717 replies to this topic

[Andrzej Lechrenski]

Capt Deadpool, on 10 June 2020 - 11:23 AM, said:

Wonderful decision to democratize PSR and match score elements.

My primary concerns are:

1. Many inexperienced players overvalue a number of metrics/actions, e.g. what many term as 'support', with regards to their contributions to actual wins, cherry-picking examples of stomps without having a good grasp of statistical evidence, and so I am a bit worried some of these metrics will be overemphasized in match scores. (Remember, if you like playing narcs/spotting/support, etc., no one is saying you cannot continue to play these builds).

2. By the same token, if damage continues to be highly emphasized in match scores but PSR is not tilted heavily towards rewarding wins, then this encourages people to go hunting for match scores instead of working together, rewarding unhelpful and (generally) unskillful play such as mass LURMing, the bane of this game.

3. I know many players on the more inexperienced/lower-tier end of the spectrum are worried about not being 'rewarded' (tiers are not rewards, but alas, I don't think many will ever really get this) with PSR increases when performing well in losses, when such rewards only encourage match score hunting as opposed to working together as a team. If a player engages in teamwork conducive to wins on a regular basis, then they should not be worried about not being rewarded for losses, as the wins will far outweigh the losses. Team-based games should be based around rewarding rewarding wins not individual match scores, or else you end up with a bunch of Russel Westbrook wannabees stealing rebounds from teammates to try to get triple-doubles with no real chance at contending for championships (apologies to OKC fans).

A caveat/compromise to the above could be if there was a way to make sure match score was altered to stop rewarding unhelpful actions such as spamming lurms, badly aimed/spread damage, etc. and reward the only possibly quantifiable skill-based metric that has the most impact on the game: aim. Maybe increase rewards for component destruction? (I don't really see how situational awareness, map knowledge, effective comms, which are the other primary skills that contribute to wins can be incorporated into match scores.)



TLDR; kill LURMs, don't adjust MS to reward fun but ineffective styles of play, ensure PSR rewards wins more than individualist match score hunting, reward better aim over spread damage if possible.


My .02 cents.

Agreed. The experience bar is the most poisonous thing to any serious discussion of improving match quality. It either needs to go entirely, or else not be tied to anything that MM actually uses to make matches.

[MovinTarget]

Not to muddy the waters on the MS calculations, but shouldn't the individual triggers have some coefficient based on weight class and/or current game circumstances that reward situational awareness and/or role fulfillment?

The most obvious example is assaults/heavies that don't do jack offensively in a match.

Edited by MovinTarget, 10 June 2020 - 12:03 PM.

[corpse256]

I'm willing to comeback and play guys.Combined queues is the first step I liked because we became competitive again. Like I've been saying since beta this is a competitive game, not a run around and have a jolly good time game. Resetting the PSR is fine with me I wouldn't mind seeing how good I'm compared to other players with a zero sum. I feel that Counterstrike did it well and you should kinda follow how their stuff works. Get players close or somewhat close to what that player's rank is. If the rules or release valves kick in to make a match somewhat unfair so be it. I think a majority of this community wants to learn how to play this game better. The key thing that kept me playing Counterstrike was to get better and try to have a positive K/D ratio. This game currently is missing that competitive edge. Back in the Beta days the game was super competitive and fun.

Would like to see that comeback. Hope Russ and Paul make the right choice this time. I know you guys are trying to get new players in but its hard when people that are vets at the game and half the matches you play are complete waste of time by either your team blows everything away and you do nothing. Or your team gets blown away and you are overwhelmed. I like the numbers you showed in the update for player score values being rated. Maybe adding more values might help with player skill to make sure that players that do stuff play with players that do stuff. Because I feel like that sometimes the teams I played in did very little and I get wasted less than a 2-5 mins of the match.

I vote Yes for the PSR reset I am willing to start from scratch again and play with players in my estimated skill level whether it be high or low.

I know a lot of players in this day and age of gaming are players that don't like hard games. That is sad and I feel like the players that love a challenge are a dying breed of gamers back in the 80s and 90s when games where hard as nails. Keep this one hard, but fun. I feel that the community and the devs are going in the right direction here. Maybe you guys will get more players like me back that been playing with you guys since the beta. But I will be seeing you guys in December when you kick off MW5 mercs on steam.

[OneTeamPlayer]

Tarl Cabot, on 10 June 2020 - 11:23 AM, said:

Or would you rather be facing off against players around your own caliber more often than not?

I just want to be in whatever tier where most people are coordinating on in-game voice comms, and the battles end between 12-8 and 12-11.

I don't want to be in a tier where people are in their private discords, everyone does their own thing, and most people (especially assaults) try so hard to hide behind friendlies until match end that nothing ever happens.

Whatever system leads to the first option is the one i want to see.

