3
More importantly, a lot of people are going to be surprised by what tier other people are in.
There's been a lot of commotion on the boards lately about people running into members of SJR, 228, EmP, and other high level comp teams in their matches. The initial assumption has always been one of two things:
1) Players were seeded in a tier that was too high for them and they need to lose a lot to fall down.
or
2) The MM swung the gates wide open and allowed T1 players to fight against T3s.
I would assert that neither of these is likely to be the case.
The more likely scenario is that these high level comp players are actually being seeded around Tiers 2 and 3.
Why would this be happening? Are these guys not actually the best players in the game?
Well, no. They are the best players in the game. But there's a catch. Players in high level comp teams tend not to exhibit the kind of behavior that PSR would value in its pre-seeding.
What do I mean by this?
For starters, many comp players actually play significantly less than solo players. Because there's no real need to grind c-bills or XP, many players only log in for scrims, practices, and league matches.
On top of this, participating in player run leagues results in both significantly stronger opponents than one would normally find playing the game, and significant restrictions on equipment and chassis', meaning many mid-level teams will actually have a higher loss/death rate than they should if placed in the solo queue.
To make matters worse, the primary factor involved in determining PSR gains/losses is match score, which is almost entirely based off of damage dealt.
When all 12 people on a team are contributing equally, damage/score per player is actually fairly low. This is a stark contrast to solo queue where a single pilot may net 1200-1400 damage while other members of their team sit in the double digits.
So, if members of high level comp teams aren't going to be the primary demographic in Tier 1, who is?
Well, this is easy. In order to best take advantage of the PSR's scoring system, a Tier 1 pilot will exhibit the following traits:
1) Drops Solo in the vast majority of games
2) Plays a lot. Like, all the time. As in, when do you sleep?
3) Does lots and lots of damage. Like, completely unnecessary damage, to the point where any reasonable pilot would have killed 15 Mechs with those numbers.
Does this sound familiar to anyone out there?
Yes. I'll say it.
Tier 1 is going to be populated entirely by pug LRM boats.
Edited by Vlad Ward, 03 September 2015 - 07:39 PM.
