What makes a good player?

A good player is a team player and does whatever it takes to get the job done. Basically someone that can lead, shoot and support. Has advanced base layout knowledge of all bases, exploits terrain advantage, is an expert pilot and ground vehicle user and has full understanding of current metagame.

Any part of establishing "this person is better than this one" requires measuring performance.
aka: KPI.
What is the goal then?

Is it winning an alert?
Or is it maximizing XP income?
Or indeed, maximal KDR.
How about becoming better at aiming? Or learning how to hipfire? Self-improvement can be a goal of a good player, but it may well reduce his stats..
etc.
What do you value to determine "better", and then "KPI's" can be looked at. We still haven't assigned any importance between vehicle, air and infatry play etc.

Winning an alert would require the most teamwork. (Play the effin objective)

I would argue that good platoon leaders know their ****, and are better players than anyone else, even if it is not reflected in their KDR, in their score per minute,
because those few people understand what needs to happen to win the alert (example), decide when to redeploy and where, assign targets (sundy over there is priority) or objectives (squad A to D point), have to realize when you're getting outflanked etc, know relative counters (how about we don't footzerg that tank column over the open field); let's bring some liberators,.. hey dudes, we need some more medics,..
have to communicate effectively,.. and still occasionaly shoot some weapons.
The "workload" is higher, and if you will, the decision loop is more important than me deciding whether I go for bodyshots at this range or for headshots.
EDIT: addendum: and those few players actually decide to do all those things in their free time. Despite idiots like me running around and trying to keep up with the redeploys (main annoyance in "objective/alert" platoon play.. amount of redeploys.. just as I'm getting to know the base layout-> redeploy to X base, take the galaxy, we're going to the completely different side of the map!)


Frankly, I'd happily trade some "great" "shooter" players for great leadership, in any platoon.

Perhaps I'm biased: I don't lead platoons generally.. in fact, I often lonewolf. Just today I took a rocket to my backside from point-blank range whilst C4'ing an enemy turret.. I had run in front of him all the way accross the walls, killed anyone shooting him (he saved me too, no worries).. and as I was laying C4 on the manned turret (surprise mofo!).. he rockets me? -> Idiots can join platoons too. Myself included, since I rocketed a few people jumping in front of me. (different situation IMO)
But there is a massive difference between platoon leaders; which is more important than how "exceptional" the squad members are.
As long as you're decent and willing, a good leader can pull exceptional results from a platoon.
I wish there would be an option "auto-kick members not within the hex of their objective after X minutes" however.

Well said sir.

Someone who takes two seconds to switch to engineer to repair the 90% dead MAX in the spawn room and repair him before going about his business instead of just rushing to the slaughter. Someone who revives people run over by friendly vehicles even though they get no xp for it. Someone who switches to an infiltrator and hacks back turrets and terminals instead of letting some idiot blow them up and remain broken. People who keep radar darts up. That guy who looks out for the invisible wraith flash running people over and drops mine and lays in wait on the vehicle gun to stop him on his next pass.

People automatically garbage tier? Yelling at people to leave the spawn in prox chat when its being shelled by 20 tanks with 10 maxes set up outside. People who think they have the right to tell others how to play. People who destroy friendly sunderers so they can place their own.

So many experts...

A good player? Someone who is tolerant of other peoples "badness" perhaps?

Lest we forget, this is a game and games should be fun...

What makes a player a good player?

It's one thing; something that contributes to the success of a battle. It doesn't matter how many times you kill or are killed, all that matters is you achieve the goal.

If you die 50 times and make 0 kills to destroy 12 Sunderers to prevent an enemy that outnumbers you 2 to 1 from taking your base... you are a better player than every player on the opposing team; it doesn't matter if their KDR is 100 to 0, it doesn't matter if their accuracy is above 80%; if you do what it takes to prevent them from winning. You are a good player.

If all you are doing is hiding in the spawn room taking pot shots at enemies taking pot shots at you; both you and the player you are shooting and that is shooting back at you are bad players; you are not contributing anything to the game except background noise and whether or not you were in the battle wouldn't have changed its outcome either way.

Situational Awareness...

Not everyone has the best twitch reflexes, but if they have good situational awareness in a game of PS2's scale, they will be an asset to their team. Players who are blessed with both twitchy reflexes and great situational awareness are fairly rare, they'd be the MLG pro types.

Conversely, a player with piss poor situational awareness, but good, twitchy reflexes isn't necessarily helping the team much, therefore probably wouldn't be considered a good player.

All of the best players I know have good situational awareness as their common denominator.

Awareness to the battlefield
Ability to create opportunities , note I said create and nit see, seeing is the easy part turning beef stew put of lemonade is what legends are made of
Ability to get results from those opportunities that benefit the whole over the few.

