First post! I don't quite see what you're going for here, your basically looking at rank. if your a higher rank, both armory completion and commendations will be higher. In my opinion, even KD isn't that imorpant (i have less than 1, because reach was my first FPS, but my gameplay has improved greatly)
This. If someone NEEDS a power weapon, it's probably because they get outgunned in a fair fight. But, but... -I couldn't think of a name. -Don't lie, you love knives. vvv-SIGGY-vvv
Maybe my friends observation of armory completion vs commendation progress varies with playlist. 95% of the time we'll be playing invasion, which is obviously Covenant vs Spartans. I'm not sure if there's a discernible correlation between skill at fighting Covenant in FF and Campaign and fighting them in MM, but that may be the reason that this observation usually holds true to me. That being said, I've played a fair amount, meaning I've observed this trend in a large number of Invasion players (it's not like I'm basing this assumption off of a few games). I definitely agree that people who have a tendency to over-compensate, that is, wear the biggest armor, aren't always the greatest, but I wouldn't say that's quite as accurate of a barometer.
I think the covenant aspect is overplayed in that argument. The Elite player model is different from the Spartan one, obviously, but I don't think it's different enough to mean that an experienced campaign/FF player will do any better in Invasion. It's much more down to the experience of playing against AIs compared to human players. A human controlled Elite will play in pretty much the same way as a human controlled Spartan.
Peg, I think he was trying to say that most people who suck use Elite armour because they're overcompensating for their lack of skill by looking large and aggressive on screen in a different character model. ...however, with that said. He plays invasion, which is mostly filled with people under the age certification of the game, so the general skill gap between that of a typical invasion player and that of a typical competitive player is ridiculously large.
Umm, I'm 99.99999999999999% sure he was relating what he said about commendation progress (implying someone who plays FF and Campaign as well as MM, in order to gain high commendations across the board) to Invasion because playing against Elites could be argued to be more similar to Campaign/FF. Reasons for believing this: 1. That's what he said. 2. Choosing Elite as your player model makes 0 difference in MM, as there are no gametypes (to my knowledge) which reflect the "preferred species" option, the only time you'd ever notice is in pre-game lobbies, so your reasoning makes no sense. I think you're mixing up the two parts of his post. The last bit about bulky armour was, I think, in reply to RoboArtist's post about big armour, nothing to do with what him and I were talking about. This is largely true. I've run in to a few parties of dedicated Invasion players, but that's very rare and overall it's a more casual population than competitive playlists.
^ Yeah. Although don't elites have more shielding in Invasion and Spartans have greater health? I remember hearing something about that a while back. And while that aspect is minimal, you also need to take into account the weapon variation. As far as I know, it's not often that you'd fight a player using a Plasma Repeater in non-invasion matchmaking. Most players stick to default weapons and human-power weapons (obviously there are some exceptions, as there will be with anything). Once again, I'm not sure to what degree such a difference makes, I'm just hypothesizing as to why the Armory Completion vs Comendation Progress predictor holds true in Invasion as opposed to other playlists.
K/D is the best method. It's not perfect but you can look at it quickly in the lobby and it's maybe 80% accurate as to what you can expect to happen in the game. I mentally group players together into brackets: A: Less than maybe .6 or .7 K/D, you are not good. Any other player in the game uses you to pad their stats. B: Up to about a .9, you are slightly less not good. You will usually beat players in A and always lose to everybody else. C: .9 - 1.2ish, you are the average player. D: 1.2 - 1.5, you will usually beat average players, but play about like an average player (that is, lose) to the following groups. E: 1.6 - 2.0, you're pretty good. You will almost always outperform A-D. F: 2.1 - 3.0, you're really good. There are probably more fine gradations in this bracket but to me they all look like "people I am a-scared of." G: Above 3.0, you're probably a "BTB pro" or something similar. You play with your inheritor friends, you spawn kill for hours a day, and you probably have 15,000 banshee kills. You're still good, but not as good as your K/D pretends. Usually these guys play like a group E guy in regular competitive playlists when separated from their vehicles and friends. Sometimes you'll see outliers. Dudes who only play MLG will have lower K/D than their skill level. Dudes who play thousands of games in the easier playlists (action sack, infection, grifball, multi-team are prime suspects) with friends often have inflated K/D. But pretty much always, you won't run into a guy with a 2.0 who plays like a .6, or a guy with a .6 who plays like a 2.0. It really doesn't happen. So for roughly estimating whether you'll get your ass handed to you, this is a reasonable method. Dubious face.
