OK, I think we're talking at cross purposes, because I misread your opening post. I was talking about being a better player, which isn't the same as individual skill when talking about a team game. Yes, K/D is a better metric for individual skill (ie. how likely you are to win a battle). That's not what I was saying. I was simply saying that K/D in one playlist is more meaningful than it is in another playlist, because of the nature of the beast. You addressed that with the opening of this paragraph (talking about per playlist K/D rather than simply global, which is what I thought you were saying), but the second bit isn't what I was saying at all. That's not comparing like for like. You're comparing one person's stats over multiple games to another person's single win. Someone who goes 25-30 to win isn't going to be doing that every game. You're putting a statistical outlier in one player's case against an average performance for another player. I think that a better indication of FFA performance (not using the term skill since, as I said, I've been misinterpreting you there) would be an "average placing" stat. This completely covers your point about someone who consistently comes second, without the approximation that top 33% brings. Would you agree that this is a better indication of overall FFA proficiency than either standard W/L or K/D? I guess my issue with K/D in terms of judging good players (either in terms of individual skill or being a good player in FFA or 4v4 contexts) is that it's more prone to distortion than W/L. If you have a good W/L, you're seriously unlikely to be a bad player. If you have a good K/D, it can be from doing well but also from stat-ing. Conversely, for judging bad players the roles flip. It's seriously unlikely to find a bad player who's lucked or blagged their way to a high K/D, but you could well find a bad player who has a W/L indicating that they're better than they actually are. On that note, I'd say that a high W/L is a more reliable judge of overall proficiency than a high K/D, and a low K/D is a more reliable judge of overall proficiency than a low W/L. You've made me question how useful W/L is overall a lot, though. Much more so than any other discussion I've had on the subject, so thanks.
This was the original statement my first post about it was addressing. William's said his W/L showed how good he was at the game and that K/D doesn't show that. The context was individual skill. He even discounted the very parts that make W/L unreliable, "crappy teams, getting jipped, unbalanced game" (whatever that means as far as winning or losing goes). Also you kind of contradicted yourself If you have good players who've got a crap W/L then how is it possible for that stat to be reliable in any way to determine even "performance" if we don't want to go with skill. Games like Call of Duty or recent Halo's winning and losing is not as important as it once was, not when everyone gets points at the end and it is so easy to twist what the circumstances of a game with factors like people dropping out or coming in. I mean if you join a game with 10 seconds left or as it is ending, it still counts as a W/L on your record. I find that happens far more often then someone getting 10 kills in a game then leaving to maintain a misleadingly high K/D.
Well actually I'd say that "how good you are at the game" is a kind of ambiguous statement, and doesn't specify individual skill. Well my point was always that it's more reliable than K/D, not a definitive indication. What I meant there was that, when looking at stats and trying to judge whether someone is good, a high W/L is really unlikely to come alongside a bad or mediocre player, less likely than an equivalently high K/D. I run in to people who are worse than their K/D implies a reasonable amount. Hell, in Halo Reach I had a noticeably higher K/D than Shad0w (I was over 2 and he was 1.7something). Shad0w is positively, absolutely better than me. He's better than me 4v4, he's definitely better than me 1v1, and I didn't get my K/D by hanging back and statting. Anecdotal evidence, I know, but you get my point. I was under the impression we were talking in basic terms about W/L as a stat, since you opened talking about how K/D is a better metric for judging skill in an fps, like the basic concept rather than specifically in Halo 4 where, I agree, JIP ****s it up even further. I was addressing that angle specifically, not trying to defend WWWilliam's assertion that JIP doesn't have a significant impact upon W/L.
In a FFA slayer game I see the player who won with 25-30 better then you even if you had 20-0 and came 2nd. This is how i see it: You decide to play a game (chess/Halo) your just about to play you know all possible rules for the game at hand (how to win what your not allowed to do etc, Which includes getting jipped In Halo) Then the game is over. Who is the better player? The guy who won? or the guy who had the most kills that game? To me it doesn't matter if it's chess or Halo the better player won. You may be amazing at pentagon games in Halo be able to 50-0 anyone 1v1 with DMR's then I would consider you a good player AT pentagons. Just like chess you may be amazing at setting up front lines with pawns and be able take out half there pieces with pawns (8-2 K/D and some of the 8 are more valuable pieces then the 2 pawn deaths) Which makes you good at a specific skill and good chance that can help you Win(key word Win, K/D helps you W/L) then if you still lose obviously you got outplayed by someone with better skills in other departments making him better then you. In a FFA slayer game Deaths don't really matter Going 1 for 1 is beneficial because 1 point closer to me winning and 1/7th of a point closer to me losing. (Not gonna die to the same guy every time so your deaths are spread out over 7 other people) So the guy who got 25kills(and a meaningless 30 deaths) he got more kills then you so he played the game better then you did and because of that he won. Good example of this is "Headcase" in Halo reach(horrible gametype imo) but In BTB if you sat at your base on hemorrhage intentionally letting enemy team kill you (because they can't resist stat padding there K/D) your skull would drop right next to your team, Team pick it up and +1 for your team. You can go 0-50 and still be the best player on your team because of that making it a poorly designed game but none the less you still played the game better and won. JIP has a HUGE! detrimental significance to W/L. Which makes W/L less reliable in games with JIP in it. But everyone has to deal with that in the game, Everyone. -Someone has 60% W/L in game without JIP there more likely to be better then someone with W/L of 20% in same game. -Someone with 40% W/L in a game with JIP there more likely to be better then someone with 20% W/L in the same game. -Someone with 60% W/L in a game without JIP is incomparable to someone with 20% W/L in a game with JIP. Same with any rule, crap random feature, unbalanced game mechanic, That the is game you decided to play and it can make it less reliable but the person who can wade though all that BS and still come out with a higher W/L (aka winning games) is better then a player at that game then who can't. (aka lower W/L) Either your trying to win and can't (which makes someone who's trying to win and can better,regardless of game or stupid rules,etc) or you don't care about W/L and are just going for K/D meaning your stat padding which is intentionally choosing to be bad at winning. -Only advantage of stat padding is at end of day you can say, I was playing games all day today and Losing... but on a related website that records my games and shows everything I did in the games one of the statistics is higher then average so it was a good day of gaming. -W/L players can say, I was playing games all day today and Won most of them I had a good day of gaming.