Hmm, what makes a good player?

I look at it like this. A bad player is one who refuses to learn from mistakes, one who defies directions for the sake of doing something that is not productive, one who plays selfishly (aside from those experienced soloists who know what to do without being with a team), one who can't PTFO if their life was on the line. A good player is the opposite of the aforementioned.

Don't get me wrong, stats DO have their place, if your are trying to assess someone's overall ability to kill. The DA stats website is a VERY good tell-all when you have someone claiming to be better than they are. You can see whose in-game K/D was gained from Tanking/aircraft, and whose was gained from sniping/Infantry play. Stats can also explain why certain players make the nerf/buff requests they do.

If you are playing competitively, it's much easier to look at a few folks' stats to determine if they have what your team needs. In my opinion, folks that generally have better stats, are usually much more capable of learning EFFECTIVE teamwork, if they desire. You can't just randomly become a great shooter, because it requires practice, time, and knowledge. With learning things such as base layouts, enemy approaches, flanking positions, knowing where an enemy might be based on the location and sound of their footsteps or gunshots, etc. You not only increase your ability to out-maneuver your enemies, but you also know where to be when you are with a team, potentially making them a more reliable teammate. Ever been with a group of 12-24 randos in a single point objective room, yet a single enemy walks and is able to shoot you and a few other in the back? You expected others to cover the approaches, but because they don't know what they are doing, that enemy literally walked in a gap that had 12-24 potential eyes that should have seen him. This happened because the bad players are ALL facing one direction, hoping to get a spawn room kill.

Being only a great teamplayer (but not shooter) is fantastic, but shouldn't be the stopping point for progression as a player. Just as in real life, we can always improve somewhere, we aren't perfect. Improving in a game is MUCH easier than breaking an addiction, bad habits, and other things we try to fix in ourselves that have been our ways all our lives. I personally use stat sites to identify my weak areas, and look for methods to correct them. I've become a Headshot Rate enthusiast (infantry, not Sniper), and have been enjoying tracking my progress. Unlike some stats, Headshot Rate actually causes you to become more aggressive, rather than sitting back.

Simple, a player who makes a difference in a fight, Objective capping, sundy busting, sundy placing/defending, push supporting, push co-ordinating, armor busting, room clearing, ammo resupplying, recon giving, threat removing, healing/rezzing, consistently striving to do these things where appropriate.

I can't be bothered addressing the team aspect of this discussion directly, because it's fairly obvious what is ideal and, well, I don't play with squads often enough to care.

However, I can address individual player skill and include my own notes:

The single most important trait a good player should have: Awareness. Not just situational, but awareness in general. You don't need to get tunnel-vision, sprinting over to a doorway. You know where you're going, so there's not much excuse for not taking the opportunity to look around while you're heading over. Always take some time to check behind you. Don't be that guy who gets shadowed for two minutes straight without realising. If there's 8 people staring at a particular entrance to a room, that means that entrance is covered and you aren't needed to help. Go cover a different entrance - preferably keep the entire 6-o'clock side covered, or just watch one of the side entrances. Keep an eye on the map. If you're aware, watching the map and there's an Infiltrator on your team dropping spotter beacons, you're nearly unstoppable. On your own, take note of possible firing lanes and places of cover. Watch out for any areas where you might become trapped by suppressing fire or grenade spam. Watch the map and understand it.

Additionally, a rather under-appreciated skill is the ability to listen, interpret and respond to sound. Footsteps, LA jets, MAX footsteps, certain weapon firesounds, enemy voicebinds and spots...listen out, understand what you're hearing and how it affects you, and respond appropiately. If you hear LA jets and you're not immediately checking the roof above you or the edge of a railing on a bridge, and you die to a shotgun to the back, that is entirely your own fault. It's also your fault if you die after hearing (or seeing on the map) an Infiltrator's motion spotter whine, but continue to run up the stairs blindly.

It's also your own fault if you push into a room that you know will have an enemy in it, with only 6 rounds left in the magazine, and you die. Play according to your current levels of ammunition, health and shield. Push in if you feel you have the advantage (element of surprise, namely), but otherwise take the time to recover before charging headlong into danger.

If you combine the ability to watch the map closely and understand what you're seeing, your awareness of your immediate surroundings, the ability to listen out and identify what is heading your way by sound alone, and ability to position yourself well, you will win a good percentage of fights. Good gunplay will come over time, and is really just icing on the cake.

Stats definitely do not tell the whole story. The co-leader of my outfit, Khiafin, was in my eyes one of the best players on Emerld NC while he was actively playing.

