110 replies to this topic

[Jman5]

Methanoid, on 15 August 2017 - 08:47 AM, said:

you talk as if a frequent player is dropping in a 1v1, doesnt matter if that 1 player is the best player ever, if the rest of his team are a bunch of myopic windowlicking 6 fingered muppets then he is going to be on the losing team regardless and it will hurt his ranking.

just now finished a conquest game where we took over the nodes 1 at a time, doing a good job of taking them all, yet even with prompts our "team" seemingly wasnt concerned that 1 enemy player was waiting for us to move on and just retook those nodes, conquest yet again turned into skirmish with our team getting anhialated in the process, no amount of 1 "good player" could fix that. Examples like that bag of genius is at present commonplace.

Every solo queue player gets their fair share of good teams and bad teams. None of us get special treatment from the matchmaker.

Zergling, on 15 August 2017 - 10:54 AM, said:

PGI changed it a few patches back so AMS missile shootdowns count to matchscore.

It's quite easy to increase average MS by something like 50, by running AMS on every mech.

If a player has bad stats in low tiers then they are just a bad player, because the level of opposition in those Tiers is hilariously low.

They scaled it back a little and now it's really small. Something like 0.1425 per missile. I run AMS on a lot of my builds and usually the matchscore reward from it is single digits.

[Appogee]

Zergling, on 15 August 2017 - 10:54 AM, said:

PGI changed it a few patches back so AMS missile shootdowns count to matchscore.

It's quite easy to increase average MS by something like 50, by running AMS on every mech.

Thanks. Do you happen to know the formula for calculating how much Match Score AMS missile hits provide?

(I worked out earlier today that each missile you shoot down earns the princely sum of ... 4 CBills.)

EDIT:

Jman5, on 15 August 2017 - 11:25 AM, said:

They scaled it back a little and now it's really small. Something like 0.1425 per missile. I run AMS on a lot of my builds and usually the matchscore reward from it is single digits.

And there's the answer I was looking for, thanks.

Edited by Appogee, 15 August 2017 - 11:27 AM.

[Zergling]

It's 1 matchscore for 7 missiles shot down. So shoot down 350 missiles = 50 matchscore.

Remember that over a large number of battles, even an increase in just 10 or 20 average matchscore can make all the difference when it comes to going up in PSR.

Edited by Zergling, 15 August 2017 - 11:33 AM.

[Jman5]

Zergling, on 15 August 2017 - 11:32 AM, said:

It's 1 matchscore for 7 missiles shot down. So shoot down 350 missiles = 50 matchscore.

Remember that over a large number of battles, even an increase in just 10 or 20 average matchscore can make all the difference when it comes to going up in PSR.

But that's the rub. Shooting down 350 missiles in one match. Maybe if you're boating double or triple AMS with quirks, skill nodes, and multiple tons of ammo or heat to throw away you can do it occasionally on LRM friendly maps like polar highlands.

Those are extra ordinary games in specialist mechs.

I don't even normally get those numbers in Faction play where I get 4 drops to build the number up.

I don't disagree with what you say that a small boost AMS provides might be all that many need to start creeping up the PSR. But it's just one small bit of the matchscore. Plenty of other stuff were cranked up a few patches ago which are also inflating the average matchscore. Just being on the winning team now nets you 28 points no matter how worthless you were. That alone overshadows the amount you'd get from an AMS 99% of the time.

Edited by Jman5, 15 August 2017 - 11:59 AM.

[Lances107]

Yea such a potato you know 967 damage during a match that is truly bad you know.

Truthfully I find the tier system insulting and truly stupid for this game. As this game relies upon team work. One guy over here gets a bunch of team members that dont work together sporting loss after loss, his cadet bonus is used up, and ends up in tier 5 forver. He also Knows the game, knows how to poke, and knows how to move in a tactical fashion. Stuck in tier 5. New player comes along gets lucky with some good teams, has his cadet bonus, and starts climbing the tier rank. Essentially the system is not based on who is the better player, but rather who was the lucky one, and who had solid teams the entire timer. Not to mention if your in a really big unit that can dominate quick play in the group q, your going to climb at a good pace.

The ops statement and others like it derive one the idea that it is clearly black and white. No exceptions, and the system works 100 percent of the time. Anyone with half a brain knows how absurd that is.

[InfinityBall]

Lances107, on 15 August 2017 - 12:43 PM, said:

Yea such a potato you know 967 damage during a match that is truly bad you know.

