106 replies to this topic

[maniacos]

Please remove or rework the PSR system. I know this has been posted and discussed before but I just need to write this here again. The PSR is almost entirely based on team performance and not personal skill. When I am in a medium or light with 24 alpha and do like 350 or more damage in a match, my rating still sinks because the team lost the match.

On the other hand, when I run with a mech that has >40 alpha and end a game with around 110 damage points, which is a total weak performance, my rating still rises when the team wins (someone else made all the work but I get the reward because I was lucky enough to drop in that team).

Where is the logic here? I obviously performed better in the first case but my rating still sinks because my team lost. I need what like more than 500 damage points(?) in a lost match to get my skill rating rising in a lost match and the actual firepower of the mech, let alone its actual role, is completely unreflected. (For instance what about giving lights more points for tactical recon than lets say assaults whose role is more to lead a push and punch as much damage into the enemy as possible?)

The actual performance of the team is something a pilot can control less in this game. You can put the best player in a random team and still lose. This goes along with PGI having made the game originating from a franchise that was originally heavily tactic based into a pewpew shot em up with it's heavy focus on damage points and kills, while the actual reward for scouting, flanking, capturing, UAV recon, going in formation or breaking enemie's fireline by harrasment or similar roles is just hilarious.

[Chip Danger]

I normally try stay out of the Forum PR BS but I have to agree with this. It's a random team based rank system and has nothing to do with your lone player skill. I have tested this even if you use 1 sl once and your team wins your rank goes up.

[Alistair Winter]

The logic is that it will not be fair on a match-by-match basis, but it will be fair when you look at hundreds or thousands of matches as a whole. Which is what it takes for people to reach the high tiers anyway.

The only thing that PSR measures is whether or not you are consistently a contributing factor to your team winning matches. If you are, your PSR will increase higher than people who have good matches and bad matches depending on their team, people who aren't consistently a contributing factor to winning matches.

It's a fairly imperfect tool, obviously. If you're able to consistently do 400+ damage per match, you will get increased PSR over time just by virtue of never losing PSR in a loss and always gaining PSR in a win. That's the problem when players are demanding that PSR should have better rewards on a match-by-match basis, for the players who "carried their team", and did 900 dmg in defeat. It sounds fair, but over time, it hurts the whole system, because it rewards selfish players who focus more on doing damage than winning matches.

As basically every weekend event and challenge has shown us, MWO is a terrible game to play when rewards are handed out primarily on account of individual accomplishments. It's far more enjoyable when the whole team is trying to win the match at all costs. Incidentally, same as most team games / team sports.

My main complaint with PSR is that people can easily skate to Tier 1 by just playing group queue a lot, if they're in a good unit. This is the same problem as we used to have with Elo, because some of the high-and-mighty top Elo players weren't really that impressive in the solo queue, in my experience. Some people are very good individually, but not so good teamplayers. And vice versa. (Incidentally, same as most team games / team sports)

[maniacos]

This still does not take in accout your actual role and your actual individual performance in the match. The damage points of a low alpha support mech, scout or what ever shouldn't count the same as the dmg done by heavy or assault working in formation.

This brings in other aspects for instance a heavy walking out of formation, going alone and not giving a single **** for their team can still do like 100 and more damage before he dies and get rewarded with rising PSR when the team is good enough to win still. On the other hand, a pilot doing his freaking job best he could and still lose with the team gets downrated, instead of saying "ok you did your job, sorry it didn't work out but here is your cookie for trying".

I know it's difficult to implement that in a automated reward system but the basic approach is there with the "lance formation", "scouting", "uav detection" and other points, just they don't get taken in account well enough.

[El Bandito]

If you are good, then you should have more wins than losses overtime. Therefore you should be grateful that this system is heavily based on WLR. Individual performance only metrics will turn this game into "Hide behind teammates and farm points warrior: online".

[Wintersdark]

What the good Mr. Winter wrote.

What's important to keep in mind is that PSR isn't really a good personal rating system match to match. You may as well just use match score for that (though it's not very good either, but is just the best of limited tools).

In the OP's case, erroneous results happen - up (a little bit) on a poor performance with a win, or down (a little bit) on a decent performance with a loss, but keep in mind these are small changes to rating that don't move the bar much. This is to account for times where you actually did contribute to a win but didn't do much raw damage (say you're a great scout/spotter/leader/whatever) or that you're actually contributing towards losses despite getting mediocre scores (poor team play).

After all, it doesn't take a stellar performance in a loss to prevent rating loss entirely, and a decent performance in a win causes your rating to increase much more than a poor performance does.

Finally, keep in mind the One True Purpose of PSR and ANY matchmaking/rating system PGI uses: the protection of new players from experienced/veteran players. PSR is positively weighted for this reason - you'll tend to always progress upwards overall unless you're really dragging your team down, but slowly (very slowly at higher tiers). This serves to move players away from the kiddie pool as quickly as possible, so the more experienced you get the less you'll encounter new players.

