129 replies to this topic

[Water Bear]

Prosperity Park, on 01 October 2015 - 09:14 AM, said:

Tier 1 means you have been playing for long time. Nothing else, really. If the law of averages nets you a 50/50 win loss ratio, and you play for a long time, then you are Tier 1. Is that your goal? To get a 50/50 win/loss ratio?

How is that a lofty goal that requires a Tier rating? That's not very impressive.

Getting a 50/50 wn/loss ratio does not require knowledge of our tiers.

Assuming the tiers are just a representation of your Elo, there is no "law of averages" that guarantees you eventually win half your games. The way Elo works is you are gradually matched against better and better players until you settle down into a 50/50 win / loss. That means you could very possibly settle into a tier 3 or tier 2 rating for life.

A lot of people have interpreted the statement that players will eventually get t1 or t2 from playing a lot to mean the system is designed that way. The actual quote says that this should happen due to players getting better over time.

If everyone got to a t1 level of skill after enough time passed then everyone in Starcraft 2 would be in masters league. In reality, something like .1% of players are there. This game should be no different. There are long time players here with thousands of matches who are stuck in tiers other than 1.

Edited by Water Bear, 01 October 2015 - 10:48 AM.

[Wintersdark]

Prosperity Park, on 01 October 2015 - 10:16 AM, said:

It's depressing because Appogee's goal is a 50/50 wn/loss ratio.

My goals usually involve positive win/loss ratios or something like that. I do not strive to be average, but others can feel free to worship their false Gods as they see fit.

eh, I'd work at raising my wlr, but it's at 1.25:1 as it stands, and with thousands of drops in those stats I simply need too many matches to move it at all. The tier bar, on the other hand, is surprisingly easy to push its much more casual-friendly.

[Water Bear]

Prosperity Park, on 01 October 2015 - 10:16 AM, said:

It's depressing because Appogee's goal is a 50/50 wn/loss ratio.

My goals usually involve positive win/loss ratios or something like that. I do not strive to be average, but others can feel free to worship their false Gods as they see fit.

I don't think you understand how Elo works. If it's working, you will eventually settle into 50/50 win loss.

Imagine playing Tennis competitively. You keep gaining international ranks until, at some point, you have met your match (probably before you start playing Rafael Nadal).

More over, being at 50/50 win loss isn't even a bad thing. All it means is that you are being matched up against people at your own skill level. If you find fair fights depressing, then prepare to be depressed.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Water Bear, on 01 October 2015 - 10:47 AM, said:

Assuming the tiers are just a representation of your Elo, there is no "law of averages" that guarantees you eventually win half your games. The way Elo works is you are gradually matched against better and better players until you settle down into a 50/50 win / loss. That means you could very possibly settle into a tier 3 or tier 2 rating for life.

A lot of people have interpreted the statement that players will eventually get t1 or t2 from playing a lot to mean the system is designed that way. The actual quote says that this should happen due to players getting better over time.

If everyone got to a t1 level of skill after enough time passed then everyone in Starcraft 2 would be in masters league. In reality, something like .1% of players are there. This game should be no different. There are long time players here with thousands of matches who are stuck in tiers other than 1.

You said "should."

The Tier system is based on accumulated points. If you play for a long time and get a 50/50 win/loss ratio, then you will accurate positive points over time and become Tier1.

Tier 1 means you have played for a long time and accumulated many points. The t does not mean you are better than others. Like I said, a new player that wins their first 50 matches and carries the team on every match is Tier 3 at best.

[MerryIguana]

Wintersdark, on 01 October 2015 - 10:42 AM, said:

Also: Meta is a terrible way to rank up. The best way to rank up, as I said above, is exactly the opposite. I've got a Direwolf with LRM's and LBX's, and I've never once failed to gain rating with it.. And I'm in T3, and while I'm competent (thousands of drops) I'm in no way a competitive player.

Meanwhile, I struggle to reliably gain rating in loses when piloting a gauss/laser ebj, and have struggled to gain rating in my YLW or HBK 4G - both mechs because I kill with little damage done.

I never said current meta mate. PSR meta sounds aweful though.

[1453 R]

Heh, easy to hold that opinion from the top, Aresye. Sure, my long history of shirking work to post on the forums in between calls has given me some small measure of hey-I-know-that-guy buffer to work with, but is a regular ol' T4 with two hundred posts to his name going to get anywhere these days?

