145 replies to this topic

[Kaijin]

Joseph Mallan, on 19 November 2012 - 07:33 AM, said:

Kinda oxymoronic don't you think? Against public stats then you share yours!

I prefer to be efficient. Had I tried to refute the point i was responding to without revealing my stats, I'd have to do what I'm doing here - posting again to back up my position (my stats aren't stellar, but they do indicate a slight tendency toward winning, and thus go a ways toward negating the idea that only 'losers' don't want public stats). Thanks for completely ruining my attempt at being efficient.

[Vosje]

Captain Midnight, on 18 November 2012 - 06:42 PM, said:

ED: Don't be afraid of being bad, be afraid of never being good. Lying to yourself and convincing yourself that a 134 damage Raven contributed *ANYTHING* to his team is not how you get good. Hopping in a 600 damage Jenner is. Face facts, get good, and if you aren't willing to do that then accept your leaderboard stats will reflect the truth, and that matchmaking should not force a 600 damage jenner to try carry your 134 damage raven to a win.

Sorry, but I can't agree with you there. You just described a match I had previously:
I run a Jenner and scouted left (on Forest Map), a Raven went right. I ran into a Centurion that wouldn't face me (his loss), the Raven ran into a Catapult and a mech I can't remember. After finishing off the Centurion I assisted the Raven, which had been holding the 2 mechs occupied with hit and run tactics. (The rest of the team brawled in the center.) Effectively, I ended up high on the board, the Raven low.

Does this mean I was such a superior pilot? I, for one, doubt it.

[Kaijin]

Vosje, on 19 November 2012 - 07:54 AM, said:

Sorry, but I can't agree with you there. You just described a match I had previously:
I run a Jenner and scouted left (on Forest Map), a Raven went right. I ran into a Centurion that wouldn't face me (his loss), the Raven ran into a Catapult and a mech I can't remember. After finishing off the Centurion I assisted the Raven, which had been holding the 2 mechs occupied with hit and run tactics. (The rest of the team brawled in the center.) Effectively, I ended up high on the board, the Raven low.

Does this mean I was such a superior pilot? I, for one, doubt it.

I can't count the times I've seen this particular situation occur. One mech, tying up 2 or 3 others, giving it's teammates the numerical advantage to triumph. That one mech may not even get a kill, and often gets killed in the end, but without their actions, the match might not have been won.

[Agent of Change]

Captain Midnight, on 18 November 2012 - 06:42 PM, said:

ED: Don't be afraid of being bad, be afraid of never being good. Lying to yourself and convincing yourself that a 134 damage Raven contributed *ANYTHING* to his team is not how you get good. Hopping in a 600 damage Jenner is. Face facts, get good, and if you aren't willing to do that then accept your leaderboard stats will reflect the truth, and that matchmaking should not force a 600 damage jenner to try carry your 134 damage raven to a win.

Good sir, you may need to re-evaluate your concept of "contribute" and also "teamwork"... maybe even "carrying". In reference to your premise I will put the TLDR here first.

TLDR: Bwaaahhahahahahahahahaaha NO.

That said my earlier post I feel covers most of my retort to this gem but let me delve deeper into several misconceptions.

1. Just because you don't like the raven doesn't make it crap, i'm doing just fine thank you. Of course i'm doing fine in my cicada and cat so y'know maybe it's the pilot.

2. Racking up a massive amount of damage doesn't actually help your team... In fact it actively reduces the pay off for salvage. Point in fact the best possible match would have a grand total of damage dealt for 8 kills of 256 (for all mechs combined) That is 8 head shots (more or less)... efficient kills are best for the team.

3. A teammate that scores 0 damage and solo caps the enemy base is in fact carrying everyone else on their team... because y'know who won that game for you.

4. I submit that proper teamwork requires so much interplay, sacrifice and active cooperation that the current numbers are just a silly way of even thinking about it.

Edited by Agent of Change, 19 November 2012 - 08:19 AM.

[Padic]

There's always going to be things that a player can do that are "correct" (With regards to helping their team win), that are impossible (or at least too difficult) to measure.

