210 replies to this topic

[crazytimes]

martian, on 11 October 2022 - 09:48 AM, said:

From what I have heard, the number of players in Tiers 3, 4 and 5 is much higher than the number of players in Tiers 1 and 2.

So although "you can be matched with anybody", I think that there is higher probability of having T3s, T4s and T5s in your games than getting much rarer T2s or T1s.

Some people feel that anyone better than than them in a single match is a "tier 1 meta exclusively group playing try hard", and evidence that the entire player base consists exclusively of such players.

Source- this thread.

[Hunka Junk]

Can anybody name one other game where you start in the middle tier instead of working your way up from the bottom?

[ScrapIron Prime]

Hunka Junk, on 12 October 2022 - 07:57 AM, said:

Can anybody name one other game where you start in the middle tier instead of working your way up from the bottom?

The only folks that start at T3 in the current system are the returning players that had higher rankings in the previous Tier system that was replaced. They already worked their way up from the bottom.

[pbiggz]

ScrapIron Prime, on 12 October 2022 - 08:06 AM, said:

The only folks that start at T3 in the current system are the returning players that had higher rankings in the previous Tier system that was replaced. They already worked their way up from the bottom.

Most games with a ranking system start new players in the middle for a set number of qualifying matches, then place them somewhere on the ranking when the qualifying matches are completed. I don't think very many games just dump you in the middle, or at the bottom.

crazytimes, on 11 October 2022 - 10:44 PM, said:

Some people feel that anyone better than than them in a single match is a "tier 1 meta exclusively group playing try hard", and evidence that the entire player base consists exclusively of such players.

Source- this thread.

This is the mechdad curse. mechdads don't want to try hard. They didn't even really want to play multiplayer, they wanted mech2 mercs with nicer graphics and co-op multiplayer, and this game isn't, and never will be, that. This game is competitive by its nature, and I don't mean that in terms of being hard core, I mean that more simply; for you to win, someone has to lose, and for someone else to win, you have to lose. Mechdads never want to lose. Anything that makes them lose is illegitimate, and a personal attack on them, and if them being bad at the game is what makes them lose, its disregarded and externalized, because it has to be someone else's fault. This is mrmadguy's problem. Complete, flat refusal to engage in even an ounce of introspection combined with a very obvious sense of entitlement to a specific experience which this game frankly hasn't promised since the days of Bryan Ekman.

[foamyesque]

crazytimes, on 11 October 2022 - 10:44 PM, said:

Some people feel that anyone better than than them in a single match is a "tier 1 meta exclusively group playing try hard", and evidence that the entire player base consists exclusively of such players.

Source- this thread.

I mean, it isn't, but as a generally T3 player, if I see D A T A in a group on either side of the match, I know damn well I'm not going to be doing much to change the outcome. And yeah, that's an experience I've had.

Not all complaints are made up.

Edited by foamyesque, 12 October 2022 - 08:39 PM.

[martian]

foamyesque, on 12 October 2022 - 08:39 PM, said:

I mean, it isn't, but as a generally T3 player, if I see D A T A in a group on either side of the match, I know damn well I'm not going to be doing much to change the outcome. And yeah, that's an experience I've had.

Not all complaints are made up.

At least you can still fight a bit to prevent the PSR loss, if you wish. Maybe get a kill on an enemy 'Mech too.

I think that it would be better than resigning, doing nothing and waiting to be killed wih the red arrow on the scoreboard to top it off.

[ScrapIron Prime]

foamyesque, on 12 October 2022 - 08:39 PM, said:

I mean, it isn't, but as a generally T3 player, if I see D A T A in a group on either side of the match, I know damn well I'm not going to be doing much to change the outcome. And yeah, that's an experience I've had.

Oh I've gone toe to toe with D A T A about 3 times this year. Lost each time of course, but I tore him up enough that he wasn't able to walk all over anyone else. That had an effect, and my team won one of those three games.

Ace pilots make a difference, absolutely. But there's no reason to think that JGx or EMP or any of the other top ranked units on the other team is an automatic loss. That's just you giving them another weapon to use against you... a psychological one.

[foamyesque]

martian, on 13 October 2022 - 06:23 AM, said:

At least you can still fight a bit to prevent the PSR loss, if you wish. Maybe get a kill on an enemy 'Mech too.

