Forward So, I wanted to revise this post both due to some changes in the game and to the availability of some better statistical data. I have seen less and less players posting giant essays on how much they don't care about KDR, so I get the feeling that the angst against stats has died down. That said, being able to read your own or another player's statistics is important and doesn't require any background in statistical analysis. It's not complicated, but it is important to avoid viewing things in a vacuum. I also happen to think that it is important to be honest with yourself and others about what you're capable of, whether you're an MLG Pro or a casual player. If you're accuracy and KDR with a certain weapon or group of weapons is below average, you probably shouldn't create a post about how underpowered that weapon is. You might actually know what you're talking about, but more likely it is a deficiency on your end. You can use this data to note positive trends or deficiencies in your own gameplay, or to help a friend solve a problem they're having. The Post Kill/Death, Facilities Captured / Defended, Kills per Hour, Score per Minute, Accuracy, and Play Time. I have seen all of these items maligned and defended. They're all useless. They're all the ultimate measure of skill. The fact is that we have statistics tracking. It is not going to go away. A great number of people like looking at stats, and the argument that if you don't care about them, just don't look at them is completely valid. That said, stats need to be examined in the context of their relationships with each other and with game play mechanics. I worked in the game industry for 5 years, and now work in corporate software QA; figuring out how things SHOULD work has been a part of my job for a long time. On top of that, I played with the top PS1 outfit for years having to judge applicants based on a pretty rigid set of criteria for recruitment and currently play with DA. I WISH I had all of the stats we have available now back then. It would have saved us a lot of time. With that said, there is a lot of wiggle room with stats. A player playing with a poorer outfit might suddenly start playing MUCH better if they start running with better players; we've seen it time and again. A certain playstyle might also throw a few stats completely out of whack. However, these situations tend to be exceptions to keep an eye out for rather than to consider every time. With that, I am going to go through each of them and explain their pros, cons, and beneficial relationships. ---------------------------- Kill/Death Ratio: This is the stat that some people prop up their characters on, and others think should be removed from the game. With a few notable exceptions, you can usually figure out what someone's opinion on this is based on what their K/D is. This simple fact makes it pretty clear that a majority of people think it is important, if only because they think other people will judge them based on it. Here's the thing. This is a shooter. It may be a combined arms, massive, objective-based, platoon-oriented shooter that generates wildly different ranges of KDRs based on playstyle... but it's still a shooter. People want to be able to trust that the person they're playing with can hold their own in a firefight so that they're not suddenly flanked from a direction they thought would be reasonably covered. A higher K/D ratio objectively means you're better at the shooty aspects of this game, which means you're better at the majority focus of this game. You cannot waltz up to a contested objective. Most of the time, you have to shoot your way there. What constitutes a high K/D ratio is specific to each player, though. Back at release, a K/D of 10 was average for a pilot with rocket pods. Currently, a K/D of 1 is alright for someone who is a dedicated medic, while 2-3 is average for a player who focuses on HA. When looking at K/D, you have to examine their Score per Minute and Classes Played to get the context. A low K/D can be forgiven if they have a higher SPM and spend a lot of time as a medic. This just means they are focusing on other things. If they have 80% of their time played as a heavy or light assault, and a K/D of less than 1.5, there's no excuse as the absolute largest goal of both of these classes is to successfully shoot mans dead. That's not to say that someone with a below average KD should stop playing, because everyone can get better, but trying to excuse it is pretty transparent. For examples, here are the stats for the top five Mattherson users by number of kills for VS and NC HA LMGs: Please also note that I am fully aware that people can cheese K/D, like the guy with a 500 ratio. These are fringe cases outside of the norm. Kill+Assists/Death Ratio: This stat is very similar to the above, so I won't write much about it, but it's simply your KDR with assists in the mix. This number will only be slightly higher than KDR for someone who plays solo or with a small group, and might be significantly higher for someone who constantly plays with the zerg or a large outfit. What it tells you is that someone is at least hitting and contributing towards targets. KDA might be a better stat to look at if you tend to be the player who enters a room first with your group. Score per Minute/Hour: The flip side of the 'This is a shooter' argument is 'This is an objective based game'. It is this, also. Kills, vehicle kills, playing medic with a large group, and following the alerts all contribute pretty significantly to SPM, among other things. A high SPM is unarguably the sign of a useful player, even if you don't agree with that use. Someone with a high K/D will most likely have a high SPM. Someone who revives everyone they see, especially if playing with a large group, wil have a high SPM. Someone who captures base after base may have a high SPM. SPM is one of the very few stats that is indicative of someone's usefulness without needing much else context. There are a few specific playstyles that ARE useful, but don't get high SPM. However, I'm a firm proponent of the term 'Useful Player' including 'Being able to adapt and change', meaning someone isn't a full time grunt, vehicle player or some niche style. There is something pretty big to consider when looking