849 replies to this topic

[Bongo TauKat]

I'm all for resetting tiers. To be honest I've been playing since closed beta but I'm not a stellar pilot. I hold my own and contribute but I'm far from getting 700 damage and 500 match scores every game. With a zero sum system I'd be playing with people closer to my own skill set.

[Nesutizale]

Its impressive how many people here seam to think that the Tier system is a "reward" or "status" thingy.

I think to counter that kind of thinking, just hide the Tier. Never show it in the game or forums because it just seam to lead to a "mine is bigger then yours" behavior while its meant to be a tool for match making.

We don't need to know what Tier we are...except for those people who need to brag about something but those can just take any other stat like K/D, W/L or something like that. At least those are good stats that actualy show something quantifiable.

Get rid of the Tier beeing displayed openly and just use it for MM as a tool.

[Nesutizale]

David Sumner, on 28 May 2020 - 12:19 AM, said:

The Solaris City map, with no combat, drops my FPS 30% lower than Tourmaline in combat. Do I wanna play more maps like that?

You are mixing two things up. One is map design and the other is how well the map is optimized for performance on a technical level.

Sure Solaris City is on a technical level terrible. Last time I was using the free cam to fly around I saw lots of unused geometrie where they stacked buildings together and half of it wasn't shown. Texturework also seams pretty bad, etc. but that is all the technical side of things.

The map design itself works, more or less. Depending on what they wanted to archive with it. Its still one of those central point maps while I would have prefered a more city like map without the central plaza.
Imagne this map with just the streets and the high buldings. Scouting for the enemy would have been a neccesaty, giveing light mechs finaly the role they where intendet for. Mediums could do more flanking while the heavys and assaults tank in the streets.

The other option could have been to make the central area more like the central park in New York. A larger central area that people would either avoid because it has little to no cover so you would be painting a target on your back when entering but it would also be the fastest route to take to fall in behind the enemy. So some risk-reward in either walking around it or through it.
Would also be more interesting I think.

Another point that I liked about Solaris City map are the "highways". Wish they would have made more use out of those like Rubilite where you can have more vertical gameplay then horizontal.

[Sniper09121986]

Andrzej Lechrenski, on 27 May 2020 - 12:42 PM, said:

This is a 12v12 team game. If you aren't playing for your team to win, you don't belong in Tier 1. End of story. Stat-farmers and the "don't tell me how to play my" game crowd can stay in Tiers 3 and 4 where they belong. Going straight W/L ratio is a blunt tool, but it will get that job done.

Two or three MVP guys drop with a team full of scrubs. MVP guys clobber the opposition and get their well-earned PSR raise, while the scrubs do 12 assists each with a single medium laser, farm 200 damage each with lurms and guess what, they also get a PSR raise. Because they won the game, right?

Wrong. The MVP guys won the game because they did more to achieve it. Therefore the reward for the scrubs is out of proportion with their actual contribution. It is common sense to match scrubs between themselves, so that they can have a meaningful impact in their matches and maybe become MVP themselves. And that last part cannot happen if the MVP guys end up in the opposing team and lay a beatdown on them in the first couple of minutes into the match. I understand that in your example different people have different objectives, but these are just personal objectives that hardly matter in the matchmaking sense.

Voice of Kerensky, on 27 May 2020 - 09:40 PM, said:

By the way, I want to recommend immediately developing protection mechanisms against "tricky drops."
I am talking about the following situation:
I am a level player, for example, 3 (new). I create a group, I invite my friends of 1 (new) level to it. Which players will our group fall into battle with? Will the matchmaker pick up a team and opponents for us based on all our levels? Or will we be thrown into the game in my 3rd level (as the level of the group leader)?

This is next to impossible to account for. And this is why groups in solo queue need to either go back to group queue and stay there or get cut down to size when they cannot sway the match their way all by themselves (maybe as little as two group players per team).