[Dauntless Blint]

Capt Deadpool, on 10 June 2020 - 11:30 AM, said:

My response to this would be to practice in the less effective/lower firepower chassis until you can contribute to wins in a similar fashion as people playing more effective chassis, or else enjoy your less effective chassis in a lower tier. My 5-small laser Flea has terrible match scores compared to less skilled players playing mechs that do more damage, but I don't care about this at all.

You don't care that it's unrepresentative of true PSR? because IMO effective chassis PSR matters and chassis should have it's own PSR modifier which is what I'm trying to address.
You could have stacked teams with worse players in better mechs and ended up with a balanced battle.
I saw 2 fleas and 3 pirate's banes on one side in a game last night. For things to be that lopsided dynamic chassis PSR modifiers could balance that out or into the game according to pilot skill level with a specific chassis.

All it takes is at the end of a battle did the player do better or worse than the global average with that specific chassis.
Then highly played (almost crutch) builds will start to show the difference in "skill" multiplying specific chassis.
Teams balance on tonnage and player PSR alone doesn't measure chassis effective PSR multiplier.

Meaning people who can carry hard in their favorite build will have a higher effective match PSR for that round in that specific chassis.

Edited by Dauntless Blint, 10 June 2020 - 12:49 PM.

[MovinTarget]

OneTeamPlayer, on 10 June 2020 - 12:27 PM, said:

I don't want to be in a tier where people are in their private discords, everyone does their own thing, and most people (especially assaults) try so hard to hide behind friendlies until match end that nothing ever happens.

Whatever system leads to the first option is the one i want to see.

This is like the people saying "I don't want to play with lurmers/tryhards/casuals/<insert adjective here>".

If that wish was fulfilled, get ready for some long wait times.

[OneTeamPlayer]

MovinTarget, on 10 June 2020 - 12:41 PM, said:

This is like the people saying "I don't want to play with lurmers/tryhards/casuals/<insert adjective here>".

If that wish was fulfilled, get ready for some long wait times.

Every other competitive team game can mix balanced team creation with teamwork focused game play.

Why do you feel that MWO can't live up to the minimum basic specifications for a viable game?

[Nightbird]

Why updating the PSR via Match Score changes will never improve match quality:

1. Points are earned after each match (sending people off to infinity or negative infinity), but the speed this happen at depends on the matches played. This prevents the MS system from ever correctly measuring a person's skill.

Example: A great player earns 3X points per match on average, playing 4 matches/day, will have earn 360X PSR points per month. A mediocre player earns 1X points per match, playing 20 matches/day, will earn 600X points per month. So a great player will be in T2 and a mediocre player will be in T1. Will this create quality matches?

2. Match Score earned does not correspond well to a player's influence on a team winning. If a person's past WLR corresponds 100% with their future impact on a team, their past MS only corresponds 20%.

Example 1: 4 solo players have 400 avgMS and 2 WLR, and 4-man group each have 400 avgMS and 10 WLR. Are the two equal in their impact on the balance of team? If looking though the eyes of MS PSR, they are equal.

Example 2: One player has 300 avgMS and 1.3 WLR, another player has 300avg MS and 0.8 WLR. The first player uses direct weapons. The latter uses LRMs and AMS. Are they equal contributors to a team? MS System says yes.


My idea which doesn't have these problems, and is simple to implement:

https://mwomercs.com...ost__p__6337632

[Capt Deadpool]

Dauntless Blint, on 10 June 2020 - 12:41 PM, said:

You don't care that it's unrepresentative of true PSR? because IMO effective chassis PSR matters and chassis should have it's own PSR modifier which is what I'm trying to address.
You could have stacked teams with worse players in better mechs and ended up with a balanced battle.
I saw 2 fleas and 3 pirate's banes on one side in a game last night. For things to be that lopsided dynamic chassis PSR modifiers could balance that out or into the game according to pilot skill level with a specific chassis.

All it takes is at the end of a battle did the player do better or worse than the global average with that specific chassis.
Then highly played (almost crutch) builds will start to show the difference in "skill" multiplying specific chassis.
Teams balance on tonnage and player PSR alone doesn't measure chassis effective PSR multiplier.

I understand what you are saying, but no I don't really care at all. Utilize wins as the primary metric for PSR/matchmaking or else you are harming the teams you are on even if you are 'better than average' than others in some ineffective chassis. Wins keeps things simple and that is the entire purpose of the game: winning, not relative skill compared to others in the same chassis. People can make alt accounts for fun/ineffective mechs that don't get wins if they want.

If I am a thousand times better than an average player in my favorite crappy mech but don't get consist wins, then I should be content in whatever tier I end up in, i.e. a crappy player in a meta mech is many times more valuable to a team/winning than a good player in a crappy mech, and people need to practice in their chosen chassis not just to be better than others in the same chassis, but as effective or better as players in effective chassis that get wins.

