86 replies to this topic

[ScrapIron Prime]

Stab Wound, on 19 July 2022 - 05:02 AM, said:

When your Tier Bar gets full a button next to it is activated asking if you would like to proceed to the next higher Tier instead of automatically thrusting you into a situation you either don't want to be in or weren't ready for?

A little message button like "Congratulations, would you like to proceed to the next higher Tier? Y/N?"

Disagree. Otherwise you'll have a Tier 1 player make an alt account, wipe the floor with people, and constantly turn down going up in Tier so they can continue wiping the floor... which defeats the purpose of having a tier system designed to insulate new players from the deadliest ones.

[dubstep albatross]

Gideon Bravor, on 19 July 2022 - 12:16 AM, said:

I don't think the PSR works correctly at all. If it's supposed to put you against people you're competitive with, then it should stop bumping me up to tier 3.

I clearly don't belong in tier 3, because ever since I entered it (and fell back to tier 4, and then regained tier 3, on and on), my W/L and K/D stats are trash compared to what I was doing in only tier 4.

I'm a good player in tier 4. Not good enough to cause my W/L to get wildly imbalanced (nothing over 1.5) or my K/D (nothing over 3, and that's only my best mech). But when I got sent up to tier 3, my W/L drops to barely 1.0 and my K/D to 1.5 (aggregate). My numbers in mediums and heavies are abysmal this season. I went from tier 4 to 3 (for the first time) right when the seasons changed, hence my mention of the season stat difference.

I had this problem, too. When one hits tier 3, one often faces tier 2 and even tier 1 players -- it can be, depending on who is in the queue and how low the population is, a jarring experience. The problem is not necessarily PSR or the tier system, but the granularity of the tiers (discrete steps) and the overall low population. If there were so many players that release valves never had to be opened, you would always face players of your tier. There would still be gradients (some are on the way up, some on their way down, some having good days, some having bad days, some trying new mechs/builds, some in their perfect build), but the variation would likely be less.

Another factor that gets overlooked is oneself -- I have a build that I absolutely love and enjoy playing. Why do I like it? I like the mech itself (aesthetics), I like the build (weapon systems), and I like the playstyle that suits it (flank harasser). I can put it down like a hog in tier 4, but once I hit tier 3 I found that, especially with "better" players mixed in, the build just does not cut it. The DPS is good, but the alpha is too low. I cannot get enough of a punch in and I am punished for every exposure. Also, higher tier players are way better at watching their flanks or responding to being flanked.

Once I figured out who I was playing against (often tier 2 and/or tier 1) and that my build just was not suited well, I changed my build and tactics. Now I make progress upwards on most games and definitely on average.

Quote

Anyway, I don't want to climb in tier. But that said, it does piss me off when the game tells you, with that annoying down arrow on top of a loss, usually, that you aren't good enough. It's pointless insult to injury.

I mean this in the most respectful way possible: this is a you problem here. I know the way the PSR change arrow is built can aggravate, but ultimately the PSR arrow is not telling you are not good enough. People often have a hard time understanding what PSR movement really represents. Just ignore it. If you feel motivated to goal on something, goal on some other metric (qualitative or quantitative).

[martian]

Stab Wound, on 19 July 2022 - 05:02 AM, said:

Maybe we should ask for a new Feature?

When your Tier Bar gets full a button next to it is activated asking if you would like to proceed to the next higher Tier instead of automatically thrusting you into a situation you either don't want to be in or weren't ready for?

A little message button like "Congratulations, would you like to proceed to the next higher Tier? Y/N?"

How would it work in the following situation?

Imagine an excellent player coming to MWO. It does not matter if he is naturally talented or if he has got a lot of experience from similar FPS games. He is simply good in the game and his skill would move him to Tier 1 quickly.

IN MWO all new players start in Tier 5.

So our new player joins MWO, starts in T5, massacres other green or unskilled players left and right, and then, when he reaches the Tier 4 threshold, refuses to move to T4.

[sosegado]

ScrapIron Prime, on 19 July 2022 - 05:49 AM, said:

Disagree. Otherwise you'll have a Tier 1 player make an alt account, wipe the floor with people, and constantly turn down going up in Tier so they can continue wiping the floor... which defeats the purpose of having a tier system designed to insulate new players from the deadliest ones.

martian, on 19 July 2022 - 06:54 AM, said:

How would it work in the following situation?

