45 replies to this topic

[Kraftwerkedup]

Couple things. ELO and PSR "hell" is being a terribad, surrounded by tryhards and getting stomped. Its a slim window of people who are artificially in tiers higher than their actual performance, because random is random. If you have 20,000 people, some small percentage will be "lucky" and constantly be on the winning team much more often than not, even though statistically, it evens out (someone else is unlucky and always on the losing time).

Its nigh impossible tell because of the lack of information, if youre there or not. Its simply a feeling.

Next, the new PSR system DOES separate the new players (tier 4) from the long time players (tier 1). Great. Wonderful. The one aspect of the entire system that works.

Now, just to put you in Paul's head for a second, (I know its frightening and devoid of sense, physics and logic breakdown there, like a blackhole for brainwaves) when this entire thing first came out....

Group queue was counted into PSR along with Pugs.

Let that sink in for a moment given that PSR is basically ELO+. So the friend of the dude in -MS- who isnt fantastic, but rolls with -MS-, drops into the Pug queue in Tier 1 in his Vindicator he made the mistake of buying and mastering. THAT is "ELO hell".

This is Paul's mindset. And he is unmovable. He thinks he knows what he's doing, so no one can tell him he's wrong. They spent all the time and energy on a system, that effectively does exactly what ELO did.

Because it doesnt matter what the game NEEDS, only what Paul WANTS.

And never the two shall meet.

Edited by Kraftwerkedup, 27 September 2015 - 10:18 AM.

[Kraftwerkedup]

And let me just address "its a team game"

It is not a team Paul.

It is a random collection of strangers. If these random people I drop into the game with and I are a "team" then everyone who is in line with me at the super market, or in traffic with me, or riding the bus together, are a "team".

They are not.

Teams require team building (I know you know this, because you work in an office, where you have to team build). Teams require trust. Knowledge of each other.

You cant get that in the 15 seconds before you drop into a match, no matter how much you hamfist this idea that this game is about "team play" and the way the team does, the way the TOTAL STRANGERS play the game, has any bearing on you as an individual.

Youve been shoving this same idea down the players throats for 3 years, and it still doesnt work.

Hire a game designer who knows what hes doing. Youre so bad at this that everyone is relieved all youre doing for HBS's battletech game is the art work. Youre the David Shula of video games.

Edited by Kraftwerkedup, 27 September 2015 - 10:24 AM.

[Screech]

But mostly PSR is just a participatory award and we might want to stop acting like it is something more.

[Kraftwerkedup]

That they made it cumulative is just mind blowingly bad.

So if you suck wind for enough matches, youll be separated from the noobs who are your equals, because "you should be better by now".

The entire point of PSR, was to put people with people of their own skill level. The only way you do that, is determine everyones individual skill, and put them with people who are as skilled as them.

Not who wins, or who loses, or whose new, or whose old....skill level.

[Ted Wayz]

Paul is trying to promote team play. Those are his words not mine.

So let's clear up some misconceptions. There are people in T4 and T5 that have played as many matches as those in T1 and T2. The PSR system has decided however that their play style is not conducive to team play. Again this is Paul's words not mine.

So read the posts where experienced players in T4 are feasting on players that are a) new and clueless and do not have the benefit of strong team players (Paul's words) around them.

If Paul's intent is to create more team players then new players should be exposed to team play sooner than later. Especially if we want to attract good players to this game.

Can you imagine an experienced gamer coming into T4, seeing no organization, and minimal use of coms. How long do you think they will stick around?

[Kraftwerkedup]

If you want to promote teamplay, you have to carrot people into playing as a team. Since you cant actively monitor everyone to dangle the carrot in their face at the right moments and in the right situations....you need to create a system that allows a player, or any player, to dangle the carrot in their teammates face.

Were strangers. No one cares about any one else or what you do, until what you do makes my life in a match harder. Were pragmatic and selfish. Were human. Until you mess up, which causes me stress (wandering off alone, suiciding, blocking lanes, shooting each other in the back) I dont even know you exist, nor does anyone else. Were not friends, were strangers dropped into a server together (group queue is obviously entirely excluded from this, which is why its insane they thought Group and CW should have anything to do with PSR in pugs, or pug PSR in the other modes...sigh).

What you need to do is with that B screen no one ever uses, and those commander slots no one ever uses for any reason other than trolling people, allow people to drop objectives that reward you. Substantially enough that youll actually do them if its not CLEARLY the wrong thing to do (putting a move order in the corner of Mordor will not convince me to go to it, even for 200 GXP).

THEN you have a group of people that will actively vye for the chance to be the dude giving rewards, and want the guy who gives the best rewards, and actually interact with these strangers. You have to if you want to get something for yourself. Thats simple human nature. (take Battlefield 4s commander mode, or any commander mode ever. No one uses it. Theres no reward feedback loop. Its boring, people bail. People played it to unlock the stuff you get from doing it, then never messed with it again. You have to reward people constantly for doing the thing you want them to do in a game. Because games are fun. And being rewarded is fun.)

This is why VOIP changed absolutely nothing, and people said that, long before we got it.

