75 replies to this topic

[Steelmesh]

The problem with PSR tiers is that it's an xp bar, rather than updating on certain parameters over a set amount of matches..

I mean how hard is it?

Simply have it recalculate after every 100 matches in a particular weight class.. take all the stats into consideration with average matchscore being the most important one, and provide a rating.

Every 100 matches, recalculate..

[Curccu]

Davegt27, on 10 January 2018 - 03:37 PM, said:

also PGI will never listen to me no matter how much money I spend

Throw few million $ at them and they will listen...

[Phoolan Devi]

justcallme A S H, on 10 January 2018 - 06:42 PM, said:

Below 120 m/s - large drop
Between 121-200 m/s - small drop
Between 201-250 m/s - even - no change.
Between 251-300 m/s - small increase
Between 301-380 m/s - moderate increase
Above 381 m/s - large increase

.

It is like this:

On a win:

0-99 ms no change
100-249 small increase
250-399 moderate increase
400- large increase

On a loss:

0-99 large decrease
100-249 moderate decrease
250-349 no change
400- small increase

I know ppl dropping from T2 to T3.
My friend, who started the with me 2 yrs ago and whose stats are better is still T4. It took him ages to get oit of T5, even though better stats and ms. Something is flawed there.

[El Bandito]

We need soft tier reset every 4 months.

[sycocys]

Would it make sense to have a ranked system and an unranked (ie casual) like many other games have?

-Ranked has mech xp/skill nodes, loot boxes, faction loyalty points, monthly/weekly rewards, and higher payouts for ranked. Then just simply base rankings on W/L divisions rather than trying to muck about with match scores.

-Casual play skips out on the bonuses and skill tree, restricted to solo drops only.

Could do it either by adding a bucket, or just moving all ranked play to FP modes - moves group QP, and would maybe need to add a new option for solo single drops in FP.

It would let casuals be casuals, and the more competitive players have a furthered game experience for opting in.

Edited by sycocys, 11 January 2018 - 04:36 AM.

[justcallme A S H]

Phoolan Devi, on 11 January 2018 - 04:06 AM, said:

It is like this:

On a win:

0-99 ms no change
100-249 small increase
250-399 moderate increase
400- large increase

On a loss:

0-99 large decrease
100-249 moderate decrease
250-349 no change
400- small increase

I know ppl dropping from T2 to T3.
My friend, who started the with me 2 yrs ago and whose stats are better is still T4. It took him ages to get oit of T5, even though better stats and ms. Something is flawed there.

It can't be though if you take Daves stats and really drill into them a bit.

Hence there needs to be clarification about what it is currently if any meaningful discussion is really gonna be had about where it should be.

PGI could well have changed it without saying anything. I mean they changed the match maker to allow T5 in with T1 immediately for ages and didn't acknowledge it was a problem until a few of us (myself I included) provided info to prove it wasn't what they 'thought' it was... But clearly someone had changed something.

[Dee Eight]

According to jarl i'm 24,340 on this account which is about 95% filled the tier 2 bar. BUT Jarl's only has the seasonal quickplay leaderboards to pool data from, thus it has no data from before season 1. Which is why it shows just over 10k games for me when in fact I'm north of 15k. My smurf account which only started season 11 is more than 5k places ahead in the rankings even though the fewer than 3000 QP games on it.

My view on the MM is the player pool isn't large enough to waste time on tier sorting. Just make the solo queue completely random other than balancing the teams by matching #s of each weight class of mech. World of Tanks has half a million active players and what is it... 7 tiers of play ? And it sorts by the tank being used not the specific player as I understand. We have five tiers of "players" who can use whatever mech they want regardless of how great or terrible it is, for less than 45k active accounts and more than 160k 'retired' accounts in its results.

[Nema Nabojiv]

sycocys, on 11 January 2018 - 04:33 AM, said:

Would it make sense to have a ranked system and an unranked (ie casual) like many other games have?

-Ranked has mech xp/skill nodes, loot boxes, faction loyalty points, monthly/weekly rewards, and higher payouts for ranked. Then just simply base rankings on W/L divisions rather than trying to muck about with match scores.

