100 replies to this topic

[Sjorpha]

Many players have unrealistic expectations on what their scores should be, and so when they get to reasonable averages of about 2-300 damage and 0-1 kills they think they are "too high" in tier because they see those reasonable averages as "bad games".

Its a shame that the system isn't a zero sum bell curve, but personally I still think the matches get better and more fun the higher I climb.

[LowSubmarino]

Tier 1 or 2 doesnt mean anything.

Whatsoever.

In Tier 1 I was hoping for some real fights. Good players. Good aim. Smart movement.

But 98 % of players in Tier 1 are abysmal. Most players are so bad, run blindly and alone over open terrain.

Stand with 2 - 4 mechs in the approach vector of an entire team. And the approaching team is even telegraphing their move via radar and this is echoed by multiple chat warnings by their own team telling them 'get ouf of the way'.

If Tier only represented the amount of hours and games somebody has played, then that alone would inevitably mean you have players with at least a microscopic level of skill. You wouldnt see that you see in Tier 1. Cause what you see in Tier 1 is just mostly either completly skillless or completly new players.

Almost all lights I see rush ahead of the team and suicide 30 - 60 secs into the game haha.

Every.

Single.

Game.

Theres literally no half good light pilots. Anywhere in Tier 1.

Maybe 1 %.

Light pilots just die.

Well....everybody just dies.

Its not that they get dominated by superior tactics or strategies or awesome aim or such.

They all die to being completly and hilariously out of position, walking blindly over open terrain with no cover and no ecm.

Ehm....and no team haha!!!!

Who does that?

How can such a player ever get to Tier 1???

And if such players can ever get to Tier 1 then what is the purpose of the Tier system?

Thats something that is so far beyond me that apparently my IQ must be too low to comprehend any kind of reasoning behind this.

I dont know what you guys see.

I play a lot of games. And I hardly ever see good players. Almost never.

All I ever see is really, really, really reaaallllllyyyyyyyyyy bad players. 98 % of the time.

So I say completly take this Tier system ouf of the game.

And everything attached to it. Just delete the MM. And start completly new. Try a differnt approach so that ppl of more or less and somewhat similar skill can play against each other.

[Alistair Winter]

Prosperity Park, on 13 May 2016 - 03:40 PM, said:

So, NASCAR is an upper-tier strategy?

Getting a whole team to move in a coordinated fashion only happens at upper tiers. Mindless Tier 1 Nascar makes Tier 5 look like fish flopping on the ground by comparison.

Zibmo, on 13 May 2016 - 07:12 PM, said:

I know this is going to be unpopular. But, my experience with most players in the lower tiers is that they seem to have more fun (there's a lot less blame-and-shame going on) and they actually use the in-game VOIP. In general, it seems a bit ... nicer ... down there. And I can live with teammates not playing as well because I can have more fun.

This is not my experience at all. But admittedly, I've only played about a dozen of matches at Tier 4, because it's hard to stay down there unless you intentionally only do 0-100 dmg for your first 30 or so matches, I think.

Anyway, my experience is that Tier 4 and Tier 5 players are no nicer or meaner than Tier 1 and Tier 2 players. You get a few "tryhards" at Tier 1 who have invested their whole life into the game, but at Tier 4 and Tier 5 you get a few random trolls who don't understand how the game work and just yell obsceneties at the people on the screen to make things better. And most people at both the top and the bottom are normal, nice people.

oneda, on 14 May 2016 - 02:39 AM, said:

Tier 1 or 2 doesnt mean anything.
Whatsoever.
In Tier 1 I was hoping for some real fights. Good players. Good aim. Smart movement.
But 98 % of players in Tier 1 are abysmal. Most players are so bad, run blindly and alone over open terrain.

This is a myopic perspective, because 99.9% of all MWO players fall into this category. No matter how you shuffle a deck of cards, there's not going to be more than 4 aces in it. And it's the same with MWO. Unless you make the playerbase ten times bigger, you're not going to get a whole Tier of good players.

That being said, the best players are in group queue, and so is the best teamwork. But even in the group queue, there's a shortage of players. If you want to see a lot of truly excellent players, you need to play a different game.

[LordNothing]

you know when psr came out, i was a very high t3. i did terrible for months. eventually my psr went backwards to about the first 3rd of the bar. i thought for sure i belonged in t4 and that it would creep all the way down. but then it just stopped moving and stayed static for months, i thought i had found my niche. then fairly recently i noticed it creeping its way into the first few pixels of t2. ive oscillated back and fourth a few times at the 2/3 borderline. i dropped back into t3 after a number of very bad games stemming from the fact that i was trying to level srm lights while people were mostly voting for the big campy lermy maps. i did manage to cross one of the worst mechs in the game (panther 10p) off my list though. of course no time to celebrate, i replaced it with another vindicator.

anyway it seems that psr is displaying what i like to call very unstable behavior. it went from what seemed like a zeroing in period, followed by being rock solid stable for several months to meandering every which possible way it can in more recent weeks. i bet pgi is cleaning house, sneaking in secret bugfixes perhaps. i very much doubt ive improved very much. my cbill and xp hauls seem to be about the same as they have always been, mediocre with occasional peaks of excellence and slightly less occasional deep trenches of wtf is wrong with you. i kind of have to agree with the op's suggestion that perhaps something is amis. makes me want to alt account, plug in my dusty joystick and go.