For that matter, if I were to start a '1453-R Does Balance' thread, as I'd actually been considering doing before the PSR patch hit and we had half a dozen Kristians trumpeting from the roofs, would it go absolutely anywhere? I really enjoy balance and adjustment discussions (note the use of the word 'discussion' in that phrase), but you can't hold those discussions anymore without tier getting involved. "You only think this would work because you're T3/4/5 and too stupid to know better" is as inevitable as Nerfinator or Paulconomy or CLANZ OP comments, and when a meaty discussion on how to potentially fix game issues turns into a peen-swinging contest, it's no longer worth pursuing.

You need to be T2 at the minimum to be taken even halfway seriously 'round here anymore, and unfortunately there just aren't enough Streak missiles in the Inner Sphere to kick up to T2 from T4 in an afternoon. So yes, I'm mostly keeping out of threads I'd otherwise love to jump in because I'm not going to disrupt those threads for people who're enjoying them with the inevitable "GTFO T4" comments, nor am I going to put up with those comments myself. Exceptions being for threads like the HBS Kickstarter, which has nothing whatsoever to do with game performance, or this one here talking specifically about tiers.

It blows and I hate it, but it's what I get to do now and for the foreseeable future. Consider it a victim complex, consider it my own way of protesting forum-visible tiers, consider it whatever you like. I tend to consider it just avoiding a hassle I really don't need.

Edited by 1453 R, 01 October 2015 - 10:59 AM.

[Kira Onime]

Water Bear, on 01 October 2015 - 10:51 AM, said:

I don't think you understand how Elo works. If it's working, you will eventually settle into 50/50 win loss.

ELO doesn't work that well when you have 11 random elements on your team.

[Wintersdark]

MerryIguana, on 01 October 2015 - 10:53 AM, said:

I never said current meta mate. PSR meta sounds aweful though.

I find it a ton of fun. I'm sick to death of laser vomit, and love (on a purely fun level) LBX autocannons. This let's me play mechs and builds I normally wouldn't use, and work hard to win with them. I both get to have extra fun with normally unusable weapons AND I get a progress bar! Yay!

Edited by Wintersdark, 01 October 2015 - 10:58 AM.

[Water Bear]

Prosperity Park, on 01 October 2015 - 10:53 AM, said:

You said "should."

The Tier system is based on accumulated points. If you play for a long time and get a 50/50 win/loss ratio, then you will accurate positive points over time and become Tier1.

Tier 1 means you have played for a long time and accumulated many points. The t does not mean you are better than others. Like I said, a new player that wins their first 50 matches and carries the team on every match is Tier 3 at best.

It is? Where did you read that?

The only PGI official statement I read said nothing about accumulated points. We do have a chart that explains when you go up and down. That's about it. And that chart would also describe how an Elo-like system makes adjustments, coincidentally.

Kira Onime, on 01 October 2015 - 10:57 AM, said:

ELO doesn't work that well when you have 11 random elements on your team.

They aren't totally random if they were chosen based on their Elo. There is some probability involved, but it's sure as heck not uniformly random.

Edited by Water Bear, 01 October 2015 - 11:00 AM.

[Wintersdark]

Water Bear, on 01 October 2015 - 10:58 AM, said:

It is? Where did you read that?

The only PGI official statement I read said nothing about accumulated points. We do have a chart that explains when you go up and down. That's about it. And that chart would also describe how the Elo system makes adjustments, coincidentally.

its different from Elo in that there are more ++ ranking changes than --, as such scores will inflate over time. Unless you're doing very poorly, your ranking will always at least slowly move upwards.

Being "good" (or knowing what's rewarded, re: my posts above) can make it happen aa lot faster though.

[Mystere]

Aresye Kerensky, on 01 October 2015 - 10:38 AM, said:

So we're just supposed to take your word for it? Who were the players involved? What was the topic about? What was the back and forth about? For someone who's been vehemently against the visible Tiers because of these exact types of situations, I find it pretty odd that you would withhold any actual proof that would support your claim. I mean, if I was against the visible Tier thing, I would have snagged some screenshots of people's replies, saved webpages, and did everything in my power to support my opinion if ever questioned in the way that I am questioning you right now. You're either incredibly incompetent at forum warfare, or you're lying.

I'm lying? You're asking me to explicitly name and shame someone? LOL.

Here's a hint: You liked a post in one of those threads, but you obviously missed that post.

On the forums "like a hawk" my behind.

[Water Bear]

Wintersdark, on 01 October 2015 - 11:01 AM, said:

its different from Elo in that there are more ++ ranking changes than --, as such scores will inflate over time. Unless you're doing very poorly, your ranking will always at least slowly move upwards.

