597 replies to this topic

[DEMAX51]

Milt, on 11 June 2013 - 11:12 AM, said:

i could care less what a higher elo pilot has to say on the forum. I want public elo so that i can measure myself against other ppl. with the current mm you may have a nice 50/50 w/l and be the best pilot in mwo or the worst pilot. how do you know?

Well, they'll be implementing Leaderboards sometime soon that you'll be able to use to judge your performance against other players'. But that's a lot different than an ELO score.

[PEEFsmash]

Please, everyone still interested in this discussion, read this post. It will clear up a major confusion.

This low-Elo/high-Elo distinction isn't about the validity of the arguments put forward by people of various skill levels. Anyone can make good or bad arguments, and they are good or bad on their own merit. Being a good player doesn't make an argument better.

It is about nothing other than the relevance of personal experience testimonies. Personal experience testimonies make up 90+% of balance discussion. My point, my ONLY point, is that when a low-Elo player calls for balance changes based on his own personal experience (in the form: "Lights are overpowered because they are impossible to hit") she is saying something that is entirely irrelevant. The low-Elo player's personal experience testimony of something being over/underpowered is typically a function of deficiencies in her own play.

If a low-Elo player suggests that something could be more fun, or something like that, then the higher-Elo player has no trump over her. If a low-Elo player posts a video like the one I did recently showing that LRMs will sometimes hit exclusively the front of a mech even when it is running directly away (http://mwomercs.com/...video-evidence/), then this evidence is not subject to low-Elo/high-Elo distinction. It is just hard evidence. (Moving in X way and pointing in Y direction gets unexpected Z result.)

Edited by PEEFsmash, 11 June 2013 - 11:23 AM.

[DEMAX51]

xDeityx, on 11 June 2013 - 11:18 AM, said:

For the hundredth time - Low Elo players shouldn't get ignored, but their feedback should just be treated differently because they are coming from a completely different perspective.

And it's already possible for the devs to do exactly that! But that doesn't mean that WE have to know other people's ELO scores to have a discussion.

[xDeityx]

Odins Fist, on 11 June 2013 - 10:59 AM, said:

If the issue here is that higher ELO players should be listened to over people that have only been around for 3 months, then it is quite obvious how bad of an idea this is.

That is not at all the issue here.

Higher Elo (not an acronym) players should be listened to with the understanding that they are coming from the perspective of a more skilled player and lower Elo players should be listened to with the understanding that they are coming from the perspective of a less skilled player. We currently do not have that perspective at all, which is causing discussion to be chaotic and stagnant.

Gaan Cathal, on 11 June 2013 - 11:00 AM, said:

We ban guns.

And these forums aren't anywhere near as toxic as they have the potential to be. The LoL "community" comes to mind.

Banning guns is a huge debate. Banning pools and cars is not. Citing gun bans is dishonest in this context.

LoL has a reputation for being a toxic community because it is the single largest gaming community in the entire world.

Deathlike, on 11 June 2013 - 11:04 AM, said:

History has already shown the discussion tends to decay as soon as any metric that shows the person's current "skill level" is used as part of the discussion.

Why repeat it when it's readily apparent?

I disagree. History has shown that discussion thrives when you can see which people can back up their words with skill and which people are incapable of doing so. It's the exact reason that we convene a panel of experts to tackle problems rather than a panel of totally random people.

[DEMAX51]

This entire discussion is moot anyway, because they are never going to make Elo public.

[Bilbo]

xDeityx, on 11 June 2013 - 11:27 AM, said:

That is not at all the issue here.

Higher Elo (not an acronym) players should be listened to with the understanding that they are coming from the perspective of a more skilled player and lower Elo players should be listened to with the understanding that they are coming from the perspective of a less skilled player. We currently do not have that perspective at all, which is causing discussion to be chaotic and stagnant.

If someone's experience runs counter to yours, the discussion that follows as to why that is and how one or the other's experience can be changed would be more beneficial, to anyone following the discussion, than knowing who has won more games.

[xDeityx]

Caviel, on 11 June 2013 - 11:04 AM, said:

The point is that this thread alone is bad enough that mods deleted 10 pages of content.

This is as false as you can get. This thread is not alone in needing 10+ pages of toxic content removed. This is not a first. Trolling people has nothing to do with the topic being discussed, it has everything to do with the maturity level of those discussing it.

Caviel, on 11 June 2013 - 11:04 AM, said:

People are advocating for the release of Elo scores that have shown in multiple other games that release a similar ranking mechanism to be a divisive, antagonistic factor in forums. This is a case of "Let's not make things even worse than they already are based on what has happened elsewhere by throwing Elo score waving into the mix."

Most of the games that people cite as divisive and antagonistic also happen to be games that are incredibly popular. This is not a coincidence.

