A new score system for Halo 5

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

There should be a new point and score system developed for Halo 5. If you want it fair and balanced then people should be penalized for dying.

For example if you die then you have points deducted from your overall score. I remember in Halo 5 in a certain match I had 15 kills and 1 death yet the guy on my team had 25 kills and 32 deaths yet almost doubled my score - it didn’t really seem like a logical system.

What happens when you have a system which does not punish death is people developing play styles where they just trade kills and doesn’t develop skill at all.

What do you people think?

2

1 kill = 1 point
1 death = 1 point for the other team.

Problem solved.

3

> 1 kill = 1 point
> 1 death = 1 point for the other team.
>
> Problem solved.

Not solved. Doesn’t work for Objectives. Doesn’t work for assists. W/L based scoring with no account of individual performance is easier to manipulate and boost than a system that includes both W/L and individual performance. Detailed problem descriptions here. Solution proposal below.

> However, there is a compromise between team and individual that will serve the same purpose, but also be more accurate. That compromise is to use individual TrueSkill rankings, but set the winning bonus high enough that it is at least equal to the maximum possible individual score. For example:
>
> TrueSkill score = Individual contribution + win bonus, where individual contribution is capped at whatever the win bonus is.
>
> This does two things. First, it ensures that no matter how much you slay, if you don’t win, your TrueSkill score cannot exceed even the worst player on the winning team. Hence, winning is everything. But it also gives the ability to distinguish between players on the winning and losing teams, such that their ranks can be updated more accurately. This will make playlists that are supposed to have team rankings update far more rapidly than currently happens, ensuring better matches more quickly. It also helps minimize kill farming, as kill farming now has only marginal rank benefits despite using individual CSR. Also note that the entire winning team has a score that exceeds every losing player, so the odds of ranking down despite winning are identical to the odds of doing so using team CSR (the discussion on win/loss in the TrueSkill links explains how winning by too small a margin when it should have been a blowout can result in downranking, and also why that is appropriate).
>
> The other thing using individual allows you to do is reward time-to-victory. Let us change the formula to:
>
> TrueSkill score = Individual contribution + win bonus + time-to-victory bonus, where all three are capped at the same value
>
> The incentive to kill farm is almost entirely eliminated. Winning quickly achieves at least the same (and very possibly, a great deal more) rank benefit as kill farming. Why kill farm when you can rank up faster simply by winning faster? The benefits to this approach should not require explicit statement - it should be obvious to all.
>
> As far as individual contribution goes, if this is to have meaning, the individual score must reflect activities that assist victory. Achieving objectives is obviously a contribution. Getting comeback kills is obviously not. Slaying has some contribution . . . but how do you define it? A simple answer is that each kill results in the other team being down a player for the respawn time - which makes it easier to achieve objectives - and so the points for each kill could be awarded based on enemy time lost divided by match length. Or a K/A/D formula, where individual score = multiplier * (K + (0.5 * A) - D), capped at a maximum and no lower than zero, where the multiplier relates to the time lost by the other team.

4

> > 1 kill = 1 point
> > 1 death = 1 point for the other team.
> >
> > Problem solved.
>
> Not solved. Doesn’t work for Objectives. Doesn’t work for assists. W/L based scoring with no account of individual performance is easier to manipulate and boost than a system that includes both W/L and individual performance. Detailed problem descriptions here.

It actually is solved. Why do you deserve points for all that other crap? So you ran out and touched a flag, yay. That’s dumb. You score a flag. Your team gets a point. Cool. Kills shouldn’t have weight on anything score wise in objective. Personal score doesn’t really matter in a team game. It’s a mute point. All the points should go to the team. Who cares about individual score. The whole point is to help the team.

In Slayer, your team gets points for kills, you get medals for all that ridiculous other crap to show that you helped, you don’t need points for it too.

In objective, your team gets points for doing the objective. Good job. You grabbed a flag, good job. Why do you need points for touching a flag or holding a ball? The stats are/were/should be recorded and then you can feel good for holding balls and grabbing flags all day. Why start cluttering it all up with points when you get medals for it.