No one does anything in this would purely for altruism but saints and nuns. People are pragmatic. If it doesnt benefit you, you wont do it. If you dont make team play beneficial to me, I wont do it.

So you have two options. The carrot. Or the stick.

Paul thinks the velvet stick, is the right approach. He is wrong about this, as he is about most things. If you put punish people for not doing what you want them to do, and just casually show them a vague path to what you want them to do, people will just hate you. They wont just follow the path willingly and with thanks for showing it to them. Theyll just be mad, and forcibly goaded down the path.

If you want to promote teamplay, you have to actually promote teamplay. You cant just say "I want you guys to team play" and expect people to do that, out of the kindness of their hearts. Theyll do what works, and what brings them the most enjoyment. If those two things arent the same thing, theyre going to bail.

Its ridiculous to expect a bunch of people who dont know each other to cooperate. When has that ever worked?

And until they figure this out, figure out that all "buckets" are not created equal, and that you cant match people based on how the cooperation with strangers went, we'll never have balanced matches. The best you can hope for is that the gods saw fit to bestow upon you a great match every few play sessions.

Edited by Kraftwerkedup, 27 September 2015 - 12:32 PM.

[Kdogg788]

El Bandito, on 27 September 2015 - 09:06 AM, said:

"Competitive" games in T4/5, hehe.

Competitive meaning the games are close.

-k

[Kdogg788]

Ted Wayz, on 27 September 2015 - 11:42 AM, said:

Paul is trying to promote team play. Those are his words not mine.

So let's clear up some misconceptions. There are people in T4 and T5 that have played as many matches as those in T1 and T2. The PSR system has decided however that their play style is not conducive to team play. Again this is Paul's words not mine.

So read the posts where experienced players in T4 are feasting on players that are a) new and clueless and do not have the benefit of strong team players (Paul's words) around them.

If Paul's intent is to create more team players then new players should be exposed to team play sooner than later. Especially if we want to attract good players to this game.

Can you imagine an experienced gamer coming into T4, seeing no organization, and minimal use of coms. How long do you think they will stick around?

So true... T4 is a great place to be when you can benefit from it.

-k

[TWIAFU]

Kraftwerkedup, on 27 September 2015 - 12:24 PM, said:

...words...

hehe, solo queue, hehe.

[Baba Yogi]

only 2 flaws i see in psr

1. It is not weight class based (weight classes differ too much from each other, you can be very good at one and totally suck at the other)
2. You cannot lose PSR when you win the match despite how horrible you may have been. i think you should lose very slightly in psr as it is possible to increase psr if u do very well despite losing.

Otherwise it's just fine, way it is you'll be matched against similar skilled people if the tier valve is tight enough. Yes as you get better you will increase in rank however that totally depends on the MWO medium, other ppl get better as well.

Edited by Lordhammer, 27 September 2015 - 01:16 PM.

[Percimes]

Kraftwerkedup, on 27 September 2015 - 12:24 PM, said:

So you have two options. The carrot. Or the stick.

I don't have the answer, but rewards are bad motivators. If you put a reward people will GAME the system to get it, not caring about what the reward is actually for. We see this in every damned events where there are MC to be won.

[EasyPickings]

I predominantly play lights. This puts me at a disadvantage for a number of reasons:
1) I don't do nearly as much damage with my lone ER-PPC Spider as a Direwolf with 4 Gauss can in a game. The Match Score is mostly damage-based.
2) A relatively small amount of damage will kill me. I can't survive a lot of hits, so if someone gets lucky with their alpha, or if I didn't notice the 6 ER-LL Stalker taking aim on my back while I'm firing at my target, then I'm done. The result is, sometimes I can do a lot of damage during a match and sometimes I get taken out early due to the bad luck stated above.
3) Running ahead of the team to scout still isn't rewarded commensurate with the danger it carries (see point 2).
4) If I'm on the losing side and finish with a score below 400, then I've automatically gone down in PSR. It doesn't matter if I've gotten the top score on the team, or been the last man standing or taken down the most mechs (all 3 happen very frequently), I still go down a notch.

With these observations in mind, I'm going to go back to playing the way I always do: to enjoy the game and do my best. I don't care too much about my PSR; I just care about having a good match. I would say about a third of my matches our team gets ROFL-Stomped, another third we do the stomping, and the final third are nearly equal games that hinge on the play of the last few players on both teams. That last third is the type I enjoy the most.

[Kraftwerkedup]

Every system can be "hacked".

The object is to make hacking it, rewarding to other people. Someone hacking a system, "gaming it", is an active participant. If you get him to need someone else to 'game it', then youve got two people actively participating together.

Thats a team.

A bunch of strangers isnt a team.

I feel you. I dont like what events bring out of people either. BUT, those games are directly reflecting the "every man for himself" paradigm that is already present, but not as obviously and blatantly in your face. If you reward "every man for himself" which isnt being rewarded now, youre at least going to have a happier playerbase. If you reward "people cooperating", you at least have more people cooperating for their own personal benefit, than you did before.

Active participation with others, is what makes a team.

