713 replies to this topic

[spannerturner]

Bistrorider, on 16 June 2020 - 03:21 AM, said:

Well, I'm gonna crawl from my hole again. Still think that the matchscore and psr should be merged into simple points system. Since I'm no math man my head hurts when trying to bite on matchmaker.

Also I think we missed something very important. As far as I understand there is gonna be reset in tier system. Like we all gonna start from the scratch - back to tier 5. Question is how it will affect the WHOLE community? Some may say: "Well, I worked hard to reach tier 3 or 2. Now they gonna reset it. I don't wanna play anymore". Risky, risky. Then the PGI may say: "Well, we did what you wanted, and now we are left with 100 players so it's the end of the story". Risky, risky. Trap?

And that's why the reset needs to place everyone in the middle tier to start. This way, good and bad players can move in their respective directions. Otherwise, if everyone starts out in Tier 5, players who have no PSR movement (ie "average" players) will stay in the same tier as the bad players, since there will be no place for the bad players to move to... In essence, you'll end up with a pool of bad to average players stuck in the same tier while the above average and better players start moving up. This pool won't help the MM at all.

To put it into even plainer language, if your PSR system rewards both + and - PSR, then you need to allow for both + and - based PSR movement within the Tier system from the start.

Edited to address Cadets: I believe "Cadets" should still start out in Tier 5. It should be assumed that they are new players that have not developed skills yet, and should be able to advance as their skills in the game improve. For those that start "alt accounts"... Well, they should have no problem moving out of Tier 5 then since they already have familiarity with the game and should have some skill.

Edited by spannerturner, 17 June 2020 - 03:25 AM.

[Capt Deadpool]

spannerturner, on 16 June 2020 - 12:29 PM, said:

And that's why the reset needs to place everyone in the middle tier to start. This way, good and bad players can move in their respective directions.

My first thought, though maybe I am wrong, is that this idea might be more painful than cadets/Tier 5's could bear and they might get disheartened and quit before they reach their appropriate tier...

While it is commonly accepted that a large number of Tier 1 players are not skilled (because XP bar), there is still a very noticeable difference between bad Tier 1 players and Tier 5 players. The Tier 1's, based on their hours of playing, understand how the game works. A large number of cadets and Tier 5's don't even know the minimap exists, have zero map knowledge and get lost easily, and don't even know when they are being shot. They just want to play some smashy robots for a few minutes without being insta-farmed before going back to some screaming kids or their 12-hr a day job....

[Mahavishna]

I think weight class has to be weighted too... also I disagree with Kamikazi on the bottom 10-12... you could play well.. contribute... but someone has to be last in damage and match score. Not fair to penalize for that.

[MrrVlad]

I'm a new player here, and this post is based on my experience with WOWs, WOT.
I would caution against heavily balancing the teams around player skill:
Let's assume you have a perfect skill measure. Considerring a small player base, T1 and T2-T5 would be matched together, so a T1 player's team will be balanced with alot of lower-tier players. This setup is bad for both - T1 will have to consider all teammates as meatshields, and whenever a teammate encounters an opponent, it's likely the opponent will be more experienced, and encounter will end quickly. Most importantly, alot of matches will be like this for T1, which would reduce "fun".

Also a proper "balancing" has to happen on both Tier and mech class at the same time - both teams should have similar amounts of mechs per class and per tier of players, while trying to reduce the tier spread when possible. It's also will be useful to have protected matchmaking for new players.

As for match score, I would think it can be a good measure, if rebalanced to give more weight to "support" events and to reduce lrm/splash weapon damage influence. And it's important to reward top contributors on loosing team. maybe not with positive change, but with "no change", balancing it with "no change" for lowest player on winning team.

[BeCause]

Detach win/loss from PSR.

[Bistrorider]

C E Dwyer, on 16 June 2020 - 04:27 AM, said:

Some may well leave, others might return.
Having been away for months, possible never to return ( Crusader would change this btw)
I think I can be objective.

First of all, I think putting all players in tier 3 at the beginning of the reset is a good idea. Even those who right now are tier 4 or 5. It's a safe solution in case of losing some players who may be angry, when they lose their progress.

