60 replies to this topic

[Rorvik]

On Friday evening, I played a bunch of games, some losses, most wins, but even the losses were fun games. It was good times all around.

However, from Saturday afternoon onwards, it's been nothing but losing streaks. I think of the last 25 games I've played, only about 3 were wins. My ON1-K that I'm trying to level up has a 1:8 W/L ratio and a 0:8 K/D ratio, and only one of the games was not a blowout. I've tried the "take a break" and the "restart MWO" tactic, but it doesn't seem to work.

Now, I'm not the greatest MWO player, but I'd like to think I do know the basics, and I do know that standing around waiting timidly for the action is going to lose you the match 100% of the time. And yet, for some reason, those players have been my teammates for the entire weekend. Again, I'm not the greatest MWO player, but there doesn't seem to be much I can do to change the above. No amount of friendly advice / chewing out of teammates seems to make a difference.

So what am I supposed to do to make things better?

[El Bandito]

I assume you are talking about solo-q drops.

First of all, ask yourself--Is winning truly what matters? There is no need to try to be a hero, if your goal is to farm C-Bills or XP up your new mech. Stay behind and farm points and kills.

Secondly, there are some mechs that are simply not for you, especially with only basic skill tree. Just accept that fact and try to get over the leveling using your GXP.

Lastly, luck, or lack thereof, can mean your losing streak will continue even with the best mechs. It will eventually end, like anything else.

Edited by El Bandito, 21 February 2016 - 10:12 PM.

[Wolfways]

Carry harder...which in my case means playing my JM6-S.

I'm currently playing Ravens and the 4x is a nightmare

[Rorvik]

El Bandito, on 21 February 2016 - 10:10 PM, said:

I assume you are talking about solo-q drops.

Yes. Someone in one of the matches suggested I switch to CW instead, but I imagine it's even worse there, what with the units and the more restrictive gameplay, so I stay the hell away from it.

El Bandito, on 21 February 2016 - 10:10 PM, said:

First of all, ask yourself--Is winning truly what matters? There is no need to try to be a hero, if your goal is to farm C-Bills or XP up your new mech. Stay behind and farm points and kills.

This is a strange question. Having fun is truly what matters, and I have fun by doing my best contributing to my team, win or lose. If we lose a game but I feel like I did my best -- no, sorry -- but I feel like WE did OUR best, then I'm fine with the loss; GG and move on to the next round. But when my team is such that no amount of (heroic) effort will get me much damage or kills, let alone a win, then it begs the question as to why I'm even bothering to play in the first place.

The other issue here is, even if I'm just Cbill / XP farming, it's substantially better to win than to lose. The amount of XP you gain from a win compared to a loss is literally ten to one (Cbills less so). If we lose but I do really, really, really well, I can get about 80,000 Cbills / 200 XP. If we win but I don't do so good, I still get 150,000 Cbills and 1500 XP. The reward gap is ridiculous, so even if I'm Cbill / XP farming, having losing streaks feels like a huge waste of time, especially when I have Premium Time running.

El Bandito, on 21 February 2016 - 10:10 PM, said:

Secondly, there are some mechs that are simply not for you, especially with only basic skill tree. Just accept that fact and try to get over the leveling using your GXP.

That is true. It is why I gave up on the SHD and WHM. I just can't make those pieces of **** work if my life depended on it. And there are some Mechs where I just couldn't be bothered to slog through the basics, so I used GXP.

But I did find really fun and effective builds with my ON1-K and Protector (the latter which is fully basic-ed), so it's not the Mechs.

El Bandito, on 21 February 2016 - 10:10 PM, said:

Lastly, luck, or lack thereof, can mean your losing streak will continue even with the best mechs. It will eventually end, like anything else.

So, do nothing and wait it out? That doesn't sound like fun. Is PGI going to refund me the Premium Time that I'm losing because I'm not playing because MM keeps putting me in uneven games?

Edited by Rorvik, 21 February 2016 - 10:51 PM.