[David Sumner]

Nesutizale, on 28 May 2020 - 01:15 AM, said:

You are mixing two things up. One is map design and the other is how well the map is optimized for performance on a technical level.

I know.
What I'm saying is if the quality is going to be the same, don't bother.
It just makes my life even less pleasant than just dealing with the MM.

[David Sumner]

Just as an example from my last match.

This is me and a team mate in a PUG drop. and that team mate was in a group of 4.

https://leaderboard....%0D%0Azfailboat

one of us ranks 66% the other ranks 98.6%

Should we be in the same match?

Edited by David Sumner, 28 May 2020 - 01:50 AM.

[Aidan Crenshaw]

David Sumner, on 28 May 2020 - 01:47 AM, said:

Just as an example from my last match.

This is me and a team mate in a PUG drop

https://leaderboard....%0D%0Azfailboat

one of us ranks 66% the other ranks 98.6%

Should we be in the same match?

Barring a low-population time, no, you should not. And that is exactly what the PSR reset and overhaul is aiming to fix. I fail to see your point?

[Andrzej Lechrenski]

Sniper09121986, on 28 May 2020 - 01:21 AM, said:

Two or three MVP guys drop with a team full of scrubs. MVP guys clobber the opposition and get their well-earned PSR raise, while the scrubs do 12 assists each with a single medium laser, farm 200 damage each with lurms and guess what, they also get a PSR raise. Because they won the game, right?

Wrong. The MVP guys won the game because they did more to achieve it. Therefore the reward for the scrubs is out of proportion with their actual contribution. It is common sense to match scrubs between themselves, so that they can have a meaningful impact in their matches and maybe become MVP themselves. And that last part cannot happen if the MVP guys end up in the opposing team and lay a beatdown on them in the first couple of minutes into the match. I understand that in your example different people have different objectives, but these are just personal objectives that hardly matter in the matchmaking sense.



This is next to impossible to account for. And this is why groups in solo queue need to either go back to group queue and stay there or get cut down to size when they cannot sway the match their way all by themselves (maybe as little as two group players per team).

You are thinking too small. Sure, what you said can happen. For one match. That is not going to happen for those same people every match. Its a burp in the statistics that is easily "accounted for" when the useless folks proceed to lose their next ten matches because they don't know how to actually play the game. Further, the more matches they (and the "MVP players") play, the larger the separation and the even fewer times that can even happen. Stop worrying about trash players getting carried. Everyone gets a lucky break once in a while. It's a waste of time and breath even worrying about that edge case.

Big picture, man. Big picture.

[FRAGTAST1C]

DeadWeight18, on 27 May 2020 - 10:26 PM, said:

I guess we could skip all that Tier discussion if Tier would not be perceived as an honour but as a handicap. Assuming we implement the new tiering system.

If it would serve to balance = nerf the higher Tier players (like higher levels in a single player game) against the lower Tier players than it could create more fun / challenge for all.

As an example:

Tier 5 = -20% heat, -10% hit location spread
Tier 4 = -10% heat, -5% hit location spread
Tier 3 = neutal
Tier 2 = -10% damage dealt, +10% hit location spread
Tier 1 = -20% damage dealt, +20% hit location hit spread

Fair for all I would say.

Where is that Billy Madison debate quote?

Aidan Crenshaw, on 28 May 2020 - 01:50 AM, said:

David Sumner, on 28 May 2020 - 01:47 AM, said:

Just as an example from my last match.

This is me and a team mate in a PUG drop. and that team mate was in a group of 4.

https://leaderboard....%0D%0Azfailboat

one of us ranks 66% the other ranks 98.6%

Should we be in the same match?

Barring a low-population time, no, you should not. And that is exactly what the PSR reset and overhaul is aiming to fix. I fail to see your point?

But what happens if a 98% groups with a 66%?

They should be allowed to group up. One of them is 98% and the other is 66% and if they're in a group, which is fair. But what PGI has constantly failed to even address is how the threat level of a group is assessed.

