103 replies to this topic

[Xmith]

The Cyberserker, on 31 October 2017 - 08:03 PM, said:

20 damage isn't "sucking with ballistics". It's 'Michael J Fox blindfolded during an earthquake playing on a Guitar Hero controller with his feet'. How did you even manage to do that? 20 damage is only like 1 or 2 bullets. O_o

You have to do better than this. This is not funny.

[Dogstar]

I've said it before but just to reiterate - PSR is a measure of wealth, not skill.

A tier 1 pilot will have played a lot of good matches and earned a lot of c-bills and mech xp and thus should be able to field at least half a dozen(?) fully optimised mechs.

The further down the tier scale you go the fewer good matches a pilot has played and the less they will have earned to spend on getting mechs fully optimised.

This is why you usually get a downturn as you go up a tier - you're suddenly facing pilots with 'better' mechs and more experience with them. Let alone the situation with going into tier 1 where you will face genuinely skillful players.

[Deathlike]

Some people are simply not as good as they think they are. This is represented statswise more often than not (it's not perfect though), but also can be demonstrated in poor balance arguments and decisions (mech building or just basic execution of tactics).

There truly is no filtering between the true T1s and the "XP bar Tier 1s" that barely have a 1 K-D or W-L ratio. The only real difference is recognizing who is who by reputation when you see them on the battlefield.. and that's about the best you can do.

There is no substitute for real skill. There are plenty of potato substitutes though.

[knight-of-ni]

I haven't read through the most of the discussion, but I completely disagree with the title.

The current tier system is most certainly an XP based system, and if you get to the point where I am and get the benefit of hindsight, you too will see for yourself.

First let me state that I do not claim to be some kind of really good player. I don't make the follow argument based on personal skill. Sure, I do tend to do well on average, but I don't ever expect to be on any kind of top 10 statistic. The only claim I make is to have been playing the game since beta.

Now, on to the supporting argument...
I am not able to make my tier bar go down noticeably, without violating the coc of course. Sure, I can lose a match just like anyone else and get the red chevrons. However, I can go through any number of losses, and my tier bar will not show any visible difference. Not ever.

Conversely, back when my tier bar had room to go up, it would only take a handful of wins, and I could literally see my tier bar had gone up a couple pixels.

Now that I've reached as far as the tier bar will go, it never visibly goes down. No matter how bad the day is going.
I guess this is a good problem to have, right?

The conclusion to this is that the current tier system rewards players much more for a win than it takes away for a loss. I'm sure many of you already know this.

Counter to this statement, one can read many posts in this forum about players struggling to advance to the next tier, or getting knocked back down a tier after a lousy day.

So how can one player struggle to advance and another not be able to go back down?

It's not personal skill. The answer is the current system takes into account the number of games you've played a.k.a. experience.

As you play more games, the current system will reward you more for a win and less for a loss. Play the game long enough and you won't go any direction other than up, simply because of the current system. Eventually, you will reach tier 1.... that is if you choose to stick around long enough.

Speculating, this does make a bit of sense. After all, if the current system didn't do that, it would be possible for an experienced player to tank one's stats for a couple of days to intentionally go back down a couple tiers. If that were reasonably possible, you know there would be players who would exploit that.

[Athom83]

Brizna, on 30 October 2017 - 07:56 PM, said:

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.

Probably the best way they could fix it is separating the leaderboards into individual tiers and your data is only tracked in that specific tier when you up/down a tier so the "average" isn't tainted by data from your previous tier. IE; If you are in T3, your performance for that month is tracked all the way to when you up to T2. Your T3 data remains on the T3 leaderboard, but any new matches you have that month is then tracked in the T2 leaderboard.

[Lily from animove]

Tarogato, on 30 October 2017 - 03:59 PM, said:

I used to think that PSR was just irrevocably bad, and that's why my matches were of poor quality. But then I started looking at just pure matchscore,







I noticed that if you divided the playerbase into 5 tiers of equal size, then the "Tier 1" players would be matchscore 236 and higher (at the time of the data I looked at). I found this deeply concerning, because I didn't consider somebody to even be a good player until they were at least 280 or 290 match score, and that's where I expected "Tier 1" to be. That's about where I was, and I barely considered myself what I would call "Tier 1". I really expected I should be Tier 2.

So my new conclusion was that the number of "good" players in this game, by my definition, is just drastically lower than I expected it to be. Put simply, everybody is bad, except for a couple people who are just so much better that they prey on everybody else. It's not a PSR problem, it's a skill gap problem.

isn't the entire point of a rating system to cluster various skills into specific tiers/brackets to match them properly? So PSr is doing it wrong. if there is a skill gap, a proper defined Rating system would bracket people correctly to seperate the people above the gap into a bracket and people below to gap into another one.

[Tarogato]

Lily from animove, on 01 November 2017 - 05:57 AM, said:

isn't the entire point of a rating system to cluster various skills into specific tiers/brackets to match them properly? So PSr is doing it wrong. if there is a skill gap, a proper defined Rating system would bracket people correctly to seperate the people above the gap into a bracket and people below to gap into another one.

