The Myth of the KDR

[gison]

Good job man!

[MightyMicah]

Good job man!

Thanks! I appreciate the support!

[Gideon Jean-Claude]

Great thread MM that I can relate to all to well. Had someone the other day inspect me on my lvl 5 twink mage and say, "Your KDR >-<", but I've only pvp'd with 10-15's with the exception of one 6, and one 10 dex bear with forg would farm kills off me while I talked with other players instead of trying the other 10+'s.

[MightyMicah]

I hate to bump my own thread, but I've read so much crap on the forums lately about who has this and that KDR. Please read.

[Mercantilism]

Please do read. So many of my friends get rushed by supposedly "respected" and "pro" players of the community when they join a game with a crap KDR char with bad gear.

[aav5224]

i dont like being rushed

[aav5224]

my kd is still pwro

[Gragorak]

I hate to bump my own thread, but I've read so much crap on the forums lately about who has this and that KDR. Please read.

I feel your pain.

The funny thing is that people get so worked up on K/D ratio. It really does not mean much for skill. There's plenty of kill farming going on still.

Total kills might represent some degree of experience. Experience is correlated with skill strongly, but at the same time, with kill farming being what it is. The other is that some people do inevitably have slower learning curves. The point is that you should not get too worked up over these. In fact, I might regard a person with a 1 to 1 K/D ratio more highly than a person with a very high ratio. The reason being that they are more likely to have fought very tough opponents and are more likely to be more skilled in this regard than someone with a really high K/D ratio. Some of the greatest players of PL PvP did not have very high K/D ratios.

Source: Personal experience. I may have been an average skilled player (in my opinion I was anyways), but I do have enough experience to know who was a capable player and who was not. Let me put it this way, you won't know how good your opponent is, until you fight them many times.

I see where you're coming from, but I'd have to disagree. Nine times out of ten when I fight someone with a 1/1 KDR, I'm able to beat them. Then again, I mostly twink so I suppose that could change things.

Ah, the hypocrisy.

[MightyMicah]

Ah, the hypocrisy.

There is no hypocrisy. I made this thread to raise awareness about what KDR means and doesn't mean. In my experience, I have been able to beat those with 1/1 KDR's nine times out of ten. This doesn't mean that everyone with a 1/1 KDR can be beaten nine out of ten times. There are exceptions to every rule. (I fought a Mage the other week with a negative KDR who beat me as often as I beat him.)

Here's a quote from this thread:

While, as a general rule, a good pvper will, in fact, tend to have a better KDR, that is not always the case.

Please spend more time reading my thread with an open mind to learn something, and less time trying to find an error.

[Caiahar]

Ah, the hypocrisy.

There is no hypocrisy. I made this thread to raise awareness about what KDR means and doesn't mean. In my experience, I have been able to beat those with 1/1 KDR's nine times out of ten. This doesn't mean that everyone with a 1/1 KDR can be beaten nine out of ten times. There are exceptions to every rule. (I fought a Mage the other week with a negative KDR who beat me as often as I beat him.)

Here's a quote from this thread:

While, as a general rule, a good pvper will, in fact, tend to have a better KDR, that is not always the case.

Please spend more time reading my thread with an open mind to learn something, and less time trying to find an error.

I remember this awesome thread as well

And erm...you just quoted yourself after Gragroaks quote :/

[Burningdex]

There is no hypocrisy. I made this thread to raise awareness about what KDR means and doesn't mean. In my experience, I have been able to beat those with 1/1 KDR's nine times out of ten. This doesn't mean that everyone with a 1/1 KDR can be beaten nine out of ten times. There are exceptions to every rule. (I fought a Mage the other week with a negative KDR who beat me as often as I beat him.)

Here's a quote from this thread:


Please spend more time reading my thread with an open mind to learn something, and less time trying to find an error.

Was dat char with neg kd me? havent played 51 in ages

[Gragorak]

There is no hypocrisy. I made this thread to raise awareness about what KDR means and doesn't mean. In my experience, I have been able to beat those with 1/1 KDR's nine times out of ten. This doesn't mean that everyone with a 1/1 KDR can be beaten nine out of ten times. There are exceptions to every rule. (I fought a Mage the other week with a negative KDR who beat me as often as I beat him.)