[El Bandito]

Rorvik, on 21 February 2016 - 10:50 PM, said:

So, do nothing and wait it out? That doesn't sound like fun. Is PGI going to refund me the Premium Time that I'm losing because I'm not playing because MM keeps putting me in uneven games?

Look, you win some, and you lose some. Whenever you are winning, twelve others are losing. Should they complain about MM too? As long as your WLR stays around 1:1 overall, the MM is doing its job.
Gonna sound obvious, but the only way one can increase the odds of winning is to get even better.

Edited by El Bandito, 21 February 2016 - 11:07 PM.

[DaZur]

Sad to say but there will and always be "runs of bad luck".

Weekend tournaments or challenges tend to bring out the worst (read selfish and mindless play) in players and is an immediate multiplier to add to the win/loss woes.

On the flip-side even running my new shiny Rifleman (men?) I have a fortunate run of wins! Just goes to show in MWO... Anything that can, will happen.

Don't let bad runs bother you... Tomorrows another day!

[Kilo 40]

My theory has always been that if you are playing one match right after another, then there is a good chance you keep playing with a lot of the same people. so when I hit a bad losing streak like that, i just go play something else for an hour or so and then come back.

[juxstapo]

<--- been here since the first wave of closed beta

Have experienced this three times. (All the way to "So disgusted I sold all mah clan mechs" sort of funk) or even "Really, actually bored with it, but feel obligated to play with my teammates". and so forth...





play something else.

Not what you wanted to hear, and yeah, I feel you with the PT. But seriously, we all tend to invest a shnog of time and money (don'tthinkaboutit, don'tthinkaboutit), into this game. Better off to step off for an afternoon or three than to get terminal burnout for two months.

Edited by juxstapo, 21 February 2016 - 11:00 PM.

[Ace Selin]

Bring the biggest baddest mech you have, the one that has the most kills & damage for you.

I bring my Dire and when i get 1000 damage and a half dozen kills my team can mop up the rest.

[Salticidae]

when on a loosing streak, the streakcrow comes out, its murders the lights and the lights tend to win games.

it save your team wasting firepower on lights and they are able to put their damage on targets they cant miss like direwolfs and atlas.

its cheesy but a bloody good carry mech.

[MrMadguy]

This threads started to appear every day, so it becomes harder and harder for me to explain, why current MM is so terrible and why it has nothing to do with real skill rating. May be we should make a sticky thread?

Ok. Here is the picture, that explains all your problems:

The purpose of MM - is to match you with and against players, who have the same skill level, as yours. You should advance to next difficulty level only AFTER you have improved enough to beat previous one. But the current system - is PSR XP Bar. Your PSR rating extremely biased towards increasing. When you have good matches - you advance pretty fast. When you have bad matches - there is almost no way to drop down. So system make several faulty assumptions: 1) Everybody, who plays football can eventually become Ronaldo or Messi top skill level player. 2) Your skill level improvement - is just a matter of time. 3) Player should be able to adapt and improve to handle constantly growing level of difficulty. Guess, what will eventually happen? Yeah... Game will become unplayable for you, because PSR literally forces you to play with/against more skilled players.

Eventually your PSR will stabilize. As you may see on picture above, PSR stabilization level is - W/L = 1 and average match score = 200-250. So very soon your average match will look like this:



That actually happened with me. Here is the stats of 'Mechs, I currently play. They are terrible, but I'm at 90% Tier 3 now and keep advancing.


Conclusion? I don't like to say it, but the only thing, that comes to my mind - is F2P conspiracy. Devs expect average player to invest some amount of money into their game and after that, when he get, all he wants, this player usually starts to play for free. And PGI don't want free players to load their servers. So after some period of playing players are being forced to buy premium time at first and then - to quit this game. You have spent, let's say, $600 in this game and eventually it will become completely unplayable for you, so there will be no other choice for you, other then quit it. But you won't be able to refund your money or transfer your paid stuff to other account. So be aware. It's highly unrecommended to invest ANY money into this game, no matter how good it seems to be at first, if you don't want to be scammed.

