110 replies to this topic

[Biomechtric]

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.

& here lies the biggest problem. I'n the wold we live in it is now 'not acceptable' that a person be told in any way shape or form that they are not good at something.
This has created an environment where bad behaviors are plain ignored or(worse) promoted, such as we have here with the PSR system.
now if people could just accept that they really are kinda crap at something it would not only give them reason to listen to the actual better players & learn but we would not be stuck with things like PSR which only exaggerates the problem by telling people they are a top class player.
Of course, it could be argued that when they realise they ain't going any further than tier 3 they will quit playing etc but this is not what we are seeing, not here, not in anything. What we do see is MWO in a mess & SJW's etc running around, crying 'unfair' & being allowed to change laws etc as the 'world' is too worried they will be offended to turn around & say, ' erm? no! That is stupid'.
It's a perfect reflection of the real world, folks too scared to put these not so good players in the tiers they belong.
A simple re-set of the PSR ratings once a quarter would work wonders here & the tiers would quickly settle as the good would progress just as fast & the bad just as slow.

[Tarl Cabot]

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.

As noted, this is an old thread, but a player could potentially stay in Tier 1 only by doing poorly, Matchscore-wise. And truth be told, if a player has a low matchscore even in Tier 5, do you really believe that same player would be happy to be in a higher tier with player more efficient than he is, players who be more vocal of his gameplay? Be like tossing a cut poodle into a shark pool.

And there are players who are in Tier 1 and 2 simply by playing enough games while barely passing the MS threshold to even move up. And we are not talking about avg 200MS but more like avg 171 MS.. That is average with 25K+ games played while time is really subjective, there is a huge difference between playing 200 games/year to 2000 games/year..

[RickySpanish]

Biomechtric, on 22 March 2020 - 12:36 AM, said:

& here lies the biggest problem. I'n the wold we live in it is now 'not acceptable' that a person be told in any way shape or form that they are not good at something.
This has created an environment where bad behaviors are plain ignored or(worse) promoted, such as we have here with the PSR system.
now if people could just accept that they really are kinda crap at something it would not only give them reason to listen to the actual better players & learn but we would not be stuck with things like PSR which only exaggerates the problem by telling people they are a top class player.
Of course, it could be argued that when they realise they ain't going any further than tier 3 they will quit playing etc but this is not what we are seeing, not here, not in anything. What we do see is MWO in a mess & SJW's etc running around, crying 'unfair' & being allowed to change laws etc as the 'world' is too worried they will be offended to turn around & say, ' erm? no! That is stupid'.
It's a perfect reflection of the real world, folks too scared to put these not so good players in the tiers they belong.
A simple re-set of the PSR ratings once a quarter would work wonders here & the tiers would quickly settle as the good would progress just as fast & the bad just as slow.

Tiers are a bit tricky now because of the low pop, if the match maker were more strict about who plays who, players would never find a game.

[Brauer]

RickySpanish, on 22 March 2020 - 10:38 AM, said:

Tiers are a bit tricky now because of the low pop, if the match maker were more strict about who plays who, players would never find a game.

Nearly everyone is tier one, or will be if they grind enough games, due to how PSR works. So no population is not the problem, the core problem is the upward-biased tier system.

[Sniper09121986]

RickySpanish, on 22 March 2020 - 10:38 AM, said:

Tiers are a bit tricky now because of the low pop, if the match maker were more strict about who plays who, players would never find a game.

Not necessarily. If the existing criteria cannot be met, the MM just casts a wider net every time until it finds enough people. And yes, the system gives PSR more readily than subtracts it, so strictly speaking the tier system has hardly any use. The Solaris ELO system is much better in that regard.

[justcallme A S H]

Sniper09121986, on 22 March 2020 - 01:28 PM, said:

Not necessarily. If the existing criteria cannot be met, the MM just casts a wider net every time until it finds enough people.

IT DOES NOT.


Stop spreading utterly incorrect statements.


How is works is clearly spelled out HERE. Go and educate yourself for one rather than spreading misinformation.

[Biomechtric]

RickySpanish, on 22 March 2020 - 10:38 AM, said:

Tiers are a bit tricky now because of the low pop, if the match maker were more strict about who plays who, players would never find a game.

Kinda true now but if PGI had listened when this was said before & acted there would be a significantly higher population than there is now as(now this will offend some) the better players would get matches that suit them so they would have stuck around longer & also more not so good players would do the same as, guess what? They get matches that suit them too.

