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DaZur, on 01 April 2022 - 05:32 AM, said:
In short, tier 5 and tier 1 are capped, as such, this tier is primarily fed by 4 and 2 respectively (Not saying exclusively to be clear). So in terms of the potential skill level between 4-5 and 1-2 the skill-gap is narrower and there is a much less skill level fall off. Tier 3 is primarily fed by 4 and 2 thus the potential skill gap is substantially wider, ranging from low 4s to high 3s... The palpable result is the potential skill-gap is huge in contrast to 1s and 5s and manifests in the aforementioned wilds swings in quality of play in tier 3'ish matches.
Ah yes, okay, I see what you are getting at here. By definition, Tier 4 feeds Tier 3. A true Tier 2 player would unlikely drop into Tier 3 very often (and this would be mis-tiering anyhow). A true Tier 3 player could, though, oscillate between Tier 2 and Tier 3. With this said, we could once again replace the specific tier number with n and say the same thing.
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Again, agree to a point. MWOs tier mechanics to progress or regress are not symmetrical. It takes notable individual effort to progress forward and or be grouped with a upwardly mobile team to rise in tier rank. Conversely, a string of losses or piloting less-than-optimal mechs (which was my downfall from 2 to 4 btw) can have you backsliding in short order.
I do agree with your general statement here. It is much easier to get a double digit PSR loss than it is to get a double digit PSR gain, especially if one is playing in their appropriate tier. This makes sense intuitively, right? One has to perform well consistently through the match (relative to their team and all of the players) to see double digit PSR gains. It can take only one bad positioning decision or some bad luck to be on the other end of the spectrum. The PSR formula, in fact, encourages this, especially when there is an outlier in the top of the field. The PSR formula is zero-sum on the individual game basis, but the way positive and negative PSR score assignments pan out is often not symmetrical. Usually a few players take big PSR hits, and the rest have fairly small changes in either direction, with a few at the top getting some decent gains.
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To the contrary... I believe the vast majority of tier 3 players are where they belong. It's the "transitional players" i.e. players who's functional skill level is above or below the median tier 3 players that are "passing through" tier 3 either on their way to tier 2 or tier 4 respectively.
Again, I think this could be true of any tier, really. Most players are constantly moving in one direction or the other (mechanical stops aside). The idea that one could be in the "middle" of a tier does not make sense other than a simple numeric accumulation of PSR (which is just a buffer for staying out of the tier below). There is no middle of a tier, there is no gradient. From the matchmaker perspective, tiers are discrete. Regardless of what anyone might claim, the outcomes of matches (and thus individual PSR changes) is dependent on so many variables that the outcome is effectively stochastic.
What I am saying is that if one breaches a new tier, climbs for a while, then "trades sideways" for a while, it is not because they have reached the middle of the tier. It is the random walk nature of PSR changes.
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You are correct.. I was kind'a vague in my explanation. Yes, there should be a more tiers ( 11? maybe ) with the top 1/3rd and bottom 1/3rd gated. This would allow for a more granular transition in skill-gaps (Mitigating the injection of non-compatible skill levels at non-peak times) keeps fresh cadets and apex players from comingling.
This is essentially what we already have. Tier 5 does not play with Tier 1 and vice-versa. Otherwise, there is effectively a two tier spread. We have overlapping and dynamic buckets that basically divide the queue into three groups based on queue composition and volume. Groups in queue and how a group is placed is a different issue and, at least, seems like it is has some issues.
