103 replies to this topic

[Brizna]

CFC Conky, on 30 October 2017 - 05:19 PM, said:

Interesting stats Tarogato, according to my avg match score I should be in T3 but I'm still deep in T5.

*Shrugs and moves on*

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

When your tier is lower your matches are easier so your match score should be higher, as you rise in tier you have to do better to keep your match score up.

Going back to the hearth of the topic I think tht match score formula is irredimibly flawed, by this I mean you can't fix it, and that the only objective way to measure skill in the long run is W/L ratio in solo queue, and even this is flawed depening on wether you are playing a meta mech or just a mech you like to play.

[Mighty Wings]

Eh PSR does work to some extent in that if you're only decent, you still need to grind a lot of games to get to tier 1. No truly bad players/or complete newbies hit T1. I still think it should be reset every few months, the experience bar effect would be effectively lost.

PSR is flawed, but the only time I felt solo queue was great was right after they implemented it. Basically all the T1 games had 50% teams of players you'd recognize, since it was based on a limited time frame for your PSR. It was one of the few times I felt I had to bring my A game every match in order to do well in solo queue.

[Lykaon]

The Tier system is far from perfect or even well designed in my opinion.

I recently introduced a friend to MWo and helped them start an account and begin playing. I ran them through some private lobby matches with other friends as an advanced training grounds and then....released them into the wild.

It took him ONE! match to get out of tier 5. Really? one victory was all it took to get about 20% into tier 4.

One match could be a fluke. Or carried by a team or lucked out and the opfor was dumber than your side by a large margin.

So now in tier 4...guess what? after only 3 hours or so of playing his account was 70-75% through tier 4.

And it seems no matter how many losses the occational victory keeps you in a tier you advanced into. There doesn't seem to be a way to lose PSR rank once it's attained shy of literally doing nothing.

At this rate this nublet will be in tier 3 by week's end. I am hopping tier three is a much much slower climb.

And here is the thing...he's not amazing. Not a tatertot by any measure but not a player who is severely out performing their teammates. They do solidly OK ranking in the top three or four in match score on their team most of the time but not always number one.


The only advantage this new player got was some one on one time in private matches being told how everything works and answering and taking questions. It was maybe 2 hours of "bootcamp" .


is this meteoric rise normal? like under 6 hours from tier 5 to 3?

[The Cyberserker]

I came to the exact opposite conclusion from your situation. It sounds like you don't belong in tier 1 and were able to get there anyway. Your post definitely makes it sound like tier doesn't accurately reflect skill at all.

Viktor Drake, on 30 October 2017 - 02:42 PM, said:

...I wish you could voluntarily drop a Tier or something...

Smurfs would be a huge problem.

Lykaon, on 30 October 2017 - 11:43 PM, said:

is this meteoric rise normal? like under 6 hours from tier 5 to 3?

I haven't played since beta. I recently came back, then decided to start over yet again on a new account. The game has changed so much and I've forgotten so much that I was basically starting from scratch on skill. Having done the new player thing recently, and then repeated it as a kinda sorta newish player, in my opinion it's practically impossible not to get to tier 3 quickly. Once I hit tier 3 it starts slowing down massively. I'm still making slow progress though, as long as I avoid playing lights. As long as I keep playing tier 2 is inevitable given enough time, even if my skill doesn't improve at all. The tier system seems severely broken. On this account I've been playing a locust almost exclusively and I'm terrible at it. My K/D is 0.71. Tier 3 is in the middle so it should be for average players. I'm an objectively and significantly below average locust. There's no reason I should be in tier 3, but there I am. Been there since the first day.

Mike McSullivan, on 30 October 2017 - 03:04 PM, said:

\today i had the honor to have matches against a team with theB33f

Next time tell him to start posting Youtube videos again.

Edited by The Cyberserker, 31 October 2017 - 12:14 AM.

[Curccu]

Kodyn, on 30 October 2017 - 03:26 PM, said:

I've always known this and just quietly laughed when people described it as merely an "xp bar".

I have around 10k matches played, started at T3 when the system first came out, rose quickly to T2, and have hung there forever now. If it was an XP bar, with that many matches I'd for sure be in T1 by now, but I'm simply not a T1 player, T2 is where I fit and where I belong. Sometimes I can tell when I get a match with more T3 players, and I get super easy kills, or my team is super horrible, and I can tell when I'm with the T1-2s and there's a bunch of voip use, intelligent decisions, and less running into each other. The system's always worked the way PGI said it did, players just refused to believe it, and there's more than a few T1 guys who like to downplay their abilities, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Sorry to be crude but, it is just XP bar, you are just not gaining XP.

