277 replies to this topic

[Appogee]

Where the system falls down, however, is in the matchmaker.

The screenshot below shows what happens to me consistently... I get dropped as part of a team stacked with low skill players who just derp into the enemy guns, and make very little contribution in terms of damage or even team performance. That leaves me and one or two other guys battling against impossible odds.

It doesn't matter how well I play, whether I do the most damage, top match score, most kils, when the team dies in about 3 minutes of battle and then loses. Down goes my PSR.



Note: I am not saying my 376 damage is "good", it's not. I'm saying that it's not possible to do much better when you get dropped in a team where 4 players do <50 damage, others do <100, etc. The match ends too quickly to do much better than this.

(And God help me if I'm actually trying to level a Mech, as I was in the match above.)

Edited by Appogee, 25 September 2015 - 01:12 AM.

[White Bear 84]

Nightmare1, on 24 September 2015 - 05:29 PM, said:

I rather thought he did a good job with the clarification. I dislike that it's so biased towards wins since I've done spectacularly well on a few losses recently, but oh well...

THIS 100 TIMES OVER..

I have gone down from losses that scored better in every way than wins that are sub par (talking score of ~150)... ...makes no sense.

Edited by White Bear 84, 25 September 2015 - 01:11 AM.

[Johnny Z]

meteorol, on 25 September 2015 - 01:04 AM, said:

Strictly performance based. Because there is a limit in which experience influences performance. The moment the experience stops to influence performance, people hit their personal skill ceiling.
The current tier system doesn't reflect said skill ceiling in any way.

Lets just say (for an example) i played as many matches as Proton did. My experience with this game will be roughly the same. But my performance is not. He has better aim, better reflexes and probably decides faster what to do. My aim will never get as good has his, no matter how long i play, because i hit my personal skill ceiling, which is lower than his.

Still, the current system will put me in the same tier as Proton is sooner or later because i'm winning more than i'm losing and perform average while i do so, and thus i'll climb from t2 to t1 if i play enough. (i just took Proton as example for any player out there that is better than me).

And i don't think i should be in one Tier with Proton (or anyone close to his level) in a system that is called &quot;Personal Skill Rating&quot;, because my personal skill is not even close to his. Still, i will hit t1 simply by playing more. Like i said, it didn't go down once since the patch. The reason i'm not t1 right now is not that i'm not good enough, but that i didn't play enough matches. But i wish the reason was me not being good enough, because then the system would fit the name &quot;personal skill rating&quot; better, imo.

What your talking about is talent not skill. And every player will be more or less talented in different areas of a good game. Maybe strategy, maybe patience, maybe aim, maybe positioning. How much opportunity Mechwarrior offers for each players individual talents is a compelely different debate. Baiting about how good someones aim can possibly be is silly.

Also experience counts for more than talent as anyone knows just common sense, a talented player in aim for example wont have a chance against an experienced player in this game. So experience > talent by definition.

Also experience eventually breeds instinct which cannot be beat, like knowing how a certain mech will overheat at the exact point while not paying any attention to the heat display at all. Even a bot cant beat that since how heat limit plays into the rest of the match and the situation. An excellent example of this is when its actually ok to overheat and not get blown to pieces or not.

Edited by Johnny Z, 25 September 2015 - 01:18 AM.

[generalazure]

meteorol, on 25 September 2015 - 12:34 AM, said:

There are simply more ways to raise it than to lower it. So as long as someone is an average player ( with positive w/l as i stated) he will end up in t1 sooner or later if he simply plays enough.

Keep in mind that w/l > 1 means you are statistically better than average. The average w/l across all player accounts is by definition exactly 1.00, can't win without someone else losing. If they made the psr change thing symmetric for win/loss (good loss with exactly the opposite change or poor win, etc), there would be no net drift for the playerbase average.

On a related note, people place way too much importance on tiers (and not enough importance on not blocking my firing lane)

[Pjwned]

Johnny Z, on 24 September 2015 - 11:42 PM, said:

Well I think there is a misconception about skill itself. Skill is actually a quantifier of experience and preparedness, so this tier rating is based more on experience than "skill" or "talent".