Caviel, on 11 June 2013 - 11:04 AM, said:

It isn't going to silence the low Elo group, just spur more low vs. high Elo arguments among the existing discussions/arguments:

[Low Elo player]: It would be really great if the game had feature X because of <listed reasons>
[High Elo player]: I disagree. Once you get better at the game you'll see that feature X isn't important
[Low Elo player]: It has nothing to do with skill, this will make the game more fun
[Mid Elo player]: I kinda like the idea, maybe if we tweaked it a bit more and did Y, I like that better than X
[High Elo player]: You both don't know how top-tier play works, you don't need X or Y, it's fine. I've played up to my Elo score without X or Y just fine
..etc.

I fail to see how the above discussion threatens the community. The low Elo player can ignore the High elo player and continue the discussion if they so choose. Or the high Elo player could actually explain to them exactly why rather than brush them off.

Caviel, on 11 June 2013 - 11:04 AM, said:

If the masses object to some aspect, and said masses leave due to some aspect, that is a concern for a game developer. If it wasn't for public outcry, we would still be dealing with pay to win consumables, just to site a recent example.

The difference between us forum posters and PGI is that PGI has the game data to measure the validity of the complaint. For example, the base capture win rate in Assault matches showing it is not as bad of a problem as projected by forum posters advocating for the removal or reduction of base captures. Again, it doesn't matter if the player has a high or low Elo, the data doesn't back up the idea.

Stop thinking PGI is going to come rescue us. By all metrics available they have very poor balancing skills. What makes you think they are going through the forums and applying Elo to the discussions? I don't see the slightest shred of evidence that this is happening.

Caviel, on 11 June 2013 - 11:04 AM, said:

Would you dismiss or give less weight a thoroughly researched idea that is well presented because the person has a low Elo score?

No, but statistically speaking the odds of a person who doesn't understand the game enough to be considered an average player will not come up with a thoroughly researched idea that is well presented. They don't have the understanding of the game mechanics to do it and if they somehow happen to beat all the odds and throw a gem out there - how does a public Elo rating stop you from reading it? Go nuts, scrutinize every post on the forum with a magnifying glass looking for that diamond in the rough for all I care.

Caviel, on 11 June 2013 - 11:04 AM, said:

I'm not saying there is no value or good things that can come out of releasing Elo scores. I'm saying the negative aspects of playerbase division and personal attacks outweigh the positive ones, and Elo has little bearing if an idea has merit or not.

I am willing to forgo having access to how I'm doing in comparison to a global scale via Elo if that means new players and players with low Elo scores are not segregated or dismissed on the forums or in the game.

The negative aspects boil down to, "people will be mean(er)" and I don't see this as a valid reason to halt progress in the same way that we don't ban pools because people drown in them.

[xDeityx]

DEMAX51, on 11 June 2013 - 11:19 AM, said:

Well, they'll be implementing Leaderboards sometime soon that you'll be able to use to judge your performance against other players'. But that's a lot different than an ELO score.

Elo scores are identical in concept to leaderboards. In Chess, the FIDE leaderboards are posted in order of Elo rating. If PGI is planning on having leaderboards, they are essentially making your Elo rating public.

DEMAX51, on 11 June 2013 - 11:29 AM, said:

This entire discussion is moot anyway, because they are never going to make Elo public.

The opposite is actually true if PGI is planning on having leaderboards or any publicly known metric of skill as people in this thread claim.

Bilbo, on 11 June 2013 - 11:32 AM, said:

If someone's experience runs counter to yours, the discussion that follows as to why that is and how one or the other's experience can be changed would be more beneficial, to anyone following the discussion, than knowing who has won more games.

Elo rating doesn't at all tell you who has won more games. You could even have a better win/loss ratio than I do and yet be at a lower Elo rating than I am because winning against easy opponents is rewarded much less than winning against hard opponents and the same goes for losing. If I lose a match that was not in my favor (it is a total misconception that Elo makes even matches - the entire system is predicated upon having unequal matchups) then I don't lose as many points as a match in which my chance to win was calculated by the Elo system at 60%.

[M e g a M a n X]

See what is happening in this thread (at least in these later parts lol)? Points are being raised and corrected
in a civilized manner (with few exceptions, you know who they are lol). Without ELO..

No one is currently asking anyone about their ELO but there is still some sort of understanding.. Would it matter if Deity has low ELO or not? Or Odin? No. Because they explain things thoroughly enough for people they are discussing with to understand what they say. Without any number beside their name to "support" their claims. Because if u can just do things in a civilized understandable manner with enough experience and knowledge, ELO is not needed to support ur claims.

PEEFsmash, on 11 June 2013 - 11:20 AM, said:

Please, everyone still interested in this discussion, read this post. It will clear up a major confusion.