at SPM. Boosts. Unfortunately, SPM is not normalized. Someone can have anywhere from 0% to around 150% XP boost, which all contribute to SPM. Someone with a SPM of 300 may be extremely useful, or they may be a mediocre player with a 150% boost. Someone with a SPM of 160 may be an above average player with no boosts at all. The only constant for SPM is that a number under 100 is pretty poor. To determine if someone actually is useful after looking at SPM, you can view all of the other stats to see what is propping it up, or keeping it down. Someone spending all of their playtime in an ESF might explain an unnusually high SPM based on other stats, for instance. SPM should be weighted heavier for engineers and medics. Kills per Hour/Minute: This isn't a stat that gets tracked normally, but is fairly easy to figure out by looking at Kills and Time Played. It is marginally useful to determine how good a player is at sticking with or creating action instead of ghost capping bases. Some people like to argue that spending ten minutes climbing a mountain to kill a sniper is a good reason for this number being low. It isn't. Just grab your own rifle or get in an air vehicle. Like K/D, this needs to be compared to SPM and Class Played to make an accurate judgement. This stat can apply to both a whole character, or be tracked by weapons. You can see in the above images what some higher KPH stats look like for those users. Below you can see the other end of the spectrum from HA, sniper rifles. You'll note the very large KPH difference between Mustarde and Timfire. This stat alone says to be that Mustarde is WAY more useful than your average sniper, even twice as useful as the guy with the next most kills. The only TR player on Mattherson with a higher KPH than him is MAXiPaDD. KPH is a stat that should be weighted heavier when looking at MAXes, Light Assaults, Heavy Assaults, and people who spend a lot of time sniping. Accuracy: Accuracy is one of my favorite stats to look at because, with a few exceptions, it is pretty standard across most playstyles. A majority of average players seem to fall in the 15%-22% range depending on the weapon type. You may see some significantly higher numbers, but these are usually dedicated snipers or people who spend a LOT of time firing lock on missiles. You can easily view the individual accuracy stats for each weapon to determine this, and viewing individual weapon stats is the better option over the overall accuracy stat. As some examples, here are the Average Accuracy stats for various weapons which include a deviation of plus or minus about 4.5% Gauss SAW: 16.8% Sirius: 21.5% T1 Cycler: 18.9% MRC3 Mercy: 15% Orion: 17.5% TRAC-5: 18.8% The averages above are just that; averages across all players on Mattherson. These include people who conserve ammo and only shoot when they're sure they'll hit, as well as people who insist on 'suppressing a doorway'. Averages lower than these numbers probably mean you should play with your mouse sensitivity to find your true comfort zone, or spend some time finding a weapon that fits your style. As a note, vehicle accuracy is a separate stat and is only important if you're looking at vehicle play. Headshot Ratio: Headshots are something someone either goes for or doesn't go for, and there really isn't a 'right' way to play it. Looking at the stats, people who go for the headshots have lower overall accuracies than those that go for the body, but obviously do more damage. The headshotters do have an advantage if they're an above average player. Here are the Headshot ratio averages for the same weapons as above: Gauss SAW: 17.7% Sirius: 12% T1 Cycler: 15.8% MRC3 Mercy: 15.4% Orion: 17.8% TRAC-5: 15.1% Time Played: Time Played is a tricky stat that plays into a lot of different elements. I regularly see people say 'Well I've played this game for 29 days to I know better than you!'. This is silly. People have played Counterstrike for 10 years and still can't make it half way up the leaderboards. Time Played can drastically affect things like K/D, SPM and KpH/M. Someone with a middling K/D, but with 20-30 days played, might have gotten notably better at the game since they started playing, and the poor K/D for the first 10 days of playtime is holding down their true, current K/D. You can put this into context by looking at their killboard, or looking at a stats site that includes Weekly and Monthly changes. SPM and KpH/M can be affected in similar ways. Facilities Captured / Defended: This stat is one of the least useful ones to look at. It is true that this is an objective based game. However, many players have extremely high numbers in these categories simply due to sticking with the largest groups of people without really contributing much in the grand scheme of things. Likewise, a player who leaves a base for the next objective without waiting for the counter to finish will rarely get the tally for their contributions, if any. The best use for this stat is to determine if someone is more offense or defense minded, but otherwise it doesn't point to many things of concern. Class Played: Not really a stat, but looking at Classes Played helps put many of the other stats into context. Medics have lower K/Ds. Heavies and LA's have higher K/Ds. Infiltrator's K/Ds vary wildly based on how it is played, and drivers/pilots tend to have the highest ratios. Just look at it and try to make accurate judgements. ---------------------------- The controversy over statistics comes down to the fact that people do not like to be judged based on what they consider to be poor representations of themselves. Poor or inflated, stats simply ARE representations of how you play. Taken all together, they provide a picture of your overall usefulness, the playstyles you prefer, if you play better in a large or small group, if you prefer support or can accurately hit targets, and if you are able to make good decisions on the fly. To argue against this is to argue against the whole of statistics in general. Statistics can be flubbed through some specific gaming of rules or exploitation, but these are rarer cases and are not hard to spot if you take all of a player's stats into account. If I missed a stat that anyone thinks is important, or I'm wrong about something here, let me know.
