849 replies to this topic

[Horseman]

AnUndeadMonkey, on 26 May 2020 - 06:44 PM, said:

4) i never said I struggled, I belong top tier, maybe T2.

Then after the reset you will have no trouble reasserting your superiority.

Quote

2) the benefit for me is knowing I'm facing other players with the same skill level or higher which will make me a better player over time.

And that wouldn't change. What would is that the matchmaker would be able to better equalize both sides.

Quote

I Only have enough time to play maybe 3-4 hours a day over 2 days.

77 matches a week is not something you'll realistically crank out in "3-4 hours a day over 2 days". At 5 minutes a match, that already comes to 6.5 hours before we even factor in the time spent in queue.

Quote

Zero sum does not work for a war sim. This game is a war sim in a MOBA environment.

MWO is not a war sim and it is not a MOBA.

Quote

You want a zero sum ranking system when teams of 12 are involved? So I can get kills, do most damage on my team and more the half the other team which has happened and get the loss and It's fair to lose ranking? I did better then the players I killed on the winning team. That's far from fair for a quick play game mode.

It seems you don't understand what zero-sum means in this context. https://en.wikipedia...i/Zero-sum_game
In game theory and economic theory, a zero-sum game is a mathematical representation of a situation in which each participant's gain or loss of utility is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the utility of the other participants. If the total gains of the participants are added up and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero.
A zero sum system would only mean that the amount of PSR gained by players in a match is equal to the amount of PSR lost by other players in that same match. How those gains and losses are distributed is a separate matter.

Quote

I'll quit if they do a mass reset, there is no value in the game for me if they do that. Punish everyone to make some happy.

That is not a punishment. You'd be losing nothing but an ego symbol. You'd lose none of your mechs, builds or personal skill.

Leidulfr, on 26 May 2020 - 10:19 PM, said:

What do you mean the game will have no value to you simply because the tiers will be reset? What about, you know, the game itself? How does a reset punish ANYONE? It simply doesn't, unless for some reason, anyone feels punished by a perceived placement within a virtual world.

Anyway, it'll all work out, dude. I don't play much anymore and I'm in Iceland so I'm not sure we play at the same times, but I'll send you a friend request. Hit me up if you ever see me on and want a lancemate.

I suspect he somehow conflates a PSR reset with an inventory wipe.

[Purusee]

I kept returning to this thread every now and then to check up on its progress (or degradation) and am honestly surprised at how many people agree to the PSR reset/rework.

Names I've not read in ages,

Names I would have never thought would agree

Names I've only ever read in-game, but never in this forum (although I admit to being one of those names)

And yet, there is quite a few people trying to stubbornly cling to this XP bar of theirs, as if it had any meaning other than being an XP bar. Just Face it:

Experience does not always equal skill, and working hard doesn't equal working well
Chances are, you spent a lot of effort and time doing something you shouldn't have, doing the wrong thing, before arriving where you find yourself now.

Does it mean you should be there?
If your performance is comparable to those that showed a certain talent for this game, making progression easier and faster, yes absolutely.
If not, even if you put all that time and effort in that you did, it doesn't change the fact you don't quite belong.

But stop insisting on staying where you shouldn't be, and instead embrace the change it might bring to take things to a different level, maybe it'll be much more enjoyable?

I know I will enjoy not being forced to stay where I don't have any right to be.

[Thaeliaris]

I have a feeling that some of the "Don't you dare to reset, I have earned my score!" folk have some serious issues with their ego.. Because why do they bother about some stupid experience bar that means nothing nowadays? If they claim they are so good that they "deserve" this T1 placement, they should immediately get it back after the reset of the PSR, right? I mean, with their skill it should be a matter of days, and with the boosted first 20 matches that are planned?