The two cannot be compared in such a way. Chess is a game where if you are able to think ahead more moves and anticipate what your opponent will do better than your opponent can of you then you are more likely to win. That ability to think ahead is your individual skill in chess. In an FPS your individual skill is derived on several factors but the determining metric comes down to how many kills you have. In a team game your team might win despite you getting just a single kill. Does that victory say something about you as a player? It's hard to tell from a single case such as that. In an FFA slayer game, sure if you win that means you reached the score limit before others, but there are still other factors that could have led to that victory. Your competition might have been going after other people, you may have gotten a lot of multi-kills through grenades, all factors that might not tell the whole story about your individual skill compared to the skill of others just because you might have had the highest number at the end. Consistency determines skill level. Most people are more skilled than me in halo because they get consistently more kills than me in matches and consistently kill me in 1v1's matchups. Someone isn't better than me just because they beat me in 1 game. But at the same time wins and losses are not always consistant. If I get 20 kills a game I might have won some of those games or lost them but the kills stayed consistent. You're mixing up multiple factors and assuming one leads to the other. Having a better K/D ratio than another person might mean that person has more wins than losses, it probably increases their chances of winning individual games. Again, we come back to what makes a player "better" than another player. This kinda goes against my point of K/D but equally demonstrates why your notion of winning makes you better is wrong. If I camp in a corner and win the game by doing that, did that make me a better player then the people who didn't camp in the corner? What if I cheated at winning by abusing some glitch? Does that make me better than other players who hadn't of thought of doing that? There are so many extraneous factors that go into "winning" that saying that sole ratio alone as the defining metric of player skill is absurd. I will grant the view point that the K/D ratio also has its extraneous variables that make it unreliable (it requires a lot of games to become a reliable statistic of skill, and people can artificially inflate it, though the same can be done with W/L) but those variables are more quantifiable and happen less often then the ones for winning or losing. Again I restate the "K/D is less useful in FFA" but in the context of determining player skill I still disagree that W/L is a better metric. Not dying in a fast paced FPS is hard. You try ending a 15 minute match with less than 5 deaths on a consistant basis. Killing lots of people while doing that is even harder. So you're telling me you think the person who won a game with more deaths than kills is better than someone who didn't die at all with almost as many kills simply because the other person didn't "win". Win and Loss is not such a polarizing concept in a game with so many other factors in it. If I win a foot race then yes, I am probably better than my competition, because the only factor that determined my victory was my speed. If I won a game of chess I did it because of the single factor of I was able to out think my opponent. In a FPS there is no 1 factor that determines victory. Reaction time, luck, strategy, the environment, all determine individual player skill and having them all might end up in victory.
If my goal is to win and I win without a Kill, What does that say about me? I contemplated all the feasible options and Did what I had to, to win and I succeeded. All that anecdotal or situational stuff is irrelevant, He had highest number at end of a FFA slayer game. Therefor in a FFA slayer game where everyone was doing everything they could to get the highest number at the end of the game, He did it better(though whatever means) and won. Whatever the circumstances where he circumvented them to win. Someone uses all there skills to the best of there ability to accomplish a goal which is winning a game while they are versing other players who are also using all there skills to the best of there ability to accomplish a goal which is winning a game. I don't understand how you can say, The player who wins is isn't a better player... Bolded part, *Mind blown* -"If I camp in a corner and win the game by doing that, , did that make me a better player then the people who didn't camp in the corner?" If by not camping the corner you would of lost, Yes it does make you a better player. -"What if I cheated at winning by abusing some glitch? Does that make me better than other players who hadn't of thought of doing that?" Depends on glitch and cheat. (Modding=No) If it's a glitch that is going to be patched out and your taking advantage of it that's a ethical issue(that wont be around for to long because its getting patched out). But if it's not going to be patched out then the better players will be taking advantage of it.(BXR, YY faster reloads, strafe jumping in quake) I added one word to your quote to explain why I think K/D is bad at defining a good player. "There are so many extraneous factors that go into "winning" that saying that A sole ratio alone as the defining metric of player skill is absurd."