I know that experience is related to skill, but that's not all there is to skill either and I still stand by what I said about PSR & tiers being misleading when apparently most of the intent behind the whole thing is to have it be a sort of experience bar.

If that's how PGI wants to handle PSR then that's more or less fine with me, although I would've found it more exciting if PGI did try to turn it into a ranking system.

[PholkLorr]

There is a huge gulf in skill between average players and the best players.

This system is heavily weighted in favour of moving up tiers. If you play averagely and win 50% of yr games and lose 50% of your games, your tier should stay exactly where it is. Not in this game. You actually up tier with that kind of middle of the pack average performance. Which is why it's stupid. So given a long enough time, your average tier 1 player is still going to be steamrolled by the best tier 1 player. Then they will be saying, why are fighting the best player when we are just average or even below average players?! Which goes back to the same old complaints about uneven games (since everyone is tier 1).

PGI never ceases to screw everything they implement in this game up.

Never fail to LOOK LIKE THEY ALMOST GOT it, only to fall short so damn far its not even funny. (Just like their joke of a 'rebalance', clan wave invasion 1, resistance crap robots, resistance 2 craps, ACH getting 'nerfed' but ...not really, etc)

[Johnny Z]

Pjwned, on 25 September 2015 - 01:26 AM, said:

I know that experience is related to skill, but that's not all there is to skill either and I still stand by what I said about PSR &amp; tiers being misleading when apparently most of the intent behind the whole thing is to have it be a sort of experience bar.

If that's how PGI wants to handle PSR then that's more or less fine with me, although I would've found it more exciting if PGI did try to turn it into a ranking system.

I think the Galaxy map will provide that in some ways, more for guilds and individuals second, and Solaris will provide that in other ways for individual players and teams. This "tiers" is yet another way. Faction ranks, yet another way. Mastering mechs another. Maybe something as yet unannounced some time.

Edited by Johnny Z, 25 September 2015 - 01:34 AM.

[DeRazer]

I wish he'd clarify that the whole "Tier 4/5 will never face Tier 1" simply isn't true in group matches.

You want something that reflects PERSONAL SKIL?

1. Dissociate from wins. The wins mechanic falsely buffs the skill of people in large groups (who due to communication are more likely to "Win" by focus fire).
2. Reduce Match Score reliance on inflated damage. Spraying targets all over is NOT skillful. Need to introduce bonus for targetting damaged/unarmoured sections ("Exploiting Weakness") and for non PPFLD weapons another bonus for concentrating fire on single Mech sections ("Steady Shooter")
3. Set the threshold for Match Score going up and down by the Tier you are on.

Eg.
Tier 5 - MS to Go Up = 200, MS to Go Down = <100
Tier 4 - MS to Go Up = 250, MS to Go Down = <125
Tier 3 - MS to Go Up = 300, MS to Go Down = <150
Tier 2 - MS to Go Up = 400, MS to Go Down = <250
Tier 1 - MS to Go Up = 550, MS to Go Down = <400

That way it gets both harder to CLIMB UP AND harder to STAY UP.

Only the most consistent performers would be able to maintain Match Score >400 on nearly every game. That would make T1 truly Elite.

Also, I saw this somewhere else - PSR rating should not be affected AT ALL when piloting mechs you have not at least Basic'ed.

Right now the system favours pilots who spend all their time in their fully mastered, moduled up, farming machines rather than those who buy lots of new mechs. The current system is likely to drive the money spenders away.

[Torgun]

El Bandito, on 24 September 2015 - 05:49 PM, said:

It stands to reason that a person who played 5000 matches have more skill than a newbie with few hundred matches under his belt. It took me 200 matches at least, to get away from 0.25 WLR back in 2012-2013. One does not magically become as good as Proton, or Heimdelight, by playing few hundred matches.

Unfortunately that's not really true. Some people learn from their mistakes and get better, some just do them over and over again. There are plenty of people with a few thousand matches under their belt that continue to commit newbie mistakes on a regular basis, just like there are plenty of people in real life that never learn from their mistakes.

