14 replies to this topic

[AjerWerklWerkl]

I think PSR is actually working very well these days...

I play some chess, and MWO's PSR behavior feels very similar to Chess's Elo, which is a very good thing.

In my case, I bounce within a specific window: Low Tier 1 and High Tier 2. If I play good mechs, I go up, and if I'm levelling up new mechs, I tend to go down.

When I go too high, it's like I'm always in the wrong position. It's terrible but it's because the players are really good. Any peek in the wrong spot gets punished, and if you take your eye off the minimap for a few seconds the team will be somewhere else and you will be dead. Early in the game backstabbers will come for you if you're not careful. And more players are very accurate, so one wrong exposure means a lot of armor lost.

There are big winning and losing streaks -- all of which I have in chess too. Part of that is randomness, but also part is due to my mentality. Sometimes I am in a more patient mood and that works really well...

So all-in-all, PSR seems to be keeping me in the right spot.

What have you all been experiencing?

[Angus McFife VI]

AjerWerklWerkl, on 05 September 2021 - 08:34 AM, said:

I think PSR is actually working very well these days...

I play some chess, and MWO's PSR behavior feels very similar to Chess's Elo, which is a very good thing.

In my case, I bounce within a specific window: Low Tier 1 and High Tier 2. If I play good mechs, I go up, and if I'm levelling up new mechs, I tend to go down.

When I go too high, it's like I'm always in the wrong position. It's terrible but it's because the players are really good. Any peek in the wrong spot gets punished, and if you take your eye off the minimap for a few seconds the team will be somewhere else and you will be dead. Early in the game backstabbers will come for you if you're not careful. And more players are very accurate, so one wrong exposure means a lot of armor lost.

There are big winning and losing streaks -- all of which I have in chess too. Part of that is randomness, but also part is due to my mentality. Sometimes I am in a more patient mood and that works really well...

So all-in-all, PSR seems to be keeping me in the right spot.

What have you all been experiencing?

I used to be tier 1 a long time ago but now it's taking forever to get to my proper tier around 2. I'm also killing like 4 people every game dealing like 800-1400 damage. I'm not even lying yesterday I got like 9 kills 1450 damage. Hey I'm having a lot of fun but still... It just needs to kinda speed up the MMR gain imo

[FupDup]

Dont LRM me please, on 05 September 2021 - 08:41 AM, said:

I used to be tier 1 a long time ago but now it's taking forever to get to my proper tier around 2. I'm also killing like 4 people every game dealing like 800-1400 damage. I'm not even lying yesterday I got like 9 kills 1450 damage. Hey I'm having a lot of fun but still... It just needs to kinda speed up the MMR gain imo

Increasing in tier is practically a downgrade because stuff like Nascar gets way more rigid and engrained as you go up. There's no need to rush to climb. You don't get any special rewards beyond having a little number "1" display under your name on the forums, which is about as meaningful as being the tallest kid in kindergarten.

[Gagis]

MWO used to have a hidden Elo rating based system. It was nice.

It had some minor issues that conviced PGI to get rid of it: People got paranoid about it being hidden, it tended to under-estimate how hard top players can carry and how hard bottom players can sabotage their team and the queue times for the best players got a bit long.

In a slight exaggeration, if Proton and Bowser were playing on the same day, they would fight each other on every match and would wait ages until the other one is also in queue. Not quite that bad, but you get the idea.

All of these issues could have been fixed. Make it public or convince people not to be so paranoid. Give outliers extra weight when calculating team total ratings. Open the gates for outlying players a bit. Done. Better system than any skill rating will ever be.

[HauptmanT]

Gagis, on 05 September 2021 - 10:33 AM, said:

MWO used to have a hidden Elo rating based system. It was nice.

It had some minor issues that conviced PGI to get rid of it: People got paranoid about it being hidden, it tended to under-estimate how hard top players can carry and how hard bottom players can sabotage their team and the queue times for the best players got a bit long.

In a slight exaggeration, if Proton and Bowser were playing on the same day, they would fight each other on every match and would wait ages until the other one is also in queue. Not quite that bad, but you get the idea.

All of these issues could have been fixed. Make it public or convince people not to be so paranoid. Give outliers extra weight when calculating team total ratings. Open the gates for outlying players a bit. Done. Better system than any skill rating will ever be.

