The true skill system catches up to someone’s real skill very fast. They may be able to throw the first few games and then have a few easy games after that, but once they start playing ‘for real’ trying to win, their true skill rating will catch up to them very fast. My fiance makes alt accounts to play with various friends of lower skill - not to boost them, but because he only wants to play BR starts with friends and playing ranked is the only option if you want BR starts currently. Because many of our friends are lower skill, the sbmm means the lobbies are a super bad time for them when he pulls in onyx players, so he makes new accounts just so he can play with them and not ruin games for them. Having a social NON-SBMM BR slayer playlist would alleviate a lot of this. And no, we don’t consider SWAT as the answer to that. Needs to be full-on regular slayer.
Having said that, his skill catches up to him incredibly fast and he’s pulling in onyx players again usually before his palcements are even done. So while boosting may work for a little while, it definitely is not something they can just do indefinitely unless they’re making new accounts every 10 games.
I think people will keep creating accounts for sure. It’s a lot easier than having to win 10 games or play 50 on a new account first.
Whilst he may be making it easier for his friends and certainly a lot easier for himself it feels unfair to the opposing lower skill players giving them a real nasty Halo experience.
I’ve been the gold person in that situation. I’ve also been a gold person playing against silver and bronze people primarily. It really makes me feel the game is picking winners and losers.
The unbalanced teams makes going into ranked alone an absolute nightmare and way too unpredictable to consistently win. It’s obviously better to go in with friends, but of course there are times when you want to play ranked and there’s no one online. This really needs to be fixed, along with an overhaul of how the system measures ranked progression.
I have no clue how it works, but there is a ban system in effect here as well. I read somewhere a story about a guy who threw his placement games and ranked in Bronze. He then partied up with some guys to help boost them. The bronze player in question did really well in a Plat/Diamond lobby (essentially carried the team) and was hit with a 2 week ban.
Obviously, the ban does absolutely nothing to deter these folks, as the free to play model just allows them to create another account with no consequence.
I’m thoroughly convinced the boosting problem is worse than most of us even realize. This supposedly ‘Diamond II’ player (probably boosted) on my team betrayed me three times in a row in ‘Ranked Arena: Strongholds.’ His aim was so poor it took him forever to even betray me. He sabotaged my game (by lobbing grenades and firing at me) to such a degree that I was given an option to boot him from the match (which I did). There was an ‘Onyx’ player on the enemy team, and I’m only ‘Plat V’ in ‘Crossplay.’ I did nothing to my teammate to provoke his incredibly infantile reaction, as I was playing the objectives and doing my best to win.
I appreciate your honesty and candor in regards to giving an actual example of what is being discussed here (although as you stated, he is not intentionally trying to boost his friends). However, If your fiance is skilled enough to able to pull in ‘Onyx’ level players before his placements are even finished, it could be potentially devastating for those players who are less skilled on the opposite team trying to win (when they don’t have an ‘Onyx’ level player on their team). When your fiance makes a fresh account to ‘reset’ the matchmaker’s evaluation of his skill level, it creates an unbalance in the system that has a ‘ripple effect’ on everyone else.
If a ‘BR’ start in reg non-ranked ‘Team Slayer’ would slow the amount of people making throwaway accounts to play with their friends, I’d be all for it. I do believe ‘343’ needs to go back to the drawing board and offer more ‘solid choices’ outside of ranked that would discourage people from making throwaway accounts, as it seems to be a symptom of a larger problem that they’ve yet to address.
I also believe giving players a m/k and controller only version of a ‘true’ solo queue would be the end of this discussion entirely (at least in my case, as I generally play ranked solo).
there is literally NoTHING wrong with queing with people lower/higher than you. And NOTHING wrong with playing on more than 1 account if you want say, a try hard account, a practice account, or that account to play with low friends. I have literally been doing it since halo 2
The reason there is nothing wrong with it is because the game WILL STILL find a balance in the ranks. If you got a diamond queueing with a gold on one team, the other team will more likely have a diamond as well then, or more plats ect ect. it will average out the ranks.
Restricting who a player can and cannot play with based on skill level is dumb. and if i wanna play with a friend who may be new to the game and wants too try comp. then i will play with them, and i will most likely do it on one of my non main accounts. And if they get ranked gold -plat and im diamond on that account. the other teams rank spread will be similar.
H5’s solo/duo que originally launched as just a solo que and it was brilliant. Like some of the best Halo games I’d had in years at that point.
And after like 3 months they changed the playlist to be a solo/duo que, and it’s been that way ever since. Still good, but man I still wish there was a solo only playlist.
I also wish there was a BTB playlist where parties have to be 4 people or less, but at least party stomping hasn’t been an issue while parties can’t play BTB
Plenty wrong with it. It unbalances the matchmaker and those who don’t take the match seriously will just dip out leaving a 2v4 (which I’ve had plenty of) or they’ll just make a new account. Care to elaborate on your points? You gave your opinion but you didn’t back it up with facts, I’d appreciate it if you would go further in depth with your points so we can have a proper debate.
