For those of you who don’t know what this is I’ll explain:
This is when 2 groups of 2 players purposely exploit the matchmaking system using private chat to allow it so they end up in the same party. This way they only play other “randoms” who would normally enter alone not expecting to play a team of 4 By doing this they avoid playing other people entering in a team of 4…
This has to be fixed. It completely ruins the already fragile Arena system and just adds to the compiling list of why no one wants to play it. It is flat out cheating because it’s not fair to the people who enter alone expecting to play other people who’ve done the same or entered in 2s.
If you’re going to come on here and say “but we can’t find a match” then don’t bother contributing to this discussion. That’s a terrible excuse for cheating and if you were any good at Arena you would play fair and enter by yourself or with a friend if you can’t find a match in 4s. I say this because everyone who I encounter uses this excuse so if you all stopped exploiting the system this way you WOULD have other teams to play against.
I’d like to try and discuss ideas on how to fix this because its a royal pain to try and play Arena and enjoy it while the other team is exploiting the matchmaking system.
My suggestion would be to make it like what Halo 3s Team Slayer system was like. You can see who’s in your party but you can’t tell for sure if you’re going to be paired up with them or not. Therefore if you risk cheating you may end up playing each other.
> Can you explain what the exploit is a bit more, im not understanding.
I suppose there’s a similar team matchup system like in big team battle where Reach’s matchmaking tries it’s darndest to match up singles and small groups with other singles and small groups so getting decimated by a coordinated group should happen fairly infrequently (though it still does happen…). This “2’s trick” Hypno mentions where four friends are going into Arena matchmaking in two parties of two, joining up with luck and timing, and staying together means that matchmaking is trying to match the group of four against singles and small groups instead of other parties.
I don’t really have anything to add myself. It’s a mean trick, but what can 343 do about it? Make random players who don’t back out after games be considered a large party? That’d be even worse.
> > Can you explain what the exploit is a bit more, im not understanding.
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> I suppose there’s a similar team matchup system like in big team battle where Reach’s matchmaking tries it’s darndest to match up singles and small groups with other singles and small groups so getting decimated by a coordinated group should happen fairly infrequently (though it still does happen…). This “2’s trick” Hypno mentions where four friends are going into Arena matchmaking in two parties of two, joining up with luck and timing, and staying together means that matchmaking is trying to match the group of four against singles and small groups instead of other parties.
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> I don’t really have anything to add myself. It’s a mean trick, but what can 343 do about it? Make random players who don’t back out after games be considered a large party? That’d be even worse.
They could institute Halo 3’s old matchmaking startup. In this instance you see everyone you’re being paired up with but your not guranteed to be in their party because it show’s you the whole 8 person lobby and not the 4 person half-lobby. This way the cheaters could get paired up against each other if they’re unlucky. It would kill this practice and re-balance the system by separating teams from randoms.