Killer Stats
By Feylan
Recently there has been a great deal of discussion on
the forums over the tracking of player statistics. These
discussions came to a head in the thread How I Learned to
Stop Worrying and Love The Killboard where the original
poster started with the premise that killboards can enhance
gameplay in a number of ways. Briefly, the original poster’s
points were that killboards:
1. Help to identify spies.
2. Promote competition.
3. Help to distinguish a pilot’s ability.
4. Prevent or reduce baseless bragging.
5. Add to immersion by creating a history of battles.
6. Provide useful statistics for balancing ships and
weapons.
Killboard Quick Facts:
• No official information from CIG regarding
Killboard implementation exists.
• Rob Irving has stated he is “not a huge
fan” of Killboards.
• Ben Lesnick has stated that any
Killboard-related features are TBA.
4
The discussion has gone on for 40 pages at the time of
writing, and a number of good points have been raised by
both sides of the debate. Interestingly, the split between
supporters of and protestors against killboards is fairly
even, with no clear majority one way or the other amongst
participants in the thread.
One poster opposing killboards, the PvA player and PvE
advocate Charlie Hobbes, wrote: “I am not opposed to
killboards because I don’t want my stats showing, however
good or bad they turn out to be once the game is out, I am
opposed to killboards because they promote the wrong
kind of behaviour in a game that is supposed to be all about
immersion and doing things ingame for ingame reasons, not
for stats or K/D ratios.”
Many other anti-killboard posters in the thread echoed this
sentiment, saying that it would be immersion breaking to
include a killboard and that it would negatively affect player
behavior, in so far as promoting kill stealing, targeting of
weaker players, and a lack of team work.
Cpt Veritus, a PvP proponent, responded that, “The single
salient point made by those who want to keep the killboard
out of the game is that it promotes targeting weaker
players to pad stats … Kill board or not this behavior
will happen, so not having a kill board removes tools and
enjoyment for some people and gains nothing.”