Thread O' Fail AKA Stats Are Lying Bastards

Liberty I always love your in depth breakdowns of players based on stats - never overassuming, yet often insightful. Like you, I find stats very helpful in understanding a player, their strengths and weaknesses. Video of gameplay can provide additional insight but it is surprising what you can already infer from stats.dasanfall.

I haven't seen you in game lately, though I'm mostly a purple man these days so our paths might just not be crossing often.

The problem is that DA KDR stats have even less value than the official stats, simply because you're trying to change the conditions of the data collection after the fact which does not consider how player behavior may change under those separate conditions. (example: the player who accepts 6 revives before making it back behind cover. would he have accepted the revives if he knew that all those deaths would still count?)

Looking at it a different way, lets say Chicago wanted to calculate the percentage of drivers who run the red light at a particular intersection. The official stats say that 2% of drivers run the red, but DasAnfall Traffic Solutions says that 13% of drivers run the red. Why the difference? The official stats exclude drivers who legally turn right on red, where the DATS stats do not exclude these drivers because they believe that turning right on red should not be legal. Its fine to want that, but the data you have collected won't tell you how many of those drivers would still turn right on red if it were illegal.

Just a quick question since you seem to know this stuff, does the class K/D also include non-infantry sanctioned weapons (like C4) in the number or just the infantry sanctioned ones? Thanks!

I had to go back and look, I think it is a bit wonky at the moment and I'd have to take back what I said about it being a decent metric. I think at one point it was "All kills while class was equipped" but as of right now it seems to be taking all primary weapon kills if that weapon can be equipped to that class.

For instance I know I pretty much only used the Sirius on my LA and Infil but it is adding to my medic Kills. But HA KDR doesn't seem to count shotguns / SMG's at the moment, so I don't know what is going on.

Hah! Thanks man, I've been on a bit of a PS2 break because I end up hitting that point where I feel like game (and my own PC) performance starts to be a large factor that hinders my improvement. So I go on break for a bit, get nice and rusty and start back up again until I reach that point again.

Hell, your infil stats section is completely ******. Only SMGs and pistols count, while sniper rifles are nowhere.

Think of the analogy this way. Two studies are done about the number of times a red light was run at a particular intersection. Both find that over a month there were 100 people who ran the light. Study 1 (PS2 player site) interviews the 100 people as to why they ran the red light and found out that 10 did so for emergency medical reasons, 50 because they were late for work, 20 because they just weren't paying attention, 15 because they tried to speed through a yellow light and 5 because their significant other was nagging them and thought "lets take a chance".

Study 2 (DA stats) interviews the 100 people and finds out that 10 people were driving sports cars, 20 were driving SUV's, 15 were driving vans, 15 trucks and 40 were driving sedans.

Study 1 decides that emergency medical purposes excuses running a red light and doesn't include them in their paper about "Why people run red lights" Does that make Study 2 wrong for including them in their paper about what kinds of vehicles run red lights?

In your analogy, study 1 is reasons for running a red light, study 2 is vehicles used while running a red light. They are studying different topics and are not comparable.

Back to our game's stats. Official KDR and DA KDR both report KDR. Official KDR reports KDR under the same conditions that players are playing under. DA KDR reports KDR under different conditions than players are playing under.

If you enjoy your stats then by all means, enjoy them. I was just pointing out that the data (such as it is) was invalidated by ignoring the revival death removal mechanic as knowledge of that mechanic changes player behavior.

If you go back a bit into Planetside 2's history specifically the history of the way stats were tracked for quite some time KDR was represented the same way DA represents it today, in that medic revives did not remove deaths from your KDR. Both sites pull from the same API, both sites at one time presented KDR the same way. If anything, it is better have the data presented in *BOTH* ways rather than saying one is better than the other.

For some reason though, people tend to get anywhere from sensitive to hostile when you show them the difference, despite the fact that some time ago the overall K/D (not looking at class, weapon, vehicle, etc K/D) was exactly the same between the two.