This low-Elo/high-Elo distinction isn't about the validity of the arguments put forward by people of various skill levels. Anyone can make good or bad arguments, and they are good or bad on their own merit. Being a good player doesn't make an argument better.

Nope it is (about the validity of the arguments). A good player should be able to present his argument better.It's like being an expert in his own field. You're an expert poptarter? Who better to ask about poptarting than you? You should be able to explain your balance issues better and have more valid points when it comes to poptarting.They should have more merit than a guy who is just building up Cbills using the Highlander trial mech

The reason why the trial mech guy doesn't immediately believe the expert poptarter and there is rarely a resulting common view of opinion is because of this:


"L2P noob" - without any other explanation


But I'm starting to get tired of this thread.. Again just take note that things can happen when done in a civilized understandable discussion. It's just that there are lots of empty space in the forums (people who doesn't say anything useful, or adolescents with superiority issues) that becomes the reason why good things rarely come out of these things.

Edited by M e g a M a n X, 11 June 2013 - 12:06 PM.

[DEMAX51]

Elo scores are very dissimilar to Leaderboards in concept.

Leaderboards simply tally your stats, like kills wins and assists, and juxtapose them with those of other players. Elo, as you mentioned yourself, is a dynamic rating system that awards (or deducts) a varying number of points from your rating depending on your wins/losses in conjunction with how likely you were to win/lose particular matches.

I would think a player's Elo score would be a much better indicator of their skill level as opposed to the types of metrics that will be visible on leaderboards, but leaderboards will give us a small insight into how well we stack up against others.



The simple fact still remains, however: A less-skilled player can still make valid observations and suggestions, "and treating their opinion differently" is just a form of segregation, and an avenue by which people can justify ignoring those with whom they disagree. Separate is not equal.

Edited by DEMAX51, 11 June 2013 - 12:04 PM.

[xDeityx]

M e g a M a n X, on 11 June 2013 - 11:58 AM, said:

See what is happening in this thread (at least in these later parts lol)? Points are being raised and corrected
in a civilized manner (with few exceptions, you know who they are lol). Without ELO..

No one is currently asking anyone about their ELO but there is still some sort of understanding.. Would it matter if Deity has low ELO or not? Or Odin? No. Because they explain things thoroughly enough for people they are discussing with to understand what they say. Without any number beside their name to "support" their claims. Because if u can just do things in a civilized understandable manner with enough experience and knowledge, ELO is not needed to support ur claims.

The point that civil discussion can happen with or without Elo is moot in the context of this thread. We aren't talking about the metagame in this thread and we therefore don't suffer from the problem that discussions about game balance do. People in those discussions are talking past each other because they are coming from totally different perspectives. Players say opposite things but both are right in the context of their Elo bracket.

DEMAX51, on 11 June 2013 - 11:58 AM, said:

Elo scores are very dissimilar to Leaderboards in concept.

Leaderboards simply tally your stats, like kills wins and assists, and juxtapose them with those of other players. Elo, as you mentioned yourself, is a dynamic rating system that awards (or deducts) a varying number of points from your rating depending on your wins/losses in conjunction with how likely you were to win/lose particular matches.

Thanks for clarifying, I was using a different definition of a leaderboard. When I hear leaderboard I think more along the lines of the FIDE world rankings or what you get when you google the word "leaderboard." In this case google pops up a ranking of the top 5 players in the 2013 St. Jude Classic (I think that's golf) and also lists their stats in addition to their ranking. The leaderboard shows who the leader is...i.e. the best player in the game.

Your definition seems a bit more narrow...instead of the best player in the game you get to see the most damaging player in the game, or the most winning player in the game, etc. In that case then I agree with you and we just had a semantic misunderstanding.

Does anyone know which definition is closer to what PGI is planning on implementing?

DEMAX51, on 11 June 2013 - 11:58 AM, said:

I would think a player's Elo score would be a much better indicator of their skill level as opposed to the types of metrics that will be visible on leaderboards, but leaderboards will give us a small insight into how well we stack up against others.

Absolutely. But don't you think that Elo rating and leaderboard data will be misused in the same way (i.e. to argue from a position of authority)? If people are concerned that public Elo ratings will cause this behavior then I don't see why they wouldn't be against specific leaderboards as well. One could say "listen to me because I have the most wins (or damage or whatever) in the game" just as easily as "listen to me because I have the highest Elo." Not that I think either of these is a valid concern...if somebody prefaced their post with their qualifications it might convince me to read it but not to automatically assume the post has merit.

DEMAX51, on 11 June 2013 - 11:58 AM, said:

The simple fact still remains, however: A less-skilled player can still make valid observations and suggestions, "and treating their opinion differently" is just a form of segregation, and an avenue by which people can justify ignoring those with whom they disagree. Separate is not equal.

