Here is an interesting take on the individuality (or lack of thereof) and self-importance of the Killboard stats.
Poetic Discourse: Could Killboards Disincentive Blobbing?
Killboards. Love them or hate them. We all use them. We view them, we link them, we track data using them. They’re here, to stay, and no amount of complaining will make them vanish.
I have no problem with killboards at all. I have a personal board, simply to track my own kills and losses. The only thing I don’t like about my killboard is the Kill/Loss ISK Ratio. It seems a nonsensical statistic, to me. Yet, a lot of people seem to rely on it as some sort of accurate metric of their PvP skills. I would think, when it comes to kill mails, this is the feature that most people rail against. Perhaps because the statistic doesn’t differentiate between scale in fights. The numbers game.
I understand taking the full brunt of any loss. It is my ship after all, and it did get blown up. The cost and loss of that ship resides squarely with myself.
But what about blowing other people’s ships up? Whether I get a solo kill or whether I am part of a 30-player team, any ship killed, I get full credit for that kill when calculating the Kill/Loss ISK Ratio. I’m not quite sure how that makes rational statistical sense.
In a way, the current kill mail system, with its Kill/Loss ISK Ratio, as used by Battleclinic, EVE-Kill, and Griefwatch, encourages large fleets (or blobbing). Why challenge yourself on kills, when you get rewarded the full value of a kill no matter how many people you have in fleet? Maybe a different calculation might encourage smaller fleets, less blobbing. High Kill/Loss ISK Ratios would be more reflective of fleet size on kills.
What if, instead, killboards only gave you a proportion of a kill based on how many people were involved in the kill? For example, if 30-players kill a 30M ISK ship, seems the better metric would be to credit all those thirty people with 1/30th of the kill, or 1M ISK. This might actually create an incentive to form smaller fleets, since high value kills with fewer players would result in better Kill/Loss ISK Ratios.
Consider my October 10th stats via EVE-kill. Based on current calculations my Kill/Loss ISK Ratio is 96.6% (29:1), with 1.35579B ISK in kills, and 45.88M ISK in losses. Yet, most of those kills were gained with large groups of Fweddit-mates. Using the proportional kill calculation, I made 68.38M ISK in kills, which would result in a Kill/Loss ISK Ratio of 65% (1.5:1).
I’m not saying changing kill mail formulas will remove blobbing from the highsec/lowsec/w-space/npc nullsec (sov nullsec is a different beast), but the current crop of killboards certainly use formulas that make zero distinction between large fleets and small gang warfare. If the formula rewarded smaller gangs, then perhaps smaller fleets become more attractive to those people that value their killboard statistics (which is everyone, whether it’s cool or not to admit it.)
You can read more of Poetic Stanziel’s opinions at his Poetic Discourse Blog.
there already is a proportionate system in place, called points. Battleclinic's point system sucks however, and Eve-Kill's was good until they removed it entirely.
I would say the kill/death isk ratio matters when there are not 500 people on your killmails. Last I heard, they stopped development on the EDK, unless someone else picked it up – I've been out of the loop on the development for about a year now.
Points was a good system.
I agree the points system was a good indicator of value vs blob size, but the km's have to retain their actual value, so that "oh look that titan I managed to shoot at gives me a 80 bil isk km on my record"
The reader must simply know what he reads. When i was recruiting i used the info of kb a lot, one must simply know what a very high efficiency means. Solo players will have less isk efficiency. Blobs will have it very high. However, gankers will also have it very high and they don't blob, they simply avoid risk in PVP.
It's not that diferent from the total number of kills. Solo player can have imense skill and experience and kill 30 ships in a month. Other can have 100 kills in an 1 hour op. You could also say that 1 kill from 100 men should only count 0,01 for each one…
Well, point of having it in such way is that blob/noob powerblocks players could of fill like they are worth anything, I have notice it is counted that way about 2 years ago and that were moment when I stoped to care about killboards other than counting machine for my own solo crusaide. And I don't think this will change anytime soon as too many people could realise they are meatbags and don't want to fly more in way they do actually, ie brainless orbit anchor and hit f1. And it would affect all blobers those worse ones like Test/goons and those abit better like nc/aaa as all of their killboards would start to be negative. There are also few other blobers who I don't pointed as they blob with bots and carebears mainly.
