62 replies to this topic

[Kodyn]

Ok, so bittervet back after a several month break, been playing for a few days now with the new PSR system. First of all, what was the point in changing anything? Tier 3 took so few matches to get out of it was a joke, and I'm sailing through T2 equally fast, even having terrible matches and being rusty as can be. I'll be back to maxed out T1 in no time and with no effort at all at this rate. This is despite frequent heat bugs, the servers seeming to have been downgraded to the point where I see multi discos every match and everyone is lagging. Despite teams potatoing harder than I previously thought it humanly possible to potato.

So my question is- does gameplay improve at all back in T1? It's been a long time since I've been T2-3, so maybe it's always been this bad and I never realized, but this is not enjoyable. I've never seen so many teams allow themselves to be surrounded and shot from every side, seen so many mechs move less than a grid square for a whole match, seen so many builds like 1xERLL + 1xERPPC + 2x SSRM 6 slapped onto 45-50 tons, etc.

I just want fun matches. That's all. I don't care about mech money, I don't care about stats aside from making sure I'm contributing and improving. But it's not very fun right now, watching people play like they're intentionally trying to throw matches or having a stroke in their chair. I don't know how they could be enjoying it, when they have sub 100 dmg games match after match. It's like the Twilight Zone outside T1, feels like playing a different, much worse game.

Someone please tell me there's a light at the end of the tunnel and T1 somehow magically feels better, because I used to really enjoy this game, warts and all, simply for the gameplay. Or explain to me how this new PSR system in any way improves the game, because you all voted on it apparently, for some reason.

[John Bronco]

It does not get better. Every now and then during primetime you'll get a match loaded with actual T1 pilots and things can be quite tense, but it's rare. Most of the people you are commenting on are likely lower tier or lockon farmers as the game does not have the population to achieve highly stratified matches.

And the fact of the matter is the majority of the player base for MWO is just flat bad at video games.

[Kodyn]

BlaizerP, on 19 September 2020 - 10:26 AM, said:

...

And the fact of the matter is the majority of the player base for MWO is just flat bad at video games.

This part I'll never get. I'm not very good at anything, in any game. Just average. If I truly sucked at something I could never enjoy it though, especially knowing I'm helping ruin the experience for everyone around me with my every action. I feel bad when I suck in a match, but now...I don't know. Hard to even feel bad because it's like people are just playing because they feel like they have to, and aren't even trying to enjoy it. I also just experienced multiple matches where either everyone or nearly everyone on both teams got heat bugs...we can't check our FPS/Ping anymore but the game feels, just, bad. It's frustrating, because there's always been something drawing me back to MWO every time I take a break, and I don't know what that is...but it's like the game/community are now actively trying to self-destruct along with PGI.

Probably only like 1k people left playing and I've been expecting too much lol. Sigh.

[RickySpanish]

Not exactly, T3 was quite fun but easy as pie. T2 is where I saw more team kills and friendly fire incidents than ever in the history of playing this game. T1 has the potential for tighter matches, but your games are still often decided by whether or not you end up with the better 4 man group. People complain about tonnage imbalance but meh, that's not as important as ending up with players from say, 228. I spent a good long while on a losing streak as I kept being teamed up with players who [Can't Win Matches]. Coupled with some hilarious mistakes of my own in the odd game without groups and T1 had the occasional potential of being as frustrating as T2.

Tl;dr: T2 is the worst, so it does get better at T1, but it still blows.

[LordNothing]

i just got out of middletier so i hope i encounter teams that are a little bit more proactive on the combat front.

doesn't seem like it though.

[martian]

Kodyn, on 19 September 2020 - 10:18 AM, said:

So my question is- does gameplay improve at all back in T1?

No, it does not.

Kodyn, on 19 September 2020 - 10:18 AM, said:

Someone please tell me there's a light at the end of the tunnel and T1 somehow magically feels better.

No, it does not.

Kodyn, on 19 September 2020 - 10:18 AM, said:

Or explain to me how this new PSR system in any way improves the game

No, it does not.

There is no difference between the old Tier 1 (that included almost all players thanks either their skill or because they played a lot of games to climb there, even if they sucked) and the new system that in reality mixes players of all skills together, together with pre-made groups, and zero weight considerations.

Kodyn, on 19 September 2020 - 10:18 AM, said:

, because you all voted on it apparently, for some reason.

Not everybody voted for "this" new PSR system.

Kodyn, on 19 September 2020 - 10:42 AM, said:

If I truly sucked at something I could never enjoy it though, especially knowing I'm helping ruin the experience for everyone around me with my every action.

Three possible explanations:
1) They do not care.
2) They are so bad players that they do not realize that they are spoiling somebody else's experience.
3) They have no influence over the non-functional matchmaker/PSR system anyway, so there is nothing what they could do even if they would care.

I am deeply sorry.

[Kodyn]

I know, I know...and I think I knew the kind of responses I'd see as well, as 6+ years of experience with PGI and MWO have taught some lessons lol.

