Killboard KDR should be removed!

[Uchoo]

It says so at the beginning that it's an anxiety initially caused by statistics, as in how a person interprets them:

This anxiety can occur for many reasons, most of which boil down to caring too much about one's 1v1 ladder rating. More so than in many other games, the perception in RTSes is that one's performance reflects one's intelligence. With no team mates to blame or fall back on, losing a 1v1 for many feels like a blow to their ego.

Right, I just don't think I saw anything that said 'hiding/avoiding your 1v1 rating is the key to a healthy mindset.'

Or I guess, comparing the average combat value you get from Marines to other players. A fun and maybe useful stat to look into, but probably not the most relevant, especially if you don't play Bio.

[oaliaen]

u can coppy paste gear from players, byt u cant coppy paste their skills.

Also, dosnt matter the gear If the ping is high asf than others.

I agree in disable the k/d , because ppl Just use War report or alt/f4 tô Prevent tô be killed. Just like a well known rr100 engie last week.

[wargrimnir]

I don't have any say in whether the killboard stays or goes, but there's nothing here that I find remotely compelling.

The dev that made the killboard did it out of his own interest, and it was shared with the community to do as they see fit. I find the chances of it being removed over your reasons given to be exceptionally low. Since the killboard released we have seen no impact on player population that can be attributed to it aside from the occasional noise that someone doesn't like it.

We find a lot of people not liking things here or there from time to time. But it's very rare that we find a LOT of people disliking the SAME thing all at the SAME time. I'll check back when this thread has over 50 pages perhaps.

Since the killboard release, have you seen an impact on the playerbase behavior (not population), insofar as it can be measured ?

On a personnal note I also dislike the fact that KDR is a public information on this server. I don't see any value brought by this single number. What's even the point of a single character indicator in such an MMO which clearly emphasize on group plays ?

As for my little experience regarding player behavior affected by KDR, many times I played in an organized warband where the leader called to retreat or not to engage a fight because the outcome couldn't be an assured win (but it wouldn't have been a suicidal situation either). Every time such a "surprising" decision happens I ask the leader for the reason of this decision and sometimes (not always) I am told KDR is the reason.

Not to invite someone to cause trouble to belabor the point I'm about to make, but we have not had a single instance of TOS violations related to harassment over KDR. People are more than welcome to report all forms of harassment, and we deal with them case-by-case. KDR simply is not a factor we have ever seen.

People have been cowards in RvR long before the killboard ever existed, for many other reasons than someone might see their magic number.

[Ashoris]

if someone is toxic in chat and blaming others for the loss i do a quick SC win percentage and K/D (if its a dps) check. Its normally really bad (and with bad i mean negative).

Why ? because it explains something ... they are normally more frustrated than the average because they have more negative experiences. More often than not they do not excel in their role and feel bad but instead of changing something in their behaviour or their perception of the fact ... they start to blame others.

but mentioning out of the blue to someone ? No.

[Brizio]

[The Killboard KDR is a Problem!]

There has been a few major discussions on the ROR Discord on this topic so I thought about making it an official feedback post here on the forums too for dev feedback and further discussions on the topic!

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

In its current state, the Killboard of the website shows the lifetime Kill/Death Ratio of a character upon search and is available to anyone to lookup and judge players based on a fairly useless Stat that does not tell the full story / playstyle or the skill of a player. Unfortunately this website feature is provenly causing many players to shame others based on their KDR or even have major negative effects on individual player mentality and behavior, by unconsciously playing more defensive and passive in order to maintain a "better" KDR.

RoR is a massive PvP MMORPG that is designed around the bigger picture of a faction vs faction campaign and is designed for players to die many a times in battle, sometimes without scoring kills in order to tip the balance towards their faction. The gameplay flow is directly fed by a steady source of players wanting to fight each other endlessly and thus generate content. The moment players start to care more about a positive KDR stat and are afraid of dying or encouraging pushes and aggressive manouvers and only participate in one-sided "surewin" scenarios, is when the gameplay flow of such game will deteriorate and show signs of unhealthiness that we are currently experiencing, from Warbands not always supporting each other or the populating Xrealming to one Faction.

Tracking Negative In-game Stats in a profile has been proven through years in many different games to have a larger negative effect on the game's playerbase, and it is tightly connected to a base human ego and self-worth problem that a good chunk of players will unconsciously start caring about them and connect their own skill or character's worth on it. Very similar to a certain male real-life comparison and issue I shall not name here. By human-nature it is not as easy to just "ignore" it and the human-brain connects it with "losing", which we know the majority does not like.

Counter-argument is that if someone cares, they will track KDR anyway, which is true, can be done through addons. But not being able to tell other player's KDR will eliminate the shaming/judging issue and then we still have the large subset of players who are only manipulated to care about this stat by the existance of the tracking on the website Killboard that reflects their performance to other players. So removing it will still have a larger effect on a considerable amount of players who's gameplay is manipulated by a worry of "what others see of them".