The you should also give more points if you are fighting against more targets…Me against 2 others! How is that going to work out. Also if I only kill one of them?!
07
Orions Lord
i liked this.
Good idea, however doing that would require adding different algorithms into your KB's stat generation system, and most owners of KBs are fucking lazy and dont wanna do that.
disagree, if you had eve-kill 'liked' on facebook you would know how hard they try to keep the server running
"those people that value their killboard statistics (which is everyone, whether it’s cool or not to admit it.)"
Not true – I've never cared about killboard stats. Killboards are useful to keep a record of activity that you can look back on and say "ah, good times", but the K/D and ISK statistics are pretty arbitrary, as are any possible adjustment to them. What killboards don't and can't show is how much that ISK loss is a proportion of how much that player can afford to lose. That might actually be useful.
Kill boards don't credit the players who fly support. There are some damn good logi pilots who make their alliance/corp mates look good yet get no credit.
Killboards really don't and never will demostrate ability, I always laugh when someone starts chestbeating over their efficiency or k/d ratio because it proves so little. Sure ideas like this will make them slightly more accurate, but there's so many flaws with them in tems of measuring a pilots ability. Take risk adverse pilots/corps/alliances, if you only engage in fights you know you'll win your gonna have few losses, your kill numbers may not be as high, but your your efficiency will look great, but avoiding challenging fights doesn't make you good. A competent solo or small gang pvper may regularly engage in fights he ought to lose (or at least die) he's gonna have lots of losses, screwing his efficiency, but its more likely that he's far more competent than the risk adverse guy previously mentioned. As someone else mentioned killboards also only take into account what died, not what was in the fight so again that makes stats worthless – just because you only killed one of two guys you were fight (and you got away) the kb will think (and make it look like) it was 1v1.
Killboards are useful for somethings likely someone is to provide a decent fight (do they use falcon alts, blobs, logi, hotdrops etc), their fits, to laugh at bad fits, how risk adverse they're likely to be but are rubbish at showing who is 'better'.
This article only touches the tip of the iceberg of the issue, that's if you care – I personally wish they didnt exist, gameplay would be so much better if people werent concerned about their stats and looking bad and also mean far more variety in people's fits making things more interesting.
TLDR – Killboards are cool but not a way of measuring ability.
an -a- dude was suicide ganked in hisec while mining, he was then summarily kicked from corp.
how fucking funny is that?
Maybe he didn't want to join ops? Maybe he badmouthed his ceo saying fuck you it's my game? Happens all the time
ISK loss ratio or k/d ratio are not relevant. In large groups you can have both of these stats at very high level and still having almost no actual skill.
The only statistics that is relevant is Battleclinic rank. It takes into consideration not only numbers, but also size of the target and attacking ship. If you are brave enough and manage to catch and kill battlecruiser in frig/destroyer size ship alone or with just a few friends, you are rewarded with many rank points. If you just enter battleship, join huge fleet and press F1 as your fc tell you, for most kills – even if they are battleships – you receive so few points, that you need to be on hundreds of killmails to get as many points as dude who kills Sabre in a thrasher. (example – being on a killmail of BS with 100 other guys in BS can give you less than 0,1 points, killing Sabre in Thrasher solo gives you 30 points)
Of course, battleclinic rank can be tricked, flying around lowsec and solokilling cynofrigs in rifter gives you as many points as to te guy who earned them in a regular fight, but still battleclinic rank is most relevant reference of pilot skills.
elite pvp killboard is green
Well, a first attempt at a somewhat readable blog by Mr. Special. Good job.
The points raised are irrelevant. The metric is accurate for what it was intended to do and it applies for every player exactly in the same way and therefore is fair.
What you don't understand is the intention of the measurement. Its intention is to treat everyone equal and to assign them the same value.