In football, if someone scored a touchdown, he doesn’t get 6 points, the team does. Then the kicker adds that 1 extra point for the team if he gets it. It’s not his to keep. The stats are recorded and the guy who scored gets congratulated and then goes out to do it again. His stats are recorded and then he can reflect back on them afterwards. Same with any other team based game. Soccer, baseball, even the Olympics where there are individual wins and losses. The person who comes in first place gets a medal, his team gets the points towards their overall score, then the victor is chosen based on the outcome that way. Other than that, there isn’t much to it. There is no need for all the other stupid points to further complicate things. No one loses points because they came in last.

5

Just stick to pre-halo 4 scoring and its pure win.

No need for any unnecessary changes.

6

> > However, there is a compromise between team and individual that will serve the same purpose, but also be more accurate. That compromise is to use individual TrueSkill rankings, but set the winning bonus high enough that it is at least equal to the maximum possible individual score. For example:
> >
> > TrueSkill score = Individual contribution + win bonus, where individual contribution is capped at whatever the win bonus is.
> >
> > This does two things. First, it ensures that no matter how much you slay, if you don’t win, your TrueSkill score cannot exceed even the worst player on the winning team. Hence, winning is everything. But it also gives the ability to distinguish between players on the winning and losing teams, such that their ranks can be updated more accurately. This will make playlists that are supposed to have team rankings update far more rapidly than currently happens, ensuring better matches more quickly. It also helps minimize kill farming, as kill farming now has only marginal rank benefits despite using individual CSR. Also note that the entire winning team has a score that exceeds every losing player, so the odds of ranking down despite winning are identical to the odds of doing so using team CSR (the discussion on win/loss in the TrueSkill links explains how winning by too small a margin when it should have been a blowout can result in downranking, and also why that is appropriate).
> >
> > The other thing using individual allows you to do is reward time-to-victory. Let us change the formula to:
> >
> > TrueSkill score = Individual contribution + win bonus + time-to-victory bonus, where all three are capped at the same value
> >
> > The incentive to kill farm is almost entirely eliminated. Winning quickly achieves at least the same (and very possibly, a great deal more) rank benefit as kill farming. Why kill farm when you can rank up faster simply by winning faster? The benefits to this approach should not require explicit statement - it should be obvious to all.
> >
> > As far as individual contribution goes, if this is to have meaning, the individual score must reflect activities that assist victory. Achieving objectives is obviously a contribution. Getting comeback kills is obviously not. Slaying has some contribution . . . but how do you define it? A simple answer is that each kill results in the other team being down a player for the respawn time - which makes it easier to achieve objectives - and so the points for each kill could be awarded based on enemy time lost divided by match length. Or a K/A/D formula, where individual score = multiplier * (K + (0.5 * A) - D), capped at a maximum and no lower than zero, where the multiplier relates to the time lost by the other team.

While True Skill is based on how you perform, it isn’t reflected in your in game score. I could kill the same guy 10 times and never die but if he is terrible, then I shouldn’t rank up. Whereas, if I kill a guy who is good more than he kills me, then I should rank up towards his level. But True Skill != In Game Performance.

7

I don’t see what this solves.

Sure, the guy with 30 kills and 30 deaths has just as many points as you when you have 30 kills and 1 death. But your overall team probably has more points than their team does because his 30 deaths are distributed between all of you.

If things like killing sprees and multi-kills count towards score, then the opposite is true. It’s not necessary to deduct points from someone doing poorly if the game already awards points to someone doing well.

8

> There should be a new point and score system developed for Halo 5. If you want it fair and balanced then people should be penalized for dying.
>
> For example if you die then you have points deducted from your overall score. <mark>I remember in Halo 5 in a certain match</mark> I had 15 kills and 1 death yet the guy on my team had 25 kills and 32 deaths yet almost doubled my score - it didn’t really seem like a logical system.
>
> What happens when you have a system which does not punish death is people developing play styles where they just trade kills and doesn’t develop skill at all.
>
> What do you people think?

