103 replies to this topic

[Angel of Annihilation]

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).

Edited by Viktor Drake, 30 October 2017 - 02:44 PM.

[Mike McSullivan]

Same here (even if im "only" tier2@55%). the switch from t3 to t2 was a jump into cold water for me, and my statistics got desintegrated (not that i give much about them, but the data shows a trend. e.g. K/D dropped from ~1.8 to ~1,28, a way positiv w/l dropped to a 1:1 in around 5000 Games)
I guess its not every game that will be a personal stomp, but all in all im i bit afraid of an even higher tier. today i had the honor to have matches against a team with theB33f and one with Sean Lang on the enemyside. Both were stomps.

[Relishcakes]

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.

[Mystere]

Play with a joystick and leave your PSR worries behind.

[Kodyn]

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.

[Grus]

Quote

i had the honor to have matches against a team with theB33f and one with Sean Lang on the enemyside. Both were stomps.

just wait till you get gane after game with sustained eye contact, teir-up and thier goons.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Then again I just had 4 out of 5 matches tonight where I can quite clearly say it was 100% my teams fault that we lost. Just had a match that was a 12-1 stomp loss for my team in Conquest. 4 of my team chased a light in one direction, 3 of my team chased a light in another direction, the 5 of us who kept our firing line yelling don't chase the lights, got rolled over by the other 10 enemy mechs, then killed off the rest of the team as they one by one trickled back after giving up chasing lights they couldn't catch in the first place <sigh>.

It it matches like that where I again start to doubt I am the problem at all or maybe the problem is I am just not good enough to carry my team or something. ARGHHHHHH....I just don't know anymore.

All I do know is since I hit Tier 1, the game isn't fun anymore. Long Que times, crappy teams more often than not and all of a sudden I am having match after match that for some reason, whatever the reason, I can't seem to get a kill or break 200 damage more often than not.

[Tarogato]

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.

Don't get me wrong, I still think PSR doesn't accurately reflect skill level. The skill gap among Tier 1 players is simply massive, people like Viktor Drake don't deserve to be in the same tier as Proton, it's just misleading, not accurate. But then the skill gap between Tier 2 and Tier 3 is absolutely tiny... these players are almost indistinguishable in terms of capability. So I definitely think there needs to be a tier higher than Tier 1, or that the tiers maybe shouldn't be equally distributed across the playerbase, or perhaps not even normally distributed.

But I don't mean that adjustments to the PSR system or the definition and balance of tiers is the solution. No, I think the solution we need is player education. I think new players need a better introduction to the game, a better foundation. And we need more advanced tutorials for the people with a desire to learn and improve further.

[Kodyn]

Viktor, I believe that what you're describing is when the MM opens up and allows for lower tiers to be mixed with the higher because of low population. The system works on high population nights, but when there's not enough people searching for matches of a particular tier, the MM will open valves and expand the parameters. This will usually result in a stomp, unless somehow the teams get an even mix, but often it goes poorly for one team.

Time of day and day of the week matters too. For instance, playing on a Saturday night after a certain point, or any point at all on Sunday, be prepared to experience mostly awful matches. I've always loved playing weeknights and Friday nights. Friday everyone is on, so it's a pretty good representation of the population, and weeknights, you tend to get only the more serious players who are willing to get on and play after work or face the wrath of wife/kids to get some matches in. Late Saturday/Sunday is a lot of casuals who don't seem to put much effort in. That's gone on for years. The one downside of the weeknights is that with lower population online you will see a good deal more of the valves opening I described and have those stomps with a bit of frequency.


EDIT: One thing I'd like to add is in response to Taro's match score post. I fully expect lower match scores from everyone at the higher tiers, because with better teamwork, scores and damage will always be distributed more evenly throughout the team. It's a lot harder to excel when everyone on your team is good, just like in comp play. You'll tend to see more inflated dmg and match scores when you have a few higher tier players on a team of mostly lower, allowing a carry situation to occur. If the system is doing what it should and the population is there to support it, scores and dmg should all be relatively low, kills will be spread across the team, etc. That's also how comp play has always tended to look on scoring.

Edited by Kodyn, 30 October 2017 - 04:08 PM.

[El Bandito]

Just get better, and you'll have fun again. When PSR was first implemented in 2015, I hit T1 after 2 weeks of play from T2, and I sucked in T1 queue (in the earliest days of tier system T1 was brutal). Instead of complaining, I ditched my LRMs, used meta-mechs/meta builds, and improved my aiming and positioning.

Edited by El Bandito, 30 October 2017 - 07:31 PM.

[Kiiyor]

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

Play with a joystick and leave your PSR worries behind.

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.

[Kodyn]

What Kiiyor and Bandito said is very true. When PSR first came out I was running largely meta builds, lotta laser vomit, playing a lot of group queue with an organized team. Nowadays I punish myself and play a lot of more casual builds, and that's why I think I'll be forever in T2. If/when I go back to laser vomit clan mechs, I do see my PSR rise, but sometimes I can only play that for so long before I just want to get in an ERPPC poptart and bounce around for some fun. This is why I'll likely never be T1, I like variety too much. But I have fun in T2, I recognize most of the players, I don't get salty when I get killed by guys I know to be better than me, and I learn the most from those players that do end up scraping me off their mech's foot at the end of the match.