Not because of his KDR, SPM, or headshot ratio, but for 1 main reason: he was a great leader.

1. He understood the game flow and the map and always came up with a strategy for how we could best engage in a scenerio. He was one of the best Sunderer drivers and parkers(yes sundy parking is a skill) that I have played with and his calls for gal-drops were always on point and made a huge difference in the fights we took part in.

2. People loved being led by him. Whether it was a large public platoon or a small scale outfit op, players always followed his orders, he kept everyone focused and motivated, and everyone seemed to have fun in his squads.

3. He was the type of player who you could always count on to pull the class/vehicle that was most necessary in any given situation. He always looked for a way to help the team and faction.

If you look up his stats, they are not great(sorry Khi) but at the end of the day I would rather have him leading me then playing along side a Kdr/Redeployside/SPM focused player any day.

I'm sure there are ALOT of these types of players out there who go unnoticed because they don't wave thier stats and accomplishments around in your face.

KDR is a very bad thing to go off,
you have some players who permanently play tank, or Bail Assault in an ESF, or snipe from 250m away.
these are all surefire ways to get huge KDR.

i used to have a vanu that i never played but logged on for passive certs,
after i got over a thousand certs i dumped them all in to magrider and i would only ever play magrider, and carefully.
my KDR peaked at around 7, and i'll admit i wouldn't call myself a pro

i'd say score per minute (before boosters/membership etc) would be a fairly good indication,
obviously it'd vary from class to class, an average engi will likely have higher SPM than the average LA,
but if you're getting a SPM above average for your class then i'd say that makes you a good player.

That is why stats sites like DA Stats separate things into different domains. The super high K/Ds don't mean anything to most of us who will pull up your DA Stats page and see that it is all from infantry farming with tanks and/or aircraft. Not to invalidate your work, but as an Infantry-Only player, who gets insta-gibbed by Tanks and Aircraft all the time, I expect you guys to have high K/Ds anyway. The only way to determine what is high in the tanking and aircraft community, is to compare yourselves against other tankers and pilots, not Infantry. Ever since discovering DA Stats, I rarely ever pull up the Planetside 2 Players site.

Yep... One of the most important things a good player does is generate a good atmosphere in which to play.

Screaming at team-mates because they don't live up to one's arbitrary expectations and farting on the V and 6 keys at inopportune moments pretty much signifies a bad (according to my own arbitrary expectations on the behaviour and competence of others ).

The player who contributes the most to the objective. But since this game has no objectives..

In-game K/D can't be discussed at all due to medics/revies.
But some advanced stats, like dasanfall provides, can be discussed and analyzed in complex.

The only thing that indicates a good player for me is when somebody clearly outperforms me with equal class or vehicle (if I'm experienced in using it ofc) and without his friends help. So I'm talking about skills mostly.

Yep yep, you can rack in 350 unboosted SPM or a 10 KDR outsmarting and out-gunning your opponents but essentially being a good player is to adapt to the necessities at hand.

K/D translates into how good they are are killing others. How good they are in 1v1's etc.
SPM translates into how good they are at farming, generally.
BR translates into how versatile they can be with more classes. Higher BR = more certs = more variety of weapons/upgrades/attachments/playstyles they have access to.

Essentially they're all meaningless alone. But you put them together, and they add significance. A rule of thumb is to never judge someone on their BR or K/D or SPM without taking into consideration the other 2. I've wasted BR 100's with half of their directives complete in 1v1's because they spend half of their time in an HE tank farming spawn tubes or lolpods in ESFS doing the same.

As an Alpha Squad player, I'd say the best players in the game are usually the ones who head to Server Smash (not all of them, but the majority). They're the ones who can look at the map during an alert and within a few seconds understand what's going to happen and/or what would happen if no one was to intervene. Some of the best players have very, very good map sense and are extremely great leaders when it comes to the Platoon/Squad side of Planetside 2.

MLG attempted and failed (FCRW etc) with this game and those tiny leetfits are a thing of the past. Tactics, interoperability and coordination are the name of the game when it comes to skilled players. Yes, making shots are very important in an FPS but everyone can shoot (assuming they have the frames). What it honestly boils down to is pretty much just having very very good problem solving abilities. Understand the counters to everything in the game, etc.

Mossie swarm? Go AA MAXs, so when you shoot them out of the sky and they roll back in with Sundy placements and armor, you can swap your guy's out to AV and AI, without wasting resources. There are point holds and different ways of doing them for my point buildings, there are ways of slowing zergs with Lancer squads (if you're VS), tech plant holds, great sundy placements etc.

Etc.

not always cause i have seen some people over level 75 who only use snipers or maxes and they dont even have a K/D of 0.4