849 replies to this topic

[Senator Blutarsky]

PSR zero sum (removing the clog at Tier 1) is a good idea. Very few disagree. They don't like the path it takes to get there and what it means for their own future ranking, but that's a different story.

If you think about it the suggestions to reward the best players on the losing team is unnecessary. If they are truly the best players they should be winning more anyway and won't be slowed down by not moving forward on losses. What it does do is penalize (I think rightly) players who have figured out how to have a strong average matchscore but don't win as often as they 'should'.
Wins already factor into matchscore but presumably not enough. Matchscore overvalues damage and that can lead to, in my opinion, incentivizing bad gameplay. Poke through Jarls List (pure avg matchscore ranking) and see how far down you need to go before you see high avg matchscore players (~300) with w/l ratios below 1. They're out there.

As an example:
Hang back and be the last player on your team to die and you'll have an extra minute or two to plink away at damaged enemy mechs before they kill you off. You should, on average, get a higher matchscore dying 12th on your team vs dying 6th but are you really a better player? Are you helping your team? Any damage/kills that happen after a match is 6-2 and the stomp is on is worthless garbage time from a w/l perspective but you can definitely save your matchscore in that time.

Matchscore isn't gospel. Its good but more of a balance matchscore-win/loss will improve gameplay.

[Mechdocdie]

Z Paradox, on 28 May 2020 - 03:16 AM, said:

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

It's so nice to be wanted.

Sadly, Z Paradox, even if you do own the tier and the team, we are stuck with each other, given the size of the player base. Either with this account or my much more successful FTP account (86%, W/L 1.1, K/D 1.06, achieved mostly with partly skilled mechs - solid Tier 2, maybe Tier 1 depending on the cutoffs used) I expect we will see each other regularly, that is if you want to be in a game more often than twice an hour.
You may not like it but you need us 63%ilers to make up the numbers and, more importantly, give PGI a reason to keep the servers going.

So calm down, because you and I agree on just about every point:

• The PSR/Tiers should be reset. I agree 100%
  
• The PSR/Tiers should only be a tool for matchmaking so that games are not horribly mismatched. Again, I 100% agree.
  
• The PSR/Tiers should NOT be a reward system. I agree again, 100%. My point was that this is what PGI did; make the PSR/Tier bar on the home screen a game reward when they built in the upward bias. That is the big mistake they are now trying to clean up.

I had no intention to try defend the status quo or try to hang on to the current Tier 1. I am simply trying to make a helpful suggestion to Paul who, unlike you, gets that p***ing off a large chunk of ordinary players like me might end the game for extraordinary players like you.

And I didn't think my thoughts were that offensive as they were to do with the home screen UI, not the gameplay. I just thought that they could harmlessly keep the fantasy alive for us also-rans by leaving the current Tier Bar graphic on the Home screen but disconnecting the algorithm and the database which drive it from from the matchmaker. PGI could then, behind the scenes, link the new, zero sum algorithm and database up to the matchmaker. Sure, the Tier Bar would mean even less than it already does but no harm done.

But if the Tier Bar graphic can't be disconnected then remove the graphic. Why? Because while you may think rubbing a player's nose in their own mediocrity is a good idea, I can't see how it is good business for PGI or the game.

Edited by Mechdocdie, 28 May 2020 - 09:26 AM.

[Z Paradox]

Senator Blutarsky, on 28 May 2020 - 09:09 AM, said:

Hang back and be the last player on your team to die and you'll have an extra minute or two to plink away at damaged enemy mechs before they kill you off. You should, on average, get a higher matchscore dying 12th on your team vs dying 6th but are you really a better player?

get a higher matchscore? not all the time.



and you can stay as last in your team if you use cover

[Horseman]

OneTeamPlayer, on 28 May 2020 - 05:15 AM, said:

1. I think players vastly overestimate the skill level in the game based on the extreme outliers at the top.
While there are some great players, the Jarls graph posted earlier shows that the game is mostly on a natural bell curve with a majority of people in the center. I see quite a few people saying Tier 1 should be the top xy or z stats without taking into account that by their metrics the number of people in said group would be unable to start matches consistently and would get merged with another tier anyway.

