John, keep up the healthy discussion. There's nothing wrong with providing different viewpoints. I'm also not arguing for or against this particular stat tracking mechanism. But I do believe that personal statistics can help a player improve... and improve in ways that will help their team.

Originally Posted by John CANavar

This is the center of discussion. From the very beginning, I am trying to prove that being effective has nothing to do with numbers you can get from stats.

I disagree here. While being effective isn't based solely on understanding personal stats, they can provide insight into areas that need improvement.

There is NO STAT which can tell you how well you did for your squad.

You're probably correct, but that doesn't mean there aren't stats that can help you improve and be more effective for your squad.

Take an AT guy. Lets say he is in your squad. The guy has terrific talent with SRAW and can hit a fly in mid air. A vodnik full of enemy soldiers heading to your flag, you are ordering AT to engage immediately but he is late and enemy deploys/captures flag. He had an excellent record with SRAW but failed this very important assignment.

He needs to be more effective and he needs practice but stats dont tell it. How it will be reflected in his stat record? It WILL NOT ! He will take lots of other vodniks in other times to put multiple +4 in his Kill number.

Now take another AT player. Lets say she has no impressive stats with SRAW and nowhere near the skill level of first guy. In a similar situation, you give the same order to her and she nails down that vodnik, defends the flag.

She is effective and doesnt need practice but stats tell a different story. How it will be reflected there? It WILL NOT ! She will miss lots of other vodniks and will have no impressive accuracy or K/D ratios like the first guy.

If you're judging a player on one particular instance, then it's going to be hard to tell who will be effective and who will not. What you need to look at are trends and averages.

STATS dont tell you if you were at the right place, at the right time and did the right thing following your orders.

Agreed. But that doesn't mean that understanding which weapons you need to improve in won't help you make that shot "when you're int he right place, at the right time."

You can look at it another way... maybe I'm not efficient with a particular weapon because I'm not using it right. Maybe I'm not in the right place at the right time when I use a certain weapon. Maybe I suck at AT because I don't use it at the right time in the right place.

But just like Drunk and Strag mentioned, you and your teammates can tell it.

This works if you're always playing with the same players in the same squad with the same SL. Stats provide you with trends and averages. Teammates provide you with situational feedback.

In my opinion, TG doesnt need players with K/D of 100:1. TG doesnt need excellent assault. sniper, medic, engineer, support, spec ops, AT players. TG needs excellent team players who have condifence in their team skills before their kill skills. If we all want this, we need to make it VERY clear, be VERY firm and idealist. We should not only say it on forums or in-game but also take actions to enforce and promote it. I think stats dont fit well under this intention.

SMs or non-SM, I say lets promote concepts like team spirit, companionship, duty, honor, sacrifice, objective, mission, tactical and smart play over personal skill. Numbers cannot help us in this.

I agree that TG should always promote team spirit, companionship, duty, honor, sacrifice, objective, mission, tactical and smart play over personal skill. But that doesn't mean we should not promote individual improvement.

Personal skill will not give us quality game. I simply cannot see how it will help our community. On the other hand, there is a risk, small or big, that it will be harmful because accept it or not, some gamers here will use it to further focus on the kill.

I disagree. While personal skill on its own will not provide us a quality game, personal skill on top of team play will provide the highest quality game. If you match up two squads, both with equivalent team play skills and one team with practiced and trained personal skills, I can only imagine who will come out on top. We should be promoting improvements to every aspect of the game.

Why we are taking that risk? As Drunk mentioned, no one will leave TG if we have no stats, in fact having no stats is a great filter stopping selfish players from getting in here, but if we have stats and things start to go wrong, we might have a hard time correcting it and some may leave the TG then. It just doesnt add up...

There's an unfair relationship between stats and selfish players. That's almost like saying all snipers are not team players, when in fact we do have some great snipers who are great team players.

I have utmost confidence in you and other TG admins. You are the guys who build up this community. You should not take my comments as lack of confidence in your abilities or intentions. I tried to analyze the question from a different angle, played the devil's advocate and decision is upto you.

I will support whatever you decide and even if things go wrong, I will be there to help community. Unless anyone else wishes to continue, I guess I am pretty much done putting arguments on this issue.

I expect nothing less from you.

Originally Posted by John CANavar

a) Stats will be personal, not public, so you will not know who played what. You can always ask but then why would you need a stat? Ask anyone on TG now and they will tell you what kit they usually play and good at.

Not always true. I consider myself pretty good at the assault and AT class. But statistics may show something different. They may both be my top two proficiencies, but I could be twice as proficient with the assault than the AT. Averages & trends will show me that.

c) Even if you had a chance to pick up soldiers for your squad, I would pick up a good team player over one with impressive stats.

I would pick the best team player that has the better skills.

It's not team player vs. skilled player.... we're trying to help team players become better skilled players.

As you can see, I still dont think that stat system will make a positive contribution to team play. On the other hand, there is a risk that it will make a negative one. This is my argument: Why risk something as important as teamplay when there is no chance of getting an improvement but a risk to fail?

Stats on their own won't increase teamwork. Stats can help an individual improve to be more effective as a teammate and increase the overall quality of play.

From the very beginning, I am waiting for someone to put a solid example of how stats will help improving team play? Did I miss it or we couldnt find one?

Let's say that I'm a SL and that there are statistics that show my number of deaths as SL average around 10 deaths / 60 minutes. Now I dive deeper into these stats and it shows me that I have 25 deaths / 60 minutes when playing assault class as SL. That shows me I might be running head strong into battle too often when assault as SL. I've just learned something that could help my squad.

The same logic could be applied to a squad member. The understanding of one's self can greatly improve their effectiveness and add to the quality of the game.

Originally Posted by John CANavar

Not necessarily. My example was not a case of mistake. It was a case of disobeying orders and preferring to be at a position that will bring more kills. If the guy were guarding the position he was assigned to, he would almost certainly get that vodnik.

A case of disobeying orders should have nothing to do with stats. If he's looking for more kills, personal stats won't change this player. These players need to be reported and removed from the server.

I would also question why a player is so inclined to increase stats that only they have visibility to? These players would be more likely to worry about their k/d ratio that's shown at the end of each round.

And by the way, these are not hypothetical situations. It happened to me several times when I was leading a squad. There are some players in our community who are using SL as mobile spawn point and that's it. Spawn, run and gun, die, spawn...

They spawn on you and shoot anything in their sight without a second thought. You say form on me, and they are running 20 feet ahead of you, alarming the enemy, risking the mission. Why? I tell you why, to get more kills. I try to describe them concepts like fire discipline, cohesion, pointman, element of surprise, contact report etc. It works sometimes, a total frustration in other times. Now the last thing these type of gamers need is numbers they can play with. It will attract new kill-oriented players and slow down the conversion/training of the ones already playing on our servers from kill-oriented to team/objective/mission-oriented.

These players should be reported and dealt with by admins.