-Casual play skips out on the bonuses and skill tree, restricted to solo drops only.

The idea itself is good. I finally get to shoot my lurms.

But! From business perspective, and common sense perspective for that matter, taking people's toys away is a no go.
Giving new toys for participating in l33t tryhard matches is completely fine though. Just like it is planned for solaris rewards, so that is a way to go with it.

[Lykaon]

sycocys, on 11 January 2018 - 04:33 AM, said:

Would it make sense to have a ranked system and an unranked (ie casual) like many other games have?

-Ranked has mech xp/skill nodes, loot boxes, faction loyalty points, monthly/weekly rewards, and higher payouts for ranked. Then just simply base rankings on W/L divisions rather than trying to muck about with match scores.

-Casual play skips out on the bonuses and skill tree, restricted to solo drops only.

Could do it either by adding a bucket, or just moving all ranked play to FP modes - moves group QP, and would maybe need to add a new option for solo single drops in FP.

It would let casuals be casuals, and the more competitive players have a furthered game experience for opting in.

The problem is how free to play games actually function.

The real purpose for any grind in a game is to retain players online. In particular PvP games because players online are content for other players.When we have targets we play longer than when we sit watching the searching screen for exstended periods between matches.

Now if there were no mech XP and skill unlocks players would have no grind. If there was no ranking system many players would not feel like they have accomplished much. What it boils down to is in MWo we are the targets for other players to shoot at and as such there are contrivances to keep us online longer.

A better solution would be a stricter set of perameters for determining what constitutes a player's skill level in relation to piers as well as a larger gradiant to set players into catagories that match them with similarly skilled/casual players.

five tiers is just not enough to create sufficent seperation between skill brackets.

If tier one is where the best players should be placed then why should I be there if I frequently want to play some of my less competative mechs. Sometimes I want to play my mechs that to be quite blunt do not have the chops to be played on a high competition battlefield. Sometimes I want to play a mech build that isn't bleeding edge "meta". I own over a 130 mechs but to be honest fewer than 30 of those are "meta" worthy there is a reason why we don't see Highlanders and Awesomes very often in higher tier games. There is a reason why the MWO championships finalist teams generally feature fewer than 6 chassis types.

[Growlly]

Lykaon, on 11 January 2018 - 05:16 AM, said:

If tier one is where the best players should be placed then why should I be there if I frequently want to play some of my less competative mechs. Sometimes I want to play my mechs that to be quite blunt do not have the chops to be played on a high competition battlefield. Sometimes I want to play a mech build that isn't bleeding edge "meta". I own over a 130 mechs but to be honest fewer than 30 of those are "meta" worthy there is a reason why we don't see Highlanders and Awesomes very often in higher tier games. There is a reason why the MWO championships finalist teams generally feature fewer than 6 chassis types.

I hope that the Solaris mech variant rankings will be used to address this for MM in the other modes. It would be silly not to.

justcallme A S H, on 10 January 2018 - 07:15 PM, said:

Now there are some 28,000 active across a month at the moment. So just think about that, only 1200 odd players around the T1 mark. The majority of the MWO population is at a T3 level and should be ranked as such. That is where the "meat" in the bellcurve is and where the majority should be. If Dave is in T1 then PSR is absolutely broken as a system (no offence Dave, i know you ain't taking offence even so.).

The other issue is that the PSR bar counts GroupQ and SoloQ. GroupQ is generally MUCH harder to get higher match scores in as if you are playing even in a 4man with competent pilots. You can shred the entire 12 on the other side pretty much on your own where SoloQ you are doing the bulk of the heavy lifting as a true T1 pilot, on your own, most of the time.

Lykaon, on 11 January 2018 - 05:16 AM, said:

A better solution would be a stricter set of perameters for determining what constitutes a player's skill level in relation to piers as well as a larger gradiant to set players into catagories that match them with similarly skilled/casual players.

five tiers is just not enough to create sufficent seperation between skill brackets.

I love how justcallme presents the data, but I think I disagree about the Tier 3 size thing. If Tier 3 is much larger than Tier 5, then the MM system is going to have a harder time finding Tier 5 players to match against each other.