[Wintersdark]

maniacos, on 26 March 2016 - 05:51 AM, said:

This still does not take in accout your actual role and your actual individual performance in the match. The damage points of a low alpha support mech, scout or what ever shouldn't count the same as the dmg done by heavy or assault working in formation.

This brings in other aspects for instance a heavy walking out of formation, going alone and not giving a single **** for their team can still do like 100 and more damage before he dies and get rewarded with rising PSR when the team is good enough to win still. On the other hand, a pilot doing his freaking job best he could and still lose with the team gets downrated, instead of saying "ok you did your job, sorry it didn't work out but here is your cookie for trying".

I know it's difficult to implement that in a automated reward system but the basic approach is there with the "lance formation", "scouting", "uav detection" and other points, just they don't get taken in account well enough.

See Mr. Bandito's post. Because this system is still heavily weighted on W/L, over multiple matches your impact on the matches matters more. Even if you don't do a lot of damage, if you're helping teams win you'll have a positive wlr and thus progress much faster.

Also, for the love of God, having your PSR increase is not a reward. The only thing that gets you is harder opponent's and thus less cbill income from matches. It is, if anything, a disadvantage that acts to reduce your income by increasing challenge to meet your abilities.

[El Bandito]

Wintersdark, on 26 March 2016 - 06:03 AM, said:

Also, for the love of God, having your PSR increase is not a reward. The only thing that gets you is harder opponent's and thus less cbill income from matches. It is, if anything, a disadvantage that acts to reduce your income by increasing challenge to meet your abilities.

All according to the Paulconomy plan. Don't forget to buy those consumables and modules if you wish to move faster in tiers.

[Wintersdark]

El Bandito, on 26 March 2016 - 06:08 AM, said:

All according to the Paulconomy plan. Don't forget to buy those consumables and modules if you wish to move faster in tiers.

what's hilarious is this is completely accurate, too.

You keep hearing newbies complain that they have to grind out modules to compete, but that's all they're doing... Grinding out something that'll just move them up a tier and into place with everyone else who did that. This they end up exactly where they were before the bought them.


You need modules and such if you're going to be doing actually competitive play (not random quick play solo queue drops) or FW while in a unit playing FW competitively but otherwise, they're totally unnecessary.

If I could choose tonjust be in t3 forever, I would. That wouldn't really be fair to new players, but it'd rock for me

The only reason I'm still T2 now is that I've only played a tiny bit in the last couple months (vacation, work, new game releases etc)... And I don't want to be t1.

[Mole]

If you look at Russ' initial post explaining PSR his whole convoluted idea for making it work the way it does is because he thought it would encourage more team play since making your rating go up would be largely dependent on you helping your team win. Which is stupid. You're never going to get PUGs to stop being selfish no matter how you tweak the rewards. When people join the military they go through a whole grueling training process that teaches them to stop behaving as individuals and start behaving as a unit. The point being, people are naturally selfish like that unless they are working with a bunch of people they have become close with. PUGs are nothing but a group of strangers that have been stuck on the same team. Of course they're going to be selfish, because that Joe Schmoe over there means nothing to this Joe Schmoe. It takes a special mindset to not be selfish in a PUG game. A mindset that most people just don't have, and will never have.

[KahnWongFuChung]

OP I would care about this topic if there was rewards involved when gaining tiers but there is not. The only reward you get for gaining higher tiers is playing more exploiters-lagers-and hackers and to tell you the truth tier4 is much funnier than tier 3-2-1 will ever be .

Edited by KahnWongFuChung, 26 March 2016 - 06:20 AM.

[El Bandito]

Mole, on 26 March 2016 - 06:19 AM, said:

If you look at Russ' initial post explaining PSR his whole convoluted idea for making it work the way it does is because he thought it would encourage more team play since making your rating go up would be largely dependent on you helping your team win. Which is stupid. You're never going to get PUGs to stop being selfish no matter how you tweak the rewards. When people join the military they go through a whole grueling training process that teaches them to stop behaving as individuals and start behaving as a unit. The point being, people are naturally selfish like that unless they are working with a bunch of people they have become close with. PUGs are nothing but a group of strangers that have been stuck on the same team. Of course they're going to be selfish, because that Joe Schmoe over there means nothing to this Joe Schmoe. It takes a special mindset to not be selfish in a PUG game. A mindset that most people just don't have, and will never have.

Which is why one needs to take the reigns of the pugs and command them. They cannot be fully controlled but can be guided. And that is enough to make a difference in a team game. I had experienced great deal of improved matches when I broke out of my mic shyness. Pugs, selfish though they maybe, are still grateful for someone to tell them what to do.

Edited by El Bandito, 26 March 2016 - 06:23 AM.

[Tarogato]

maniacos, on 26 March 2016 - 05:51 AM, said:

This still does not take in accout your actual role and your actual individual performance in the match. The damage points of a low alpha support mech, scout or what ever shouldn't count the same as the dmg done by heavy or assault working in formation.

