379 replies to this topic

[Tongo Rad]

So does everyone start at 3?

[D U N E]

If you are fighting 1v4, then you are playing wrong. Any decent pilot is going to minimize exposing to multiple mechs, and any coordinated team is gonna try to 4v1. If you keep fighting large groups and not smartly minimizing your incoming fire, you are going to lose.

Chances are you will have a 4 man on your team, use your team as armour, help them maximise the damage dealt to the enemy for the armour you have lost as a collective. If you are gonna get yourself constantly out of position so a 4 man can punish you, it means you need to re-evaluate your positioning. Coordination is always gonna trump the lack thereof.

They didnt give is 8v8 and instead we got joined ques. These people should be raised in PSR, if you do well even if they go up, so can you. So just don't be a potato and take bad trades. 4 elite players means you have the chance to have 8 potatoes to pad your score.
The optimal solution is MM evening skill level between the teams, so even if they get 4 elites, your team is going to be generally more competent. So the 4 men need to carry their 8, while all you need to do is worry about your own weight. Though differences in PSR gain for groups isnt going to solve your issue. We need differences in how MM assigns players and creates groups. With 5 tiers and a small population, that isnt as easy as making sure your PSR goes up when you allow yourself to get farmed.

[MODOK69]

PSR changes are all well and good and thanks for the time put into it and listening to the community, but until you fix the weight (6 to 8 assault vs 1 assault in a drop, yes it happens more than you think), the PSR still really does not mean anything! Recommend group drops be limited to one of each weight class!!!

[Liophora]

Not only that but match score is still horribly biased against light mechs, not to mention that it doesn't take the actual objectives into account. Just had a win on conquest where I had 2 minutes of capture time, singlehandedly capturing 4 of the points and got 78
Seventy freaking eight for actually doing the map objectives and capturing. Less than an assault that did only 100 damage who got 93
This change does seem good, but only if you assume that match score is a fair measure of skill which it sure as hell ain't :/

[D U N E]

Capture time isn't a skillful activity that deserves a lot of MS. Capturing an objective isn't good, you should be holding an objective and stopping it from being captured, which equates to damage, which is a skillful activity - which should help remove a mech from their side, reducing the amount of mechs to deal damage/capture.
Once you have slightly more objectives, if the enemy lights aren't screening, then you can be back stabbing, etc.

Mindlessly capturing points isnt playing the objective. You are meant to hold and control ground, not run around point to point.

Light mechs get less MS due to usually having less weapons, though prime examples like the Wolfhound, Piranha, etc. Can all farm a lot of damage. Which can be said for many mechs, bads do nothing, primes do everything.

[morosis]

D U N E, on 01 July 2020 - 01:46 PM, said:

If you are fighting 1v4, then you are playing wrong. Any decent pilot is going to minimize exposing to multiple mechs, and any coordinated team is gonna try to 4v1. If you keep fighting large groups and not smartly minimizing your incoming fire, you are going to lose.

Chances are you will have a 4 man on your team, use your team as armour, help them maximise the damage dealt to the enemy for the armour you have lost as a collective. If you are gonna get yourself constantly out of position so a 4 man can punish you, it means you need to re-evaluate your positioning. Coordination is always gonna trump the lack thereof.

i dont know if it is intended, but i sense this undercurrent in your writing that you think i am trying to penalize someone for playing intelligently or use PSR to unfairly lift up my own average performance. i am not. i am only asking for a PSR system that accurately reflects my own capabilities, as an individual, and doesnt treat solo play and group play as the same when they are very much not.

no halfway decent player is trying to fight 1v4. the issue is that whether we like it or not, a 4 man group working in coordination is much, much more powerful than any individual player, and can isolate and defeat an individual player even if he has proper positioning and fights intelligently with his team. since the PSR calculation is explicitly a metric for individual skill, and we know how powerful coordinated groups are, then it needs to be a part of any even remotely accurate calculation.

maybe i should put this another way:

lets play out the logic.

