55 replies to this topic

[MadDach5und]

I've played this game on a constant basis for over seven years.

I didn't really give a damn about pilot skills for most of that time. Until the skill rating changed.

After years of playing for free, building skills and C-bills and a fleet of about a dozen mechs -- I sunk a few REAL dollars into the game - buying custom camo, paint jobs and such.

My skill rating moved to Tier 4 overnight. After 3 years or so without ANY real change. Then it changed again, and I was up in Tier 3 within a week or so. Odd. My game play was still the same. After developing some skill and growing with the game, I made it slowly into upper Tier Two over the next year or so.

Then about a year ago the Pilot Skills were re-negotiated. My creep to almost Tier one was demoted to Low Tier Three. One weekend struggling with trial mechs to get an achievement left me in high Tier Four.

Then, I started linking in to Twitch TV and the live streamers who broadcast gaming thru their online channels. It was fun - and still is. I'm a regular watcher of several channels. I realized the concepts of forming group lances and trying to sync drop with them into matching games. But then I realized I couldn't sync with a lot of them because they are Tier 1.

SO I started working harder at games.

Here is where the Leaderboard comes in.

For years, I also largely ignored the Leaderboard. Most times when I bothered to look up my name, my rank was usually somewhere in the three to six-thousand range. Meh. Didn't care.

For the last year I have been trying my damndest to game the most damage or kills I can and raise my skill rating. I have improved dramatically - at least, so far as the "Leaderboard" is concerned. My current Leaderboard ranking is 569, which isn't terribly high, but for most of this last year I have been, month to month, well above the 1,000 rank - and I believe a few times in the Top 100. So far this month I have played 305 matches with an average match score of 238.

Pilot Rating doesn't give a sh1t. I have wallowed along that line of purgatory between Tier 3 and 4 for more than a year now - never being more than few wins or losses above or below that transition. All I know that the harder I try to move up, the harder it gets to move AT ALL.

I started looking up a lot of pilot names for these online streamers and friends I have added by being part of the Twitch community. Many Are Tier One or Two Players. If you go by Leader Board stats, their monthly ranks are freaking two thousand, six thousand, ELEVEN thousand - playing only 20, 40 matches or maybe 100 tops. Yet their freaking pilot skill bars are maxxed Tier One ALL the time.

It appears to me Pilot Skill has turned into a kind of personal Credit Rating that can be Gamed by Tier One Players --
1. By controlling drops with joined friends and coordinated others
2. Playing assaults or mechs designed for max damage and likely kills
3. Playing the bare minimum of matches to maintain that rating.
4. Using Alt accounts to 'slum' drop and practice alternative designs so as not to taint their primary account

My conclusion:
High Pilot Skills are based on controlling their environment before the match ever starts, not dealing with whatever gets tossed into the mix.
Leaderboards at least show an individual pilot's effort in their accomplishments, and are blind to history since they re-set every month.

The biggest hypocrisy being fed into this audience is that lower tiers are more 'fun' because of their unpredictability -- when many of them at the same time are doing everything they can to control their pristine primary accounts.

I still love playing this game - but if you want more participation in it, then this 'class' system either has to go, or needs a better may for people to move around in it.

[VeeOt Dragon]

i can see where you are coming from (though i myself never got higher than high T2 before the reset and have never checked my leaderboard setting because i don't care.). honestly i think people care to much about their "stats" and forget about just having fun. stats are all well and good but when it you start having to make alts or such to preserve it just to say you are better than someone else than you have forgotten the point, the point is just having stompy robot fun.

as for making an alt to preserve that ranking i can see people doing that. though one of the streamers i watch from time to time (TTB) he started an Alt recently but i think it was just for fun since he is using a random number generator to pick his mechs and seeing how quickly he can rise in Tier.