Whoa.

9

i think 1 kill=1 point, if you die you get points subtracted off your final score -exampple- someone get 13 kills but 18 deaths, his total score should be -5, ( it does not take from your score to win the game, just means you dont get exp, instead it takes -5 exp from you [ if we do then halo 3 ranking system ]) im not sure if anyone thinks this too, but i think it could work to know who really is good at the game

10

It doesn’t really matter how much you win by, only whether or not you win, and objective gametypes should never penalize anyone for deaths (other than the regular penalties for respawning).

I think there was an elimination gametype in Halo 3 where the objective is obviously to not die while getting the most kills. Seems like you would have liked this one. However, I’m pretty sure it was wildly unpopular.

11

> It actually is solved. Why do you deserve points for all that other crap? So you ran out and touched a flag, yay. That’s dumb. You score a flag. Your team gets a point. Cool. Kills shouldn’t have weight on anything score wise in objective. Personal score doesn’t really matter in a team game. It’s a mute point. All the points should go to the team. Who cares about individual score. The whole point is to help the team.
>
> In Slayer, your team gets points for kills, you get medals for all that ridiculous other crap to show that you helped, you don’t need points for it too.
>
> In objective, your team gets points for doing the objective. Good job. You grabbed a flag, good job. Why do you need points for touching a flag or holding a ball? The stats are/were/should be recorded and then you can feel good for holding balls and grabbing flags all day. Why start cluttering it all up with points when you get medals for it.

The ridiculous stuff has no business being in a ranking calculation (spree bonuses, snapshot, comeback kill, and a myriad of others). I state that in my post. What does need to be included are scores for activities that contribute to victory.

> In football, if someone scored a touchdown, he doesn’t get 6 points, the team does. Then the kicker adds that 1 extra point for the team if he gets it. It’s not his to keep.

For determining W/L, you are precisely correct. The team gets the points. But in ranking players, you are incorrect. You cannot calculate an individual’s contribution to the win without assigning points based on individual performance. A kicker who goes 50% at 40 yards is less valuable than a kicker who goes 65% at 40 yards, regardless of the respecting winning percentage of their teams.

In professional sports, kickers aren’t randomly assigned to teams. In MP play, they often are. That is one of the reasons why professional sports analogies for ranking MP play fail. The ranking calculation for MP play must take more into consideration than professional sports. For MP play, to ensure good matching, the system must be able to distinguish between kickers. Strict W/L mathematically cannot do that. It can’t. You can’t predict individual performance from any calculation that deliberately censors all individual contribution.

> The stats are recorded and the guy who scored gets congratulated and then goes out to do it again. His stats are recorded and then he can reflect back on them afterwards. Same with any other team based game. Soccer, baseball, even the Olympics where there are individual wins and losses. The person who comes in first place gets a medal, his team gets the points towards their overall score, then the victor is chosen based on the outcome that way. Other than that, there isn’t much to it. There is no need for all the other stupid points to further complicate things. No one loses points because they came in last.

In professional sports, your team is not chosen at random from a pool of players. Your team is far more static than most “teams” in MP. Yes, there are some people who play with the same team much of the time. There are rarely people who play with the same team all of the time.

Because no one will play enough to have the opportunity to play against every other player - and because skill changes with time (sometimes significantly) - an explicit ladder system is not possible. Any ranking system must resort to statistics.

Straight W/L ranking when some people play as randoms, some people play as partial teams, some people play as full teams, and virtually everyone plays with combinations of the above is not statistically valid. If you do not believe this, I cannot help you without giving you a statistics course. The only cases in which strict W/L is statistically valid for giving an actual indication of skill is if all players either always play as randoms or always play as part of the same team. The further you deviate from those ideals, the worse W/L becomes at representing a true measure of skill. You can argue if you wish, but those arguments won’t change the mathematics.

