Determining A Player's Skill Level

[Krios]

Any statistics based system would fail. Cause everyone likes to mess around sometimes, or abandon mission while farming for stuff and not getting it (I remember farming vor's seer, 60 or so mission aborts).

[KuroNekoXlll]

MR is a better system of determining "something" than you think

I did not say "skill" for a reason as warframe isnt that hard of a game....

spy? bring loki

defense? bring frost

farmings? bring nekros

are they still hard anymore? not really... you just bring X to Y and it will be a simple task

 

There's this thing called... "gear check"... oh remember this lovely term from the good ol mmo days and... well today?

MR is kinda like an indication of "gear check".

IS THE MR14 MORE SKILLED THAN THE MR 6....Well obvious he may or may not be, there is no way of telling HOWEVER

what we CAN expect from an mr14 is he is MORE LIKELY to be geared for the task than an M6.

 

It is also likely like someone of higher MR (up to a certain point btw, (ex; mr 20s and mr 14s.... cmon, not much of a difference) HAS superior gear and maxed out mods. I'm sure you can argue this by saying something like like "OH, BUT WHAT IF THE MR6 JUST GRINDED CORES AND MODS ALL DAY AND NEVER GOT NEW WEAPONS" cmon man... stahp with the nonsense. That is a horrible argument, you're just pulling outliers outa your @ss and outliers should not be included when reaching conclusions

 

I hope to shed some light on MR without being too rude

Oh, and OP, idk what nonsensical idea you got there man...MR is a good enough system IMO as long as people are aware of what it most accurately represents of a player (how much gear and mods they accumulated) 

Edited December 14, 2015 by KuroNekoXlll

[DSpite]

Looking at this topic made me remember that there is still no way to tell if a player is skilled/strong or not. Someone with a high MR or conclave score could simply mean they have farmed much and even a founder can be MR3. One can be carried or taxied on pretty much everything. I think I've suggested something similar an year ago, but this time I'm more specific.

 

When you finish a solo (you must have started in solo mode, so you can't invite other players, I know the game can detect if it's solo mode because the esc menu pauses the game) void (or the equivalent after star chart 3.0, picked void because it contains all factions at the same time) endless mission the game would keep the information about the enemy level at the time of your departure, successfull or not, and update it every time you achieve a new highscore. Since the curcumstances are different, the scores for the three gamemodes would be tracked separately. These numbers should be visible from your profile and, after gathering enough data from it, DE could divide them into ranks and make a player's first endless solo void run to drop a sigil/emblem that updates on your power rank so you can show it off.

 

I have a primary and a testing account that I started at U14. One is MR17, and is where I spend Plat and collect everything, the other is an MR7, 3 Frame, 10 odd-ish weapon account with me using a Glaive throwing Excalibur to see just how far I could push it (even though now it's a moot point with the Excal "upgrade" he got, but when I started it still had Super Jump).

 

Anyway, point is my "skill" level is the same on both accounts. It's either good or bad in both, but the "number" stats will be WILDLY different.

 

You can't look at a bunch of numbers and just guess a person "skill" when using a complex device like a Warframe.

 

"S THE MR14 MORE SKILLED THAN THE MR 6....Well obvious he may or may not be, there is no way of telling HOWEVER

what we CAN expect from an mr14 is he is MORE LIKELY to be geared for the task than an M6."

 

Most accounts with high MR have a majority of the weapons with basically ZERO kills on them. That means the weapons were NEVER used in actual combat.

 

If you actually had to manually get kills with a weapon to get affinity, it would mean that in order to get it to Rank 30 you must of used it, modded it, attacked with it.

 

Putting a pistol/sword on your back while spending an entire mission on top of a pole spamming Penta rounds until you hear a "DING! Weapon Rank 30 Archived!" is a meaningless metric to use for MR.

 

Under no circumstances I make decisions on players regarding MR until I first go examine their profiles and get an idea if they might of actually have used the weapons they are making comments about in the forums.

Edited December 14, 2015 by DSpite

[AdunSaveMe]

There's this thing called... "gear check"... oh remember this lovely term from the good ol mmo days and... well today?

MR is kinda like an indication of "gear check".

IS THE MR14 MORE SKILLED THAN THE MR 6....Well obvious he may or may not be, there is no way of telling HOWEVER

what we CAN expect from an mr14 is he is MORE LIKELY to be geared for the task than an M6.

With the exception of mr-locked weapons, no, you can't expect that. Churning through weapons for mastery fodder doesn't make you better geared or more skilled, because a rank 4 player can have a better loadout than a rank 10 player, and be more skilled. If it does make it more likely, it makes it more likely in the slightest possible way.

Edited December 15, 2015 by AdunSaveMe

[Pridesfury]

And do i get bonus points for using banshee instead of valkyr? What about using dread instead of soma prime?