(honestly though the lower Tiers are more fun for the exact reasons you mentioned people saying they are. hit a T3 and it starts getting boring due to only meta builds or builds used to pad someone's PSR (i like LRMs perhaps a little more than the next guy but its because i find IS LRM fun when my hand tremors prevent me from hitting the broad side of a barn with something else, now an LRM SuperNova is just there to farm damage (i tend to a personal Rule of not using LRM on an Assault mech). hell its so rare to see one of the more sub par mechs in a T3+ match that i usually comment on it. not calling them out but rather supporting them for using something that isn't so commonly seen (hell i can name about a dozen mechs (evenly divided between IS and Clan) that you will never see a mtach that doesn't include at least 2/3 of them on one team or multiples of them at T3 and up))

Edited by VeeOt Dragon, 15 May 2021 - 09:55 PM.

[VeeOt Dragon]

honestly the solution to the problem you see (not sure i see it as a problem but playing devil's advocate here) is to move the Tier lvl to the back end. in other words make it a sort of hidden stat that isn't shown and is only seen by the matchmaker for the purpose of keeping things balanced. though i am sure someone will create a 3rd party site that would extract that data rather quickly. i would still show the the little up/down/ neutral indicator on the end of match screen just so people who don't care to check the leaderboard can get a feel for how they did that match (in other words keep the end of match stats screen the same but just don't show Tier or total PSR)

not sure how this would go over though or if it would even be needed

[Leone]

Okay, so, first off, Damage done is the biggest portion of your match score. Heavies or Assaults'll be your best bet to farm it, just due to weight of weaponry. My money's on heavies though, due to the ability to reposition as needed and twist damage better.

Positioning and reading the battlefield is a truely valuable skill.

Honestly, I don't see the hipocrisy you're talking about.

~Leone

Edited by Leone, 15 May 2021 - 10:01 PM.

[Vxheous]

MadDach5und, on 15 May 2021 - 09:09 PM, said:

I've played this game on a constant basis for over seven years.

I didn't really give a damn about pilot skills for most of that time. Until the skill rating changed.

After years of playing for free, building skills and C-bills and a fleet of about a dozen mechs -- I sunk a few REAL dollars into the game - buying custom camo, paint jobs and such.

My skill rating moved to Tier 4 overnight. After 3 years or so without ANY real change. Then it changed again, and I was up in Tier 3 within a week or so. Odd. My game play was still the same. After developing some skill and growing with the game, I made it slowly into upper Tier Two over the next year or so.

Then about a year ago the Pilot Skills were re-negotiated. My creep to almost Tier one was demoted to Low Tier Three. One weekend struggling with trial mechs to get an achievement left me in high Tier Four.

Then, I started linking in to Twitch TV and the live streamers who broadcast gaming thru their online channels. It was fun - and still is. I'm a regular watcher of several channels. I realized the concepts of forming group lances and trying to sync drop with them into matching games. But then I realized I couldn't sync with a lot of them because they are Tier 1.

SO I started working harder at games.

Here is where the Leaderboard comes in.

For years, I also largely ignored the Leaderboard. Most times when I bothered to look up my name, my rank was usually somewhere in the three to six-thousand range. Meh. Didn't care.

For the last year I have been trying my damndest to game the most damage or kills I can and raise my skill rating. I have improved dramatically - at least, so far as the "Leaderboard" is concerned. My current Leaderboard ranking is 569, which isn't terribly high, but for most of this last year I have been, month to month, well above the 1,000 rank - and I believe a few times in the Top 100. So far this month I have played 305 matches with an average match score of 238.

Pilot Rating doesn't give a sh1t. I have wallowed along that line of purgatory between Tier 3 and 4 for more than a year now - never being more than few wins or losses above or below that transition. All I know that the harder I try to move up, the harder it gets to move AT ALL.

I started looking up a lot of pilot names for these online streamers and friends I have added by being part of the Twitch community. Many Are Tier One or Two Players. If you go by Leader Board stats, their monthly ranks are freaking two thousand, six thousand, ELEVEN thousand - playing only 20, 40 matches or maybe 100 tops. Yet their freaking pilot skill bars are maxxed Tier One ALL the time.

It appears to me Pilot Skill has turned into a kind of personal Credit Rating that can be Gamed by Tier One Players --
1. By controlling drops with joined friends and coordinated others
2. Playing assaults or mechs designed for max damage and likely kills
3. Playing the bare minimum of matches to maintain that rating.
4. Using Alt accounts to 'slum' drop and practice alternative designs so as not to taint their primary account

My conclusion:
High Pilot Skills are based on controlling their environment before the match ever starts, not dealing with whatever gets tossed into the mix.
Leaderboards at least show an individual pilot's effort in their accomplishments, and are blind to history since they re-set every month.