[Andrzej Lechrenski]

FRAGTAST1C, on 28 May 2020 - 02:11 AM, said:

Where is that Billy Madison debate quote?



But what happens if a 98% groups with a 66%?

They should be allowed to group up. One of them is 98% and the other is 66% and if they're in a group, which is fair. But what PGI has constantly failed to even address is how the threat level of a group is assessed.

I have friends who are T5 pugs. When they group with me, our team is in T1 matches. As we should be. I brought the pug; it's my fault if he messes the floor.

[Aidan Crenshaw]

FRAGTAST1C, on 28 May 2020 - 02:11 AM, said:

But what happens if a 98% groups with a 66%?

They should be allowed to group up. One of them is 98% and the other is 66% and if they're in a group, which is fair. But what PGI has constantly failed to even address is how the threat level of a group is assessed.

True, so far I've seen no info on that.

[Knight Captain Morgan]

Why not do a PSR reset? But considering that if you just wait a minute all valves open and Tier5's are fed to Tier1's to be roflstomped anyway, why bother?

[Aidan Crenshaw]

Knight Captain Morgan, on 28 May 2020 - 02:21 AM, said:

Why not do a PSR reset? But considering that if you just wait a minute all valves open and Tier5's are fed to Tier1's to be roflstomped anyway, why bother?

Please read the OP again. The "valves" are tighter than they have been since the beginning of the testphase in april.

[BlueLynx]

I have been a Tier 1 player for years now... even if I obviously do not possess the skills for it & am not improving my skills despite a lot of play. I would welcome the Tier reset.

[Mechdocdie]

Just went back to the source material and noticed two things:

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.

If I read that as written, the implication of the CAPITALS is that the fix that Paul is contemplating is to simply make it so the best you can achieve by doing well on a losing team is to stay neutral; a mirror image of what currently happens on a winning team. Zero sum indeed; simple to implement and perfectly fair, carrying good players, team players and even those who sacrifice metrics like damage for the good of the team upward. Any dead weight will be left behind with a neutral rating or when they are next on the losing side.

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

That being said, we have a plan to make PSR zero sum... but, there's a big draw back. .......

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

And if I read that as written, Paul is acknowledging that a reasonable chunk of our precious and dwindling player base does have an emotional attachment to their Tier level...and there are enough posts in this thread resisting the change to confirm this. Salting those people doesn't change the fact that they will have at least a little grief. And no matter how much anyone dismisses it, the one thing you have to admit is that no-one has reached Tier 1 without playing a ****load of games. If a mediocre player has done it then I, for one, am happy to show just a little respect to someone who has clearly supported the game for at least a couple of years.

The mistake PGI made was to mix up a matchmaking mechanic with an in game reward system. There was no other reason for putting in the upward bias. I am not a programmer but I don't understand why you can't have both if we separate. Take the same match data, have the current algorithm take that and feed into the current visible UI which does not have to be reset, and use the same data, feed it into the adjusted algorithm to feed into matchmaking from reset starting point applied to all.

If you're after feedback, Paul, it would be nice to know if this split is possible. If it isn't then I would vote for the reset but please also remove the PSR/Tier bar from the UI. For the majority of players it will only act as a daily reminder of our mediocrity, once the bell curve has formed and we are all in our place.

Edited by Mechdocdie, 28 May 2020 - 02:48 AM.

[Nesutizale]

David Sumner, on 28 May 2020 - 01:21 AM, said:

I know.
What I'm saying is if the quality is going to be the same, don't bother.
It just makes my life even less pleasant than just dealing with the MM.

Okay if that is your point then yes we don't need bad optimized maps. On the other hand IIRC Rubi was made after Solaris City and its a better map in design and performance. So it is possible for them to do better the Solaris City.

Beside that PGI allways said that they shied away from doing a full City map like Solaris because of the performance problems that it would cause but fans asked for it and at least I acknoledge that they tried to.
Lets just hope that with the little bit of more attention MWO now seams to get some heavy map reworks and, or optimazation will also be part of attention.