Damage isn't that much better a metric than number of kills, because a precise player who is scoring lots of pinpoint head/rear torso kills will end up with a relatively high number of kills, but a relatively low amount of damage dealt. The LRM boat who is evenly distributing his damage across the entire surface of his enemy will easily deal far more damage than anyone else on the field (simply because there is more damage for him to deal before it results in a kill).

And then of course base capping/defending often doesn't involve dealing either large amounts of damage or kills.

I guess all I'm trying to say is, OP, I'm glad you like the direction they want to go in.

But Scoreboards cannot ever accurately capture player performance, and as such, should be ignored by anyone who doesn't need the game to feed their ego in order to enjoy it.

[CodeNameValtus]

I've definitely had this conversation more than once. K/D means very little to a Brawler, or a Striker, or a Scout.

The only mechs that are concerned with KDR is LRM Boats and Snipers. If you are playing any other role than one of these 2, KDR means jack squat to you.

I was arguing that playing a Brawler, as it was my choice to do so. Is basically a suicide mission. You are going to get cored most games. As a sniper/lrm boat, you just throw DPS down the range, and are rarely if ever getting damaged. You aren't the first one over the hill, you aren't tanking 3-5 mechs at once...heck, your damage totals for a game should be significantly higher than a brawler even.

There really isn't a good metric to gauge how good of a player you are other than win rate. And even that is somewhat flawed without resetting it prior to matchmaking phase 2 (with ELO), and even still it's flawed, as it's a team game, and ever League of Legends player can tell you. You can't gauge a players skill in a team game accurately. Sure, if you play hundreds of thousands of games you should kind of settle into where you should be, but it's a roller coaster ride to get there.

The reason that is flawed, is it doesn't take into account lopsided games. Winning 8-0 is different than winning 8-7. Which is different still from winning 0-0 via cap. These should probably be accounted for in the ELO system that they are implementing, however, knowing how these systems work is usually a closely guarded secrect, because otherwise everyone can point out flaws like these.

[SPARTAN 104]

about .7% will care about the leaderboards. Truth is unless a game is an e-sport like Halo, SC, and others. It doesn't matter. Ask the afk kids how much they care about live leaderboards. Oh nevermind they are in the game trolling telling people they are afk playing other games.

[Hythos]

dario03, on 18 November 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

...
Stats can't always tell a whole story.
...

MWO would devolve into "best build flavor of the month" only: 3PPC/1Gauss Atlas > x2Gauss K2's > x2Gauss Jaggermech > all

Teralitha, on 18 November 2012 - 01:08 AM, said:

This scenario is not possible with MWO.
...

I don't believe it can. Though there must still be some form of mechanic to allow certain people thier form of satisfaction from playing games.

Commodus, on 18 November 2012 - 01:23 AM, said:

Please! No official stats. They ruined so much games i played in past.
This e-peen comparision is so annoying and unnecessary.
....

We've seen it before. Remember LPB's in Quake? Remember how one player would seem so godly great, because they litterally were 'all ping?' Or how about that match when a player earned 6 kills... 6, light / med units while dealing 200pts of damage, with a 23ping in MWO. Or how about a player using an i7Extreme + quad-680GPU system vs someone with a C2duo E7500+ GTS250?
Fair is never fair, on the internet.
(that last example is a difference of 40-75+ FPS vs 5-25FPS in normal situations....)

Kobold, on 18 November 2012 - 01:17 AM, said:

Leaderboards keep players interested.

Yes, this is true. Yes, leaderboards will be needed for those whom would otherwise be disenfranchised by it (a-la "World of warcraft PVP").
For those of us whom it means nothing, we need a way to be able to ignore it.

[SamizdatCowboy]

John Norad, on 19 November 2012 - 07:29 AM, said:

Dude, what is wrong with you?
That absolutely makes no sense whatsoever and tbh sounds like pure bias.
If you want to call every teamplay-oriented player a carebear, go ahead and look like a moron.

And yeah, your personal stats are secondary. What counts is the team performance, i.e. win or loss.
It also depends on how they would implement stats. Just K/D and W/L is ridiculously simplified for a team based game and merely encourages kill whoring, which is exactly why many people say ignore stats. A kill wh... oriented player is either a douche or a real carebear, not caring about the team.