I used to try not to play on Sundays or EU servers because of this type of gameplay, but maybe I can just adjust to it and make my own fun somehow, not at all tied to successful matches. I do kinda wish they'd just revert the changes though, even if it's only slightly different in reality, this MM feels much worse in practice. 2 assaults, 1 medium and 9 lights worse. Or the reverse imbalance. I used to predict wins/losses by player names I recognized, now I can clearly tell a stomp within 2 seconds of glancing at the weight distribution.

One plus to all this, now I can play moderately bad or just sub-optimal builds and be creative with no downside, since your PSR goes up seemingly every match, unless you literally suicide or are terrible on a level I can't even comprehend.

[VonBruinwald]

Kodyn, on 19 September 2020 - 10:18 AM, said:

Or explain to me how this new PSR system in any way improves the game, because you all voted on it apparently, for some reason.

To answer your question:

VonBruinwald, on 30 June 2020 - 04:46 AM, said:

This was not a community decision. The vast majority of the populace was not informed or given the option to weigh in on these decisions. The "community" [we] are talking about is an elite-clique.

The quoted thread explains in detail why the current system is a failure and how a better alternative was offered but due to friend-voting we ended up with what we got.

VonBruinwald, on 01 July 2020 - 05:49 AM, said:

In a nutshell:

• PGI threw their hands up and said "Fine! You fix the 'wolfing matchmaker if you're so smart".
  
• So an elite-clique came up with a solution.
  
• Then Nightbird came up with a better solution.
  
• But he wasn't part of the in-crowd so the clique dragged his idea through the mud and presented theirs to PGI round the back. PGI implemented their idea.

And now:

• Nightbird has gone public with his idea.
  
• And the clique are attempting to drag it through the mud again, but the models are on his side.
  
• Which has left the clique salty, seeing as they pitched their idea as community driven.

[LordNothing]

at this point i kind of think we should get rid of psr all together and just do random. though to be fair the psr system may actually be balancing out the 4 mans by giving skilled teams worthless potatoes. would certainly explain why i havent seen any good teams (other than that they are rare).

Edited by LordNothing, 19 September 2020 - 12:14 PM.

[Kodyn]

Personally I've been seeing pre-mades lose as often as they win, simply because half of them aren't trying either. If your premade is all in some gimmick meme loadout, or dropping way light and not actually good at driving lights...or just aren't good players to begin with, kinda removes any advantage.

I feel like all combining queues accomplished was screwing over any chance at tonnage balance. Ok, so now guys with only one friend can group up in solo. I thought the main complaint from those folks before was they didn't like getting stomped in group queue...well, welcome to modern MWO, where most matches are stomps no matter what queue. All we did was shift the cause of the stomps from one thing to another. I'm really not sure which was worse- the PSR change or the combo-queuing, but none of it makes much sense or seems to be in any way enhancing what's left of the game. One of the like, three employees left at PGI should just revert it and then promise to never try fixing anything ever again. Let the game ride out the rest of it's lifespan as it was at the beginning of the year- it felt better back then than it had for a good bit.

MM with this small of a community is always going to suck, but at least before the changes it sucked slightly less, I feel.

[Willard Phule]

The best part of T1 is waiting twice as long for a match with T3 Cadets you got in 30 seconds back at T2.

[JediPanther]

The only way to have fun with mwo is to care about winning as much as pgi cares about mwo. None at all. Run whatever builds you want and do whatever is fun for you.

[Tarl Cabot]

Hmmm, PSR change did not come up until after Solo queue was merged into the Group queue, Soup queue is using Group MM and and tonnage values instead of matching up Solo queue weight tiers. There is also the fact that PGI in their Battletech mind went with the smallest unit designation of Lance with min/max tonnage instead of thinking of gameplay value and restricting it to 1 weight class/group.

https://mwomercs.com...-hold-on-patch/

Then there was the outcry of PSR issues, etc. Initialling Paul was going to make the static PSR thresholds equal/zero sum. Lots of flak because if you could pull off 400+ MS one should move up a little and not have zero moment. PGI held off on it and allowed the players who visit the forums provide alternate systems, AS LONG AS IT PERTAINED to Matchscores generated in the game. The one that PSR selected appeared on the first page and had had 136 LIKES. The extreme outlier whose post was on page 13 with 10 LIKES and 45 LIKES on the linked thread (edited originally posted June 2019) with details would have required PGI to rewrite the MM as it used Win/Loss to make the teams. One example would have been if a 4-man with a high W/L ratio dropped they would have been paired with the worse players in the bunch. Mine you, examples like this was not posted for several months but PGI was not looking at rewriting the PSR but simply change a formula and MS triggers.

https://mwomercs.com...thread-we-need/

In the end, it would not have matter since PGI was looking for MS triggers. The differences in the once Paul put up dealt with the on how much winning would determine placement/movement, no more static PSR/MS thresholds. See link below.

https://mwomercs.com...ity-version-10/

imho, the biggest outlier is how PGI setup the Soup queue. It did not help when PGI put ALL players in mid-Tier 3, including incoming new accounts and recently created Cadets and players who were still in Tier 4 and 5. That was a clusterf.

