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Psr Going Down Constantly - What Am I Doing Wrong?


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#1 RickDiasPK

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Posted 27 February 2021 - 12:10 PM

(Nevermind my join date; I've barely had time to play MWO despite having an account for years. Only just now got serious about the game)

So, I'm in Tier 5 and puzzled by something: My PSR is going down nearly every game. Even ones where I feel I do decent-ish (200 damage, stay alive, didn't do anything to cause a teammate to get killed, I maintain locks where I can, etc.), my rating goes down.

Clearly the game is telling me I'm trash and need to improve, but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. If I play more aggressively to score more damage, I die; massed fire cuts me down quickly. If I do team-player oriented things like carrying ECM and TAG to escort my team's long-range units (kind of like an Anvil mech in tabletop), my PSR plunges further. In fact, I actually feel stupid for doing these things. EDIT: Heck, my PSR goes down even when my team wins!

Basic controls and such are no problem; I can move my 'Mech competently, I avoid overheating most of the time, and so on. I'd like to think I'm not hopeless in this part of the game.

Nonetheless, the game has made clear it's extremely unhappy with my play and thinks I'm among the worst MWO has to offer. That stings. Any starting points on what I'm missing? I realize it's hard to guess without match videos of my play... but can you think of any common stumbling blocks?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Edited by RickDiasPK, 27 February 2021 - 12:14 PM.


#2 Ignatius Audene

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Posted 27 February 2021 - 12:32 PM

Simple start is mechbuilds and settings. Put your mouse sense waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down and then half it again. Psr change is depending on your performance relative to red and blue team. But dont mind going down. It is just a mm tool to pair you with similar skilled opponents and not an achievement!!

Ms and therefore psr is 9/10 dmg dmg and dmg. 200 dmg is normally not good enough to rise. Forget all tt builds (spam whatever weapon your chassis can spam the best and corresponding to the quirks. If your mech needs more than 2 weapon groups, it is prob to hard on the bracket build side). Stay away from slow mechs until your positioning is rly good.

#3 RickDiasPK

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Posted 27 February 2021 - 12:43 PM

That's what I was afraid of. Admittedly, that's discouraging; I don't expect it to play 1:1 to tabletop, but learning that pretty much all in-lore designs are bad in this game is jarring. Had been hoping that things like a clone of the Tempest or Anvil could do well (or even a Black Knight clone), but perhaps not?

Thank you for your thoughts in any case!

#4 Elizander

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Posted 27 February 2021 - 01:13 PM

PSR compares your performance to the performance of everyone else in the game, including your team and the enemy team. The winning team also gets a bonus at the end of the match.

If you want to find out how to improve, check the average damage numbers of everyone in the end screen for team damage/match score. You will generally want to be in the upper middle of that.

Part of it is just finding what playstyle works for you best. I hate poking and peeking 10,000 times a match to rack up damage so I go with huge alpha mechs that get the job done in 6-9 salvos instead of 20.

Also until they patch it out, I recently got the top match score by on my Kitfox-C by dealing an amazing 200 damage and shooting down 1,800 missiles on Polar.

Honestly though, you shouldn't bother with it too much. It just places you where you can perform alright. There's no point in being Tier 1 if you're going to die in the first 2 minutes due to hyper aggressive Nascar by veteran players who know the maps inside and out. When you get better, you go up and if not, then take your time to improve.

Personally I'd turn off the PSR/Tier display on the home screen if it ruins your enjoyment of the game. You can find it in settings. Me and other players can climb up to T3/T2 or whatever if we just played our best mechs, but I got like 150 of them and I'd be stupid not to have fun with as many of them as I can so screw tier rating and Imma just go have a few laughs in my AC20 Urbie. Posted Image

The downside of this though (as a whole) is that when I do take out my favorite mechs, there are games where I end up plowing through newbies with like 5+ solo kills while just going off on my own. It's the consequences of PGI not giving each mech its own PSR rating.

Edited by Elizander, 27 February 2021 - 01:17 PM.