QFT It's pretty easy to interpret how good players are at the game from what they choose to be known as. I've noticed that some of the best players tend to prefer something memorable, simple, serious, and unique (the latter two, not always and only to a degree). Don't get thrown off by numbers or filler text because if their "namesake" happens to be in use, they're not likely to compromise and trade it off, but they generally don't choose too smothering of a filler text. On the other hand, players who choose names that likely came off of a random generator, are untastefully long, or hope to imply that they're good are typically nothing to worry about. Again, it's not an exact science, nor is it universal applicable, but it's quick and (mostly) accurate. I'll be fine: -SniperOfD3ath -The C0D K1ller -xBullatxShooter -Concave Lemon -Unbeateatable -The Grey Walrus -RedPyroFiend Tread lightly: -itz Nolan -Leper TM -Sir3n -o Bedridden o -Career45
Well...like I said...not everyone...just...a general trend. I'm not trying to say anyone in particular is bad, and I'm certainly not attacking anyone here. I'm simply saying I'm wary of those names when surfing MM alone. That being said, I don't think any statistic or generalization you can look at will tell you exactly how good a player is without having actually played with them. You can gauge people, but not be certain. On K/D again... Honestly, I don't think it matters all that much at all. I mean, I'm not putting much stock in someone with a .8, but I don't really look at .9-1.8 much differently until I've actually player with them. Playlists stats are better than general stats in my eyes, but even they don't tell all. The best indicator of player habits in skill from my experience is their 25 most recent games. You can tell what they play, who they play with, how they play and how effectively they play from this. A 1.8 K/D can be made a lot less impressive when half of their recent games are ties in grifball with +65 spreads. Likewise, players who always have at least a friend or two in their match will generally have better stats than an equally skilled loner, although the group shows that the player can effectively communicate while the loner doesn't tell you anything about that. Even then, don't count anyone out until you've played them.
In response to this, and as a further explanation of my post above, I assumed we were mostly talking about getting a feel for the teams' skill levels in the pre-game lobby in matchmaking. In that respect, K/D is a quick and relatively accurate indicator. It's certainly MORE accurate to go snooping on their profiles and look at all of the above and then some, but who has time to do that in the 1 minute before a game starts?
Ah. My mistake. Is there a way to check K/D easily in-game that I'm missing? I assumed we were talking about Waypoint stats, as I've never really looked deep into checking people's stats before/after a match before, unless it's the deeper scouring I mentioned above. If it is just the minute of lobby time, I go with the stereotypes I listed before, but even then I don't assume much until I really know how the other players react.
It's funny because that gamertag was chosen from the suggestions. I do agree with Erupt and Mingo. If you play long enough, you tend to notice people with a specific type of tag play better than the general populous. I find people with inside jokes for gamertags are pretty good. Looking at K/D doesn't show much other than how they spend their time on Halo. I mostly play customs so my K/D doesn't mean a thing. Reach also lacks a ranking system, but Halo 3's system wasn't too reliable to begin with. in the end, it's all instinct.
Not exactly easily, but you can pull up their service record, then their matchmaking stats and estimate k/d based on their total kills and deaths. I can eyeball it to within .1 of the actual ratio, usually, and when I'm playing in games I care about I usually check out as many players on both teams as I have time for.
met a warrant officer today that had a 9.81 k/d. I was all like how in the F@$* and ended up raping him.
