Individual ratios vs team objectives

Up till recently I was of the opinion that personal sacrifice could win you games. I would typically be the first to push lanes, stomp the enemy base and focus heavily on global objectives.

I would apply pressure, which in my opinion overweights the cash benefit that the opposing team would generate out of my eventual deaths. Globally, the combat would happen more and more in their base - which usually lead to victory. Of course, you cannot just become a pure cannon fodder, but with just a bit of skill it really made sense. I had more wins than loses overall, but my KD ratio was weak.

Now, with people becoming more and more conscious about their stats, their KD ratio mainly, the match becomes a beauty contest. The game switches to a pure focus on pros. Winning or loosing seems to be a collateral result. So winning and loosing gets closer to 1 and my KD ratio travels to the moon.

I've been recently to a few games with an absurd number of retreats. As soon as someone would start loosing a one on one, they would run away. Although it makes sense to some extent, sometimes you really aren't sure who would win, seriously, but they would take no risk.

Many games are stalemates, with medium to long range combat only. I really don't think its by strategy, especially in PUBs, I think its about the final stats. So its not about the game, its about the pretty numbers. I have to be honest, sometimes having a 4-1 KD final ratio, makes me happier than actually wining the game. Maybe its inevitable, but I doubt Im the only one getting that. I feel I miss the point.

By the way, why dont we have the life win/loss ratio in the locker room?

You can't fix people.

If you're tired of pubs behaving like that get yourself a team and play organised games - people know what to do there; well some do.

Two different things:

1 - Yes. Most players seem completely unaware of the objective. It's absurdly unnerving to push a lane all the way up to the enemy base, look around and realize your team fucked off somewhere 20 miles back. This much, I completely agree.

2 - Running away, living to fight another day, it's always a bad idea. In fact it's usually a good idea in order to conserve juice. Sometimes it's a good idea to throw yourself under the bus if it means delaying or stopping a juice, getting a shot in on a downed moneyball about to go up, or meatshielding your own moneyball when it's about to reset it's shield. Most of the time, however, it's better to move back and save your juice.

Sigmars, you and I seem to have a different understanding of the game. I'm not going to say that I am certain that I understand it better than you do, but I think I do. Staying alive is almost THE most important concept in the entire game for several reasons.

1. Streaks and multikills. The more people and bots you kill in a row the more money you get. Lika so:

Multikillx2: $25
Multikillx3: $50
Multikillx4: $75
Multikillx5: $150
Multikillx6: $300
Killstreakx3: $25
Killstreakx5: $50
Killstreakx7: $75
Killstreakx10: $100
Bot Killstreakx25: $50
Bot Killstreakx50: $75
Bot Killstreakx75: $150
Bot Killstreakx100: $300

Money is power in this game, and if you can keep a streak going you can make all the difference by purchasing juice repeatedly, purchasing high level turrets and having all (or mostly) level 3 skills. I am accused of "juice hacking" on a regular basis by players that don't understand how I have so much money. Streaks cause this to happen.

2. Juice. Preserving the juice bar is critical to maintaining momentum. I often have plenty of money to buy juice and choose not to because my current bar is already almost full. Juicing well will cause victory time and time again, and you must stay alive to do this.

3. Field Positioning. Most people don't realize this yet, but maintaining field control is extremely important in this game. Death sends you back to spawn room and lets the enemy march forward (probably with bots in tow). Losing ground means losing bot killing potential (money and juice) and probably damage to your defenses (losing money on turrets). If you retreat you give the enemy some ground in favor of future potential success. If you die, you give it all to them.

Here's the gist of it: Never die. There are almost NO situations in which death is acceptable. I'll list the only two I know of:

1 .Overtime with less than 30 seconds on the clock and you can do significant damage to the enemy money ball.
2. You have just spawned in and the base is in bad shape with bots all around it. Using the annihilator at the cost of your own life here is acceptable.