[Johnny Z]

PholkLorr, on 25 September 2015 - 01:30 AM, said:

There is a huge gulf in skill between average players and the best players.

This system is heavily weighted in favour of moving up tiers. If you play averagely and win 50% of yr games and lose 50% of your games, your tier should stay exactly where it is. Not in this game. You actually up tier with that kind of middle of the pack average performance. Which is why it's stupid. So given a long enough time, your average tier 1 player is still going to be steamrolled by the best tier 1 player. Then they will be saying, why are fighting the best player when we are just average or even below average players?! Which goes back to the same old complaints about uneven games (since everyone is tier 1).

PGI never ceases to screw everything they implement in this game up.

Never fail to LOOK LIKE THEY ALMOST GOT it, only to fall short so damn far its not even funny. (Just like their joke of a 'rebalance', clan wave invasion 1, resistance crap robots, resistance 2 craps, ACH getting 'nerfed' but ...not really, etc)

Your just being insulting. The huge gulf between the so called top players an so called average players is more often than not luck or cheating or mech stats etc.

Only way to accurately judge a players vrs another players "skill' is in a duel that ensures no cheats, with the exact same mech that both players have spent the exact same amount of time on.

Also this is an excellent way to have good matches and protect noobies. Regardless of irrelevant insults or other bull. If it wasnt I would be saying so also.

Also let me be clear, most players that are promoted by others as being amazing are in fact cheats.

This will sound arrogant but its not irrelevant to the cheating situation, I have seen 4 players match my top scores. Only 1 matches my top score previous to the last ban wave and he got banned. I thought he was cheating, and he was and got perma banned. The other 3 I await the next ban wave. 95% of my matches are "average". The other 5% is alot of luck and experience. Also this is a big subject, but for starters top scores cannot be attained in a winning match.

Edited by Johnny Z, 25 September 2015 - 02:07 AM.

[El Bandito]

Torgun, on 25 September 2015 - 01:37 AM, said:

Unfortunately that's not really true. Some people learn from their mistakes and get better, some just do them over and over again. There are plenty of people with a few thousand matches under their belt that continue to commit newbie mistakes on a regular basis, just like there are plenty of people in real life that never learn from their mistakes.

And those guys are still in T3-5. I saw the posts they made.

[meteorol]

Johnny Z, on 25 September 2015 - 01:15 AM, said:

Also experience counts for more than talent as anyone knows just common sense, a talented player in aim for example wont have a chance against an experienced player in this game. So experience > talent by definition.

I think you don't really understand what i don't like about this system. My whole problem with it is that it doesn't factor in "talent" once the experience has reached a certain point.
In a skill rating system the best tier should be exclusive for people with experience and talent. The current system allows you to pretty much get to tier1 without being exceptional talented, just by having enough experience. For my taste, it puts to much emphasis on experience and doesn't factor in talent enough.

[Widowmaker1981]

This is a totally bloody stupid system, because over time it means T1 will contain a wider and wider skill gap. The Tier system is supposed to provide good matchmaking, and how is it going to do that if T1 contains a huge range of skills? The system doesnt know if you're a 'good' T1, an elite T1 or a bad T1 that just plays a lot.

1) Win / Loss should have no bearing, or a very small bearing on PSR changes. Doing crap in a win should make you lose PSR.

2) Tier boundries should be dynamic, not static, so that a set percentage of the playerbase is T1, and that percentage doesnt change over time.

[Johnny Z]

meteorol, on 25 September 2015 - 01:53 AM, said:

I think you don't really understand what i don't like about this system. My whole problem with it is that it doesn't factor in &quot;talent&quot; once the experience has reached a certain point.
In a skill rating system the best tier should be exclusive for people with experience and talent. The current system allows you to pretty much get to tier1 without being exceptional talented, just by having enough experience. For my taste, it puts to much emphasis on experience and doesn't factor in talent enough.

Like I tried to say above, this game cannot determine that anyway. Team make up and all the other factors determine that.