[UnofficialOperator]

Definitely have to agree with Tarogato. They either have to change their tier cutoffs and base it on something like matchscore or prevent mixing of the buckets. Just got out of some matches with some known T2 and its not pretty

[kuma8877]

I have to agree with Bandito's attitude to this situation, as it mirrors my own in game experience over time and thru tier skill thresholds. I'm just behind you Viktor, and should crest into tier 1 pretty soon. I fully expect to take it on the chin when I get there as I learn to adapt to the tier (minus MM opening up). It happened when I started playing (took forever to dig myself out of the hole my early games left me in), when I went into tier 3 and again when I crossed into 2. Can happen to a lesser degree if there's a significant balance change too.

Just keep playing and learning, eventually your skill set will grow to the point where you're comfortable again and having fun. At least that's been my experience. Also, don't forget that you've been bumping into tier 1's often enough while in tier 2, they can be beaten .

[SFC174]

Viktor I'd say your story confirms that PSR is largely an experience bar - or at least experience is a big contributor to PSR.

Why? Because you feel like you don't belong in Tier1. I felt the same thing when I hit Tier1 as well after about 3k matches. I didn't drop as hard as you did, but I did feel like I was the deadweight in many more games.

The conclusion is that you (and I) didn't belong in Tier1 at that point. I've gradually gotten better over time (4.2k matches now), but I still feel outclassed by more players than not. According to Tarogato's research, I'm somewhere in the top 10% of all players match score wise though. I regularly see players like A Real Life Scientist, Proton, and a variety of regulars from the top competitive teams and I am nowhere near their skill set/ability.

There are many things that need to change to make PSR better (or whatever a new ranking system would be called). But for starters, there probably need to be more tiers. Tier 1 should be a god level Tier with just a couple hundred players at most based on the currently active player base. Tier 2 should be somewhat larger (400-500 players). Tier 3-5 should incorporate the bulk of regular players, incorporating somewhere in the 2000-3000 range for Tier 3, and then 10k or so for Tier4, dropping down to 2-3k again for Tier5. You could go all the way down to Tier6 and 7. It would basically look like a bell curve, but Tier7 would have a bump due to the inclusion of new or infrequent players.

Of course, you couldn't have Tier1 or Tier2 only matches if you only had 1000 people in the top 2 tiers. So you'd need balance. Each team would ideally get a Tier 1 and Tier 2 player, and the bulk would be made up of Tiers 3-4. If more Tier 1s were playing, maybe you'd get 2 on each side. If none available, go down the Tiers. A Tier 5-7 should never see a Tier 1. I'm just spitballing here, but the fundamentals would be as follows:

1. More Tiers
2. Zero-sum Tier movement (if you go up, someone else must go down - unless the player base size is increasing)
3. A more accurate player ranking system (match score for starters would be good to include)
4. Ranking more heavily weighted on most recent seasons
5. Balanced tiers on each side of the match, but you will have to mix Tiers. Those higher Tiers will be expected to carry more, or at least offset their opposing number on the opposite team - but I like playing with good players, I learn more. I just don't like having a couple Unicorns on the opposing team and none on mine - that's no fun.

Not that I expect it to happen, but it work a lot better for players like you and I that are being classed with people who are far better than we are (personally I blame it all on playing on a laptop with a trackball - I swear I'm better than my stats say! )

[Stf Sgt Marblez]

Yup. Had the honor of fighting with sustained the other day, after the match was over i asked him how long he has been playing. He responded with "All you need to know, is I put in work." His 6 kills and 1100+ dmg that game confirmed that.

The rest of EYEZ.... well they arent as bad as me

[Xiphias]

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

So I definitely think there needs to be a tier higher than Tier 1, or that the tiers maybe shouldn't be equally distributed across the playerbase, or perhaps not even normally distributed.

This. I think the tier system does a pretty good job at the lower tiers. It does a terrible job in T1 because the top percentage of players are so much better than the lower percentage in T1. When I get a player who just hit T1 today on my team and the other team gets proton, it's not really an even matchup.

[CFC Conky]

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

[Trissila]

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

But I don't mean that adjustments to the PSR system or the definition and balance of tiers is the solution. No, I think the solution we need is player education. I think new players need a better introduction to the game, a better foundation. And we need more advanced tutorials for the people with a desire to learn and improve further.

There is nothing that can be done. Most people just don't get this game, and have no desire to learn it -- they just want to shoot big stompy robots.

Tier 2 this week has been incredibly frustrating for me, because I warn my team about obvious positioning problems and incoming enemy flanks, early and often... and still they do nothing about it. I spectate players that have an enemy 'mech that is missing limbs (clearly heavily damaged) and on their screen, just to one side... and they just walk right by. Don't even twist to snap off one shot as they go by with plenty of ammo and no heat buildup. I call out open CTs constantly, and still I see 'mechs with orange or worse CTs go on for MINUTES longer because nobody will shoot them (I can't because I'm at the top of my heat bar opening that CT up, usually).

These aren't advanced tactics for pro players. These aren't hidden nuances that you can only learn with tons of experience. These are things that are either covered in the tutorial, or very basic Battlefield Operations 101 things. People don't play well because they don't want to play well.

[Johnny Z]

PSR is player friendly protecting newbies.

Meanwhile Mechwarriors competition has different ideas...