[AdunSaveMe]

This system is for the others to look at to know what to expect. So cheating would be to make yourself appear more powerful than you actually are. I don't see a way to do this. Doesn't knowing what to do also count as skill in this specific game? (some wall of text explaining my point)

 

edit: Sorry, didn't realise nobody has said anything after my last post. Now I don't think I can delete it, as I see no way to do so.

The fact of the matter is, you can put as much work as you want into a system like this, but it would never be accurate, and you find yourself having put all these resources into a system that is ultimately detrimental to the game and the community.

 

Knowing what to expect is helpful. But there's no system you can implement that won't also breed toxicity in massive amounts.

 

It's not worth it.

[Emeraudes]

Gear checks based on mastery isn't a good gauge as it doesn't take into account what mods you have. Honestly, an MR 4 player could have maxed essential mods and a lot of corrupted/nightmare mods while an MR 15 player might not even have something like Quick thinking.

 

This would drastically affect how you perform, regardless of which frames you have at your disposal.

[Davoodoo]

This system is for the others to look at to know what to expect. So cheating would be to make yourself appear more powerful than you actually are. I don't see a way to do this. Doesn't knowing what to do also count as skill in this specific game? (some wall of text explaining my point)

 

edit: Sorry, didn't realise nobody has said anything after my last post. Now I don't think I can delete it, as I see no way to do so.

Funny but article you posted can be summed up with "do whatever you can, regardless of whether it adheres to rules or not to win and everyone who doesnt agree with you is "scrub"".

 

Whole idea is based on imperfection of balance, bugs and exploits. Stuff that simply shouldnt exist and rules generally prohobit it. Thing is that without such tactics these ppl arent effective thats why so few of those actually win any tournaments where there are ppl who activelly ban ppl for not following rules.

Thats because it isnt about self improvement, aka skill, its about winning.

 

Ive met plenty of such ppl and while initially claiming how pro they are, their house of cards simply crumbled when they were faced with same tactics.

 

I sitll stay by with what i said, you arent interested in skill.

Edited December 15, 2015 by Davoodoo

[Artekkor]

Simply: you can't. Any system created to determine this will be abused one way or another.

Only by playing and watching said player, i guess.

[Blakrana]

Skill is an inherently subjective affair.

 

Sure. You can wrap up some basic guidelines...but those lines, those will differ from person to person. If we're judging 'skill' by that article, basically anyone breaking a game over their knee to win at all chances...those kinds of people rarely make good play partners from a sportsmanship perspective.

 

Games aren't however, funnily enough, about winning necessarily. Sure, you can believe personally that the only way a game matters and can be 'fun' is by 'winning' (and if you don't, why link an article stating as such?). Feel free to do so, we're all in for different things. But by that same measure, you cannot actually argue that I am incorrect that it is entirely just as satisfying to lose as it is to win, provided the state of play for that scenario was damned good fun.

 

Some of the best games I've ever played have ended in a last moment defeat, by a worthy adversary, AI or otherwise (not strictly speaking Warframe here). Helps that those foes have been sporting and not out to be as linearly fixated on the goal of winning at all costs.

 

And no, your tactical options will always be different, Solo or Team wise, because in the latter, you have anywhere between 1-3 or 1-7 other bodies on your side, bringing all manner of other materials to the playing field. Your overall effectiveness as a group can jump quite impressively compared to what you can do alone. Linear or Exponential is actually possible depending on just what people bring to the match, and whilst some things remain constant...there are always plays you can only do with other people around.

 

Support is a prime example of things you don't measure on a Solo metric. Your system will never tell you this rather useful information about the person you're 'assessing' for skill. In a team game, no support can lead to earlier defeats than would be considered normal expectations.

 

Which is the nature of Warframe at it's core: team based co-op, flawed that it is. As someone who predominately Solos where I like, I cannot actually understand why you'd want the measure for a team based game (tenuous though it can be) built upon how well someone does on their own. Some people, believe it or not, are actually less capable to measure in such a system, because their entire kind of play style needs other people to actually be recognised for what merit it is, as stated above.

 

It also won't tell you how good they are at listening to team plans, how well they work in a group, how prone they are to being unsporting if their personal pride is even slightly impinged...I could really go on about the number of terrible things that happen if you measure how well someone plays in a team by how far they go Solo.

 

It doesn't tell you anything about them that can be a real killer for a having good game.

 

Winning ain't everything, and is certainly not the measure of a person's actual skill.

 

Nonetheless, I must confess, I'm just a 'filthy casual' at the end of the day, so I suspect much of what I've said will be easily dismissed by what pros and elites we have knocking around, as per the usual. Whatever, really. People will always find ways to segregate and filter out what they consider good and bad...just got to be a good sport and suck it up if you don't make the cut, and hang out with people happy to have you.

