Pilot experience and skill level

[Lusche]

The "what a crap thread" and the claim "it's easy for the average player to get 200 perks" inspired me to do another kind of statistical analysis I haven't done this way before. In my search for Mr Average, and to see how much pilots do improve over time I took a look at all the pilot's of tour 148.
I divided the pilot IDs in to groups depending on how many tours they played in the 12 tours (1 year) before tour 148. It's not perfect, as some players did change their pilot ID, but you will see it had not that much of an impact.

Thanks to Kvuo's suggestion, I did not determine the averages of the key fighter mode stats but the median- that is the value where 50% of the pilots are below and 50% are above that number.



In other words, even among pilots that have been around for at least 10 tours (and often many years), 50% had less than 0.75K/D, less than 0.5 kills/sortie and less than 3.02 kills/hour

[zack1234]

hurrah! well done everyone

[StokesAk]

This is a very interesting statistic. I wonder how many months it takes our stats to level off..

Thanks for posting!

[Butcher]

I said I was an average pilot not trying to be a smartarse, i was being realistic in my own sense. Certainly am not an average pilot in the sense of the pie graphs, but compared to the average veteran pilot I suppose I am.

[zack1234]

i agree

[Dragon]

Woot, I'm spot on with a 7-9 month old.   

[RTHolmes]

interesting

since you have the data gathered already, any chance of seeing the mode graph? very often when people say "average" I suspect they are actually referring to the mode.

[A8TOOL]

The rich should pay more
The fast should run slower
The smart should think less
and all games should end in ties.
We can all be our weakest link.
It's the right thing to do.
           signed       BHO


It seems in reality most pilots don't increase in skill level over time. You would think they would but they don't.

 It seems most get better from where they started but hit their pinnacle of learning 3 months in and can not progress from that point. Reasons for this might be laziness, unwilling to expand on their skill level or born to make the same mistakes over and over looking for a different result....which I think Einstein said was crazy.

Just seen one unmentioned squad with MANY long time players bring a crapload of attack planes to take a base with just one goon and fail. Not so much because it was a bad plan but because most of them can't directly hit a thing. (plane or ground object)

One guy fully loaded should be able to kill any ground object in one pass except a shore bat or HQ that I can think of. Shore bats take me 3 passes in an F4U 1000's, rocks and guns. ... and I'm definitely average.

One guy should be able to kill more than one plane without running out of ammo and calling RTB before the reach the second.

Just an observation.

[Ardy123]

Skill level doesn't improve because players aren't incentivized to improve. Why put the effort if the same result can be accomplished simply by having more numbers?

[A8TOOL]

Met a guy a few months ago who had played the game for over a year and did not know he could set his views apart from the default to his liking.

Another had no clue you could set convergences and yet another decade old player did not know he could set enemy skins to whatever he wanted.

Just to set record straight on myself. I still don't know how to use most dot commands......but I never miss a shot because of it heheh

[RTHolmes]

Met a guy a few months ago who had played the game for over a year and did not know he could set his views apart from the default to his liking.

thats crazy, its a big disadvantage for the newbs. there should be sensible default views. (its been wishlisted a coupla times ...)

[Slade]

Very nicely done!  

I would add that the kills\sortie can be skewed via the rearm pad use\abuse.  Perhaps, once someone learns to game this stat it changes therein.

Rearm pad should only become enabled when fighter hangers down.  

[RTHolmes]

nah splash'n'dash was common in WWII, nothing wrong with rearming.

[Lusche]

Just a remark on general skill level and effort: Even if all players would start to show much more effort to "get better", the median values wouldn't me not that much different in my opinion - because no matter what, there will always be a minority of players being much better than the majority. And in a combat game like AH, the majority of players are mostly the victims of a minority. (And this is exactly why it is so very important to have other means of 'winning' than just shooting the enemy down, by capturing bases and winning the war)

If we look at the kill balance, that is all kills of a player - all his deaths, only about 25% of all players have a positive result - only one quarter kills more than being killed. Those 25% feast on the other 75%.

And Butcher - you are still calling "average" what clearly isn't average. Someone with K/D of 7+, and similar levels in the other kill stats, is not "average" veteran, when the average veteran (those guys right in the middle of the rankings) is struggling to get his K/D to 1.0.
You may rate yourself not as a very good pilot on the raw skill scale (from 0 to perfect), but compared to the utter majority of long time players, you are still way beyond them. They just suck more than you.
I know that feeling quite well: I don't realyl think of me as a very good fighter pilot, because I know there are like 100 players that can consistently kick me around at will. Oh my god, I suck! But then that also means at the same time that there are like 3900 who can't

I can only emphasize again: The skill level of the mass of AH players is frequently overrated. Because they are anonymous, we only see and talk about the very small number of top pilots (maybe 50 or so) and their heroic feats, not the ~4000 or so ordinary guys making up the arena.

[Dead Man Flying]

It seems in reality most pilots don't increase in skill level over time. You would think they would but they don't.

I think that pilots increase in skill over time, and the data provided by Lusche support that conclusion.  Every metric improves over time.