[Shifty McSwift]

Relishcakes, on 30 October 2017 - 03:15 PM, said:

T4 reporting in! I have to say I kind of agree here, I have played over 500 games(most of which I was ******* around in a non serious fashion) and the 5 matches I played with a friend in T2 where HUGELY different...people seemed to actually care what was going on. A very different game indeed. It helped me though to refine my mech build to a better, more effective build.

For my first thousand or two games I wasn't aware stats were being recorded for QP, and I only learned about tiers at around the same time. I was too busy farming out enough cbills to buy and test mechs, usually selling old ones that I did poorly in, to notice my poor *** efforts of grinding in shitmechs were being recorded and publicly posted.

After that I pretty much sold everything for a KDK and got metagaming, because there is no space to play around and test things out really. QP is literally placed in the same rating and ranking fields as full 12 v 12 unit fights, which to me makes them nonsense numbers mostly, but apparently they "matter" to some, so much so, that they will judge you/talk down to you/ignore you based on your averaged stats.

[Tarogato]

Shifty McSwift, on 31 October 2017 - 01:27 AM, said:

For my first thousand or two games I wasn't aware stats were being recorded for QP, and I only learned about tiers at around the same time. I was too busy farming out enough cbills to buy and test mechs, usually selling old ones that I did poorly in, to notice my poor *** efforts of grinding in shitmechs were being recorded and publicly posted.

After that I pretty much sold everything for a KDK and got metagaming, because there is no space to play around and test things out really. QP is literally placed in the same rating and ranking fields as full 12 v 12 unit fights, which to me makes them nonsense numbers mostly, but apparently they "matter" to some, so much so, that they will judge you/talk down to you/ignore you based on your averaged stats.

Personally, my approach is along the lines of,

- First, did you say something that really makes no sense? Completely false or misconstrued?
- If so, is your QP match score even relevant to the discussion at all
- If it is, what is your percentile?
- Are we talking basic topics? Then I probably am looking to see that you at least reach the top 60% or something
- Are we talking something nuanced or requiring advanced knowledge and experience? Maybe top 30%
- Are we talking like seriously high tier, comp-level topic? Maybe top 5%.

I may feel that somebody doesn't meet the bar I expect for them to be able to truly confidently discuss a topic. But that is exceedingly rare. I don't go around looking up everybody's stats, and I don't go around flaunting or shaming them. To be honest, I can't even remember the last time I've looked up somebody's stats because of a discussion. Occasionally a topic comes up and we get a person or two who are clearly at ends with the opinions of everybody else, and have an opinion that just baffles me. In a case like that... maybe I might look up their stats and see if perhaps their perception is potentially marred by a lack of aptitude.

For example, some guy comes along complaining that X-MECH is the most overpowered thing ever, but you look up his stats and he scores very poorly and he doesn't even have many matches played in the weight class in question. Maybe he's the problem, not X-MECH. In that situation, I'd like to determine what his weaknesses are, help him understand and provide advice. Maybe his stats need to be brought up to assist in this. Sometimes if a guy's insistently (hopelessly) stubborn, I just lose my composure, give up on him and call him a bad. Doesn't fix anything, doesn't help anyone, but it sure makes me feel better and I can at least mentally move on to the people who form more rational arguments.

But that's the key. I just want to see rational arguments. Vast majority of posts that people make aren't full of sh**. Make a rational post? Then I don't give a darned about your stats.

Of course there are still some people who think that stats are everything and will jump at the opportunity to point out that a person they disagree with has lower stats then themselves. If you see people doing this, just report and move on. Don't let people like that affect how you play your game "oh i have to have high scores on the leaderboard to impress the forum warriors" ... no. You don't need high scores to be a positively contributing member of the community, you just need to understand what you're talking about. If there are people around who don't get that, then that's their problem. Thankfully, those kind of people are rare.