I swear that system was based on your skill in a particular mech. It would drop me into crummy teams on any mech I was trying to skill up, which really made skilling a new mech a PITA. Hard to skill these things up when your team dies in 3 minutes flat and you dont have time to do more than a couple hundred in damage, with LOOOONG losing streaks, which made it take forever just to get first victory of the day.

[Nightbird]

Glad you're enjoying it, given you have 0.8 WLR the last two months. I think you'd have better matches bouncing between T2 and T3.

[HauptmanT]

Nightbird, on 05 September 2021 - 03:11 PM, said:

Glad you're enjoying it, given you have 0.8 WLR the last two months. I think you'd have better matches bouncing between T2 and T3.

I switched to lights only for the end of last month. My PSR was climbing too fast, and I hit T3 towards the end of august. Played about 5 or 6 games with the T1 tryhards, and hated it. Reminded me why I havent played this game much for a couple years. So I've been running lights only to limit my damage and drop back down to mid t4. Isnt working, because I'm starting to be a good light pilot. I may have to start playing assaults instead. I'm really bad with those. Slowness gets me insta gibbed when I turn the wrong corner.

I did want to see how things woulda looked without me actually trying to hamstring myself... But those T1 games really brought back the PTSD. Before the reset I could only play like 3 or 4 mechs and not suck. Now I can play any of the hundreds I have. Gonna milk T4 for as long as I can stand it.

[PocketYoda]

I'm happy being in tier 4 as the game is more casual and the builds are more varied.. back in the exp psr days i made it to tier 2 and hated it.. so when i got reset i learnt to use bad mechs as they tend to lower psr, then if i want to up psr i use top tier mechs..

I like to hover mid tier 4.

Edited by MechaGnome, 05 September 2021 - 05:33 PM.

[Davegt27]

OP ever hear of PLL (phase locked loop)

this the system used in your radio to keep it locked onto the radio station you select

that is what MWO feels like to me both in the old days and now (big deal they changed the name from ELO to PSR)

or maybe that is what your getting at by mentioning ELO

I feel like I need to game the system (maneuver aspects of the game program ) to move up

there is even a guy that tells players how to get to tier 1 (nothing wrong with doing this)

stuff like take AMS, stay with the team, don't die (again nothing wrong with doing this)

but having this embedded in the program code makes me sick (what the Caldron is doing won't work IMHO unless you dig into the code)

I always feel like I am playing against PGI's computers

do good for a few matches and that search function spins and spins (or let me find some one to kick the crap out of you)

good days in MWO are few and far between

try to skill up a mech and my PSR drops like a rock
get into a fight 1 v 3 and just fighting your butt off at the end of the match you get 70K C-bills and 200 XP

zero SUM can be defined as spinning your wheels, going know where

I know your saying if you don't like it then leave

all games have problems so for the most part I play the game I am given

but so far when a suggestion comes up and I get this sinking feeling it turns out that suggestion has sucked

(engine de-sync is one)

GLHF

[AjerWerklWerkl]

Nightbird, on 05 September 2021 - 03:11 PM, said:

Glad you're enjoying it, given you have 0.8 WLR the last two months. I think you'd have better matches bouncing between T2 and T3.

Yeah, it depends entirely on whether I'm levelling up new mechs or trying stupid "lone wolf" things in lights, both of which don't work well for me against good opponents. (And both of which I did a bunch the last two months.) I *wish* I could level new mechs in a lower tier and then go back to a higher tier when I want to focus!! Some PSR adjustment per mech would help with that.

[Flyby215]

AjerWerklWerkl, on 05 September 2021 - 08:34 AM, said:

I think PSR is actually working very well these days...

I play some chess, and MWO's PSR behavior feels very similar to Chess's Elo, which is a very good thing.

In my case, I bounce within a specific window: Low Tier 1 and High Tier 2. If I play good mechs, I go up, and if I'm levelling up new mechs, I tend to go down.

When I go too high, it's like I'm always in the wrong position. It's terrible but it's because the players are really good. Any peek in the wrong spot gets punished, and if you take your eye off the minimap for a few seconds the team will be somewhere else and you will be dead. Early in the game backstabbers will come for you if you're not careful. And more players are very accurate, so one wrong exposure means a lot of armor lost.

There are big winning and losing streaks -- all of which I have in chess too. Part of that is randomness, but also part is due to my mentality. Sometimes I am in a more patient mood and that works really well...

So all-in-all, PSR seems to be keeping me in the right spot.

What have you all been experiencing?