Thank you for the explanation. I hope that some changes in psr and matchmaker will help. But maybe situation will be the same due to, let's say, nature of MWO and randomness of quick play games? But there is something wrong with the tier system itself. My example: I started playing in june 2019. After long brake from playing any multi game and any computer game in general. Getting out from tier 5 was kinda hard. It was a grind for mc's, mechs and I had to learn many thinks, sometimes this learning was very painful I moved through tier 4 very fast, had some good builds and fun playing them. Tier 3 for me is a most fu..ked up place to be, because you can play with all players from t-5 to t-1. So going out of tier 3 took me some time. Now I'm stucked in tier 2, and at least I see some difference in matches and players I'm facing. And tier 2 becomes really hard for me, but also I had more fun, because of more mc's more mechs, more ideas for builds. I see tiers as some kind of leagues, like in a sport. That's why I wanted to go up, but I stopped bother about it when I reached tier 2, started to play more factions or played private matches.

Right it's already too long. I'm getting to the point.

Somehow around August 2019 I showed MWO to my friend. So I already knew this or that and obviously played a lot better that in my first match ever. He created an account I took trial Atlas and did some good blast in one or two matches, been drunk I'm looking at the tier belt and I'm tier 4. I'm like how? (Don't remember the score and I can't find my friend account on Jarl. Maybe beacuse he didin't play later?). There were some talks here about how fast you can go out from tier 5. So you can go up really fast and I think it shouldn't be that way. I don't know the numbers behind the tier progress bar, but maybe those numbers should be much higher? Like going up or going down should really took a player decent amount of time? Not like, I'm playing few months and I can be tier 1 or almost tier 1.

EDIT. Maybe solution that tier 5 plays only with tier 5 and so on would change something, but the playerbase is to low for that imo. And it also gonna be boooring

Edited by Bistrorider, 16 June 2020 - 11:53 PM.

[Stone Wall]

Doesn't help your discussion on adjusting the PSR but....

The PSR was a bad idea to put into a MechWarrior game. MechWarrior has always had a high learning curve. You learn by getting your *** beat and by doing what that guy did to other people. Having players compete in echo chambers of skill is not good for the health of your game, as you see the state it is in today.

[Sjorpha]

Zerex, on 15 June 2020 - 11:07 PM, said:

On Incursion and assault base rushing to win the game to boost your PSR, in other words you might see a huge in games being won or lost with not a single mech dying, and in some cases, not even a point of damage being done.

If base rushing is objectively a good strategy for winning, then that's by definition the correct way to play the mode. If you want to make people not play for the objectives the way to do that is to change the game modes so that it's no longer an effective way of winning.

A win is a win, a loss is a loss. Playing for the win is how people should play the game, introducing perverse incentives to make players not play for the win is a terrible idea.

If the winning strategies are cheesy or uninteresting or whatever you thing you dislike, you can argue for changes the game modes to that the winning strategies become interesting.

No matter what, being good at winning is what it means to be good at the game. There is no other metric.

Edited by Sjorpha, 17 June 2020 - 05:12 AM.

[Sjorpha]

Xiphias, on 15 June 2020 - 12:53 PM, said:

You can see that the W/L system arrives at a good steady state with clearly defined tiers. Including the MS in the calculation causes the system to diverge and ends up putting things back to where they are right now. How long that takes will depend on the values used and the playerbase, but that's the eventual result.

This is great.

PGI please pay attention to this above simulation and do simulations for whatever models you're considering.

We want a distribution along the lines of the blue one, we don't want a distribution like the red one.

[Sergeant Destroy]

So is this **** gonna happen anytime soon or what?

[spannerturner]

New thread on the topic was started:

https://mwomercs.com...edback-round-1/

[Munkeyed]

Would make it more directly competitive... HUZZAH!
should still have a slight penalty/bonus for win/loss, just too keep it a "team sport"

[Exhall]

PGI essentially said "We can't fix this, you do it". And when it all falls down over semantics they can say "Well, we tried". With player numbers so small everyone will be playing everyone else anyway so it won't make any difference.

[Tin Roof Rusted]

Not sure if this is the place to suggest this but here goes.

A while ago I had a email conversation with someone there about Pilot score after a match.

