Perspective time, K/D ratio: What is Good, Bad, Normal??

I know. I was pointing out that there are helpful actions that won't improve your KDR. If you're running 0.3 or less I'd suggest taking a look at your playstyle, definitely.

Coming from the BF franchise and so on, the transition to not caring about KD has been a little difficult for me, since for a long time I measured my success to some degree by how well my end KD was along side my SPM during that particular round.

Getting owned over and over again bothers me still (but is to be expected since I'm a noob at PS2) but I'm trying to not put much stock into that stat.

I find reviving and repairing vehicles to be much more useful since you're facing an endless meat grinder and dieing a lot is kind of the norm at bio labs and stuff like that.

Best to just take a WWII Russian approach and take up arms as a Russian conscript. You're just another piece of meat in the vast inexhaustible army of your faction, sent forth to crush all opposition in an endless red tide (blue or purple depending on faction). Your worth is determined more by you helping you team achieve victory at whatever objective they're trying to take, and since each hex doesn't have a limited number of "tickets" for spawning, KD effectively becomes a moot stat.

These types of threads are the true metagame for PS2.

Quoted in full because I wanted to. Cheers to FocusLight for answering OP's question comprehensively without being judgmental.

Lol, you have no idea what you're talking about, those kind of people you mention would have a low KPM since they are putting themselves out of most dangerous situations, what happens with people with 4-5 KDR and more than 1 KPM then? Oh yeah, we must be farming hiding in a corner without contributing to the faction

Or maybe someone who is much better at the game than you could probably be.

Not really, some people just stay bad even being BR100, if you didn't get good in 50 days of gameplay, you probably reached your limit, you won't improve anymore, on the other hand, I've seen low BRs that in their first hours ingame already play much better than those BR100s, the ones that start being bad and get really good are a large minority.

It means you are rushing in and trying to have fun rather than playing very cuatiously. My k/d is .4 and ive played for something like 58 days worth. I dont consider that a failure in any way. Lets say you play medic, your role in keeping the troops pushing forward is invaluable, but...your k/d ration will be horrible. It you want it to jump up, try infilitrator and sniping from long range with a one shot-head shot kill rifle. You will usually get 2 or 3 guys if you learn to cloak - line up shots - declaok - take shot or 2 - cloak and move positions. does that make you a great support for your team? If they have guys on the tower platform raining down rockets it is a necessity to snipe them to stop that action, so yes. If not, then maybe not. Oh.... FYI i never snipe unless its to counter them as nothing is more satisfying as killing the snipers that are killing you and your teamates. Making them run for cover and cloak up is fun to watch.

Normally 1:1 would be average.
Factor in T/King and you add .05 to deaths (1:1.05) for your average.
Then factor in that you get resurrected by medics about a third of time, so subtract .35 for 1:0.75), for a K/D of 1.25.

You should, if you're an average player, be killing 1.25 players for every re-spawn. If you're moving with an outfit that employs medics regularly you should be higher, around 1.5 to 1.75 for every re-spawn. If you're constantly running solo, then you should be around 1.0 kills per respawn.

KDR as a metric to the individual is only as important as you want it to be. That said, excuses like "I play support" or "I rush in first" in regards to low KDR are cop outs. If you're having fun, keep doing what you're doing, but realize that there are better ways to do those things that don't involve constantly dying. That's what we're judging.

I'd like to point out a little math problem as far as the idea of 1.1+ being "average" though: due to suicides and teamkills, there are more total deaths in this game than kills. That's just an unavoidable fact, because while every kill is a death, not every death is a kill.

This means that, logically, the server-wide and game-wide mean (ie average) K/D should be below 1, because you get that by adding up every single kill in the server/game and dividing it by every single death in the server/game. Keep in mind you can't just say "well there's more below-average players than above average players", because that's not how averages work. If there's more below average than above, that means the true average is lower than you think it is. This is ignoring medics, which most stats sites do. IIRC the "Players" page also ignores medics, revive only removes the death on the in-game screen.

People who play mostly infantry are also going to have much lower K/D than anyone who plays mostly vehicles. Vehicles can take more hits, are vulnerable to fewer weapons, and can have a higher top speed to escape dangerous situations with. This is one reason K/D really doesn't mean much in this game. If you're in any kind of vehicle and go out of your way to mostly engage infantry, of course you're going to have a high K/D. If you play infantry in areas that vehicles can reach, or actually try to fight vehicles, you're going to have a very low K/D. If you play a MAX and mostly fight infantry you're likely to have a high K/D, but that engineer behind you who's helping you get all those kills is going to have a low K/D to show for it.

So don't worry about K/D, focus on helping your team and having fun. Some people are just really good at twitch-aiming and CQC, which is pretty much the only kind of infantry combat that's really rewarded in this game. They can get a high K/D and help their team at the same time, but it's the "helping their team" part that's important, not the K/D.

Like I mentioned, vehicle drivers (or gunners in vehicles where the two are separate) naturally get a high K/D, so it just doesn't really mean anything for them. The mark of a good vehicle driver is making sure they help their team rather than just farming: identify things (or groups of things) that need to die fast, and make them die. For example rather than just farming the infantry around the Sunderer, actually blow the Sunderer up and help your team push. What matters for a vehicle driver is not how many kills you get, but how much impact those kills have.

An engineer or a medic though isn't likely to have much K/D to show for their action, but their roles are just as important. A good Engineer knows how to keep his ammo pack in a place where it's most useful, and can switch between providing ammo, repairing, and giving fire support as necessary, as well as bringing the right mines for the situation and knowing where to place them. This won't necessarily give him a good K/D, but it will help everyone around him improve theirs.

