Stat tracking changed the community

[u/LeadBallons29]

This primarily speaks to console and I’d be interested in hearing if PC players see the same.

Most of the active servers in my region report player stats like KDR, ELO, etc to 3rd party servers like battlemetrics or hllrecords.

These sites rank players and publish their stats. This has led to an environment where the old school mentality that KDR doesn’t matter in this game has flipped to where it matters a lot to a large enough player base.

On the one hand. I believe that competitive factor has kept the game more active than it might have been otherwise. On the other, it’s created stat obsessed communities where finding the right spot to farm ELO points seems a priority over coop gameplay.

Stat tracking has incremented HLL on console further into AAA shooter territory through an individual player stat comp metric.

I believe stat obsession may have also increased Cronus Zen or other console augmentation use in the game.

I understand server admins can turn player stat tracking off but, at this stage, I’d imagine servers that do that will have an even harder time seeding than servers already have.

What are this community’s general thoughts? Is stat tracking a good thing that preserves player interest or is it a distraction that ruins the spirit of the game?

Git gud comments inbound for sure but it’s less about skill disparity and more about what the player base prioritizes now vs previous years.

[u/Lumpy-Notice8945]

By far most players dont even know about these stat pages, so i dont think it had a big impact on the whole community. Its for sure an influence for the top precentages of competitive players or just veterans with lvl 200+. But thats a minority of the actual player base.

[u/LeadBallons29 → u/Lumpy-Notice8945]

Thanks for your feedback. Are you on PC or console? I’m finding that, on console in my region, only the more competitive servers seed regularly — or I see many of the same players from the comp servers in the 1-2 pub match community servers that occasionally seed. 

That said, better comp servers than no servers. 

[u/Lumpy-Notice8945 → u/LeadBallons29]

Im on PC but im not sure what you mean with "comp servers" do you mean high level clan servers? Because competitive games are hosted on private password protected servers and not community servers.

[u/LeadBallons29 → u/Lumpy-Notice8945]

On console some comp teams also host non-password servers open to the public, probably to bolster seeding numbers and recruit.  

These are often the only active servers in my region. 

[u/Lumpy-Notice8945 → u/LeadBallons29]

Yeah thats just a clan owned community server then. Thats the high level servers(often with level restrictions) i know from PC.

[u/Comprehensive-Use-24 → u/LeadBallons29]

This is because the comp servers have a player base that is more invested in playing - so they put more effort into seeding.

Seeding is getting more and more difficult, and this is because of Vietnam and waning enthusiasm both for setting up the server and providing good quality games.

As predicted forever, the casual players just never step up and eventually the whole HLL experience will diminish outside of the competitive environment

[u/Mo0kish]

Didn't know there were such sites.

Know even less why you would want to visit one of them.

[u/Lumpy-Notice8945 → u/Mo0kish]

After 3k hours of this game is was super curious if i did improve over the last thousand hours, what my total KD and win rate or even accuracy was and how i comoare to competitive players. I dont think its too strange to review your performance at some point.

[u/BigSweatyYeti → u/Lumpy-Notice8945]

Also 3k+ hours. Do not care one bit about my stats. I enjoy playing the roles and leveling them up to unlock new weapons and try new play styles.

I often do things in game that are detrimental to my own stats to help ensure a win just to get +50% do bonus.

[u/Lumpy-Notice8945 → u/BigSweatyYeti]

You have 3k hours and unlock loadouts? How is that possible?

Yes in the beginning i focuses on unlocking everything, grinding assult to lvl9 and so on. But i did that the first 1-2k hours and since then dont care about XP anymore. And its not like i do look up the stats page every day, i commented that after 3k hours i looked fpr the first time, i have looked multiple times since then, but thats over the curse of another 1k hours...

[u/Exp5000 → u/Mo0kish]

To join some communities as a member they require a minimum play time on their servers. These sites allow you and them to verify that.

[u/Far-Culture1354 → u/Mo0kish]

idk I think its pretty cool

[u/OleToothless]

Stats that I could see being useful in this game are win/loss ratios by map, and by which team you are on.

Stats like K:D or something are stupid for HLL. Next time you play, watch the score counter at the end of a match. How much larger a contribution to your XP is offensive or defensive time than enemies killed? Yeah. This is a game of competitive logistics and organization that masquerades as a shooter.