What I'm saying is... there is a group of players that are above and beyond all other players. But this group of players is too small to constitute its own matchmaking bracket. So no matter how well the PSR or matchmaker works, you won't have enough "Tier 0" players to build "Tier 0" matches, so the "Tier 0" players will inevitably be matched with the much lower skilled Tier 1 players.

I still think we should have a "Tier 0", even if it's just a title and nothing else, to distinguish those players who are head and shoulders above the rest. But there aren't enough of these players to expect matchmaker to properly accommodate them.

Edited by Tarogato, 01 November 2017 - 06:03 AM.

[Sjorpha]

Tarogato, on 01 November 2017 - 06:02 AM, said:

I still think we should have a "Tier 0", even if it's just a title and nothing else, to distinguish those players who are head and shoulders above the rest. But there aren't enough of these players to expect matchmaker to properly accommodate them.

The matchmaker could try to spread out tier 0 players evenly across tier 1 matches and try to put one on each team, or something like that.

[Tarogato]

Sjorpha, on 01 November 2017 - 06:17 AM, said:

The matchmaker could try to spread out tier 0 players evenly across tier 1 matches and try to put one on each team, or something like that.

Well, yes. I do believe the matchmaker isn't doing the best it could do at siding players for even matches. I explored that a little bit back here: https://mwomercs.com...is-of-the-12-0/

[Lily from animove]

Tarogato, on 01 November 2017 - 06:02 AM, said:

What I'm saying is... there is a group of players that are above and beyond all other players. But this group of players is too small to constitute its own matchmaking bracket. So no matter how well the PSR or matchmaker works, you won't have enough "Tier 0" players to build "Tier 0" matches, so the "Tier 0" players will inevitably be matched with the much lower skilled Tier 1 players.

I still think we should have a "Tier 0", even if it's just a title and nothing else, to distinguish those players who are head and shoulders above the rest. But there aren't enough of these players to expect matchmaker to properly accommodate them.

yes everygame has those top palyers and unless you have a few 100k concurrent palyers at the same time you won't have a proper bracket for them ever. But currently those T1-T3 brackets are entirely messed up anyways.

[InspectorG]

Mystere, on 30 October 2017 - 03:19 PM, said:

Play with a joystick and leave your PSR worries behind.

WiiMote Steering Wheel in my Dire Straits Whale.

Im sure ill never see T1....

[InspectorG]

Tarogato, on 01 November 2017 - 06:24 AM, said:

Well, yes. I do believe the matchmaker isn't doing the best it could do at siding players for even matches. I explored that a little bit back here: https://mwomercs.com...is-of-the-12-0/

My anecdotal experience:

I remember when PRS first dropped, i was mid-T3. Crept up to T2 where my casual *ss resides.

When PSR dropped, players knew that aggression, coordinated fire, and communication worked. MWO felt like it should and as i got better so did the other Pugs. I noticed as i hit T2, i had to carry more.

Nowadays, Camping, VOIP is silent, no one reads text comms, and objectives are ignored. Rabbit runs and Campsites galore.

I cannot give PSR, without periodic resets, a vote of confidence.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Bohxim, on 31 October 2017 - 02:33 AM, said:

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

The thing is, when I first hit Tier 1, I wasn't having this issue, not at all. It isn't until they tightened up the match maker so Tier 1 only sees Tier 2 at most that I started having the issue. Also I have been playing since closed beta and I usually score in the top 25 in every leaderboard event that I have ever participated it. Point is, I know I am not a bad pilot and in fact think I am pretty good but recently it just often feels like I am getting "outplayed" quite often by other players as opposed to before the MM was tightened up, where I often found myself being the better pilot. It just kind of feels like I am a like a college basketball player who did fairly well in College but now that I am trying to play in the NBA, I am a 2nd or 3rd string player at best trying to complete against Michael Jordan.

Or as I said, the MM is just trolling me cause wow sometimes it just seems like the majority of my teams are doing really dumb things. However, again I hadve to ask, is it my team doing dumb things or are they just playing differently and I am not adjusting to the differences of playing at the top levels? I don't know what it is but I keep having the moments of "Wait, where did my team go?" or "why am I taking fire in the rear, isn't anyone on the team covering the flanks?" or "Wait? weren't we just pushing this flank? Why did everyone sudden go running off in the other direction?" usually followed by my mech getting shot out from under me. Usually my team gets stomped a few minutes later but this has happened enough times where my team won easily that I wonder if I wasn't just doing something wrong.

Edited by Viktor Drake, 01 November 2017 - 09:33 AM.

[DAYLEET]

Tarogato, on 01 November 2017 - 06:02 AM, said:

I still think we should have a "Tier 0", even if it's just a title and nothing else, to distinguish those players who are head and shoulders above the rest. But there aren't enough of these players to expect matchmaker to properly accommodate them.

Tiering cant do that, competition game mode can do that(i think we have that). There isnt enough for just t1 and t2 matchup. Theres T3 and T4 in there and then theres the t3 and t4 that damage spammed their way to t1. Both QP and Group count for the same xp bar, how dumb is that. How much do we need a better tiering system though? Having new players playing with each others is the most important part.

