New MWO Player Skill Rating System, Why v1.0 Was Bad

[@Ancient0fDays]

THANK YOU FOR BEING YOU...LOVE YOUR WORK AND YOUR ANALYSIS...GREAT TO HEAR YOUR VOICE AFTER ALL THESE YEARS...!

[@ndr2q]

Agree so much. I was (sadly) one of those terrible players in Tier 1, and it was an awful experience, both for me and my team. I love the Mechwarrior franchise and was a Legendary Founder, I had so many hours in MWO and it felt like no matter how bad or awful I was, my PSR rating kept going up. I eventually stopped playing because I was in a PSR hell, where I was getting stomped over and over, but couldn’t drop down to a lower Tier since I had been playing so much and so long. I play a lot of fluffy / close-to-stock mechs because that is what I enjoyed most. It worked OK back in the beta and first year after launch, but the game has changed so much and a rubbish mechdad like me never had any business being put in Tier 1. It was a broken system, and I apologize to everyone who ever had the misfortune of getting matched with me as a teammate, lol. Here’s hoping PSR 2.0 does a better job of keeping me nowhere near the top tier.

[@kaseyboles30]

The thing is, being matched way outside of your actual skill level hampers improvement. If you're stomped in 30 seconds you learn nothing. Likewise if you have no challenge and see nothing new that is useful. If the new systems matches you in your skill bracket more often you might actually be able to improve in a meaningful way.

[@Beer-can_full_of_toes]

I just get tired of trying to fight my way out of T4 when I keep getting bad teams over and over right when I’m about to break through to T3. Super low skill matches are usually nothing more than frustrating when it’s a team of T5 T4 players against a wrecking ball of top tier players. I spend so much time trying to coordinate a team and getting stomped it isn’t really worth playing either way. Team balance is still a nightmare. I always seem to get the sack of potatoes that can’t stay with their team or focus targets which is so basic but absolutely paramount in this game.

[@robertrequiredfield5064]

Getting back into MWO after a long break. Your content is really helpful and thoughtful. Thanks!

[@Bomag]

Don’t worry, when I win the lottery and at a multi millionaire I will buy it off PGI and get the game under active development again with more maps etc, and then market it better to bring in more players and try to foster a nice esports scene for the more competitive players.

[@BlackhawkSC]

Nice

[@cool_dude_like_really]

Hope you won't forget this comment by the time you'll actually win the lottery 😁

[@cdanielh128]

Just saw this video in suggested. I left a good while back, was an original founder and still watch Baradul here and there but mainly for Battletech. It's nice this has finally been addressed. I might actually pop back in and get a decent match for a change. Thanks for the video. I look forward to more.

[@deeber3960]

Welcome back. o7 Haven’t played MWO in several months, myself, but might well be dropping back in soon. I’ve dusted off my HOTAS and made myself a “Tier 5 or bust” decal. ;)

[@jensjensen7462]

Great to see some content from you 👍🏻 Much appreciated 🍺🍺🍺

[@WookieeRage]

I'm getting back into the game, so seeing you making videos is great! Thanks for the time and effort that goes into this quality content. Cheers!

[@jonnyone-truck2460]

seconded!

[@HHHThanatos]

Thank you very much for your analysis! It's been quite some time to produce content. Much appreciated! Playing is a real nightmare for me at the moment.. tha

[@CaffeineNightOwl]

good to have you back.

[@griffusmc3228]

welcome back at least for a little while black hawk... keep up the work

[@BlackhawkSC]

Thanks man

[@sebastianfuentes3482]

Welcome back! Happy to see you in the game. After psr reset games are a mess, but I think the new method is better...the real problem is the player base, too small nowadays. Thanks for the video!

[@JayRaxter]

You're 100 percent RIGHT about player skills, this from a player who is in the bottom 5 percent

[@ClanBRxV]

Hey man, great to see you jumping into the new PSR system post reset. Would be good to hear your take on the new system and your thoughts. I feel the same about the old system which was practically useless. This system is not perfect but it seems better but it's hard to say till it settles down. I hope Paul is open to some tweaks from community feedback. Hope to see ya around more. Cheers dude o7 - BrioS

[@BlackhawkSC]

Hey Brios. I think the new one has the right idea. There are a couple of obvious issues that I'll talk about in the next episode.