For example, you could run around kicking butt, kill 10 on other team, loose the game due to score or whatever, and your Pilot Rating will be = or go DOWN Solely because your team lost the match!

I mean really? If you kicked butt that match, team lost, you shouldn't be penalized just because your team lost the match!


Another suggestion I had was the loading screens when exiting a game. IMO, a great deal of time in this game is devoted to skills on a new mech.
So when the game is over, why can't the game put you back on the last screen you were in before the match launched?

Instead, the match ends, you are back on Home, then have to click to Mechlab, then have to click to skills.
Why not just put us back in the screen we were in when we clicked Quick Play?

[Xiphias]

Barely Good, on 18 June 2020 - 01:42 PM, said:

Not sure if this is the place to suggest this but here goes.

A while ago I had a email conversation with someone there about Pilot score after a match.

For example, you could run around kicking butt, kill 10 on other team, loose the game due to score or whatever, and your Pilot Rating will be = or go DOWN Solely because your team lost the match!

I mean really? If you kicked butt that match, team lost, you shouldn't be penalized just because your team lost the match!

That's perfectly fine though. I know it doesn't seem fair to go down on a great match, but as long as the movement on average is in the correct direction the individual matches don't matter. A player that is consistently putting up good results (10 kills) will win more often than not so they will go up. A player that isn't contributing might go up (undeserved) some matches, but will end up losing more often than they win.

Individual match results don't matter, only the average of the match results. If you balance the MM around individual matches by letting players on the losing team move up (and winners move down) you will cause the system to diverge over time and split most players into either T1 or T5. That's not a good system in the long run.

[Akillius II]

If PSR change works then Devs gonna know it from all the haters yelling about being up against equals. And number of steam rolls will go down while number of close matches should go up. Therefore their precious win/loss ratios will be (correctly) a thing of the past as the number of matches won/lost vs equals should over time become 50/50 equal.
But from many of the comments I can see a lot just don't get it, and that's caused by way too many Years of a bad faux "PSR".

I vote Core 1A as it does not favor a reverse flow to tier 5, and it does not favor the old ways.
+ Match scores already account for win/loss.
+ One "bad" or good match doesn't equal a whole hill of beans after a few dozen matches if PSR is formulated correctly.
If there was say 500 points per tier then it'll take several matches to change tiers, so a few bad/good matches won't change it.
+ Core 1B and 2B are not zero sum and both act like the current PSR just in reverse down to tier 5.
+ A real PSR would not require monthly/quarterly resets/adjustments/etc which (as others pointed out) 1B/2B/2C would.
+ 1A favors the floating middle and players float or sink depending on skill, as it should be.

Caveats:
- Mechs that move 0 distance for entire match get No match score.
- Mechs that overheat and explode within first 2 minutes of match starting get Negative match score.
- Mechs that go out of bounds and die within first 2 minutes of match starting get Negative match score.
- Players that severely damage or kill "friendlies" within first 45 seconds of match starting get Negative match score.
To avoid exploiting PSR to drop tiers, these players PSR for that match should be flagged to stay Unchanged.

[Horseman]

Akillius II, on 18 June 2020 - 06:01 PM, said:

+ Core 1B and 2B are not zero sum and both act like the current PSR just in reverse down to tier 5.

They very much are zero sum if the PSR adjustment is calculated correctly. Remember, a zero sum system just has to ensure that the total amount of PSR increase is equal to the amount of PSR decrease (ie, that the sum of all PSR changes after the match equals zero). How that amount is distributed overall is not relevant.

[Akillius II]

Cognitive biases aside, lets avoid systems that require never ending "adjustments" therefore the amount distributed does matter.
Otherwise PGI will have a "MMR Hell" ranking system like league of legends & some other games use.

Also PSR must not be linked to a history of a players previously played matches like some kind of persistent leaderboard-like ranking system to avoid smurfing among other issues.

However to encourage team play PGI just needs to simply increase the matchscore rewards for:
Lance Formation, Protected Light, Protected Medium, Protect Proximity

Ideally there would be a Solo-PSR, and a Team-PSR, and a CW-PSR, but that won't happen.
Because PGI is not looking to reinvent match maker, PSR and match scores all at the same time.
So PGI is unlikely to mess with matchscores beyond the above as that is an established known working system.
Moreover if PGI changes too much in matchscores or match maker then interpretation of changes to PSR will be flawed.

