What I don’t understand is…why wouldn’t I be ? Eve is a game full of big egos, often having big tantrums and storming out with an entire corporation’s worth of goodies. The lead gankers have zero problem with posting their killmails in a bragging manner all day long. Corporations produce endless bragging videos. In a recent thread here on ISK wealth, one player had no problem posting that they had almost a trillion ISK and a screen print of it. Watch shows like the Meta Show and even though a lot if it is just banter…there’s bragging there too. And don’t even get me started on Reddit.
So the very notion that everyone in Eve is playing the game solely for the ‘enjoyment’ and that nobody gives a stuff about bragging rights is patent and very demonstrable nonsense. Eve is jam packed with ’ I am better than you’…so too are these very forums themselves. Heck…Destiny even says so directly, and I quite happily concede it.
Compared to all that…why would anyone have a problem with me wanting my rather minor ( by comparison ) achievements recorded ? I may be #200,000 in the bragging rights list…but that is at least higher than #200,001
A point I accept…but then that fact is readily displayed in the stats where you can see that the ‘score’ is the same as the kills. I don’t really care if it is called Kills or Assists…for my overall chars it is at least 723 of something and is 723 more than zero.
I would also make the point that Losses also includes PvE losses, whilst PvE kills don’t get recorded anywhere at all. A bit of an anachronism.
Which would be fine if all ships in the fleet were the same doctrine, but I’ve been in AO fleets recently flying an Eagle that cannot even begin to match the firepower of the Nightmares of some allies. I’d love to bring my Nightmare along…but corp doctrine says no ( though I do fly them for Wrecking Machine ). I think everyone who contributed should be on the KIll…or ‘Assist’
Another very mentionable point is SRP. Impossible to get without a killmail…as there’s no other way of proving that one did lose a ship.
So actually I agree with you. If the ship collector can point to his collection of 10,000 ships and the ISK farmer can point to his trillions of ISK, then a PvPer should be able to point to their kill record of some sort. And a PVEer should be able to point to their ‘mission record’ or whatever, although I don’t think there’s much there for them.
Bragging rights are a motivator, as is “player rankings”, in any competitive game. I’ve said in the past that EVE probably needs more e-peen measuring sticks (one eg. being leaderboards of various types).
Killmails may or may not be able to be a part of that, again due to the issue of fleet battles where the combinations of participants who all affected each kill then getting sent killmails at the same time would likely be difficult. They removed bounties for (supposedly) that reason, and killmails would be more overhead than bounties.
I’m not razzing you in this thread over the concept of p1ssing contests, but rather your somewhat slavish dependence on zkillboard. Yes, CCP probably would be better off with a “threat ranking” system, preferably one that had a bit more impact on gameplay than the current “get some neg standing, then buy it off with tags” pretension. That’s just part of the list of 1,001 things CCP could/should do to make EVE better, but they’re too busy thinking of new ways to screw up the game.
Just a side note for clarity: I think zKillboard is an excellent tool and resource, incrediby useful for many purposes, and I’m thankful to Squizzc for running it. But a tool is only as good as the purposes it’s put to.
PvE losses don’t get counted in your stats. They exist only as kill records.
PvE kills get counted in the new achievements thing as a total.
Insurance mails get generated for every loss, and can be API-verified. This is how we used to do it back when there was no kill log and all kills and losses were sent out as mails.
People who brag generally have the least to brag about, and are doing it to compensate for their inadequacies.
What did I say? I am so confused now. Am I gonna have to do another tearful apology?
What is the point and purpose of PvP where there’s zero sense of being ‘better than’ anyone else ? Why would I want to go play chess tournaments ( which I used to and am very good at ) with no rankings or scoreboard ? Is a chess grandmaster simply compensating for inadequacies ?
Why would I want to take part in sports where there is no scoreboard or rankings ? Every competitive environment…which is precisely what Eve is…has ‘bragging rights’ and at least some sense that person X did ‘better’ than person Y. I’ve seen videos of other combat MMOs that clearly have scoreboards and overall win and/or kill stats.