Edited by LordNothing, 14 May 2016 - 04:35 AM.

[Tribal556]

oh well, competitive play is boring, and makes people angry.
after years and years of playing mmo games, lot of players just play for fun now, (don't care)

And there's always better players , who use all the cheap tricks, so that doesn't worth the effort, mimetic stuff is boring too.
I am happy at tier 5 , even if it s stupid sometimes

Edited by Tribal556, 14 May 2016 - 04:47 AM.

[Meathook]

I don't get it either, when playing soccer with friends, my try-hard team always gets bitter if I don't want to follow the goal-keeper meta and run around the field trying fun stuff. I mean, it's a game and we are trying to have fun, who wants to win or something like that, right?

[Bud Crue]

I am T3, so I play with all the Tiers, at least in theory. All I know is that as bad as I am at this game (I have terrible reaction time and I make REALLY bad decisions sometimes) I still see behaviors that are consistently as bad or worse by players of all tiers. T5 to T1, I often still have to try and ride herd on people, calling out things like "Hey look at the mini-map! ALL if the enemy are at H6!" because half of the team including several known T1 players are scattered all over. Or my recent favorite "Okay folks we either need to fight or get in the circle. Hiding -OUTSIDE THE CIRCLE! does not win domination".

So at my level it sure seems like there is no correlation between good teamwork/behavior and higher tiers. Poor play is exhibited by everyone, and in all Tiers. I look forward to the utopia of higher tier play where such poor play and lack of team work is presumably nonexistent, but I have a feeling that it doesn't really exist at least in QP...puggers gonna pug and all that.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Im in the "why are there tiers" tier. I wish I could drop down lol

[Ultimax]

oneda, on 14 May 2016 - 02:39 AM, said:

Tier 1 or 2 doesnt mean anything.

Whatsoever.

In Tier 1 I was hoping for some real fights. Good players. Good aim. Smart movement.

But 98 % of players in Tier 1 are abysmal. Most players are so bad, run blindly and alone over open terrain.

You seem to erroneously believe that when you are T1 all of your team mates and all of your opponents are also T1 in a solo PUG match.

Edited by Ultimax, 14 May 2016 - 07:34 AM.

[Davers]

Taffer, on 13 May 2016 - 10:02 PM, said:

Not sure if it counts as a ranking, but I prefer to play the lower tier/lower battle rating vehicles in these types of games.....but then battle ratings get ****** around to force you to get stomped by something better. I do prefer the mwo way (no br), but the Elo and PSR both suck imo.

It IS a ranking, of a sort. Not really as definitive skill-wise as it could be, but having played alts in Tier 5 matches there is a world of difference in player behavior.

[Agent 0 Fortune]

I recently started a new account just to play through tier 4 and 5, I found it a lot more fun than my regular account. For the first half you are a slave to the Trial mechs, then you have to decide how much time you want to invest. I figured I wanted to play through my Elite skills, but not much longer, so I picked medium chassis (Blackjack X1, 3, and 1DC), knowing that I could buy all the weapons, modules, and engines that I needed and still be done between elite and master.

Of course I really enjoy "cowboy" mode, where it is you vs. 12, if you are not comfortable running lone-wolf, this may not be the mode for you. On the other hand it harkens back to the closed beta 8v8, where an individual mech really made a difference. Currently I have nearly mastered my 3 Blackjacks, about 50% into tier 4, and I am thinking about starting over with another chassis. I just need to choose one that has enough hardpoint variation to keep me interested, and that I can afford to build on a limited C-Bill budget.

[Dirkdaring]

Alistair Winter, on 13 May 2016 - 07:51 AM, said:

So you expected things to be better at Tier 1, only to find out that it's basically like Tier 2, but

No, its exactly like Tier 2 because they both drop together.

Didn't even read the rest of your comment after that, sorry.

[Alistair Winter]

Dirkdaring, on 14 May 2016 - 08:47 AM, said:

No, its exactly like Tier 2 because they both drop together.

Didn't even read the rest of your comment after that, sorry.

I will try to cope with the loss.

[Mavairo]

Bishop Steiner, on 13 May 2016 - 08:01 AM, said:

Only winning by the most direct and copypasta route possible is fun.

So is the decree of the Overlords of Mt Tryhard.

Challenging yourself by playing suboptimal builds, playing for fluff, etc, is the thing of feeble minds.