#5 Gagis

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Posted 27 February 2021 - 01:54 PM

View PostRickDiasPK, on 27 February 2021 - 12:43 PM, said:

That's what I was afraid of. Admittedly, that's discouraging; I don't expect it to play 1:1 to tabletop, but learning that pretty much all in-lore designs are bad in this game is jarring. Had been hoping that things like a clone of the Tempest or Anvil could do well (or even a Black Knight clone), but perhaps not?

Thank you for your thoughts in any case!

Roughly same kind of stuff is strong in MWO as is in Battletech, but the trick is that most stock mechs in battletech are deliberately designed to be very weak and are massively outgunned by any of the few optimized canon mechs, not to mention player designs.

MWO has a more restrictive mechlab than the mech construction rules of the board game, but still robust enough that anything a player makes is almost certain to be better than stock, simply because most stock mechs are deliberately designed to be A LOT worse than they could be.

EDIT: Actual tips:
Mouse sensitivity WAY DOWN
Try to focus fire to what your team mates are shooting
Try to focus damage into one component on a mech you are shooting at.
Try to twist your torso to make focusing YOUR components harder
Watch how streamers play on twitch

Edited by Gagis, 27 February 2021 - 01:56 PM.


#6 RickDiasPK

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Posted 27 February 2021 - 02:19 PM

I'm noticing the most common theme here is the mechlab, and that's starting to make sense to me. I've been trying to run configs inspired by lore/tabletop (not exact copies, but similar) and found the only time this has worked is on the Huntsman.

I'll have to think about whether I'm really interested in that or not; I miss the 'combined arms' feel of tabletop and this game's fan-made predecessor.

In any case, thank you all for your opinions. It's giving me a good starting point to figure this out!

#7 Grumpy Old Man

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Posted 27 February 2021 - 02:29 PM

Rick, why don't you post the build you use on your Mechs right now and we will see whether we can offer some suggestions as to what might work better. :)

I am sure you will be able to find something you enjoy. :)

#8 RickDiasPK

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Posted 27 February 2021 - 05:26 PM

You're going to laugh, because the things I've been running prior to this topic are tabletop builds I enjoyed. Things like:

TDR-10M Thunderbolt on Thunderbolt (Champion): 1x HPPC, 1x LPPC, 1x SNPPC, 1x ERML, 1x LRM-5, 1x SRM-4 (these proxied for the 1x MML-5 on the tabletop config), 4/6/4 movement on a Light engine, all remaining weight to armor and heatsinks.

TMP-3G Tempest on Thanatos: 1x Gauss, 3x ML, 1x LPL, 1x SRM-4, 4/6/4 movement on XL engine, all else to armor and heatsinks.

ANV-6M Anvil on Thanatos: 2x LPL, 1x ML, 1x TAG, 1x ECM, 5/8/3 movement on standard engine, all else to armor and heatsinks.

BL-6b-KNT Black Knight: Just ran the stock config with the replacement of one Medium Laser for an extra heatsink.

MAD-6S Marauder II: Stock config.

Huntsman G proxy on Huntsman: 3x ER Medium Laser, 2x SSRM-6, all else to armor/heatsinks. Weight that would normally go to a Retractable Blade used for armor/heatsinks.

The Huntsman G is actually doing okay. The rest, not so much.

#9 Elizander

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Posted 27 February 2021 - 06:01 PM

There are mechs that still run mixed loadouts, but not in the lore build sense. One issue that people pointed out is that this is purely a mech game so you have to design your mech to fight other mechs. There's no infantry with rocket launchers, light vehicles or enemy installations that you can target with machine guns or a single LRM10 to take them out (though I think you can do this in MW5).

You can usually do fine with two weapon types. Missiles and lasers, gauss rifles and lasers, UAC/10s and PPCs and so on. Just take into account the ranges of your weapons because ideally you'd like to be able to shoot them all at a good range.

If you still like a Thunderbolt with ER PPCs, there's a Thunderbolt that does really good with PPCs and it has 2 energy hardpoints that are high mounted on the right torso with a good amount of PPC quirks to support it (the 9S). Maybe that's enough to what you want and it'll be a bit more effective at what it does (peeking and poking with 2 PPCs).