I’m not clear why anyone would want to log into a competitive MMO without a scoreboard of some sort. Maybe the sheer disbelief that such a thing doesn’t exist in Eve is why so many noobs leave. And maybe not just noobs.
@Altara_Zemara Im surprised you’re putting this much energy into this discussion and have this much of your Eve self worth tied up in kill stats. The real irony for me is that I know who you are as an entity in this world because of your interactions HERE, outside of the game. There are thousands of players in null sec with 10s of thousands of ‘kills’ who I have never heard of and don’t know exist, but I know all about your Eve life and growth and adventures and thoughts because of this space where you aren’t even allowed to post KMs.
And that’s a good thing…because an outspoken and totally lacking in any sense of awkwardness noob is very likely saying all the things a lot of others are thinking anyway but don’t say because of the vultures circling overhead. That’s valuable precisely because my Eve experience is pretty normal and not exceptional. I’m not out on some limb somewhere with outrageous thoughts…just the run of the mill stuff a lot of people think but never say.
zKillboard should never have been created. However, it was brought to life and irreversibly changed the gameplay for thousands of players in EVE Online. It is impossible to estimate today whether it has caused more good or evil in the history of the game through its existence.
I do know one thing: when I started playing World of Warships many years ago, from open-beta onwards, the naval battles were really good gameplay for everyone. The community stuck together, was keen to discuss and generally respected each other (perhaps because it was made up of genuine naval history fans and ambitious players in the early days, and everyone had one goal - to keep the game up to high standard).
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before someone came up with mods that displayed during battle the win ratio and other statistics revealing how someone was playing. The community split. The good players (shown as purple) were grumbling at the matchmaker when they got the weak players (red) on the team. Sometimes even the not bad players (green) were not good enough in their opinion. On the other hand, weaker players felt despicable and demotivated when they were reprimanded with poor winratio (which was not always the result of their actions alone in WoWs…). Clans were formed that only accepted purple players, looking at others with disdain. There was malice and mockery of someone’s winratio in chat.
Many players - myself included - felt that this was the beginning of the end of a promising game. Too many players had become fixated on making god-like winratio stats, rather than enjoying the game. History has shown that WoWs has become anything but a toxic product, sadly.
I see an analogy between the existence of winratio-mod in WoWs and zKillboard.
I think it’s your association with killboard as meaning something about someone’s Eve career that is the most frustrating to people. I could make the argument that someone competent and patient enough to scan down MTUs and risk their ship as a suspect in hi sec is far more of a competent eve player than someone who F1s a bunch of structures after a fleet warp.
It’s not zKill’s fault (and it’s not even the first kill board to be created). CCP are the ones who enabled external kill boards through their API export system. With the ability to extract such data, someone would’ve done it; you can’t bring together the entire EVE community into an explicit agreement that no one would do this, it’s just impossible.
It’s now too late to do anything about the existence of kill boards, for better or for worse. Just like legalized RMT, they’re so intertwined into the game that their removal would likely be catastrophic.
WoW has even-team battles and matchmaking, while EVE doesn’t. Scoreboards for either game accomplish very different goals. In WoW, they primarily serve as a bragging tool, while in EVE, they primarily serve as an intel tool.
It’s the expression that these records are something she’s entitled to, that a third party should record them for her, and that they are fundamental.
People who play chess can, without anyone recording any records of their matches, know they’re good at chess and be satisfied with that. They could even still boast about it and just show that they’re good at chess by beating other players at chess. It helps to have a record of your accomplishments to convince someone who doesn’t know much about people who play chess that you’re good at it, but it is not necessary.
As Io said, if you really want a record of something having happened, you can go to the trouble to make it yourself. Record it, post it for all to see, refer people to it.
I personally think zKillboard stats are pretty worthless and easily skewed if you’re of the mind to do so, but I don’t really object to people who want to think it’s significant and feel motivated to improve those stats. I would not object to CCP putting in some official reliable killboard. I just don’t think it’s a right or something people should have an expectation of.
