The High Kill Theory

We’ve all been there before. Long nights of struggle busing through ranked in attempts to climb the tiers. It gets hard blaming yourself over and over again.

“Where else is there to look? Yes, let’s check the stat sheet. Click “tab” and take a gander at everyone’s KDR. Yep, there’s the thorn in my side. Or maybe there are two. These two players have little to no kills, and have died so many times. This is the reason we’re losing!”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this voice in my head. So many times, that I’ve created a path for this thought that provides constructive depth to the issue. There is nothing we can do at the point of realization when it comes to locating our weakest links. Calling them out in chat and targeting them won’t improve the future. At this point, all we can do is improve our odds. What is proven to work, and keeps the team unified is suggesting a switch. They might already have one in mind, but commit to the role that needs to be played. Maybe their stats aren’t their fault, and there are just counters on the board that could be dealt with with a simple mix of the team makeup. Perhaps a player died one too many time sacrificing themselves for a play that may or may not have been successful.

When it comes to KDR’s, obviously I high kill count most likely means you are doing everything in your power to win the game. But who knows, you may not be. There have been a good handful of games, especially team oriented objective based games, where the team with the higher kill count dies. Can we deep dive into why this might be? Let me introduce two situations, and allow the reader to decide which of the situations they would rather be in.

Scenario 1: You are a dps, and you are consistently getting kills and have acquired no deaths. It is halfway through the round and you are 11/0 with the rest of your team not far behind. Maybe one of you teammates has died on accident falling off the map, but the other team isn’t effectively getting your teams health down to zero. You are still at first funnel point, and the enemy team almost has the point captured and the round won.

Scenario 2: You are a dps, and you are consistently getting kills, just like the previous scenario, but instead you are sitting at 6 and 2 and the rest of your team has a negative KDR. The round is almost won because enough of your team managed to stay alive to keep hold at the funnel. Keeping control of point in your possession.

Scenario 1 feels good. It may even feel like you are winning. Due to the objective based nature of the game though, the goal isn’t to kill the other team more than they kill you, it’s to hold an area. Scenario 2 we are correctly focused on the correct objective, but we lack in the ability to overcome the teammate. Both scenario’s hold one flaw, and that’s the team kill to solidify the round, or break the funnel and gain the objective.

The art of the team kill is something many players don’t really think about other than the sheer excitement that comes when performing one. The reality is, this is something that can be implemented and timed to strategize a team’s push. It is done by perfectly time and combing ults outside of a threshold the enemy team has their counter ults. This is a subject for another article, but just wanted to add some insight on the deciding factor between Scenario 1 and Scenario 2.

Outside of strategy, the high kill count may be irrelevant in other aspects. Let’s convert this over to something like the NBA. A nationally played and followed sport. Every team is always trying to get the best players, but why is it always at most, “The Big Three”. How come All 5 players aren’t top scorers every game? The simple answer is, Math. Video Games, adn most sports games have a finite amount of time. Since this boundary exist, it is safe to say there is also a finite amount of points to score. Let’s declare this number to be 120 points for one team in basketball. Between 5 players, that equates to 24 points each. Oh but wait, there are benched players that will take away from this finite sum. Let’s say they, as a group, scored 20 points. This leaves us with 20 points for each of the 5 “All-Stars”. Now, does this seem like anything extraordinary? No. We can only take points from one play and give them to another making one player seem worse than the other. So, where does the NBA find value in those that are scoring less? This is where the revalation comes in. The produce in ways other than just getting the ball through the hoop. They facilitate passes (create kills and get assists), they block the ball and get rebounds (tanking and flanking), they create confusion and cause fouls (shove people off maps or dive the back line). This logic can directly be correlated over to a 5v5 or 6v6 objective based game. It also has a finite amount of time.

To summarize though, this is by no means an excuse to do bad. Moreso just a piece of literature hinting at a different way to progress the game when your team isn;t doing so hot. First reaction is understandable, but not productive. Instead of coming at player in chat about their stats, maybe take the time to come up with an intelligent suggestion. It has helped me win a ton of games that were meant to be lost.