You just essentially answered your own question. If your mech is a low damage support role, then if you do your job properly, you should be contributing as much to the win as somebody running a high alpha high damage role. Since you earned that win by supporting your team, PSR rewards you for the win.

Unless of course running a low damage support role dosn't actually contribute much to the win, then PSR punishes for not doing enough work towards winning the match. And the simple matter of fact in this game is... if you are not killing mechs and dealing effective damage, you are not going to win. So instead of playing a "support" role, build a real mech that can actually win games - PSR will reward you for it.

[Y E O N N E]

Tarogato, on 26 March 2016 - 06:28 AM, said:

Unless of course running a low damage support role dosn't actually contribute much to the win, then PSR punishes for not doing enough work towards winning the match. And the simple matter of fact in this game is... if you are not killing mechs and dealing effective damage, you are not going to win. So instead of playing a "support" role, build a real mech that can actually win games - PSR will reward you for it.

Assuming he's just playing solo, he would still be able to deal good damage and win with a low alpha support build if he were decent at the game. There are plenty of people who get away with nothing but twin PPC, some of us do fine with STD engine Locusts, Mist Lynx, etc.

So, really, it sounds to me like the problem here exists between the keyboard and chair.

[Solarise]

maniac try playing support role is easier to play and it helps to cover your teammate, make sure they don't get focused, as many pusher do not have enough support beside them. They tend to push alone n die fast.

[Alistair Winter]

Wintersdark, on 26 March 2016 - 05:58 AM, said:

In the OP's case, erroneous results happen - up (a little bit) on a poor performance with a win, or down (a little bit) on a decent performance with a loss, but keep in mind these are small changes to rating that don't move the bar much. This is to account for times where you actually did contribute to a win but didn't do much raw damage (say you're a great scout/spotter/leader/whatever) or that you're actually contributing towards losses despite getting mediocre scores (poor team play)

Exactly! Had a match with my ACH the other day, on Polar Highlands. The other team was deathballing and we managed to circle them to attack from an unexpected angle and then envelop them. I was the only ECM mech on my team and everyone was on VOIP complaining about the lack of ECM cover, so I was running back and forth trying to protect guys from LRMs. At some point, my team charged and I noticed we had a Dire Wolf flanking the enemy and about to catch them in some serious crossfire. But he was way in the open, so I rushed over to provide ECM cover and I stayed within 90 meters as he snuck up on their position. They didn't see him coming, so he got 3 kills in 15 seconds.

Afterwards he was all like "stealth DW ftw", as if he single-handedly made that happen. But would he have been able to get in that position without ECM cover hiding him from their radar? I don't think so. So in the end, I didn't do much damage, because I had to stay close to my team to provide some ECM cover when they were exposed, otherwise they would have been eaten by LRMs. But I felt like I did contribute a lot to the victory, none the less. I could probably have YOLO'd and ran off to hunt isolated assault mechs on the enemy team, and I would have gotten paid more and done more damage, but it would probably have been worse for my team.

[Triordinant]

Alistair Winter, on 26 March 2016 - 05:32 AM, said:

My main complaint with PSR is that people can easily skate to Tier 1 by just playing group queue a lot, if they're in a good unit. This is the same problem as we used to have with Elo, because some of the high-and-mighty top Elo players weren't really that impressive in the solo queue, in my experience. Some people are very good individually, but not so good teamplayers. And vice versa. (Incidentally, same as most team games / team sports)

Maybe they should have separate PSR for the group queue and solo queue.

[Alistair Winter]

Triordinant, on 26 March 2016 - 06:44 AM, said:

Maybe they should have separate PSR for the group queue and solo queue.

Probably. It's still a little unfair because 2-man groups are not the same as 12-man groups. But it would probably be a good thing in terms of separating the players who are consistently playing with good units from the players who just play group queue to relax with friends. MM already tries to do a little bit of that, but maybe not enough.

[Xavori]

El Bandito, on 26 March 2016 - 05:56 AM, said:

If you are good, then you should have more wins than losses overtime.

That's not even remotely true. You are 1/12th of a team. Even if you perform 2x to 3x better than a normal player, you'll never be more than a small fraction of the team's chances to win or lose.

And it's not that win/loss is a part of the PSR formula, it's that it the most overwhelming part. If your team wins, it's a near certainty your rating won't go down. Conversely, you can have a very good match, a match that would be max increase if you'd won, and have your rating go down because the rest of your team lost.

But perhaps the worst part of PSR is that it doesn't function like a true ELO. If you reached 50/50 success/fail in ELO, you stop moving in rating. A 50/50 success/fail ration with MWO's PSR is still going to move you up. That's why most players who understand PSR don't even think of it as a rating at all, but just an XP bar. Play long enough and unless you are the worst player to ever play, you'll end up in tier 1.

[Foxwalker]

The only thing I can say about the Tier system is that it removes some focus from KDR. The idea to get players focus more on team play to win the match to increase their Tier rather than only seeing how many kills per match they can get to up their KDR.

Personally I for one worry less about how many kills I get and focus more on contributing to the "win"