Slashdot Mirror
Are Game Stats Important to You?
Nehle asks: "In almost every new multi-player game there is a way of keeping statistics about the games that are being played. Whether it's fan-based services or a service created by the game creator. Unreal Tournament 2004 can write nice HTML files for you, Bungie keep an insane amount of stats about games played over X-Box Live. For my favorite shooter - Enemy Territory, there is an application called Enemy Territory Teamstats and I wrote this little script to keep track of my games.
Are stats any important to the average /. reader? Is it interesting how many times you shot 1337h4x0rg4m3r in the head, or is winning all that counts? Do you even want people to know if you lost 14 games in a row?"
I play TFC and I care more about the fun i have playing then my stats
~ Mooga
My University had a CS server running on the network.
There were stats and it got really competetive.
Some people were totally manic about it, we did a corolation between high scorers and people who failed their courses, it was ugly.
Anyway I consistently had the highest games won average and kill/death (and kpm which shows I'm not a camper!)ratio but could never seem to reach #1.
There were roomates who would put one computer on as idle and the other one would just shoot him in the head for a while till other people joined.
By the end of the semester someone broke 5000 kills.
It was pretty unifying, but I think it might have discouraged new players.
It was good at forcing people to consistently use names which helped to keep names and faces lined up.
To me, and I think most, Stats are useful just as a cool little thing to look at. It's always fun to try and beat everone else at a particular statistic, but outside of that, I don't see much point for stats except as something to look at.
I already know i'm going to hell, now i'm just trying to get cable down there.
when I first started playing Unreal Tournament, stats were the crack that kept me playing constantly. I'd check my stats 3-4 times a day. Especially if you were ranked well, it was very, very addictive.
By UT2003 though, when I realized how little stats had to do with how well you played, I used them only to actually review performance.
I make no claim that I am an average gamer guy though, I was pretty focused on competition at a high level.
...is who won. Stats just provide the secrets of how to beat you. If any profesional player is smart, they would never let their stats (weapon percentages, etc) out the door. Show up at the LAN party only known for winning, kick ass, erase the stats and walk away.
You can learn alot about both your game and how others play it through stats. I'll use CS as an example because most are familiar with it. The 2 elements of stats are ingame and out of game. The ingame stats like statsme are very nice to have, it lets you see right away how you were hitting and killing/being killed. They should almost be mandatory on public servers these days. As for the web-based stats (a la psychostats), I remember seeing an update that included a body diagram with hit percentages. Pieces like that allow you to really see where your aim is going as well as look at the aim of good players (do they go straight for the head or do they just go for the torso and make sure to send enough bullets).
It's always nice to have the other stats available like accuracy with different guns and who killed who how many times...and what could be more fun than friendly competition for who can be #1 on stats with the crappy guns.
Bottles.
I'm a bit surprised nobody has mentioned the stats in the GTA games yet. In GTAIII it was just something cool to look at. Vice City expanded the stats to include things like best times in all the races, amount of time spent flying, etc.
Now in San Andreas, it's just amazing the amount of stats that are kept. Not just your character stats like muscle, fat, stamina, sex appeal etc, but stuff like how many times you've failed a mission, how many times you've been to hospital. How many good and bad dates you've been on. How many times you've been laid. The longest you've managed to survive with 5 stars worth of police chasing you. How much cash you've spent on haircuts or tattoos or property or food or clothes.
Adds another level of depth to the game IMHO.
The only thing I'm concerned with, and the only reason I play games in the first place, is having fun. Does having my stats tracked make it more fun? Since I'm not in the top 5% or so that would get noticed for having the best stats, it usually doesn't add anything. I prefer teamplay-oriented games (like the Tribes series or UT2k4's onslaught) where individual performances don't matter as much as the result for the team. Even if you're not a leet killer, you can still play defense and help out your team.
Call of Duty stats are far more accurate than Enemy Territory stats, which are warped to hell with all these cheats. That game is officially doomed on the network. There is not nearly enough patches, and there are far too many hacks immune to punkbuster.
"Infinite landmines"
"Airstrike thru walls"
"1 hit kills"
"Super fast ammo charges"
"Starting campaign with top level abilities"
I am not making this stuff up. I talk to enough ET admins who monitor their servers up close. Even they don't know how to actively ban and kick 24/7. As if ET pro bringing down everyone's performance wasn't enough to affect stats.
On the other hand, I find stats detract fromt he game. People start worrying about the little numbers and stop having fun just playing. and if you're teammates with them, you either have to start putting absurd importance on them or they act like assholes to you. It detracts from the game experience. I don't want an overarching experience, I want a game. If I want a persistant experience I'll play an MMO.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?