Ahh but there will be longer wait times in T1 & T5 I hear you cry. Nope, sorry, due to the fact that the majority of players are really around the T3 area there would be a majority population & as the matchmaker takes from 2 tiers each way, if a T1 match doesn't have enough players it looks at T2 & T3 (then promptly craps itself as it has a massive selection to chose from & it's never had it so easy) to fill the spaces.

It's an easy fix that should've been done from day one, even just as a temporary fix until it was either replaced or fixed.

[SteamingManure]

justcallme A S H, on 22 March 2020 - 02:53 PM, said:

IT DOES NOT.


Stop spreading utterly incorrect statements.


How is works is clearly spelled out HERE. Go and educate yourself for one rather than spreading misinformation.

All he says is that it's limited to a max of 2 tiers of separation. So agreed, you should never have T1s with T4s or T5s.

1) Stop allowing Tier 1 players to play against Tier 4 and 5 players completely. Hard line.. no ifs ands or buts no matter how low the player count is in off peak times. To do this, the value for Tier separation has been set to 2. The biggest skill gap allowed now is Tier 1 to Tier 3. Tier 2 to Tier 4. Tier 3 to Tier 5.

It doesn't say if he starts with just say T1 first and then widen it by T1+T2 if there aren't enough T1s, to T1 +T2 +T3 (max separation allowed) if there aren't enough T1+T2.

In any case the real problem is that Tier in and of itself doesn't mean much. You can have someone that is T1 and a 340 average match score and then you have T1s with a 250 average match score. The 2 should not be considered equivalent and if you have 2 T1s with a 340 average, they need to be put on opposite teams rather than the same team (the MM doesn't separate them by design, only if it occurs randomly) Likewise, if you have T4 players, there are some with average match scores of say 340 and others with 150. It should again treat them differently and try to even up both sides by match score.

Edited by SteamingManure, 22 March 2020 - 03:34 PM.

[Tarl Cabot]

Quote

It doesn't say if he starts with just say T1 first and then widen it by T1+T2 if there aren't enough T1s, to T1 +T2 +T3 (max separation allowed) if there aren't enough T1+T2.

For Tier 1/ Tier 2 players the skill gap even in those tiers are WIDE. There are players with avg 171ish - 180 MS playing with players with 300+ MS. Those low end players are there because they barely bypass the necessary threshold to move UP while playing 25k+ games. Even if the population was 5x as large and have enough of a player base who just crosses that threshold while playing 25K+ games, we would still be in the same boat.

PSR is setup with hardset MS thresholds, 4 for winning and 4 for losing, and PSR determines how much on one moves up/down or breaks even. Since going live those thresholds have NOT been adjusted by PGI directly, but only indirectly by adding more items that can be used to increase a player's MS, primarily AMS.

Unfortunately, the MM only looks at a player's tier, nothing else. Do not expect anything else from PGI...

[Biomechtric]

@Tarl Cabot
Thanks for the diagram, I looked for that but couldn't find it in the time I had free.
My gut feeling is that there is an even lower threshold on the 'medium drop' as I can't remember seeing a drop for myself in ages & just like everyone else I have bad games too.
This though shows the problem perfectly. I'n a fair situation for all levels of player we should see an equal amount of red & green on that chart but set up, as it is, shows just how much the bad players are protected from their own inadequacies with regard to their actual skill level.
This is what our current system causes in hilarious visual form(& that is humans completely out of their depth for those that don't get it).

[Sniper09121986]

justcallme A S H, on 22 March 2020 - 02:53 PM, said:

How is works is clearly spelled out HERE. Go and educate yourself for one rather than spreading misinformation.

That may be the case... unless it is not.

That post was made at the time when MWO population peaked at 1597 people (by Steamcharts). It now peaks at 756. Now, skill matching is important, but not as much as finding 24 people for a game, because otherwise it ceases to function. Twenty four people or bust! The diagram above puts people with match score below 250 in PSR dead zone that they cannot climb out of without upping their game significantly, so it is safe to assume that people starting at tier 5 would stay there indefinitely and never get into high tier matches unless and until they improve. Now, I cannot (and nobody outside of PGI can) say how many tier 4-5 players play the game at this time. But I can say I regularly spectate some behaviour (and not just performance - behaviour) that simply does not belong in high tier matches. I am talking chain-firing through all weapon systems over and over, for instance. Or doing 6 damage with 5 assists. I have no idea how these people got in my matches, yet here they were.

Our world being what it is, PGI is not a charity. I think they took a cold hard look at their player-base and decided that the lambs make up small enough percent of it to be thrown to the wolves without significant risk of PR backlash, especially if they do not even announce the action. If said wolves make up the overwhelming majority of the player-base, they might as well cater to them so that they can find any matches at all. Because otherwise the game ceases to function and no-one is happy at all.

