67 replies to this topic

[Odwalla]

So, I've done it. I played through another Leaderboard Tournament and managed to get rank 1 in Inner Sphere mediums. This was my second attempt at one of these tournaments where the first one I placed 2nd in both the Marik bracket and overall top scores. This time, I decided to collect as much data on my experience as I could. So I streamed about 10 hours of my games and recorded all 151 matches I played in a spreadsheet.

Now, I wanted to have a discussion about these tournaments. What my experience was, how they could be improved in the future and why (if the format stays the same) I will no longer be participating in them anymore.

The Formula

The main issue and source of frustration in these tournaments is the formula that's used to calculate your score. It essentially weighs far too heavily on the actual kills over anything else. Even winning the match is secondary to securing a kill. So with the current formula, you basically want to prioritize your games like this: `kill > assist > damage > win`. Believe it or not, my number 1 best game, was a lose. Unfortunately, it was a match I didn't stream but you can see it recorded in my spreadsheet. It was an 8 kill, 1 assist, 1323 damage match that I lost in a 2xPPC 3xSSRM2 Griffin-1N.

So why is this a problem? Why does putting so much weight on kills not a good idea? There are a few issues with it that I'll try and highlight:

1. Kill focus encourages greedy play. I get that this is a solo tournament, but we still have to play it in a 12v12 environment. So it encourages kill stealing. I actually had to stop targeting mechs that were almost dead so my team wouldn't steal it from me. That's the mindset you have to have when playing in the tournament and it's toxic.

2. Kills do not represent your performance in a match. My 10th best tournament match (where I personally think I carried the hardest the entire weekend) was a 1511 damage match... in an SRM Griffin. That WOULD have been my best match, if my team didn't literally steal all the kills of mechs I worked on opening up.

3. Kills are too random. This game takes skill to play well. And there are a lot of great ways to evaluate a players performance in a match and I think the match score does a decent job of that. Kills, however, are a large portion luck. It's not uncommon for the player with the most kills at the end of a match to not have contributed very much in terms of damage.

I would much better prefer a formula that doesn't emphasis kills as much and actually encourages team play and winning the match. I don't know what the best formula for that would be, but it's certainly not the current one. Just using the match score for example would be a huge improvement.

One of the arguments for putting more wight on kills instead of damage is because of the possibility to exploit damage numbers by farming disconnects or stripped mechs. So I don't know what a better solution for that would be, but putting all your money on kills is way too luck based than I enjoy to participate in.

LRMs and Why They Suck

I don't think I have ever hated LRMs more than I do after this tournament. The frustration I get from seeing LRMs in a match is two fold.

1. When the enemy team has a lot of LRMs that usually means teammates will become very passive. A few will get bored and charge into their death until the enemy team has a substantial lead in kills and proceed to roll the rest of my team. This is especially frustrating when a hand full of maps favor ranged and LRM builds so much that if you get narced or stuck under a UAV, you're literally dead within seconds without the ability to even return fire on the targets that are killing you. It's very reminiscent of stun-lock rogues in vanilla World of Warcraft.

2. When my team has a lot of LRMs that means I'm going to lose kills to mechs that are leaching off my targets. It's usually assault LRM boats who sit in the back and just fire all their missiles at targets that I am tanking and trying to open up. The amount of kills that I've had stolen to friendly LRMs was maddening. I actually stopped targeting mechs if my team was LRM heavy and have even shielded legged enemy mechs from my friendly LRMs to make sure I could secure the kill.

I'm not sure how this can be improved on for future tournaments. I personally would love a rework of indirect fire weapons in general. But honestly, probably the easiest solution would be to not put so much weight on kills.

Map Imbalance

You can see from my spreadsheet data that I actually played a wide variety of builds between the Griffins and Shadowhawks though I decided to stick to those two chassis strictly. I played SRM brawlers, PPC+AC snipers, PPC+Gauss snipers, ERLL builds. But at the end of the day, I had to really start grinding with the ranged sniper builds because of the imbalance of maps (looking at you, Alpine).