[@ClanBRxV]

@@BlackhawkSC Yup, it's not perfect but seems good. I've been monitoring a player (who streams) who is honestly tier 4 or probably tier 5 in actual skill and his PSR is dropping, which seems to indicate new PSR is "working", at least in placing players better. Will see where he ends up when he settles. A good case study. In PSR v1.0 he was Tier 2 almost at Tier 1 🙄 - BrioS

[@deeber3960]

@@ClanBRxV Hi BrioS, you know I joke a lot in my KZbin comments, but if I can work up the courage and momentum (everything is becoming tougher as I get older ...) to get back into MWO in the next month or so, I'm planning to watch my progress seriously, if only to see if the new system is working as intended.

[@Gakuseinozen]

Glad to see you playing again... Was in a match with you today, I think. If you ever need a group to drop with, hit up the EYRI discord server 🙂

[@itsasickness]

it was good to see you in the game yesterday. it makes me happy to see some of the content creators who are on the fringe of being active at least giving the post reset MWO world a shot. i think "new PSR" is better than "old PSR" but think it needs to account for groups now being in solo queue. in about 60% of reset games, i can just look at certain names together in a lance and know the game was going to be a stompy win or stompy loss. everything you said about how elite pilots warp games with their skill is true, and it is exaggerated tenfold when those pilots group up in solo queue. i dont think its ok to have groups in solo queue unless the matchmaker is going to be sophisticated enough to 1) measure their impact correctly, and 2) properly balance around them. i dont see either of those happening though.

[@BlackhawkSC]

It does account for groups and I'll try to explain that in the next video. However if a person plays in a good group all the time, it might take a while for the PSR to recognize their actual skill level

[@itsasickness]

@@BlackhawkSC awesome, thanks! looking forward to hearing it.

[@geoffreyveale7715]

@@BlackhawkSC I saw a comment from a player in one game implying that the matchmaker does not take proper account of the actual tonnage of the group. As such groups should generally be as high in tonnage as possible.

[@ChurchAutoTest]

@@BlackhawkSC In reality while the new PSR system will impact group players differently (good thing), the matchmaker still does not account for them properly. Which is why you can get a group of elite players plus another great player or two while the other team is full of low skill casuals. And then there is the tonnage imbalance. Really the matchmaker is still a complete joke.

[@BlackhawkSC]

The MM does take into account weights. You can choose to take whatever mechs you want and the MM would try to balance that. It does make sense to take assaults for small groups though since assaults, right now, are the best weight class overall, and there's a chance for the MM to match an assault with a heavy on the other side if it's not able to find a matching assault.

[@byter75]

The tricky thing with interpreting the graph showing the old distribution of player tiers is that it makes a great number of generalizations. Someone who pops in for one match will have a lot less impact than someone who plays several hours each day for those 3 months. The matchmaker uses tiers to quickly try to throw lobbies together but it then uses individual PSR to try to balance out the teams. Which is a long way of saying, I wish we could see whether tier corresponded with number of matches played and whether the most dedicated players were distributed at the very top of tier 1. An anolgy I have used to describe the old system was that if everyone wanted to game the system then all they would need to do is earm a lot of match score by everyone taking assault mechs with streaks. Since assaults take the most punishment and streaks tend ot spread their damage a lot, it would help ensure that everyone would get lots of dmg and match score (and thus PSR gain). This however is obviously quite a silly since they arem't actually are really good at the game, in fact their kills are rather inefficent and the weapons are aiming for them. Under the new system, this thankfully will be addressed, even if everyone scores a lot of match score it doesn't prove that they are heads and shoulders above their peers.

[@BlackhawkSC]

That was the criticism with LRMs for a while. They farm match score but didn't necessarily require skill nor contributed to wins. Any system based purely on match score is going to have problems until the match score formula is also fixed. But... match score is also better than any other single metric right now.

[@xherdanrayng1903]

yay ur back!!!

[@H-Y-P-E-R-I-O-N]

It's nice to see you back

[@geekdenice5355]

Can't wait the other ideos. thx for this one alerady :D

[@ChurchAutoTest]

Good to see you again. Wish that it was under better circumstances. PGI has just gone from bad to worse in their decision making about MWO. I'm pretty sure I'd still be Tier 1 under this new system (avg 360 match score and 1.3 WLR pre-merge), but the game and matchmaking is just intolerable to me at this point.

[@geekdenice5355]

event + week end... very inpredictable games today

[@1228carlito]

It's too bad they waited so long to get and implement input from the community on the game. 5 to 10 years ago this would have made a huge difference.

