Thread O' Fail AKA Stats Are Lying Bastards

First look at my sig. Then know that I have only 25 kills with a vehicle in this entire game and have only used a MAX 9 times. I've been playing pure infantry a long long time.

Now watch this:

Now tell me, did you expect that? Because I wouldn't have. At all. But it happens. In fact, this is typical. When I play medic, I get ***** (and if you think this is bad, you should see me try to use shotguns).

So when I say stats lie, which I have many times, this is what I'm talking about. You should never, EVER, look at someone's stats and say "Oh yeah he's probably pretty good". Yeah, maybe with Infil or HA I am, cuz #invisibilityandovershieldcrutchFTW. Any other class? Better find someone else.

KDR can be padded, SPM can be so easily padded it's not even funny (XP boosts), people can be godlike at one aspect and **** at something else and the stats average it out to making them look pretty good, etc. Even when you break stats down and try to dissect them they still LIE. This is why the only way to know for sure if someone is any good is to WATCH THEM PLAY. It's also why I invented Shrap's Law (which never caught on and never will), a spin-off of Godwin's Law:

As a discussion about a video game continues, the probability of stats being used as validation for someone's opinion approaches 1. By Internet convention, that person loses the argument.

In my mind I'm secretly hoping that becomes a meme but it won't.

Side note: this thread's second purpose is as a challenge: do you have the balls to post a video of you getting your *** kicked? Almost all gameplay footage is people showing off - do you #notgivea**** enough about seeming badass to buck the trend and publicly show everyone how terrible you are? If so, post it! I salute you!

http://stats.dasanfall.com/ps2/player/TheShrapnelKing

First, your overall K/D is 2.07; it is inflated because those signatures use the in-game K/D which removes deaths when revived.

Your K/D in that session seemed to be about 2 on a quick glance. Even if it wasn't, stats are just averages.

Using stats.dasanfall you can get a pretty good idea of how good someone is. If I want to see how well you play with X weapon of Y class in Z stat, I can. People can pad stats, but it is pretty easy to tell when they do.

Besides the fact I basically never look at that because I simply don't care, what is your point?

I know that.

If my count is correct it's actually 35 kills and 32 deaths. My session total was 38:35, there's a few I didn't record.

Stats make assumptions. Accuracy stats, for example, assume that you are trying to hit your target.

If you are a player who actually uses suppressing fire, you accuracy will be rated as garbage, for example.

It also doesn't assign relative values to kills or deaths. Any given kill or death you have may, in the context of the fight, be more or less important, but the stats counter doesn't care and can't measure it anyway.

Like I said: you must watch gameplay.

Obviously, that game stats are srs bizz and thou shalt not ignore your stats...



and also thou shalt not value one particular set of stats because they take into account one particular teamplay mechanic.




Honestly though, people seem to forget they are playing a video game.

oh people don't forget that it's a game. it's just some of them value boasting about how much better they are then X or Y player with stats whether straight from the game or broken down further (dasanfall for example)

Some of us don't value neither boasters or boasting.

A bit of constructive criticism: you should adjust your aim up slightly. I noticed you are getting nothing in the way of random headshots from the cone of fire bloom. If you aim higher you'll get more headshots from the randomness of bloom. Its something I struggle with greatly that people with big HS% have suggested to me.

This seemed like one of those spam threads that we have here lately.

Oh where to begin.
Maybe I shall start with you trying to use one example of gameplay to disprove the stats gathered over your time playing this game. Everyone can have a bad day. Doesn't prove anything. Statistics don't work like that...

Other than that your stats reflect your playstyle rather well. You don't seem to be going for headshots in those close engagements which explains the bad headshot rate. But otherwise as I saw in the vid your accuracy is actually very good. This too is reflected in your stats.
Another thing I noticed from the vid is that our playstyles and skill are roughly on the same level. Apart from the fact that your accuracy is better than mine. Again this is reflected perfectly when I compare our stats.

Sooo... I gotta ask: How do you come to the conclusion that the stats are lying? because you had a bad day and played badly? That happens to me too. Doesn't disprove the stats that were gathered over hundreds of hours. Stats are averages. Pointing out one extreme example doesn't prove anything.

If anything your stats could help you improve your gameplay by pointing out where you are lacking. Namely that you should train yourself to go for headhots. But I guess simply hating on evil stats is easier.

And some of us have a will to improve and enough brain capacity to realize that stats can help us do that by accurately pointing out what we are good at and what we suck at.

Thought this was gonna be how people can't figure out how to use the oracle properly and end up going off on a tangent and getting nothing done. Was somewhat disappointed.

I know you said you don't really look at the DA stat site but I can give you a few bits of Info you might find interesting / enjoy / etc.

Your Heavy KD is 2.64 where your Medic K/D is 1.79.