If I get in my SRM brawler, I'm actually rolling the dice for having a ****** game simply because of the maps alone. Where if I take my AC5+PPC Shadowhawk, it really doesn't matter what map I get, I know I'll be able to get some work done and have a chance at a good game. This is part of the reason why the sniper meta has been so strong for so long and why before private lobbys letting teams know what maps will be played, competitive play was 99% jump snipers. They are good on every map.

So how can this be fixed? Simple (sort of), allow players to veto maps in the same way that SC2 players can. If I want to SRM brawl, let me veto Alpine so I have an actual chance of accomplishing something in a match. If I'm in an energy boat, let me veto Terra Therma. I'm fine with maps giving a slight edge to certain play styles or builds, but to the extent that some maps favor ranged engagements, it's practically impossible to have a good match with a short range mech/build.

Time Investment

This is one issue that I really don't have a good solution to. But essentially whoever has more time to play during these tournament weekends has the best chance of winning. So since this tournament was extended through a Monday instead of ending on the standard Sunday, it means people who were seriously attempting to win had to play an entire day extra to avoid losing their ranks.

Conclusion

So that pretty much sums up my experience with the tournament. And though I had some fun and I was glad that I took the time to record all my matches, it was overall a huge time investment and frustrating experience. Something that I hope can be improved upon in future tournaments. Unfortunately, this will be my last attempt at one of these tournaments. So good games to everyone who participated and congratulations to all the winners.

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Tournament Data

Google Documents Spreadsheet

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Match Highlights

Title	Build	Score	Twitch	YouTube
Gauss Sniper Shadow in Frozen City for the Leaderboard Tournament	[Gauss+ERPPC](http://mwo.smurfy-ne...7e482ff79652567)	MS:119, K:2, A:9, DMG:975	Twitch Link	YouTube Link
ERLL Shadowhawk in Caustic Valley for the Leaderboard Tournament	[3xERLLas](http://mwo.smurfy-ne...d80e301e5cdd051)	MS:131, K:2, A:10, DMG:930	Twitch Link	YouTube Link
LRM Troll Griffin in Tourmaline Desert for the Leaderboard Tournament	[4xLRM5+ERPPC+Tag](http://mwo.smurfy-ne...8a85733f90a2884)	MS:143, K:2, A:4, DMG:1033	Twitch Link	YouTube Link
LRM Troll Griffin in Caustic Valley for the Leaderboard Tournament	[4xLRM5+ERPPC+Tag](http://mwo.smurfy-ne...8a85733f90a2884)	MS:89, K:6, A:4, DMG:542	Twitch Link	YouTube Link
Sniper Griffin in Canyon Network for the Leaderboard Tournament	[2xAC5+PPC](http://mwo.smurfy-ne...401f36981104f10)	MS:120, K:1, A:9, DMG:921	Twitch Link	YouTube Link
Sniper Shadowhawk in Alpine Peaks for the Leaderboard Tournament	[2xAC5+PPC](http://mwo.smurfy-ne...401f36981104f10)	MS:133, K:4, A:8, DMG:919	Twitch Link	YouTube Link
Brawler Griffin in Terra Therma for the Leaderboard Tournament	[4xSRM4A+2xMLas+7tAmmo](http://mwo.smurfy-ne...5b335940d13047a)	MS:189, K:1, A:10, DMG:1511	Twitch Link	YouTube Link
Brawler Griffin in Forest Colony for the Leaderboard Tournament	[3xSRM6A+3xMLas](http://mwo.smurfy-ne...15ff8618a26c03c)	MS:128, K:3, A:3, DMG:1139	Twitch Link	YouTube Link
ER Large Laser Shadowhawk in HPG Manifold for the Leaderboard Tournament	[3xERLLas](http://mwo.smurfy-ne...d80e301e5cdd051)	MS:114, K:6, A:6, DMG:781	Twitch Link	YouTube Link

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My Tournament Attempts

Title	Rank	Link
Worthy Adversaries	Rank 1 IS Medium	https://mwomercs.com...t=201408faction
Faction Challenge	Rank 2 Marik	https://mwomercs.com...t=201403faction

Edited by Odwalla, 20 August 2014 - 03:27 PM.

[Ph30nix]

very well written and congrats.