The biggest hypocrisy being fed into this audience is that lower tiers are more 'fun' because of their unpredictability -- when many of them at the same time are doing everything they can to control their pristine primary accounts.

I still love playing this game - but if you want more participation in it, then this 'class' system either has to go, or needs a better may for people to move around in it.

The default sort of the MWO leaderboard is Wins, which is inflated by total games played. You're better off looking at sorting by W/L, or K/D, or Average match score, to really see where you sit overall. You can play 1000 games in a month, win 400, lose 600, but by sheer volume, be in the "top 10" of the monthly leaderboard simply because you have 400 wins

[martian]

MadDach5und, on 15 May 2021 - 09:09 PM, said:

I've played this game on a constant basis for over seven years.

I didn't really give a damn about pilot skills for most of that time. Until the skill rating changed.
Then about a year ago the Pilot Skills were re-negotiated.

The change was needed because the old PSR system was not much more than the experience bar. It was almost impossible to go down in the old PSR.

Actually, the "pilot skill" was not so important since even not too good pilots moved to Tier 1 by the virtue of playing hundreds and thousands of games.

MadDach5und, on 15 May 2021 - 09:09 PM, said:

Pilot Rating doesn't give a sh1t. I have wallowed along that line of purgatory between Tier 3 and 4 for more than a year now - never being more than few wins or losses above or below that transition. All I know that the harder I try to move up, the harder it gets to move AT ALL.

Why exactly do you want to be in Tier 1?

The Tier 1 games are faster, 'Mechs hit harder, the situation in every game is more fluid. Any mistake you make (for example, in positioning) can be punished by the enemy team very quickly.

You can face 4-man premade groups composed of four elite players.

Pardon me my directness, but if you are moving between Tiers 3 and 4, do you really think that Tier 1 would be the right place for you?

MadDach5und, on 15 May 2021 - 09:09 PM, said:

I still love playing this game - but if you want more participation in it, then this 'class' system either has to go, or needs a better may for people to move around in it.

So what do you suggest?

[meteorol]

MadDach5und, on 15 May 2021 - 09:09 PM, said:

Yet their freaking pilot skill bars are maxxed Tier One ALL the time.

It appears to me Pilot Skill has turned into a kind of personal Credit Rating that can be Gamed by Tier One Players --
1. By controlling drops with joined friends and coordinated others
2. Playing assaults or mechs designed for max damage and likely kills
3. Playing the bare minimum of matches to maintain that rating.
4. Using Alt accounts to 'slum' drop and practice alternative designs so as not to taint their primary account

My conclusion:
High Pilot Skills are based on controlling their environment before the match ever starts, not dealing with whatever gets tossed into the mix.

Their pilot rating doesn't drop because they are always among the top performers on their team. It is really that simple.

There is no need to "game" PSR. Good players (and i assume the streamers you are referring to are probably pretty good) will always be max T1 regardless of whether they drop solo, or synchdrop, or try new builds.

I'm probably worse a player than the streamers you are referring to, and my PSR pretty much never drops, even though i literally do nothing to "game" the system. I have many alt accounts for various reasons (testing NPE at different times, testing how fast i could get to T1, playing IS in CW when my unit was clan etc), which all went to max T1 (and stayed there). I have never created an alt account with the intention to not "taint" my main account PSR. Something like 85% of my drops are solo. My unit is a tiny unit of IRL friends and we seldomly have more than 2 or 3 people online at a time. I never synchdrop (wouldn't even know with whom i should do it, lol).

PSR is no rocket science (much to the contrary, it was an experience bar for a long time.

[Vamboozle]

I would say I’m a casual player (maybe on average half a dozen matches a day) and I say my performance is (if I’m being very generous) at best average.

I play for fun and and a long standing love of the whole Battletech universe.

For me PSR, Tier & Leaderboards are of little or no interest other than as a mechanism to provide me with a fun game - now there’s a whole other thread on whether it achieves that or not but broadly for me I think it does.

