desktop. So I should be good again.... for a couple of years... Then, I can get much higher KD:R than I do now. Which isn't that great, especially with all my suicides and ****.

So.......... No reason to remove it. but to make it easier to see how they achieveed it.. Maybe make a seperate KD:R for air play.. and tank play too.... and infantry...... ..... .. .. .