What I meant by treating opinions differently is referring to perspective. Right now we treat everyone's posts as the same when in fact they are coming from totally different perspectives. We have no way of telling what Elo brackets a player is getting their experience from.

But even if I did mean by that statement that we should give less weight to the lower Elo player's opinions, that position may also be valid. We treat people's opinions differently every day, and with good reason. Segregation based on traits like race are a bad thing, but segregation based on a skill metric is not inherently bad. For example segregating the Minor Leagues and the Major Leagues in baseball by skill works great for baseball.

Consider this scenario: you're at work trying to figure out a problem and you have 30 minutes before deadline. You need help. Two people are available to help you - your team leader and the brand new intern. The team leader suggests one thing, the intern suggests another. You obviously go with the team leader's advice, and give less weight to the intern's, right?

It doesn't matter if the intern turns out to be correct in that specific situation...if the same situation occurs next month with a different problem and a different brand new intern you wouldn't say, "well last time the intern was right so I'll go with them" because statistically speaking the person with the experience is more likely to give you better advice.

But if that same intern who gave you the good advice last time chimed in maybe you'd give his idea more thought. This is much the same as if a low Elo player made thoughtful posts about balance that were spot-on. You would start to learn to ignore the indication that the person may not be unqualified (in the analogy the fact that the person was an intern, on the forums their low Elo rating) and give their posts the same weight as someone who had a higher Elo. The same is true if a high Elo player consistently made posts that were way off, you would learn to ignore their Elo and would give their posts less weight.

Edited by xDeityx, 11 June 2013 - 12:34 PM.

[Dude42]

Seems like all anyone cares about is how public ELO or a bracket system would affect the forums. But what about the game. I want it because I want to see who my teammates are and I'd like to know what to expect from them before we start. If it's just me and a bunch of raw recruits I want to know about it before they're all dead. Maybe I can take command, and maybe they would listen because I was higher rank. Maybe someone better than me could take command, and I would listen. And wouldn't it be nice to know, after getting pubstomped 8:0 that it wasn't because the other 7 people on your team were expected to be carried by you by the matchmaker. I mean at least if I saw that it was me and 7 green recruits vs 8 pros I could just not try so hard and focus more on things like getting the nubs to unlock their arms and explain what focus fire was. We'd still lose, but at least I could feel helpful

The only negative things you guys are saying are concerning e-peen wavers on the forums. Is that really what's important to you?

If you're really that scared that someone might have a bigger forum-peen than you, or that some people might pay a little bit more attention to someone's idea because they can demonstrably play well then I feel sorry for you. As for me, I want what's best for the game. Which in this case is some sort of indicator of the skill level of your teammates.

Edited by Dude42, 11 June 2013 - 12:40 PM.

[Caviel]

PEEFsmash, on 11 June 2013 - 11:20 AM, said:

It is about nothing other than the relevance of personal experience testimonies. Personal experience testimonies make up 90+% of balance discussion. My point, my ONLY point, is that when a low-Elo player calls for balance changes based on his own personal experience (in the form: "Lights are overpowered because they are impossible to hit") she is saying something that is entirely irrelevant.

This whole argument is based on the game somehow functioning differently for a low and high Elo score player. It doesn't, a medium laser does the same amount of damage no matter what your Elo score is.

These opinion threads you site are irrelevant to you, maybe because you don't necessarily agree, although they can be very relevant to other players, possibly even high Elo players. You have no statistical evidence to support or refute a claim upon first reading an opinion beyond your own personal experience. No more than the person making the claim that lights are overpowered, in your example, based on their own personal experience alone. Elo has nothing to do with this, and I don't need an Elo score to spot these baseless claim kind of threads any more than you do.

Maybe lights are overpowered, maybe there is something wrong with HSR that backs up the claim. The "Lights are overpowered because I can't hit them" idea alone has no merit because it is simply an opinion on anecdotal evidence which has nothing to do with the players Elo score. We all play off the same code base, there is no difference in game behavior between Elo ranking players. I don't need an Elo score to filter that content out.

Quote

The low-Elo player's personal experience testimony of something being over/underpowered is typically a function of deficiencies in her own play.

[citation needed]

See? No Elo score needed to understand a claim with no statistical evidence presented.

Quote

If a low-Elo player suggests that something could be more fun, or something like that, then the higher-Elo player has no trump over her. If a low-Elo player posts a video like the one I did recently showing that LRMs will sometimes hit exclusively the front of a mech even when it is running directly away (http://mwomercs.com/...video-evidence/), then this evidence is not subject to low-Elo/high-Elo distinction. It is just hard evidence. (Moving in X way and pointing in Y direction gets unexpected Z result.)