It isn't an individual player issue, but affects the server's health as a whole. One shouldn't feel stressed or bad about fighting for their faction against the odds and dying in the Warhammer universe.

[Effects & Proposal]
On a quick note of things I can think of, that are discouraged indirectly by KDR for those who are stressed by it ( care for it ):

• - Joining Even Fights

• - Warbands not helping each other when others seemingly are losing

• - Not Defending "hopeless" Keeps / Forts

• - Joining Underdogs ( Faction Balance )

• - Splt pushes ( half Pug Warband stays behind / half Attacks )

• - Early withdrawals, causing unnecessary wipes

• - Melee actually being in melee to pressure ( Pushing )

• - Trying Warband leading

• - Joining / Helping new WB Leaders

• - Experimenting with Off-Meta Classes / Specs

• - PvP RPing

• - RP Warbands ( though RP people probably dont care )

• - and probably other aspects of the game....

By removing the KDR Tracking from the Killboard and as a result removing other's ability to track other players, it would eliminate both the social issues that this feature is causing along with the gameplay effects it is causing on a good chunk of the playerbase - while still maintaining the ability for each individual player to keep track of their own scores.

Additionally, perhaps showing only Killcount and Deathblows and not deaths would also encoruage more aggressive playstyles and generally players caring more about getting kills, rather than playing massively, which is what Warhammer is about!

The Weekly / Monthly Leaderboard could still track players based on highest killcount - but without showing deaths, but this can still be up for discussion on how important people think that leaderboard is.

[Discussion]

This post has been created with the aim to give this topic more visibility and let everyone discuss and share their opinions on it, whether you agree or disagree with what is said above, or share any other viewpoints and perspectives you have on the matter! Potentially, if there is a common agreement - give a visible proposal to the Development team to review!

Please keep the discussion civil!

I disagree completely. Even tho i dont care about it, i check from time to time.

I dont want to sound like a jerk but there is no other way to put it. Imho ppl should focus on how they play the game and leave the others to play how they want.

[wonshot]

The killboard tracking kills & deaths seemingly have helped sniff out whenever people from time to time try to killtrade, and getting rid of that is a net possitive for the server.

To some extend a part of me think that if players played more careless there would be more engages and therefor a better pvp product. But if deaths on leaderboard were taking out, people would still lean on aao and not try to defend keeps or go to 3rd floor as the situation is "hopeless" it would just push the same mindset to an other argument I perdict.

[Sulorie]

if someone is toxic in chat and blaming others for the loss i do a quick SC win percentage and K/D (if its a dps) check. Its normally really bad (and with bad i mean negative).

Why ? because it explains something ... they are normally more frustrated than the average because they have more negative experiences. More often than not they do not excel in their role and feel bad but instead of changing something in their behaviour or their perception of the fact ... they start to blame others.

but mentioning out of the blue to someone ? No.

Yeah, when someone complains about class x being weak, a kill board check plus gear and rank/rr is the first thing I do before talking to them.
Too often people in /ad channel give tips only relevant for t4 players, while those seeking help are below 40.

[Aethilmar]

There is an argument to be made that we need more stats, not to remove the ones we got i.e. people do respond to the visible statistics (see my post) therefore if you make more statistics visible then folks get recognition for other game aspects.

For example, if you have a leaderboard for most heals or most damage mitigated with breakouts by per session or per minute played you can encourage folks to play into the strengths of their class archetypes instead of chasing the one highly visible stat that is primarily aimed at DPS.

[Panzer80]

Indeed, it should. It seems to drive some people into an unhealthy obsession and to bring down the frequency of competition.

[Specialpatrol]

if someone is toxic in chat and blaming others for the loss i do a quick SC win percentage and K/D (if its a dps) check. Its normally really bad (and with bad i mean negative).

Why ? because it explains something ... they are normally more frustrated than the average because they have more negative experiences. More often than not they do not excel in their role and feel bad but instead of changing something in their behaviour or their perception of the fact ... they start to blame others.

but mentioning out of the blue to someone ? No.

Yeah, when someone complains about class x being weak, a kill board check plus gear and rank/rr is the first thing I do before talking to them.
Too often people in /ad channel give tips only relevant for t4 players, while those seeking help are below 40.

Such behavior can precisely result in players getting outed, shamed and possibly blamed.

A recent discussion in advise chat, concerning the value of dps warrior priests, resulted in one guy fronting another guy's KD-ratio in that chat, as an argument that dps warrior priest sucks. It was a lousy attempt to gain superiority in an open discussion - and the person who did it, completely failed to grasp that KD-ratios can depend on playstyles (when you play your warrior priest as healer, for instance, you generally tend to die more than you kill).

I say lose the KD ratio. It serves no purpose except for simplistic people to judge others. If you got issues with another person's playstyle or arguments, either just avoid that person - or engage in a constructive conversation (with emphasis on constructive) and counter with better arguments.