When you ask to add another measurement, one which focuses closer on individual pilots, will you create problems similar to those you are seeing, because your measurement will leave out all e-war pilots and logistics pilots. Yet, these pilots can be just as important for the outcome of a fight as the damage dealers.
Now, you can introduce an additional measurement, but in the end will it be very similar to the amount of damage dealt, because e-war and logistics hardly kill a ship but the damage dealers do, which means it all boils down to the amount of damage dealt.
Because you already have the amount of damage dealt on most of the killboards does it already serve a purpose similiar to the one you are looking for and for most players is this good enough.
Also, killboards can only be as accurate as the killmails produced by CCP. If you wanted it any more precise would you have to include the duration of an engagement, because as you already will understand does it not only matter how much damage one deals, but how fast one kills a ship. The faster killer is the better killer.
Until CCP adds more detailed information will you likely have to live with the current killboards.
TL;DR: A readable article, however the chosen subject was not analysed but tossed aside and so not fully comprehended.
I was actually thinking of developing one like this but with the isk dropped counting as a separate metric as I make my isk from pvp it would be nice to know what my share of the drop was. A 1b isk ship kill means nothing to me if 30 people are on it.
Would be for personal use really but if anyone is interested I could maybe let them access it.
Killboard are useful if they capture the kills/losses of the whole fleet – in sov 0.0 that does usually mean that only coalition-level killboards give you an accurate view but in other areas of the game personal (if you strictly stick to solo pvp) or corp-level (if your corp doesn't ahve any friends they fly with) killboards can be meaningful.
to really make a killboard CFC friendly, it really should factor in strategic objective.
To make a killboard CFC friendly, then CFC kill links should be displayed not in green but in pink color, to factor in the CFC faggotry.
I reckon you'd know about that, having been buggered by them repeatedly.
Dividing the value on the killboard of the kill between the involved parties sounds good to me.
If two people kill a Tengu, they each get half the value added to their killboard in kills, if five people, they each get a fifth.
Would certainly change my KB (21b in kills, mostly from fleet fights against CFC/SOLAR) knocking my efficiency under 95%, would be nice to see how well I'm doing outside the blob
I'm with you, but how would you divide points between say, the guy who tackled, vs the DPS, etc.?
Why would you need to?
Multiply zero by a number and it stays zero.
Divide zero by a number (not equal zero!) and it stays zero.
If ISK efficiency has no meaning then it will also have no meaning when you divide it or multiply. It will only stay a meaningless number.
If you believe the number of ships is a meaningful number then you do not want to combine it with a meaningless number.
Ergo the first question is what is important to you? ISKs versus ISKs or ships versus ships?
I can create complicated formulas for you to account for many of the different factors in order to produce a "more meaningful" number. However, you would still only be looking at a board and ask yourself: how am I doing against others?
The answer is: either you win or you lose.
The purpose of blobs is to win, not to make killboards look pretty. Before it becomes a kill message and before it can go on a board do you first need to win. Then can you look at the board for all the vanity in your heart and until eternity. Until the next fight.
dividing by zero….are you trying to break the universe?
You are reading it wrong. "Divide zero by a number…" means "0/x" and not "x/0". It is only meant to show that neither operations (*,/) give a new meaning to a value when a value has no meaning to begin with.
Points are already divided very fairly, such that people who only blob will have to kill much more ships to get the same rank as someone who merely does solo having the same kill/loss ratio. As it is currently it is very fair, skill is always based on how high people's rank are, not how much isk they have killed or their kill ratio. People already avoid blobbing when they are focused on getting to higher ranks, but some people just enjoy fleet ops. I am speaking with reference to battleclinic. I don't really like the other sites…
I was about to say. I'm pretty sure both eve-kill and battleclinic have point systems that can tell you a more accurate story as where someone's PvP skills are.
great article. I agree with some of the comments, Battleclinic does work on a good 'point' system, but alot of people don't use, or simply just hate BC. I can understand why, its slow, you have to type in codes to post mails, it can be annoying to navigate. Eve-kill is better IMO, but is down alot recently..