So why not skip Elo comparisons entirely and just look at the idea itself as facts vs opinions? Why does Elo even need to play a part? PGI already has the data they need to confirm facts and opinions, the base capture statistics in Assault mode being the example I cited earlier. If PGI sees a complaint/idea running rampant that really has no merit from a statistical point of view, they are able to post information to validate or invalidate the claim if they see too many threads on a particular topic based on misinformation. They don't even need Elo for that, and neither do we as players to judge the merit of an idea or observation.

PGI has data from everyone, we don't beyond whatever testing we gather which is still limited in scope.

If enough people say "Yea, this is a problem for me too," or "No, this isn't a problem for me," who cares what the Elo score of the posters are?

xDeityx, on 11 June 2013 - 11:27 AM, said:

History has shown that discussion thrives when you can see which people can back up their words with skill and which people are incapable of doing so.

I have a feeling I can site more examples where score comparisons are used in a negative context than you can show it being used in a positive way.

Let me give you a real world personal example: I played WoW in the past, started during closed beta. Not wanting to overly tout my playing ability, I was a good WoW player from a skill point of view and did the big raids in vanilla WoW. My problem is that I lacked the large blocks of time to invest heavily in character advancement via raiding and getting all the gear required to continue to move forward. As a result, I quit playing. I didn't hate the game, and I wasn't bad at it, I was the fact that I couldn't advance at all based on my own personal time constraints.

With a new release I re-subscribed based on the inclusion of expert level runs on regular dungeons to help bridge the gap between where I was and where I needed to be to play through the new end-game starting raid content, plus the concept of raid wings that meant no more 5+ hour marathon raids required. Great, solves my complaints, let's give WoW another whirl!

With the level cap increase, my purple raid level gear was woefully under-powered compared to green and blue level gear 1-10 levels higher where I was. Not a big deal, I worked my way up to max level, built up gear to start expert level dungeons through questing and crafting, and was ready to start work on getting initial raid level gear through expert dungeons to get my foot in the door for raiding. Unfortunately, this was after the inclusion of gear score.

What I found was that it was extremely difficult to find groups to run said expert dungeons because my gear score was not high enough for the groups looking for members due to some arbitrary gear score level. Even though I was at or above the Blizzard recommended level, I was denied groups simply because of my gear score being below group thresholds which was above said recommended level. Even though the content was designed specifically for players in my situation, I was locked out simply because of my gear score. I could run dungeons regularly because my gear score wasn't high enough, and my gear score wasn't high enough because I couldn't get into the dungeons I was locked out of.

If it was just one group that would be fine, shrug it off and move on. The problem was it was 90+% of groups that were running, so I spent most of my time in town looking for a group that would "drag me along" with them. When I could actually get in a group, it generally disbanded after a single completed dungeon run. The forums were a joke as my opinions were immediately brushed off because I didn't know what I was talking about, as though gear somehow makes the mechanics of my character work differently. At this point I was fed up at the slow pace of advancement, crappy community focused around gear score and the epeen waving that went along with it, and I quit WoW and haven't looked back since.

That, xDeityx, is why I vehemently oppose any sort of public ranking system along the lines of gear score, realm rank, Elo, or whatever mechanism you wrap around the arbitrary player rating. Just because I didn't have the large amounts of time to invest in WoW, and I didn't "keep up with the Joneses" with my gear score, I was locked out from content even though I had more than enough skill to do so.

It happened to me in WoW, it happened to others in WoW, plus other games as mentioned by other posters. I will call BS on any claim it won't happen here. I will put whatever vote I have to help make sure it doesn't happen in MW:O as well.

WoW had/has a large enough player base that it can shrug of the loss of players in my situation. I suspect MW:O does not.

[xDeityx]

Dude42, on 11 June 2013 - 12:38 PM, said:

Seems like all anyone cares about is how public ELO or a bracket system would affect the forums. But what about the game. I want it because I want to see who my teammates are and I'd like to know what to expect from them before we start. If it's just me and a bunch of raw recruits I want to know about it before they're all dead. Maybe I can take command, and maybe they would listen because I was higher rank. Maybe someone better than me could take command, and I would listen. And wouldn't it be nice to know, after getting pubstomped 8:0 that it wasn't because the other 7 people on your team were expected to be carried by you by the matchmaker. I mean at least if I saw that it was me and 7 green recruits vs 8 pros I could just not try so hard and focus more on things like getting the nubs to unlock their arms and explain what focus fire was. We'd still lose, but at least I could feel helpful

The only negative things you guys are saying are concerning e-peen wavers on the forums. Is that really what's important to you?

If you're really that scared that someone might have a bigger forum-peen than you, or that some people might pay a little bit more attention to someone's idea because they can demonstrably play well then I feel sorry for you. As for me, I want what's best for the game. Which in this case is some sort of indicator of the skill level of your teammates.