#Meta4Lyf

I'm actually considering maintaining T3 instead of letting T2 happen. If I played more often, hell this weekend I could probably nail T2 with as fast as I've torn through T3 so far. But I know the higher up I go, the less fun I'm probably going to have, because I'll have to start using cookie cutter meta mechs..and that's depressing.

[Bishop Steiner]

Mavairo, on 14 May 2016 - 10:32 AM, said:

I'm actually considering maintaining T3 instead of letting T2 happen. If I played more often, hell this weekend I could probably nail T2 with as fast as I've torn through T3 so far. But I know the higher up I go, the less fun I'm probably going to have, because I'll have to start using cookie cutter meta mechs..and that's depressing.

it's possible to be a Mech Hipster and progress (I still am moving toward 1, slowly) but for me it's not so much my builds but what I fight ever single match being the same, that gets old.

[627]

I started a new account for the what mech chaleng, playing cents exclusively. I lost the the first few games because single heat sinks and makeshift weapons... totlally forgot how fun it is if you have to care about money and what to sell and buy...

However I'm now somewhere in t4 with that account and progress to t3 is somewhat slow, even with high wins and matchscore nearly every match.

And running a cent bomber you really see the skill difference. It went that far that I played worse and more risky than I used to play, making errors that would normally get me killed. I can facetank an atlas because he gets intimidated by me, starting to run away. And you see all sorts of... lets call it exotic builds that you scratch your head about it.

Quite an experience and to be true, the skill system is needed and seems to work mostly. However, the higher tiers aren't without flaws, you get at least one "special" player every two matches or so where you just spectate and wonder...

[Aresye]

oneda, on 14 May 2016 - 02:39 AM, said:

I dont know what you guys see.

I play a lot of games. And I hardly ever see good players. Almost never.

All I ever see is really, really, really reaaallllllyyyyyyyyyy bad players. 98 % of the time.

Wait until PGI does another "solo queue only" leaderboard.

When you've got some of the best players from SJR, EmP, 228, Lords, and AS comprising 3/4 of all players in the match, things can get pretty intense.

Of course, these matches generally don't help anybody for the leaderboard itself, as nobody can ever score high enough in these types of matches.

[Appogee]

I'm in Tier 1, but I experience Tier 1 matches very seldom when solo.

I play off peak US time. My matches are mostly populated by lower tier players whom I am either expected to carry or to stomp. (We're told that Tier should only ever play Tier 1 to 3, but it's BS. In off peak the matchmaker clearly has all release valves open and it just plonks higher tier players with lower ones in pursuit of some notional mathematical average.)

So I experience 15 straight losses of facepalming incompetence, until my win/loss ratio goes below some threshold, then suddenly I'm placed in more competent teams where I get a run of wins.

The above has been the case since Elo was introduced. Tiering doesn't seem to have affected matchmaking at all from my perspective. I hope it's working out better for those of you lucky enough to be in US primetime.

Edited by Appogee, 14 May 2016 - 01:03 PM.

[wanderer]

A system that gives you a tier rating based on games played vs. actual skill results in the modern MWO experience- ever increasing numbers of barely average players bleeding into T2 and T1 simply because they played so many games, the net result pushed them up.

It didn't mean their match scores improved, mind you. Just "I played a lot".

This has meant that since the tier system was introduced, more and more potatoes end up planted in the T1-T2 field. They will not end up knocked out of it back to T3-4, because of the way the system works is vastly biased towards your tier bar marching upwards. T4-T5 just usually ends up with them the majority of "weird plays" because that's the "I haven't played much" category now and nothing more...but the same players will rapidly end up in T3 without actually improving if they keep playing.

And T2. And T1, in time meaning the tiering system as a separator is essentially useless.

The match score needed to improve or merely hold equal needs to increase with tier level, badly.

The loss of tier ranking for a poor score needs to bite more as you go up in Tiers as well.

Only then will there be any differences based on performance. The effectiveness of the matchmaker was made into a lie simply by the tier gain bias marching players upwards without fail.

Edited by wanderer, 14 May 2016 - 03:23 PM.

[Mavairo]

Bishop Steiner, on 14 May 2016 - 11:42 AM, said:

it's possible to be a Mech Hipster and progress (I still am moving toward 1, slowly) but for me it's not so much my builds but what I fight ever single match being the same, that gets old.

Well the builds help dictate, what your personal strategy is going to be, so progressing higher will take some of..okay most of the at best organized chaos of the matches I get into now.
Personally I think, more emphasis needs to be placed on, scouting, flanking bonuses, ecm countering, UAV lock, capping points etc in match score rather than dmg being so heavily a factor. It'd do a lot to broaden gameplay, if more cbills, as well as your match score increased more dramatically for those things than just straight up murdering everyone...it'd open up the maps some more imo.

Edited by Mavairo, 14 May 2016 - 03:28 PM.