Play for some time on free account. And when game will become unplayable enough - just make new one. Try to play as bad, as you can, at first in order to avoid "cadet bonus". Then you'll have about 400 good matches (depends on how good you really are). As soon, as you'll reach Tier 3 Hell - you'll have to abandon this account and make new one. And don't buy anything. You are not little kid, yeah? You have enough patience to wait for paid stuff to become free. First I wanted to buy Maulers. But what now? I have waited and now I have them for free.

Edited by MrMadguy, 22 February 2016 - 02:00 AM.

[Ex Atlas Overlord]

So basically MrMadGuy sucks..... and instead of getting better he just creates new accounts to keep clubbing the new players.

*Barf*

Don't listen to this guy.

[MrMadguy]

The Atlas Overlord, on 22 February 2016 - 12:35 AM, said:

So basically MrMadGuy sucks..... and instead of getting better he just creates new accounts to keep clubbing the new players.

*Barf*

Don't listen to this guy.

This is how MM should actually work: if you suck - you only should play against players, who also suck. As simple, as that. Not everybody can play football like Ronaldo and Messi - majority of players can handle domestic football only. But it doesn't mean, that they don't deserve playing it. You may keep your elitism for yourself.

[Cyborne Elemental]

I don't get out of a losing slump.

Once it starts, its all up to RNG matchmaker and my anger level.

[SQW]

Er...since everyone uses the same MM, the odds of you running with a bad team is the about the same as running with a great one. By the same token, we should be thanking MM for letting us win too - why only blaming loses on MM and yet attribute winnings to our 'skillz'?

The only constant is the pilot himself. A negative Win/Lose ratio is more indicative of the pilot than the MM.

None of us are special snow flakes that RNGesus will bother ******** on beyond a couple of games.

[C E Dwyer]

As madguy is saying the PSR system is bad. as with a lot of things P.G.I try to 'fix' they just make it worse.

P.G.I tried to fix the match maker and have a visible(optional) skill rating because players screamed at them for it, and with the league solaris bull shine which players also have been screaming for came up with this piece of crap called P.S.R for league play, and to 'balance' the matches.

It's not anything like a skill indicator so no matter how bad you are,sooner or later you will end up in your solo games against comp players.

It's seriously useless, but unlike what MMG is hinting at it doesn't stabilise, neither is there a P2W situation.

I can't begin to describe how much P.S.R is what falls out a donkies backside, and MMG's sample mechs seem to bare whitness to that, as I don't own a single mech with stats those bad, my k/ds for mechs and I own all but the origins series in the positive, most are over 1.5/1 and about half are over 2/1.

Yet I'm only about 60% through T3 so I can only assume that MMG is padding things and has other mechs that have much better stats.

Anyway I'm in a slump at the moment and in my T3 ness I'm still facing off against highly skilled players like TheB33f, and other people of equal quality, and no way will this stop happening as no matter how badly I play, my P.S.R will still keep going up.

the MM as sad as it is also has another flaw in it, in that it is acitively coded to try to keep your win/loss at around the 1/1 mark, so your streak of losses will change, sooner or later

Edited by Cathy, 22 February 2016 - 01:16 AM.

[MrMadguy]

Also, don't listen to guys, who say:
1) It's RNG due to snowball effect. Sorry, but I'm experienced enough to see the difference between noobish players, dying by themselves and causing snowball effect as the result, and coordinated stomp, where enemy team just pushes and stomps your. And coordinated stomp means, that enemy team is MUCH MORE SKILLED, then yours. Also, snowball effect can't happen with other team, when two Assault are AFK on yours. Right?