In a game where people can choose to sometimes play as randoms and sometimes play with teammates (and those teammates may vary from session to session), the most accurate way to determine skill for matching is to include individual performance elements.

Many people complain about ranks in Halo (and other games), but fewer understand the mathematics that are used for statistically-based ranks. To be able to improve it, we must understand the mathematics (at least qualitatively). I do understand the mathematics quite well (not because of Halo, but because a good part of my professional life uses these types of statistics), and straight W/L will give a suboptimal matching experience compared to a system that takes into account individual contribution.

> While True Skill is based on how you perform, it isn’t reflected in your in game score. I could kill the same guy 10 times and never die but if he is terrible, then I shouldn’t rank up. Whereas, if I kill a guy who is good more than he kills me, then I should rank up towards his level. But True Skill != In Game Performance.

I’m not sure this makes the point you want to make. When using strict W/L, you are correct that TrueSkill doesn’t take relative ranks between players into account - it just looks at team ranks. However, that is common to any algorithm or calculation that uses only team score. Calling it “the H3 ranking system” does not magically give it the ability to predict a difference in individual performance when the only information used is team score. Your example makes the argument that using only team scores can give an inaccurate impression of your skill relative to the other players . . . and your argument is correct.

However, using individual rankings, TrueSkill can (and does) explicitly take into account whether that guy you’re killing repeatedly sucks. If he sucks, you don’t rank up. If he’s awesome, you do. Your subsequent post, however, then argues that individual contributions are irrelevant and that everything should be W/L - which is the exact opposite of what your example says should happen.

Ranking is fundamentally a predictive calculation, which is used to match players such that the outcome is uncertain until the game is actually played. If someone ranks up based on playing with the same 3 people for the majority of his playing time, a strict W/L system cannot predict his performance when playing with other players because all of the individual information has been censored. Since ranking is fundamental to making good matches, we all have a vested interest in making that prediction as accurate as possible. Significant improvements can be made on a straight W/L calculation - so why not make them?

12

> > It actually is solved. Why do you deserve points for all that other crap? So you ran out and touched a flag, yay. That’s dumb. You score a flag. Your team gets a point. Cool. Kills shouldn’t have weight on anything score wise in objective. Personal score doesn’t really matter in a team game. It’s a mute point. All the points should go to the team. Who cares about individual score. The whole point is to help the team.
> >
> > In Slayer, your team gets points for kills, you get medals for all that ridiculous other crap to show that you helped, you don’t need points for it too.
> >
> > In objective, your team gets points for doing the objective. Good job. You grabbed a flag, good job. Why do you need points for touching a flag or holding a ball? The stats are/were/should be recorded and then you can feel good for holding balls and grabbing flags all day. Why start cluttering it all up with points when you get medals for it.
> >
> > In football, if someone scored a touchdown, he doesn’t get 6 points, the team does. Then the kicker adds that 1 extra point for the team if he gets it. It’s not his to keep. The stats are recorded and the guy who scored gets congratulated and then goes out to do it again. His stats are recorded and then he can reflect back on them afterwards. Same with any other team based game. Soccer, baseball, even the Olympics where there are individual wins and losses. The person who comes in first place gets a medal, his team gets the points towards their overall score, then the victor is chosen based on the outcome that way. Other than that, there isn’t much to it. There is no need for all the other stupid points to further complicate things. No one loses points because they came in last.
>
> In professional sports, your team is not chosen at random from a pool of players. Your team is far more static than most “teams” in MP. Yes, there are some people who play with the same team much of the time. There are rarely people who play with the same team all of the time.
>
> Because no one will play enough to have the opportunity to play against every other player - and because skill changes with time (sometimes significantly) - an explicit ladder system is not possible. Any ranking system must resort to statistics.
>
> Straight W/L ranking when some people play as randoms, some people play as partial teams, some people play as full teams, and virtually everyone plays with combinations of the above is not statistically valid. If you do not believe this, I cannot help you without giving you a statistics course. The only cases in which strict W/L is statistically valid for giving an actual indication of skill is if all players either always play as randoms or always play as part of the same team. The further you deviate from those ideals, the worse W/L becomes at representing a true measure of skill. You can argue if you wish, but those arguments won’t change the mathematics.
>
> In a game where people can choose to sometimes play as randoms and sometimes play with teammates (and those teammates may vary from session to session), the most accurate way to determine skill for matching is to include individual performance elements.
>
> Many people complain about ranks in Halo (and other games), but fewer understand the mathematics behind the ranking system. To be able to improve it, we must understand the mathematics (at least qualitatively). I do understand the mathematics quite well (not because of Halo, but because a good part of my professional life uses these types of statistics), and straight W/L will give a suboptimal matching experience compared to a system that takes into account individual contribution.
>
> Ranking is fundamentally a predictive calculation, which is used to match players such that the outcome is uncertain until the game is actually played. If someone ranks up based on playing with the same 3 people for the majority of his playing time, a strict W/L system cannot predict his performance when playing with other players because all of the individual information has been censored. Since ranking is fundamental to making good matches, we all have a vested interest in making that prediction as accurate as possible. Significant improvements can be made on a straight W/L calculation - so why not make them?