It seems like things would be better if:
1) They are sized inversely proportional to how many of them are playing. In other words, if typically there aren't many Tier 2 players online, and there are a lot of Tier 1 players, Tier 2 should be bigger than Tier 1. If Tier 1 is bigger than Tier 2, the Tier 2 MM will be harder/less fair. This also helps account for growing or shrinking of the active player base.
2) There is hydraulic displacement--an equal number/proportion of players are promoted or relegated between the tiers. In addition to helping manage the tier sizes to make MM faster, this also helps to correct errors, like a player that goes on a hot or cold streak, damage farming, etc. This also helps if you made your way to Tier 1 a long time ago, took a break, and came back to find that everyone else in Tier 1 is ahead of you now.
3) Instead of "you got enough wins to advance to the next tier" advancement, it uses a combination WLR, kills per match (not KDR, since that encourages cowardice), and match score. During the promotion/relegation period, it simply looks at those stats and promotes/relegates the top and bottom players.
4) Group modes either don't count toward PSR or are weighted down to something like 5% of what solo matches count toward PSR.

[Alkabides]

Maybe I might mistaken but I thought you can loose tier status if you're playing bad enough. I know I dropped from tier 3 to 4 a few times while trying new mechs. I also think people need to consider in any tier there is going to be a wide skill gap. Probably no more so than at tier 1. Ocean is deep in tier 1, a lot of nasty things to swim up from the bottom to gobble you up. But, you're a pretty nasty predator too if you're swimming there even if you don't want to admit it. The alternative would be you go down tiers and end up clubbing the seals there and they start complaining about the tiers through tears. Tier 1's are fine where they're at.

[NRP]

People should really stop obsessing about their Tier number. Even if Tiers were reset, nothing would change. You would still get matched up against the same people you do now. If there were more Tier gaps, the matchmaker would just cast a wider net. The player population being relatively small and static.

[Bud Crue]

Alkabides, on 11 January 2018 - 07:08 AM, said:

Maybe I might mistaken but I thought you can loose tier status if you're playing bad enough. I know I dropped from tier 3 to 4 a few times while trying new mechs.

Yes, but you have to play REALLY bad to drop. Like getting skunked on a win level of bad. Like rushing out in a raven and getting one shot by a lone Kodiak before you get any scouting bonuses bad. You have to be so unlucky, and do so repeatedly in order to appreciably drop in tier. Yes, every arrow down is technically a drop, but it takes far more of those down arrows, over time, to overcome the occasional up arrow that you will inevitably get just by being carried or getting lucky, to drop the tier bar noticeably.

Alkabides, on 11 January 2018 - 07:08 AM, said:

I also think people need to consider in any tier there is going to be a wide skill gap. Probably no more so than at tier 1. Ocean is deep in tier 1, a lot of nasty things to swim up from the bottom to gobble you up. But, you're a pretty nasty predator too if you're swimming there even if you don't want to admit it.

No. No I am not a nasty predator. I am closer to Mr. Magoo than I am to Mr. Croup. Pretending that my skill or level of predatory nastiness is even within airline travel distances of the EMP or 228 guys is simply that: a pretense. The current system allows or even makes this an inevitable circumstance for a few reasons, but the underlying idea that we are the same level is still just a pretense.

Alkabides, on 11 January 2018 - 07:08 AM, said:

The alternative would be you go down tiers and end up clubbing the seals there and they start complaining about the tiers through tears. Tier 1's are fine where they're at.

Yes, if I suck, I should be tiered with others that equally suck. That is not seal clubbing, that is how a tier system is supposed to work. My stats are not arbitrary. I am objectively NOT at the top level of play nor have I ever been. Yet, the system despite my clear statistical level of mediocrity does not place me in what should be the tier level of mediocrity, instead it says I am at the top. How does that make any sense in this supposedly competitive game?

Edited by Bud Crue, 11 January 2018 - 07:46 AM.

[Spam Lanwalker]

Nema Nabojiv, on 10 January 2018 - 04:23 PM, said:

As I agree the xp bar is not indicative of anything, with the population that low, it doesn't really affect our MM quality either.