The point was never to separate the tiers from each other, but rather to give the matchmaker meaningful data about player performance so that it can equalize the teams better. Cause right now it can just as well matchmake by a freaking CUCUMBER.

Quote

2. I see a lot of assumptions that PSR will be a static number in the same way the current XP bar tier is.

PGI hasn't given us a reason to believe otherwise.

Quote

If the system isn't made as a comparative scale then it will just fall into the same issue as seen now over a few months span of time.

Agreed.

PeeWrinkle, on 28 May 2020 - 05:33 AM, said:

I am not sure about this. I have not been playing much lately so my opinion may not or should not matter. But I do have an issue with zero sum.
(...)I think it needs to be a system that rewards good play. If you win you don't automatically go up, you have to achieve certain stats. If you achieve certain stats in a loss you should go up as well.

It's not an issue with zero sum, it's an issue with Paul's idea that W/L should become the only deciding factor.

bilagaana, on 28 May 2020 - 07:35 AM, said:

I frequently see support for this notion and am baffled at the rationale. Perhaps, if teams were static--i.e., the same members each match--it might be useful as one out of several indicators of skill. However, teams (at least in QP) are not static. In fact, let's be honest: QP teams are more often than not absolute cr*p. It is entirely possible for a skilled player to individually perform well in terms of damage and kills and still be on a losing team, sometimes in multiple matches. Why should such losses, the result of ineffectual teams, effect such a player's overall skill ranking? There's a logical disconnect in that argument that I am not following.

In theory, a good player will still have a net positive effect on his or her teams' winrate. It would take longer for it to come through the statistics, but the stats would be a bit more accurate that way.

[JRcam4643]

Being able to increase PSR in a loss is fine. Winning and losing should have nothing to do with PSR. Problem That I've seen is it's almost impossible to get a negative score if you're on the winning side no matter how little you helped.

[Jesslp]

Horseman, on 28 May 2020 - 04:38 AM, said:

Those are some of the worst, most backwards ideas I have ever seen. You earn no points, and may god have mercy on your soul.

I agree with most of what you say, like above. He even should lose points, ill say.

But theres a couple of things that i dont agree with.

1)

Horseman, on 28 May 2020 - 04:38 AM, said:

Tier is already supposed to be a handicap in that the higher you go the better opponents you're supposed to play against.

Mostly right. But some time -after- the Tier reset, that most people hopes it will happen (myself included), if theres not people enough so Tier 1 play only with Tier 1 players, so to speak, those poor Tier 5, 4, 3 who end up anyway against Tier 1 and 2... could get a little extra to make their sad lives (in mwo) a little less bitter. In the form of -small- perk bonuses, and IF they DO perform well, even against higher level players, a little extra cash (cBills). You get the idea.

How big or small the extra bonuses? we can discuss that for as long as you want to. Im not speaking of 50% cooldown speed or 90% less heat or anything like that.
Small bonuses like the ones some chassis get, AND always -proportional- to the difference in tier levels. Keep in mind, this is only for the case, that after tier resets, lower tier players get (bad luck for them/us) against much higher tier players, that is not supposed to happen, or at least not very often.

I dont think that will make the game worse for Tier 1 players, but could make the game a lot better or at least a little bit better, for the rest of the player base.

2) Since your arguments are 100% correct, if you do not attack other peoples arguments, using the fact that they are "bad players", it would be so much cooler.
Because even "bad players" can make valid points sometimes (not that one, for sure).


Apart from that, and on another tough: On the tier reset, if theres going to be 5 levels, why not start at level 3? its in the middle and, wouldnt that move everyone to the "real tier" they belong to, in the fastest possible way for everybody? Better players would go up quickly, and bad palyers would go down quickly too.

[Senator Blutarsky]

Z Paradox, on 28 May 2020 - 09:29 AM, said:

get a higher matchscore? not all the time.

and you can stay as last in your team if you use cover

10-12 is hardly a stomp. My point was about getting to 250 in a loss. Also, just looking at this congrats great match, but honesty how often do you see assault mechs being the last players standing? I'm guessing those weren't 7 solo kills with your raven.