PSR grouping exploitation drives stomps. stomps ruin competitive balance. lack of competitive balance drives attrition. attrition titrates the community down to just the elitists. then what?

instead, the system I am proposing would avoid incentivizing the best players to group in the first place. then, the stomps we see would not come from a desire to farm PSR but from organic mismatches or exceptional gameplay. we retain competitive balance, we avoid the attrition, and the elitists get to all be in tier 1 because there are enough average players to fill the other tiers. how is that not better for everyone?

Edited by morosis, 01 July 2020 - 02:48 PM.

[John Bronco]

I don't really think any of these top players really care about farming PSR. Competent players enjoy playing with other competent players and giving them a haircut on a score isn't going to change that. You're still going to get farmed and they're still going to go up.

[ghost1e]

tbqh actually the balance to grouping with good players is that ppl do less dmg themselves, as you can't farm that much in a good 4-man

(I myself don't find it very hard to do 1k+ solo, but if I'm in a decent 4-man it gets way harder)

[morosis]

BlaizerP, on 01 July 2020 - 02:51 PM, said:

I don't really think any of these top players really care about farming PSR. Competent players enjoy playing with other competent players and giving them a haircut on a score isn't going to change that. You're still going to get farmed and they're still going to go up.

if they want to play with their friends, totally cool. if their friends happen to all be elite players, totally cool. but PSR should account for the fact that 4 elite players are dropping together. why is that a bad thing?

i dont care if i'm average, or below average, or terrible. i care that the system is actively incentivizing elite players to team up and farm casuals for PSR.

my experience yesterday was a lot of being dead, sitting in spectator mode, listening to group guys talk about how they cant wait to be back in Tier 1, or how people need to "git gud" or "have fun in Tier 5". totally toxic.

[Liophora]

D U N E, on 01 July 2020 - 02:07 PM, said:

Mindlessly capturing points isnt playing the objective. You are meant to hold and control ground, not run around point to point

Yeah sure, there's definitely no skill in picking where to capture based on placements of both teams and points, avoiding enemy 'mechs, knowing when to defend the points and when to run to stay alive for the win...

Who said anything about mindless?

If it gets your team the win (which it frequently does after everyone else has been killed) then it has value and that should be reflected in the match score

D U N E, on 01 July 2020 - 02:07 PM, said:

which equates to damage, which is a skillful activity - which should help remove a mech from their side, reducing the amount of mechs to deal damage/capture.

Care to explain how dealing 500 damage in an LCT-1V requires the same level of skill as dealing 500 damage in, say, a FNR-5E? Because I'm pretty sure the former takes a lot more of both skill and luck. Hence my point: damage is a poor indicator of skill and yet is by far the main thing used for calculating match score.

[morosis]

TheUltimateGhost, on 01 July 2020 - 02:58 PM, said:

tbqh actually the balance to grouping with good players is that ppl do less dmg themselves, as you can't farm that much in a good 4-man

(I myself don't find it very hard to do 1k+ solo, but if I'm in a decent 4-man it gets way harder)

but you almost always will win, and that's a lot of the PSR calculation.

[Xaat Xuun]

MODOK69, on 01 July 2020 - 01:46 PM, said:

PSR changes are all well and good and thanks for the time put into it and listening to the community, but until you fix the weight (6 to 8 assault vs 1 assault in a drop, yes it happens more than you think), the PSR still really does not mean anything! Recommend group drops be limited to one of each weight class!!!

witness this for the first time the other day (before PSR change), we had 1 assault, they had 5, I was like, "That's not suppose to happen"
That really has been the only time I've seen that much lopsided weight between teams

[D U N E]

Good players should be incentivised to play with good players, and mediocre players should be advised.to play with good players. Group play is what brings the game more life, and everyone should be incentivised to form groups and play with them to increase their own skill as well as those around them.

PSR should not penalize people for playing with groups, it should try to be a measure of the average skill of the player. If the player isolates themselves to group play, then that should be their PSR, as that is what they on average bring to the table. With that inormation, the MM should be sorting groups into fair teams to make the games closer.