Again, you’re talking rank. I have no problem with improving the ranking system. H4 has a -Yoink- system. Same with Reach. 2 & 3 had decent systems, but they were flawed. That is not the topic if discussion here.

Your performance for your rank is recorded as to how well you do in the game. Like you and I said, your performance helps your rank, as it should. I’m arguing the fact that people get 10 points on their game score for standing there and being a distraction (those points are the topic of the thread), which has nothing to do with your True Skill or your rank. Unless you are just trying to get your knowledge or version of True Skill out there, you aren’t arguing the correct point. And I’m not even arguing it, which I don’t think you understand.

I’m saying that in a game, lets say slayer, if I kill someone, my team gets 1 point. Next to my name, a number will reflect the number of kills I have. If I die, the other team gets 1 point and the person that killed me gets a number for their kills next to their name. That is what is being argued here. People in H4 get points for so many things that aren’t necessary and don’t mean anything. You get medals for them to show that you helped. Winning is what drives the game, and it’s being rewarded for winning that will make people not care about the stupid number next to their name.

In CTF, who cares if you scored the flag if your team won? Right now, everyone because they get points for doing things like that, not for winning the game. If you turn the focus back to being rewarded for winning, then people won’t care about the flag caps, odd ball time, etc… and they will just care about working as a team and winning the game. This will also promote better play as you don’t/shouldn’t want to be the guy that went -10 and cost your team the game.

13

>

We are on the same page. We are just arguing different points. I agree with you that the system needs improvement. That is why they hired Josh Menke to 343 to specifically work on the ranking system. I agree that there should be things that are accounted for (kills, assists, etc.) that go into determining your True Skill and not just winning.

The only problem is… this thread is talking about all those points for snap shots and distractions. Those points. Nothing that has to do with True Skill and Rank. I’m saying that those points just need to go. They don’t promote team play, don’t affect the score of the overall game, and you already get medals for them. So why add points to them too? I think they are dumb and just get in the way. They put so much time and effort into making the medals, that I wouldn’t think you would need points for them too. You’re being rewarded twice for the same things.

14

> The only problem is… this thread is talking about all those points for snap shots and distractions. Those points. Nothing that has to do with True Skill and Rank.

But it does. Those points are currently fed into TrueSkill for the rank calculation and assist with ranking up. Discussing the scoreboard is discussing ranking and TrueSkill. H5 will need to feed the ranking algorithm some set of performance information. Should that not be the same set of information fed to players on the scoreboard? Should not ranking up, winning, and the scoreboard all promote the same type of play? If so, then they need to use the same information.

And we haven’t just been talking about “those points”, either . . . you explicitly talked about deductions for deaths and not awarding points for objective completions or assists. So both you and I were taking a broader approach than that (as was the OP, who specifically mentioned deductions). However, when it comes to the ridiculous crap, you and I agree completely.