Come on people, get over it! If you're so certain about your skills, try playing comp/faction play maybe? Or Solaris mode and prove your guts there? I'm probably a lower T2/upper T3 player skill-wise, and am completly fine with that.
I started playing MWO in late 2016 if I recall, Never played much (I have about 2k games under my belt, which is propably ridiculous for some of you), and I got to that damned tier 1 this year - and I'll be more than happy to dump this, if the PSR reset and the planned changes will bring positive changes to the quality of matches. I believe this is a step in good direction.
I got my friend to start playing this game, now thanks to combining the queues we can finally play together without issues. I want to have fun, not to turn the game off in frustration after having a series of sh***y matches.

[RickySpanish]

Yes please, reset PSR. But also, make it harder to reach T1 or it will all have been for nought.

[oO JimPansen Oo]

Do it!

[C337Skymaster]

Sniper09121986, on 26 May 2020 - 02:22 AM, said:

I remember a discussion of a unit drop-caller on a Raven with K/D of 0.5 or so but W/L of about 20. Clearly an above-the-salt guy with good understanding of the game, but how do you account for him? And why should people get hit in their PSR after making all three kills in a 3-12 loss? There is no easy answer there, and, well, we do have to start at some point. Since most games tend to get decided by kills, I would say we need to track individual performance without much emphasis on W/L and rely on individual motivation to perform in a more efficient manner, but that is just my two work credits.

Except you JUST pointed out the ONE scenario where counting whether the match was a win or loss is the only metric left to judge the player's performance, because his KDR suggests he should be down two tiers from wherever he was at, but his WLR suggests he should be up two tiers. And honestly, I'd love to know who this guy was and go play with him, because he's using the Raven exactly as it was intended: "If the Raven fired its weapons during an engagement, the engagement was considered a failure, even if the battle was won".

And that's something that is only ever going to be subjective, and nobody is going to be able to program for: The guy who's been stealthing around capping during a Conquest match, and wins the game while the rest of the team died in a stomp; or the guy who gets that one crucial (and often lucky) headshot early in the game on a good player, or high-damage 'mech, and shifts the balance of power for the match; or the one guy who's just super annoying and distracting and drags the entire enemy team around the map while his team can accomplish the objective. I've occasionally felt, at the end of a match, that "if it wasn't for this one guy's action, here, we would have lost that match, instead of winning it", but those types of actions are never rewarded because they blend in to all the other statistics at the end of the match. Drop Calling is one of those things that can REALLY shift how a match turns out when it's done successfully (i.e.: the rest of the team actually listens and obeys, and doesn't mute the drop caller), and there is NOTHING in place to reward a drop caller for calling successfully, and likewise nothing in place to penalize trolls from messing with their team. There's just no way for a computer to know the difference. Heck, I'd bet even W.A.T.S.O.N. couldn't figure out how to score people based on the VOIP transcripts by the end of the match.

[Knight Captain Morgan]

JackHarkon, on 27 May 2020 - 01:40 AM, said:

Well, I am against it or better not just refresh everything and hope every problem is solved. A frech start is nice and all, but the problems the matchmaking has now, will appear again. The main problem this game has, is its low palyerbase. So I would much more prefer a good marketing campaign to bring more players to the game. Lots of people do not know about your game and you have to promote it a lot more. Otherweise you can change all you want, but if the dwindling continues, you can shutdown the servers by 2023.

Translation: the seals are leaving so the clubbers will need a fresh supply of newbies to club if you expect them to keep playing. Who could’ve possibly predicted that casual solos leaving would be a direct result of forcing them into stomps against comp premade farm teams?

Edited by Knight Captain Morgan, 27 May 2020 - 04:39 AM.

[C337Skymaster]

Tarl Cabot, on 26 May 2020 - 03:23 AM, said:

• Remember, many players have been identified who have moved up to Tiers 1 and 2 with an average 171 MS....and only a 0.82 Win/loss ratio while playing TONS of games...IS Paul actually saying said player is hitting 400+ MS on a LOSS, thus sucking eggs on wins while moving up? Think about that......