It’s because your rank is not a real number. You have an invisible rank that actually places you in games and a visible rank. The systems job is to slowly drag the hidden and visible rank to the right spot, which is why some people don’t lose CSR from a loss but gain heaps for wins and vice versa.
So if you’re getting onyx players in your lobby, the system/invisible rank believes you are onyx even if your account says bronze. This player will then fail to lose CSR when they lose as they aren’t actually bronze and the system drags them up towards their invisible rank.
This system straight up kills boosters because they will play against similar skilled players no matter what their displayed rank says.
Do you have any concrete evidence to back this up or are you just merely speculating? I understand how visible/hidden mmr is supposed to work in theory, but in actuality there are many more variables to take into consideration when you’re talking about a shorter span of games. We’d also have to assume that the matchmaker and the subsequent data it generates is patented ‘trade secrets’, so neither of us really knows if it performs as well as it should (we can only speculate), only ‘343’ would have the actual statistics. I don’t disagree that when an account has hundreds of games the mmr appears to work very well for that individual player, but how the algorithm handles other players with ‘fewer games’ could use some tweaking (in my opinion).
I can think of several ways to get around what you described, but I’m not going to list them because I don’t want more players replicating those methods (and I don’t want to give anyone any ideas). If the ‘hidden mmr’ truly kills boosters, why are there still so many boosters in ranked games? We don’t even have a dedicated anti-cheat running for the game, so I mean, boosting isn’t even ‘343’s’ top priority when you really think about it. There are many cases of wall hackers and other things which are a much higher priority to clamp down on.
Yet getting back on topic, most people would find it reasonable to assume that when a ‘Silver’ or ‘Gold’ player is outplaying an entire diamond/onyx enemy team, that they’re more than likely boosting their friends and not just having a good game (though those do happen too).
I’m not being confrontational or accusatory, just curious how you arrived at your conclusion that the matchmaker finds ‘true skill’ quickly without being full of flaws that create bad match ups from time to time. Most of my matches feel horribly unbalanced to the point that I question why I’m even playing ranked at all. I’ve personally played hundreds of ranked games solo around ‘Plat VI-Diamond I’ rank (so the system knows my skill ‘or lack thereof’ very well) and maybe 15% of the time do I have matches that aren’t complete stomps one way or the other. I’ve seen quite a few ‘unranked’ players paired with a high level account (or duo unranked) on my team that quit the match if it isn’t going their way almost instantly. This has left me in several games where I have to sit through ‘Slayer’ or ‘Oddball’ matches as a 2v4 with another random person and we’re just getting totally annihilated.
Throwaway accounts don’t care about what happens to their rank over the long term as much as dedicated accounts do, because they’ll just make another if they don’t get the results they want the first two or three times. It is free and costs nothing. Oh, the throwaway didn’t get ‘Diamond IV’ after his ten placement games? He’ll just try again on a fresh account (as an unranked duo) with his friend, making the matchmaker have to guesstimate their skill level again. That is a separate issue though from the ‘Silver/Gold’ accounts that are still figuring out how to trick the matchmaker into giving them favorable outcomes.
I’m noticing a different trend occurring now. I’m seeing lots of ‘Diamond VI/Onyx’ players with a 1.50/1.60 k/d queuing up with ‘Gold’ players who have a .50/.60 k/d so the ‘Diamond VI/Onyx’ player can pad their k/d ratio and keep it really high by not getting matched against other entire teams of ‘Onyx’ players. I usually get absolutely hammered as a ‘Plat VI’ in those games if I end up on the opposite team. Yeah, the ‘Gold’ player dies, a lot, but so do I if I end up having to fight the ‘Diamond VI/Onyx’ player at any point in the game; they’ll just decimate me and my entire team or clean up after a big fight. If it is something like ‘CTF’, ‘Strongholds’, or ‘Oddball’ (and not ‘Slayer’) I’ll get clobbered even more.
It is insanely annoying when a high diamond queues with a gold - makes it hard to rank up with such a heavy weighting towards victory and not personal performance (another debate)
Still, restricting how people play the game with their friends doesn’t sit well with me - but there’s logic in limiting the skill gap when partied up in ranked.
Maybe you need to play ‘x’ number of games to be able to queue with higher rank players.
If you are genuinely a silver/gold player - and have 50-100 games under your belt to prove it… then you can join up with higher ranked mates to go online.
The biggest problem that nobody seems to realize is the fact that you can be an onyx, and queue up with your friends who are unranked or placed silver. This then ruins the game lobby involved for everybody as there is not fair way to rank match you up.
I’ve been in a game recently with a bronze and an onyx in the same lobby. Not sure how to stop this fully when allowing fireteams? I have griped to myself that they should try matching peeps either within 3 to 6 ranks higher and lower(i.e. Diamond 1 would see Platinum 2 to Diamond 6 players in lobby) or just Bronzes against Bronzes, Golds against Golds etcetera. Of course this would depend on player count.
And I seriously feel this entire reason why I have been seeing so many quitters lately. Has to be at a 50% rate? And you just know it’s a bronze or gold that has been getting smashed by a diamond or onyx. It makes for a horrible experience for everyone!