[@PeterHamiltonz]

Holy cow. MWO is still a thing...

[@willh8950]

Peter Hamilton Still alive, and ive honestly seen more proper cadet newbies in the last 3 or 4 months then in the year or so previously!

[@excessmaterial]

My heart just really hasn't been into this game since they stopped making content for it. It's like...bleh, I have so many other games I've been playing over the past year. So many good memories of MWO too. Such a shame.

[@johnmoore8599]

Right now, everyone is running assaults to game the PSR. It makes running light and medium mechs problematic. However, I am seeing players I haven't seen in 6-12 months. Hopefully, things will improve, but without new mech packs, I don't see PGI making any new income off of this. There are ways to play a medium right now, but it has to be a streak boat. Streaks can put out a lot of damage rather quickly.

[@BlackhawkSC]

Exactly, they should have done this when PSR was first introduced. But I don't think you or I would be too sad if PGI has to give up the license due to not being able to run MWO profitably.

[@johnmoore8599]

@@BlackhawkSC Well, they couldn't even build a decent MW5. They could have deconstructed MW4, and built something similar with better AI. They already had a lot of the art and models done. But, they blew it.

[@fishsnapz5501]

If you swap the uac for an lbx20 the heat becomes much more manageable and if you know how to play support you can put up some great numbers.

[@BlackhawkSC]

It doesn't use the jam chance quirk though, that's the main reason to take this build.

[@MG-hx3ym]

I’ve been playing a while now pretty well too. I’m never the lowest in damage on my team and I’ve been in tier 5 for months and the meter barely budges. I would love to go up to tier 4 so I can stop playing with such ill mannered people yelling over VOIP.

[@perry92964]

i think it might be a little to late to fix the psr they are doing it now cause the game pop is so low, i get the feeling there are only a couple of people working at pgi these days and they dont play their own game, in my opinion they made a huge mistake with the skill tree patch that introduced the new weapons. the big issue is it give your mech extra phantom weight and makes all the mechs move up in class. assault mechs arent feared anymore cause they can be taken out easily with mechs half the tonnage

[@TheInsomniaddict]

Ah, great. Back to Tier 4 I go!

[@ninetenduh]

I played the game on launch and only just recently picked it up again, pretty much a week ago, and I absolutely don't get the system, is the bar in the home screen supposed to go up or down, why is my skill rating reduced when I do on average 400 damage and 1-2 kills with a 200-300 match score, I am no prodigy or anything but it seems rather odd to me that I do decent to not be a detriment but still get punished.

[@BlackhawkSC]

I suggest checking out the followup video which explains how the PSR works kzbin.info/www/bejne/nXK5g357gt6Hm7c

[@jonjon3829]

I dropped from T3 to T4 but i dont do any better then before.

[@1000mjf]

PSR 1.0 put me off playing mechwarrior online because i was getting fed up losing 20 match only win a few here and there and team steam rolls

[@detpackman]

MWOs major issue is its match maker and PSR to be honest PSR needs a reset more often then it is , the issue is that PGI wants to keep search times down rather than build teams correctly , what ive seen is tons of mismatched tonnage and skill level teams , i realize the reset should stablize it in a few weeks , but MM keeps putting together overly tonnages in matches , and mismatched skill sets still . PGI should have enough pilot data to properly build a akill based tonnage MM system , they need to put tonnage into the mix as well , while there are a few 1% at the top that perform in any tonnage others have certain tonnages they excell at , and putting 6 Assualts aganst a team with 2 is kinda mismatched and just not giving the one team a fair game IMO

[@BlackhawkSC]

Tonnage matters less than skill and the mech that's being piloted. Two of the best mechs in the game are 65 tonners. Pilot skill and how the game measures that should always be the number one criteria in a proper matchmaker. There obviously is a point where tonnage difference gets too ridiculous, but in my last 2 weeks of playing, I haven't been able to point to one game where tonnage is the main difference maker.

[@detpackman]

@@BlackhawkSC thats only the case with a certain percentage of the top skill level players that do well in any mech, from my own experience if there is a major tonnage discrepancy the match goes to the higher tonnage team PERIOD , certain meta mechs only have so much armor , some of the better assault mechs have the advantage of more surrivabilty in a slug fest against said meta heavys , especially if there is 4 to 1 odds not in there favor you have to look at it out of the top level of play window your looking at it from and look at it from those at tier 3 level or lower

[@badhobz1]

So is it better to take 2 uac5 or 2 uac10 ? The uac10 seems to jam more than the 5. Also is 2 uac 10 more dps than 2lbx 10 ?