You have to have people matched based on their personal skill level, and then you have to carrot them into cooperating with people they naturally dont want to cooperate with, are are simply an impediment to your "fun".

Let me ask you, have you ever been frustrated when someone "steals your kill". Have you ever been frustrated when you stole someone ELSES kill? Do you think he was frustrated when you did that?

Since no one thinks about a strangers feelings or intentions or concerns or "fun" unless it directly effects your ability to achieve the same objectives, you have to get these people to WANT to cooperate together to achieve these goals. You cant just put the goals out of reach unless they work together, people will just bail. (im not saying MWO is totally doing that now, but its close, and PSR doesnt help). You have to have a constant reward feedback loop, pulling people together.

We arent "assigned" a team by PGI when we drop into a match...were the ones putting ourselves together with random individuals. It would be like going to party where you dont know anyone, and you cant see what anyone looks like. Most people would leave that party, or just sit there not doing or saying anything awkwardly. If you give them a game to play, theyll all play it seperately, even though theyre all "together".

We arent friends. Theres no built in connection. Mutual benefit is the only thing that draws us together, and thats not enough for 90% of the people on the planet in an entertainment product. You have to entertain us into mutually benefiting each other. Plenty of other games pull this off.

[Ted Wayz]

Lordhammer, on 27 September 2015 - 01:16 PM, said:

Otherwise it's just fine, way it is you'll be matched against similar skilled people if the tier valve is tight enough. Yes as you get better you will increase in rank however that totally depends on the MWO medium, other ppl get better as well.

Not quite. If you have a match score of 350-399 every match and lose every match you will go nowhere. As Paul stated you need to accumulate wins to advance.

In solo queue you do not control who you are teamed with and who you are playing against. And match maker has proven to be streaky. So who knows if you will have good matches?

[Kraftwerkedup]

The win and loss part of it is ridiculous.

Someone who consistently has 450+ matchscore, win or loss, should get to tier 1 pretty quickly. Someone who gets there and then their match scores drop to 200 because now theyre with better players, should pretty quickly fall back down. As the total number of matches increases, you should get a better idea where you belong...and be stuck there unless you get better, or get worse.

NOT accumulating a buttload of matches and a 1 to 1.3 loss to win ratio and maxing out your PSR bar.

Its should be a rating of your actual skill at killing other mechs, since thats all there is to do in the game. If there are more things to do later, they can adjust it.

OR, you separate it by class, so that lights are ranked by how well they spot, narc, tag, assist, etc, while assaults are graded on how much damage they put out, take, kills, and protection of smaller classes.

I feel pretty convinced they actually dont have an engineer to change ELO, so they just created ELO+, and instead of replacing, also added some level of personal performance to the scoring. The main component is still winning or losing. Which has nothing to do with personal performance. I see match after match where some guy does 1000 damage, everyone else does terrible, and they lose. That guy needs to move up quickly to get away from the scrubs, or else he's going to bail.

[VinJade]

so from what I am reading it comes down to four things;
1: Paul clearly doesn't know what he is doing or he is very pig headed and doesn't care about anything that isn't his way.
2: Strangers will never actually at as a team unless unified by being in the same unit.
3: as things are they just don't work
4: Voip doesn't work(I said so a long time ago) & we see players ignoring orders from other players because they either don't like them or they don't trust them.

now to go along with what EP was saying I also play for fun and I run light mechs only I use my LRM heavy Adder and I can normally deal large amounts of damage however there will be times I end with little damage or none if I am taken out another enemy I didn't see.

I firmly believe that if you earned to move up regardless if you won the match or not then you should be allowed to.

as it is something needs to be done but not in house as it clearly shows that Paul cannot do it.

Edited by VinJade, 27 September 2015 - 02:09 PM.

[kf envy]

Ted Wayz, on 27 September 2015 - 07:34 AM, said:

So Paul states that Tier 4/5 is full of players who haven't learned teamwork. And that by learning teamwork they will be able to pull themselves out depths of PSR hell.

First, I don't necessarily agree. It seems most of the players that say they are in T4 also mention that they like to play a variety of mechs or play non-optimized builds. But that isn't my main point.

If this game rewards teamwork and teamwork is the behaviour you want to promote, why would you place new players in T4? Wouldn't you want to place them in the tier where teamwork is the norm not the exception? Wouldn't you want them observing what you think are the "right" behaviours from the start?

using team work and supporting my team with out using god teir meta builds is what got me in T4. so im calling pauls BS

[VinJade]

@KF
I have to wonder if there is something else at play that we just don't know about?

[MechWarrior5152251]

If you like 12 flamer Novas why would you ever want to get out of Tier 5?

[C E Dwyer]

Put simply

P.S.R is one big fail.

It fails so hard it would be amusing,but for the fact the game is three years old, counting closed beta, and it seems the lead dev has learned nothing in that time, about how to balance a game, or to make the Match Maker work, ego and vanity ensure that he will never step down and give someone with the skills he hasn't got, a chance to put the mistakes right.

Also, that the time and money wasted on this could have been better spent else where.