I hate playing solo against parties, they could be average at best but teamwork is everything and they’ll still win more often than not. Yet that’s what I love about this game, teamwork over individual performance almost every time.
I do however want separate playlists also for this reason.
I think a player’s performance could be assessed from their post game stats but not necessarily their kills. Miko you would obviously want high healing and probably a lot of assists to show that he was involved in combat, but if you’re playing a dps or assassin character, getting kills is kind of your job, so you should have a high kill count.
1 Like
I think overall, no, but staying alive does equal to supporting your team. Being a man or two down in this game changes the positioning of your team, you have to hold back with your push for the objective. Fighting for an objective with people down can, in most cases, provide a huge disadvantage.
Therefore, I don’t necesarilly consider someone with a high K/D a seriously good player, they could get 3 kills in the game but stay back and not help their team out. However, someone who is making use of that time alive by providing support for the team is a good player. I managed to keep a split of team support in the open beta and I kept a 26 K/D, it’s how you keep alive and what you do when you are alive that matters.
1 Like
Well not really. The fact that your team lost and you ended up with the most KDA could also mean the exact opposite, you could have been focusing too much on your KDA and let your teammates do all the work, thus them ending up with a worst score because they had to do your work. That logic could go both ways and unfortunately i saw that happening way too many times during the open beta.
To give you an example, in one of my last games i was playing as Rath and at the beginning i thought that my team was quite alright, i was with a pretty nice KDA and was at the top of the score by a good margin but then the other team decided to push harder and unfortunately my own team decided not to push back because they didnt wanted to mess their stats, to the point where our tank would flee at the sight of another player and one of my teammates decided to stick to our base and spam the surrender button.
I ended up having to try and push back our lanes alone, with a squishy character and an helix tree made for another tactic completly different. No point to say that my KDA suffered and we ended up losing despite our average KDA being much better.
Im not saying that KDA stats are completly unecessary but in games like Battleborn it prometes individual playstyles that hurt the purpose and objective of the game.
Yep, yep, agreed all round re character choice and playstyle.
One thing I would add though is that a good ‘slayer’ player would also (potentially) make a better Montana, Miko, etc. Aiming etc are all transferrable. A good slayer player who plays Miko for example would not only be able to babysit their teammates and hold L2, but also juggle their healing with midrange kunai shots and support the team’s damage by proccing poision far and wide (for example). Also such players may have more experience with positioning, map awareness etc.
I should point out also that I’m not necessarily talking about the ‘k/d’ that appears on player statistics… it would be correct to say that some people get obsessed with that and focus on kills only to the detriment of their team. But generally speaking, a higher k/d does correlate with the kind of killing/damage potential I am talking about.
1 Like
I think an average score per game stat shown on the playercard could be good (assuming there wasn’t one already?). Miko etc do get score (indirectly) through their assists. Though tanks tend to be shafted a bit in this regard, which has been brought up elsewhere. [quote=“mattiwarden, post:22, topic:1381134”]
I think a player’s performance could be assessed from their post game stats but not necessarily their kills.
[/quote]
1 Like
I’ve definitely had experiences like this before where I was the only one holding the line, and the rest of the team was off doing whatever the hell, and it definitely made my job harder. I don’t think that K/D should be the goal, I just think that after the match it’s usually a pretty good indicator of performance.
3 Likes
It only factors in assists on enemies killed, it doesn’t take into account all the times you saved your teammates, which is really Miko’s primary job.
1 Like
I main Deande, as you can probably tell, so killing is a job of mine and a speciality of my character, but I don’t shy from minion sweeping or hiring thralls either. IMO, Rath and Phoebe - Who are arguably the top two slayers - can and should double their roles to sweep minions and defend the tank when the opportunity or more importantly the need arises. I think the assassins are currently underrated in terms of their multi-role versatity and most assassin players seem to think that the objective is not their job even if the team is unbalanced or in turmoil.
1 Like
Eh, yes you are correct, but a change of the nature you are suggesting would require an overhaul of the experience and scoring system, I would imagine. There are more pressing things for GBX to focus on.
1 Like
As a thought experiment re k/d: imagine you just finished a match and look at the scoreboard. On your team there is a Mellka that went 2-20, and an Ambra that went 17-4. Who would you prefer to keep on your team for the next round?
2 Likes
Well sort of, the thing is that when the game ends you already have so many stats available that you wonder why only kills and assists count to your overall score.
It would more sense to take all those stats that the game already tracks anyway and give you a much more meaningful score than just attribute 2 points per kill and another point per assist.
And it depends, what would you prefer? A Mellka with that KD but with 4x more minions, shards collected, thralls wont and turrets built than Ambra?
Its all very subjective.
2 Likes
I see that as an unbelievable scenario. For them to have a 2-20 means they wouldn’t have even the time to accomplish the other tasks of getting all those 4x minions,thralls, shards in comparison to the Ambra player. Kills can be racked up quickly while death pays a heavy toll. Yes the first deaths at the beginning are quick but that respawn time gets pretty long.
2 Likes
Like others have said and I agree KD is irrelevant to a degree.
If your healer goes say 1-15 then something is wrong because dead = not getting other things done.
1 Like
All the talk about K/D but everyone forgets there is Assists in there too. I’ve seen scores in other games where someone was ragging on someone for having 2 kills and 10 deaths, completely ignoring the 30+ assists they had.
K/D/A helps, but teamwork matters more in objective based games. I’m happy if my K/D/A ratio is above .75, but I prefer my W/L ratio to be above .9.
3 Likes
This is precisely why the score column needs to be removed or changed to reflect minions built/kills and structures built/destroyed.
The score column sends the wrong message.
It isn’t that taking out the opposing team isn’t important, but it isn’t the only factor.
2 Likes
Yah I agree. If it showed more of what helps with objectives it might get people to focus on that more instead of sending in characters to the fray that don’t belong there. Everyone can kill, but not everyone specializes in it and these other specialists shine when they do there job.
When I play Toby my k:d is awesome. I rarely get killed unless the enemy really pushes and got plenty of kills (sniperlife).
When I play as cald i get shards, assists and build all the things. Murdering minions and getting out before I can get murdered. I could probably push for more kills, but then I would not be using cald as I see he is best.
1 Like
A 2-20 ratio is exagerating a bit but thats beside the point, the truth is that a player can seem to have a poor score and yet be a lot more helpfull to the team than the one that tops the KD ratio.
This is specially true on a game like BB, my point is that without seing the rest of the stats i couldnt decide which one i would choose, just knowing their KD wouldnt mean much to me.
On a game like CS:GO? Yeah probably, on Battleborn? Not a deciding factor.
1 Like
Just want to echo what a few other posters have mentioned.
If the final score on the leaderboards was a better reflection of the team objectives it would help serve to reduce the ‘K:D’ is all mentality that people (especially those with a large FPS PVP background) might have.
The final score is right now is 100% about K:D, which is counter-intuitive to an object-oriented game like BB.
In fact ‘K:D’ should probably be no more than 20% of the overall score.
Killing minions, gathering shards, building buildables, providing healing…should all be on an equal footing with K:D. (Can’t really use the ‘Objective’ column as there are only 2 in Incursion…though it would work better for Meltdown & Capture)
I am actually expecting to see a change to how that final score is calculated when the game releases…so we’ll see if it does.
2 Likes
A negative K:d ratio can be bad though… But thats more of a matter of not dying than killing.
1 Like