K/D becomes less and less accurate an indicator of skill the longer the player has been playing Reach. I've had Reach since release date, and have played so many games that my K/D no longer changes. It's 0.72, which is absolutely terrible, and yet in the Team Slayer playlist most of my games end with me getting about 7 deaths and 15-20 kills. This has been the case for about 8 months now. I have to agree that probably the most accurate indicator of a player's skill is how they present themselves to others. Armour, Service Tag, Gamertag, etc. I've also noticed that the more Campaign someone has played, the better that person plays as a team member, especially in Objective based Gametypes.
Your overall point is sort of true, which is that players tend to be better at the game the more they play, so many people who have played a lot of games are at least a little better now than they were in the beginning. However, you're making it out to be that your K/D today would be far better (like 2.0) if you could cut loose all those old games where you played badly, and if you look at your own game history, you'll quickly realize it's not true. Filtering just for competitive games, you go negative the majority of the time - way more than half of your games. Even glancing over just the slayer and slayer DMRs games, you still tend to go negative or even. Now it's quite possible that you are a little better than a .72, whatever that means, and that you're better than the player you used to be - but the gap is not in the ballpark of how you make it out to be. Which is not to pick on you or get into a ****-measuring contest, by any means. My point remains simply that k/d is usually pretty accurate. Most of the time, if you run into a player whose skill seems way out of whack compared to their k/d, it's not because they're gotten a lot better over time - rather, it's usually because they focus mostly on a single playlist. People who play mostly MLG tend to have a lower k/d. People who play mostly BTB often have a higher k/d, especially if they play with friends - some of the highest k/d players play most of the time with full teams of high ranks in BTB. Infection and multi-team are known for k/d stat-padding, but I don't often run into people who only play those playlists.
I had a pretty **** K/D for a long while because of getting worked in the MLG playlist for seemingly ages... And also from the time when I was lucky to break even in vanilla settings. Full bloom kills me because of latency issues. I'm usually getting between a 2:1 and 3:1 K/D ratio in MM these days. In two months of MM, I've brought it up from a .7 K/D to a 1.08 K/D. I still don't play that often though... MM blows.
To elaborate on what Nutduster said, I had a look at playlists like the CEA ones (which have only been around a few months in themselves) and am still at a loss to find a competitive playlist in which you're positive. In fact, I'd actually go so far as to say that the opposite of what you say is true. Having a 3.0 k/d after 50 games doesn't mean much, still having it when you've got 50,000 kills under your belt gives it MUCH more weight. There are also two ways to look at it: You're right that it's possible to get significantly better over time and yet your K/D will only show an average, still influenced by your earlier, less skilled periods. But if someone has a high K/D after playing loads of games, it's incredibly unlikely that they started off good but got worse over time. Low K/D with lots of games played offers the potential for the person to have gotten better (though still not nearly as likely as you're making out, the vast majority of the time a K/D under 1 indicates that a person is below average skill). High K/D with lots of games played has much less room for inaccuracy (aside from playlist specific habits guiding K/D, like Nutduster said). I think how people present themselves is more indicative of how good people think they are, rather than how good they are. Often these two things align (though again, not nearly as often as you're making out, if you ask me), but there's still a big gulf between them. I rely on K/D as a guide to how good someone is, and it rarely steers me wrong (though as Nutduster says, a low K/D can lull you in to a false sense of security when the person plays loads of MLG, and visa versa with BTB or something). I think it's easily the most reliable judge, though nothing is full proof by any means. Also, I don't see your logic with the campaign point. How does Campaign relate to team work or objective when neither of those things really feature in Campaign? Simplistic as it sounds, playing more MM is likely to make you better at MM. If you go in with a lone wolf attitude then you'll play to that. It's an attitude thing rather than a skill thing for the most part, and I think you're fooling yourself if you think that lone wolf players putting in lots of Campaign time will somehow turn them around, as if it's something they just haven't learned yet rather than making a conscious decision to play the way they find to be most fun (even though it is seriously annoying to be on a team with them).