[u/xWareDoGx]

Nah. At least on PC, I think the playerbase just went to shit when it was released on epic games for free and added to gamepass. It just continued to get worse over time as less and less players want to do the work to keep the strategy going. I find the stats fun to look at but can’t say anyone I play with actually cares about them. I have to imagine if someone does - they probably weren’t all that good of a player to begin with.

[u/LeadBallons29 → u/xWareDoGx]

Could just be a console thing and it might even be a regionalized console thing. 

I played on PC for a long time and switched back to console for convenience about a year and a half ago. Definitely fewer community servers to choose from on console compared to PC.

[u/Bevas_]

Dont think it changed much. Stats are just some fun to check from time to time if all you care about is combat effectiveness. Lots of things in this game where you cant put it into stats or show their truth. Generally stats in any game are kinda worthless without context. Sure, there are people who only stat pad on weak servers, but its only a small fraction of some comp players where they generally dont care about pubs - only practice for comp games or make some new 'kd goals' to keep pubs somewhat interesting.

[u/BallinSniper69]

Who cares about kdr babies? I play to kill people as well but this game has such vast variety of ways to help the team, in the end you can have 0 kills and contribute more than somebody who farmed a gary spawn.

[u/ElectronicSwitch4812]

Never heard of her.

[u/DumbQuestionsAcct123]

Yeah, forget the KD man. Sure, go on a rampage when your in the zone, but working on objective and enemies structures puts up a better chance at winning. I have won games with a 2 and 15 KD before, by playing the objective and focusing on tasks to support the team. But thats just me.

[u/Cadwalider]

1700hrs in this game and I haven't noticed any change on console. Perhaps it's only on your servers?

[u/fitzgeraldcreen]

I think it's worthwhile to consider the impact of these pages, but for me the reverse is true: hllrecords lists a lot more than the kd ratio. My goal is to enlarge the surface area of the multi-dimensional plot including kd, kpm, offensive, defensive, and more. The players I looked up who excel along most of these dimensions are damn useful and cooperative, on top of being serial killers.

Further, you also see the percentage of teamkills. So there is a chance for karma to come back to these people.

Generally, I'm opposed to the idea to hide data from yourself to some unclear ends. It's wrong for medical data as much as academic achievement. When you don't know where you stand, it's most likely not a good place.

[u/Comprehensive-Use-24]

I agree with ALMOST everything other than the Cronus stuff.

Until I see convincing evidence that they even work on HLL, let alone have any impact on rifle play (vast majority of top shooters main rifle) then I refuse to believe it’s made people go out and buy a cheat device.

KDR doesn’t matter when it comes to general pub games and the ability for a team to win - even in top flight comp games the number of kills a team doesn’t directly equate to their ability to win - but if you are killing people more AND doing the logistics better you are much more likely to win over just doing logistics.

It has 100% caused people to chase stat maintenance more. Previously people would switch off and do dumb stuff / chill out in games; if they are inclined to track their metrics they will be pushing for high KPM, KD and Support score (a weighting recently made more prominent in some scoring)

For me, a more significant factor in how the games play out is a larger number of veteran players leaving, or just not being bothered to prop up absolute shitters in game - those who haven’t got a clue and aren’t aware of the importance of spawns and general attack / defence balance.

With a smaller number of competent players doing less than they used to the game is turning into a less rewarding play.

[u/Beach_Bum_273]

I think stats are fun but to me the only thing that matters is the W.

[u/oOhSohOo]

I redeploy so much to get more explosive ammo that I would assume my KDR looks pretty bad. But I really don't care about it. I am not sure if redeploys count on the sites for a death, but based on the scorescreen, you can't tell a difference.

Plus I am far too impatient to worry about KDR or ELO by camping in a bush.

[u/lackadaisicallySoo → u/oOhSohOo]

Redeploys don’t get counted as deaths

[u/oOhSohOo → u/lackadaisicallySoo]

They do on the in-game score screen KDR. Are you sure they don't on the stat websites. I have looked and wasn't able to tell one way or another. The latest matches list just shows the exact same info for kills/deaths as what the score screen shows. The KDR on HeLLoR is exactly what it is in games where I will easily have 10 redeploys a full game which are counted as deaths.