Then, as noted at the beginning of this post, allowing groups of lance size that could technically field 3 assaults+light, but usually two assaults+ others, or go heavy with all the same mech/load out. Seriously.. for those who have played FP, usually the most effective teams were those whose mechs complimented each other, many times fielding the same loadout/mechs. What could go wrong by allowing that in Soup Queue. And using tonnage instead of weight class matching.. many have seen how that worked in Group queue, both good and bad.

The biggest joke..? How PGI compared the Tiers prior to making PSR changes.. They were like WOW, Tier 5 had more players than the other tiers when they posted a graph showing the players who had dropped at least one game from the previous 3 months. Of course Tier 5 would be huge since players started out in Tier 5. The Leaderboards only counts/shows players who had played at least 10 games that month.. That should have been a clue to PGI on the potential player base which did not stick around.

Anyhow.. beer run!!

Anyhow

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 20 September 2020 - 09:31 AM.

[RickySpanish]

JediPanther, on 19 September 2020 - 02:29 PM, said:

The only way to have fun with mwo is to care about winning as much as pgi cares about mwo. None at all. Run whatever builds you want and do whatever is fun for you.

Sure, but would you mind dropping with the other team?

[Nightbird]

So PGI put together a bad PSR and MM and MWO obviously was hurt by it. Then PGI let the community design a new PSR system and so the community created another bad system. And so here we are today. Any questions?

Tarl Cabot, on 19 September 2020 - 05:47 PM, said:

I'm glad you're so embarrassed by what happened to be rewriting history to get over it. I would be embarrassed too.

[TriggerHappyPacifist]

I like the new PSR system and it has gotten better at Tier 2 and 1. More players means better matches but new combined queue and weight mismatch by MM needs some tweaks. An easy fix would be to assign mechs by weight to lances, groups be damned. Grouped by speed would be even better.

I don't know how you get 6 assaults on 1 team and 0 on the other. That really needs fixing.

Day and time makes a big diff on teamplay for sure, and not just because MM has a smaller population to work with. Draw people out on voice comms and you get more teamwork. Though u have to remember a lot of folks don't speak english if you play late or early.

[martian]

Shmoken, on 19 September 2020 - 10:10 PM, said:

...
I don't know how you get 6 assaults on 1 team and 0 on the other. That really needs fixing.
...

Russ Bullock and Paul Inouye have known about this problem since ... dunno ... April or May? Now it is late September and so far there has been no PGI's attempt to "fix" it.

[JediPanther]

RickySpanish, on 19 September 2020 - 06:24 PM, said:

Sure, but would you mind dropping with the other team?

I have. You don't remember all the times we've fought each other. I fight every one eventually. I'm as annoying as uacs jamming all at once right when you find an enemy dakka boat.

[Red Potato Standing By]

Kodyn, on 19 September 2020 - 10:42 AM, said:

This part I'll never get. I'm not very good at anything, in any game. Just average. If I truly sucked at something I could never enjoy it though, especially knowing I'm helping ruin the experience for everyone around me with my every action. I feel bad when I suck in a match, but now...I don't know. Hard to even feel bad because it's like people are just playing because they feel like they have to, and aren't even trying to enjoy it. I also just experienced multiple matches where either everyone or nearly everyone on both teams got heat bugs...we can't check our FPS/Ping anymore but the game feels, just, bad. It's frustrating, because there's always been something drawing me back to MWO every time I take a break, and I don't know what that is...but it's like the game/community are now actively trying to self-destruct along with PGI.

Probably only like 1k people left playing and I've been expecting too much lol. Sigh.

I am bad at video games compared to a lot of people, but I still find enjoyment with them.it is kind of like karaoke majority of people are not very good but find great enjoyment in doing it regardless.( also why is it someone else’s responsibility to make sure you have a good experience?)

[Kodyn]

Now now Ricky and Jedi, you're both pretty. I'm also sure you've both killed me and vice versa.

I'm in the end just embracing the changes for now, as I did in the beginning of the year when the game felt ok and I had a sad, pathetic hope that FP/CW was going to somehow come back. I'll give up on that pipe dream, not worry so much about whether my team even knows what game they're playing or how to operate their own hands- and just play what I want how I want.

I've started to notice that I can get away with different things in different mechs than I used to, so that's interesting. Suddenly I can out-damage my entire team with some of my worst mechs/builds, while my carry mechs can't carry hard enough to force a win when the team decides to throw it, etc. 1k dmg in a BASP is nice and all, but I feel less compelled nowadays to bother when that kind of dmg will still result in a loss where I have the only kills. This gives me an excuse to run some of my godawful stuff that I would see tank my PSR previously. I've had matches where I was embarrassed by the mech I brought and the mistakes I made, where I still had 200-300 more damage than the next highest ally, and the only kills on the team.

It's a little frustrating to see some of the stuff I see in matches, but I'm getting over it. I'm sure people judge and hate the way I play too sometimes, but this is what MWO is now - make your own fun. If CW/FP ever makes a comeback, I'll dive into my dropdecks and tryhard again, but for now, frack it.

Edited by Kodyn, 20 September 2020 - 09:16 AM.