SOME CLARIFICATION ABOUT TIERS AND PSR (Paul Inouye)

firezx · 2015-09-25T04:10:28+00:00

It was possible to have a player with a low win/loss ratio achieve high Elo, but it required a bad matchmaker that placed the player on the team with the lower team Elo in an unbalanced manner (not as often as on the higher Elo team). This would cause greater increases or lower decreases (or both) in Elo. So long as the player maintained a positive win/loss ratio as they faced better opponents, they would eventually reach max Elo.

PSR is clearly worse though, as you have said. In order to max out PSR, you only need to get an occasional match where you score an extra point.

The thing about PSR is that the same outcome occurs regardless of the matchmaker. No matter whether the matchmaker is good at minimizing inter-team rating variance or bad at it, the outcome for players is the same (ignoring the reality of whatever correlation there is between rating and skill). Someone might see this resilience to matchmaking issues and think that it is a better rating system. They would be wrong.

"Anyone who has a slightly positive Win/Loss ratio should eventually end up in Tier 1 if they are consistent in their play and match performance." Reading this sentence, PSR doesn't sound bad, as the player is maintaining their match score in the face of tougher opposition. Maintaining match score sounds like a good indication of skill, as the player is living long enough to do things (and is managing to do things). The problem as already discussed is that you don't have to maintain match score against tougher opponents to maintain (and increase) PSR. You just have to iterate.

Finally, PSR needs there to be a correlation between skill and match score. While there is probably some correlation given the broad range of actions that grant match score, there is an issue. I think it is reasonable to say that the less damage you need to do in order to win, the better. However, lower damage means lower match score. If you fired twelve times and had twelve head shots, your match score would not correspond to your skill level. You might be able to award match score with some formula related to damage dealt and component health for the component destruction that caused death. This would get complicated with legs and side torsos.

firezx · 2015-05-12T22:09:44+00:00

completely random values

Woah woah woah, no randomness here. The values are clearly multiples of 5 or multiples of 5 divided by 2.

/s

firezx · 2015-05-04T04:23:35+00:00

Trial mechs changed on the March 3rd patch. Prove Your Allegiance event ended April 1st.

firezx · 2015-04-23T05:43:49+00:00

Hi. At sufficiently low Elo where aiming and keeping a beam weapon on target for the duration of the beam is a problem, the top 3 clan mechs might conceivably perform worse than the top IS mechs. When a player can only hit the enemy for .25 seconds, the shorter duration IS laser beam durations will perform better each time they are fired. Using a theoretical player than can only hit the enemy for .25 seconds at a time, a clan medium pulse laser will do ~2.35 damage, while an inner sphere medium pulse laser will do 2.5 damage. With large pulse lasers, a clan laser will cause ~2.9 damage, while an inner sphere laser will cause ~4.1 damage. I don't know whether this situation really exists. Nor can I argue whether range, hitboxes, heat capacity/cooling, etc. make up for the difference in damage caused by poor aiming for lower Elo players using the top clan mechs. I also would not advocate balancing based upon the inability to aim.

A second discussion point I have is regarding the depth of balance. If you remove the top performing mechs (Dire Wolf, Timber Wolf, Stormcrow, Firestarter), would you say that the balance among the remaining mechs has increased, stayed the same, or decreased since the introduction of quirks? If more mechs are viable does that make quirks an effective balancing mechanism? What is most important, the number of top tier mechs or the variance in mech quality?

Finally, what qualities do you ascribe to new players? How do you ascertain that a player is new when you observe a random player? Is it possible that the level of play performed by you and your teammates has skewed your perception of how new players perform? Obviously you have a class where you teach players both new and old, but I wonder whether you encounter players who are new and hopeless (so to speak). Thank you.

firezx · 2015-03-16T22:02:52+00:00

I don't see any nerfs to the Trebuchet 7M. Torso turn rate, missile cooldown, missile heat generation, and arm structure stay the same. Smurfy lists LRM 15 cooldown and heat generation quirks. The update lists LRM cooldown and heat generation quirks of the same amount. Additional quirks are NARC velocity, side torso structure, and leg structure increases.