[JoeCold]

I don't think win/loss should be part of the equation. The performance of your team mates already have an effect your personal numbers and this trends toward a positive direction in a win and a negative direction in a loss. So, a +/- for win/loss is doubling down on something for which there is already a natural accounting.


Further, I think the top "x" players on the losing side of a stomp should get a bump up (and vice versa for the bottom "x" on the winning side) because the effect of your team mates performance on your own numbers is greatly exaggerated in a stomp.

[MovinTarget]

OneTeamPlayer, on 10 June 2020 - 12:53 PM, said:

Every other competitive team game can mix balanced team creation with teamwork focused game play.

Why do you feel that MWO can't live up to the minimum basic specifications for a viable game?

So there are other games out there where the teams are comprised of partially premade groups that don't use a private voip? Players don't do whatever they want or play selfishly? They are always dedicated to a single objective even when there are multiple victory conditions?

Do tell, what games are these?

My point being, I'm pretty sure if you were to put those games under a microscope they don't really equate to MWO -NOT THAT IT DOESN'T HAVE ITS OWN MULTITUDE OF FAULTS!

[Wreckreation]

I don't have to read any of the posts. You can please most of the people all of the time but you can't please all of the people all of the time. Choose a course or you will lose in the end. Those that have heartburn, best of luck.

[SirHavan]

Opinions:
1. Don't nerf AMS - its the only defense for LRM boats and the only thing that keeps that meta in check
2. can we just get on with it alreay? Reset and lets play the game

[Laser Kiwi]

Wraith of Shadow, on 10 June 2020 - 11:42 AM, said:

Well, like I said earlier, they could split damage rewards for armour and structure. Make it damaging armour gives little to no match score, while damaging structure gives a lot more.

LURM spam will mean a lot less if they have grind through non-point giving armour first.

That would also absolutely screw the first contact of assault vs assault though, because the 2 first assaults quite often start to die before they get a chance to really beat on internal structure. Also, lets say 2 annis meet armour between 100 and 150 side and front torsos, the first 5 salvos of their face to face confrontation gets them nothing, when the other mechs concentrate on these two mechs, their proportion of the damage befiore they drop will often be insignificant, this will lead to even more hesitation amongst assaults frontlining.

Between you and me though i actually don't have a problem with this, many others would, but i also believe most assaults shouldn't be standing 100m away from each other churning armour when they are the mechs most capable of carrying a plethora of direct fire weapons suitable for use at 400 or 500m.

[Dauntless Blint]

Capt Deadpool, on 10 June 2020 - 01:04 PM, said:

I understand what you are saying, but no I don't really care at all. Utilize wins as the primary metric for PSR/matchmaking or else you are harming the teams you are on even if you are 'better than average' than others in some ineffective chassis. Wins keeps things simple and that is the entire purpose of the game: winning, not relative skill compared to others in the same chassis. People can make alt accounts for fun/ineffective mechs that don't get wins if they want.

If I am a thousand times better than an average player in my favorite crappy mech but don't get consist wins, then I should be content in whatever tier I end up in, i.e. a crappy player in a meta mech is many times more valuable to a team/winning than a good player in a crappy mech, and people need to practice in their chosen chassis not just to be better than others in the same chassis, but as effective or better as players in effective chassis that get wins.

My point precisely. Some chassis are more equal then others. It can be used to our advantage when compression is making lopsided teams.

Win loss by
Tonnage by
chassis by
Player = Effective PSR

Edit: Groups artificially inflate wins and PSR.
If the PSR is working everyone should be winning and losing 1 for 1 in a zero sum bell curve except the extreme top and bottom of the player pool.

Edited by Dauntless Blint, 11 June 2020 - 03:08 AM.

[Andrzej Lechrenski]

SirHavan, on 10 June 2020 - 01:42 PM, said:

Opinions:
1. Don't nerf AMS - its the only defense for LRM boats and the only thing that keeps that meta in check
2. can we just get on with it alreay? Reset and lets play the game

On the other hand, it doesn't speak well of the player base if they are bringing AMS just to farm points instead of for the more practical reason -- that it is useful.

Of course, if there was even one week of "the only way to earn match score now is from shooting down missiles", lurm boats wouldn't be a problem for months after.

[The Teddy Bear]

Sorry, but I dont feel like reading through 15 pages at all. Can someone pls - summarize up the best suggestion for PSR changes? We can hopefullly line up from that point. Delivering PSR alternatives and what´s producing match score in the same thread seems like "bring back the kindergarten" to me.