> I’m saying that those points just need to go. They don’t promote team play, don’t affect the score of the overall game, and you already get medals for them. So why add points to them too? I think they are dumb and just get in the way. They put so much time and effort into making the medals, that I wouldn’t think you would need points for them too. You’re being rewarded twice for the same things.

I agree. But how well do you think a system would work that has a scoreboard that gives one set of scores, but calculates rank using a different set? You specifically are excluding points for objective achievements and assists. You have said several times that the only things that count are kills in Slayer, with no individual points for objectives. Just W/L.

We both agree that strict W/L has problems when determining rank, so you need to include some information about individual performance. Unless we wish to revisit the whole H4 “I was at the top of the scoreboard but ranked down” crap in H5 (or people wondering why Teammate A ranked up but he did not) then the individual score at the end of the match and the scores used for calculating rank need to be one and the same.

The scoreboard is only there to give individuals an evaluation on how well they did during the match. Why feed players one thing and the rank algorithm something else?

15

No, I disagree. The current K/D scoring is perfectly fine. You are penalized for dying with a respawn countdown time (and sometimes being forced to watch your body being teabagged).

The guy who got more kills, yet more deaths probably did so because he was more risky and jumped into the fray more. Sure, he died a lot, but he got more though. To win a slayer match, you need to to push at your enemy, charge ‘em, guns ablazin’. You can hang back, be more cautious, and/or camp, but chances are since you’re not going at the enemy more, you won’t see them as much, and get less kills.

The guy who was previously described is further penalized by his negative K/D. Now I know some players could care less about K/D, but is still is a big part of shooter games.

16

>

I do not think that anything else than W/L is required at all. Including an algorithm that tracks and ranks players based on their ingame performance can severily hurt the gameplay. Since it promotes a selfish way of playing. Much like the individual CSR playlists are now, it’s essentially a FFA where you’re not allowed to shoot those of the same color as you.

The problem is that individual players are ranked according to the team. It should be that the Team is tracked instead as a whole. You do not get an individual rank, you get a “scoreboard” where all teams you regurarly play with are ranked accordingly.

If you go in alone or with less players than the required Team Size, then W/L is still a good indicator how well you play in a team. It’s not your ability to play well, of course, but it’s an indicator non-theless.

W/L already includes all necessary skills that were used to win, putting on extra factors such as kills, deaths and assists just put more emphasis on those three stats. How good you are at killing, how good your are at avoiding deaths, how good you are at getting assists. It gets more of a double meaning and as it’s for the individual, any player that understands the system will come to the conclusion that betraying a team mate for the rocket launcher will not only put a death on his stats, which will put him/her below you, but you’ll also get a rocket launcher to get kills with. That’s what happened in Reach before the W/L only update in Arena.

Another thing about it is that winning becomes a bonus, not a requirement. While you could make the ranking system not rank losers up, the main objective for players could very well be “not be anything else than first on my team so I do not rank down incase we lose”.

17

Kind of like how we’ve always been able to do?

18

Just bring back the halo1-3 score system. I prefer to see the points in slayer as kills not some weird point system

19

I liked 3’s scoring system the best probably, or maybe Reach’s.

20

> I do not think that anything else than W/L is required at all. Including an algorithm that tracks and ranks players based on their ingame performance can severily hurt the gameplay. Since it promotes a selfish way of playing. Much like the individual CSR playlists are now, it’s essentially a FFA where you’re not allowed to shoot those of the same color as you.

While this happens it H4, it is because there is no associated scoreboard benefit for winning. In H4, it is only individual performance that matters. In the hybrid scheme above, individual contribution accounts for only 1/3 of the score. The other 2/3 is associated with winning.

I agree with you that it doesn’t work in H4. No issues there. But I disagree that W/L is the correct alternative - especially since, mathematically, it categorically isn’t.

> The problem is that individual players are ranked according to the team. It should be that the Team is tracked instead as a whole. You do not get an individual rank, you get a “scoreboard” where all teams you regurarly play with are ranked accordingly.