One of my favorite stats is % of time spent in vehicles. It used to be easily visible on ps2-stats.com but that site seems to be offline at the moment. It isn't too hard to derive from other stats though.
I also like to look at vehicles destroyed, because it's something that has a bit more permanence on the battlefield than a player kill.
A great source of information to be sure Tristan, and thank you for making it available to the community. A stat I've always wanted to see is the number of MBT's and Sunderers killed by the AV, C4, ESRL's compared to other sources like other tanks.
What a bunch of nubs. Everyone knows the true measure of skill is strategically falling behind on the final lap so you get the lightning or blue turtle shell.
They're still worthless unless we get a monthly look at stats. But no, SOE needs money from KD reset tokens =P I mean, I know people that are very skilled (even a great lib gunner/pilot) with KD less or slightly more than 1. I've seen dozens of people who have bad stats but still play very well (in the FPS aspects of this game, not support) and people with great stats who are just plain bad. And even though you do make a good point that stats should be taken differently for each playstyle, you simply cannot see the person's playstyle a lot of the time. If I want to go around as a combat medic and play offensively with a 3 KDR when I do, you won't see that. You also won't see the light assault who deals massive damage to an enemy tank zerg but only gets one guy with his C4 per death. Or the heavy assault who puts his life on the line to get one more deci shot on the enemy tank so his friend's lib can take it down. In the end, IMHO the data we have is significantly flawed. I had this opinion when I had 0.3 KDR 8 months ago and I'll have it when I reach 2.3 KDR (if I stop dual pounding that should be around Christmas at this rate)
As long as folks realise that statistics only truly measure exactly what values they track and anything we choose to extrapolate from the numbers are subject to personal interpretation, then all is grand. A great annalist knows the old adage, ''The map is not the territory'' and will respect the context of their conclusions! A good read OP!
Either way, YOU still know your playstyle and part of this post is being able to judge your own progress.
That's only for Mattherson if I remember correctly. They're not planning on making characters from other servers available there.
Whether they will be available or not through this source, the stats are still available through the API. SOE has provided the data, and all you need is someone to interpret it.
Very well written post. On top of what you said, what we have right now are lifetime stats. An average of all your gameplay from the moment you first drop podded in, to the last time you logged in. Which, in no way, is a current measure of your skill. The longer you have played the game, the more "outdated" your stats become, especially if you are someone who has improved over time. What we really need, are charts that show average stat improvement over time. Looking at my KD of 1 right now, you might think, "that guy is a pretty average player." But this really isn't close to my typical session KD anymore. My session KD typically sits at a bare minimum of 2, often closer to 3 or 4. However, since I spent the first few months of the game with a KD of .3 ish, it will take me years to recover from that statistical disparity. If you keep an eye on most high BR players, especially if they weren't doing so good early on, you'll steadily see their stats improve over time, because increasing the average takes so long. Which is why I continue to say that overall average statistics are useless, because they are in no way a measure of current performance.
I judge my progress by my dual pounder headshot rate and it just crossed 1% today I believe =P Sure it's possible... but I don't think anybody will make this available for all servers for a long time. It's a lot of work to do.
I can't wait until you guys are ready to release this data project to the public. Well written post Tristan. I personally use KDR to track how well I am performing during a given session. My frustration with the medic revive canceling deaths is that I no longer can tell if my KDR was due to good medics or good performance. Prior to that change my KDR was very consistent for gaming sessions from 1-2 hours or longer. Now it's all over the place and I don't have nearly as much use for the stat.
