The Kill/Death ratio is the leading cause of Internet Tough Guy and E-Penis syndrome, with people bringing it up as a measure of skill and throwing huge fits whenever someone makes the death number go up by even a tiny percentage of what it normally is. To me, it’s just a massive excuse for drama and causes community problems. Naughty Dog has similar thoughts, and have decided to utterly remove the ratio from the stats.
“We’re not showing K/DR on any of our online stats – it encourages breaking the spirit of the game. So we’re taking a hard line on this to see if it has any effect. A graph or spread should give you all the info you would want. If you really want your ratio, take the time to break out the calculator. There is too much focus on padding this stat to the detriment of the rest of the community and our experience with U2 has been that some players will abuse anything to bump up their KDR. I would have figured that kill-farming would be universally abhorred.”
A major problem in online game communities is people who think stats mean anything. Me personally, the only stat I ever judge anyone by is how many times they have disconnected from a match, and if you’ve left more than 10% of your matches, I’ll probably kick you straight off my team or make a point of ganking you repeatedly to see if you are a ragequitter or just have bad internet.
Maybe outright removing the ability to calculate the score would also be a solution to prevent people abusing K/D, since as the quoted part says, players will abuse anything to bump up their K/D, including through bribes, coercion, and even blackmail. I’ve seen all three of those happen. People will game anything in the rules or in the mechanics with impunity these days.