Imagine an excellent player coming to MWO. It does not matter if he is naturally talented or if he has got a lot of experience from similar FPS games. He is simply good in the game and his skill would move him to Tier 1 quickly.

IN MWO all new players start in Tier 5.

So our new player joins MWO, starts in T5, massacres other green or unskilled players left and right, and then, when he reaches the Tier 4 threshold, refuses to move to T4.

Wow!

If some Tier 1 pilots are so toxic then forget I ever said I want to be one or play against them!

Maybe I'll just return to the time when I blissfully didn't care about PSR and just did play this game only for fun!

Edited by Stab Wound, 19 July 2022 - 07:12 AM.

[martian]

Stab Wound, on 19 July 2022 - 07:10 AM, said:

Wow!

If some Tier 1 pilots are so toxic then forget I ever said I want to be one or play against them!

Maybe I'll just return to the time when I blissfully didn't care about PSR and just did play this game only for fun!

And now, how would you handle the situation that I described above?

[ScrapIron Prime]

Stab Wound, on 19 July 2022 - 07:10 AM, said:

Wow!

If some Tier 1 pilots are so toxic then forget I ever said I want to be one or play against them!

Maybe I'll just return to the time when I blissfully didn't care about PSR and just did play this game only for fun!

Tier one pilots in general are not a problem. But you know gamers, there are always a few real peaches in every bunch, and some will exploit the game.

When the PSR system is working as intended, you'll never encounter a Tier 1 player until you hit Tier 3. (There are some exceptions, and there are threads for that.) So they are kind of off in their own corner, at least until you become more proficient at the game.

And there are those who say that it is unfair that they should EVER have to face players who are better than them. For these people, the solution is... single player games.

[Gideon Bravor]

Stab Wound, on 19 July 2022 - 05:02 AM, said:

That's an interesting problem to have, but it did spark my creativity.

Maybe we should ask for a new Feature?

When your Tier Bar gets full a button next to it is activated asking if you would like to proceed to the next higher Tier instead of automatically thrusting you into a situation you either don't want to be in or weren't ready for?

A little message button like "Congratulations, would you like to proceed to the next higher Tier? Y/N?"

martian, on 19 July 2022 - 06:54 AM, said:

How would it work in the following situation?

Imagine an excellent player coming to MWO. It does not matter if he is naturally talented or if he has got a lot of experience from similar FPS games. He is simply good in the game and his skill would move him to Tier 1 quickly.

IN MWO all new players start in Tier 5.

So our new player joins MWO, starts in T5, massacres other green or unskilled players left and right, and then, when he reaches the Tier 4 threshold, refuses to move to T4.

I have thought of this feature, and this problem.

My solution would be to make it so if you pass a certain statistical threshold (like a W/L exceeding 1.5), you can't remain in the tier.

If your numbers fall in line with a certain level of mediocrity, you can choose your tier. Only exceptionally high stats will force you into a higher tier.

This allows borderline people who are only marginally gifted in the use of a few mechs, to keep from rising to tier 3 to become Stormtrooper fodder for tier 1s.

[Gideon Bravor]

ScrapIron Prime, on 19 July 2022 - 07:16 AM, said:

And there are those who say that it is unfair that they should EVER have to face players who are better than them. For these people, the solution is... single player games.

This is a cheap dig.

The matchmaker in this game is supposed to match you against people of roughly equal skill. It's not supposed to set you up, regularly, to get slaughtered by the upper 1-5% of performers. That's exactly what entry into tier 3 does.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen utterly hapless people on my team step out of cover, and come back with 20% of their health gone within the first few minutes of a match starting. Some are so hapless, they only retreat into cover at ~60% health with a missing arm. These people have no place in these matches. Yet the matchmaker says they do.

There are very clear, obvious reasons why, after entering tier 3, I get so many stupidly lopsided, totally unenjoyable for all but 2-4 players on the winning team, matches.

Even when I was performing much better than when I started, and moved from tier 5 to 4 and then to 3--at no point did I utterly dominate even tier 5 players the way tier 1s dominate most tier 3 players.

I mean, keep on ignoring the obvious if you want, but it's not going to help the game's population in the long run.

[crazytimes]

ScrapIron Prime, on 19 July 2022 - 05:49 AM, said:

Disagree. Otherwise you'll have a Tier 1 player make an alt account, wipe the floor with people, and constantly turn down going up in Tier so they can continue wiping the floor... which defeats the purpose of having a tier system designed to insulate new players from the deadliest ones.

This.