[Bohxim]

To add on OP;
Most times it's about learning the trend and improving your game (aiming, positioning and comms). When I first hit tier 3, it was a nightmare for me. Almost every game I went in, I got stomped so hard. Then I joined a unit who had some comp players and they gave me some tips. From there it became more obvious to me. I started noticing most times I bring lrm, I'm afraid to push to the front because I can't retaliate as well as a direct fire and I'm also reliant on locks (back when radar derp was dominant). Then I found certain mechs played better at certain styles (Ie hill hump, side peek, marauder wiggle on bird mechs, full twisting on human mechs etc) then I learnt synergy and styles for weapons (lpl erml mix for peek and cool, uac5 10s for kill zones etc). Then I found weapons that seem to click with me (FYI, I really favour the ac and uac2 calibre weapons because it allows me range trades while giving me sustain at a shorter range). Finally I learnt team play styles (some teams like to really murder ball everyone, some like delegation of roles. I was lucky to be able to play with both types)
All these, bit by bit, added up to improving my game that helped me eventually climb to tier 1 and still maintain a somewhat consistent and decent average. All these will eventually reflect in your tier ranking to course, but it will help you feel more at home as you climb the ranks. Hope this helps mate

[El Bandito]

Lykaon, on 30 October 2017 - 11:43 PM, said:

At this rate this nublet will be in tier 3 by week's end. I am hopping tier three is a much much slower climb.

And here is the thing...he's not amazing. Not a tatertot by any measure but not a player who is severely out performing their teammates. They do solidly OK ranking in the top three or four in match score on their team most of the time but not always number one.

The only advantage this new player got was some one on one time in private matches being told how everything works and answering and taking questions. It was maybe 2 hours of "bootcamp" .

is this meteoric rise normal? like under 6 hours from tier 5 to 3?

If he is indeed ranking on top 3-4 in his average match, then he should not stay in T4-5.

[Shifty McSwift]

Tarogato, on 31 October 2017 - 02:11 AM, said:

Personally, my approach is along the lines of,

- First, did you say something that really makes no sense? Completely false or misconstrued?
- If so, is your QP match score even relevant to the discussion at all
- If it is, what is your percentile?
- Are we talking basic topics? Then I probably am looking to see that you at least reach the top 60% or something
- Are we talking something nuanced or requiring advanced knowledge and experience? Maybe top 30%
- Are we talking like seriously high tier, comp-level topic? Maybe top 5%.

I may feel that somebody doesn't meet the bar I expect for them to be able to truly confidently discuss a topic. But that is exceedingly rare. I don't go around looking up everybody's stats, and I don't go around flaunting or shaming them. To be honest, I can't even remember the last time I've looked up somebody's stats because of a discussion. Occasionally a topic comes up and we get a person or two who are clearly at ends with the opinions of everybody else, and have an opinion that just baffles me. In a case like that... maybe I might look up their stats and see if perhaps their perception is potentially marred by a lack of aptitude.

For example, some guy comes along complaining that X-MECH is the most overpowered thing ever, but you look up his stats and he scores very poorly and he doesn't even have many matches played in the weight class in question. Maybe he's the problem, not X-MECH. In that situation, I'd like to determine what his weaknesses are, help him understand and provide advice. Maybe his stats need to be brought up to assist in this. Sometimes if a guy's insistently (hopelessly) stubborn, I just lose my composure, give up on him and call him a bad. Doesn't fix anything, doesn't help anyone, but it sure makes me feel better and I can at least mentally move on to the people who form more rational arguments.

But that's the key. I just want to see rational arguments. Vast majority of posts that people make aren't full of sh**. Make a rational post? Then I don't give a darned about your stats.

Of course there are still some people who think that stats are everything and will jump at the opportunity to point out that a person they disagree with has lower stats then themselves. If you see people doing this, just report and move on. Don't let people like that affect how you play your game "oh i have to have high scores on the leaderboard to impress the forum warriors" ... no. You don't need high scores to be a positively contributing member of the community, you just need to understand what you're talking about. If there are people around who don't get that, then that's their problem. Thankfully, those kind of people are rare.

Testing a new mech/build, playing drunk/tired/hungry, in a bad mood that day, forgot to equip consumables/ammo, pet screaming like it is dying outside/pet causing some kind of catastrophe, bad weather/power surging, sudden bowel movements, fell asleep during loadscreen, forgot to return to keyboard while cooking/making out during loadscreen, mid game crash/random application decides it is time to open and update mid game, wasd keys fly off keyboard/mouse explodes, forced potato PC usage, family/friend using account... I mean just to mention a couple of variables, and then times those (and the surely hundreds/thousands more) by 24 for solo QP matchups, per game.

And then add alts, and people who only seriously play organised unit matches, and score juking tactics.

It is a lot of variables man, more than enough to offset averages. Plus the stats themselves don't include a lot of important variables for measurement either.

I think you can value input more by what is said and how it is said than by stat tracking. Except of course for the big obvious ones, like total games played, and whether stats showed someone has even used a particular weapon or build they might be railing against or for.

[Mystere]

Kiiyor, on 30 October 2017 - 04:13 PM, said:

Make sure you use your feet every third match and record it, for salt farming when people spectate you.

