With the decision by the Call of Duty World League to keep Capture the Flag (CTF) in the competitive rotation for the Call of Duty: World War II season, I have decided to release a new team statistic for CTF. Since the release of WWII, I have been tracking stats from CTF games during professional team scrimmages to give me an idea on how create an objective rating that could be used to gauge how effective a team plays the crucial Game 3 game mode.

Introducing the CTF Rating (CPR%, or Capture Plus Return Percentage)…

Calculation:

CTF Rating = Capture % (Percentage of team’s flag pulls that are captured)+ Return % (percentage of opposing team’s flag pulls that are returned)

Detailed calculation:

CTF Rating = [Captures/(Opponent Returns+Captures)] + [Returns/(Opponent Captures+Returns)]

The CTF Rating is an objective rating to measure a team’s effectiveness on both offense and defense in CTF. By taking into account capture %, a measure of how effectively teams are pulling their opponents flag, and return %, a measure of how effectively teams are stopping their opponent’s flag pulls, we can arrive at a number that combines BOTH offense and defense efficiency. The theoretical minimum value of the stat is 0 (0% capture percentage + 0% return percentage), the theoretical maximum value of the stat is 200 (100% capture percentage + 100% return percentage), and the average value of the stat is 100 (50% capture percentage + 50% return percentage).

One limitation with CTF Rating that I want to mention is that, currently, I am only using captures and returns from the post-match scoreboard to calculate the statistic, meaning the statistic does not account for any flag pull that does not result in a capture or a return. Although uncommon, it is possible that a team runs out of time to capture a pulled flag at the end of the first or second half.

My inspiration for creating the CTF Rating comes from a statistic tracked in hockey called PDO, or SPSV%, that represents the sum of a team’s shooting percentage and save percentage. The similarities between the CTF Rating and PDO statistics and the transferability that this stat has going from a sport to an esport is shocking. Even if we simplify the statistics required to measure both the CTF Rating and PDO we can see how well they compare to each other:

Hockey vs. Call of Duty Shots = Flag Pulls Goals = Flag Captures Saves = Flag Returns

The theory behind PDO being that most teams will regress towards a sum of 100, the league average, because in the long run, a high or low team PDO is rarely sustainable within a high-parity league like the NHL. Therefore, teams or individual players (team’s shooting percentage and save percentage when the player is on the ice) with above a 100 PDO are considered “lucky” and it is expected that their PDO will decrease towards 100 in the future. On the other hand, teams or individual players with below a 100 PDO are considered “unlucky” and it is expected that their PDO will increase towards 100 in the future. However, one should not fully attribute PDO to luck. Teams might be getting lucky or unlucky, or they might have really great or really poor shooters, or they might have really great or really poor goalies, or a combination of the three.

At the moment, I do not have enough data to conclude that CTF Rating will be interpreted in the same way during the CWL Global Pro League stages with teams regressing towards the mean value of 100 in the long run. However, in my opinion the statistic should really be looked at as an aggregate measure of a team’s offensive and defensive efficiency. I look forward to tracking each professional team’s overall CTF Ratings as well as CTF Ratings by map for the upcoming CWL open events and the CWL Global Pro League, and using an analytical approach to describe their overall performance in CTF.