Most people in matchmaking do not play with any team regularly. Most people are randoms, with a pool of a dozen or so players they occasionally mix-and-match for partial teams. Unless you wish to force people to join teams and play with those teams, this idea is, unfortunately, a complete non-starter.

> If you go in alone or with less players than the required Team Size, then W/L is still a good indicator how well you play in a team. It’s not your ability to play well, of course, but it’s an indicator non-theless.

No, it’s not at all. When Team Slayer went to Team CSR and had ranks reset prior to Proving Grounds, there were a lot of people who were playing with an AFK guest immediately after the reset in order to rank up quickly (I noticed the same thing in Ricochet as well). That technique was effective to vault up to CSR 20 or so, after which it had diminishing returns. Regardless, strict W/L allowed AFK guests - who contributed absolutely nothing positive to the team - to rank up significantly. I still see people occasionally doing the same thing in CTF. An AFK guest cannot play well in a team. An AFK guest does not play at all. Yet, strict W/L allows AFK guests to rank up. This necessarily means that strict W/L is not a good indicator of how well you play in a team.

> W/L already includes all necessary skills that were used to win, putting on extra factors such as kills, deaths and assists just put more emphasis on those three stats. How good you are at killing, how good your are at avoiding deaths, how good you are at getting assists. It gets more of a double meaning and as it’s for the individual, any player that understands the system will come to the conclusion that betraying a team mate for the rocket launcher will not only put a death on his stats, which will put him/her below you, but you’ll also get a rocket launcher to get kills with. That’s what happened in Reach before the W/L only update in Arena.

The difference is twofold.

First, the hybrid system links 2/3 of the possible score to winning. Winning is still paramount. You cannot score higher than anyone on the winning team if you lose. Conversely, if you win, you cannot score lower than anyone on the losing team. To rank up, winning is a must (as opposed to the H4 system, where you could lose all the time and still rank up).

Second, things like betrayals can be accounted for by properly measuring individual contributions. In the more detailed proposal, I specifically state that there is no penalty for deaths in Objectives. None. And for Slayer, betrayal deaths can be exempted from penalty. The problem in Reach and H4 was that no one put any thought into how it should work, and when it didn’t work, just defaulted to W/L because it’s easy and doesn’t require any selling.

But that’s the lazy option. No one does that even in real life. Baseball teams don’t evaluate pitchers based solely on team win/loss - they use individual stats. Same with hitters. Same in football, or basketball, or soccer, or gymnastics, or swimming, or any other competitive sport. Some sports even use calculated statistics to determine effectiveness - like quarterback rating in football. The only thing that gets rated on W/L is the team itself . . . but as already stated, people in MP generally don’t play that way and most cannot be associated with any specific team.

MP play is like a big free-agent pool in professional sports. No one ranks free agents based on the historic W/L percentage associated with the teams they used to play for, and neither should we do that for MP play.

> Another thing about it is that winning becomes a bonus, not a requirement. While you could make the ranking system not rank losers up, the main objective for players could very well be “not be anything else than first on my team so I do not rank down incase we lose”.

As long as the score contribution from winning is greater than the maximum possible individual score, this is not true. Winning is the requirement. Every player on the other team will at least double your score if you lose (and generally the margin will be much higher than that). The difference between the first and last player on a given team is far less than the difference between the first player on the losing team and last player on the winning team. You cannot prevent rank downs by losing but scoring first. You can only prevent rank downs by winning.

Many folks seem to equate any individual contribution to score with “bad” and “selfish”. This was true of two bad attempts at an individually-based ranking system, but is not true in general. A hybrid system can be far superior to W/L. This is not supposition - it is a mathematical necessity, as W/L is statistically invalid for properly evaluating the random / team mix in MP play. What is necessary to make it work is an intelligent design up front, and tweaks if exploits are discovered. Kind of like everything else in life. It won’t work if it’s just thrown together (H4/Reach), and even a good plan can require small adjustments.