Truthfully I find the tier system insulting and truly stupid for this game. As this game relies upon team work. One guy over here gets a bunch of team members that dont work together sporting loss after loss, his cadet bonus is used up, and ends up in tier 5 forver. He also Knows the game, knows how to poke, and knows how to move in a tactical fashion. Stuck in tier 5. New player comes along gets lucky with some good teams, has his cadet bonus, and starts climbing the tier rank. Essentially the system is not based on who is the better player, but rather who was the lucky one, and who had solid teams the entire timer. Not to mention if your in a really big unit that can dominate quick play in the group q, your going to climb at a good pace.

The ops statement and others like it derive one the idea that it is clearly black and white. No exceptions, and the system works 100 percent of the time. Anyone with half a brain knows how absurd that is.

Confused. Do you think the unlucky guy can't repair his mechs and play anymore after his cadet bonus is used? No idea what you think you're talking about

[Zergling]

Lances107, on 15 August 2017 - 12:43 PM, said:

One guy over here gets a bunch of team members that dont work together sporting loss after loss, his cadet bonus is used up, and ends up in tier 5 forver. He also Knows the game, knows how to poke, and knows how to move in a tactical fashion. Stuck in tier 5.

There aren't any good players 'stuck' in Tier 5. Anyone playing well, will go up in Tier in about 500-600 battles.

Edited by Zergling, 15 August 2017 - 01:30 PM.

[Mawai]

Davegt27, on 15 August 2017 - 03:14 AM, said:

another thing to consider

if enough good players leave the game then a ton of bad players will get pushed up
to tier 1

so if you see me and my sub 200 dmg Mech don't blame me I know I should not be in tier 1

complain to PGI

Nope. Good players leaving the game won't increase the progression of anyone to tier 1. PSR awards are based solely on your match points and win/loss. No matter what players are on a team there will always be a winning side and a losing one. High ranked players leaving doesn't increase your chances of winning a match. It may slightly increase your chance of getting a higher match score but that depends on how often these "highly" ranked folks would have been on the other team in a match you participate in.

[Mawai]

I think there are a lot of factors that affect in game performance and not all of them equate to being a "bad" player.

In another recent thread a player was saying how they had trouble progressing and their stats weren't that good. However, later on in the thread they mentioned that the game plays between 12 and 22 FPS.

Even the best possible player would have trouble generating decent numbers in a game that runs at 12 to 22 FPS (and quite possibly less when there are a lot of mechs on the screen). Even 20 FPS is one frame every 50ms ... this adds to network lag. 10 FPS is 100ms of lag. The odds are good that unless the target you are firing at is stationary then it probably is NOT at the location where you are firing on your screen. Your screen just can't keep up with the server.

I'd love to see a plot of some of the in game performance stats plotted against FPS since I suspect that there is a strong correlation at certain points (unless folks use LRMs or SSRMs where lag is less of an issue).

I play MWO casually (have since closed beta) .. I am probably average and am now in the upper half of tier 3.

These are my observations on PSR:
1) Mech choice matters - some mechs are easier to use to gain PSR than others. Lights are among the most difficult since you have to be really good to get a high match score in many cases (unless you hide and snipe and you still have to be good at that role).
2) LRMS really do make it alot easier to go up in PSR. I have a couple of decent mechs with LRMs+TAG+lasers that often get a higher average match score than some of my direct fire mechs if only because intelligent use of the LRMs can let you do damage through most of the match.
3) Progression is (Match performance - {SOME BASELINE}) X (Number of Matches) - if your average match performance is above the base line then you will rise in PSR. How fast you rise depends on how many matches you play, The BASELINE bar is relatively low ... somewhere around W/L * Average Match Score = 180.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Honestly I am not sure where I should be Tiered. I can usually hit the top 25 on any of the leadboards if I put my mind to it but we all know that alot of that is about being able to play enough times to get lucky with 10 exceptional matches. As for average Match score, I am ranked 4603 Overall with an average match score of 285. I think that should put me in maybe Tier 2 if they were actually ranking things by actual skill, hell maybe even Tier 3 but absolutely don't feel I belong in Tier 1 and absolutely don't consider myself elite.

[Galenit]

Davegt27, on 15 August 2017 - 03:14 AM, said:

if enough good players leave the game then a ton of bad players will get pushed up
to tier 1

Wrong.
The system is not working as you think,
there is no correlation between the players and the tiers,
there is noone how gets pushed.

Tier is like levels in a mmorpg,
you have an xp-bar,
it fills everytime you do something,
if you do something good it fills faster,
if you die too much, it goes down a little,
In the end the teamwins will fill the bar faster then you can derp.