We basically have two buckets now - tier5+tier4s, and tier2+tier1 with tier3 being in limbo and having a chance to be mathced with each group depending on current number of players.

this! Im not a good player , dont have the time or the will . i regularly se my t3 games filled with unit tags and t1 players , it is NO fun to play against these skilled monsters

edit: looks like im t4 again ? you can go down tiers ? hopefully so , then i can tank my way to t5 and some actual fun games

Edited by Spam Lanwalker, 11 January 2018 - 09:19 AM.

[Cementi]

Tier should have average match score ranges for each one. Whatever your average is it puts you in that tier.

Then PSR should look at your last 30 matches.....thats it. It cannot accumulate, and it would be a better metric for a returning player.

[Suko]

Davegt27, on 10 January 2018 - 03:37 PM, said:

I was looking at Jarl's list

https://leaderboard.isengrim.org/

and my overall rank is 26259

26259! I don't think you can get much lower then that
it also means if you see me on your team your chances of winning just
went down I mean come on why am I even in tier 1 it makes no sense

its obvious the current PSR system is not working
also PGI will never listen to me no matter how much money I spend
since my low scores mean in there eyes it qualifies me as low like scum

can any of you try hards talk some sense into PGI
the PSR is not working

GLHF

I appreciate the fact that you know you're not a T1 player, despite the game's opinion. I've met plenty of others who are the exact opposite. They think they're the best player on the team because they got that T1 badge, but anyone who checks out their leaderboard stats knows they're not even close to deserving that T1 rank.

In full disclosure - I'm no T1 player. I'd say I'm more in the T2 ranks, maybe even upper T3's. I really wish I could get into T3 so I could actually have some fun and not always have to wear my tryhard pants.

[Kin3ticX]

Handing out tier 1 almost like free candy leads me to believe its more part of a feel good thing than it is actual functionality. Im not saying its part of some grander player-payer model but then again this is a free to play so naturally I am looking for those tactics everywhere possible in games.

We can see a tier rating but we don't really know whats happening with the MM and PSR numbers behind the curtains.

We didn't need Dave27gts thread to know that there are ~average players with half of everyone in the game better than them making it to the highest tier (of which there is 5 levels).

Without some stats from PGI its really a lot of guessing (and they would never cough up something like this because its just a PR storm waiting to happen). Maybe things look pretty well distributed across all accounts, but me thinks for active accounts Tier 1 is getting mighty top heavy.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 11 January 2018 - 10:10 AM.

[sycocys]

Lykaon, on 11 January 2018 - 05:16 AM, said:

The problem is how free to play games actually function.

* and the rest

The casuals would still be playing after mechs and gear which is mostly what they are here for anyhow.

I don't think removing the xp/skill system would have a negative impact on their experience, probably most of the people that just want casual play would barely even notice - more likely it would irritate the ranked players having a mode that doesn't give them access to it, which is probably not a bad thing because it keeps them playing ranked matches.

As far as players being part of the content because it is PvP, well that is true - but its equally true that if they don't want to keep playing they aren't providing those matches for anyone ranked or otherwise.

[Leone]

I 'unno, I was actually sad when the tier system was introduce and I stopped seeing alotta the same folk in quickplay. Kept me playing CW more though, so I can't really complain. I'm not saying it works, I'm not saying it doesn't, since I'm not really in the system much.

But I do think the system should take some consideration into account for those tier 3/4 players who play mostly CW and only drop in Quickplay for events. Seriously, every match of mine going from tier four to halfway through tier three was either showing newbs the ropes in group queue, or pub stomping for events before I just stopped. I've a CW alt who only played QP for events. And that just ain't fair to the actual lower tier players. I might not be tier 1, but if your trying to make it fair, you don't want CW vets let loose in General pop without some constraint.

~Leone.

Edited by Leone, 11 January 2018 - 01:06 PM.

[Dee Eight]

Random conspiracy question... did the forum get the search feature broken at about the same time that new 3rd party ranking app was being written/implemented ? I ask because it pulls its data from the QP leaderboard info on the forums.... and it could easily have pulled tiers by search for usernames for everyone who put their tier info in public view also.