Instead of focusing on tiering we should focus on matchmaking with battlemech and loadout to create better matchup, something more tiering cant do. Why does a team have all the arty? Why do they have the fotm mech/loadout when one team has the clowns? Tiering isnt that important then. What's important is having less loopsided match base on team composition and tiering cant do that. It didnt do it when it was implemented and its not doing it now. Those who still think tiering represent skills in mwo lie to themselves. We dont need tiering to know who the good players are.

Edited by DAYLEET, 01 November 2017 - 10:28 AM.

[Tarogato]

DAYLEET, on 01 November 2017 - 10:27 AM, said:

Tiering cant do that, competition game mode can do that(i think we have that). There isnt enough for just t1 and t2 matchup. Theres T3 and T4 in there and then theres the t3 and t4 that damage spammed their way to t1. Both QP and Group count for the same xp bar, how dumb is that. How much do we need a better tiering system though? Having new players playing with each others is the most important part.

Maybe I'm not explaining myself clearly.

I would like to see a "Tier 0" that is just a label. We understand that there aren't even enough T1 players to build T1 matches, the matchmaker has to draw from also T2 and T3 just to build a match in a timely manner at all.

I just want a T0 that shows up on your forum badge, and your in-game progress bar. It doesn't necessarily have to be used for matchmaking, I just want something you can look at that says "this player is rated a lot higher than your typical T1 player", so that for instance Proton doesn't appear to be in the same tier as JoeSchmoTierOne who isn't even in the 50th percentile for average match score.

[Mole]

Xmith, on 31 October 2017 - 10:02 PM, said:

You have to do better than this. This is not funny.

He forgot to post a trigger warning didn't he? You poor thing.

[DAYLEET]

Tarogato, on 01 November 2017 - 10:55 AM, said:

Maybe I'm not explaining myself clearly.

I would like to see a "Tier 0" that is just a label. We understand that there aren't even enough T1 players to build T1 matches, the matchmaker has to draw from also T2 and T3 just to build a match in a timely manner at all.

I just want a T0 that shows up on your forum badge, and your in-game progress bar. It doesn't necessarily have to be used for matchmaking, I just want something you can look at that says "this player is rated a lot higher than your typical T1 player", so that for instance Proton doesn't appear to be in the same tier as JoeSchmoTierOne who isn't even in the 50th percentile for average match score.

What i didnt say explicitly was that i would be T0 eventually, sooner rather than later if i have that as a goal. If Tier One means what i think it means, i shouldnt be tier one. Real measure of skills can only be ascertained in one on one duel or in regulated unit versus unit matches.

I propose that we rename tiering to something more telling of its purpose. With words like Seasoned Veteran for tier1, Private for T5, or anything of the like. Its not faire to call Tier 4 or Tier 3 someone who can only play 10 game a month. Or tier five a guy who must run a stock PNT-8Z because roleplay or whatever.

THEN, Tiering should only be acquired when playing in comp play or dueling. You cant have a semblance of tiering without stricked rules, locked teams or 1v1. Comp Play and Dueling(its gona happen right?) should come with its own visual ranking, i dont play it but im all for that.

Edited by DAYLEET, 01 November 2017 - 11:55 AM.

[Savage Wolf]

InspectorG, on 01 November 2017 - 09:00 AM, said:

My anecdotal experience:

I remember when PRS first dropped, i was mid-T3. Crept up to T2 where my casual *ss resides.

When PSR dropped, players knew that aggression, coordinated fire, and communication worked. MWO felt like it should and as i got better so did the other Pugs. I noticed as i hit T2, i had to carry more.

Nowadays, Camping, VOIP is silent, no one reads text comms, and objectives are ignored. Rabbit runs and Campsites galore.

I cannot give PSR, without periodic resets, a vote of confidence.

PSR does not incentivize teamwork or playing to win. It only incentivize racking up high numbers of damage and kills. And the gameplay suffer for it. ELO was only based on wins and loses which meant that people better play together or lose. It meant there was more tactics people were willing to make because it was about winning, not damage numbers.

[Gas Guzzler]

Savage Wolf, on 01 November 2017 - 12:06 PM, said:

PSR does not incentivize teamwork or playing to win. It only incentivize racking up high numbers of damage and kills. And the gameplay suffer for it. ELO was only based on wins and loses which meant that people better play together or lose. It meant there was more tactics people were willing to make because it was about winning, not damage numbers.

PSR is extremely win/loss heavy. You can have a garbage game (like 150 damage) and win, and have your PSR increase, and you can do 500 damage on a loss and only have it stay the same.

[Savage Wolf]

Gas Guzzler, on 01 November 2017 - 12:09 PM, said:

PSR is extremely win/loss heavy. You can have a garbage game (like 150 damage) and win, and have your PSR increase, and you can do 500 damage on a loss and only have it stay the same.

If you focus on damage, chances are you will only ever increase your PSR, because then even if you lose, you don't fall. If you focus on winning then there will be more matches where you lose and didn't have the damage to offset the loss and even if you win, you might only have enough damage to rise a little.
In conclusion, the system is optimized for damage, not win/loss.