 

Any rate, apologies for going on.

[Kethus]

-snip-

I mostly included that article against the point that using certain frames is "cheating". So in order to be a good played you must abide by all unspoken rules such as not using any stealth frames and Limbo in Spy and Rescue, not using Rhino, Loki, and Valkyr at all because they basically can't die, not using Mag on a corpus mission, or Nova in places with lots of enemies (which is pretty much anywhere), and not use Frost or Vauban in defense missions. I don't know if I've missed something, but it seems pretty limiting. (well not for me because I pretty much use Oberon all the time, but that's still a large chunk of frames you're not allowed to use)

 

If you are playing with a clan of course there is no need for such a system since you know the people you play with, but I can hardly see any circumstance that can lead to positive emotions after losing a 60min survival run with 3 strangers. Strangers always tend to mind their own business and I am usually the only one who talks. As much of a "fake pro" or whatever I appear to be in my posts I'm actually not and I have very limited time to play the game.

 

When I see recruitment that includes forming an actual team it's always about grinding something by sitting in the same spot like Draco and those types of void survivals where you aren't really required to think.

 

Well since pretty much everyone who wrote here disagrees, a system like that is probably a really bad idea. Either that or people don't know what they want until they've tried a chunky pasta sauce.

[Tsukinoki]

Well since pretty much everyone who wrote here disagrees, a system like that is probably a really bad idea. Either that or people don't know what they want until they've tried a chunky pasta sauce.

The thing is that a lot of people that have posted have been through the time when your Conclave Rating was visible to all players in a squad.  People used that as an indication of how good your mods/weapons were.  Pretty much the same idea behind your "solo score" that you proposed.

The problem with it is that numbers like that are useless for determining how good a player is, whether they can actually do anything in the squad, and whether they would be better than the next person in any way.

And yet everyone used it as a massive epeen measuring stick and started demanding "1200 CR minimum!" and all sorts of other ridiculous CR numbers as a way to say "See, I have 1300 CR, I'm better than you scrub!!!!!" even though you could easily beat those players with only a 600 or so CR if you knew what you were doing.

It made the community very toxic and hard to find a squad without getting yelled at one way or the other depending on your CR, and it was generally very bad for the community.

It didn't serve a purprose.  It didn't make it easier to find good team-mates for missions.  All it did is let the arses be bigger arses than before and annoy everyone.

The exact same thing would start to happen with your idea.

It would just breed toxicity and problems with a meaningless number.

It wouldn't make it easier to find a good team mate or do anything else.

It wouldn't serve a purpose except to let arses be bigger arses and make it harder to get into void missions.

Also, no one said that those frames were "cheating".

They said that they could easily cheese the missions.

Because tell me: What "skill" does it show if I can sit in a T4S mission for 80 minutes as a Valkyr while being completely invincible?

Does that show I would be good in a team? No.

Does that show I would be able to adapt to different strategies? No.

Does that show I won't end up being a load on a group? No.

All it shows is that I can cheese the game and nothing else.

It doesn't show anything helpful for people looking to recruit.

And anyways, why try to get a "score" from solo play in a group play game?

Because honestly, being able to go 40 waves solo T4D as a Frost shows: I have a frost! and litterally nothing else.

Because honestly, I could bring a lato to T4D and as long as I was a Frost I could get through 40 waves without any "skill".

Most defense games need more than 4 frosts.  So how does your "Score" tell you that I also have a good Nova, Rhino, Trinity, or other useful class that would help the group a lot more yet suck for doing the defense solo?

The score becomes utterly pointless because it doesn't tell you if I can do anything else in the game, or will be useful in any way to the group if I have to play another frame (and good luck getting very far into a T4D with just 4 frosts and no damage buffs/armor mitigation/cc, at least not without wasting tons of time).

Meanwhile, what if I don't have a frost or hate playing a frost?

My solo score for T4D will suck and I won't be able to get invite into the groups because everyone will be spamming "60+ T4D score minimum!!!".

So if I play support frames largely and don't have a Frost I now can't get recruited into missions.

I may be utterly amazing at playing a support frame and helping the team.  But just because the score is purely a solo score I'm never going to get recruited into groups and will have a very annoying time in the recruitment channel with lots of harrassment directed at me for trying to form a group because my score is low (and that also happened when CR was visible and you tried forming a group without CR restrictions....lots of hate and harrassment).

So again: What is the point of the score?

All it does is be a useless measuring stick for peoples epeens of how much they can cheese the game.

Meanwhile it hurts players who don't have certain frames or don't like playing them because they won't be able to get the solo scores high enough to be able to get into groups without lots of harrassment over their low scores simply because they play and prefer the support frames.

Edited December 15, 2015 by Tsukinoki