K/D: then vs now

[Lusche]

I'm getting the urge to gather a lot of data and putting it into simple graphs again...

must...resist...urge...

[Bronk]

I'm getting the urge to gather a lot of data and putting it into simple graphs again...

must...resist...urge...

<----Give in to the dark side.

[Steve]

Yes K/D average of the populous has to be the same (1:1)

Actually they are probably very close but not the same and it would not be 1:1.

There are handful of times each day where someone dies but no-one gets credit for the kill.

Example:  1 guy shoots your plane and give you a PW so you head for home. While you are rtb a friendly kills the guy who shot you. You then fail to make it home and there is no-one close enough to you for them to get the proxy when you die.

Example:  you get disco'd with no-one around and you had not been pinged.

Example:  you hit a mountain on climbout with no one around.

So the K/D of the overall arena is less than 1:1.

 

[Urchin]

Do it Lusche!  I'd love to see some data to back up my assertion that the "average" pilot in this game has gotten worse and worse, getting exponentially worse in the past 3 years or so.  

The overall K/D of the arena has to be 1, but I imagine that the standard deviation has gotten larger and larger.  I might try to think about how to present that data, but I imagine you'd do a better job than I ever would.

Good point Steve.  So yea, the "true" K/D is less than 1.  Not sure how much less, nor how one might go about finding that information.

[Steve]

The overall K/D of the arena has to be 1,

See my previous post.

[Lusche]

Do it Lusche!  I'd love to see some data to back up my assertion that the "average" pilot in this game has gotten worse and worse, getting exponentially worse in the past 3 years or so.  

The problem is, with the brute-force method I'm using I could do such a thing only for a current tour and for tour 89, not even two years ago.

[grizz441]

I don't think a high K/D means "good."  How can it with so many players being nothing more than "dead money" in the pot?  There's also a number of pilots who can kick the crap out of me but who do not achieve a K/D of 1 because they constantly put themselves, intentionally, into impossible situations.

There is a correlation between skill and K/D, but not a great one.  But yeah, this has nothing to do with skill, only K/D and the percentiles only refer to K/D, not Skill Percentile.

Actually they are probably very close but not the same and it would not be 1:1.

There are handful of times each day where someone dies but no-one gets credit for the kill.

Example:  1 guy shoots your plane and give you a PW so you head for home. While you are rtb a friendly kills the guy who shot you. You then fail to make it home and there is no-one close enough to you for them to get the proxy when you die.

Example:  you get disco'd with no-one around and you had not been pinged.

Example:  you hit a mountain on climbout with no one around.

So the K/D of the overall arena is less than 1:1.

 

Yeah you're right.  It's actually closer to 1 in Aces High since there were no proxies in Air Warrior.  If you are on a guy's 6 and he crashes and you hadn't shot him yet you get no kill...another reason K/D is higher here.  (just thought of that)

But for all intensive purposes you can assume 1:1, it's probably like 1:1.05 or something.  The majority of deaths, somebody gets credit for it.  I doubt noobs are off crashing into mountains thousands of deaths in the middle of nowhere skewing this ratio.

[save]

Comparing with WB3 , kills are much easier here - specially at range , version 2.5 was about the same as in here imo.

I find long range kills much easier than WB.

[RedTop]

K/D is subjective. As was stated...Several guys in this thread can kill anyone in the arena 1v1...or even 2 and 3 v 1. Yet thier K/D is very low.

I am very average at BEST...probably more of the low end...and my K/D is 22 in fighter....why? Cause I fly a specific way when I want to just see how far I can take it. (personal score) Most of the time Im dieing in attack mode and have no intention of attacking crap other than another plane. 

[Lusche]

K/D is subjective. As was stated...Several guys in this thread can kill anyone in the arena 1v1...or even 2 and 3 v 1. Yet thier K/D is very low.

Indeed: Individual K/D is very subjective and only a very rough hint on a players skill - and this only if you take a look at all the other factors (for example the planes he's flying)

However, it would be nice to see the overall distribution of K/D ratio. Even more interesting to see if that had changed over the years.

If there were any changes, they would have reasons, and we could wonderfully argue about them for a long time

[A8HatTrick]

Uter and complete BS.

Just to give you an example of how biased this opinion is K/D average of either game has to be the same, simply because for every death there is a kill.  

The age range in AH is the same as it was in WB.  

