1. Support classes, dedicated transports, dedicated tank drivers, there's a number of ways to contribute to objectives that don't directly involve killing
2. Not all shooters are the same. In a game where Team Deathmatch is the most common multiplayer type, I would advocate KDR because the amount of times you die vs. the amount you kill directly contributes to whether you win or lose. In addition, we know that Eternal Crusade will have multi-manned vehicles/armor. Take Planetside 2 as an example. Many of the dedicated Liberator pilots had poor/mediocre KDRs but it was their skill as a pilot that kept the Liberator up, allowing for the gunner to score easy kills and achieve a high KDR, with little to no effort. You yourself say that you gauge players based on their KDR and the Liberator example alone shows how poorly a gauge of skill it is in a game like Eternal Crusade/PS2.

Does EVE have objective based PvP? I've not played it so I don't know. If it's simply "who can kill more" then of course KDR would be an important factor because that's all there is, killing.

And guess which one of these always took precedent over the others? I never once saw anyone brag about resupplying medals

1) So because of support classes, dedicated tank drivers and transports, there shouldn't be stats? If this is what you plan on doing going into Eternal Crusade, then join a Strike Force that is dedicated to driving and transporting people. I will now direct you to this:

That way, you don't have to worry about people judging you based on your ability to kill.

2) And I will now direct you to this:

Being a pilot in Planetside 2 grants you driver bonus for when gunners kill, which contributes to your overall score.

I've never once been kicked from a platoon or denied entry because of a shitty KDR in Planetside. I've gone 0 kills and 12 deaths before. No one judged me. No one told me I sucked and I should get out of the squad. I looked at my score and said "Man, that sucks. I should do better."

The majority of games with leaderboards that sport some kind of teamwork elements to them usually arrange the leaderboard by score, not kills.

Which brings me back to my original point:

Then if score/score-per-minute/hour/etc can be used to gauge how well a person is doing, regardless of whether they're flying a ship, playing support or just killing stuff, then that is the metric that should be used to gauge how well a person is doing. Where a person can claim they contributed to a war effort despite having a poor KDR, they can't make the same claim while having a poor score-per-minute.

I just want to emphasize that I'm not advocating for the removal of stats, just kill-death ratio. And yes, one of the reasons KDR should not be included is because of those support roles.

I agree, stats allow you to track your progress but KDR does not. If I wanted to know how good my accuracy was, I would look at my accuracy % and compare it to players who use the same type of weapon. If I wanted to see how I could better my situation awareness, I'd look at what weapons are regularly kill me and adjust my playstyle accordingly. KDR has no bearing on either of those.

If you ask someone how good they are, they will invariably respond with their KDR. It becomes something they protect, generally at the expense of playing aggressively. Unless a person is in the upper echelons of player skill and has amazing situational awareness, maintaining a good KDR means playing more cautiously. However maintaining a good score-per-minute means that you have to play aggressively, constantly capturing bases/charging objectives/killing players/etc because any idle-time/timidness is going to bring it down.

tl;dr: I want furious, aggressive battles in Eternal Crusade and I think having score-per-minute will help achieve that and I think KDR will hinder it.

I will up this. I like all the other stats and maybe add in some silly/unique ones (#sacrifices), but the KDR sucks because you may accomplish great things at the costs of Deaths. Keep out the KDR but keep kills and other stats.

Oh please no... no more stats nerding. I hate statistics so much that I could order and exterminatus on the person who decided that it's a nice thing to have statistics on video games. And to be fair ok lets have stats cause I know there are a ton of people who care about them but make them so that if you do not want to do anything with them you can hide them from everyone if you want to.

KDR is something I also despise. It doesn't reflect on skill, team contribution, and doesn't provide anything useful for someone looking at your personal profile. I hate to keep referencing Battlefield/Battlelog but it does keep a track of useful statistics, such as weapon accuracy percentage, how much you play of each class, unlock progression, medal/ribbon progression etc. Battlelog stats reveal skill, your weapon/class preferences, and so on.