2) That it's due to lack of players. If there is a lack of players in your Tier, then queue wait time should be at least 1 minute. My queue time is instant. That means, I personally don't have any problems with population of players. If Tier 1-2 players have this problems, so they are being matched with me to decrease their queue wait times - then it's only THEIR PROBLEMS, that they are minority in this game. I haven't signed an agreement, that I agree to be punching bag for higher Tier players, sorry. If PGI wants to decrease their wait time at my expense, then they should first ask me, if I agree with this, then second - they should provide reward compensation for decrease of match quality (50K CB+1K XP for playing against Tier 2, 100K CB+2K XP for playing against Tier 1) and third - this matches should be alternated with good ones. Why it always me, who should be punching bag for elite? Make it at least 50/50.

Edited by MrMadguy, 22 February 2016 - 01:49 AM.

[Doman Hugin]

First thing i'd say is to use comm's, if you're like me and uncomfortable on comm's, start by just giving information.
A red dorito on the map is information but if backed by someone identifying the mech thats greater knowledge.
And i've noticed that if one person starts giving info others find thier voice too.

Other than that, find one mech that you just rock in, doesn't matter if it's meta cheese, LRM's, whatever, keep it fully stocked with modules and consumables. So when you need to lighten the loosing streak jump into it and have some fun.
Mine's the BLR-1G(P) - 3 LPL 4ML, with mods and quirks the cooldown and range of both get pretty close, and can alpha 3 time before overheat.
Pure cheese / easy mode but great for getting you out of a slump.

Also don't blame the MM, the moaners are mostly people that can't dominate anymore and want to drop in PSR but are actually good enough to keep progressing.
Note: We see 5 Teirs, PGI see's 4000 and the average spread per match is about 150, less that 0.2 of a teir.

[MrMadguy]

Doman Hugin, on 22 February 2016 - 01:48 AM, said:

First thing i'd say is to use comm's, if you're like me and uncomfortable on comm's, start by just giving information.
A red dorito on the map is information but if backed by someone identifying the mech thats greater knowledge.
And i've noticed that if one person starts giving info others find thier voice too.

Other than that, find one mech that you just rock in, doesn't matter if it's meta cheese, LRM's, whatever, keep it fully stocked with modules and consumables. So when you need to lighten the loosing streak jump into it and have some fun.
Mine's the BLR-1G(P) - 3 LPL 4ML, with mods and quirks the cooldown and range of both get pretty close, and can alpha 3 time before overheat.
Pure cheese / easy mode but great for getting you out of a slump.

Also don't blame the MM, the moaners are mostly people that can't dominate anymore and want to drop in PSR but are actually good enough to keep progressing.
Note: We see 5 Teirs, PGI see's 4000 and the average spread per match is about 150, less that 0.2 of a teir.

You can do it, but it will make things even worse. Yeah, I have AWS-8R LRM60 boat. I do well in it. All matches are easy and fun. Rewards are good. But... My PSR flies up at enormous rate in this 'Mech. After completing 50KMDD Christmas event I gained 50% of Tier 3 in a matter of just few hours - I was 1 millimeter away from advancing to Tier 2. And after that all my ordinal 'Mechs became UNPLAYABLE. And there is no way back. I've experienced about two months of non-stop lose/stomp streak, before situation improved a little bit - I managed to drop to about 70% Tier 3. But after just two days of good matches I advanced back to 90% Tier 3 and keep slowly advancing. And I don't want to play this 'Mech only: I buy 'Mechs not to let them collect dust in their mechbays - I want to play them all!

The most fun thing in this game for me - is building new 'Mechs. So what the point to have MechLab in this game, if you can play only one best 'Mech? Also eventually this 'Mech will become unplayable too - it's just a matter of time. Tier 1 players say, that LRM boats are irrelevant in Tier 1. Yeah, in a world, where everyone can put precise shot to your ST from 1K meters while moving without Adv Zoom (I can't aim precisely even with Adv Zoom, especially when enemies blind me or due to screen shake) - guys can equip some other 'Mech Modules, like Radar Derp.

Edited by MrMadguy, 22 February 2016 - 02:30 AM.

[VorpalAnvil]

One word: Morrowind.

Also OP, you seem like your in game goals are to do well as a team. Perhaps join one?