I don't think the issue has been coming as much from players hitting 400 MS on a loss, as hitting 250 on a loss (much easier threshold to hit). As soon as you hit 250 on a loss, you don't move down, and your next win will ratchet you up some more. This just needs to be evenly balanced around a target match score. PGI needs to decide what they want average player match score to be. If you get more than that, you move up. If you get less than that, you move down. But it's got to be centered around the same score point. Currently, Loss is centered around 300, and win is centered around 0, and that results in ratcheting.

[Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie]

so it's not a 'test' but permanent afterall.. color me surprised.
*cough*

the psr-reset is several YEARS too late to matter, sorry. you can still reset it all you like, but it won't bring people back, at least not in numbers.
and I know it's gonna be ignored, like everything, but: the reset means nothing if you don't do it regularly; so next reset is in 2026 then ........ ?


[Redacted]

[MovinTarget]

Reset it...

[Sniper09121986]

C337Skymaster, on 27 May 2020 - 04:19 AM, said:

Except you JUST pointed out the ONE scenario where counting whether the match was a win or loss is the only metric left to judge the player's performance, because his KDR suggests he should be down two tiers from wherever he was at, but his WLR suggests he should be up two tiers.

Yeah, I know My point is that we need a consensus on what QP objectives are in order to measure player progress towards reaching them. Now, FP is more of a group-minded mode, so players there need to be judged on the basis of their contribution in achieving their collective objective, and the biggest deciding metric for that appears to be W/L. With QP, the mergening of queues has made things difficult, but my understanding is that people come to QP primarily on their own, so individual performance takes priority, and that means K/D, match score and whatnot. The Raven guy obviously brought a VOIP gun into a solo knife fight, hence his W/L, but hey, how often does that happen in QP? So I guess we need to establish where we want to go, and that will give us the idea how to get there.

[Haipyng]

I am good with the reset. Tiers were not meant to be a status symbol, they were suppose to be a balancing mechanism. Even casual mediocre players eventually got into tier 1.

I am also glad for the queue changes. I've been saying people wanted to play with smaller groups of friends since they originally dropped 4 mans from QP. I predicted two years ago that going on without any changes to GP or QP would result in them collapsing into one when the population dropped to the point of not being viable.

We could not on-board new players wanting to play in a casual group by taking them into GP to play against 8-12 man premade practiced teams. You think QP has stomps now? Try the heyday of GP with a 3-4 mans with newer players against the large 8-12 mans. 3 minute matches, 0-12. Enough of those they just threw up their hands and left. Play solo or don't play was the option. With GP dead and being unable to get a match the 3 of us left just haven't played MWO together for over a year.

In the last month we have gotten 3 friends to come give it a try and it has been far and away better. Its not instant death anymore. They are actually coming back for our game nights. Its an improvement and a step in the right direction.

[Zulu211]

What seems like a decent compromise is; reset the tiers and only move the needle for individual play. Being the worst guy on a good squad and benefiting from squad play isn't a true reflection of a players ability. Turn off tracking for squad play in QP and that eliminates any exploit for PRS.

People will rise and fall on their own merit.

[MrMadguy]

Paul Inouye, on 25 May 2020 - 03:41 PM, said:

There's still an elephant in the room. PSR calculations. Yes it's true that it biases upward movement. That bias comes from the formula currently saying that if you LOSE, you can still move up if you perform well. THIS is the aspect that breaks zero sum distribution.

You don't even know, how I hate to always be right.



Just do it! Reset Tiers and make them zero-sum! I want actual PSR value, not just speed of climbing towards Tier 1, to reflect my skill.

Edited by MrMadguy, 27 May 2020 - 05:13 AM.

[McHoshi]

Paul Inouye, on 25 May 2020 - 03:41 PM, said:

So, the 4 weeks are up. I want to start by sharing some findings.

The last time I communicated I set the Match Maker configs (release valves) in this manner and left it for a while...