You really think matchscore can't be gamed? Let me introduce you to the COR-7A... or all the players LRMing in tier 4-5 ..

[Z Paradox]

10-12 was not stomp

this was stomp ->




and yes, dont use UAV, dont use R, dont use AMS, dont stay near lance, dunt use weapons... and you get no MS like narcs.. you get NARC MS bonus if they kill them with lock on weapons...

Edited by Z Paradox, 28 May 2020 - 10:21 AM.

[Jesslp]

Asmudius Heng, on 27 May 2020 - 05:49 PM, said:

I do not know if this has been said but for those saying that win and loss should play no part in PSR i disagree a little. There are many roles in the game and many things pilots can do that influence a win that cannot be counted on the match score. Taking spread damage by talking and sponging well is a real skill and you can win a game because you were a hard target and the enemy over focused on you. That pilot is a god damn hero but gets no points at all basically - same for those who active their voice comms and call targets etc (which i should do more honestly).

There are intangible things that lead to wins - though obviously a terrible player can be in a winning team too despite their efforts to be terrible individually.

I think that wins and losses should still be a factor just not the massive factor it is now.

+1.
No. + 1000000.

[Anomalocaris]

Senator Blutarsky, on 28 May 2020 - 09:09 AM, said:

If you think about it the suggestions to reward the best players on the losing team is unnecessary. If they are truly the best players they should be winning more anyway and won't be slowed down by not moving forward on losses.

But this assumes that the matchmaker will, over time, even out the distribution of teammates such that contribution of the player in question is the sole driving factor in wins and losses. Unfortunately, this has never been the case in MWO, and I don't foresee that being the case even with a much improved system. You will get runs of bad matchmaking, particularly with the balance breaker of groups in the merge queue. Until someone figures out how to match groups vs. solos properly people are going to get streaks of wins and losses they don't deserve. And if they don't play a couple hundred games a season, the WLR will not rank them appropriately IMO. That's why there has to be some sort of match score contribution (or other factor) to the matchmaker ranking system.

In an ideal world, where the matchmaker works well and people play lots of games, WLR should be all you need. But the reality, IMO, is quite different.

[letir]

Senator Blutarsky, on 28 May 2020 - 09:09 AM, said:

Hang back and be the last player on your team to die and you'll have an extra minute or two to plink away at damaged enemy mechs before they kill you off. You should, on average, get a higher matchscore dying 12th on your team vs dying 6th but are you really a better player? Are you helping your team? Any damage/kills that happen after a match is 6-2 and the stomp is on is worthless garbage time from a w/l perspective but you can definitely save your matchscore in that time.

Matchscore isn't gospel. Its good but more of a balance matchscore-win/loss will improve gameplay.

I mean, what exactly you supposed to do when your team losing in the landslide? Charge forward and somewhat turn 0-3 into 5-3 singlehandidly? Cannot exactly shield bad players out of position from everything or overcharge guns with heroic willpower. When your team start losing, you lose too.

May as well try to "save the matchscore", and maybe even pull a win.

[Daedra117]

My opinion is worth zero but id like to point out 2 conditions for the tier reset green light anyway:

1. This:

Warning incoming Humble Dexterer, on 25 May 2020 - 04:38 PM, said:

Just make that formula say that if you WIN, you can still move DOWN if you perform bad.

Not the other (easier) way around. ^This, exactly.



2. Once the new calculations are set, make them public

Spoiler

Edited by Daedra117, 28 May 2020 - 11:28 AM.

[Capt Deadpool]

Asmudius Heng, on 27 May 2020 - 05:49 PM, said:

I do not know if this has been said but for those saying that win and loss should play no part in PSR i disagree a little. There are many roles in the game and many things pilots can do that influence a win that cannot be counted on the match score. Taking spread damage by talking and sponging well is a real skill and you can win a game because you were a hard target and the enemy over focused on you. That pilot is a god damn hero but gets no points at all basically - same for those who active their voice comms and call targets etc (which i should do more honestly).

There are intangible things that lead to wins - though obviously a terrible player can be in a winning team too despite their efforts to be terrible individually.

I think that wins and losses should still be a factor just not the massive factor it is now.