I mean its good to see PGI doing something, even if its just a first small step and Paul actualy sharing with us what they see. Lets just hope that they will improve on this basis. Communicating more, testeing more and maybe even put out some new ideas.
I know I am hopeless optimistic, I guess but I still like MWO and want it to become better.

[SirHavan]

I vote for a reset, but I don't think it will change much with the current player count.

[Z Paradox]

Mechdocdie, on 28 May 2020 - 02:46 AM, said:

The mistake PGI made was to mix up a matchmaking mechanic with an in game reward system.

TIER is not a reward system it is more of a player skill lvl and it should make you play with same lvl players. At the moment you get tier up even if you suck at playing game.
you Mechdocdie is T1 with W/L Ratio of ~0.90 and K/D Ratio of ~0.70 you shod be T3 or T4, You think I want to have you in my Tier and my team ???

and with current setup Tier is useless system... so yes reset it

Edited by Z Paradox, 28 May 2020 - 03:25 AM.

[Aivazovsky]

Dogmeat1, on 26 May 2020 - 06:39 AM, said:

This is going to be long but please try to bear with me.

Zero-sum sounds great in theory but zero-sum systems like ELO fail in team based games like this because they only usually only take into account wins and losses. For matchmaking quality to improve, it is critical that a player ranking system is implemented that actually assesses how much an individual player contributed towards a win or loss. PSR could actually do this if scaling matchscore targets and a dynamic tier system was introduced. To my knowledge the current PSR system works as follows;

Match score target	Win result	Loss result
300	large increase	small increase
250	small increase	no change
200	no change	small decrease
150 and below	small decrease	large decrease

Now this doesn’t work because the targets are too easy to achieve and given enough games, nearly anyone will max out their PSR and be matched against players well above their skill level. However simply removing the PSR cap and adding a formula like this would solve this issue;

scaledMatchscoreTarget = MatchscoreTarget * (PlayerPSR / MedianPSR)

And here's how it looks if we decide the server median (50%) PSR is 1600;

Player with 1600 PSR	Player with 2400 PSR	Player with 1200 PSR
300	450	225
250	375	187.5
200	300	150
150 and below	225	112.5

Given enough games, eventually every player will reach a point where their matchscore targets are going to be roughly on par with their average game results thus resulting in minimal PSR changes. Of course in general heavier weight classes produce higher average matchscores than lower ones, and certain mechs are much better than others. To reflect this we can simply use the average matchscore (based on server stats) of each variant as additional variables in the formula (we can default to weight class averages for new or rarely played variants). The new formula might look like this;


scaledMatchscoreTarget = MatchscoreTarget * ( (PlayerPSR / MedianPSR * 0.8) + (playerMechAverageMatchscore / medianMechMatchscore * 0.2) )

In this example I assigned a 80% weight to the player’s PSR and a 20% one to the mech’s average matchscore but these could easily be tweaked. You could even add further variables so that the strength of the player’s team compared to the opposition is also taken into effect.


So how would the tier buckets work?

To make a system like this work the static PSR targets, currently used to determine which tier an individual player belongs to, need to be removed. Instead a dynamic system that is regularly updated and that uses the median values of the active playerbase should be implemented. This would mean, regardless of how big or small the active playerbase becomes, each bucket would maintain the same percentage of players. For example;

Tier 5 = 1-25%; Tier 4 = 26-50%; Tier 3 = 51-75%; Tier 2 = 76-90%; Tier 1 = 91-100%.

As long as the targets are being updated on a regular basis (monthly, weekly, daily, etc) then each bucket would always roughly maintain that percentage of players.


What about the matchmaker?

To make this really work, the matchmaker needs to assign players to lobbies in pairs. What I mean if a tier 1 assault player jumps into queue, the MM waits until another tier 1 assault players enters before assigning them to a lobby (on opposite teams). This would ensure that even if there is a mix of tiers on any given team, the opposition would have the same mix of tiers and weight classes. If after a certain period no equal tier player can be found, then the MM can start breaking the MM rules. I would like to see some testing to see which produces better results; break the tier rules or breaking the weight class ones first.