[@BlackhawkSC]

UAC10 does jam more than the UAC5 but still does more DPS overall. However if you saw my UAC tutorial, the UACs aren't really about sustained DPS but burst damage, in which case the UAC10's burst damage is superior. If you need a link I can provide that for you.

[@jochikondur]

@@BlackhawkSC Some metawarriors choose to use 3 x cAC10 (+ 1 x ERPPC) on their clan mechs and just eat the ghost heat, any thoughts on that?

[@BlackhawkSC]

I don't see that build working out well in the public queue vs 2xUAC10 + ERPPC. Primarily the cAC10s are not pinpoint damage just like their ultra versions and you forgo up to 10 points of burst damage plus a lot of weight and slots. Your sustained damage is better, but why not take LBX if you want sustained damage? I don't see a good argument for this build, but I'm open to being convinced :)

[@badhobz1]

Thanks for the insight. I’ve been working on building a super tanky mad dog. Using the RV chassis, you can then take all the mdd-c omni pods to get assault level armour stats. I then use uac10 and 2 er medium lasers to round it off. I used it to grind psr

[@jimr3633]

Statistically the PSR distribution should be a bell shaped curve, all things being equal. You might expect some bias towards tier 5 for new players that give up but their accounts remain active indefinitely?

[@BlackhawkSC]

They're calculating the curve using active (playing) accounts.

[@fallingfloor6924]

The guy shooting med lasers at 900 meters doing 1 damage shouldnt be carried to next teir. Likewise when running ac/20 dual snub ppc and killing two mechs with solo KMDD, but since you only did 400 damage you're punished.

[@BlackhawkSC]

The new PSR system does address that first issue to a great extent.

[@billysouth4698]

The new PSR at the moment is a shitshow, though I agree its a step in the right direction.

[@zigzera7757]

Is there even enough player to really mater

[@BlackhawkSC]

That's a good question

[@mattjohnson8585]

If the new PSR works out, there will be. And all the people returning will come out and say 'See? I told you so!'

[@C88-o5o]

Well. If you look on the website on the psr and match score update. They’ve given player statistics. In a 24 hour period, around 1500 players peaked in the evening. With about half that at the lowest point usually during the day. With a rough average of about 1000 players at any given moment. So yes, there is enough players to matter.

[@CaffeineNightOwl]

before the change, I had an avery between 500 and 800 dmg per game. now I hardly reach 200 dmg. and regardless of winning or losing or have kills, I´m downgraded every single game. so, although I´ve invested hundreds of euros to get the game going over the years, I´m considering strongly to quit. I´m playing to have fun, not to get frustrated.

[@BlackhawkSC]

The PSRs should settle over the next month or two. One thing I don't like about the new PSR version is the settlement time takes too long. So both bad and good players are stuck in T3 for too long. So right now you might get a bunch of guys who are really T1s on the other side and a bunch of people who are really T5s on yours.

[@ClanBRxV]

@@BlackhawkSC A bit problem with the PSR system is actually the effect of a top/bottom 1% on win/lose, match score and thus PSR +/-. It's an effect that's hard to influence for the average player. This leads to some variance which is made worse by the small population and the fact that the groups are not matchmade. With such a small population, I don't think there will ever be an ideal solution and there are pros and cons to all things. Guess we'll get a better feel about the PSR Reset after a month or two. - BrioS

[@BlackhawkSC]

The thing is a lot of these truly game changing players have already left the game. When I was dropping this last week, I may have seen these players come up about 5 times. The major issue at this moment is still the PSRs not settling. That's why I said ideally we'd have like a T0/T6 but it's not as urgent as the actual bell curve itself. To be honest right now the matches don't seem any different than PSR v1.0. That's because before T1 is the same as T3, and now everyone/most people are officially T3, which ends up being effectively the same.