A good medic knows how to balance healing with fighting, make use of their C4 (never bring healing kits as a medic, you have your F key for a reason), and knows when it's safe to revive someone. They won't necessarily get a good K/D either, but they'll keep everyone around them on their feet. Both medics and engineers are absolutely essential to supporting an effective MAX.

10-4 good buddy! I'll avoid that in the future.

You can pad accuracy pretty easily.

errr nm.

KD is NOT the only measure of a players skill or worth. Dedicated support players (and transport veh pilots) have the hardest time achieving a strong KD.

Anyone who cannot acknowledge the value of a real cm/eng support player on the PS2 battlefield is a dummy.

For the majority of the time I've played this game, I've been a hardcore medic and engineer. It was impossible to have an impressive KD and still be an effective support class. I was out there helping allies and getting killed repeatedly during the days before revives removed deaths from KD stats. Mine was 1.2 during those days. Not good, but certainly not bad considering my play style.

Nowadays, I play every class and use every vehicle. I'm still not a serious KD stat padder, but I have managed to raise my overall KD to above 2. Lately, it tends to be between 4 and 8. Each session I see my overall stat rise .01 or so.

The optimization patches helped a lot, also. My ancient PC can get a steady 30fps most of the time now.

Even if I had a fast PC and more talent, I still wouldn't care about having the most impressive KD. I play for team objectives and fun and getting certs (to unlock more stuff) - not a figure to impress other nerds.

What matters to me is how useful you are to the objective at hand, not K/D. Be a good player, let the rest sort itself out.

(Moves hand) There is no K/D ratio, this is not the stat you are looking for......

As I'm sure has been said thousands of time, KDR is the worst thing that could have happened to a game like this. It gives people a psychological sense that there is a number of importance that they must keep up, even when it's useless.

For example, I may play as a medic or an engineer, get zero kills, but keep my team mates alive long enough to kill 100 soldiers and retake a base. My KDR might be very, very low (as my objective is not killing infantry), but my usefulness might be extremely high.

On the contrary, I play as a sniper and get very high KDR's usually, however sometimes I find myself simply farming the same few people over and over again who put their heads in stupid positions. One might argue that the medic/engineer is far, far more useful for the team, and more likely to help with taking the base. This is not to say that snipers are useless (if used correctly/well), however avoiding direct confrontation simply to keep a high KDR is absolutely detrimental to the sense of teamwork in the game.

IMO, SOE should remove KDR from the stats, and replace it with SPM (Score per Minute) as a more fair assessment of your usefulness. That is to say, if you prefer playing as an engineer and not killing anything, your score can still be high. Whereas if you play with a sniper who gets a kill every few minutes (because you're camping away from the action where you can't be killed) your score per minute is going to be alot lower. It would also give added incentive for people to go after high-scoring objectives such as generators and terminals - especially for pubs (public players) who are not attached to a squad.

Sorry? I didn't catch what you were saying. Too distracted by that Vanoo Infil over there.

“Anyone above 7-8.1 K/D is, at this point, almost guaranteed to be either A) someone that is very, very good at farming and plays this game way, WAY more than can be considered healthy, or B) an out-right cheater. This is because even to the best players, good kill-streaks are few and far between, and in between them is your "average" game-play. You get a few kills, you get killed yourself, you get a few more kills, die, get one kill, die 3-4 times in a row in a critical situation, get a few more kills etc.”

You say WHAAT ??

IMHO, I do not understand the term "farming". There is NO such thing. When we want to take a base, we have to kill everybody in it, or make them run away,.. and if they keep spawning, then we have to kill them again. If they keep spawning and run to the exact same place where I just shot them 1 minute ago, that's my fault for 'farming' ??
And when an enemy zerg storms a hill, all at once, with a completely unorganized and uncoordinated herd instinct, and they all end up getting blasted by my tank.. I'm NOT farming.. I am protecting my factions infantry and armor, which are trying to the take the base..
You can't call that zerg farming.. it's more of a stupid zerg suicide for the advanced..

I resent the statement that my KD of 9.4 on my TR character indicates any kind of cheating.. it doesn't . I just got pretty good at not getting killed.. mainly by running away as fast as I can when I realize that I can't win the engagement.. staying around to die and not accomplishing anything would be outright stupid. Plus my tank costs a lot of resources, I'm not giving that up just to die..
And good kill streaks are NOT few and far between.. I was in an AV Turret and got over 50 kills, the herd idiots running towards the base.. an engineer helped to keep the turret alive.. we weren't that good, the zerg suicidals were that stupid.. Don't try to pin cheating or unhealthy game play .. You want bigger kill streaks? Easy, warp to the continent where you have the least % of the map.. like the TR on Easmir show 6% ?? !! I'm totally there, 'cause I KNOW the enemy is at our front door.. turkey shoot.. pushing them back can a real thrill.. for me, that is.

To back up my point: I am NEVER in a bio lab.. I am NEVER in a big battle.. I am always on the outskirts, flanking..
I play differently.. and on my TR Character, my KD matters, yes it does. it matters to me, ONLY to me.
My Vanu and NC are only 1.9 and 0.8 respective.. right there you see the difference in play style and tactics. You statement of cheating is outright obnoxious.. please don't do that.

To the guy who started this thread: Your KD only matters to YOU. if you want it to matter. You need to find your style and character in this game. Maybe infantry zerging in bio labs is not what you like. Try tanking. Try Sundies.. watch more Youtube videos on different classes.. learn from others before you try to learn on your own.. Find something that is fun for YOU.. the rest will follow.

I went from a .52 to a 1.04 in about 2 weeks. I used to just rush things as a light assualt and suicide bomb. After I became more passive and more of a sneak and flank playstyle I usually end sessions with a 1.8-2.5 kdr now. Like people have said KD isn't really skill mostly how you play.

I assume he refers to infantry gameplay, getting that kind of KD playing exclusively tanks is actually pretty easy.