18 replies to this topic

[SPAZZx7]

Hello, A few of you may remember me from a thread asking about ballistic weapons a while back.

To sum it up, I'm starting to get worried I'm ranking up too fast for a new player. I barely understand the game at all beyond my current mech, and its limited ballistics weapons systems.

All I do in matches is support my team, and statistics show me I do that very well. I attempt to plug in holes so we cannot get flanked, support advancing bots when they have a chance at pushing the enemy, and snipe people whenever I have the chance. I regularly get around 400-700 damage doing this, Rarely going below 300, even when I die early.


I just afforded my first other mech, the "King Krab", but I'm no even close to outfitting properly, and now I hear that ranking is highly influenced by damage. I regret the decision learning this. I think I should have gotten a light mech or something... I am afraid if I continue, Learning how to use a light or medium will no longer be an option as I will operate it too poorly to be combat effective against the higher skilled players. Forcing me to only use what I am familiar with, being locked into this support status.

I have not even tried to learn proper brawling tactics or evasive maneuvers in smaller light mechs. I do not know how to operate a jump mech, and barely even know what the lock on button does. (That's almost a joke, but I really dont use it often.) I have not even used a missile system competently, and only grazed lasers so far.

Is there a large difference in players between pilot skill level 4-3?

Is this something to be generally concerned about? I know I overthink things. Perhaps it is nothing. But I'm not sure If i should just sell my king and buy a light so I can get familiar with it before I level up again...

*Grammar Edit*

Edited by Rikkada, 23 December 2015 - 08:20 PM.

[Hexenhammer]

You're over thinking it a little. Match making teams up people across 3 tiers. Think of it as a slider. so T5 people will play with 5,4,3 players, T1 can play with 1, 2, and 3. T3 players will be grouped with 5,4, 3,or 4, 3, 2 or 3, 2, 1.

In some ways its a good system because it eases people into tougher matches without dumping against t1 premades from the start.

Edited by Hexenhammer, 23 December 2015 - 08:34 PM.

[TheCaptainJZ]

The tiers are not really ranks in the normal sense as you can move up and down in them, though it's easier to move up by design. New players are "sped up" at the beginning of their career so that they can be placed more appropriately quicker.

As you have pointed out, your PSR is heavily impacted by damage so if you switch to a light later on, you might lose more games than normal or get a lower score because you are learning. Don't worry about it though. The Matchmaker works as Hexenhammer says--You are matched up with players in the neighboring tiers, so there's not a lot of difference between 5 and 4 or 4 and 3.

[Unreliable Mercenary]

Only way to improve is to face steadily stronger opponents. Do not fear ranking up, the game will smack you down to a lower rank if you hit a brick wall, trust me.

[SPAZZx7]

Im not worried about fighting better players in my current mech, what im scarred of is facing these "meta players" with my light mech that I dont know how to play yet. lol

Edited by Rikkada, 23 December 2015 - 09:05 PM.

[SPAZZx7]

Just though of a way to fix this from even being a problem in game.

Rank each mech type separately in the ranking system for each player, that would be an instant practical fix.

Perhaps a dev will see it.

Edited by Rikkada, 23 December 2015 - 09:18 PM.

[Kali Rinpoche]

Your win percentage has a much greater effect on your progression. If you do average damage but continually lose matches, you will at best, most likely end up with ( = ) no movement.(Your PSR will occasionally go up in a loss in which you excel over most in the round.) In an unmastered mech, you won't be doing optimal damage for a bit. (Lacking modules, pilot skills, etc..) You're probably going to lose more that you win and if you don't get 1-3 kills, 6-7 assist, 500+ damage your PSR will go down. The distance across tier's increases as you progress.

My advice, is to keep having fun while working to master skills trees and further refine your mechs to your liking. Once you get to tier 3, it will slow down some. This will give you a chance to taste higher skilled matches while still getting matches against newer folks.

Enjoy!

Edited by Kali Rinpoche, 23 December 2015 - 09:47 PM.

[Void Angel]

As others have pointed out, the tier system is not designed to measure pilot skill - it is designed to measure teamwork. Teamwork requires skill, of course, but that's not what PSR is about. You are ranking up fast because you are doing the things that you should be doing: you're playing as a member of the team.

You're not going to be playing a substantially different set of people just because you go up a tier. As far as I know, you're not restricted to matches just within your tier - the only thing I've seen from PGI was that Tier 5 pilots would never be thrown in with new players. This is obviously a good thing, but I don't know the precise limits on how far above or below your tier you can get matches. I do know that as a Tier 3 player, I can get players in matches whom I am sure are Tier 1 or 2.

