Valve has more than a few nifty stats pages going now, including the very revealing HL2 Episode Two and Team Fortress 2 stats.

Bragging rights for the above-average player aside, the Episode Two stats are particularly interesting and fall inline with Valve's commentary on the page: "striving to make our products better". Indeed.

The death maps are an amazing visualization of the bottlenecks in single-player play. It's not hard to imagine the usefulness in a game design sense: Are players stuck on intended puzzles, or are they dying repeatedly somewhere unexpected?

It's refreshing to see statistics applied without a marketing push. Or at least the marketing is a secondary attribute, because Valve does gain significant respect from their audience, plus press attention when they publish these goodies. Other game companies, especially in online gaming (MMOs, hello!), should stand up and pay attention here: you don't need to scream your own accolades directly when you can create them by just being damn smart.

An important distinction is Valve doesn't harp on the popularity of any game features when they present these stats and graphs. They obey that old rule: Statistics do not demonstrate intent, just direction. Let the reader decide how player direction meshes with game design intent.

In other words, don't try to measure fun, but use the tools to maximize it.

The ever eloquent Tobold posted something quote worthy yesterday:

"But while we could discuss class balance in PvP endlessly, in the end it all sounds like the rock complaining that he always loses against paper in a game of rock-paper-scissors."

Class-based combat, whether it's WoW, Team Fortress or Tribes, is always best balanced in rock-paper-scissors style. That's the basis of the design. PvE requires more complexity in the design, whereas PvP is lent plenty of diversity by the human vs. human element.

As a PvE player, I'm selfishly irked over Blizzard's constant PvP-related rebalancing of the classes and how it alters the rest of the game. My impression is they appease a population that doesn't get it: some classes should be your bane.

Accept it. Play the class you enjoy most, to the best of your abilities. If you have problems with class balance in PvP, it's probably PEBKAC.