Alas, no system can ever be perfect and it is hard to quantify such things into a numerical value that can be effectively utilized. Another example, if I drop two arties in my light, the results of those arties will sometimes compose 90% of my match score, when in many cases what is the deciding factor in a victory is that I harassed an assault lance long enough that our team had a brief numerical advantage long enough to get up 2-4 kills before the enemy was able to group up effectively, and the quantification of stripping out a lance's back armor so they must walk backwards is effectively zero in the match score. Similarly, if I leg 50%-100% of the enemy's alpha lance that was harassing our assaults and then my teammates delete the stumpies, also not reflected.

In other thoughts, (apologies if this has been mentioned already), but since we are going through all the trouble of reseting tiers, in the interest of competitiveness, adding even 1 or 2 additional tiers (or 3) would make a massive difference. I'd be all for waiting an additional one or two minutes between matches in exchange for adding more tiers, but maybe I am the minority. Maybe there should be a poll...

Edited by Capt Deadpool, 28 May 2020 - 11:27 AM.

[Marshal Jim Duncan]

While the tweaks have generally improved the matchmaking, I still don't like the combining of 'single player' and 'group players' because the ppl who tend to drop in groups have a different agenda than those who drop solo. And, some of the ppl who drop in groups more frequently are just ******** and it was kind of nice to be able to ignore them.

The PSR issue needs to have a 'drank too much' modifier somewhere, somehow.

I mean, it's not like you guys are giving me $50,000.00 at the end of the year because I achieved rank 1.

It's supposed to be fun, not a job. That's what comp. play is for.

At least shift the PSR to rank KMDD's way higher than the actual killing blow.

[Senator Blutarsky]

Just to be clear what's being proposed didn't sound like PSR based solely on W/L. The size of your PSR move would still be based on matchscore. So in effect its matchscore + W/L rather than for all intents and purposes just matchscore like it is now.

Also the correlation between the two has go to be pretty close to 1. The problem with 'penalizing' winners who don't perform is you're back to making it matchscore focused vs the combination. Matchscore isn't a perfect yardstick. As mentioned soaking damage and sharing armor isn't factored in at all and is an important game mechanic. Winning is I believe more fundamental or at least a good counter-balance to matchscore which is primarily damage driven. If you only play 12 matches a season, sure anything can happen, but if you play a couple hundred matches and your avg matchscore is say 250+, but your W/L is below 1.... I'm sorry but you don't belong in the top tiers same as the people who just grinded their way there after 5 years.

Penalizing winning is just... un-american. But seriously its bad game design. You want to give players a challenge (winning the match) not tell them how to do it. If someone, or team, comes up with a crazy strategy that wins most matches but results in half the team having low match scores then why should they be punished? That's punishing originality and teamwork just bc they aren't winning in a way that fits neatly into the matchscore formula.

[Laser Kiwi]

Storky, on 28 May 2020 - 09:00 AM, said:

Here is my word.

1. Reset tier (optional, for better 2.)
2. For skill calculations:
GOOD players have bonus on heavier mechs and penalty on lighter
vice versa
BAD players have bonus on lighter mechs and penalty on heavier
3. very slow mechs light like urbie or fast assaults like victor with 385 must count as medium and heavy.

Explanation:
Skill and firepower do not matters much if mech is outpositioned. Fast mechs help to get better postion and forgives mistakes about that.
BAD playes can't convert speed in survival, but they not much less dangerous on heavier mechs wth more hp and guns. Also they often have initial good aim from other games.

You give bad players too much credit regarding aim. Most bad players haven't even thought about the mouse settings or their own mouse settings in the mouse software. Too often i die from stupidity to watch guys aim wander all over the target, or maybe everyone's drunk. And i'm not talking about the lag delay you get viewing other pilots, i'm talking about obviously wrong mouse settings.

[Laser Kiwi]

Z Paradox, on 28 May 2020 - 10:17 AM, said:

10-12 was not stomp

this was stomp ->

and yes, dont use UAV, dont use R, dont use AMS, dont stay near lance, dunt use weapons... and you get no MS like narcs.. you get NARC MS bonus if they kill them with lock on weapons...