You can drop the SRM4 on the Thanatos and just go with 2x LL and 2x ER ML to support the gauss rifle.

You get the idea. It'll be close enough to what you want by just adjusting it a little more so you can be more effective.

I assume you got everything to go with double heatsinks and you're putting like 90% of the armor in the front.

#10 RickDiasPK

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Posted 27 February 2021 - 06:52 PM

Correct; I'm generally facing forward because I fully expect any Light that SERIOUSLY wants to ruin my back to be able to succeed. I don't completely ignore the armor back there, but it's not a major concern of mine.

And yeah, it's true that we're only fighting other Mechs. I might do some more tweaking, but so far that's pretty disappointing. Wasn't expecting a pure copy of tabletop, but this doesn't feel all that much like BattleTech to me. Oh well.

Thanks for your thoughts, I might try some of these ideas out!

#11 Dozer6

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Posted 28 February 2021 - 07:33 AM

I encourage you to look at some of the builds in the mech section of this new player help section, find a good solid fit that works for you.
I just started working on getting my psr up, and i'm going up! Finally.

Read and listen as much as you can from the better players in here and put it to practice.

You are going to have matches where your team mates will be completely incompetent, focus on your damage output, don't get down and move on to the next match.

#12 General Solo

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Posted 28 February 2021 - 08:01 AM

seismic helps
best back armour ever, well its saved me plenty
being reactive to back shot indicators is usefull too

Edited by General Solo, 28 February 2021 - 08:02 AM.


#13 ScrapIron Prime

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Posted 28 February 2021 - 09:48 AM

Your Tempest build on the Thanatos chassis is good, other than the usual caveat about XL being fragile. The Anvil build, however, while durable and sporting no heat issues, is underpowered. Though the tabletop anvil was as well.

The thunderbolt build is a great example of how something can work in tabletop, but not in A first person shooter.

TDR-10M Thunderbolt on Thunderbolt (Champion): 1x HPPC, 1x LPPC, 1x SNPPC, 1x ERML, 1x LRM-5, 1x SRM-4 (these proxied for the 1x MML-5 on the tabletop config), 4/6/4 movement on a Light engine, all remaining weight to armor and heatsinks.

The PPCs are ballistic style weapons, requiring you to lead the target, the laser requires you to track the target without leading, the SRM has a different mechanism of leading the target, and the LRM requires maintaining a missile lock. Combined, you have 4 styles of weapons across two distinct range bands, which serves to complicate your reaction times and aim.

Such concerns don’t exist in tabletop, but looking around in MWO, you’ll see people reduce the number of weapon choices. In this case, if you changed the armament to 2 HPPC, 2 ML, and 2 SRM 4, you simplify both your aiming options as well as your range response options. What it loses in tabletop purity, it gains in MWO playability.

I like to straddle the line between playability and tabletop lore. As a board game junkie, I don’t like the meta builds, but I realize that they’re meta for a darn good reason... they’re effective. Find a comfortable medium so you enjoy both the build and the game play.

#14 Spheroid

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Posted 28 February 2021 - 11:19 AM

This isn't a tabletop simulator its a competitive arena shooter with an unrestricted mechlab and mixed teams composed of factions that would normally murder each other not fight side by side.

PSR is working correctly. If your desire is to be more lethal take loadouts that spew damage or deliver large chunks of damage while minimizing exposure.

Simply emulate those builds and chassis which you observe to have success in your matches. If not MW5 is releasing on Steam later this year.

#15 GaIahad FREWS

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Posted 28 February 2021 - 11:41 AM

View PostSpheroid, on 28 February 2021 - 11:19 AM, said:

... If not MW5 is releasing on Steam later this year.
I prefer to play MW5 on a Xbox series X Posted Image

#16 Ignatius Audene

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Posted 28 February 2021 - 12:49 PM

It is included in gamepass for pc as well.

https://grimmechs.isengrim.org/

Here are a bunch of meta builds. Even if u are not interested in meta, maybe take a look, to see some basic mech building rules (endo over ferro etc.)