A group isnt isolated to one side, both sides on average will have a group, MM should try and make sure these groups are of equivilant skill levels, or the players in the team can make up this offset. The answer to group balancing is within the MM handling the PSR of grouped players, increasing the PSR of grouped players while they are in the group would personally be my method. So they gain/lose MS/Skill all the same, though afterwards they are given a modifier via the MM on their tier as they are in a group. Then the MM sorts teams based on this and tonnage

Skill, and playing with skill shouldn't be penalized, we should promote higher skill play and people seeking out higher skill play.Currently we need to wait a month for people to stabilise and get into their tiers and then view the average quality of games. Then we can see how unbalanced it is. For example, are the 4 mans on each side on average cancelling each other out.


500 damage in a locust vs Fafnir. I prefer lights and find the locust to be easier.

Locust is fast, can always be on the flank, and has more ample opportunity to place an artillery strike.

Fafnir is slow, punished by teams nascaring, and everytime you poke, you are likely gonna eat **** for it.

Locust you play it your way, Fafnir you try and take power points and have more RNG on your own team destroying your plan.

[D U N E]

Also, I would say, for arguments- choose optimal variants of each chassis. I'd argue it's a skill to pick a good mech, equip it with good weapons, and then use it appropriately.

[morosis]

D U N E, on 01 July 2020 - 03:16 PM, said:

A group isnt isolated to one side, both sides on average will have a group, MM should try and make sure these groups are of equivilant skill levels, or the players in the team can make up this offset. The answer to group balancing is within the MM handling the PSR of grouped players, increasing the PSR of grouped players while they are in the group would personally be my method. So they gain/lose MS/Skill all the same, though afterwards they are given a modifier via the MM on their tier as they are in a group. Then the MM sorts teams based on this and tonnage

if i'm reading this correctly, you're saying what I am saying. groups need to be handled differently than solo players. currently, it is not so. they are treated the same. formula is the same. dominant factors being match score and win rate.

as another poster said, good players were going to play together anyway. the system doesnt need to also reward them for doing it. solo players were going to get farmed anyway, the system doesn't need to penalize them for it.

Edited by morosis, 01 July 2020 - 03:41 PM.

[D U N E]

No. Group players should get the.exact same rewards as everyone else. What I am saying is when in a group, the MM has a raised modifier to make the group worth more. Though, with the lax way tiers are, there is no true way to do this.
Regardless, grouped players in PSR gain/loss are handled the exact way solos are.
It's just when in a group, the players are classed as being more valuable, so are therefore worth for the MM.

[D U N E]

End of the day, good players are going to get into tier 1, higher PSR isnt a "reward", it's an indication you are a better player. Or on average when you play you are bringing a higher level skill base. Though since to my knowledge 2 people in tier 1 are worth the exact same, there is no proper way to balance out the levels of good. Just buffing a group +1 tier is also a bad idea since you have many crap groups barely in their tier, and you would degrade their experience by arbitrarily saying they are worth +1 tier since they may have the ability to have team work.
Personally, I feel it's all stuck in the MM now actually getting the tier data and assigning groups, though since MM has to weigh both tonnage and Skill with a lower playerbase, I feel like that may be asking too much for it.

[OneTeamPlayer]

Making tier 1 solo and making tier 1 in a group is totally different and we all know it.

"Incentivizing groups" has been done no less than 3 times now (multiple FW versions, group queue, group queue 8v8) and always ended the same sad way.

Some people liked playing solo against other solo players.

Depending on how long it takes to sort high tier groups out of casual rotation a number of solo players will be "incentivized" out of playing MWO altogether.

MM works worse and worse the less population available, and solo players have always formed a massive majority of the playerbase in comparison to all group styles combined.

Keeping all those in mind, it was obvious that the best idea was to overwrite the well-liked and populated solo queue with group queue.

[DeathClown82]

yeah it would be great if i could actually get the damned patch to work

[Nearly Dead]

The IP is wasted on PGI, I wish it was possible to take it away from them like taking a horse away from a neglectful owner.