Also, completely agree that support needs to have a role on getting kills. people are going to hate me for saying this, but on LoL, if you are support and have given a buff to a team member and they kill someone, you get an assist on that kill.
Just something eve could do..
(sorry for even saying LoL)
Good idea.
I'm for it. Good idea.
`BL dude leave the whining to -a-, you guys(plus NCdot) have gained kudos because you fight, outnumbered and dont bitch just get on with it
with that comment you sound like your frustrated which just makes us feel like were doing something right
Riverini, why'd you change the title from "Could Killboards Disincentivise Blobbing?" to "Could Killboards Disincentive Blobbing?" Don't make me sound Panamanian, dude!
It does not matter after one has read your article.
I have said forever making a KB where a DInty who points a Titan and gets 90 bil isk on his stats without doing 1 thing is bullshit.
In my world KB= DMG done+ECM worth certain amount+Tackle certain amount while taking DMG it increases etc and at the end the number on the KM is divided from largest DMG dealer/Best tackler to an Inty doing .0000001% DMG o na titan getting his .00001% share
This would mean solo players get alot of points and ISK as even if they dont get 200 kills at a time.
So a SOlo small gang might have the same amount of ISK destroyed as a guy who blobs structures and ships etc…….Hell the CFC would all have to split there kils 400-700 ways.
This is BntyHunter just ant login
Coming from a Corp perspective I don't see killboards as a way to track who is elite and who isn't. Killboards do a horrible job of showing how good of a pvper you are. However it does show how active a corp is with PvP and can be used to show perspective members what kinda timezones you are most active in, what kinda ships we fly normally and what kinda ships we kill. Battle Reports can give you an idea of a corps PvP style.
It can also be used by leadership to get some (not all) information on who is active and when in regards to PvP, unless they are a logi pilot or fill a different role its a good way to see how active a person can be, what kinda ships they like to fly and other little bits of info that are good but do not fill the full picture.
Are killboards a great way to find the best PvPers? I think not but its a good way to see how active corps and players are and what they fly in regards to management. However its not the end all be all of information nor will it ever be.
the reason I still use battleclinic is that it gives points
higher points for 1v1 that blob
higher points for killing a higher class ship in a smaller ship
my kills:death of isk:isk lost is worse than others, but the rank is based of points, and by points im top 5000 while others with more kills and less losses are 100k + becuase its all blobbing
Only way to fight the blob is with an equal or larger blob. Changing kb calculations won't change that. Those who don't have the blob can flap their vagina's about not getting good fights but they do so docked up. Hard to get kill board stats when docked eh? This has less to do with blobs, and more to do with non-blob kb stats being accurate.
no they just suck makalus cock
-A- there for fights? You'd have to undock once in a while for that.
Only thing I stroke to is how many tackle I kill.
I think pretty much everyone in -A- is there for the stroking balls with fairly equal sides or where we are horribly outnumbered and still pull on each other's bag.
Anything else would require being good at… Eve, -A- doesn't do good…
FTFY
lol – your kb must look like a graveyard right now since HBC is canning your @rse!
-A- is makalu
Im not in -a- but i mean for them to not undock like you say i wonder how they are almost always the number one alliance on the killboards
Its also far easier to fake kills on BC then it is on Eve kill. I see a ton more faked kills on BC then on eve-kill.
BL Dude, don't take CFC fag comments into consideration. All comments referring to "-a- doesn't undock" just reflect CFC frustration from the fact that we don't give easy kills like they do. If we undocked vs their blob they'd just write "hahaha -a- is stupid because they undocked".
You haven't noticed the new Postal WiS minigame yet? How else could AAA possibly be racking up kills without undocking?
it's ok, we're making up for it with the easily taken sov you're giving us.
wrong BL/NCdot have CFC respect, -a- doesnt, simple as
there is no HBC, only CFC and pets
Ok – you keep believing that! – Now where's my tin foil hat???