What I didn't tell you was that two Fridays ago after reading all the comments and watching some vids the community made, I made this adjustment to see what would happen over a longer period of time:



Basically I decreased the weight class valve to no longer allow it to open up completely. I also reduced the allowable Tier spread and increased how long the MM would wait until it added another Tier to the viable team composition.

As you can see, the Average Team PSR values narrowed drastically between any two opposing teams. The Weight Class balance would open up to maximum first, then eventually Tier separation would open up. This is why at times in the above graphic will still have tight Tier separation but the Weight Class balance would be a little lop sided.

These settings seem to be working well in terms of finding a relatively happy medium.

* Matches are still kicking off much faster than before.
* Tier/PSR separation is drastically tighter than before.
* Weight class balancing is also much tighter than before.

On another note, when we just combined the queues, stomp rates went up by 5%. With the current settings in the match maker, that went back down to 1%.

It is because of these results, [color=orange]we have decided to keep the current combined queue.[/color]

[color=red]HOWEVER:[/color]

There's still an elephant in the room. PSR calculations. Yes it's true that it biases upward movement. That bias comes from the formula currently saying that if you LOSE, you can still move up if you perform well. THIS is the aspect that breaks zero sum distribution.

That being said, we have a plan to make PSR zero sum... but, there's a big draw back. If we make this change, the PSR rankings for all players will need to be reset. That means if you're Tier 1, you'll be going back to Tier 4 for a bit. If you're Tier 5, you're also going back to Tier 4.

There is a multiplier for the first 20 games all players play that push your PSR changes higher or lower to speed the seeding process of the PSR player distribution. After those 20 matches, regular PSR zero sum values will be used.

We need your feedback on whether this is acceptable or not (losing current Tier standings).

Just do it!

[S Phoenix]

Reset it - Doesn't bother me

[Flying Fox 333]

Yep, no issue with resetting the tiers. I don't think I should be in Tier 1 anyway.

[FRAGTAST1C]

Paul Inouye, on 25 May 2020 - 03:41 PM, said:

On another note, when we just combined the queues, stomp rates went up by 5%. With the current settings in the match maker, that went back down to 1%.



It is because of these results, we have decided to keep the current combined queue.



HOWEVER:



There's still an elephant in the room. PSR calculations. Yes it's true that it biases upward movement. That bias comes from the formula currently saying that if you LOSE, you can still move up if you perform well. THIS is the aspect that breaks zero sum distribution.



That being said, we have a plan to make PSR zero sum... but, there's a big draw back. If we make this change, the PSR rankings for all players will need to be reset. That means if you're Tier 1, you'll be going back to Tier 4 for a bit. If you're Tier 5, you're also going back to Tier 4.



There is a multiplier for the first 20 games all players play that push your PSR changes higher or lower to speed the seeding process of the PSR player distribution. After those 20 matches, regular PSR zero sum values will be used.



We need your feedback on whether this is acceptable or not (losing current Tier standings).

1. The stomps went back to 1% from what base value? The MM puts together a match where majority of the time, it's a stomp. STOMP. I'm not talking about a regular win/loss. If it went back to 1%, then it's still above the average which makes the MM almost meaningless.



2. Resetting PSR is good but please DO NOT STOP THERE. You still....


A. Have not told us how you plan on assessing the threat value of a group. You're pitting weekend groups against comp groups.



B. Have not made any attempt at fixing spawn locations where Assaults end up in Alpha lance even though they're not in a group.



C. Have not made any attempt at fixing the 3-man and 2-man groups ending up in the same team.



D. Have not made any attempt at making sure BOTH teams have a group, let alone equally matched ones. Many times, one team will have a group and a full stack of 80-90%+ players while the other team has a cadet or two.

[Erikwa Kell]

We've only been BEGGING for a tier reset for like ...8 ******* years. no biggie.

Shame it took so long to finally listen to the player base.

[GweNTLeR]

Reset, don't care.