Sure you can go down, but by doing it you will get banned.
Banned? Yes, with this system ist nearly impossible to go down in tier without violating the coc.

Mawai, on 15 August 2017 - 01:37 PM, said:

High ranked players leaving doesn't increase your chances of winning a match. It may slightly increase your chance of getting a higher match score but that depends on how often these "highly" ranked folks would have been on the other team in a match you participate in.

Higher score because more wins, but only if the enemy has less high ranked players.

Less high ranked players in a match inflate the matchscores,
killing an enemy with lasers over 5 minutes removing every part of armor gives a lot more matchscore then a dualgauss onehit headshot kill. And if there are no high ranked players, they have the time to do that.

Edited by Galenit, 16 August 2017 - 03:37 AM.

[C E Dwyer]

I want to laugh a little, at T1 top 50 player

I'm not trying to be mean, please let me explain.

I have often been in the Top 75, and in those events I've had some top 50 and I think one or two top 25. If not 25 it was under 30.

I currently sit as a T2 a shiver away from T1

last November I declared that if I played the same level of games as I was then, I would be T1 by May, even though I shouldn't really be a T1.

My own assessment of my play is I should be where I am now, a mid to high T2. since then I've had two and a half months off, and play I'd say less than half the matches I did when I declared this.

So despite it being 3 months off, I'm actually maybe a week or three out of my prediction, while playing less, when I wasn't on hiatus.

I am not a comp level player, many of the places I received I would not have, had most the better players, bought the mechs for these events.

Also while a genuinely good player might take 20 games to get a match score of around,3200-3500, I might make 2000-2300 by playing three times as many matches.

Basically put, I am very inconsistent in my match play, and what results I get are done from a far harder work rate, than a comp level player, and just because I get a 1k game doesn't mean I won't completely potato the next three.

You look at the last event only those in the top roughly 10-15 places are genuinely great players, the rest of us well lets just say I secured two top fifty places with under a 1200 score. and I could have got top 75 by doing virtually no damage in 10 games, with the reinforcement Uziel chassis.

No matter how hard P.G.I or a very small minority of players defend it, the system is broken, and at least should have the upward bias removed.

Form day one the savy people around here were declaring it broken.

P.G.I designed it around the false assumption that there were only Newbie players in the game, that had the ability to learn and git gude.

Not complete Noob potato's that either can't or refuse to learn, yet get into higher tiers due to the upward bias and being carried.

[Methanoid]

InfinityBall, on 15 August 2017 - 10:51 AM, said:

Uh, yes, one good player could have stopped that immediately by killing the 1 enemy player capping behind your backs

*shrug* maybe the enemy capping mech was no idiot himself, i did chase him away (too quick) but he still did his thing just fine.

[Weeny Machine]

@OP: Here is an even shorter explanation: It is just time dependend when you reach T1. Everyone gets up eventually. You get banned for non-participation a long time before are able to tank your PSR.

[Malcolm Vordermark]

Generally better to just think of it as an experience bar. Unless one's win rate is bad they should be gradually increasing. All the tiers have their potatoes.

[Luminis]

Honestly, if PGI really wants to keep their XP bar like tier system, they should at least ensure that the minimum match score to increase your PSR goes up in higher tiers. An average performance that barely gets you from T5 to T4 should definitely not let you slowly progress from T2 to T1.

But to be even remotely meaningful, we'll need a zero sum system. Sort players by, dunno, average match score or whatever and put the top ten percent of players into T1, everyone from the 11th to 20th percentile into T2, and split the remainder in a 25-25-25 fashion across T3, T4 and T5. Something like that. Reset the tiers with each season. Boom, done.

Lances107, on 15 August 2017 - 12:43 PM, said:

Essentially the system is not based on who is the better player, but rather who was the lucky one, and who had solid teams the entire timer.

This assumption is utterly false. This might be true for a single day's worth of matches, but over prolonged periods of time? Nope. You'll win roughly as many games thanks to being on the better team as you'll lose to being on the worse team. The one factor that stays the same, long-term, is the player in question. Of course, blaming it on being unlucky with team mates is a neat excuse, but that's all it is: An excuse.

The PSR system is designed in a way that allows below average players to proceed to T1. The bar to advance one's PSR is rather low, so a remotely capable player should have no problems advancing out of the lowest tiers.

[Basilisk222]

Racerxintegra2k, on 15 August 2017 - 02:40 AM, said:

After 2 years of playing. My take on the Tier Rankings are listed below. I'd like to see everyone else's opinion.