However reading this I think what we have here is the age old problem of as soon as you publish statistics to measure something and it’s success / failure, people will naturally change their behaviour to meet that yardstick.

For example yesterday on Alpine we’d got the other team down to 1 light mech with 8 minutes to go - we only have heavies and assaults left and he proceeded to run around the map for 8 minutes with us unable to catch him. Did it keep his K/D ratio up? Yes. Was it fun? No As you can see playing the stats.

Personally I’d rather be blind to the stats and have fun.

Edited by Vamboozle, 16 May 2021 - 12:11 AM.

[Gagis]

The MWO official leaderboard simply counts number of wins, so those who rank the highest are the ones who play the most, even if they suck. It is absolutely pointless.

Use this for more accurate statistics: https://leaderboard.isengrim.org/
The most important measure of skill is your Win/Loss Ratio.

The average skill level of those MWO players who have not gotten bored and quit is so low that there is absolutely no need for any sort of shenanigans to make it to the top.

Edited by Gagis, 16 May 2021 - 12:19 AM.

[John Bronco]

I've played enough games with you to tell you if you want to do better on the leaderboards you simply need to fight more.

Do more damage.

Kill more mechs.

Help your team.

[martian]

John Bronco, on 16 May 2021 - 12:24 AM, said:

I've played enough games with you to tell you if you want to do better on the leaderboards you simply need to fight more.

Do more damage.

Kill more mechs.

Help your team.

It is interesting how some people come to the forums and complain about:

• how PSR punishes them personally,
  
• how they are in a different Tier than they feel that they should belong,
  
• how MWO challenges are unfair because they require them to show some effort,
  
• etc.,

and yet those people refuse to:

• change their playstyle,
  
• modify loadouts of their 'Mechs
  
• or adjust their tactics
  
• etc.

[JP Josh]

martian, on 16 May 2021 - 02:10 AM, said:

It is interesting how some people come to the forums and complain about:

• how PSR punishes them personally,
  
• how they are in a different Tier than they feel that they should belong,
  
• how MWO challenges are unfair because they require them to show some effort,
  
• etc.,

and yet those people refuse to:

• change their playstyle,
  
• modify loadouts of their 'Mechs
  
• or adjust their tactics
  
• etc.

ya need to make a exception for a light pilot thats able to drill the head out of most mechs.

working with my brother the other day we downed 7 mechs together (firestarter with lots of flame and a nova cat with shitload of alpha) however due to the game not taking into account me shutting down the enemy and my brother head shotting them we both lost psr.

after that we have went to just our fun builds again since the game doesn't really reward smart play for the lighter classes.

[martian]

JP Josh, on 16 May 2021 - 02:38 AM, said:

ya need to make a exception for a light pilot thats able to drill the head out of most mechs.

working with my brother the other day we downed 7 mechs together (firestarter with lots of flame and a nova cat with shitload of alpha) however due to the game not taking into account me shutting down the enemy and my brother head shotting them we both lost psr.

after that we have went to just our fun builds again since the game doesn't really reward smart play for the lighter classes.

Yeah, the match score gives a lot of weigh to damage dealt.

[CoffeeKitty]

there are a ton of people who play lights/med and get to psr1, im one of them, i play almost exclusively light heavies and heavy mediums, and rarely dip outside of the 55-65t range because thats where i have the most fun and do my best work, you can easily cap out t1 playing this.

a light can take more trades because of speed so use that, you can easily see in the same video that explains the PSR formula, a guy doing 1100 damage in a jenner lol

it's not uncommon.

That being said i do think match score weighs "damage" WAY TOO HIGH.

i get headshots a lot and they "punish" me for instantly killing fresh enemy, or ill leg an assault or instantly kill them from behind. you get the idea.

I'll also kill myself by facetanking to secure a garunteed 4-6 kills and win the match.