Yeah, but there's clearly a contradiction between the general spirit of this thread (KDR isn't so important measure of skill and it shouldn't be something to care about) and that your old response to WhoIsThis. WhoIsThis said that "KDR doesn't mean much for skill", and you disagreed. Now you're here bumbing your thread which clearly states that KDR doesn't really tell much about skill. It looks like there's a huge contradiction between your reply to WhoIsThis in Caztori's KDR thread and this thread, don't you think?

So many things affect KDR, that it just doesn't tell much about skill.

Actions that make KDR better:

• Boosting.
• Farming ungeared noobs.
• Refusing to fight more skilled players.
• Never playing FFA/CTF.
• Leaving FFA/CTF games if is in the losing team/team members aren't the most skilled veterans out there.
• Only calling weaker players in GO matches.
• Using forgotten (prior nerf)/halloween/plat pack gear against people with legit gear.
• Teaming & spawning.
• Playing against lower levels.

Actions that make KDR worse:

• Playing lots of FFA/CTF.
• Playing mainly with more skilled players, aka trying to improve own skill level and tactics.
• Playing against higher level opponents.
• Using legit gear against forgotten bows/halloween gear/plat packs.
• Trying to fight back while getting teamed and/or spawned.

Can you honestly say that KDR reflects players skill at all? At least at my main pvp range, 22-26, good players tend to have KDR 1.0-2.0, while those who have higher tend to be less skilled. Foxsmash for example is probably the best 22 fox post-nerf, and his KDR is about 1.0. Many foxes who have KDR 3.0+ can only dream about killing him.

Of course this could be completely different at sewer pvp, I haven't played that level range much.

Please spend more time reading my thread with an open mind to learn something, and less time trying to find an error.

I've read this thread thoroughly twice now, once when you originally posted it and yesterday. I don't feel I'd need to spend more time with it. It's well written post with good thoughts, but is is in great contradiction with your response to WhoIsThis few weeks ago.

[dudetus]

If rushing is PvP and afterwards using things to kdr at pvp, how does dodge kill many achievements?

[MightyMicah]

Gregorak: You have stacked the deck on your side and refused to acknowledge the point of this thread, and the message I was conveying in WhoIsThis' thread. There remains no contradiction. Allow me to elaborate.

First of all, there are two main ideas in this thread. Once you understand these, you'll understand what I'm saying. These two ideas are:
1. KDR does not always have a direct link to skill. (Notice the qualification "does not always." This is an exception, not a rule, that I am expressing.)
2. KDR definitely means something, but not what people generally say it means. (See #4 in my original thread. That was dedicated to the idea that KDR does mean something.)

In this thread, my goal was to bring to light that you should not simply chalk up a KDR to meaning skill, or no skill directly proportional to good KDR, or bad KDR. Instead, you should read KDR's very carefully to find our what they do tell you. In WhoIsThis' thread I did just that. Most times, (9 out of 10 to be excact) when I face an opponent who has a 1/1 KDR, I can beat them. Why doesn't this contradict this thread? Because I read their KDR in order to deduce this. Seemingly, I chalked them up to having no skill due to a bad KDR, but that isn't quite the case. Most talented pvpers can experience every negative effect that you listed, and still maintain higher than a 1/1 KDR. Granted, there ARE exceptional cases that I listed in my original thread, but those are exceptions. This is why I quoted myself (Shadowstar) in the previous comment I posted.

The idea is that you can never know anything for certain by looking at KDR. Because you can't know anything for certain, you should not assume anything to be true. However, you should do your best to try and deduce what a KDR means. Just don't judge so shallow as "Good KDR means good pvper bad KDR means bad pvper."

It seems you have misrepresented my thread to mean, "Stop judging by KDR." When, in fact, my thread is saying something more like, "Stop judging falsely by KDR."

[MightyMicah]

If rushing is PvP and afterwards using things to kdr at pvp, how does dodge kill many achievements?

Insightful as always, dude xD

Was dat char with neg kd me? havent played 51 in ages

No, but if I fought you, it would have been

I remember this awesome thread as well

And erm...you just quoted yourself after Gragroaks quote :/

Hehe...I was quoting it to reinforce that the original statement of this thread acknowledged the rule

[Caiahar]

Dang it, my rhino has 1.6/1.8 KD
I guess I suck..






All for one, and one for all.

[dudetus]

Insightful as always, dude xD

Yes, Ik I can be a nuisance sometimes but there's also that serious part in me who wants to contribute to the discussion