Edited by Ignatius Audene, 28 February 2021 - 12:49 PM.


#17 Void Angel

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Posted 28 February 2021 - 01:04 PM

View PostRickDiasPK, on 27 February 2021 - 12:43 PM, said:

That's what I was afraid of. Admittedly, that's discouraging; I don't expect it to play 1:1 to tabletop, but learning that pretty much all in-lore designs are bad in this game is jarring. Had been hoping that things like a clone of the Tempest or Anvil could do well (or even a Black Knight clone), but perhaps not?

Thank you for your thoughts in any case!

That's a common reaction from some of us who played the 80s tabletop game - but as SrapIron pointed out, it's that way for a reason. It would be that way even if there were more roleplay aspects to the game. Harebrained Scheme's Battletech offering is a much closer fit to that kind of gameplay - but Mechwarrior games have -always- had bad results from tabletop canon builds. It's just a matter of format - the only possible solution would be to break out of the first-person vehicle shooter format that's defined the Mechwarrior series since MechWarrior 1.

Pick up a meta build for a 'mech you enjoy, learn to use that build, then go from there - modify away from the meta to suit your style and preferences as you like, but learning to use the meta will help you with all aspects of the game. I'd also check out some of the guides in that section of the forums, starting with Fat4Eyes excellent Tactics 101 illustrations.

#18 Half Ear

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Posted 28 February 2021 - 04:53 PM

Ignore the PSR. As noted the current setup is comparing you to the other 23 players in that drop (not the entire game) for movement up/down. And winning no longer guarantees movement up or breaking even, which was one of the biggest issues with the original PSR setup. Nor is there really anything earned by moving up in Tiers other than to be facing off against more competitive players who utilize the mechlab to juice what they can out of the builds they will be using.

Tier 5 is as low as one can drop, and it is filled with both new players to the game and long time players who aren't attempting to milk as much damage as they can to move up. A few would likely admit that for the most part they enjoy it now then the previous PSR setup, a setup which would allow a person with a 170ish MS w/ 0.86 W/L ratio to be able to reach Tier 1, consistently playing with/against others whose MS is 2-3x that.

And as a reminder, lore/TT is something MWO is not. MWO is not set in 3025 timeline with a general public mechlab, where mech upgrades could take months to complete and may not work 100% of the time even then. In MWO with its mechlab, a Battlemaster can be a scary or it can be a joke, dependent on the user.

I now think of tiers more in BT/MW terms, such as Elite, Veteran, Regular, Militia and Green. One could flip Militia and Green, even then a Green unit may have several Greens (recruits) troops who would then usually mixed in with Regular/Veterans for seasoning. Even for MWO though, PGI has failed to really incorporate and make CW/FP the centerpiece of the game. MWO is more like the the old Microsoft Gaming Zone than anything else.

Again, just Ignore the PSR for the most part. If you are not happy in your actual stats/scores, there is plenty of data, most likely an overload of data, but think of what you actually want? Just blow up and be blown up by mechs, playing the way you want, or do you want to enhance aspect in order to be more of a teamplayer, even when there are others barely touches that aspect of it. Do you want to treat the other 23 players like they are different levels of NPCS?....

Edited by Half Ear, 01 March 2021 - 06:39 PM.


#19 loopala

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Posted 05 March 2021 - 08:32 PM

PSR is a Lie!!
Fun is king!
I am tier 5 cause I like playing mechs I like vs META mechs.....

#20 ScrapIron Prime

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Posted 07 March 2021 - 07:45 AM

View Postloopala, on 05 March 2021 - 08:32 PM, said:

PSR is a Lie!!
Fun is king!
I am tier 5 cause I like playing mechs I like vs META mechs.....

This. I’ve been back for about 2 weeks and I’m closing in on Tier 3 where I’ll probably stay forever because I don’t run the meta or feel a need to compete. Just have fun with it.





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