The problem with knowing a player's rating before the battle starts is that people react horribly when they feel they are "unjustly" disadvantaged by something out of their control (the matchmaker). Having 50 less averaged team Elo really isn't that bad and every single game will be mismatched, but it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if players know that they are on the underdog team. Some players will be like you and try and cooperate, but I believe more players won't.

I'm basically taking my opponents' argument here, that people will be mean. I disagree with that in the context of forums because like you said - who cares about forum trolls? But in the context of the actual game I think that it will have actual consequences.

Competition is crazy in the sense that "momentum" is actually a factor. Momentum isn't anything tangible in the game, but any fan of competition will tell you that it is a huge factor. Momentum is pure psychology, and I think that in-game public Elo ratings will start the underdog team off with a disadvantage in momentum. Hiding the Elo until after the results of the game have been tallied will start both teams off on an equal psychological footing (except for things like perceived disadvantages in starting positions, loadout of the team, etc.).

Check out this article on momentum if you are interested!

[Dude42]

xDeityx, on 11 June 2013 - 12:52 PM, said:

The problem with knowing a player's rating before the battle starts is that people react horribly when they feel they are "unjustly" disadvantaged by something out of their control (the matchmaker). Having 50 less averaged team Elo really isn't that bad and every single game will be mismatched, but it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if players know that they are on the underdog team. Some players will be like you and try and cooperate, but I believe more players won't.

I'm basically taking my opponents' argument here, that people will be mean. I disagree with that in the context of forums because like you said - who cares about forum trolls? But in the context of the actual game I think that it will have actual consequences.

Competition is crazy in the sense that "momentum" is actually a factor. Momentum isn't anything tangible in the game, but any fan of competition will tell you that it is a huge factor. Momentum is pure psychology, and I think that in-game public Elo ratings will start the underdog team off with a disadvantage in momentum. Hiding the Elo until after the results of the game have been tallied will start both teams off on an equal psychological footing (except for things like perceived disadvantages in starting positions, loadout of the team, etc.).

Check out this article on momentum if you are interested!

What about the psychological aspect of doing 700+ damage and getting 7 kills, and losing? That kind of thing will make you ragequit the whole game if it happens enough.

I would really like some sort of warning beforehand. You're absolutely right tho, if I was playing against a 2700 rated team, and my team average was 1200, I wouldn't try very hard. But why should I? At that point why not focus on teaching the finer points of how to play the game to some people that obviously need help?

You have no chance to do that because the first indication that there might be a need to is that they are all dead. And while this was going to happen anyway(without about a 99% certainty based on ELO) at least I wouldn't be raging on my team so damn hard for 7 of them not managing to get a single kill or put out a respectable amount of damage. Even in Starcraft you know if you're favored to win before you start the match. I don't see anyone arguing that it messes them up because of the psychological aspect of knowing they were not favored. Being slightly favored or slightly unfavored isn't a real disadvantage, and you get more (ELO)points if you win. I just want to know if there's no hope of winning before I try my *** off, get those 6-7 kills, and do that 700+ damage and lose because the next highest score on my whole team was 54. It's psychologically exhausting to put up that much effort in vain.

Edit: And its not like this doesn't happen all the time, particularly after I've just carried 5-6 teams to victory. Usually when my W/L gets to around 2.5 with a mech I start getting paired with teammates....I mean just wow. In theory, if MM was working properly the way they claim it does, my teammates should get better after a win streak like that, since I should be playing in a higher bracket. But instead they get noticeably worse. I would also like ranks so I could document this phenomenon more clearly. The way I am currently testing it is I have 2 Atlases set up nearly the same. Both have KDR's about 2.5, but I swap them out when I start noticing I'm being placed on really bad teams. One has a W/L of a little over 2.0, the other has a W/L of about 0.6. And all I'm doing is switching mechs after I notice at least 2 locked arms on my team and switching back when I started getting teams with paintjobs again. That's all. I guess to sum it all up, I'm tired of being paired with new players and not knowing it. Please give me some sort of clue.

Edited by Dude42, 11 June 2013 - 01:34 PM.

[xDeityx]

Caviel, on 11 June 2013 - 12:51 PM, said:

I have a feeling I can site more examples where score comparisons are used in a negative context than you can show it being used in a positive way.

Honestly I don't think either of us can prove it one way or the other because there are too many other factors that we can't rule out that could influence the toxicity of a community.

Caviel, on 11 June 2013 - 12:51 PM, said:

Let me give you a real world personal example: I played WoW in the past, started during closed beta. Not wanting to overly tout my playing ability, I was a good WoW player from a skill point of view and did the big raids in vanilla WoW. My problem is that I lacked the large blocks of time to invest heavily in character advancement via raiding and getting all the gear required to continue to move forward. As a result, I quit playing. I didn't hate the game, and I wasn't bad at it, I was the fact that I couldn't advance at all based on my own personal time constraints.