Well, obviously, but if you'll notice I said I won't be changing the outcome much when they're on my side, either. I don't like being carried like that, I want to feel like I had an impact on a match, win or lose. I try my best to do that every time but, like, you get why it can be frustrating when there's that level of skill and coordination disproportionately torquing a match around themselves, yeah?

[pbiggz]

foamyesque, on 13 October 2022 - 09:55 AM, said:

Well, obviously, but if you'll notice I said I won't be changing the outcome much when they're on my side, either. I don't like being carried like that, I want to feel like I had an impact on a match, win or lose. I try my best to do that every time but, like, you get why it can be frustrating when there's that level of skill and coordination disproportionately torquing a match around themselves, yeah?

Tiers already exist, so vastly superior players are kept apart from newer or less practiced ones; so aside from that i am not sure what can be done; its a competitive game, some people are going to be better than you and me; its the way of things.

If you're balancing around D A T A though you're going to have a bad time, you do not balance games around their most wild overperformers.

Edited by pbiggz, 13 October 2022 - 10:41 AM.

[martian]

foamyesque, on 13 October 2022 - 09:55 AM, said:

Well, obviously, but if you'll notice I said I won't be changing the outcome much when they're on my side, either. I don't like being carried like that, I want to feel like I had an impact on a match, win or lose. I try my best to do that every time but, like, you get why it can be frustrating when there's that level of skill and coordination disproportionately torquing a match around themselves, yeah?

At least you can contribute to your team's victory and earn yourself some XPs and C-Bills.

It is possible that in the next game the premade will be on the enemy side, or maybe in some different game.

And by the way, I think that such premades upset the game balance too much.

[foamyesque]

pbiggz, on 13 October 2022 - 10:40 AM, said:

Tiers already exist, so vastly superior players are kept apart from newer or less practiced ones

The entire point of this thread is that in T3, *that doesn't work*.

[Meep Meep]

foamyesque, on 13 October 2022 - 02:04 PM, said:

The entire point of this thread is that in T3, *that doesn't work*.

In t3 everything works if you have half a brain. Its when you get to the upper part of tier 2 and into tier 1 that you really have to start taking your positioning and loadouts seriously or get farmed. The odd t1 or t2 players or lances you run across in t3 are just the preparation for the fun to come.

Edited by Meep Meep, 13 October 2022 - 02:41 PM.

[foamyesque]

Meep Meep, on 13 October 2022 - 02:40 PM, said:

In t3 everything works if you have half a brain. Its when you get to the upper part of tier 2 and into tier 1 that you really have to start taking your positioning and loadouts seriously or get farmed. The odd t1 or t2 players or lances you run across in t3 are just the preparation for the fun to come.

Gameplay tactics were not what either myself or the person I was replying to were talking about. It was about the idea of the MM keeping people of wildly different skills separate... Because in T3 it doesn't. You can be facing anything from bottom of the barrel T5 people who don't even know how to move their 'mech's legs clear through to people like TTB, Sean Lang, D A T A, et al.

In the ideal the tier-match would be a lot tighter and the top of T1 should only be competing against other people in T1, the bottom half of T1 overlaps with the top of T2, and so on down the line. It's a questions of whether the playerbase can support that kind of granularity and given how frequently I see and recognise certain names I'm not certain it can.

[Meep Meep]

Yes but the op's main complaint was its pointless to play in t3 because a big bad t2 or t1 player or lance will instagib you or something so whats the point of playing. T3 is a forgiving tier and you are just as often on the gud players side as against and the team cohesion is still more than loose enough to accommodate many different playstyles and loadouts and not be unduly punished. Stray too far out of bounds of the meta in the upper tiers and its poof back to the mechlab.

[foamyesque]

Meep Meep, on 13 October 2022 - 03:49 PM, said:

T3 is a forgiving tier and you are just as often on the gud players side as against

As I've said before on this very page, that's not really a great experience either -- it's dull, because it doesn't feel like you're working or contributing much to the success of your team when someone else hard-carries you.