Basically, don't worry about it! Just playing "the meta" won't make players very good at using meta builds, for one thing. I remember when the jump sniper (poptart) meta was all the rage; and you could tell the bandwagon scrubs from truly skilled practitioners of the meta pretty easily - because the scrubs camped in place, while the top players were mobile and adaptive. You'll see more meta builds as you rank up, but the same principles apply, and the things you are doing will still serve you - and your team - quite well. Trust me, I value a relatively inexperienced player who does what you're doing far more than I want some selfish jerk with good marksmanship on my team.

As for your understanding of the game, there are a number of resources available to you: Smurfy's Website is the best reference site I have ever seen for any game, and some of use have guides in our signatures (Shameless plug!) Finally, of course there are those of us who haunt the new player forums (Koniving,cough, cough) who will overload you with more information than you ever thought one delightful nerd-creature could hold - and answer any questions you have along the way.

[Leone]

Rikkada, on 23 December 2015 - 08:14 PM, said:

All I do in matches is support my team, and statistics show me I do that very well. I attempt to plug in holes so we cannot get flanked, support advancing bots when they have a chance at pushing the enemy, and snipe people whenever I have the chance.

First off, Bot tend to bring to mind connotations of autonomy. The battletech universe isn't a big fan of autonomous 'mechs. Nit picking aside, this, this right here, tells me you'll do alright. Seriously, check out my guide. Half the stuff I go over is doing that very thing.

Rikkada, on 23 December 2015 - 08:14 PM, said:

I just afforded my first other mech, the "King Krab", but I'm no even close to outfitting properly, and now I hear that ranking is highly influenced by damage. I regret the decision learning this. I think I should have gotten a light mech or something... I am afraid if I continue, Learning how to use a light or medium will no longer be an option as I will operate it too poorly to be combat effective against the higher skilled players. Forcing me to only use what I am familiar with, being locked into this support status.

Whilest not jump capable, you could get the locust. Easy enough to nab at 1.5 million cbills, it'll cost roughly 6 million in the end to pimp out. This allows you to drop in it early and test out light tactics whilest still learning the game. Granted, you'll be in a subpar build at first, and it'll be real rough, but if you counter every King Crab match with a locust match, you should slow down in advancement.

If you go this route most folk prefer the 1E for laser boating, though the 3V is the toughest.

Rikkada, on 23 December 2015 - 08:14 PM, said:

I have not even tried to learn proper brawling tactics or evasive maneuvers in smaller light mechs. I do not know how to operate a jump mech, and barely even know what the lock on button does. (That's almost a joke, but I really dont use it often.) I have not even used a missile system competently, and only grazed lasers so far.

Meh, I prefer the ballistics for IS mechs anyways. I figure you'll actually be well served by starting strong as it should reduce the cbill grind for ya. As for targetting, the biggest benefit is your allies may now know you are fighting someone and provide assistance. If someone else is targetting the mech for you, it shouldn't be a problem.

As for selling your mech, I would strongly counsel against it. It is a straight up loss of money, and in this instance, you would also take a hit to your money making capacity. that is straight up innefficient. Just get yourself a light, (Take this, it'll show you costs and build options.) and alternate between learning at the school of speed and hard knocks, and waltzing through the battle field in your murder machine generating free cbills.

~Leone.

Edited by Leone, 23 December 2015 - 10:46 PM.

[Prof RJ Gumby]

Rikkada, on 23 December 2015 - 08:14 PM, said:

I regularly get around 400-700 damage doing this, Rarely going below 300, even when I die early.

This alone says that you're too good for your current tier. Don't worry. There's no cosmic jump in difficulty between neightbouring tiers. You'll just have better teammates/enemies on average.

[Rogue Jedi]

your damage does have a large impact on your score, and hence your Player Skill Rating increase/decrease, but do not worry about it, if you are averaging more than 300 damage you are doing well, I have been playing since Closed beta and most of my Mechs average 200-300 damage per game, although I do spend a lot of time in Lights and mediums which do have a lower damage potential than heavies and assaults, but I hate being slow.

it is not unusual to be excellent with Assaults and rubbish with Lights or vice versa, ^{(I personally tend to not do well if going slower than 75 so assaults and IS heavies are not great for me).}

but if you are worried then Leone's suggestion about getting a Locust and playing a few games in the Locust then a few in the King Crab is a great idea, the Locust can get high damage numbers but most Mechs are able to kill or cripple it with 1 hit, so it teaches you positioning and being sneaky ^{(because if you are not you are dead).}

I think the main reason the first few matches have such a large multiplier is so that if a highly skilled player creates a new account they only get a few games playing the less skilled/experienced players before coming up against more skilled opponents.

