Stats and Halo 4

Games Other Halo
1

For Halo 4, I believe that stats should have a minimal impact as possible due to many reasons. I love Halo: Reach, but the one thing I despise the most was being forced to show your overall matchmaking stats. Since E3 is here and oodles of Halo 4 information is circulating on the web, I decided to I join in and state what I’d love to be added before November 6.

What is so bad about showing off your matchmaking stats in online multiplayer?

For those who have no idea what I am talking about: when a player clicks on your gamertag in the matchmaking lobby, they are able to examine (or scrutinize!) your online stats. All of your kills, deaths, and wins are shown for everyone to take a gander at.

This “stat window” is a new feature that was implemented with Halo: Reach. From what I recall, your overall stats weren’t shown in the interface in previous Halo games. If you wanted to check out your stats, Bungie.net was the place to go. Unfortunately, this new feature hurts gameplay more than it helps. Believe it or not (as obvious as it may sound), there are players online who are egotistical and care about themselves. From my personal experience, this poor sportsmanship devastated countless matches throughout my time playing Halo: Reach. These type of players (often stereotyped as “tryhards”) could care less about their team, and focus on only one thing: improving their stat record, aka stat padding. Thus, these players often do the following: intentionally betray team mates for power weapons, ignore the objective at all costs, hide throughout the match (to avoid dying), and as a last resort - they “rage quit” the match. Why do they do this? For their stats. Perfectionism in cooperative multiplayer is a vice. It is not needed. All it does it ruin matches for thousands of players. Are you tired of your team mates chasing after you, shooting you, teabagging your corpse, and grabbing that precious Sniper you looked forward to using? Are you tired of being the ONLY one on your team to bother invading the enemy base to capture the flag? Are you tired of being the only player on your team to not quit the match? I figured so.

If you are reading this thread 343, here are some changes I’d like done to enhance the online multiplayer experience for Halo 4:

  1. Completely scrap away our total kills and deaths from our in-game Service Records. Thus, players would be less concerned with killing players throughout the match and instead, would focus on the objective of the match for once. Do not fret - all your matchmaking stats would still be shown here on Halo Waypoint. Just not in-game!

  2. Implement a Win/Loss Ratio, or at the very least, give us an incentive (or a better reward) from winning a match. To win a match, requires teamwork. We should be rewarded for cooperating as a team, instead of being rewarded for being a lone wolf. It doesn’t work well in any multiplayer game whatsoever. Reach’s credit system and its credit payout is broken. For winning a match, you hardly recieve any credits. You get credits for killing, however! I believe Halo 4’s ranking system must give some leverage to teamwork.

Adding these changes, I feel, would greatly benefit Halo 4’s cooperative multiplayer experience. If you are for, against or unsure about these proposals I suggested, please comment in this thread. Thanks!

2

To be honest I don’t see this being a problem, I’ve played a few reach games and no one ever talks about someone elses k/d ratio until after the game when they see prior game stats.

3

If ranking is based on win/loss, I really don’t see a problem.

4

I totally understand what you mean Maxwell. You can either care about your K/D ratio or you don’t. For those who don’t - that’s great. It doesn’t matter whether you die or not. But for those who do, I feel it worsens the enjoyment of the game itself. I’m not one to brag, but I’m an Inheritor in-game. I’ve played against and with a wide range of players, many who simply play the game for fun. However, there are lots of them who are egotistical and only care for themselves. I cannot describe the amount of times I’ve seen these players spawn trap their opponents in Big Team Battle and Invasion… or if they are on my team they will show no mercy and betray me as much as they can. When I compare these moments with the ones I had during my Halo 3 days, I am inclined to believe that cooperation in multiplayer is slowly eroding due to stats. I would love it if Halo 4 could reward players who support their team rather than themselves.

5

I am that “lone wolf” player you’re talking about. I play like that because 90% of the time my teammates are mentally handicapped 12 year olds and THEY are the ones that kill you for the sniper/tank/whatever, I’d love to be able to play with a decent team but that never happens. Yes I play to improve my stats, but I also play to WIN, and IMO allowing other players to see your stats gives you some motivation to play better. Also, I only quit if my team mates quit first.

6

I see your point in stats motivating players to do better. After all, this is a competitive multiplayer game. I would be all for giving us an option to toggle the ability to show our stats or not. This gives players the freedom to do whatever they wish with their profile. I think that’s a good compromise, IMO.

7

Yeah, that could work.

8

> I am that “lone wolf” player you’re talking about. I play like that because 90% of the time my teammates are mentally handicapped 12 year olds and THEY are the ones that kill you for the sniper/tank/whatever, I’d love to be able to play with a decent team but that never happens. Yes I play to improve my stats, but I also play to WIN, and IMO allowing other players to see your stats gives you some motivation to play better. Also, I only quit if my team mates quit first.

The secret to avoiding this is playing with a regular group of people. Shouldnt be hard to organize considering this dedicated forum.

Works well for me on Battlefield, I play with the same 6 or 7 guys every day.