The reason Stat lines work in professional sports is twofold: firstly, there's an organized standard by which to judge, and secondly, there's a diversity of competition to ensure the validity of the numbers.
Neither of these is available to us.
I would argue that we do have these two elements in our hobby. For the most part, the east coast plays with the standard rule set of 3.15 and we do have a tremendous range of talent on our coast. While numbers would vary according to competition, I think is something that might make documenting the numbers interesting.
Let's think about it. If I play ten games at the Horsemen's usual 5/15 playstyle, while another Nerfer plays 10 games at 3/15, suddenly the Hits-Per-Round average is completely screwed. If I'm averaging 2 Hits per Round at 5/15, I'm playing a hell of a lot better than the guy who's averaging 2 Hits per Round at 3/15.
This is a totally valid point but what we've done since recording our first series of numbers at DCNO is list the important information including the size of the teams, the rule set included, and the game type so people can accurately gauge the impact of a player on a given round. This is something we came to address after we realized the numbers themselves needed context.
If I'm averaging 1 Hit per Round and 20 Kills per Round against players like that, it certainly doesn't show anything over someone averaging 3 Hits per Round and 6 Kills per Round against the Horsemen.
This is why I think a
series of statistics would provide some worthwhile information. At DCNO I did very well but I'm guessing that at DEAL my numbers, along with most other people's, will be more grounded. The telling thing is going to be who is capable of sustaining good numbers while competing with some of the best talent in the hobby. This is information that would be made available for people if interested and while talent might alter the numbers significantly I don't know any game in which it wouldn't.
It's a great thought, Evil, but I don't believe it belongs in a Nerf war. Mantis is right, Nerf isn't about winning and pissing on other people's stats. It's about having a good time and shooting people with foam.
Nerf isn't about winning and pissing on other people's stats, in fact that isn't the purpose of this. This is for people interested in seeing how well they do and not necessarily comparing them with other people's, but recognizing what they did poorly or particularly well after the fact. Nerf is about having a good time and shooting people with foam and I don't think casually documenting a personal performance changes either the good times or the act of shooting people with toy guns made for children.
My example of how these stats were useful was brought on by some mediocre middle rounds for me.
In rounds 5 and 6 at DCNO, I achieved a combined 7 kills, 6 hits record. Being able to see this and being aware of how mediocre I had done, I took the time to figure out what I had done wrong and the answer had come to me almost immediately;
I had played uncharacteristically overaggressive and did not use my team enough.I probably would have figured this out at some point during the day when I felt like I was fairing poorly, but documenting my poor rounds made me consider changing how I played almost immediately.
Now changing how you play may not always affect what occurs in the game and bad days are surely to occur but consider the final three rounds I had at DCNO:
Round 7: 6 kills, 2 hits (Loss)
Round 8: 6 kills, 0 hits (Win) [pistols only]
Round 9: 9 kills, 2 hits (Win)
The last 3 rounds of the day saw me go 21/4 because I was aware of how poorly I had done and was encouraged by my weak performance, which was backed up by numbers, to figure something else out and to play smarter. Not for the sake of improving my stat-line but because I wasn't helping my team significantly.
Edited by Evil, 21 June 2007 - 10:55 AM.