I do have a question how many matches do you think you played total?


personally i dont see why they arent using the IN GAME scoreboard score. Ideally they need to do a complete rework of the scoring for these things, but lets face it they have nothing to do with an actual tourney they are ment to encourage play so they can get data.

[Roughneck45]

Awesome write up and congrats on 1st.

TLDR: These tournies are a grindfest, so get your extra large poopsock ready if you want to get a spot on the leaderbaords.

[Nidhogg]

Well done, I think you were in one or two of my games as I tried to at least get 10 solo games under my belt. I think the biggest detractor of this particular tournament was the lack of banners on the MWO forum announcing it, or in-game announcements. I had to find out via word of mouth on Sunday that it was going on =\

Well fought!

[Alistair Winter]

Great OP. 10/10

I have PM'd Joseph Mallan so he can come to this thread and remind us that you can't veto maps in real life, just like he didn't veto any maps when he fought the communists in the Korean war. He should be here shortly.

(Just kidding, Joe.)

[Roughneck45]

Alistair Winter, on 20 August 2014 - 03:36 PM, said:

I have PM'd Joseph Mallan so he can come to this thread and remind us that you can't veto maps in real life, just like he didn't veto any maps when he fought the communists in the Korean war. He should be here shortly.

too true.

[Bishop Steiner]

Excellent, concise post. Gotta say, most of your salient posts is why i stopped playing the tournaments. That, and just not being able to devote 1-200 match over a weekend. Of course, I ain't your caliber, but have broken top 20 a few times, so not a total noob, either.

But the scoring is off, and the play atmosphere, toxic. SImply put, aside form those that play purely for Epeen, I can't remotely see how these tournaments are fun, and I play games, explicitly, to have fun.

Also thank you for bringing up the Stunñlock issue. As a known, respected NGNG rep, perhaps they will listen to you where others have failed. But stunlock, as a mechanic has no place in MWO, ever. And to have a legged mech get dragged down to 15 kph, ensuring death, because Timmy LRM5boat learned to exploit a bad mechanic? Pure bupkis.

Alistair Winter, on 20 August 2014 - 03:36 PM, said:

Great OP. 10/10

I have PM'd Joseph Mallan so he can come to this thread and remind us that you can't veto maps in real life, just like he didn't veto any maps when he fought the communists in the Korean war. He should be here shortly.

(Just kidding, Joe.)

I thought Joe fought the Grey Coats over at Antietam.........?

[Odwalla]

Ph30nix, on 20 August 2014 - 03:32 PM, said:

...
I do have a question how many matches do you think you played total?
...

I had exactly 151 matches played for the tournament. All are tracked in the spreadsheet with my builds and results

[Bishop Steiner]

Odwalla, on 20 August 2014 - 03:39 PM, said:

I had exactly 151 matches played for the tournament. All are tracked in the spreadsheet with my builds and results

did you reward yourself with Bacardi afterward?

[Thorqemada]

There is not killstealing in this game - only finishing!
I witness to often PUG-Mates not to fnish almost dead Mechs bcs a fresh one arrives, i allways scan the enemies for weak Mechs that can be finished fast as this puts your Team on a numerical advantage (higher Chance to win).
I even had to stop to leg Light Mechs for the Team and have to kill them bcs the PUG lets the legged Light often stay alive while it shots their backs with the still intact weaponry.
I play to have fun and win - kills and damage be symptoms of playstyle and efficiency/inefficieny.

Regarding the number of matches aka Torunament-Marathon - simply take off 1 Point per match played from the ranking result (10 matches free of course as it is best of 10) which means if you play 300 matches you will have 290 Points subtracted from the end result.
Or you reward tournament Players with 250 (watever seem to fit) Points for participating and take off 1 Point for each match >10.

PS: And we have still no Elo-Manipulation watchguard.

Edited by Thorqemada, 20 August 2014 - 04:15 PM.