Stats are completely optional and not strictly necessary, however as I said above they do reveal your skill and preferences which may be useful for Strike force organization among other things. If I as a Commander look at your profile and see you prefer to play as a Raptor, I'll put you into a Raptor squad, or a squad dedicated to fast attack.

See attached images for stat keeping done rather well.

Why do you think KDR and support roles are mutually exclusive? People are going to worry about their kills to deaths regardless of whether or not they are shown. Do you think a devastator shouldn't have stat tracking of his own? Kills and deaths are very much apart of stat tracking as score-per-minute is. Why should the devastator not have death tracking, when it's his job to kill as many of the enemy and not die. If his deaths are higher than his kills, maybe he should stop and think to himself that maybe something is wrong.

Why can't there be both? I'm still failing to see why you find both to be mutually exclusive. There's two sides to this. Someone who has a good score-per-minute is invariably a good support player/diver. On the flip side, someone who has an amazing KDR is also contributing just as much to the war effort. The more people you kill, the less of the enemy that are on the field. If you are dedicating yourself to killing the enemy more than supporting your team, there should be stat tracking for that. As that is a valid tactic for a shooter. Regardless of what the shooter entails, you still have to kill the enemy a lot more than they kill you. Especially if you're trying to take an objective.

Let's not forget there's going to be a cover system in place. If you were worried about players being apprehensive about playing aggressively then cover isn't exactly helping.

This is a two way street of course. There are going to be players who contribute nothing and just show up for capture points. I can't tell you the number of times I've been running with a platoon in PS2 and there have been people who switch factions because the other is stomping the map and he wants the experience and score points. The game then snowballs and becomes not fun. But that person must be good at the game right? He has a good score from just being there for capturing points. I'm guilty of this. I show up at capture points in the last 30 or 40 seconds and get boat loads of experience and score for just being there, regardless of contributing to the capture of the base.

If you want furious and aggressive battles, putting a large amount of emphasis on support classes and the like, will distract from other classes, like tactical marines, or devastators. Planetside 2 is also troubled by this. If everyone is playing a support class, then no one is able to take down heavy targets effectively, like tanks or MAX's.

tl;dr Kills and deaths are just as important to non-support classes as score is important to support classes. Getting rid of KDR doesn't improve anything. What improves a game like this is rewarding people for aggressive play styles.

Well the thing is that you say that they are optional but eventually people (statsnerds) start to use them and require them and all. I personally want to play a fun game and don't give a rats ass about my stats and want to get to know good new friends. Stats in general attract certain types of people I usually dislike allot aka. "your got good enough for our funfuntime, your kd ratios is horrible we don't like you etc". So if stats are implemented I personally want them to be something that can be hidden from everyone if I want. You do not need to see my stats even if they where good, bad or horrible.

Sorry I sniped you a bit. Walls of text ain't fun.

Sadly that's true. I used to play World of Tanks and there is a realtime statistics mod used in game called XVM. It added useful information to the minimap that wasn't ordinarily in the game, however it also added it's own efficiency ratings and made the win/loss ratio of everyone in game viewable, along with their total battles. Lots of people bad mouthed those with poor W/L ratios and low efficiencies.

Tribes Ascend and TF2 are two games that didn't/don't have a KDR and during my time playing those I have never once seen someone complain about the lack of it. I've never needed KDR to tell me when I was doing poorly, my short term memory is usually good enough and I don't need to know my long term KDR

Score-per-minute covers all classes/roles and is definitive. You can't accuse a person who has a high SPM of not contributing, while you can accuse someone of a high KDR of being non-helpful. SPM does a better job than KDR and including KDR alongside SPM would be redundant while including all of its harmful effects.

I'm fairly certain the devs have not said whether or not sticky cover will be in

The times where you could jump from base to base as they cap were limited. You could do it maybe 2-3 times before you had to go back to fighting. More often then not people would show up for the cap then attach themselves to the larger force that was taking it, which is good.

Support classes also keep players alive and at the front

SPM acts as a gauge for all classes, while KDR only for some