57 replies to this topic

[NighthawK1337]

You're still adding graphs. Nice.
I answered "better than most people" yet I found out that I'm smack dab in the middle of T1 W/L ratio of 1.16. Ah my hubris. However a majority of players seems to think that. Lol. more than 50% answered that in almost every tier. Still at least my KDR is above average, 1.32. Yay greediness.

Tarogato, on 15 January 2017 - 09:38 PM, said:

Except that assumes that all players started playing the game in June 2016. They may well be veteran high-division competitive players who just don't play as actively as anymore.

I could create such a graph though, from the global player base stats - no poll/survey necessary. I'm just lazy, so ... I'll do it tomorrow. Bug me if I don't have it here in the next 30 hours.

Nah, I just found your other graphs, I'm good with that. Great work. At least it shows that people do improve W/L Ratio as they improve in tiers.

I think saturarion of T1 could be addressed if we give penalties to performance too, and make it the major factor for moving up or down PSR instead of the current system. Where it just give points willy nilly, and the big factor is whether you win or lose, which is hard to balance since you're playing with 11 people. They should at least make 50% for team coordination and 50% pilot skill.

Edited by NighthawK1337, 15 January 2017 - 09:46 PM.

[Cato Phoenix]

It looks like the players who state that they are better are, on average, better, and those who say worse, seem worse.

[The Unstoppable Puggernaut]

I've added mine.

I like the way Tier 4 sticks up the middle finger on the kill per match graph lol.

Based on the average match score it all seems to be working out. I noticed on the T1 side I am on this higher end on the graphs which is dissapointing. I always thought I was suppose to be on T2. I've seen really good players and they definately need their own tier but according to this, I should be in T0 and the really good players need to be in T-1 or T-2 (that's a minus).

They really need to expand the scale and emcompass 4/5 together.

[Magnus Santini]

Puggernaut, I think it would be a mistake to combine T4 and T5 because it would put current T5 people in games with T2. That is not going to produce better games.

[meteorol]

Done it.

Knowing my skill ceiling pretty well from years of playing online, being a filthy casual, i feel like i should be in the middle of the pack.
Somehow this isn't really the case though. Probably a combination of MWOs paperthin skill ceiling and the highly casual, low skilled playerbase. It's still odd though.

[Tarogato]

So I did something recently that I never thought of doing before... now this isn't isn't exact because I was too lazy to extract actual numbers from the playerbase, I used a polynomial model instead, but it should be pretty danged close to the real deal.

If you line up all of the players in the game from highest matchscore to lowest matchscore, and then divide them into five equal-sized "tiers", it would looks like this:









The takeaway is that Tier 1 and Tier 5 would have a super wide variance in skill level, even if PSR did work absolutely perfectly. But Tier 2, 3, and 4 would all be pretty similar, nearly indistinguishable from one another.

The problem is that there just aren't enough good players in this game. The 5% just skyrockets in performance against everybody else, there aren't enough high-level players to keep themselves in check. We need to be doing what we can in helping the community to get better at the game.

Edited by Tarogato, 17 January 2017 - 09:40 AM.

[Bud Crue]

Tarogato, on 17 January 2017 - 09:38 AM, said:

The problem is that there just aren't enough good players in this game. The 5% just skyrockets in performance against everybody else, there aren't enough high-level players to keep themselves in check. We need to be doing what we can in helping the community to get better at the game.

Forgive my ignorance of statistical analysis, but it looks like from your results page, that more than half of respondents are Tier 1. How does the assertion that we don't have enough good players in this game follow from that or from the chart above. Please help me understand.

Edit: is it the artifice of five "equal" tiers?

Edited by Bud Crue, 17 January 2017 - 10:56 AM.

[Mcgral18]

Bud Crue, on 17 January 2017 - 10:55 AM, said:

Forgive my ignorance of statistical analysis, but it looks like from your results page, that more than half of respondents are Tier 1. How does the assertion that we don't have enough good players in this game follow from that or from the chart above. Please help me understand.

Edit: is it the artifice of five "equal" tiers?

If we split current mass of stats into 5 equal tiers, that's what we get.
Our current Tiers are not equal

He did find this detail

Quote

That's not perfectly exact, as I used a polynomial model instead of grabbing the actual percentiles from the data, but it's about right.

t5 < 172
t4 > 172 < 190
t3 > 190 < 212
t2 > 212 < 236
t1 > 236

So, the average match score of a Tier 1 player is anywhere above 236
Or, the gap between T1 and T5 is only 64 Match Score


That's ~100 average damage difference

Edited by Mcgral18, 17 January 2017 - 11:01 AM.

[Oberost]

If the average match score of a Tier 1 player is just 236 or more this can explain a lot of things...