I used to play chess when I was young! 'Was undefeated in school-county tournaments, even made 3rd at the provincial finals for my age group. Sadly stopped playing shortly after my high school didn't have a team, despite my efforts

Pertaining to your question, however, my PSR experience has been much more negative of late. I find the matchmaker is controlling the outcome far more than anything I am able to influence, and the lack of any tier change suggests that I am apparently where I should be.

This had me puzzled in June and July: in June I had an unusually high match-score, followed by July where I had my all-time lowest W/L ratio, by a significant margin, since recording began. My tier remains completely unchanged though; not even a pixel on the tier bar. Such wild swings in statistics without any significant deviation to my mechs or strategy leads me to believe something is happening behind the scenes, something that isn't visible to the players.

This "something" seems to be controlling the matches.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist! At least, I don't think?

[Kiiyor]

I kind of agree with you, up to a point. And that point is upper tier1. The tier system there is better than it used to be after the progression/xp requirement changes, but if you perform consistently OK, you're realistically never going to drop back to tier2, even with a string of bad matches.

I also find I can almost always predict a win/loss based on identifying which team the 3/4 man groups of note are dropping in.

Thing is, it's super hard for a matchmaker to work perfectly well in MWO for one reason; the mechlab. Players can have the most skill in the world, but they just aren't going to perform as expected if they drop in a potato. You also can't predict how different kinds of potatoes will taste when you mash them all together. Too many lurm boats or snipers, and you don't have enough armour on the front lines. Too much of a disparity in mobility will often see slower mechs caught up if the teams are rotating hard. Even perfectly proportioned teams with complimentary supporting builds can fail if their pilots have different levels of aggression.

I've thought about maybe having a battle rating system for each mech chassis like they do in say war thunder, but again, the issue is with the mech lab. You can absolutely take a non-potato chassis and force it into a potato costume with poor outfitting choices.

Maybe we could compliment player PSR with a PSR based on how well you do historically in each mech chassis. Make each chassis start at the same tier as you, then give them a modifier (with a floor/ceiling) that changes based on your performance in that chassis. If you perform consistently well using meta machines, you get a boost of maybe +0.5 ~ +1 tier. If you pilot non-missile boat Awesomes and don't perform nearly as well, maybe -1 tier.

[Elizander]

If I stick to playing a certain style and with certain mechs I can get to T3 and climb, but I don't want to do that all the time. I wanna play my dumb 54 kph AC20 urbies and mess around with builds I am not used to.

I know that if I play in a certain time window, I better pick assault mechs so that we don't end up with fodder assaults that deal no damage and no amount of UAVs, 300+ damage and support I do will make us win. I don't always want to grind just for the sake of getting my PSR up because that just means I'll be having less fun over time. Sure it's great to get coordinated teams when I'm in T3 and the MM tosses me into a T1-T3 game during NA time, but it's honestly a chore to rack up 600-800 damage each game with a laserboat and I'd get bored if all I did was play my Scorch, 4x LB10 assaults and HBR 24/7.

So I think the system is working fine if you just want to have fun and play games in a tier that suits your play style. If you're being upset that you're not T1 for no other reason than you just want to show of T1 in your forum post, then the only advice is to git gud, but the world isn't gonna end if you just derp around in T5.

[justcallme A S H]

Dont LRM me please, on 05 September 2021 - 08:41 AM, said:

I used to be tier 1 a long time ago but now it's taking forever to get to my proper tier around 2. I'm also killing like 4 people every game dealing like 800-1400 damage. I'm not even lying yesterday I got like 9 kills 1450 damage. Hey I'm having a lot of fun but still... It just needs to kinda speed up the MMR gain imo

Your stats this month are 2.21 KDR so on the raw numbers you are falling a little short of the 4 kills a match so you might well have a bit of a perception vs reality issue.

That said it is not just about kills. It is the quality of performance.

For example - If you are just last hitting things thinking that is going to get you a PSR rise well that ain't gonna work.

You want the Solo Kill, KMDD and associated damage. That is the magic combination, so to speak.


Generally speaking - T2 is probably the roughest Tier to be in. You are just above the average but a long way away from the Tier 1s. You will match with them almost all the time as well. T1 guys generally don't have an issue in T1 matches, although the disparity of skill in T1 is, sizeable.

Tier 3 at least matches down to T4 so some games will be higher tier and some will be lower.

[Saved By The Bell]

I dont use meta, so its very hard to go up in Tier 2. But I am not interested.