The issue for me with PSR increase is the diminishing ability to experiment with loadouts. Mistakes and unoptimized builds are punished with far more alacrity than they are in the tiers below.

You say "punished". I say "challenged". It's a matter of perspective and attitude.

[chucklesMuch]

Lykaon, on 30 October 2017 - 11:43 PM, said:

The Tier system is far from perfect or even well designed in my opinion.

I recently introduced a friend to MWo and helped them start an account and begin playing. I ran them through some private lobby matches with other friends as an advanced training grounds and then....released them into the wild.

It took him ONE! match to get out of tier 5. Really? one victory was all it took to get about 20% into tier 4.

One match could be a fluke. Or carried by a team or lucked out and the opfor was dumber than your side by a large margin.

So now in tier 4...guess what? after only 3 hours or so of playing his account was 70-75% through tier 4.

And it seems no matter how many losses the occational victory keeps you in a tier you advanced into. There doesn't seem to be a way to lose PSR rank once it's attained shy of literally doing nothing.

At this rate this nublet will be in tier 3 by week's end. I am hopping tier three is a much much slower climb.

And here is the thing...he's not amazing. Not a tatertot by any measure but not a player who is severely out performing their teammates. They do solidly OK ranking in the top three or four in match score on their team most of the time but not always number one.


The only advantage this new player got was some one on one time in private matches being told how everything works and answering and taking questions. It was maybe 2 hours of "bootcamp" .


is this meteoric rise normal? like under 6 hours from tier 5 to 3?

A couple of weeks ago I made my first alt account. I was curious... took 3 games to get to tier 3 (I'm average at best, at this game). (My main account took a very long time to progress; mwo is my first torso twisting game with lashings of heat management).


@OP I have noticed quite a difference in game play/competence from when I don't recognise any of the other players (as regular tier 1 players) to when i do... and I'm not meaning EmP like top tier class of players... simply regular T1 players (that's my used to seeing on my main account or on the forums).


Also I completely agree with Tarogato's point the about the gulf in skills between the very best players and the average tier 1 player's,
It's huge. Like night and day difference between the very top players and the rest.

Edited by chucklesMuch, 31 October 2017 - 03:16 AM.

[arcana75]

Anyone (like I) who has ever entered a new tier then immediately drop back to the old tier following a bad match, will know it's not a mere XP bar. What's happening though I think is that the rate of increase is much higher than the rate of decrease.

[Thorqemada]

PSR is a watershed system that prevents very bad players from playing withg average to good players but it is a very unreiliable system to display the skill of players as it is not a zero sum system...it is partly an experience bar and partly a skill sign.

Edited by Thorqemada, 31 October 2017 - 04:13 AM.

[Savage Wolf]

It is definitively an XP bar. I shy far away from meta builds, I experiment a lot and I really don't care about improving my current skill. I'm content and probably belong at my current tier. I most certainly do not belong in Tier 1 or want to go there. And yet, the XP bar is progressing ever so slightly.

That and matchscore is incredibly flawed at measuring skill level in any capacity. W/L should still be the dominant stat and it's not. I don't care how you win as long as you win. So, no, PSR is still a bad system on many levels.

[Lykaon]

El Bandito, on 31 October 2017 - 02:44 AM, said:

If he is indeed ranking on top 3-4 in his average match, then he should not stay in T4-5.

My point is how fast is to fast for tier advancement?

My friend's first handfull of matches were in a trial Hellbringer. Later he bought and upgraded a Marauder 5D (using a loadout he piloted previously on one of my accounts in private matches)

Essentially he is "good" in heavy mechs or more specificly good in his Marauder with a specific custom loadout.

I will outright say he is currently complete garbage as a light or assault pilot So his tier advancements are exclusivley tied to a specific mech and not a measure of overall "skill".

I just think time in tier should be a bit longer to actually learn. I can't imagine a solo nublet without the benefit of a friend directly instructing them actually grasping much of anything in tier 5 if they advance to tier 4 in ONE victory and apparently get through tier 4 in mere hours.

[Savage Wolf]

Lykaon, on 31 October 2017 - 07:09 AM, said:

My point is how fast is to fast for tier advancement?

My friend's first handfull of matches were in a trial Hellbringer. Later he bought and upgraded a Marauder 5D (using a loadout he piloted previously on one of my accounts in private matches)

Essentially he is "good" in heavy mechs or more specificly good in his Marauder with a specific custom loadout.

I will outright say he is currently complete garbage as a light or assault pilot So his tier advancements are exclusivley tied to a specific mech and not a measure of overall "skill".