[Bud Crue]

Mcgral18, on 17 January 2017 - 11:01 AM, said:

If we split current mass of stats into 5 equal tiers, that's what we get.
Our current Tiers are not equal

He did find this detail


So, the average match score of a Tier 1 player is anywhere above 236
Or, the gap between T1 and T5 is only 64 Match Score


That's ~100 average damage difference

Tarogato has the data and data doesn't lie, but I think his raw charts and your observation above are more indicative of the state of the game, as opposed the conclusion that we have too few good players. I think it that the majority of players are pretty good to relatively great (55% of the response pool being tier 1 at the time of this post), That majority, may not be, for the most part, vastly superior in their overall performance in game than the rest of the population (see your point above), but it is enough that the better players still consistently dominate the fewer players of lesser skill in terms of match outcome. That snowballs. That is to say: good players stay on top with the "bad" players never getting any better. Thus, bringing us to Tarogato's final point:

Mcgral18, on 17 January 2017 - 11:01 AM, said:

We need to be doing what we can in helping the community to get better at the game.

Good players need to be willing to teach and bads like me (no matter how insignificant that difference is statistically speaking is) need to be willing to listen and make an effort to learn.

[Oberost]

I don't think that the majority of players are good, just that the majority of players that read this forum, Reddit or the Steam forums (I think that this survey is on Steam too) are Tier 1.

A lot of people don't care about forums and more people just read and don't post anything.

[Mcgral18]

Bud Crue, on 17 January 2017 - 11:26 AM, said:

Good players need to be willing to teach and bads like me (no matter how insignificant that difference is statistically speaking is) need to be willing to listen and make an effort to learn.

I guess shooting them and calling them Terribad isn't helping


How does one help players get better?
Build analysis (LOL Lurms...maybe not the best way)

Arm lock, when it's good and bad (WHY arm lock on a Nova!)


Or just the importance of torso twisting?



Chat is generally more reactive than helpful.

Oberost, on 17 January 2017 - 11:39 AM, said:

I don't think that the majority of players are good, just that the majority of players that read this forum, Reddit or the Steam forums (I think that this survey is on Steam too) are Tier 1.

A lot of people don't care about forums and more people just read and don't post anything.

Russ was saying he'll gather up some stats, to MAYBE share with us


It would be nice to see the official distribution

[Deathlike]

Tarogato, on 17 January 2017 - 09:38 AM, said:

So I did something recently that I never thought of doing before... now this isn't isn't exact because I was too lazy to extract actual numbers from the playerbase, I used a polynomial model instead, but it should be pretty danged close to the real deal.

If you line up all of the players in the game from highest matchscore to lowest matchscore, and then divide them into five equal-sized "tiers", it would looks like this:









The takeaway is that Tier 1 and Tier 5 would have a super wide variance in skill level, even if PSR did work absolutely perfectly. But Tier 2, 3, and 4 would all be pretty similar, nearly indistinguishable from one another.

The problem is that there just aren't enough good players in this game. The 5% just skyrockets in performance against everybody else, there aren't enough high-level players to keep themselves in check. We need to be doing what we can in helping the community to get better at the game.

It's call the NPE. You know it doesn't really get bandied about in MWO because it's the malnourished orphan that's forgotten about every single time it's brought up (or not brought up by me, cause I keep talking into deaf ears).

Mcgral18, on 17 January 2017 - 11:43 AM, said:

I guess shooting them and calling them Terribad isn't helping


How does one help players get better?
Build analysis (LOL Lurms...maybe not the best way)

Arm lock, when it's good and bad (WHY arm lock on a Nova!)


Or just the importance of torso twisting?



Chat is generally more reactive than helpful.

TBH, I don't like using terribad or potato either, but when telling people not to do something and they do it anyways... I'm not here to bandage the team's hand once they touch the stove repeatedly.

Maybe the Church of Skill would need to be advertised more... or just even mechanisms that allow such teaching to happen (benefiting the teacher as well, not just the student). The simple fact is that PGI hasn't really tackled retention through the NPE (there are things PGI are doing too slowly to address other retention related things like variety and purpose) and you wonder when we'll have some sort of potato famine (sorry, the puns never cease ).

The reluctance of some people probably eat at me more than the people that are new. One group can strive to be better. The other doesn't care what we have to say. I guess PGI knows better right?

[Tarogato]

Mcgral18, on 17 January 2017 - 11:43 AM, said:

Arm lock, when it's good and bad (WHY arm lock on a Nova!)

Funny you mention the Nova specifically. I did multiple hours of 1v1 against a single player who was much better than me. I found I did better in Novas when I used armlock - those were the only times that I could beat him. It's because using armlock is almost like a DPI/sensitivity clutch - locked arms move much more steadily and free arms tend to fly all over the place and jitter like crazy, even at low sensitivities.