I have no idea why a player with a functioning brain and without an overgrown ego should be a care bear.

(emphasis added)

Trolllololol.

The whole point of my post was it's possible to care about stats AND be a team player BECAUSE of how the devs plan to structure the ranking system so that it DOESN'T use K/D which I've said OVER AND OVER AGAIN in this thread is a bad metric for leaderboards.

I never said team-oriented players are care bears, I said players are care bears if they think it's bad to care about stats AT ALL.

Good heavens man, actually read the OP before Flame On.

Padic, on 19 November 2012 - 08:14 AM, said:

But Scoreboards cannot ever accurately capture player performance, and as such, should be ignored by anyone who doesn't need the game to feed their ego in order to enjoy it.

See? This is an example of a care bear to me.


Hello people, MechWarrior is a video game that revolves around big stompy robots blowing up other big stompy robots. A major segment of the player base plays as mercenaries who are fighting for the almighty CBill. The rest of the player base advances in their House by how well they inflict pain on the other side in matches. It is a frentic, competitive, high octane shooter. And a natural part of competitive shooters is stats, rankings, leaderboards, and ladders.

This is not some Kumbaya, let's hold hands and make a better world, peacenik game. If you want that go play FarmVille. This is the BattleTech universe, one of the most Machiavellian, blood thirsty sci-fi universes ever created.

Bryan Ekman said:

[BRYAN] Since MechWarrior® Online™ is by nature a competitive game, we’ve designed all aspects of gameplay to feed back into a variety of scoring systems to generate ladders, rankings/leaderboards, and statistics. We do not plan to support private matches or leagues at launch.

link

Edited by SamizdatCowboy, 19 November 2012 - 08:52 AM.

[M4NTiC0R3X]

I don't think public stats are a good idea 'cos it leaves some people w/ bad vibes... but I guess I wouldn't be opposed to the idea IF there were way more stats implented

for example: You'd be able to see each 'mech you('ve) own(ed) and pretty much everything you've done w/ them.

K/D: 234/203
W/L: 147/206

I don't think that reflects my skill enough on its own... Those stats are certainly not true if you seperated my 'mech variants.

edited: The only problem I have w/ public stats is not enough information... Reminds me of Starcrafts Win/Loss ratio... people would just make a new account if they ever got a single loss out of 600 I'm serious it bugs some people and they'll do whatever it takes to keep it 100% win rate or as close to that as possible.. I know because I used to be that way and it pissed me off getting out-played in a big boy match...

I guess that kind of drama could be used to fuel the future e-sport matches here in MWO so... PGI, MAKE MOAR STATS! and then yea it'd be kinda kewl like a sports line-up I could dig it.

Edited by M4NTiC0R3X, 19 November 2012 - 09:22 AM.

[thunXa]

If ranking is not made by kills it will be hard to keep it even because of the different game modes.

First of all founder status needs to be ignored.
All game modes which are implemented in ranking needs to reward an equally amount per match.
Which is unlikely because the next mode we will get is going to reward very spread xp to the team.
Simply because of the different capture zones.

so there need to be a ranking for each game mode.



And yes, public stats are cool :-)

[Padic]

I think I'd be care-bear'ing if I was concerned about how a scoreboard makes people feel. I'm merely commenting on the difficulty of creating an "accurate" score board - especially how easy it is for a scoreboard conscious player to game the statistics.

Kills, deaths, damage given, damage taken, time spent in the opponent's base, time spent blocking your opponent from capturing your base, destroyed components - all of these numbers might have some bearing on whether or not your team wins the match - but none of them map perfectly.

I suppose the good news is that, in general, a good player will still tend to rise upwards, no matter which metric is used - but if your ranking system isn't putting the best player on top, what good is it?

[thunXa]

Padic, on 19 November 2012 - 09:26 AM, said:

I think I'd be care-bear'ing if I was concerned about how a scoreboard makes people feel. I'm merely commenting on the difficulty of creating an "accurate" score board - especially how easy it is for a scoreboard conscious player to game the statistics.