I believe that if you die in this game you probably just made a critical mistake. Whatever wins games for you though I suppose, I just have to imagine it would be a lot harder if you dont play according to what these concepts I listed here imply.

WhiteHawke, you just listed reasons why you do things the way you do. It's all valid. I still don't think this is the main reason many others do that. That's where I insist on the stats.

For example, how many times you'd see someone juice up, just to kill 1 player in a one on one situation mid-map while it could be used to a greater good, like wreck 2 lvl 3 RockIts and a pro ?

Another example, you see very often someone run and hide away from his base at a critical moment such as "push back the enemy or you loose".

Or, when they stay in the spawn. Yes, they may think its over. I still think the game should give you reasons to get out from the safe and face death defending your base. Death is acceptable by all means at that precise moment. Because if it worked and it does sometimes, that's where the thrill is at.

The whole discussion is: for what reasons you do not want to die. For those you listed or for the KD ratio ?

death is not an option. ok, well may be it is. If you see no way out of a situation then re think it. There either A. has to be a way out. or B. you already screwed up to much and got yourself in a 20 ft hole with only a 10 ft ladder.

Deaths should be avoided like the plague. Imo, not even for the lazer fun ball. Even if you only had juice to worry about, or your kill streak, or your bot streak. Any one of those alone would be enough to justify staying alive. Let alone all 3 combined. Always play 3 steps ahead so you know your exit. Death is not an option.

I am all in for winning when Im playing, which sometimes results in some deaths i wouldnt have gotten on my records if i were killwhoring, but my KD is still 4.7. So imo, this is one of the few games where you can actually go all in for objectives, and still have a really good KD.

Playing against you a few times I'd say your money mostly comes from bots though you do get quite a bit from kills.

Should rename yourself to "Loan Shark" (The juice is always running).

Quite the deadly player!

Still think Lunge needs at least a 5 second cooldown.

This is why I wish games didn't track stats at all, it boils down into everyone waving e-peens around and no one caring about being Kredit To Team.

I have a bad KDR. Why? I play Tank, I push bot lanes, I stun turrets, I light people on fire, but I die a lot because I'm always attacking.

My poor KDR is also a useless stat to measure my gameplay by because I'm almost always top 2 or 3 in money earnings.

Let me please note this, If I play I do my job and my KDR suffers. Even if I'm doing a game winning job my KDR will suffer.

Here is the problem. I will not be chastised unless I play sin.

This really erks me when my team do it. It's also kind of amusing when the other team does it to me. Quite often people will juice just to kill as many players as possible, and sometimes they'll go directly after me (if I'm doing well).

There is nothing more amusing then watching them chase me down and either not kill me in time (best result), or kill me and then run out of juice (still don't mind as they've pretty much done no harm).

If I get juice at a time when players are significantly spread out, I'll either wait until a group of 3 or more are together, or I'll take out base defenses (though assault is not so good at that). And I don't wait for them to group cus I'm a KDR whore, but because it's far more productive to kill half their team than 1 or 2 stragglers. If the moneyball is down, juice is ALWAYS spent on destroying it.

imo juice use is very situational.

If the enemy team has pushed you to your base then going past them and juicing to take out thier turrets is a risky task. Sure you may take down thier defenses, but if you never push them back to it then you essentially wasted a juice.

When using your juice look at the whole teams situation. Sometimes juicing to clear several bot waves and a few pro's is very beneficial to your team. It would give that added breathing room to make something happen.

Also if all 6 of thier team is right around the corner, juicing to clear them out allows your team to push bot lanes uncontested. It all really depends on the situation.

Also, never die with full juice, even if you end up only killing 1 person.

To me its pretty simple, I prefer to see a player with a KD of 35-20 than 10-0. The first one has clearly been more active, surely fed cash to the oponent, but the oponent fed him more, better, he obviously did some streaks as well. Streaks and juice aside, the added time of the opoents' in spawn really weights in the total balance as well. Therefore, the same guy probably contributed much more to the victory than the second and took more risks which have paid.
That's why death is an option. Its more than just numbers, its the pressure that you apply on the filed by your overwhelming presence. That's why you see kill champions still loosing games on PUB's. Die, as long as the oponent dies more.