Im still at the top of T1, but im aware of these problems. they do exist. all of this kind of proves PSR is a useless metric so just ignore it.

in a team based, objective based game, the only thing that should matter is wether or not you achieved the objective, i.e. Win.

winrate is the universally best indicator of future winrate, thats just how math works.

obviously this game has so much randomness added to the system, like not being able to know what map you're going to play before you pick your mech and weapons, so even the best players can pick a bad tool for the given job, since they dont know the job before they pick, this skews even things like Jarls in favor of those who play generalist roles the best.

see my post here for solutions to how to fix said issue;

https://mwomercs.com...readyup-screen/

[Bud Crue]

OP, this may be hangover related, but I am having real trouble understanding your complaint. You seem to be conflating pilot skill, one's rank on the leader boards, tier level, folks who group, drop and even weight classes that one drops in; and I for one can't make heads or tails of it.

[Alexander of Macedon]

The PGI leaderboard ranking isn't a reliable assessment of ability since it's mostly tied to how many matches you've played in the current month rather than your actual performance in them. Jarl's List gives you a much more useful way to self-assess since the rankings there are based on performance and you can look at how you've changed over time.

Looking at that, you can see that you struggle to have an even W/L ratio, that you have a fairly deeply negative K/D, and that your average MS is currently in the low 200s. Performance like that is going to negatively affect your PSR ranking, since you're going to go down more frequently on losses and often perform poorly enough to go down even on a win.

That said, you can also see that your belief that you improved over time is correct. You went from ranking ~25,000 - 30,000 to ~6,000 - 8,000 last summer, then slid back up to the low 10,000s. Your average K/D has also moved up from ~0.3 - 0.5 to ~0.8 - 0.9, and your average MS has improved by about 50 points since you started playing.

Basically, the performance you've put up historically meshes with your experience of being stuck at T5, slowly climbing up towards T1 in the old experience-bar PSR system, and then tanking back to T3 once the new system was implemented last summer.

If you want to push back up to T1-2, my advice is to focus more on quality of matches than quantity. You're not wrong that PSR gain/loss is often decided before the match, but that's specifically a personal matter re: what mech and build you decide to bring. Group drops have little effect on PSR because they have little effect on match outcomes.

Basically, look at places like grimmechs for effective builds that you can set up on mechs you already own, and for mechs that you might like to purchase. When you watch good players either in observer cam or on stream, pay attention to the builds they're running. (Don't take Baradul as an example since he runs a lot of memey ****, same with theb33f's non-serious content.) Work on your own skills, how to position, aim (remember, low sensitivity + lowish DPI makes it easier to aim in MWO), how to work with your team. If you have a mic, use it to help call out targets for your team.

PSR going up is mostly a function of having high match score relative to your team, and that's mostly a product of doing lots of damage. If you want to consistently have your PSR go up, you need to consistently do lots of damage, which means taking an effective build and staying alive long enough to use it. Spamming matches is going to hurt you more than help you, especially if you're using ineffective builds.

Once you're comfortable that you're performing well enough to consistently lift your rank, start spreading out what you do. If you're good enough, you can run joke builds from time to time knowing that you'll perform well enough to make up for it. If you're not and are focused on pushing your PSR up, you can't really afford to.

Edited by Alexander of Macedon, 16 May 2021 - 03:28 AM.

[PocketYoda]

The lower tiers are more fun, if you aren't remotely competitive..

[Ignatius Audene]

Use this leaderbord not the pgi meh**(*. Pgi sorts by qp games played or so.

https://leaderboard....h?u=MadDach5und

This and an reset and change of por has happenend during your way

Edited by Ignatius Audene, 16 May 2021 - 03:28 AM.

[Dr Cara Carcass]

Leone, on 15 May 2021 - 10:00 PM, said:

Okay, so, first off, Damage done is the biggest portion of your match score. Heavies or Assaults'll be your best bet to farm it, just due to weight of weaponry. My money's on heavies though, due to the ability to reposition as needed and twist damage better.

Positioning and reading the battlefield is a truely valuable skill.

Honestly, I don't see the hipocrisy you're talking about.

~Leone

I diasgree, Heavies are underperforming within the actual meta, when they are below 80kph fast. Which is a lot of IS heavies atm.

[Vlad Ward]

Ultimately, PSR is based almost entirely on match score and 238 average MS is very middle of the road. I averaged 253 last month dropping the majority of matches in Stryker Mechs, which I'm terrible in. You want to be averaging closer to 300 if you want to climb consistently to T1.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 16 May 2021 - 08:00 AM.