I’ve been thinking about this topic for a good while now, I remember a detail in Call of Duty that mid game you cannot see your K/D anymore as it affected peoples playstyle, now its been a while since I’ve played to know if its in a more recent title or a working concept to thwart player behavior but I think this might create even more division in the community overall, of people who play to have fun and look to play to win at all times.
I feel like your argument could become a gateway conversation to ranked BTB, ranked actionsack and even tighter SBMM in otherwise playlists that were never made to be competitive. Just can’t think of a good way to implement it no stats and not see some new problem arise from it.
I did not know the fact that this had been done with CoD, is it known if something like this is still implemented in the latest installments? Can you see how it affected the game modes?
With the modification of the statistics at no time would I wish that the implementation of more competitive modes would be sought, because that would be counterproductive for the life of the classified games, further segregating the competitive community.
I do not want to be an unfair person and say “If you are looking for statistics that focus on the competitive”. But after having a game focused exclusively on competitive and esports such as Halo 5, my position will always be in favor of fun.
If the reinvention of social gaming statistics to a non-competitive, but more social approach, would cause a positive effect on some players and a negative effect on other players in the community, I think it would be fair to take stock and see what percentage there would be in either side, and if it would be worth it.
Before it was a theory what I had, but after your comment then it becomes a proven fact that the global statistics of some games that should not matter end up having a negative effect.
I think it is an issue that 343i should be raised in the future.
My take on removing statistics from Social(which has been a feature since Halo 2 and the days of BNet) is that if you remove them, it removes a sense of player achievement, on BNet you could see things like, Total Games Played, total kills and deaths, total medals earned(Halo 3 you could see this as a breakdown for each medal!), you could see things like Score Per Game. Stuff like this being universal is important because it helps show player growth and gives some people goals to achieve, like get a positive KDR(some people will just play swat or something and thats okay), or getting one of every medal in the game, or getting their Slayer W/L ratio to be positive. Stats give players detailed information about how they are playing the game, whether you receive that as positive or negative is just your outlook on player progression. Yes some people will never look at their stats and will never care about them, but if you remove them for everyone to cater towards that audience you are going to impact the people who wanted those stats. If a feature can be ignored, it should never be removed for the sake of those who can simply choose to never interact with it.
If you check my first comment, you will see that I mention the need to keep a list of the medals that we get. This is not a bad thing in any way and I see it as an important addition.
The player’s sense of accomplishment can be refocused in a number of ways that don’t involve maintaining an archaic stat system. Such as the achievement system, the battle pass, a level-up system, the medal table, the decorations, etc.
There are many ways to reward and make the player feel that he is achieving achievements and progress without having to resort to a statistics system that is generally being ignored due to its little use. All this obviously speaking from a point of view of social games.
And, it is not a question of summarizing it as “I receive these statistics in a negative way”, but rather to consider the actual use and its usefulness, already having global statistics for the ranked, the fact itself of the redundant and untrue information that they provide. social statistics.
Obviously all of this can be ignored, but why not put it to better use? Instead of keeping something that people tend to ignore because it is useless, perhaps it would be best to rethink its use and give it a better one that suits social games, marking a clear difference between rankeds and unrankeds.
I agree that people’s stats shouldn’t have to be global and I personally think that everything you said that should be added in sounds great, only players should have an option of making it visible to them only/friends/everyone; just like we are able to do so with our names on xbox.
Player upvoting would be really cool to see, I think I first saw that with Overwatch and the multiplayer team there is staffed with some of the top talent in the industry.
Unfortunately I don’t play Call of Duty to immediately check but I was able to find some of the first iterations of it used in the Invasion style gametype Call of Duty created in COD WW2, the game type called War Mode excluded K/D from being shown in game. That’s as much as I could find, I think there is much more data on this in the data science video game industry and that might take asking around for resources.