I'm not the OP, and I don't want to defend everything they've said, but there's a couple of actual points that underlie things that keep getting... bounced over, I guess, because people go immediately to 'well, just improve your own personal skills and you'll rank up', and they have to do with the play experience of people who, for example, just get into the very bottom of T3, and are suddenly getting fed to occasional top-of-T1 players (who then complain about their own T3 teammates being incompetent) mixed in with matches where they're the best player on the field and everyone else is bottom of the barrel T5 jank.

In T3 as far as I can tell you can be matched against literally anyone, depending on how the MM groups you that instant, which leads to hugely inconsistent game experiences. And that's bad from an enjoyment or player retention point of view regardless of your own personal skill level or attitude towards arrow directions.

Edited by foamyesque, 13 October 2022 - 04:07 PM.

[Meep Meep]

Oh I agree that t3 could be made even more comfy with a greater separation of the tiers but alas aging niche game and low population numbers mean that if you make too much separation then queue times skyrocket and even during prime time you can wait a bit for a match to form especially in the upper tiers. It is what it is and if they can't handle the heat of t3 then the mm will promptly dump them back into t4 until they grind back up to the barrier again to be tossed back. Only way to fix that is to get population numbers up and they don't really seem all that interested in bringing in new blood even though they have two other active BT ip they can cross market on.

[foamyesque]

Meep Meep, on 13 October 2022 - 04:16 PM, said:

Oh I agree that t3 could be made even more comfy with a greater separation of the tiers but alas aging niche game and low population numbers mean that if you make too much separation then queue times skyrocket and even during prime time you can wait a bit for a match to form especially in the upper tiers. It is what it is and if they can't handle the heat of t3 then the mm will promptly dump them back into t4 until they grind back up to the barrier again to be tossed back. Only way to fix that is to get population numbers up and they don't really seem all that interested in bringing in new blood even though they have two other active BT ip they can cross market on.

Yeah. But I can't imagine it's a lot of fun for the T1 guys stomping on T3 guys or the T5 guys getting stomped by T3 guys either, y'know? It'd be nice if there was a solution, though I can't think of one.

[Meep Meep]

foamyesque, on 13 October 2022 - 04:25 PM, said:

Yeah. But I can't imagine it's a lot of fun for the T1 guys stomping on T3 guys or the T5 guys getting stomped by T3 guys either, y'know? It'd be nice if there was a solution, though I can't think of one.

When a decent event rolls up I will often make or play on an alt account and play only one mech on it as a fun little diversion since you typically farm events super fast on your established accounts. I find that when in the starting tiers when you go on a beast mode streak and last man standing dominate a match vs a lance or so of remaining players no one gets pissy or mad and its usually a bunch of cheers and whoops of delight from your own team and a dose of GG well played exciting match from the other side. As to the blowouts of 12-1 and such that happens in every tier it just happens faster the higher tier you go. I don't think the bad or average players really care all that much about wins or losses and its really just the guds that get pissy because they were cut out of damage and kills on a stomp and blamed their noob team on a blowout if they get stomped in return.

[martian]

Ding Toast is Ready, on 14 October 2022 - 10:48 PM, said:

Oh I'm pretty sure they love it.

We all keep playing, after all.

If you would like to play a MechWarrior game that offers battling multiple human opponents, lots of customizable 'Mechs (including some of the fans most liked ones such as Archer, Crusader, UrbanMech, Annihilator, etc.), diverse maps, relatively fast skill-based matchmaking, various events and challenges, etc., then MechWarrior Online is the only practical option for the majority of players:

Quote

“It may be a crooked game,” said Everard, “but it’s the only one in town.”

[Primus Virjul Khaine]

This issue still stands.

It is exact: when you hit Tier 3 the match making becomes broken, matching you with even more inexperienced players AND then hurdles higher tier players opposite.

The higher the tier the more competition you have with higher tier players(who are higher tier because they have been playing since the inception of MWO and not based on skill); thus, you need a higher and higher match score to climb the ladder.

The combination of the 'raise the bar' tier system and broken matching making at tier 3 make the tier system broken to new players attempting to raise their rank.

Higher ranked players can chime in all they want; they will experience this when they create new accounts and attempt to climb the tier ladder.

Edited by Primus Virjul Khaine, 26 January 2024 - 04:08 PM.