4
There are also a lot of complaints that the Tier system is just an experience bar and eventually almost everyone will rise to Tier 1. That means that there are players that carry Tier 1 ratings that are much less skilled than other Tier 1 players just due to playing a lot of games. This results in a lot of frustration even among Tier 1 players.
Perhaps the time has come to do a hard reset of everyones PSR Tier level!
I can already hear the cries of indignation from some of the higher Tier players. "You cannot do that! I worked hard for my Tier rating!" To that I say, the PSR rating system was never meant to be a badge of honor or an ePeen award. It was meant to be a tool to separate new players and lesser skilled players from each other when queuing up a match so that both would have a chance to have an enjoyable game experience.
Next they will say, "But if you reset everyone then everyone will be mixed up and the games will be a mess with players of all skill levels shoved into every game!" Yep, they would be absolutely correct but isn't that what is already happening? The difference is that the cream of the crop will very quickly rise to the top and the separation of highly skilled players, moderately skilled players and less skilled players will happen in a matter of weeks if not days. When this happens the quality of the games will improve for everyone.
There will be the Achievement chasers who will say, "I earned that ranking! You cannot just arbitrarily take it away from me!" Yeah, I understand that achievements are important to a lot of gamers. However, that was never the intent of the Tier system. It is not really an achievement and IMO it is unfortunate that the Tier has come to be construed as one.
Finally, someone will say. "You are only proposing this because you are a low Tier!" Perhaps that is true. I honestly do not care about Tiers. I only notice it when that arrow either turns green and points up (My team and/or I did good?) or is red and points down (apparently I suxed!) Full disclosure; I have slightly over 500 games of experimenting, screwing around, learning and improving. Just now, I checked and I am a few pixels short of Tier 4. Even if I cared about my Tier ranking,That progress is not that much to lose so I do understand the angst of those that do put some value in their ranking. For the most part, matchmaking has not been that big a deal for me. I have been in games a couple times with players who I recognized from the forums that were Tier 2 and once I saw a player who I had played with in solo Q the previous week who had a Tier 1 under his name. Maybe he leveled up killing me? Still, most of my games have been fun and competitive.
As I understand it, it has taken the PSR system about a year to become the jumble mess that it has now become. Maybe a reset will buy us another year before it happens again (annual reset?). And maybe, once the players settle in to the Tiers where their skill level would place them then the matchmaker would once again be able to provide competitive matches again.
If we truly want the matchmaker and PSR to be meaningful then it either needs to be revamped completely or just reset so it can work again.
Thoughts? Critiques? Comments? Name Calling?
