Why Traditional Accuracy Fails

One might assume calculating accuracy to be straightforward. Other websites use a simple ratio of hits to total shots taken.

$$\text{accuracy} = \frac{\text{total hits}}{\text{total shots}}$$

A player can take thousands of shots in a match, but only a subset of those are directed at exposed enemy players. A player might shoot at terrain, builds, trees, NPCs, accidentally misclick, or direct stray shots into the environment.

Including these types of shots in our denominator $\text{total shots}$ artificially reduces a player's $\text{accuracy}$, causing their aim to appear worse than it really is.

Why should shots that were never intended to hit another player lower the shooter's accuracy?

True Accuracy

True accuracy considers only shots that were aimed at exposed enemy players.

$$\text{true accuracy} = \frac{\text{total hits}}{\text{total shot attempts onto players}}$$

This requires the calculation of a new statistic, shot attempts onto players, which we'll refer to as simply shot attempts.

Understanding what constitutes a shot attempt is crucial to understanding true accuracy and other advanced statistics.