[Tarogato]

Bud Crue, on 17 January 2017 - 10:55 AM, said:

Forgive my ignorance of statistical analysis, but it looks like from your results page, that more than half of respondents are Tier 1. How does the assertion that we don't have enough good players in this game follow from that or from the chart above. Please help me understand.

The distribution of respondents in my survey is not indicative of the actual in-game distribution. It's only a sample after all, and is subject to the predispositions of higher tier and higher skill players to more frequently read and participate in the forums, reddit, etc. Thus, the actual distribution may be wildly different. Only PGI knows the actual distribution, because PSR tiers are not publicly available (except by opt-in), and they are not referenced in any databases we have access to.

What do we have access to however is a database of 60,000+ players, with their average match scores, what weight classes they play, their kills, deaths, wins, and losses. From that we have this: https://docs.google....#gid=1246543983

Which unveils that only 5% of players are above ~290 average match score, which about where I'd consider a threshold for "actually good at the game". Similarly, 75% of players are ~230 match score or lower, which is what I would personally consider "bad." And the average player is actually only 200 average match score. Anything at or below that is really atrociously bad in my opinion. Like... I question if you're even having fun playing the game if you consistently score that poorly. Yet that's actually 50% of people that play this game...

Edited by Tarogato, 17 January 2017 - 01:33 PM.

[xTrident]

OP I just wanted to give you a heads up on my survey answers - The minor issue I had, and it's really no big deal other than I wanted to tell you - Asking whether I believe I'm better, as good or worse than others I'm teamed with. Well back when my tier mattered and I was matched against "like" players I'd say I was put into matches where most were better than me. Now I feel like I'm well placed if not slightly better than most of them.

Also I used to primarily pilot IS mechs but over the past four months or so I've gone over to Clan mechs. My answer was that I felt most players I was teamed with/against were still better than me. Thought process on that was the matches have been much better for me, but it's really not been that long that they have been. I'd say mid December or so is when I noticed. I also answered that I use Clan mechs more even though that change happened around the same time, maybe slightly sooner.

Anyway your graphs... Very interesting and provide great information. My average match score right now is 260 - for season 7 and as you can see on the left, I'm in tier 2. Nearly to tier 1. My match score has me on the upper end of tier 2 and lower end of tier 1. Ironically, and I say ironically because I think the PSR PGI has in place is a joke - it looks as though I'm right in line.

Thanks OP.

Edited by xTrident, 17 January 2017 - 01:58 PM.

[Ultimax]

Tarogato, on 17 January 2017 - 09:38 AM, said:

So I did something recently that I never thought of doing before... now this isn't isn't exact because I was too lazy to extract actual numbers from the playerbase, I used a polynomial model instead, but it should be pretty danged close to the real deal.

If you line up all of the players in the game from highest matchscore to lowest matchscore, and then divide them into five equal-sized &quot;tiers&quot;, it would looks like this:









The takeaway is that Tier 1 and Tier 5 would have a super wide variance in skill level, even if PSR did work absolutely perfectly. But Tier 2, 3, and 4 would all be pretty similar, nearly indistinguishable from one another.

The problem is that there just aren't enough good players in this game. The 5% just skyrockets in performance against everybody else, there aren't enough high-level players to keep themselves in check. We need to be doing what we can in helping the community to get better at the game.

Many players here, including an unbelievable amount of vets, are willfully underperforming - bad builds or bad mechs or bad ideas on how to play (or all three). These things are rampant here with no way to change it.

[C E Dwyer]

What has, amused, bemused, made me lift an eyebrow, is the disparity between people that claim to be competitive and the amount of solo dropping.

Surely the genuinely competitive people are in group play at every opportunity and not farming pugs, which the pie charts seem to indicate

[Snazzy Dragon]

Cathy, on 17 January 2017 - 02:12 PM, said:

What has, amused, bemused, made me lift an eyebrow, is the disparity between people that claim to be competitive and the amount of solo dropping.

Surely the genuinely competitive people are in group play at every opportunity and not farming pugs, which the pie charts seem to indicate

That would be the case if people weren't so heavily restricted on their group tonnage for dropping in bigger groups-- and FW is hardly the ideal competitive environment as well.

[Tarogato]

Cathy, on 17 January 2017 - 02:12 PM, said:

What has, amused, bemused, made me lift an eyebrow, is the disparity between people that claim to be competitive and the amount of solo dropping.

Surely the genuinely competitive people are in group play at every opportunity and not farming pugs, which the pie charts seem to indicate

Just a small example: Quite a few of the people in my unit don't play the game that much. They pretty much only play private lobbies (competitive league matches). So when they do get on to play the game outside of comp matches, it tends to be solo queue or nothing.