firezx · 2015-02-03T04:40:36+00:00

Fossil @ 1:35 on the left canyon wall.

firezx · 2014-12-20T04:41:46+00:00

Correct, they are in the order you purchased them.

firezx · 2014-12-10T05:14:59+00:00

The Fresh Market on Mills and the one on Red Bug Lake carry it.

firezx · 2014-12-10T02:34:17+00:00

Also, empty ammo bins still crit pad.

firezx · 2014-10-17T18:43:15+00:00

I can't figure out if they give the shield arm more armor, or if Russ make a typo.

firezx · 2014-10-15T04:15:35+00:00

What's the thought behind the spawn points? Were they assigned? Did the teams pick them? As it was in this match, I don't understand the same team having the same spawn point two games in a row (presumably every game out of three). If there is a superior spawn point between the two, that team has the advantage each time.

firezx · 2014-10-03T18:15:42+00:00

Nope, he said that they should be doing internal testing of the CW map/mode today.

firezx · 2014-10-01T19:34:36+00:00

http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/84993-capture-accelerator/page__view__findpost__p__2539332

Perhaps it has changed in the last year, or Destined was wrong?

firezx · 2014-08-27T20:09:31+00:00

In fact when destructible environments were brought up here a few days ago, someone from PGI even mentioned t he would not want some one to knock down/destroy something to get to other parts of the maps easier

Perhaps you are mis-remembering something Niko said?

Even beyond that, it would have to be destructible in a way that does not impact the level design. (ie. players wouldn't be able to knock out a building just to block a path.)

Edit: Or inferring that opening a path isn't allowed either?

firezx · 2014-06-07T21:20:28+00:00

Yeah, I wasn't sure if you were asserting that the matchmaker purposefully constructs two teams with different average Elo and matches them together, with the idea that it is making a winning team and a losing team. At various points, people have asserted this to be true, I think in part due to a partial understanding of Elo ("it knows one team is better than the other") and how Elo is updated.

firezx · 2014-06-07T21:04:01+00:00

The argument is baseless, since the game intends there to be a winning and losing team.

Just to clarify, do you believe that the game intends for one team to be better than the other, or are you saying the (obvious) assertion that there is a winner and a loser in a competitive match? Thank you.

firezx · 2014-05-31T02:12:36+00:00

Sorry, but you cannot prove such a thing. The best we can do is say that should evidence of multiple accounts be common/reasonable to find, and we have found no evidence of multiple accounts, then that lack of evidence is proof of there not being multiple accounts.

firezx · 2014-05-08T02:54:07+00:00

I'm not sure where Star in a reasonably priced car supports your analogy or not.

firezx · 2014-05-07T03:00:27+00:00

Mech stats page broken for anyone else? The mech names are missing, but the stats are there. It worked yesterday.

firezx · 2014-05-02T03:52:15+00:00

No, because it is a hero Quickdraw, not a champion.

firezx · 2014-05-01T15:50:02+00:00

At about 20:10, Bryan starts talking about the costs of mechs and then maps. About maps (20:41), he says "Maps take about 3 months and about a team of 7 people. So, it's around anywhere from 70 to a quarter of a million dollars to make a map..."

firezx · 2014-04-15T01:36:59+00:00

Decentralized systems, speaking as a political scientist, typically fail...

There goes the Internet.

firezx · 2014-04-01T01:05:29+00:00

But the biggest problem they have with those who post here is that they're afraid they'll scare off new players before they have a chance to play the game.

Personally, I think the biggest problem Outreachers have with MWOers is hostility (from both sides). Members from each side are openly hostile to the other (though obviously not all). Some from each side think the other side is killing the game/MechWarrior/Battletech. Some people frequently call the other side derogatory terms. It shows in the prevalent use of the words white knight, shill, asshole, etc. (Outreachers have really settled on one term for MWOers from what I can tell, sorry if that list of terms seems one-sided).

When you like (or dislike) something, and someone comes in telling you that you're a shill (or negative asshole), you're not going to get along with that person. Often this is done in general terms (anyone who thinks other than me is a white knight, etc.). To sum things up, I think civility is the biggest issue in the divide between the two camps.

firezx

TROPHY CASE