43 replies to this topic

[Bilbo]

Charons Little Helper, on 03 March 2014 - 11:14 AM, said:

Exactly - hence my proposal that it should be your 1st 10 matches with a mech.

Plus - from PGI's perspective - it would encourage people to get a variety of chasis.

I wouldn't mind it allowing you to drop a few scores(5-10), but as it stands it just isn't worth bothering with.

[xhrit]

I spent all weekend playing the ESO beta, so I did not participate in the tournament at all. I totally would have, if it was last weekend. Bad timing I guess.

[DustySkunk]

Actually I was quite surprised with my ranking. I opted in, played 15-20 serious matches, gave it my all and did above average for myself. After I clocked those in, I spent most of my play time this weekend just leveling my Catapults. I ended up placing well.

To be honest, going into this I had no expectation that I would win any of the prizes and I think that kept if fun for me. It was rewarding just to get some measure of feedback regarding how well I stacked up to other players. Not knowing our ELO, (while I consider it a good thing) has always made me wonder.exactly where I might fit in with my peers. Now, I have some idea.

What I would suggest to anyone who is truly upset with the way this tournament was run is to consider two things:

1) There were only *five* prizes per category. If you went into this assuming you would win, you are essentially placing yourself within the top five players of the tournament for each category. There is no reason not to assume some of the best of the best opted in. If you think you're that good and had a serious shot of winning... okay. My hat is off to you. Otherwise, if you're mortal (like me) the likely-hood of winning something was remote to begin with, and being upset that you didn't win is an exercise in futility.

2) It's all for fun. You play to have fun. No one (at least that I know of) is making a living off playing MWO. In my opinion, if you are playing this game solely for the opportunity to participate in contests like this and win, you are playing for the wrong reasons. There are other games out there with lively competitive scenes in which you can get your competition fix in. MWO isn't there yet.

That said, it would have been nice to have something to commemorate our participation in the tourney, like a cockpit item or a badge of some sort.

Just my 2 cents for what it's worth.

-Dusty

Edited by DustySkunk, 03 March 2014 - 12:31 PM.

[Sug]

I like how I only played 5 games in my hunchback and I'm in the top 500.

[Water Bear]

ScrapIron Prime, on 03 March 2014 - 07:58 AM, said:

Yes, I noted your early lead and I couldn't close the distance between us. If anything it got worse.

Now I know a lot of people use new or alternate accounts to play tournaments, but that might confirm that ELO played a rather huge part in the rankings. I only have one account, and my ELO has got to be pretty good. Perhaps that kept me from being a contender? (The question being whether it figured into our scores or merely meant we dropped against matching ELO opponants. Not sure which.)

Maybe. My ELO has got to be crap. All but one of my mechs has a K/D below 2, including all of my cicadas. When I went into competition mode I was probably matching against completely new players. I do not normally play to get kills, IMO people that are trying to prove their skill by getting high K/Ds and win numbers through various means, such as coordinated drops, are goofs.

I play this game because I really enjoy playing it, and I have been a big Battletech fan for more than a decade. I love piloting my -9M awesome. Honestly I'm a little glad the competition is over so I can go back to being "bad."

GoManGo, on 02 March 2014 - 09:56 PM, said:

Well fellas I hate to burst your bubbles but I don't think there are more than 20,000-30,000 players left playing this game=MWO.And I would assume maybe 5000-8000 players opted in for this tournament = go do the math+ wacky ELO givesyou the answer=LOW PLAYER COUNT.

I don't think I would say it quite this way, but I agree that my success might have been helped by this game's small player base, if indeed it has a small player base.

[TB Freelancer]

I never opted in this time....just don't have the time LOL....

[aniviron]

From twitter, 5000 people opted in to the tournament; I'm sure at least some of those opt-ins, like me, opted in just on the chance that playing would be fun, but then never dropped at all.