I'm not defining skill. I'm defining who is a "better player" meaning who is "Better at this game" or "Better at winning this game" (or "Metric of a players skill") 5shotting is a skill. Strafing is a skill. Capping a flag is a skill. Not dieing is a skill. Tons of skills in halo which all fit into "extraneous factors" "There are so many extraneous factors that go into "winning" that saying that A sole ratio alone as the defining metric of player skill is absurd." K/D only represents your skill to kill and not die, Which is an important skill that usually factors into been a "better player" (Been able to win more games,Having a higher W/L) I would define a "better player" the person who wins when in a game versing other players when both players are using all there skills to the best of the ability regardless of any stats. Which I apply to Any video game, Any board game, Any Sport, Any game, Because I see competitive games as "Arbitrary rules where multiple teams will do anything they can to win following those rules but only one can win and the team who can use all there skills to win is better during that game" That's just one game, But for Halo there is matchmaking that matches you with "similarly skilled" players so a player with a higer W/L are winning vs Players at there skill/level more then players with low W/L who are losing to players at there own skill/level. If you define a "better player" as someone who is able to kill more then they die comparatively to other players ability to kill and not die regardless of who wins. (aka K/D meaning the best players are ones that go 50-0 with sniper on BTB KOTH and don't contribute to winning at all, or to use that logic in chess it means the player who took the most pieces is better) Then I guess we do have different opinions on what defines a "Better player"
One thing I like about Halo 4 is the really loud music that's always playing so that if my friends are all together in a room, and we take a break to talk, the music is there berating us for not picking back up the controller and playing the game. DUN DUN. PLAY THE GAME. DUN DUN.
Yeah I was constantly forgetting what I was doing mid game and just walking away in previous Halos. Thank god 343 finally addressed this issue. I'm also glad they took the coolness of Jeff's voice to it's logical conclusion and had him talk constantly throughout the entirety of every game.
In the new update, Bravo talks about how they'll be updating the game on a bi-weekly basis now for more substantial updates, but more importantly, this: Finally something done right.
IMO I feel like pretty much all there updates(besides fixing glitches/bugs and DLC) are all just trying to get Halo 4 up to to the status quo of previous Halo. And all compliments should feel like A pro basketball team with one horrible player that is tall and looks like a good basketball player (and has highest salary of the team) is just horrible at basketball, Then his slowly learning how to play basketball and when he improves slightly to get closer to the average status quo and people should be like "Good job buddy keep at it we might take you off the bench" (not specifically your post)But the compliments seem like "Wow did you see that basketball player he got a 2 points today his doing pretty good" but its not how you root for a kid where you know there **** and don't wanna be rude, It's like people are thinking there doing a better then average job and praising them for it. And hole time there spending to get back to status quo(by undoing there bad choices that they mostly by things they copy pasted from other games) there not spending it innovating(which I can't think of one substantial innovative thing they have done anyway) They choose to take out X then pretty sure soon after release knew people didn't like it and only now there putting it back and getting praise and money(Fact=Every time any game has a update it increases interest/publicity of a game which generally increases playerbase and DLC/micro sales) I swear I read somewhere Reach was only allowed two TU's or something, How is Halo 4 allowed so many TU's?
Reading through the bulletin I gathered that matchmaking updates will now be bi-weekly rather than weekly, and that on a completely separate note, there is a (singular) new title update in the works.
I was under the assumption TU where just fancy titled patches and they had already done bunch of patches("title updates"), What's the defines the difference between patch and TU? Someone told me Reach or any game was only allowed 1-2 TUs(aka patches) or something and Halo 4 has already had a bunch of patches.
Why do why you think H4 has had a bunch of patches/TUs? I only remember the one so far. How many times have you been made to actually download an update when loading the game? Matchmaking updates don't require a download, they are simply tweaks of custom options and adding/removing playlists.
I haven't been following Halo 4 much, But least been 3 patches have been done with quick search. Halo 4 Patch 1.02 - The Halo Council Halo 4 Patch 1.02.01 - The Halo Council Halo 4 Title Update 1.03.00 Information - The Halo Council (not sure if the on my X patch is done in those Or there is gonna be a 4th patch) There could even be more I don't know about. So I'm guessing you can patch/TU as much as you want. (Makes me wonder why Bungie didn't do it more to fix reach)
Oh boy. Guys, have you seen this? Check out the pic linked in unusual hiccups post. It's been confirmed that it's not SpOps, nor is it from the Castle map pack. Forge World is back? Halo 4 News - Forge World Evidence, and Proof - YouTube