Your medic weapon K/D is around 1.8 - 2.4 the difference is a result of dying with your med tool / pistol / c4 out. Weapon K/D only tracks deaths you have while that weapon is equipped, but class K/D will show you where you stand.

As you said yourself, the session you showed wasn't your best and your stats show it was below average for what you normally do. So for every 36 - 35 you probably have another day where you go 72 - 35 as a medic. If we look at your stats and then the video the performance seems within the spectrum of what we'd expect, granted on the lower side but within reason.

You did point out it is possible to manipulate stats, but with the DA site you can find the info you need to see how much something is being padded. There is a section to show how often you equip (run around with) med kits or how often you die with them out (thus padding your weapon K/D) your shots landed per kill (LPK) that will show if your are padding your accuracy. SPH doesn't really matter because the site breaks down literally everything you do per hour / minute including :

Kills, Vehicle kills, Damage, Deaths, Head shots, etc etc.

As a final note, I know when we (DA) look at someone, we use two sets of filters / standards when it comes to where stats place someone when it comes to apping. You have your newly created alts that people make specifically just to statwhore and the "played for fun or with another outfit". It is certainly a bit subjective but when you can properly apply these filters to your expectations, you can get a decent picture of what is going on.

*edit* It is also worth noting that most people don't just say "low accuracy, you suck" most look tend to look at the whole picture. If you have a KPH and KDR in the top 1% of all players but have average accuracy, there is probably something like you said where you don't mind shooting to suppress. No one stat by itself is important, it is always about the combination of various categories.

Where is the line between being effective and statpadding? When I pull AI vehicle against rolling infantry zerg, am I merely using tools the game gave me effectively, or am I dirty farmer and statpadder?

There is a special place in hell, reserved specifically for people that use Benny Hill music.

Stats don't tell the whole picture, and indeed playing medic is more frustrating than HA/Inf by a significant margin in my opinion. While i've played mostly medic/engineer, i'm on the scout rifle directives these days, and yesterday i picked medic a little with the Equinox (VS 'S' AR): i felt blind (no darts), weak (no invisibility: more frontal shocks) and outgunned (gun picked). It wasn't pretty!

Still, stats tell enough to paint a rather accurate picture of your usual practices most of the time. The one thing they don't show is your progress with a specific weapon or class, as kph, kdr, etc... are provided as a whole, same as the accuracy on a specific weapon. For instance my first auraxed gun has 25% accuracy, but my more recent ones tend to have have 4~5 points more, yet there's no way to tell in which order i proceeded.

Most of the rest can be deduced, including suppressive fire, as Liberty said.

Nicely said and informative.

Using the DA site can be a serious (if not rude) awakening for many folks in PS2.

I can sympathize with the OP about stats to some degree.

I have a really weird playstyle.

I have no lvl 100 characters and I've played since beta.

I have extended periods in game where I travel around a lot shooting at random targets (trees make me nervous...).

I like vehicles because of that and find myself running around a lot.

I tend to help others instead of looking at stats.

When I focus, I can be deadly... I guess.

When I look a the stats on DA, the above proves true.

My KDR is above average, my accuracy, KPH tends to be low and apparently I'm only worth 850k.

But what that site REALLY says, is that hunting the flora on Auraxis can be really bad for your rep.

Negative. There is instead a special place in hell for those who dis Yakety Sax, the magical song that makes anything funny.

However i do have to point out

Too much faith in the internet here.

The only thing the manipulated stats created by SOE proves is that people are easily manipulated and once they become emotionally invested in a system, they will defend it beyond any rational point of reason.

'SOE stats' are functionally a Skinner Box or an Operant Conditioning Chamber where Operant Conditioning is done.

And quite clearly, the Stat-hoes who live and die by them are the living embodiment of the thing inside the chamber below. They've been trained early, because they'll be living the rest of their "lives" just like that.

Real Money is and will be spent to get more useless pellets / stats. Get used to it. Or Not.

Everything stops being funny when repeated into oblivion even when inappropriate.

Hah! Okay to be fair what I should have said was "You will always have people who don't really understand how all the numbers work and will fixate on one thing they deem to be important, those people should generally be ignored" But like you said they (stats) will never offer you a full picture of the player because you have players who "play" for stats and people who are just there to have a good time.

I know for me, personally I'll try to use them to gauge a players understanding of the game to put into context what they are posting about. For example, in the numerous "Heavy OP" threads that pop up, the most vocal people tend to have very little difference their performance as a Heavy versus other classes. Some actually even worse (LA usually being their best because you tend to shoot at more unaware targets rather than having to go head to head).

The great part about the DA stat site is, this kind of thing isn't a problem. It really only exists with the generic PS2 player site (and also forum sigs) because of the limited information presented. Pulling what you need is all well and good, it only really becomes "padding" when you fail in one area (usually non MAX infantry play) and stick to force multipliers which are generally lower risk higher reward methods of killing more dudes faster.