[@ClanBRxV]

@@BlackhawkSC Good point about the T0/T6. I always felt that MWO should have a "diamond tier" above tier 1 which is like the top 100 players or so and matchmaker should account for this. Anyway, I expect settlement time to be around 2 months. Long but hopefully with the longer grind, the final placement is more accurate - BrioS

[@CaffeineNightOwl]

@@BlackhawkSC sry blackhawk, that you got all the blustering from me. it´s because of this PSRs and you seem to have insiderinformations. first q: why is it said, that the so called "elite players" contribute more to the game than "normal" players? "game changing players" are not needed, if all players were on the same skill level. and aren´t the so called "elite players" not mostly somewhat arrogant, non talkative and non helpful to the "normal" ones, not to speak of the newbies? let the "elite"players play with themselves. 1 vs 1, 2 vs 2, 3 vs 3 and so on, if you can find 24 "elite" players, it could also be 12 vs 12. If they necessarily have to put the so called "elite players" together with the so called "average players", they should have nerfed the so called "elite players", for example 30% less armour and damge for tier 1, 20 % for tier 2, 10% for tier 3. that would be a challenge for the so called "elite".

[@marvthedog1972]

the current PSR sucks worse than this one. You can never really leave your :"tier" regardless of how well you do in your match

[@Revener666]

This is not better, I want a system that don't decrease my PSR when in a light mech where I work my ass off but don't do enough damage. since match score seems to be like 99% damage influenced.

[@19FlyingWombat76]

Still suck`s like hell doing it without real preparing the ppl for it and I´m down to bloody Tier 3 and gotta fight up again! I´m no noob so this will happen but I´ve didn`t even seen a real statement how it works out now. I allways defendet this game against haters but now I´m close to become one myself with this support! No excuse for this shit and I´m pissed like hell!

[@geoffreyveale7715]

Lately I have been seeing posts with links to porno sites. Just found one in the posts for this video. Are you noticing this as a trend on KZbin?

[@BlackhawkSC]

No, but I think I deleted a comment with an inappropriate link

[@geoffreyveale7715]

@@BlackhawkSC I reported the one that I saw and it disappeared immediately.

[@ClanBRxV]

@@BlackhawkSC I've deleted a few too but honestly only a few. I have seen a few bot accounts leaving generic "good video" kind of comments. All these recently... - BrioS

[@BlackhawkSC]

@@ClanBRxV I've seen the bot comments too

[@ChaosAI24]

Go play WOT for a month and you'll end up being very happy in MWO again!

[@BlackhawkSC]

I heard WOT has a terrible grind, true?

[@ChaosAI24]

@@BlackhawkSC Yep, in comparison MWO comunity is a paradise.

[@texastony1946]

The matchmaker is broken. I have never seen so many stomps as there are now. This is going to drive away new players to satisfy high skill players.

[@BlackhawkSC]

Most people are in Tier 3 now, but this will change over time. When the PSRs settle, I think the matches will be more competitive. I do think they should adjust the tiers more quickly though.

[@Triggerhawk]

As a relatively new player myself, it's not worrying me or the friends/family I've brought to the game with me. As SC said just give it a bit and it'll all even out and be even better :) also I've worked out if you're against high tier players like jay z or bows3r just make sure you push into them as a team, they're used to being the aggressive ones and catching people off guard. We snagged a couple of wins doing that

[@geoffreyveale7715]

@@Triggerhawk If you can get the most of the team to be aggressive this is usually OP, often giving your team a massive win. On the flip side when you see your team cowering in one place for a while it normally results in defeat.

[@Triggerhawk]

@@geoffreyveale7715 yup. But I do like setting up defensive firing lines where I can find choke points too I find that works out well and it's pretty fun when everyone listens

[@CaffeineNightOwl]

exactly.

[@SirSquash]

if i can get 3 kills in a match and destroy a bunch of components while also do objectives, team loses and my psr goes down..... the new system is broken and bad. if its "PILOT" skill rating, then why does the performance of my team affect it? broken trash system....

[@dangwancie4797]

2021. it's still shite

[@becauseitscurrentyear8397]

this new system ruined the game its not skill based and makes the game horrible. its not fun to play.

[@turk88]

Game is dead BlackhawkSC , let it die and hopefully enough quit to force PGI to lose the license and hopefully someone who cares about Mechwarrior will pick it up

[@BlackhawkSC]

Maybe...I think there's still going to be a few thousand people around the world with a mech itch :) Eventually though I expect the game to be a money burner for PGI and they will be forced to sell the rights as their most financially viable option.

[@cool_dude_like_really]

@@BlackhawkSC this comment makes me sad

[@JainZar1]

Nice to see you back! Also I wouldn't mind if you made this kind of contend for other games. It really helped me understand how MWO is meant to be played.