Fear not because in the end it doesn't matter what I write here, as I'm not on twitter, and I'm not one of Russ's pets, plus I'm not a whale and only purchased half the mechs via preorder over the years on my main account so I'm definitely persona non grata.

Edited by Akillius II, 19 June 2020 - 05:07 PM.

[Ishaldre Conner]

I haven't played in years due to the wildly unbalanced weapons and mechs, a complete lack of a meta-game with any true BattleTech canon or feel to it, the lack of constructive/meaningful/important missions and gameplay, and the static maps.

My two-cents on what needs to happen?

1. Procedurally generated maps, so no two battlefields are the same (unless the battle is at a particular city/landmark/etc.)
2. Fix PUGs, S7 and Faction Play with a Canon timeframe selector, which will allow people to play period-specific battles across the IS from the Star League to the Word of Blake (or beyond). This gives everyone a chance to play to their likes and maybe try another BT era they are not familiar with. This also allows the development team to produce more Mechs from all eras and prevents any Mech produced from being totally nerfed as almost all Mechs had their glory day at some point in the BT canon.
3. Make the Clans operate like the Clans. Batchall must be in force during Faction Play (and possibly PUGs, but I think not having it in PUGs would be better). One of the big draws to the Clans is the Batchall and to have more accurate Faction play, 12 IS Mechs vs a smaller Clan force not only helps balance the superior weaponry of the Clan, it gives the IS Mechs a more sporting chance. And to make the Batchall more attractive, the lower a Clan team's bid, the more swag they will walk away with if they win (C-Bills, etc).
4. Make Faction play missions have more significance. Scouting missions, hit and run supply lines, frontal assaults, sneak attacks, "hold the line" and other mission types that all feed in to each other based on success or failure. Points, rankings, and badges are great for S7, but ultimately useless when it comes to Faction play if you want it to be a true canon-based game mode. Also, every fight being an even number of Mechs of the same tonnage is lame. War is never lined-up so neatly. Players want to see a lance of scout Mechs do a hit and run on two lances of lights and mediums defending an ammo dump or to see a star of Assault Mechs fighting to the last against waves of attacking Mechs.

I know I am asking a lot, but I played for many years here and put a lot of money in to this game in the hopes that the development would come around to a model of gameplay that was more engaging, jived with BT canon, and made more sense. I know that this post will likely fall by the wayside and MWO will fade away, no longer profitable or enjoyable.

And that makes me very sad...

[Surn]

Sorry, as the a 99% player that has actual experience in this type of system I must apologize for not keeping up with the restrictions as I am working on a project at the moment.
Although, I was not aware of the restriction in finding average player PSR. My old league RPI could easily handle that, so I assumed 24 years later that would not be a problem.
I had also relied upon a rpi adjustment system to simplify match tracking and player RPI and team RPI. Think of it as college basketball RPI rankings, with player rankings included. You know, March Madness...how the brackets are calculated... maybe that is unfamiliar to some of my fellow mechwarriors.
my proposed, forumla was ( from post):
Win/Loss variable:
W = +1 for winning pilots and -1 for losing pilots
Match variables:
P = Individual Pilot Matchscore
TA = Team Average Matchscore
WA = Winning Team Average Matchscore
LA = Losing Team Average Matchscore
A = Average Matchscore of match
Historical variables:
PPSR = Individual Pilot Current PSR
APSR = Average PSR of Pilots in the game.
PSR = (P * (APSR/PPSR)/TA) + W * ( 1 + (WA/LA))
This makes it harder to gain matchscore as you have a higher PSR relative to the match participants, and the opposite is true.
However, it is not Zero sum, but that can be alleviated with a lookup table.

My new formula :
PSR = P/A + W * ( 1 + WA/LA)
How the pilot did in the game + win/loss factor that is consistent across winners and losers
Rank the players in order of psr, with top psr worth 24 points and bottom worth -24.




Also, how did the "Community PSR Fixes / Proposals" seem to happen the same day as the announcement? I literally have not had time to put into this yet.

Edited by Surn, 23 June 2020 - 08:26 AM.