With a new release I re-subscribed based on the inclusion of expert level runs on regular dungeons to help bridge the gap between where I was and where I needed to be to play through the new end-game starting raid content, plus the concept of raid wings that meant no more 5+ hour marathon raids required. Great, solves my complaints, let's give WoW another whirl!

With the level cap increase, my purple raid level gear was woefully under-powered compared to green and blue level gear 1-10 levels higher where I was. Not a big deal, I worked my way up to max level, built up gear to start expert level dungeons through questing and crafting, and was ready to start work on getting initial raid level gear through expert dungeons to get my foot in the door for raiding. Unfortunately, this was after the inclusion of gear score.

What I found was that it was extremely difficult to find groups to run said expert dungeons because my gear score was not high enough for the groups looking for members due to some arbitrary gear score level. Even though I was at or above the Blizzard recommended level, I was denied groups simply because of my gear score being below group thresholds which was above said recommended level. Even though the content was designed specifically for players in my situation, I was locked out simply because of my gear score. I could run dungeons regularly because my gear score wasn't high enough, and my gear score wasn't high enough because I couldn't get into the dungeons I was locked out of.

If it was just one group that would be fine, shrug it off and move on. The problem was it was 90+% of groups that were running, so I spent most of my time in town looking for a group that would "drag me along" with them. When I could actually get in a group, it generally disbanded after a single completed dungeon run. The forums were a joke as my opinions were immediately brushed off because I didn't know what I was talking about, as though gear somehow makes the mechanics of my character work differently. At this point I was fed up at the slow pace of advancement, crappy community focused around gear score and the epeen waving that went along with it, and I quit WoW and haven't looked back since.

That, xDeityx, is why I vehemently oppose any sort of public ranking system along the lines of gear score, realm rank, Elo, or whatever mechanism you wrap around the arbitrary player rating. Just because I didn't have the large amounts of time to invest in WoW, and I didn't "keep up with the Joneses" with my gear score, I was locked out from content even though I had more than enough skill to do so.

It happened to me in WoW, it happened to others in WoW, plus other games as mentioned by other posters. I will call BS on any claim it won't happen here. I will put whatever vote I have to help make sure it doesn't happen in MW:O as well.

WoW had/has a large enough player base that it can shrug of the loss of players in my situation. I suspect MW:O does not.

As both a PvEr and a PvPer I can relate to a lot of your story. But I don't think gear score is quite the same as an Elo rating. Gear score is (presumably...correct me if I'm wrong please because I'm pretty sure I dropped out of PvE before gear score came in) an objective rating of your gear. The best possible gear in the game is known, so its easy to create a metric from best to worst. But gear score has no real impact on the skill level of the player, just how many items he has crossed off a checklist. Elo is a measure of skill though, or at least that's what its trying to be. You can argue how good of a job it does but there is a reason that a myriad of organizations use an Elo rating system as a metric of skill.

I think your analogy in WoW would be much better if you look at Arena Ratings (Elo, basically) and what impact their publication had on the game. When I played WoW I peaked at a 2200-something 2v2 Arena Rating before I got burned out from arguing with my partner after every loss, but it took me a long time to get there. One of the biggest tools I used for my own self-improvement was the Elitist Jerks forums.

These forums recognized the problem that too many players who didn't know what they were talking about were drowning out the conversation, so they made a requirement that in order to post in a certain section of their forums you had to be above a certain Arena Rating (1800 I want to say? Don't remember to be honest). While there were still plenty of posts disparaging other players for their opinions due to their (relatively) low Arena Rating, the level of the discussion was raised to the point where it was an insanely better source of information than the official WoW forums. The discussions avoided pitfalls that average players interjected, for example thinking that a certain class was doing a good thing by attacking a class entirely suited to counter it (e.g. a warrior who is attacking a priest but can't generate any rage because of the priest's shields).

The EJ forums were also instrumental in guiding public opinion toward a logical metagame in much the same way that LoL's top players trickle the metagame down. As much as I don't like it, you can't deny that developers put a lot of stock in public opinion. As EJ directly or indirectly educated the masses, the developers couldn't help but also be educated about the state of the game they created, and I think the overrall result of EJ existing was that WoW had better PvP for it.

MWO is currently losing players that we can't afford due to the horrible balance. I think public Elo ratings would do a lot to help that, not to mention the impact they would have to each player on a personal level. I think I'm a good player but to be honest I have no metric of knowing this. If MMO's have taught us anything it is that players love progression. Knowing your Elo would just give players another area in which to progress (the most important area imo). Of course, private Elo would do the same thing.

