5 replies to this topic

[Livewyr]

New player experience:

It is my understanding that new players start out in a mid/low Elo level. Why?

That is not a great New Player Experience. ("Hi, welcome to MWO, if you did not start up half-way up the learning cliff, prepare to be crushed down to the bottom of it for your next 25 games.")

Why not start new players..near the bottom bracket? A few months ago, in order to help my buddy get used to the game, I created an Alt account to group with him, without dragging him into my Elo bracket. Problem was, I was running into games with a few people recognized, and I know that they are not brand new. My buddy got his *** shot off horribly for the first 10 games.. and has not touched the game since. (I cannot even bribe him with drinks!) Needless to say... that account has not been touched since.

I am not saying start them off at "0" (or whatever the floor is) but much closer to it. Give them a little room to fall down if they find the game harder to learn than others..but do not set them up to be crushed for their first bunch of games.

If I am wrong about this, please correct me.

[SI The Joker]

I mostly agree with you except I'm gonna go out there and say they should start at "zero" (The floor). If they are able to play/pick it up quickly... that rating will surely rise quickly.

New Players should be treated as such. Let them play with other new players!

[Piney II]

I think that was changed recently - new players are in the low bracket for their cadet matches.

[Darian DelFord]

If its been changed I have not seen any indication of it. This is one of if not my biggest pet peeves about the MM. I see people in trial mechs who really do not know how to play being mixed in with people who have been playing for years.

Start New folks at the bottom of the scale and let them work their way up against people of their own skill. The better thay get the better their ELO may improve

While we are at it.....

CHANGE ELO FROM A WIN LOSS gain to be more based on the PLAYER SKILL. At the moment the easiest would probably be match scored based on INDIVIDUAL MECH. Not Chassis but individual MECH!!!

[Bilbo]

They start at 900. That's hardly mid.
http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__3730082

[Wintersdark]

Livewyr, on 22 September 2014 - 08:24 AM, said:

New player experience:

It is my understanding that new players start out in a mid/low Elo level. Why?

That is not a great New Player Experience. ("Hi, welcome to MWO, if you did not start up half-way up the learning cliff, prepare to be crushed down to the bottom of it for your next 25 games.")

Why not start new players..near the bottom bracket? A few months ago, in order to help my buddy get used to the game, I created an Alt account to group with him, without dragging him into my Elo bracket. Problem was, I was running into games with a few people recognized, and I know that they are not brand new. My buddy got his *** shot off horribly for the first 10 games.. and has not touched the game since. (I cannot even bribe him with drinks!) Needless to say... that account has not been touched since.

I am not saying start them off at "0" (or whatever the floor is) but much closer to it. Give them a little room to fall down if they find the game harder to learn than others..but do not set them up to be crushed for their first bunch of games.

If I am wrong about this, please correct me.

There is a valid reason for it, and it has to do with how Elo works. Actually two reasons, but the most important is the first.

See, Elo is a zero sum system, largely. Your score is an arbitrary number, matching you against other players at a given "winningness" level. But players don't enter and leave the system at the same scores.

So, if players started at zero, for example, faced against the least players with the least "winningness", then they would improve over time. They'd improve a LOT. Most would end up in mid-range Elo, because most players are and remain average players (hence average). So, in a 2800pt system, those players would enter the game at 0, and grow to 1400. Other players would drop. For that player to gain 1400 pts, his opponents must lose 1400 pts. Then, those players eventually stop playing, removing those points from the pool. So, what happens is over time, skill level at a given rating increases because the "value" of that rating decreases.

This means that a player that doesn't play for a while and returns to the game will suddenly be facing more skilled opponents, despite having the same rating he does.

For Elo to work best over time, you need to inject a suitable number of points into the system to prevent this behavior. This injection happens via new player starting scores.

---

The second concern is that you need to be VERY careful about what Elo you start new players at. I've seen the full length of the rating system personally, and what happens at very low Elo is you start getting average skilled players who are extremely antisocial and destructive to teamwork - player pilot skill is less important than teamwork. At those lower levels, games become very random, and individual players matter less as a result. Player's often think things like this about average Elo games, but in most cases they have no idea, because they haven't seen just what very low Elo is like. It's very difficult for new players to learn to play there, too, because a great many players there are also there because they have absolutely no idea whatsoever how the game works.

As it is now, they start in lower than average elo, but not very low. It's low enough that you're not going to face many veterans, except for the more average veterans (who end up thinking Elo is really screwed up, without realising that they are just average players - and that's not an insult; most players by definition must be average.)

In short, Elo is a complex system that works better than anything else available, but definitely has its flaws, which are well known and documented. The Wikipedia page on Elo is very informative, and I recommend reading it if you're curious. This complexity and the nature of how it works, however, is what places limits on new player scoring, and is also why modifiers are very complex to use.