But even assuming 5000 opt ins and everyone plays, it's not that hard to get a high rank. I rarely don't place in the top 10-15 in the class I am competing in when I play, but the more I thought about it, I realize: 5000 players total. Many of those won't even be competing for whatever the chosen weight class is, and are instead going for best heavy/light/assault, and opted in because why not. Of the rest, most compete for a specific chassis. So between the 8 mediums you can run, there's going to be about 300 players on average competing for each one. Then again, that also assumes that every single person who signed up for the tournament and is actually playing to win, which seems unlikely- at best, half probably are, which means that if you finish in the top 50 for, say, Hunchbacks, that really means that you're at about 50/150, which is a lot less impressive.

tl;dr is that the very high amount of granularity in how the prizes are divided combined with the fact that there aren't that many people playing means that you can get in the top 50 pretty easily just by having a total of 10 wins period.

[DustySkunk]

aniviron, on 03 March 2014 - 08:58 PM, said:

From twitter, 5000 people opted in to the tournament; I'm sure at least some of those opt-ins, like me, opted in just on the chance that playing would be fun, but then never dropped at all.

....

I agree with much of what you have said. However I do not think that Twitter is an accurate means to count the amount of participants, unless PGI tweeted the numbers~ I just checked their account and I do not see that information, although I may have missed it. I'm someone who doesn't use Twitter, and I think assuming that all of the players that opted in do (and then tweeted about it) is a huge assumption to make.

What we can say though that at least 5000 people opted in, and that's a start though

Edited by DustySkunk, 04 March 2014 - 07:01 AM.

[Mordin Ashe]

I got to place 39 in lights after 10 terrible matches with my Oxide by tbe saturday night, then I stopped playing. I am no beginner, but THIS score in highly competitive light Mech bracket and 10 very sucking games? I blame people for not signung up for the tournament.

[Deathlike]

aniviron, on 03 March 2014 - 08:58 PM, said:

From twitter, 5000 people opted in to the tournament; I'm sure at least some of those opt-ins, like me, opted in just on the chance that playing would be fun, but then never dropped at all.

But even assuming 5000 opt ins and everyone plays, it's not that hard to get a high rank. I rarely don't place in the top 10-15 in the class I am competing in when I play, but the more I thought about it, I realize: 5000 players total. Many of those won't even be competing for whatever the chosen weight class is, and are instead going for best heavy/light/assault, and opted in because why not. Of the rest, most compete for a specific chassis. So between the 8 mediums you can run, there's going to be about 300 players on average competing for each one. Then again, that also assumes that every single person who signed up for the tournament and is actually playing to win, which seems unlikely- at best, half probably are, which means that if you finish in the top 50 for, say, Hunchbacks, that really means that you're at about 50/150, which is a lot less impressive.

tl;dr is that the very high amount of granularity in how the prizes are divided combined with the fact that there aren't that many people playing means that you can get in the top 50 pretty easily just by having a total of 10 wins period.

Please don't give me ideas to compete in the Awesome bracket. Nothing good will come of it.

[Clit Beastwood]

Deathlike, on 04 March 2014 - 07:56 AM, said:

Please don't give me ideas to compete in the Awesome bracket. Nothing good will come of it.

Oh too late. Next tourney... AWESOMEFEST

Edited by Fierostetz, 04 March 2014 - 11:35 AM.

[Water Bear]

Deathlike, on 04 March 2014 - 07:56 AM, said:

Please don't give me ideas to compete in the Awesome bracket. Nothing good will come of it.

If they have an Awesome category, I will try as hard as I can to win it

[Bhelogan]

I was not surprised at all. I only did solo drop in the SDH, and I know the role I fill (SSRMS, MGS, LL) well, but it doesn't always equate to stellar game depending on my team makeup and the opponents. I got near the top 10 by Saturday night, but was unable to add any games Sunday. With a score of 2134, that was good enough for 40th. Mostly I wanted to break a score of 2K. I think overall I am probably a better pilot than some that placed above me, and probably a worse pilot than some that ranked bellow me. However, I think anyone that was able to get a score over 2K in any category is overall a pretty good pilot.

