Can Social be Social again? Please?

Games Halo Infinite
184

I agree with this statement. They do have a poor system for determining opponents for players who want to play with their diamond buddies. They should instead make SBMM more accommodating for these situations. Something like I have suggested above, in which matchmaking is procedural based off every player’s rank that joins. There may not always be players in high diamond who are also playing with low bronze players. That is generally hard to determine, so they match a gold player or a silver player against them. The system definitely needs tweaking, more in favor of the social aspect, but needs to be balanced in a way that doesnt allow that diamond player to just carry bronzes to their ELO and then the bronze can no longer compete by themselves.

The outliers are no longer outliers at this point and shouldnt be ignored

1 Like
185

You complain about someone else not giving evidence, while you here make a claim yourself without any evidence…

Well, every game has the numbers of players going down after the first days/weeks, especially FTP games. Besides: you claim it is due to strict SBMM, but how do you know that’s the case? People have a lot of complaints about crossplay, desyncs, high ping (since you can’t limit servers), melees not registering, crahses, etc. And also there a people complaining about not noticing any SBMM.

Yet, you say it’s because of a realy strict SBMM… There is no evidence in those numbers that that is the case.

But also let’s take a look at your claim that you experience very strict SBMM in your social matches.
I took a look at your quick play and BTB matches:
Quick Play:

  1. Strongholds: 200-20
  2. Oddball: 200-61
  3. CTF: 3-0
  4. Strongholds: 200-0
  5. CTF: 3-0
  6. Oddball: 200-2
  7. Slayer: 50-34
  8. CTF: 3-0
  9. CTF: 3-0
  10. CTF: 2-1

BTB:

  1. Stockpile: 3-1
  2. Stockpile: 3-0
  3. Slayer: 100-57
  4. Slayer: 88-55
  5. Total Control: 2-1
  6. Slayer: 100-72
  7. Total Control: 1-0
  8. Total Control: 3-0
  9. Slayer: 100-79
  10. Total Control: 100-90

So: your BTB matches seem to be just what you say you want: some close, some one-sided. Seem a pretty mix to me.
But the Quick Play matches are almost all one-sided results…

So where is the strict SBMM you claim there is? In SBMM there seem to be some SBMM, but not strict. In Quick Match, there seem to be none if you ask me.

2 Likes
186

You can’t improve if you’re dying off spawn, the disparity between diamond and bronze makes practical learning impossible, the bronzie would have to pick up and skip a lot of developed habits or tactics, he can’t just mimic what an Onyx does to get the same result if he doesn’t know why and how things work in higher tiers. If he was playing gold or silvers, yes, he would slowly pick up the pace, but against 4 diamonds, not so much, this is assuming the bronzie even wants to put up with such a trashing.

187

What makes an SBMM Non-Ranked mode “sweaty” is the mindset you have when you go into it. Put a podcast on, put some music on, put your favorite season of The Office or another show on, vibe, and run the game on autopilot with your muscle memory taking over, not caring so hard whether you win or lose.

Alongside this, the Diamond and Bronze player might just be in the same group together so they can play a Non-Ranked game together and chat in their private party chat, not caring about winning or losing but still having fun playing the objective.

2 Likes
188

Right, how often are you going to catch a diamond player playing with their bronze buddy and absolutely demolishing the other team? Nah they are most likely messing around. And they should be more accommodating to the Bronze player rather than Diamond players. Make it a scale based system where there should be lower ranks along side the Bronzes since that is the lowest skill of that Party. Casuals are not meant to be ranked, but they need some sort of placement system that isn’t random. So shift the matchmaking to lower ranks. That way the Diamond doesn’t have to try hard to do slightly well, bringing the stakes of the game lower and making it so the Bronze, Silver, and Gold can play effectively

189

My assumption would be that he wouldn’t be facing all diamonds in the game. At least in my experience when I look back at a game and ranks if one team has bronze/silver/gold plus a plat (assumption would be this team would be playing together as friends given how far off the ranks are) the other team always had similar ranks across the board. maybe a silver or couple golds or plats. I mostly matchmake solo and haven’t ran into many lop sided teams.

190

I really vibe with everything you are saying and I think the current conversation could take a page from this post here, if you are still interested in the discussion.

191

Both fine points, that’s not my concern, the issue is that IF the bronzie and diamond want to do good, they’d be better off playing solo, or at the very least if the Bronzie simply doesn’t want to get slaughtered (I know Broznie ain’t doing good in bronze, but they’ll be worse in higher tiers).

This can be fixed by y’know, simply relaxing, not palying to win, no sweat there.

But then you also have the other 2 people paired with the Bronzie who may not feel the same way, who are forcibly handicapped because of other people, and that’ll probably cause some friction.

I’m not saying SBMM needs to be removed, just some tweaking.

2 Likes
192

Agreed but to be honest if you truely are at a bronze level in skill then you most likely will get torched going against anyone above a silver skill level. At a bronze level I would assume playing bots would be pretty enjoyable and also competitive enough to keep you interested. Maybe they can add more bot game types to play with friends when you are at such a low skill level.

1 Like
193

I know, using Bronzie and Diamond was just for the sake of “worst case scenario” to get the point across, it could be gold and Onyx and while it wouldn’t be as bad (and far more likely a scenario) you’d still have the same issue.

While not the most pressing issues 343i has, I feel it’s one worth addressing down the line.

194

they can start by increasing the radar size to 24m like it used to, 18 meters was used on Halo 5 which is a sweat fest of it’s own

1 Like
195

I don’t even look at the radar when it is their to be honest lol

196

What exactly do you think I need to provide evidence for?

I have made three basic arguments in this thread. Or, viewed another way, I am making one argument with two pieces of evidence that support it:

  1. It is better to provide players with more options for how to play. Having ranked use skill based matchmaking and social use connection based matchmaking (or very loosely use SBMM) provides two different experiences to the game.
  2. The most successful Halo games (Halo 2 and 3) offered both these experiences stated above, and nobody complained about it or thought it was a problem.
  3. It’s obvious that SBMM is not required for a game to be fun or received well by the community across all skill levels, because Halo Reach did not use SBMM anywhere and was generally well received - it certainly did better than any game 343 has yet made.

If you want to argue that SBMM benefits the most players, where is the evidence for that? Nobody has yet presented any evidence for it, and it’s because I don’t think such evidence exists, because I think this is a made up argument that is in fact false.

This is absolutely false. Look at the Steam charts for Apex Legends. Successful F2P games grow over time.

I agree with you that I was either incorrect in my initial argument that SBMM is implemented strictly, or otherwise they changed something in the past two weeks. I’ve noticed a lot more variety in my games.

SBMM is still being used, though. If I log on to any of my kids accounts, who are bronze, and play a game, they are playing very different players than I am. If I play with my friends who are lower skill than me, they complain that playing with me makes the game way too sweaty and difficult for them. I have heard this complaint even more in BTB than in the 4v4 modes.

Fundamentally, as per my argument above, I just disagree with the entire notion of SBMM in social. I disagree that it benefits anyone, and think all it does is take away an experience that was previously available and successful in Halo 2, 3, and Reach. I do not agree that removing options/choices from players for how to play is good.

I have not yet heard a single argument in favor of SBMM that suggests it needs to be anywhere other than the ranked modes.

4 Likes
197

Yea they just want to stomp every lobby and blame sbmm when they cant.
Its pretty pathetic NGL.

Theres a difference between playing casually and getting upset that you can’t go 20-2 every game. For a lot of these dudes its the latter. If they were truly playing casually they wouldnt hit the forums every time they lost a game.