WhiteHawke has explained it well enough I think.

Plus

There's a hurdle that once you get over makes fragging players so incredibly useful because of the amount of deaths you're giving them, a team respawning is a team doing not much else.

Anyone on your team can hopefully *Roll eyes* take out the bots, not everyone can hold three plus peoples attention at a time, for a long time.

31-20 10-0 aren't the only options and targeting "Kill Champions" for a teams loss seems a bit silly to me, while he was suppressing the opposing team severely what were his team mates doing?

SFA is the answer in the majority of situations, what's he suppose to do? not frag opposing player letting them steam roll his team back to their spawn?

There is very definitely a place for "Main slayers" in MNC, the problem is everyone thinks they're him, when they ain't.

Like I said, as long as they respawn more...

If you end up with a KD of 3-0, that gives you a ratio of 3. If you end up with 15-10, that gives you 1,5. On paper you perform double worse. On paper.

They aren't the only options, but you do understand what a preferable trend is, right ? I'm not targeting kill champions for teams loss of course, I just say it's not sufficient to be a KC to win. Most of the times, he was suppressing the opposing team so severly, that he didn't do anything else.

Well, since money's important, it's nice to have a killstreak, but bots and turrets are where it's at. Anything obstructing you from doing so has to die, whether you dig your own grave or not.

Is that about right?

See that's where you don't get it.

If he goes 40-3 I don't see why you think he hasn't done enough for the team.
It makes every other job for every other player on his team easier.
And it's frowned upon, not everyone can do this, and it's a huge help.

Fragging bots is not hard, everyone can do it, people just don't do it, where is the moral outcry for this? it is taken as something that has to be endured because it's so common, unlike kill whores who are actively scorned.

I'm not actually a player that only frags pros, I like fragging everything rofl, but I can see where people who are fragging only massive amounts of Pros is still more helpful than 90% of the team mates you usually get who end up stuck in spawn because they die failing to frag players.

I've done this by accident before when I thought more threats were present and was wrong. Not all classes can wreck a level 3 rocket. Assault without RoF is almost always better off targeting individuals. A team with enough supports and enough hacked gear is situation in which an assassin should target individuals. Supports and snipers should almost always kill pros with their juices.

Yes, these are both dumb. The latter is not dumb if a juiced opponent is camping right outside, but otherwise you can just use one of the many exits to get back into the fight even if one is camped.

Throughout the beta I would die frequently enough and think nothing of it, as I was accustomed to other types of games where death is less relevant. Then I started to pay attention to the finer mechanics of the game. Every death gives your opponents money and makes them stronger. Enough deaths and they have an extremely profitable streak that will allow them to juice or allow them to purchase a wide range of game changing things. When I play TF2, Dystopia, or DoD Ill gladly die when there is a possible gain involved. This game is CONSIDERABLY DIFFERENT. It doesnt matter how many kills the opponent has as long as you complete the objective in those games. In this game, the objective is VERY directly tied to your performance and your ability to stay alive (denying the enemy power). Note that Im not particularly arguing for the K in K, Im arguing against the D. Id always rather have a player with lower (or even 0) pro kills on my team than one with an even K ratio thats been feeding the enemy team resources.

It sounds like you may have been playing against me when I was teaching myself to play assassin. If so, then absolutely yes. This is what the class does, and as such this is what I do with it.

I appreciate the compliment!

I disagree with this, but this is not the thread for that discussion.

It needs something. Linked to dash skill or longer cooldown or some other reduction. It is far to good at forgiving mistakes. With armor it makes it impractical to punish an over-commit with how easy escape is.

Claims to the contrary saying "but awful assassins do..." are not valid.