Solaris will be great for that. Tiers is about making good matches and protecting newbies.

Another not completely off tpopic thing I did notice/think of prior to this entire topic is that amazing match scores in the regular queue will be alot less frequent since this tiers system has been added.

Edited by Johnny Z, 25 September 2015 - 02:02 AM.

[An Atlas]

Kira Onime, on 24 September 2015 - 04:54 PM, said:

http://mwomercs.com/...-tiers-and-psr/


Fkn lol.

"Tiers are NOT a RANK"

"If we were to turn off new player registration/sign-up and just let the current player base play on forever, eventually everyone will bubble up to Tier 2 or Tier 1."

@Kira Onime

Selective ignorance OP

"That's because with experience comes better player skill. "

"Lower tier players would end up being those who refuse to adjust to their team's dynamics and play a 1 trick pony type of gameplay."

"It's more along the lines of: you are not playing in a team based mind set. Remember, PSR calculations reward team play more than 'Rambo' or 'I'm the hero and will carry my team to victory' play styles. Being in Tier 4/5 means you can now adjust your game play to become more aware of what your team is doing as a whole and working together to get a victory. If you see your PSR progress bar move up, you will know you're getting better at this."

If you're going to argue a point Kira, at least actually read the thing you're quoting as a source.

Widowmaker1981, on 25 September 2015 - 01:55 AM, said:

or a bad T1 that just plays a lot.

It doesn't reward just playing alot....

It just happens that if you play a lot.... YOU GET BETTER.

Edited by The Paulconomy, 25 September 2015 - 02:00 AM.

[Greyhart]

Thinking on it I think the problem lies in the amount you have to score on the loosing team to avoid going down.

I think if you get match score of 300 you remain the same on a loosing team.

Now getting a high match score on the loosing team is more difficult as you (by definition) will have less kills and less assists than the winning team, meaning a lower match score. Also as your team mates die you will get focused more meaning less time to cause damage.

Therefore getting a score of 300 on a loosing team is actually substantially better than getting 300 on the winning team. If they adjust the scoring thresholds they are going a long way to solve the problem.

[ZippySpeedMonkey]

All this means is more space bucks for me...

I seldom play as part of the team and prefer to go off on my own...

Looks like PGI wants me to continue to maul the lower tiers. I can live with that, others might not, but I most certainly will...

[TexAce]

My proposal

[El Bandito]

Widowmaker1981, on 25 September 2015 - 01:55 AM, said:

This is a totally bloody stupid system, because over time it means T1 will contain a wider and wider skill gap. The Tier system is supposed to provide good matchmaking, and how is it going to do that if T1 contains a huge range of skills? The system doesnt know if you're a 'good' T1, an elite T1 or a bad T1 that just plays a lot.

1) Win / Loss should have no bearing, or a very small bearing on PSR changes. Doing crap in a win should make you lose PSR.

2) Tier boundries should be dynamic, not static, so that a set percentage of the playerbase is T1, and that percentage doesnt change over time.

Which shouldn't matter anyway since T1 players can already play with T3 players under the current PSR system.

TexAce, on 25 September 2015 - 02:00 AM, said:

My proposal

That idea is gonna make cowards out of everyone. One wrong move and one can die in 2 seconds in current alpha heavy meta. And if the team doesn't win, then that person is going to have a large drop in rating. Who will risk engaging the enemy first then?

It is much better for player retention if the tier climb rewards more than it punishes.

Edited by El Bandito, 25 September 2015 - 02:09 AM.

[An Atlas]

El Bandito, on 25 September 2015 - 02:01 AM, said:

Which shouldn't matter anyway since T1 players can already play with T3 players under the current PSR system.




That idea is gonna make cowards out of everyone. One wrong move and one can die in 2 seconds in current alpha heavy meta. And if the team doesn't win, then that person is going to have a large drop in rating. Who will risk engaging the enemy first then?

It is much better for player retention if the tier climb rewards more than it punishes.

So players that cower instead of working as a team will go down in rank?

SOUNDS LIKE IT'S WORKING PERFECTLY