Every time there's a PSR reset, or MM fails, even I farm hard. Seal clubbing isn't really that much fun full time.

Current system isn't perfect, but it does go some way to insultate the newbies and potatoes from the upper third of players.

[Brizna]

Honestly PSR formula is based on match score formula, and match score sucks to judge player performance since it's based mostly on damage done and rewards using team mates as meat shields to last longer than them.

For example I just had a game with my friend where we didn't have a great game yet our team won because of us. Both of us were in Hellfire Void, both UAC20 + 4 SPL with MASC, just for fun. We pushed an enemy position we thought had 1 enemy mech, but lmao there were 4, all heavies and assaults. Luckily with the MASC and all we were able to disengage but not without getting heavily pounded by the 4 guy we had foolishly pushed and all the sniping friendlies of them we had left in our flank that were attracted to our "doritos". We did survive though and tried again but we were so damaged we didn't do much before dying. I did 300+ dmg and my friend 150+, meanwhile our team basically trampled over the enemy 2ish at a time as the enemy team was busy trying to kill us, my friend lost PSR I barely stayed at my PSR on a win. Still our team had a very easy time farming the enemy thank to us.

How can a match score reward this kind of stuff? Impossible. All you can do is forget about match score and embrace Win / Lose ratio. OP probably wouldn't like the idea, but it's the right idea.

[ccrider]

Just a question, but do we get paid to be Tier 1 or some kinda cool **** or something? I might play 20ish games a year in QP but if there's monetary compensation I'll play enough to bump my 3/4ths Tier 2 to Tier 1 for some cash.

(Just kidding, but seriously, why anyone cares about QP tiers or whatever is beyond me. If anyone wants to be noticed for their skill or whatever, play comp. If you wanna roll around with friends on some cool maps and modes, play FP. If you are only playing QP, just do it for shits and giggles and don't stress about stuff that will literally not change your gaming experience in MW:O in the slightest. Also, play FP; I don't like waiting in queue so come fill up FP so I can play more games.)

[Gideon Bravor]

ccrider, on 19 July 2022 - 01:17 PM, said:

If you are only playing QP, just do it for shits and giggles and don't stress about stuff that will literally not change your gaming experience in MW:O in the slightest.

Dead wrong here. Tier totally changes the gaming experience in MWO.

Tier 4 isn't competitive at all, because you're not constantly thrown into matches with tier 1s.

Tier 4 and 5 are the fun tiers. It's when you get to tier 3 that it stops being fun, unless you change the way you play, the mechs you play, etc. You either adapt to get stomped less, or quit. Take a wild guess what most people end up doing when they hit tier 3.

I can ignore my tier all I want; uncheck its visibility in the menu, blah blah, and it won't change the fact that I'll mysteriously start having streaks of 2-12 losses the minute I enter tier 3. The game very noticeably became far less fun for me.

The whole problem is that the PSR system takes mediocre players and elevates them into tier 3. This would be fine if the population was large enough that there was only a +/- 1 maximum tier difference in matchmaking. But there isn't. There's a 2 tier difference. And that's all the difference in the world.

[martian]

Gideon Bravor, on 19 July 2022 - 11:28 AM, said:

I have thought of this feature, and this problem.

My solution would be to make it so if you pass a certain statistical threshold (like a W/L exceeding 1.5), you can't remain in the tier.

If your numbers fall in line with a certain level of mediocrity, you can choose your tier. Only exceptionally high stats will force you into a higher tier.

This allows borderline people who are only marginally gifted in the use of a few mechs, to keep from rising to tier 3 to become Stormtrooper fodder for tier 1s.

You can bet that some people would abuse such system by keeping their ratio at 1.49.

Edited by martian, 19 July 2022 - 10:25 PM.

[Gideon Bravor]

martian, on 19 July 2022 - 08:59 PM, said:

You can bet that some people would abuse such system with keeping their ratio at 1.49.

A simple workaround would be to factor in K/D or average match score as well. I'd like to see someone manipulate all 3.

Point being: this only matters at tier 4. It'd be fair to ask people if they want to stay in the shallow end of the pool, where you can run any mech you want, with any loadout, and not really care about meta.

Or if they want to play with the big kids and all that entails: sweating the details, conforming to meta, and finding that your favorite Spider with full jump capacity and 2 small pulse lasers--that's just not going to be usable anymore.

This would be a very useful feature, if for no other reason, to tell people that they're no longer going to be dealing with the same caliber of players if they decide to move to tier 3. Right now there's absolutely no hint in the game that warns you: entering tier 3 really means facing tier 1 players.