[xDeityx]

Dude42, on 11 June 2013 - 01:06 PM, said:

What about the psychological aspect of doing 700+ damage and getting 7 kills, and losing?

I would really like some sort of warning beforehand. You're absolutely right tho, if I was playing against a 2700 rated team, and my team average was 1200, I wouldn't try very hard. But why should I? At that point why not focus on teaching the finer points of how to play the game to some people that obviously need help? You have no chance to do that because the first indication that there might be a need to is that they are all dead. And while this was going to happen anyway(without about a 99% certainty based on ELO) at least I wouldn't be raging on my team so damn hard for 7 of them not managing to get a single kill or put out a respectable amount of damage.

I hear you, and I actually agree with you on a personal level. If I could know my team's Elo score it would definitely help me influence the outcome of the game. I just think that the community as a whole would be hurt by it because there are a lot fewer people who would take a positive "how can I make the best of this and pull out a win" approach than there are people who would just fold like a stack of cards at the first sign of disadvantage. People already fold too easily when their team is down a kill or two because they think a comeback is impossible. It's like they don't realize that an enemy 'mech could very well be a zombie with a blood red torso.

Dude42, on 11 June 2013 - 01:06 PM, said:

Even in Starcraft you know if you're favored to win before you start the match. I don't see anyone arguing that it messes them up because of the psychological aspect of knowing they were not favored. Being slightly favored or slightly unfavored isn't a real disadvantage, and you get more (ELO)points if you win.

Actually this was a topic of debate in StarCraft 2 before it was launched. Players were concerned about the psychological aspect of for example a gold facing off against a platinum (the highest rank at the time...since launch they've added diamond, master, and grandmaster ranks though). I believe the eventual consensus was for players to suck it up, but StarCraft teams are much more intimate than MWO teams. In StarCraft ladders you are either alone or you get to pick your teammates unless you willingly choose to place yourself in a random 2v2, 3v3, or 4v4 ladder. In MWO you have a bit of a different situation with the 8v8 queue and the mixed 1-4man queue.

I don't think it'd be the end of the world if we showed Elo ratings before the game though. I'd definitely be willing to test it.

Dude42, on 11 June 2013 - 01:06 PM, said:

I just want to know if there's no hope of winning before try my *** off, get those 6-7 kills, and do that 700+ damage and lose because the next highest score on my whole team was 54. It's psychologically exhausting to put up that much effort in vain.

You should always try your *** off just because of the way that rewards in this game work! Unless you're rich and don't care about the rewards I suppose...

[Caviel]

xDeityx, on 11 June 2013 - 11:38 AM, said:

This is as false as you can get. This thread is not alone in needing 10+ pages of toxic content removed. This is not a first. Trolling people has nothing to do with the topic being discussed, it has everything to do with the maturity level of those discussing it.

You should keep quotes in context before declaring them invalid.

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What makes you think they are going through the forums and applying Elo to the discussions? I don't see the slightest shred of evidence that this is happening.

I don't think PGI uses Elo either, because I feel Elo is irrelevant beyond the match maker. PGI makes the decisions and has all the data, we offer opinions and observations. PGI doesn't need Elo to judge observations since they have the real data.

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They don't have the understanding of the game mechanics to do it and if they somehow happen to beat all the odds and throw a gem out there - how does a public Elo rating stop you from reading it?

Reversing that logic, people are going to post regardless of their Elo ranking, why can't you just not read and respond to the unsubstantiated posts and not even deal with public Elo? Then PGI and IGP does not have to invest time in coding for and supporting public Elo scores and more time on other things.

Quote

Go nuts, scrutinize every post on the forum with a magnifying glass looking for that diamond in the rough for all I care. The negative aspects boil down to, "people will be mean(er)" ...

The impact on the forums is just one aspect. Wait until it starts getting applied to mercenary groups so that the new and unskilled players are shunned from in game content as well. Anything that locks out a set of players is bad for the game since all players are bad/new at one point. As I mentioned earlier, MW:O doesn't have the tens of millions of active players to shrug things like this off. I wish it did.

[Chavette]

While I appreciate your WoW life story, most of us probably didn't play the game or understand what you meant by it, just sum it up in a paragraph, we'll understand.

I don't understand why this whole thing is such big of a deal. What I'm seeing is that the trolls are trolling this thread overtime, being afraid ELO arrived they'd get trolled by the good players. I know this is wrong because good players don't troll all day long, they have better things to do. For this reason its a safe guess they got this idea by relating to the good players from themselves.

[PanzerMagier]

I've never seen a game with a "good" community that had a public elo system.
I use league of legends as an example. Worst community in the world. Because EVERYTHING runs off elo...

Just go away... all you stat whores... this game is bad enough, I don't understand why you want to make it worse.