[aniviron]

DustySkunk, on 04 March 2014 - 07:00 AM, said:

I agree with much of what you have said. However I do not think that Twitter is an accurate means to count the amount of participants, unless PGI tweeted the numbers~ I just checked their account and I do not see that information, although I may have missed it. I'm someone who doesn't use Twitter, and I think assuming that all of the players that opted in do (and then tweeted about it) is a huge assumption to make.

What we can say though that at least 5000 people opted in, and that's a start though

On Feb. 28th, Russ Bullock tweeted, "Over 5000 players opted into the weekends tournament. Lots of very good competitive matches going on. Very fun." Sounds like a pretty reliable player count to me.

Seriously though, look at Helmer's excellent developer tracker every week if you want to have any idea what's going on at all. The forums are worthless, and PGI agrees. More than 40 twitter updates, vs 5 total forum posts last week.

Deathlike, on 04 March 2014 - 07:56 AM, said:

Please don't give me ideas to compete in the Awesome bracket. Nothing good will come of it.

I was sooooooooo close to taking first in the Awesome category last time. :[ Was 2 points off the lead when Aethos landed a massive game at the end and pushed 20 points ahead of me. Still got 3rd, which was enough MC to buy a bay for the AWS-8R.

I guess what I'm saying is that I would love the competition. I didn't bother with this tournament, but I would with the next if you're going to try and push me out of the top 3 for Awesomes. ;D

[DustySkunk]

aniviron, on 04 March 2014 - 04:53 PM, said:

On Feb. 28th, Russ Bullock tweeted, "Over 5000 players opted into the weekends tournament. Lots of very good competitive matches going on. Very fun." Sounds like a pretty reliable player count to me.

Seriously though, look at Helmer's excellent developer tracker every week if you want to have any idea what's going on at all. The forums are worthless, and PGI agrees. More than 40 twitter updates, vs 5 total forum posts last week.

Good enough for me! 5000 players it is. I take back what I said; I was looking in the wrong place. Glad to know where to go for good updates. Thanks for the info~ greatly appreciated

[Sephlock]

PhoenixFire55, on 03 March 2014 - 12:02 AM, said:

There are two types of people ... those who think they are better than they are and those who think they are worse than they are.

Wrong. There is a third type:

[Kell Commander]

Usually there are large advertisements for these tournaments right on the home page. First thing you see. This one was on the 2nd page of a patcher I know I never read because I am apparently wrong in thinking the official website for the game is the most ideal place to post this type of thing about the game.

As a result I did not even know it was happening until it was pretty much over.

[KurtisMayfield]

I was surprised because I only got 4 matches in my Cicada in, and I was ranked as 295th. I thought we needed 10 matches minimum to place?

[Barkem Squirrel]

Thanks for the replies, and about the tweet that Russ made alluding to over 5,000 people signing up on the first day of the tournament.

I have and will always play this game for fun, but tournaments I think will have an effect on people. Some people will just man up and perform better than normally. In other words, more competitive play, with less Leroy Jenkins type of charges.

For the last few months I have been stuck at a certain difference of wins to losses, and during the tournament that improved by 30 games. I had more kills per game than on average, more damage and less deaths.

I also had those matches where one person in the top 5 were on the other team, and those sucked. On the same team is more of you kill stealing ...................

I would like to see tournaments with 20,000 or more people participating. It seemed to me that there were more people in tournaments last year during open Beta.

One other issue, not everyone that was playing new about the tournament. This is on PGI. Maybe give a lead time for informing people about the event or better, a calendar of events that are scheduled.

Awards. Does it have to be over the entire weekend? Can it be one award per person for the event, but have 12 hour intervals, with the same restrictions best 10 matches.

Even though I did not ask the question, the size of the player base I knew was going to come up. This game is not start playing and dominate. We all know that, I have seen many new players asking for help. Do we need a mentor system to help with new player retention?

[Clit Beastwood]

KurtisMayfield, on 05 March 2014 - 07:34 AM, said:

I was surprised because I only got 4 matches in my Cicada in, and I was ranked as 295th. I thought we needed 10 matches minimum to place?

I observed the same thing lol - 4 matches and in the same neighborhood as yourself.

Maybe a bunch of people opted in with the trial cicadas?