The Mech Pilot Tier System, What Am I Missing?

[Lord Borzoi]

I've been playing for over 8 years, spent hundreds on my mech stable, and finally broke 1000 hours play time. (As of this writing 1002, to be exact) Though I had taken the last two years off from playing and restarted 3 weeks ago

Yet I've never once progressed beyond tier 5. I still enjoy the hell out of this game, which is the overall purpose of any game and right now I'm finally starting to wonder what I'm missing.

What are the benefits of a high tier status besides well deserved bragging rights?

[sumdumbum]

Benefit? longer wait times, mostly lol

[The Fifth Horseman]

The tier is a matchmaking tool. The only benefit to being T1 is that you're usually free of perpetual Tier 5 inmates and more often get matched up with and against more competent and competitively-oriented players. If you're on average better than the average players you get matched with, you will rank up over time - the only question is how fast that happens.

[climbingeastofwinter]

There is no difference between T1 and T5. The scoring system misses out on the context of the game and can't account for most of what is important.

The way to T1 is higher accuracy, but also taking less damage, scoring more points, destroying more components, getting more kills, etc. Basically, besides just knowing how to build and play your mech, it means throwing your allies under the bus so that you can be the one to cash in after they go down or are no longer able to compete with you.

If you lead the charge in mashup games, you're going to go down fast and generally your teammates are going to sit back and try to farm damage, so they won't back you up, won't take advantage of your opponents heat capacitors being maxed out by firing at you, and won't be able to pressure the other team while they're potentially out of position maneuvering you counter your charge movements. All of your effort goes to waste buying teammates opportunities and additionally your score gets penalized because, relative to cowardly damage farmers, you contribute 'less' according to the system. The scoring system wants you to just do more damage than everyone else and get more kills, and there is a little nuance in there for how you do it but generally what matters is that you're the one to get the kills and shoot at enemies while they're busy shooting at your teammates, so you aren't the one taking the hits.

It's a good game, but don't try to make sense of the scoring system, it's just there for the sake of being able to generate some kind of feedback but doesn't actually reflect on player contribution and the tier system is mostly a joke.

[Fastspectre]

longer wait times and you get to fight people that can actually aim but have 0 idea of how to play the game otherwise
it's utter stupid chaos, people in there assaults going left by themselves just to notice oh surprise, i run in to a team of lemmings where at least one knows to go right and everybody else just followed, and die (throwing away a 100 ton mech)
teams where most of them go lleft also only to notice they run into the entire enemy team full of right handed mechs and get murdered because the enemy gets their guns around the corner 1st (12 years and tier ones still don't understand that)
i personally wish i could go back to tier 4, basic gameplay knowledge and team play was way better there then in t3-t1...

[spartanspud]

There's no difference. T5 just means you're a bot. And T1 just means you're able to press R then aim before pressing LMB.
It should sort people into matches. But it's not uncommon to have T1 and T5 in the same match because of the low player count.

[spartanspud]

Originally posted by Fastspectre:

longer wait times and you get to fight people that can actually aim but have 0 idea of how to play the game otherwise
it's utter stupid chaos, people in there assaults going left by themselves just to notice oh surprise, i run in to a team of lemmings where at least one knows to go right and everybody else just followed, and die (throwing away a 100 ton mech)
teams where most of them go lleft also only to notice they run into the entire enemy team full of right handed mechs and get murdered because the enemy gets their guns around the corner 1st (12 years and tier ones still don't understand that)
i personally wish i could go back to tier 4, basic gameplay knowledge and team play was way better there then in t3-t1...

If there's cover, you can peek out from it vertically, from the left or right. The direction you approach the cover from doesn't dictate how you peek.
Going left on Canyon Network can be viable. Advisable even, depending on the mode and spawn point. Going left when spawning in Alpine Peaks' low side is arguably the only correct decision so you're not being blown to pieces on a constant uphill approach from the right. Going left on Solaris allows you to position yourself to not have to fire through your allies and put your enemies in a crossfire. On Hellebore one of the spawns must go left. So on and so on.
The first situation where it comes to mind that it's a distinctly bad choice is Vitric. If you go high left on Vitric you're probably going to get shot from multiple angles.

[Lord Borzoi]

Okay, thank you everybody. I won't trip on the tier system anymore.

And I can shoot and aim btw. My personal best, I feel, was solo killing a pair of Atlas' I found wandering around by themselves, in a tricked out stealth Raven. I actually felt bad because the very next match the lead Atlas was on my team and he told me he was trying to show his newbie cadet friend that this game wasn't that hard or mean.

Yeah, I kinda messed THAT up for him...

I ran a figure eight pattern between the two of them and the cadet Atlas hit the lead Atlas as often as I did! And once the lead Atlas went down it was basically a baby seal clubbing after that. (Newbie was an utter newb.)

[Shiro]

Originally posted by Lord Borzoi:

I actually felt bad because the very next match the lead Atlas was on my team and he told me he was trying to show his newbie cadet friend that this game wasn't that hard or mean.

Yeah, I kinda messed THAT up for him...

yet another reason to have global chat engaged, you can chat with ppl after you kill them. Friendly chat I mean, not trashtalking. Game might be hard for newbies, but you can make it not mean :)

[Lord Borzoi]

Ah Shiro, I recall your name. We played together fairly recently if memory serves

My lance and I use a side Steam chat to communicate. Much better. No button pushing, just an open mike for everyone. Plus you can talk smack about somebody without hurting anyone's feelings. Occasionally we'll all play in the same room. You can really coordinate then!

Unfortunately my absolute best player, well technique-wise, got his dumbass banned for playing while black out drunk and being an ahole. (Not while working with the group, but when solo) I finally got him replaced with a newb who shows great potential. Averages 300 to 400 points of damage a round in a freaking Blackjack no less. Only been playing for three weeks and still hasn't acquired his first Assault mech. He's *very* meticulous. An accountant in real life.

That brings my lance back up to three, as my kid brother was our old lead but sadly he passed away back in May and we haven't replaced him yet. I'm trying to get one of my son-in-laws to play. (Hmmm maybe if I got a pair of Assault mechs I can show one of them that this game isn't that hard or mean...)

[Lord Borzoi]

Now I remember!

You killed me about three times in one night! Good times....

[Sar]

I’m m terrible at video games and I’m hard stuck in T1. I would probably be in T5 if I played Light mechs, however. I feel like Lights are the worst weight class unless you have really good aim and/or gamesense.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally posted by Sar:

I’m m terrible at video games and I’m hard stuck in T1.

True, a lot of the population in this game is absurdly terrible.

[SharkPlush]

Yeah, it's good to have a system in place so it can choose who plays with who when possible, but the when possible is always there so we can you know, enjoy gaming.

[khajiit]

i got to tier 1 by just giving assault mechs backshots

[Sar]

Originally posted by The Fifth Horseman:

Originally posted by Sar:

I’m m terrible at video games and I’m hard stuck in T1.

True, a lot of the population in this game is absurdly terrible.

Yeah, but where would we be without them? With another dead game where only cool kids that can headshot you from 1km away with a Gauss/ERPPC combo are playing? Except that wouldn’t be sustainable and the servers would shut down. I’m grateful to everyone still playing, even if they aren’t doing well all the time they still gotta do well enough some time, or at least they enjoy their garage of shiny robots.

Edit: to be clear, I’m not one of those cool kids. I wouldn’t play this game either if only they were left.