The confusion and frustration arises when average players hit this wall upon transitioning from 4 to 3, and wonder what the hell happened. If they don't read forums, don't understand how matchmaking works, all they do is get pissed and leave.

Today I went up against a player with a 4+ K/D. Guess how that ended. He had 5 kills that match and 1000+ damage, so it was fun for him, yeah. But was it fun for the 8 people on our team who did less than 500 damage?

And this wasn't even a terrible 3-12 outcome like many. Yet the end was rather statistically predictable regardless.

[BellatorMonk]

So where is the statistical charts that show population per tier at this point?

[katoult]

martian, on 19 July 2022 - 08:59 PM, said:

You can bet that some people would abuse such system by keeping their ratio at 1.49.

That's not even necessarily intentionally. Or really a problem.

My latest themed alt account has a WLR of 1.14 and KDR of 1.29. It so far has maintained a fairly constant average circa +10 PSR progression to where it's in Tier 3 now. I've played 18 matches in Tier 5 and 106 matches in Tier 4 in it.

While in Tier 4 that account met known Tier 1 players that were souped up only twice, and a known-and-acting-it-out "T5 farming" smurf account only once. Yes, there were other smurfs - some i know, some you can guess from the name - but not the farmy kind.

[martian]

BellatorMonk, on 19 July 2022 - 11:07 PM, said:

So where is the statistical charts that show population per tier at this point?

The official PGI's data are hard to come by.

[sosegado]

martian, on 19 July 2022 - 07:15 AM, said:

And now, how would you handle the situation that I described above?

Well, respectfully, it sounds like a bad game of "Would You Rather" with the choices being:

A:: Risk facing a lance of super douchebag Tier 1 [( skill level)] griefers every now and again and give honest Pilots that know they are going to be cannon fodder the option to remain where they feel competitive and comfortable.

or

B:: Leave the game where it is.

As it stands, we already face the chance that there's going to be a griefer Lance with every drop.

So, yeah, imho the risk is worth giving honest players peace of mind and a choice.

Maybe as a community it will make us all better at rooting out and dealing with the griefers?

<edit> for clarity

Edited by Stab Wound, 20 July 2022 - 01:14 PM.

[Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie]

Stab Wound, on 20 July 2022 - 05:34 AM, said:

Well, respectfully, it sounds like a bad game of "Would You Rather" with the choices being:

A:: Risk facing a lance of super douchebag Tier 1 level griefers every now and again and give honest Pilots that know they are going to be cannon fodder the option to remain where they feel competitive and comfortable.

or

B:: Leave the game where it is.

As it stands, we already face the chance that there's going to be a griefer Lance with every drop.

So, yeah, imho the risk is worth giving honest players peace of mind and a choice.

Maybe as a community it will make us all better at rooting out and dealing with the griefers?

pls define a "tier 1 douchebag griefer" a bit; not sure I can follow your train of thoughts there.

-yes, there are some douchebags in tier1. generally though, they aren't griefers as they try to perform and win (hence the tier1, which would otherwise be way less).
-yes, there are "griefers", but with the intention to troll instead of performing, you're shooting yourself in the foot - hence they aren't tier1 very often.

so pls enlighten us how apples and oranges come together here.

[sosegado]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie, on 20 July 2022 - 09:36 AM, said:

pls define a "tier 1 douchebag griefer" a bit; not sure I can follow your train of thoughts there.

-yes, there are some douchebags in tier1. generally though, they aren't griefers as they try to perform and win (hence the tier1, which would otherwise be way less).
-yes, there are "griefers", but with the intention to troll instead of performing, you're shooting yourself in the foot - hence they aren't tier1 very often.

so pls enlighten us how apples and oranges come together here.

I wasn't calling all Tier 1 pilots douchebag griefers! Holy Cow!
I deeply apologize for any confusion I caused.

The pilots I'm referring to have all the skills of a Tier 1.
Maybe they are Tier 1 because they play the game, maybe they just walked in off the street to play the game and they are gifted with all the skills of a Tier 1. I only use Tier 1 so that you have a frame of reference for what skill level they represent.
Regardless, their chief characteristic is being a douchebag that wants to make the game suck for normal pilots.

Again, sorry for any confusion.

<edit> By the way, thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify what I meant. Some people wouldn't have been that cool.

Edited by Stab Wound, 20 July 2022 - 11:52 AM.