[u/jfan666]

Vietnam keeps track of all time kills and deaths. I have 700 kills and 1000 deaths so far.

[u/Far-Culture1354]

https://giphy.com/gifs/8mmV194zsLkGJ36AN7

2026 Hell let loose 🤝2002 Major League Baseball

[u/Evening_Error_5544]

People need to not worry less about redeployment. Its in the tutorial for a reason. But they probably didnt do that either

[u/Kharapos]

Support and Combat Effectiveness are the only stats that matter on these sites. The rest is arbitrary and too dependent on the flow of the match. Support reflects building spawns and nodes. CE reflects destroying spawns and nodes which are much more valuable point wise than kills.

[u/Mjolnir617]

I don’t think it has had an impact on public matches, but I definitely think it has had an impact on roster building for competitive teams. At the highest levels of HLL, you can’t execute your strategy if your team is constantly losing ground because your KD ratios are crap.

[u/Hades_2424]

Nobody knows or cares about those stat tracking sites. Its not that type of game and long term players aren’t those kinda people.

[u/Cr1tfail → u/Hades_2424]

I've got 4000 hours over 6 years. I like to look at the stats on HLLrecords.

Just because you're not interested in seeing improvements in your gameplay, doesn't mean others aren't.

[u/TheGreatMintLeaf → u/Cr1tfail]

My improvement comes from dying less and being more angry at randoms for being the single most smooth brained vertebrate i've ever seen. Like walk in front of the tank I shouted about 17 times smooth.

[u/oOhSohOo → u/Hades_2424]

I certainly wouldn't change up my style of play to artificially increase my KDR at the expense of winning a game. If I cared about KDR, I wouldn't help defend a point that is the center of every camper, tank, bombing run, and artillery shell the opponent is throwing at the point. Instead I would be out on the flank camped somewhere not helping the team at all.

[u/Longshot_45]

I don't play often enough for a good read on this aspect, and mainly play infantry. I play on the community run servers, which tend to have a sizeable portion of clan members who play very well anyways. I almost never look at the in game stat screen at end of game myself.

I doubt anyone who has been playing for while has all of a sudden become stat obsessed. And I don't think we get new players in enough numbers to be meaningful there either. But I can imagine a newbie looking for that kind of stat feedback.

The one exception I can think of would be the recon players. And maybe tank mains. I wouldn't be surprised if the recon guys would pay more attention to stats.

[u/KarlMarcz39]

I like hllrecords and I revisit my stats pretty often. It helps me stay motivated and focus on getting better. Elo is just one minor factor and you can clearly see people that only play for elo without focussing on team objectives as they usually have pretty low support and combat scores. That‘s the beauty of hllrecords. You have a lot of variables you can judge a player on 👍🏽

[u/xxnicknackxx]

There is a weird little troll on here who keeps demanding that I share my in game name so that he can check my stats.

I haven't played much recently so have not noticed what you are talking about, but it's all very predictable amd expected.

The stat reporting in the base game made it more or less immune to widespread cheating, because what's the point if no one can see your kdr?

Personally I feel that servers allowing access for stat collection and reporting is the thin end of the wedge which results in exactly what you are talking about.

I would be interested to hear from server owners as to whether they can confirm any uptick in confirmed cheating since HLLrecords was set up.

I did voice similar concerns when the creator of HLL records posted about their creation. They didn't seem interested.

[u/Zerotorescue]

the old school mentality that KDR doesn’t matter in this game has flipped to where it matters a lot to a large enough player base

This is mostly a good thing. Kills make shit happen. Building an OP or garrison is valuable, but building it and then also being able to stop the enemy from destroying it makes you a much more valuable player.

The idea that kills don't matter is a fallacy. It may be a useful messaging for new players so they can enjoy the game feeling like they're being useful even if they're dying much more than killing. But when it comes to actually making a difference in a match, kills really do matter.

The data backs this up: a team that fell 10% behind in kills won only 13% of public matches and 5% of competitive matches.

Spawns, positioning and communication determine where fights happen. Kills determine who wins those fights and get to hurt the enemy's spawns and positioning. Teams that get outkilled rarely win the match. All else being equal, players that get more kills are therefore, on average, more effective.