I just think time in tier should be a bit longer to actually learn. I can't imagine a solo nublet without the benefit of a friend directly instructing them actually grasping much of anything in tier 5 if they advance to tier 4 in ONE victory and apparently get through tier 4 in mere hours.

Because he is new.

It's actually only a good thing that you are positioned fast as a new player. No one wants a new but very good player staying in Tier 4 for very long. After a while, yeah, the progress should slow down.

[Electron Junkie]

If the player base was larger the easy fix would be to rebuild the tiers like so:

1 - Top Tier 1
2 - Low Tier 1
3 - Top Tier 2
4 - Low Tier 2
5 - Merge Tier 3, 4 & 5

The truth is Tier 1 is very, very split between Tier 1 potatoes like myself where if I get out of position or overextend I have plenty of time to back up while twisting into cover and the crème de la crème that core my heavy/assault in one second when I poke from cover at the wrong moment with 100+ alpha strikes.

But wait times are already reaching 5+ minutes up here in potato land so I can't see a refactoring of the tier system happening anytime soon.

[El Bandito]

Lykaon, on 31 October 2017 - 07:09 AM, said:

My point is how fast is to fast for tier advancement?

My friend's first handfull of matches were in a trial Hellbringer. Later he bought and upgraded a Marauder 5D (using a loadout he piloted previously on one of my accounts in private matches)

Essentially he is "good" in heavy mechs or more specificly good in his Marauder with a specific custom loadout.

I will outright say he is currently complete garbage as a light or assault pilot So his tier advancements are exclusivley tied to a specific mech and not a measure of overall "skill".

I just think time in tier should be a bit longer to actually learn. I can't imagine a solo nublet without the benefit of a friend directly instructing them actually grasping much of anything in tier 5 if they advance to tier 4 in ONE victory and apparently get through tier 4 in mere hours.

Hey I got into Platinum rank in Overwatch in my first seasonal placement matches, even though I played the game for only 2 weeks and mained only one hero, back then. If such MM is good enough for Blizzard, then it is good enough for PGI.

Edited by El Bandito, 31 October 2017 - 07:28 AM.

[Davegt27]

Viktor Drake, on 30 October 2017 - 02:42 PM, said:

Yes, I have to admit it, I am finally starting to think that PSR does accurately reflect skill and here is why.

Since I have hit Tier 1 and the tightening of the MM to reduce the Tiers you can see at Tier 1 to just Tier 1 and 2, my stats have tanked like no ones business.

I went from generally seeing myself in the Top 5 if not Top 3 performers each and ever match to being bottom 5. It used to not be rare for me to see at least 2-3 kills a match with rarely a match going by where I didn't get at least 1 kill, to a half dozen or more matches going by without even seeing a kill. My K/D went from 1.60 and climbing to 1.48 and falling rapidly, a huge drop considering I have like 5000 matches in or some such. I am quite literally just getting walked all over in the matches I am playing.

Sure I originally was blaming the match maker or complaining about sucky teams but at some point, after like 2-3 months of game play, those excuses should melt away. Consistently sucking week after week with the only change being the fact I hit Tier 1 and the Tiers got tightened up, I have to admit the problem has to be my skill or builds that are lacking. I avoid meta builds like the plague and generally run more realistic battletech-ish builds but that wasn't a problem before hitting Tier 1 now it could possible be.

So as much as I hate to admit I am not some godly elite mech pilot, I have to conclude that PSR is actually working as it is supposed to and much to my disappointment, my skills aren't capable of competing against the majority of Tier 1 player. The bad part about this is I am finding that I am no longer having fun with the game because being the team **** (Ugh..can't even say T U R D), match after match sucks.

That being the case, I wish you could voluntarily drop a Tier or something because I have been having a great time with the game since Closed Beta, probably have at least $1000 invested in the game and I really want to go back to a point where I am having fun (probably was farming Tier 3s and 4s at the time to be honest).

so I am not the only one
I knew I sucked even when they started the ranking sys and they put me in tier 3
I just had the streak Wolf that kicked butt

I been going down for a year with a short pause at .82 when I built the Boom Hammer
since reaching tier 1 in May (I would guess) I have gone from .82 to .79

people jumped my chit on another thread but when you have 19,000 drops it takes a lot to
move that number (I would need like 100 kills with no deaths to push the number up)

to keep my interest in the game I been buying Mechs
the last 2 days I played over 3 hours just to get 2 wins

so it takes like 2hrs of game play to get the x2 XP bonus

my plan right now is to make it to 20K drops