[The Basilisk]

As you already noticed, the player rating system is highly damage focused and as you may have guessed there are ways to deal lots of damage without doing outright "good" damage.
( LRMs are the most prominent example for doing lots of useless damage bloating your score letting you advance till the point where they won't do you any good and letting you hang high and dry without anyskill in real weapons )
But the fact that you regularely getting high numbers and good ratings says, what ever you are doing, you are doing it constantly and within borders of what the game wants from you.
So don't worry.
The moment where you fee you can't progress further and where you get the feeling you can't even get the Locust down anymore you simply have reached the point where you should team up and exchange knowledge and technics with other warriors.

Edited by The Basilisk, 24 December 2015 - 01:43 AM.

[M0rdresh]

As I'm ranking up my mech of choice to elite I notice I lose a lot of ranking points.
I'm playing variants that less efficient, I'm not used too and not really a style I like.

That's a negative aspect of the game imo, grinding those variants.
I do get the idea behind it though. I like the mastery better, at least you can do that on mechs you choose yourself.

[JigglyMoobs]

Rikkada, on 23 December 2015 - 08:14 PM, said:

.....

All I do in matches is support my team, and statistics show me I do that very well. I attempt to plug in holes so we cannot get flanked, support advancing bots when they have a chance at pushing the enemy, and snipe people whenever I have the chance. I regularly get around 400-700 damage doing this, Rarely going below 300, even when I die early.
....

Don't worry. This is good enough for T3. Situation awareness and tactical instincts are paramount in this game and it sounds like you are focusing on exactly the right things. Non-ballistic weapons and jump jet you can learn at your own pace.

Visit: http://metamechs.com/ when considering your next mech purchase.

Edited by JigglyMoobs, 24 December 2015 - 02:03 AM.

[Not A Real RAbbi]

I wouldn't worry too much about this, OP. That you recognize it, and that you seem to want to get better (instead of thinking that your rapid ascent so far means that you're already awesome), tells me that you're going to be just fine.

Besides, I am in tier 3 at the moment, too. You'll always have at least ONE scrub to beat on, therefore!

Seriously, though ("This is my serious face."), there's plenty of good advice above. Play your game, learn the things you want to learn, build the mechs you want to play, etc. Do it your way, not necessarily the 'meta' way, and you'll do just fine.

And for the sake of your sanity, IGNORE that PSR tier until you think you're comfortable with your performance. It doesn't tell us much right now (except that I am a scrub, but that's already well established), especially with the recent influx of new players from the Steam release. It will be a while before that really starts to matter again, and it might take some considerable adjustment of the metric.

TL;DR- Play your game, player!

[Koniving]

Rikkada, on 23 December 2015 - 09:17 PM, said:

Just though of a way to fix this from even being a problem in game.

Rank each mech type separately in the ranking system for each player, that would be an instant practical fix.

Perhaps a dev will see it.

PGI already did this ages ago.

Don't know if it's apart of the new PSR system, but it was part of the original match making system. You had a score for each weight class (light, medium, heavy, assault).

If damage was the main influence for pilot skill ranking, I should think my many thousand+ damage matches would have gotten me out of tier 4 by now. I'm only down here because I hadn't played in about 6 months before the new match maker (anyone who didn't have a recent record got thrown to what was the bottom at the time of their next log in. So guys coming back now are probably tier 5.)

(Note: I play way too much with my enemies, severing limbs for fun and watching them limp around while doing circles and jumping on their heads. >.> Never get caught alone; I'll be waiting...)

[Leone]

I spend most my time in CW save for events like this, so I just entered tier four with this event. And hilariously enough, my switching match was in an all narc an flamer build I ran for the x2 exp before actually playing for points.

~Leone.

[Zardoz484]

I think as one guy said you're over thinking this, you don't have a problem. Some people take quickly to this game and some people don't. You sound like somebody who is taking to this game quickly, relax and enjoy your King Crab and your success. I was well into 20 plus matches before I got my first kill. If somewhere down the line your looking for a challenge look into CW.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

The game starts you up very high in Tier 5 so that if you were a really good player you wouldn't be kept there for long, your first 25 matches or so also have a considerably higher weight than ones later on. Tier 4 currently is filled with many new players who did well in their first few matches, so loads of people in the same boat as you. Tier 5 consists of the people who didn't do so well in their matches and so haven't moved up. Tier 3 is a mid tier where a good number of people settle in or move up very slowly in.

Tier 4 can take quite awhile to move out of and T3 takes even longer. T3 matches can be very different from match to match, sometimes you'll have really good players and sometimes you'll have really bad players, other times you'll have people right around your skill level. I was in T3 for awhile before moving up, I was never in T4 or below, but from what I've seen in my friend's matches T3 can be considerably more dangerous than T4. Just think, you were doing 700 damage a match in your mech, well T3 consists of everyone who was able to do that back in T4. You'll learn quick in T3 what you can and can't do and if you analyze what you did in a match to get yourself killed and correct that you'll improve.

You sound like a pretty decent player anyway, so you'll do just fine in T3 and up matches, don't get too worried and just learn what you can.