Its been my experience that within a single Tier there is a HUGE variation of skill.


Tier 1 : Average player that plays consistently for a long time.
Above average player that's played for a while
Elite player
Top 50 player

Tier 2: Average Player that plays consistently for a while
Above average player
Above average player that's slowly inching toward tier 1
Elite Player on his/her way to Tier 1


Tier 3: Average player that has been playing for a month
Above average player that has been playing for a couple weeks
New Elite player that has played 5 matches
Average Player
Below Average player that has figured out the basics of the game.
Below Average player that has inched there way across Tier 4
Relativly new player.
Very Casual battletech fan.



Tier 4: Former Potato that has learned to click the mouse.
New Player
Alt Account for a day


Tier 5: Rookie "Potato"

Honestly, solo queue is so team dependent, and this game is largely so situational in how or when you die, that I'm not convinced the Tier rating really, means much more than "I play with more than 3 people on average"

If you're winning all of the time, chances are you're not playing by yourself in solo pugland.

I'll admit, i'm not a god at this game, but I grasp its concepts well, and I fight very well, I roll damage, I push when asked, and I target and issue orders etc when required. But If I and one other do that, that just isn't enough. Sometimes, a lance can carry a team. And let's face it, it gets really old constantly driving the same old, day in, day out. I like variety, I like trying new mechs with new builds, and not all of them work. But when a build does, I'll keep it and move on to master another mech, playing that cool build I made when I want to.

A lot of the fun for me is creating in this game, sometimes I find really weird builds that work well, sometimes I get roflstomped and go, "Well, that didn't work." and sometimes you get facewrecked on the pure basis that pilot over there is drooling all over themselves.

I think Tier 1 are the people who play often, and with a group, they're probably also much more likely to have a mech that's min maxed, and they're probably less likely to be nostalgicly playing (As in they're not going to use an inferior chassis for love for it, they'll likely be using the best of the best.)

Tier 2 I'd say are the same as tier 1, with more exceptional lone pilots that don't meta-mech for pure love of the chassis, or ones that do and typically play with a larger group for consistency or have really good ability to clutch with very solid builds. Skill between 1 and 2 I'd say is likely minimal. I'd say it's probably more tools at that point. Spamming largely stops working entirely

Tier 3 Good pilots that play alone, okay groups, the occasional spammer on a lucky streak.

Tier 4 Either casuals, experimenters, spammers, newbies, or lone wolves. Generally most people in tier 4 are held back somehow, either skill, extensive nostalgia or laser parkinsons. tier 4 is kind of hard to pull out of once you're down there though, because games are excessively inconsistent, and losses or abandonment are largely up to the wind. So much spam it occasionally loses fights before they start.

Tier 5 Learning mechanics, and do not own own mech yet probably. These players often don't even know how to spam.

The large problem is that Tier is mostly relegated to score, and that's usually best farmed with kills and damage. Harassers, and fans of fast, high risk lights, are just not making a high tier without a coordinated team to support them.

TL:DR the Tier system really tells you playstyle, rather than actual skill, and for a lot of skilled players, it keeps them out of tactical engagements in favor of window licking galleries.

[Dashen]

I've been playing for 5 years on and off and i can tell you that from tier 4 to tier 1 there is no difference.

-most of the people have 0 map awareness.
-most of the people who lead have 0 knowledge about critical mass, nascar done bad, and generally speaking tactics.
-pugland is a free for all & screw my teammate, imma run faster than him.
-very rare good leaders will call the right targets and have your team steamroll the enemy, gotta love them, they're rare.

This is consistent among all tiers.

In fact since i got to t1 my gaming experience dropped down tremendously, it's worse, people are like donkeys, i wanna go back to t3.

Add to that people spamming arties and you get a recipe for going back to MC Gold.

[David Sumner]

Zergling, on 15 August 2017 - 01:30 PM, said:

There aren't any good players 'stuck' in Tier 5. Anyone playing well, will go up in Tier in about 500-600 battles.

So, a casual player could be stuck in Tier 5 for oh, a year.
I'm sure that would motivate them to stick around.

[martian]

David Sumner, on 21 March 2020 - 09:11 PM, said:

So, a casual player could be stuck in Tier 5 for oh, a year.
I'm sure that would motivate them to stick around.

Do you realize that this thread is 2¹/₂ years old and that Zergling was last active 1¹/₂ years ago?

Plus, you can move out of Tier 5 much faster than in one year.