Being "good" (or knowing what's rewarded, re: my posts above) can make it happen aa lot faster though.

Edit: To make the argument more clear:

The probability that you lose and do very well is (probably) lower than the probability that you win and don't do too well. So if you are matched against even opponents, the distribution of your performance (poor, good, excellent) is not the same conditioned upon whether you won or lost.

Therefore things may not 'balance out.'

Edited by Water Bear, 01 October 2015 - 11:16 AM.

[STEF_]

I still think, as always thought, that the best way to determine is a player is comp/good/average/bad/steeringwheel, is to read his/her stats.
w/l ratio
k/d ratio
dmg/match.

Period.

[Kira Onime]

Water Bear, on 01 October 2015 - 11:00 AM, said:

They aren't totally random if they were chosen based on their Elo. There is some probability involved, but it's sure as heck not uniformly random.

ELO is a rating system that was created for chess where only 2 players are involved, you and your opponent.
Win? Go up
Lose? go down

In a team game where, especially one with 23 random elements actually, this system is not a very good one.

[Moonlight Grimoire]

Honestly learning what my Tier was (Tier 5) I was frustrated at being rated a terrible player. Then it dawned on me, I was away from the play styles I hated. Despise the pathetic meta that is hyper conservative with hill humping, super long range, snipe play. It is boring to me. I love getting stuck in, I love brawling, I love the sheer chaos of T5. Yeah stomps happen, things are often lopsided and your teams are of uncertain quality. But, you know what is down in T5? A huge melting pot of skill, consistency (or lack of) and load outs that are varied. These are people playing for fun, not people who have sunk thousands of games into MWO, they drive what they love and they drive it whenever. When I want to fight tryhards I jump on CW or group queue.

Honestly the Tier system I at first hated due to I felt underrated and like crap due to I was rated T5, but, to hell with it, I want to play stompy robots, not MLG metahumping.

[Mystere]

Water Bear, on 01 October 2015 - 11:00 AM, said:

The only PGI official statement I read said nothing about accumulated points. We do have a chart that explains when you go up and down. That's about it. And that chart would also describe how an Elo-like system makes adjustments, coincidentally.

Doesn't that same graph suggest that if you consistently get high scores and win more often than lose, then you will be gaining points?

[Kira Onime]

Mystere, on 01 October 2015 - 11:16 AM, said:

Doesn't that same graph suggest that if you consistently get high scores and win more often than lose, then you will be gaining points?

[Appogee]

MerryIguana, on 01 October 2015 - 10:07 AM, said:

No offense, but that is depressing. Did you really need a number to focus you on improvement?

You incorrectly equate "having a goal" with "not being focused on improvement".

PSR Tier is a new, visible, quantifiable way to measure progress and improvement, beyond the endless stream of fleeting match scores every 10 minutes.

We could have a debate about whether PSR truly measures how good a Mechwarrior someone is. But that is probably for another time.

[Water Bear]

Mystere, on 01 October 2015 - 11:16 AM, said:

Doesn't that same graph suggest that if you consistently get high scores and win more often than lose, then you will be gaining points?

You can't assume you are winning more than you lose if an Elo type system is working. Otherwise see my above argument.

Kira Onime, on 01 October 2015 - 11:13 AM, said:

ELO is a rating system that was created for chess where only 2 players are involved, you and your opponent.
Win? Go up
Lose? go down

In a team game where, especially one with 23 random elements actually, this system is not a very good one.

Why not? If everyone in the game is picked so that their Elo is within +- 5%, say, of your Elo, then isn't it fair to judge whether your Elo should go up or down based on the outcome of that game?

Starcraft 2 had rankings for it's multiplayer modes (2v2, 3v3, 4v4) and in all of those players tended to settle into consistent ratings just like they do in 1v1. I am under the impression that LOL or similar games also have rating systems that seem pretty stable.

Edited by Water Bear, 01 October 2015 - 11:23 AM.

[BlackDrakon]

When they released the Tiers, I was Tier 2 and the bar was almost full. A week later, I haven't change my playstile, I still do solo drops 90/95% of the time I play, and I still go for kills other than damage (Nova 12 CSMPL pilot).

Now I'm Tier 1, a week later, and I still do what I have always done, playing to win, pushing ppl to engage and avoiding fights (most of the time) when I know I'll get cripple or dead.

Its the attitude, not the tier what matters. Play to have fun, not to get to the next tier...