The total number of people playing AH is almost the same as what WB's was when I left. (Ok, was basing that on a 10 year old memory, and the dedicated size of the arena's at that time)

Ows something to WB? I think not, AH is an evolution of WB because I was the creator and designer of both. But WB  more realistic? Not in any portion of any model including damage modeling. (Was just saying what you learned in WB as a game designer and programer, what we all learned in WB's as pilots makes for a better GAME in AH.. didn't realize you felt differently)

Once again, nothing is different now then when I was running WB's.The same goals apply now as then.  I am always amazed how people can say the quality is less, when all the people play here and not in WB. What do you really believe a people prefer to play a game that has less quality and is more expensive? Because we are more expensive than  WB.  Umm... When I played WB's It cost me $100 a month until 2.0 time frame I think, and I stated in my original post that AH is a better game start to finish, my point was the quality of the gamer and the community due to its relatively small size up to 2.0 and what I perceived to be much older gamers in WarBirds made the game in that aspect better... Sorry If I ruffled any feathers. Was not my intentions. I have given your games well over 7 years of patronage, and alot of those on Hourly Rates. Saying AH's has more players in an arena and what I perceived to be more of a twitch gamer aspect than WWII aviation enthusiast feel to it. I still feel that Aces High does not hold the same quality of gamer that the original War Birds did.  Now I left after 2.01 because the quality of the game (due to the quality of player) was going down once the pricing model changed and the arenas got bigger.  I came back years later to Aces High because YOUR name was on it and on the book sitting on my desk... Warbirds, the Story so Far.  

HiTech

 

[NoBaddy]

...He mentioned that it was very rare for someone to get 9 kills in a sortie in AW, and that he sees it a lot in AH....

I, for one, can remember plenty of folks that could kill that many in a sortie in AW. The first to come to mind are the guy that wrote this and the guy that gathers the model data for this one.

[Zazen13]

As a bonafied survivalist I can tell you that while relatively high K/D's may seem to be more prevalent in terms of plurality in AH, they were far, far easier to attain in AW. My best camp in AW was 584 kills to 3 deaths; 2 augers and 1 to a "party wagon" buff gun crew, and I had many camps along those lines. My best in AH, just off the top of my head, was less than 30 to 1 K/D, my average tour much lower than that. It really has nothing to do with the relative quality of the pilots per se. It's the HO's and collisions more than anything else that are responsible for it. Simply put, there's more mitigating factors somewhat beyond your control that can ruin your flight in AH.

The perception that K/D is focused upon more in AH is an illusion created by the arbitrary separation of "Fighter" and "Attack" sorties. It's only evident when looking at someones scoresheet and noticing the statistical disparity between the two categories then taking the amalgam. If you combined all attack and fighter sorties for a given pilot I think you would find the average K/D worse in AH than in AW. In AW K/D was really the only metric able to be calculated by the available in-game statistics, in AH it is but one of several and the least competitive in terms of the ranking mechanism.

[grizz441]

As a bonafied survivalist I can tell you that while high K/D's may seem to be more common in terms of plurality in AH, they were far, far easier to attain in AW. My best camp in AW was 584 kills to 3 deaths; 2 augers and 1 to a "party wagon" buff gun crew, and I had many camps along those lines. My best in AH, just off the top of my head, was less than 30 to 1 K/D, my average tour much lower than that. It really has nothing to do with the relative quality of the pilots per se. It's the HO's and collisions more than anything else that are responsible for it. Simply put, there's more mitigating factors somewhat beyond your control that can ruin your flight in AH.

The perception that K/D is focused upon more in AH is an illusion created by the arbitrary separation of "Fighter" and "Attack" sorties. It's only evident when looking at someones scoresheet and noticing the statistical disparity between the two categories then taking the amalgam. If you combined all attack and fighter sorties for a given pilot I think you would find the average K/D worse in AH than in AW. In AW K/D was really the only metric able to be calculated by the available in-game statistics, in AH it is but one of several and the least competitive in terms of the ranking mechanism.

I think the original argument is that it's easier to get more kills in a sortie.  This should probably be called K/S: then vs now.  I think it's easier here than AW.

[Zazen13]

I think the original argument is that it's easier to get more kills in a sortie.  This should probably be called K/S: then vs now.  I think it's easier here than AW.

Perhaps, but there was no way to measure K/S in AW so that ascertion is pretty subjective. I don't think that was the case for me personally. But, I was a Fw190-A8 pilot primarily in AW the last 10 years and I fly a relatively short-clipped/legged plane in AH. In AH K/S is far more a function of the plane you fly than anything else as there is a big difference in ballistics, ammoload and endurance between individual aircraft. In AW the difference in those categories was relatively minimal by comparison.