Kills, deaths, damage given, damage taken, time spent in the opponent's base, time spent blocking your opponent from capturing your base, destroyed components - all of these numbers might have some bearing on whether or not your team wins the match - but none of them map perfectly.

I suppose the good news is that, in general, a good player will still tend to rise upwards, no matter which metric is used - but if your ranking system isn't putting the best player on top, what good is it?

Who is the best player in your opinion?

Is it someone that makes the most kills? captures? the best commander?

The statistics will tell and people will follow.

[Padic]

In my "opinion"? The best player is the one who wins the most. If I had to choose one statistic to rank all players on, it would be win/loss.

Obviously this puts PUG's at a disadvantage, but, you know. It's a team based game.

I prefer this format because it encourages you to play to win, instead of play to a statistic. A game should always strive to bring the rules in line with the intended format of play. If you need to sacrifice your mech to save your base, you do it. Even if it hurts your K/D or will leave you crippled so you can't deal a ton of damage. You can run the build that is useful for the team, instead of the build that deals the most damage.

Finally, I should note that I PUG exclusively, and would not mind seeing teams score far higher in the win/loss leaderboard as a matter of course.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

KDR doesn't mean crap here.

Win/Loss raito is what matters, might also want to focus on Damage Done/Match... C-bills earned should also be another factor.

But KDR... yeah, no. Not in this game.

[John Norad]

SamizdatCowboy, on 19 November 2012 - 08:50 AM, said:

The whole point of my post was it's possible to care about stats AND be a team player BECAUSE of how the devs plan to structure the ranking system so that it DOESN'T use K/D which I've said OVER AND OVER AGAIN in this thread is a bad metric for leaderboards.

I never said team-oriented players are care bears, I said players are care bears if they think it's bad to care about stats AT ALL.

Good heavens man, actually read the OP before Flame On.

Then please be more specific and refrain from statements that make people stop reading
I usually read posts completely. But my time is too precious to read long winded bragtard self-presentations, and your OP looked like one after reading the first part and skimming the rest. I'm sorry if that was the wrong impression I got there.

Edited by John Norad, 19 November 2012 - 10:27 AM.

[Wispsy]

Taiji, on 19 November 2012 - 05:55 AM, said:

LRMs before nerf, lights since being buffed like crazy, premade stats are all worthless and pugging stats only slightly more realistic, etc. etc. etc.

Meaning there can be no such thing as strong/weak stats yet, and so you're wrong of course.

None of that changes the fact a very good player will have good stats regardless and a very bad player will have bad stats regardless.
Also weak and strong are matters of perspective....Now to be fair I was being overly critical of Kaijin's stats but that aside there are people with 100+ kill/death ratios and there are people with 0.001(I assume have never seen it but I am sure there are some people who are really dedicated with really bad pcs).....of course there can be weak and strong stats. :/

[Tasorin]

Yes OP, because stomping pubbies in completely broken cheese ball builds and running up your stats equate to your piloting prowess in MWO.

[Captain Midnight]

Tasorin, on 19 November 2012 - 01:19 PM, said:

Yes OP, because stomping pubbies in completely broken cheese ball builds and running up your stats equate to your piloting prowess in MWO.

Stomping with a "cheesy" build (read: effective) is why my team wins and my stats are great. People "having fun" with 4SL 2xLBX10 atlas RS builds are why teams lose and players have poor stats.

I don't see the problem. ANY mech can be made effective, yet not every mech is. Without stats there is no way for a player to know if he is good or bad.

[SamizdatCowboy]

Tasorin, on 19 November 2012 - 01:19 PM, said:

Yes OP, because stomping pubbies in completely broken cheese ball builds and running up your stats equate to your piloting prowess in MWO.

As I pointed out in my OP, I don't want to stomp pubbies... the holy grail for me would be solaris vii style competition, where I could for example compete on the 1v1 hunchie ladder.

But in lieu of this, the pub stomping problem still goes away since the new matchmaking system will pair players of equivalent skill level... as well as pug v pug and pre v pre.

Really the new ranking/stats/matchmaking systems are going to solve a lot of the problems people keep bringing up in this thread.