[Aidan Crenshaw]

Nope, the rules from 2017 are still in full effect. As recently shown by ASH as a sideproduct of his quarrel with Dee Eight. He showed how many games were required to reach tier 3 with a new account. He did not meet any t1's (though they tried to sync with him) until he actually hit t3.

[Sniper09121986]

Aidan Crenshaw, on 23 March 2020 - 02:33 AM, said:

Nope, the rules from 2017 are still in full effect. As recently shown by ASH as a sideproduct of his quarrel with Dee Eight. He showed how many games were required to reach tier 3 with a new account. He did not meet any t1's (though they tried to sync with him) until he actually hit t3.

Well, who do I meet then? If I am now in T2, then how did these folks get here with that kind of play-style? Their score was less than 100, so no tier advancement up at all. For more or less consistently good players the tier system is just an XP bar, but for these people it would actually function exactly as intended. Have they bought their accounts or something? It just does not add up.

[Biomechtric]

Sniper09121986, on 23 March 2020 - 02:49 AM, said:

Well, who do I meet then? If I am now in T2, then how did these folks get here with that kind of play-style? Their score was less than 100, so no tier advancement up at all. For more or less consistently good players the tier system is just an XP bar, but for these people it would actually function exactly as intended. Have they bought their accounts or something? It just does not add up.

Sorry but the way it is set up makes it very, very easy to rise & nearly impossible to fall & like Ash I have had the same experience personally & also saw the same(bad players rising) when I was in my unit. There were a LOT of people there that were consistently terrible & were still on their way to T1.
The worst thing was that they saw these rises as proof they were good.
Ash is 100% correct in what he says i'm afraid.

[Sniper09121986]

Biomechtric, on 23 March 2020 - 03:06 AM, said:

Sorry but the way it is set up makes it very, very easy to rise & nearly impossible to fall & like Ash I have had the same experience personally & also saw the same(bad players rising) when I was in my unit. There were a LOT of people there that were consistently terrible & were still on their way to T1.
The worst thing was that they saw these rises as proof they were good.
Ash is 100% correct in what he says i'm afraid.

In some twisted way I think that proves that, practically speaking, we have NO functioning matchmaker at all

[Biomechtric]

Sniper09121986, on 23 March 2020 - 03:10 AM, said:

In some twisted way I think that proves that, practically speaking, we have NO functioning matchmaker at all

It does function but not over a long period of time which is exactly the problem we have been trying to get across.
The PSR system needs reset at least twice a year. This would have a huge positive impact on match quality for all.
To say it's not working at all just isn't true.

Edit.
I must add that tha matchmaker is working fine, it's the PSR that's the problem.

Edited by Biomechtric, 23 March 2020 - 03:20 AM.

[Sniper09121986]

Biomechtric, on 23 March 2020 - 03:16 AM, said:

It does function but not over a long period of time which is exactly the problem we have been trying to get across.
The PSR system needs reset at least twice a year. This would have a huge positive impact on match quality for all.

Either that or fix the add/subtract ratios that are currently skewed. But I agree that a reset would be much easier to accomplish.

[Biomechtric]

Sniper09121986, on 23 March 2020 - 03:25 AM, said:

Either that or fix the add/subtract ratios that are currently skewed. But I agree that a reset would be much easier to accomplish.

Yup. it would cause serious aggro with a huge amount o players though as lot of the problem players(not the correct wording I suppose??) feel they deserve to be in T1 as they played so many matches to get there.
I wonder if this is why it's not being done PGI?
& yea, it still stinks of protecting said bad players from their own inadequacies.

[Sniper09121986]

Biomechtric, on 23 March 2020 - 03:29 AM, said:

Yup. it would cause serious aggro with a huge amount o players though as lot of the problem players(not the correct wording I suppose??) feel they deserve to be in T1 as they played so many matches to get there.
I wonder if this is why it's not being done PGI?
& yea, it still stinks of protecting said bad players from their own inadequacies.

Given the age and overall maturity of BT scene, I think the number of crybabies at this point is overestimated And besides it would only benefit them in the long run since they would have more time and opportunities to get the hang of it as opposed to dying two minutes into the match with nothing to show for it. A baby wolf needs to start with mice if it hopes to be able to down a moose someday.

[Biomechtric]

I believe the outcry would be huge if it was done, few folks will take it well when someone says they are not good at something, even worse if that is then proven to them.
We see it in all aspects of life nowadays, there is little use in being exceptionally good at something as you can almost be guaranteed that someone else was given a free pass to get to the same level you have worked hard at.
Been there, seen it & never bought the T shirt as the colour clashed with my hair...