[Ph30nix]

Odwalla, on 20 August 2014 - 03:39 PM, said:

I had exactly 151 matches played for the tournament. All are tracked in the spreadsheet with my builds and results

god damn.... going by the avg 6-7 minutes a match that was 17 hours worth of play time

Thorqemada, on 20 August 2014 - 04:05 PM, said:

There is not killstealing in this game - only finishing!
I witness to often PUG-Mates not to fnish almost dead Mechs bcs a fresh one arrives, i allways scan the enemies for weak Mechs that can be finished fast as this puts your Team on a numerical advantage (higher Chance to win).

this is also seen as switching to the higher treat target, i have also often seen MANY times team mates ignoring the fresh new enemy mech to try and finish off the almost dead zombie with no weapons but enough armor left to stall while their team mate rips someone open.

Thorqemada, on 20 August 2014 - 04:05 PM, said:

I play to have fun and win - kills and damage be symptoms of playstyle and efficiency/inefficieny.

Yea high damage does = inefficiency

[Eboli]

Great post that is informative and constructive.

I admit I don't like these type of comps which bring out the "selfishness" of players (not meant to be an insult to you) and it also creates the potential of non-participants not enjoying their weekend game play when mixed with people who are in the comp.

OTOH - The House Events where everyone can obtain a reward is so much better, fairer and entertaining.

Cheers!
Eboli

[Prc]

IT DELIVERS! i mean yeah you do 800 dmg and there comes proton with his dual gauss 3D and finishes every goddamn kill to top the charts by 3000 dmg away from anyone else, it's pretty damn frustrating idd seeing ppl with 300 dmg and 4 kills being so above from 700 dmg ish and 1 kill players.

Only tourney i played srsly was the faction b4 the clans so might be worse now

Edited by Prc, 20 August 2014 - 04:49 PM.

[Thorqemada]

Ph30nix, on 20 August 2014 - 04:10 PM, said:

...this is also seen as switching to the higher treat target, i have also often seen MANY times team mates ignoring the fresh new enemy mech to try and finish off the almost dead zombie with no weapons but enough armor left to stall while their team mate rips someone open.

Red CT + all weaponry still firing is priority target over fresh Mech!

[Ph30nix]

Thorqemada, on 20 August 2014 - 04:16 PM, said:

Red CT + all weaponry still firing is priority target over fresh Mech!

oh yes very true, priority should always be to remove the most firepower as fast as possible.

[Cion]

Thanks for the input, very good post.

Due to lack of these numbers, I'm guessing 151 matches equals about 22 million cbills (no premium time) and like 30 hours of play time?

[Ph30nix]

Cion, on 20 August 2014 - 04:19 PM, said:

Thanks for the input, very good post.

Due to lack of these numbers, I'm guessing 151 matches equals about 22 million cbills (no premium time) and like 30 hours of play time?

scroll up a few posts, if you go by 6-7 minutes per match its about 17 hours

[Aresye]

Yup. Pretty much the same experience I had, although I think I played less matches overall.

One match I had a Raven literally shadowing me. Wherever I moved, he moved along right beside and/or behind me. The best part? He didn't help me at all with the targets I was facing. I'd be up in their face taking damage, dealing damage, and here goes Raven guy just circling around not firing a single shot. That is, until I finally got my opponent down to internals, in which case the Raven would literally bee line straight at my target (sometimes getting in between me and them), and take the kill. He did this 4 more times. I don't think I've ever been so tempted to just straight up TK someone than that moment.

End result?
Raven: 5 kills, 0 assists, 150 damage.
Me: 2 kills, 9 assists, 1400 damage.

[Ph30nix]

Aresye, on 20 August 2014 - 04:29 PM, said:

Yup. Pretty much the same experience I had, although I think I played less matches overall.

One match I had a Raven literally shadowing me. Wherever I moved, he moved along right beside and/or behind me. The best part? He didn't help me at all with the targets I was facing. I'd be up in their face taking damage, dealing damage, and here goes Raven guy just circling around not firing a single shot. That is, until I finally got my opponent down to internals, in which case the Raven would literally bee line straight at my target (sometimes getting in between me and them), and take the kill. He did this 4 more times. I don't think I've ever been so tempted to just straight up TK someone than that moment.

End result?
Raven: 5 kills, 0 assists, 150 damage.
Me: 2 kills, 9 assists, 1400 damage.

had one doing that to me in my direwhale, so i legged the little *******

[A banana in the tailpipe]

Great write up and your LRM issues carry over to every single solo drop currently.