That's what happens in faction when a bunch of pugs come up against guys with a specific deck of long range weaponry with advanced zoom and the inherent advantage of defending boreal. Telling because in reality the damage scores on the winning side had so many triples and doubles. Literally a bunch of tier 4 pugs decided to drop FP and stared at the pretty blue lights for 17 minutes and 10 seconds. The poor ******** probably didn't even get in the gate.

[David Sumner]

Andrzej Lechrenski, on 28 May 2020 - 02:20 AM, said:

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

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?

That is my point.

[JoeCold]

Though I'm definitely in favor of the PSR reset even though I don't think it will really fix things unless they make more tweaks to it than were discussed in the OP, I feel a little suspect of the entire OP due to one statement:

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%.

This is supposedly over the two weeks prior to the post, a period over which I was wondering why it "felt" like stomps had gone up suddenly. It bothered me since the post so today I did some quick and dirty tracking.

I played 24 matches and tracked the outcomes. I didn't know if there is an official definition of "stomp" in the game. So, I defined "stomp" as the losing team having no more than 4 kills AND the winning team having at least 10 kills. In 24 matches, 13 were stomps by this definition. It's worthy to note that 5 of the 11 "non-stomps" were won 12-5. So, if one has a more loose definition, the volume goes up. I don't think of 12-5 as a stomp, but its certainly not competitive, That means at least 75% were not competitive.

I probably should have recorded more detailed results. But, like I said, it was "quick and dirty" to satisfy the itch that has been drilling at me since the OP. I don't think prior to recently I experienced this much lopsidedness.

[Horseman]

Jesslp, on 28 May 2020 - 10:01 AM, said:

2) Since your arguments are 100% correct, if you do not attack other peoples arguments, using the fact that they are "bad players", it would be so much cooler.
Because even "bad players" can make valid points sometimes (not that one, for sure).

I try to avoid it unless their level of (lack of) understanding the game is part of the discussion - usually that happens when bad players try to pass themselves off as significantly better than they are or attempt some kind of special pleading as to why they believe they have "earned" the "right" to be in Tier 1.
I don't have an issue with bad players as such, but I have all the issues if they make up self-aggrandizing lies about their performance.
And sometimes it does come up after they make statements so terrifyingly ignorant that you expect General Kerensky to come back from the dead to strike them down for that stupidity.

Quote

Apart from that, and on another tough: On the tier reset, if theres going to be 5 levels, why not start at level 3? its in the middle and, wouldnt that move everyone to the "real tier" they belong to, in the fastest possible way for everybody? Better players would go up quickly, and bad palyers would go down quickly too.

Yes, if T3 is supposed to house the middle of the population. If they restart everyone in T4, then bulk of the population would end up there (provided the new PSR calculation indeed isn't biased).

Senator Blutarsky, on 28 May 2020 - 10:02 AM, said:

You really think matchscore can't be gamed? Let me introduce you to the COR-7A... or all the players LRMing in tier 4-5 ..

Score can be gamed, certainly. Win/loss ratio less so, and over large sample sizes, the player's actual ability will still have much larger impact than any attempts to game the system.

letir, on 28 May 2020 - 11:00 AM, said:

I mean, what exactly you supposed to do when your team losing in the landslide? Charge forward and somewhat turn 0-3 into 5-3 singlehandidly?

... if both times are bad enough, you can.

Senator Blutarsky, on 28 May 2020 - 12:27 PM, said:

Penalizing winning is just... un-american. But seriously its bad game design.

What about penalizing being a deadweight? Because that's what it comes down to: players on the winning team who didn't contribute to the win should not profit from it.

Laser Kiwi, on 28 May 2020 - 12:59 PM, said:

You give bad players too much credit regarding aim. Most bad players haven't even thought about the mouse settings or their own mouse settings in the mouse software. Too often i die from stupidity to watch guys aim wander all over the target, or maybe everyone's drunk. And i'm not talking about the lag delay you get viewing other pilots, i'm talking about obviously wrong mouse settings.

It's worse than that. Most of them play with their arms perma-locked. I've seen then get killed because they couldn't bring their arm weapons to bear on a target because of that.