Like I said earlier in the thread, some people take the stats way to seriously and they end up forgetting two very important things:

1) We only get descriptive statistics. These can be interesting but you should avoid making inferences from descriptive stats.

2) Even if we had data appropriate for inferential tests, there are way too many confounding variables in PS2 to really draw any significant conclusions from the data we are given (nerf threads I'm looking at you)




As far as the history of KDR thing, I understand that. Personally, I don't care one way or the other what stats people use. My only concern is the possibility of discouraging new players who have a hard enough time keeping the official KDR up, nevermind DA KDR.

Forgetting stats at the moment if you want to improve your gameplay I would say play medic more often. It will force you to go for those headshots more often. That's how I got better anyway.

I pad my weapon KPH with medkits I'm not ashamed


*runs away*

You filthy stat panda

Maybe the point of this thread isn't "your stats say nothing about you," but that everyone dies, and you shouldn't break out the yakety sax whenever you kill Harvester.

Essentially, just because someone is statistically better than you, doesn't mean it's any victory worth bragging about when you kill them. You can brag to yourself, though. Who doesn't do that?

what are megahigbies and cheese burgers flipped?

The thing about the DA KDR is that it tells a very interesting story about the player. You can use my VS alt for example - I'm pushing close to a 5.0 KDR according to SOE. But on DA, it's a 3.6. I play almost exclusively with a platoon on that character, pushing points and getting revived. I will routinely log out with SOE telling me I have something like an 8+ KD, when I know that's not reality - and my little recursion overlay reminds me that no, I was not death incarnate, and I actually only had a 4.5 KD that night.

Contrasted with my TR, I have a 3.2 DA KDR and 3.6 SOE KDR. I started from scratch with that player, learning the game and spending a lot of time solo. I also sniped a lot more than I do with my VS. There was that portion of time where SOE didn't let revives affect the KD. So there is less of a difference between the two numbers.

Like liberty said, i'd rather have both at my disposal because they tell us a little bit more about the player and who they play with. Snipers will have similar KD's between SOE and DA. Players in outfits will often see a bigger gap.

Your point about player behavior - that is up to the individual to decide how much they care about their KD. I usually don't accept revives if I am fairly confident I'll be dead instantly again - better to respawn and reset that engagement. But I don't let that number floating on my screen tell me what to do - if we need to take a point I'll be throwing grenades and charging in, expecting the medics to follow and get me back up until we are on point. And we'll do it until we cap the base and I get to shout GINYU FORCE RULES at the end.

This is a necro but I don't care:

This may be true but how accurate is his analysis really?

His post didn't really analyze my playstyle, he was mainly pointing out the implications of the various stats on that site because I've never looked at them before.

Given that I know how I play on average but I've never showed anyone, I wonder how accurate Liberty would be at predicting my playstyle/skill based solely on my DA stats page which he claims tells so much.

Sanctioned weapons

lol

Um, whats your point??
Infantry vs infantry "sanctioned weapons" are that way so you can compare player skill...

What makes an ivi sanctioned weapon:
Does not kill in 1 shot or fire multiple shots per round (eg. shotguns).
Is not a heavy weapon (MCG, Jackhammer, Lasher).
Is not mounted on a vehicle or turret.
Is not a MAX weapon of any type.
Is not a utility item, knife, rocket launcher, etc.

OHK weapons are skillless cheese.
Heavy weapons are not comparable to each other.
Vehicle weapons are not infantry weapons.
Maxes are pure skilless cheese.
Rocket primary is OHK skilless cheese.

It is all broken down into separate "domains"...
You want to see your sniper stats, look in the bolt action section.
You want to see your shotgun stats, look in the shotgun section.

So I am failing to see your issue here, are you mad your OHK cheese doesn't boost your ivi score??

What was I supposed to be looking at? How shaky your aim is?

The issue is MLG wannabe circlejerking of saying only certain things count for skill in a combined arms game. Its a joke.