For groups the same pairing system should apply. If a tier 1 4-man group jumps into queue then they should be only matched against a tier 1 group of equal size. If the MM can’t find another tier 1 4-man then it should look for (at tier 1) 2 2-mans, a 3-man + 1 tsolo player and finally a 2-man + 2 solo players in that order. Only after waiting a certain period should it start looking for lower tiers and a group should never be matched against a complete lance of solo players.

Now these PSR, tier and MM changes are far from perfect, but I think they would result in far better quality matches and a better separation between new, casual and try-hard players that would result in a happier situation for everyone involved. Furthermore I think I don’t think this would require extensive modification of existing code (other than possibly the MM) and should be realistic to implement.

I hope Paul Inouye read this post...

[Tarl Cabot]

Javajoe42, on 27 May 2020 - 06:50 PM, said:

I vote NO RESET. I have played 4 years now and I am Tier 2 with how many thousands of hours of play just to freaking be put back all over again. I suggest get rid of TIER all together. That way its just random players playing against each other. ....

snip

I am one not looking to spend another 4 years trying to get back to Tier 2. I would think that if the reset is done you will lose a large percentage of players and all you will have left are basement dwellers who never go outside who play this game. I all for helping balance but a PSR reset is the few things players have left to look at what they have accomplished so far. I mean are you making lots of money introducing NO new mechs? MW5 feels like its dying already. Not sure what incentive your giving people now to stay on.

Kat Baran, on 27 May 2020 - 11:46 PM, said:

You get something wrong here - you don´t have to get back to T2 and you will not reach it without improving.
I am at the end of T2 but i don´t belong in this high tier, too.

Who was that with the example of football?
If you spend every day with playing football in your garden you are not qualified to play champions league.

https://leaderboard....%0D%0AKat+Baran

Javajoe42, Kat Baran comment is something many agree with. Tiers with its MS usage with the PSR bar was create to separate newbies from vets, and the MM uses only Tier.

Issue though is that PGI draped PSR as Pilot Skill Rating, and as more games are played the player improves with experience, moving a player up in tiers. But the PSR thresholds, ESPECIALLY on a win, have been set too low.

Jarls does represent absolute values across the board. Elite players move up into Tier 1 quickly then an average player gets there slower while below average player will eventually get there after 25K games.

Think about that.... A player with an avg 171MS-190MS w/0.82 W/L ratio, 0.5 K/D ratio (not even trading) are reaching Tier 1... and MM only uses Tiers.. Thus, automatically without ANY valves being opened up, said players are instantly matched against players with an average 300-500+ MS....various W/L ratio ranges and 2+ K/D ratio...

Are you really ready to be stomped consistently if the MM matches the below average players with you (again, MM ONLY looks at Tier) against more skilled players?

I am marked at Tier 1 and I have been in it not long after PGI switched from Elo to Tier/PSR. I am a skilled player but I am not a elite/highly skilled player, and I do not belong in Tier 1. atm this account is basically retired but I play on an alt, who is current Tier 2.5 with only approx 700 games played. Mind you, the alt account has not used RL funds to purchase anything. Everything has been with C-Bills and MC, earned in events.

https://leaderboard....ch?u=Tarl+Cabot

So if you were to make it to Tier 1, you would be matched against even better players. Everyone will have excellent, decent scoring games but they will likely become fewer and fewer and your average MS will drop. Even now with the current PSR setup, your avg MS would have eventually seen you reach Tier 1. There are already players with 25K games who has a 171 avg MS being pitted against players with 300 avg MS....

Just one more thing. The issue with Tier/PSR is that the MM only uses Tiers instead of using some thing else that is measured. such as Avg MS over last 500 games with Tier 1-2 , etc... similar to Elo MM.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 28 May 2020 - 03:59 AM.