I would actually confidently message Tom French and the multiplayer team on this, they are busy and may not even read an email/tweet them but if you try not to make it just about Halo he might be able to provide more insight just as a industry solution that could be applicable to Halo in the future. As it stands now they are ready to drop the game, so we’re probably not going to see anything reworked unless its flatout broken for awhile.
Just wanted to add, its easier to add a toggle to hide stats for those who dont want them then to have to either add them for fans who do or leave those fans in the dust.
Stats in social should be turned off by default, but there should be an opt in option for those that want to feel special for stomping noobs in what’s supposed to be a play for fun environment.
I strive on stats.
I always want to become better and learn from my mistakes.
Stats are a part of that puzzle.
If my personal results wont matter at all, i wouldnt care to play the game at all.
Its hard enough to play for the win in a team of unknown casuals who make mongoose jumps their primary goal of the game.
Although what you propose are very good ideas, I really believe that we should try to rethink the approach to statistics, not leave what is already there and put a button to turn it off because in the end that would be wasting resources on something that in the end becomes useless. Although the idea of giving the player options to choose from is very good.
What you are looking for is already done in ranked games. I don’t think it’s a good idea to seek competitiveness in social games where the vast majority of people play casually for fun and silly things.
If you are looking for competitiveness, do not do it in social games, do it in competitive games because that’s what they are for.
i play ranked with mates i can trust.
when im alone i play social.
and i dont think social is for goofing around.
social is a regular playlist with certain modes.
why should one play them when he doesnt care?
it ruines the fun for everyone else
So what you are saying is that if people want to watch their growth and success and see their progression, they should play ranked because you believe global stats make social more competitive? That argument is complete unrealistic, you’ll have competitive people in social no matter what, the only thing you are taking away is the ability for people who prefer the more fun aspect of social matchmaking to observe their growth compared to the rest of the player base.
You keep saying that stats in social don’t matter and that nobody uses them because ranked stats are more accurate, but I and many others play a lot of big team and/or don’t like playing ranked with randoms. I still like to see my kda and win/loss ratio to see if I’m improving. You are suggesting more vague stats but most people are looking for simple straightforward stats to track their progress. You also keep saying that the resources used to track and display stats should be used for other things but all the stats are already being tracked for mmr and data collection anyway so it doesn’t really take extra resources.
Post game show heaps. And give us an improved API so we can delve even deeper.
But don’t show useless / toxic career stats. Like K/D for objective games. It does not help. Concentrate on win % and objective stats (flags carried etc). And even then these don’t necessarily reflect unselfish play.
Obviously K/D for slayer games. But even then I would go for more damage related stats. Damage for (divided into those that lead to kills and those which didn’t) and against. You could then easily focus on the team players; the MVP (most damage dealt that lead to kills), the Sponge (most damage taken per death), the Rampager (most damage dealt in a minute), the Assistant (most damage that lead to kills without actually doing the kill)… etc.
I agree, it encourages bad playstyles like kd farming in objective. If people need a gauge to know their progress they can just use comp ranks like it used to be.
It doesn’t seem fair to say that social games are to be taken seriously and competitively. It is obvious that everyone wants to play to win, but it is also true that people want above all to have fun playing and having fun without feeling that they have to sweat and suffer to win at all costs.
Approaching social games as competitive ranking games is a mistake because they kill some of the fun that social games bring in a sandbox, trying to play with friends to see if a fun strategy works or just have a good time .
Things like riding on top of the Banshee carrying the flag or flying the Warthog Run and hooking it with the grappling hook to get to the other side of the map are things people want to do, but if you put a competitive focus on something you don’t is, we just make people decide not to have fun the way they want because “you have to win at all costs.”
To all this, the custom games also have statistics that collect the same information as the ranked games and the social games, should we then take them seriously and not play the fool? Obviously not because the approach that custom games have is very far from competitive games, in this one I also see that those statistics are superfluous because they have no real use beyond filling in numbers.