[Nightbird]

The Teddy Bear, on 10 June 2020 - 01:54 PM, said:

Sorry, but I dont feel like reading through 15 pages at all. Can someone pls - summarize up the best suggestion for PSR changes? We can hopefullly line up from that point. Delivering PSR alternatives and what´s producing match score in the same thread seems like "bring back the kindergarten" to me.

The only suggestion with proof backing it up:
https://mwomercs.com...ost__p__6337632

Edited by Nightbird, 10 June 2020 - 02:03 PM.

[Andrzej Lechrenski]

The Teddy Bear, on 10 June 2020 - 01:54 PM, said:

Sorry, but I dont feel like reading through 15 pages at all. Can someone pls - summarize up the best suggestion for PSR changes? We can hopefullly line up from that point. Delivering PSR alternatives and what´s producing match score in the same thread seems like "bring back the kindergarten" to me.

Any of the various permutations of using W/L ratio to match people against each other. Nightbird's is fine. There are also other ways.

I think most of the people who take this seriously agree with you that the match score stuff is just a red herring.

Edited by Andrzej Lechrenski, 10 June 2020 - 02:00 PM.

[Skudski]

It's a bit much to ask the community to assign values to every aspect of the match score. But here is my take on it:

This new system seems fine, it is a complete switch around from basing your tier progress on team result to individual performance. So long as you attribute slightly higher values to the team win and actions that lead to the team win, this will be fine as it will still encourage teamwork.

But I think its overkill. Given that the playing numbers are so low and you are having to mix tier 3 with tier 1, the system really doesn't have to be that complex, you just need to do enough to keep the noobs away from from the good experienced players. As everyone else is going to be mixed together anyway.

The current system kind of does that, all I think most of us are asking is to make it zero sum and start again so not so good players have a better chance of not mixing with the elite, but also to change the progress weighting so you can still progress if you play well in a losing team, and go backwards if you play badly in a good team. Its really that simple. Lots of guys have drawn their charts on here like this one:



And I think for most of us, that is enough. It works perfectly fine and still encourages teamwork over anything else to get the win.

But I'm also happy with the new system that was suggested, so long as teamwork-friendly actions are rewarded with bigger values, it just seems like a lot of effort for not a lot of gain and for not very many players.

The numbers are down, they aren't going to go surging to massively high numbers no matter what you do with this game. The game is amazing, but people don't like change and the amount of changes that have been made over the years has alienated many players. Yet, at the same time, there has not been enough change, the game has become a bit stagnant and your hands are tied by the community not liking change. Also, in its current format, we all love it but its too complex for younger or new players to get into it and progression is a bit too slow with too many established players making it hard for the noobs to break through and get into it.

Just a thought, many of us have put a lot into this game in terms of money and time, have you had any thoughts towards creating a MW5 online game? The size/investment in our MWO accounts could be carried over in some way of reward/starter pack, at least then you could use the new engine, new detail etc and re-launch the game to hopefully capture a new, bigger audience? I don't know what the numbers are, but if there are a lot of people who purchased MW5, that audience could be tapped into to launch a "vs mode" attachment to the current MW5 game or an altogether new "MWO 2" game.

Another thought, as I really like the idea of starting afresh. Part of the drive to play the game is to build. But so many of us have nowhere else to build to? I regularly hover around the 300,000,000 cbill mark, I have loads of gxp, mc etc and 186 mechs. The mechs are all so finely balanced with each other and already have so much variation in weights, loadouts and quirks, there really is nowhere left to go, and I'm sure there are guys on here who's accounts dwarf mine.

So, to start again with an amazing new game, and all the mistakes of the past learnt from and used to create something special, and no having to completely change interfaces or losing old data etc which really put people off of this game at various times and lost large swathes of the community. You also have this amazing community to bounce ideas off, to launch new features in the new game, only this time with thousands of experts right here to give you the feedback and direction needed to get it right. This time, you can get it right from the start and keep it that way!

New mechs, new maps, new numbers on each team, new match formats, perhaps a generally faster, more dynamic game-play. Make it simpler for general public and younger players to get into more easily, but still more complex than MW5, more focus on allowing re-spawning to make it more dynamic and encourage more aggressive gameplay, but also more realistic, so you can lose weapons and mechs like in MW5 and progress allows you access to better mechs and weapons etc.

Like I say, just a thought. But I think there is plenty of scope to relaunch this game in a completely new style. If its too similar there is no point in doing it.

Thank you PGI for creating and continually tweaking this game to how we all want it, it's been a rough ride at times, but the end product is amazing. However it might be time to admit its time has come and gone, lets work together to create a new "MWO" and expand it out to the wider gaming community, it might not be exactly what the "purists" want, but we are all getting older and less likely to game, so us "purists" can get together and help create a new version of our beloved game that our kids might actually play and enjoy, to keep the mechwarrior name going. We have had our ultimate game, maybe our time is up, and its time the rest of the world got a taste of it