Hello fellow Halo fans:
I’ve spent the last few hours compiling evidence after making a striking discovery while browsing through HaloTracker. For a long time, I’ve felt that this game got harder some time after Christmas. I didn’t really understand why, but my stats had been dropping even though I felt as if my ability was rising. I had heard some chatter while playing from a lot of players that Warzone was rigged, and that 343i had made the game harder for better players, but there was essentially no evidence, and these claims seemed as if they stemmed from frustration in the midst of a tough game rather than a claim from an astute observation. I was unsure what to think for myself; I wanted an explanation for the reason why my own stats had seemingly dropped for no reason, but I wasn’t convinced. So this morning I decided to delve into the evidence myself and see what I could find–and what I found was mind-blowing. After navigating myself to HaloTracker and looking at the stats of the top 100, 200, and 300 players, I found that near 100% of all people experienced a ‘kill death ratio’ (k/d) drop among all players who had played the game before and after January 1st. Many of the people on the list hadn’t played consistently from game launch to today, but with the exception of only one outlier, every single person in the top 300 who played Halo 5 Warzone before and after January 1st experienced anywhere from a 0.5 to 2.0 k/d drop rate.
Here is a link (http://oi67.tinypic.com/2i0yoom.jpg) to an image I pieced together showing ten examples of k/d drops that I’ve pulled from HaloTracker in order to come to this conclusion (there are many more than those ten, these simply illustrate the claim I am making). This link (http://halotracker.com/h5/leaderboards/kd?page=1&gametype=warzone) will bring you to the HaloTracker top 100 k/d list for Warzone.
So the question you may be now asking is how exactly did 343i make the game harder for better players (if this theory is correct). Well I’ve heard a lot of things, from spawns, to bullet magnetism, and even changing grenade functionality, but in all honesty I have no idea. It’s also possible that 343i simply improved the matchmaking system so that better players only match with players of similar skill so that one good player in a lobby full of noobs doesn’t control the entire game.
I’ll leave the conjecture up to you, but I think I’ve shown that there is substantial evidence to show that was a secret change to the Warzone playlist back in early January that effectively nerfed highly skilled players. Also, before I post this thread, I would like to say that this change isn’t necessarily bad, as it challenges better players to tougher fights and trains them to be even better players, and makes the game overall more fair to everyone.
EDIT: For some reason I couldn’t get the BBCode to work for named links, so I apologize for the sloppiness.
Well…i’ll be damed… didnt saw that coming… despite all these difficulties better players still manage to blast the hell out of my team… good find though.
I am not sure if I can believe this our not… but I am inclined towards it…
Making it more fair by matching skilled players with skilled players is nerfing?
What the hell kind of logic are you using?
This “secret change” is called matchmaking improvement. I’m pretty sure 343i told people that they were tweaking matchmaking in Warzone to make matches more fair.
Sounds like you are kind of mad you’re not getting matched with the noobs.
Only thing I remember is that AI kills use to be calculated into the overall KDA. After the update, 343i made a patch that eliminated many of the AI kills from calculating into your KDA.
I remember I had over 2.5 KDA and after the update, it dropped to 1.3 KDA because of all the AI kills being taken out from the calculation. My guess is it was because of that.
How did you access past data? I can currently only see recent days for a particular player.
> 2533274852660538;4:
> Only thing I remember is that AI kills use to be calculated into the overall KDA. After the update, 343i made a patch that eliminated many of the AI kills from calculating into your KDA.
>
> I remember I had over 2.5 KDA and after the update, it dropped to 1.3 KDA because of all the AI kills being taken out from the calculation. My guess is it was because of that.
I may be wrong, but isn’t that only true for kills plus assists/death? I’ve always been under the impression that raw k/d never factored in AI kills.
I’ve found that though my skill through kd has risen my win percentage is still dropping even though now I have a much better grip on the game.
There was another post a couple months ago with some evidence that warzone has an invisible csr for players. Likely this is more evidence of that.
I personally don’t find this surprising. Social playlists in every halo game have had background ranking so I’ve kinda assumed it’s there.
> 2533274989334266;5:
> How did you access past data? I can currently only see recent days for a particular player.
Many people on the top list haven’t played consistently from release date to today, so there’s a lot who only played when the game first came out, and others who only played in the past few months. The data on HaloTracked isn’t obscured, it’s just that some people haven’t actually played since release day.
> 2533274852660538;4:
> Only thing I remember is that AI kills use to be calculated into the overall KDA. After the update, 343i made a patch that eliminated many of the AI kills from calculating into your KDA.
>
> I remember I had over 2.5 KDA and after the update, it dropped to 1.3 KDA because of all the AI kills being taken out from the calculation. My guess is it was because of that.
It was the opposite. After the update ai kills counted toward your k/d. They did not before. You can verify this by looking at the carnage report.
> 2533274962122285;7:
> I’ve found that though my skill through kd has risen my win percentage is still dropping even though now I have a much better grip on the game.
My win percentage has also dropped from a 60% to now a 30%, but I didn’t look into it.
> 2533274852660538;4:
> Only thing I remember is that AI kills use to be calculated into the overall KDA. After the update, 343i made a patch that eliminated many of the AI kills from calculating into your KDA.
>
> I remember I had over 2.5 KDA and after the update, it dropped to 1.3 KDA because of all the AI kills being taken out from the calculation. My guess is it was because of that.
I thought they fixed that?
> 2533274875982754;11:
> > 2533274852660538;4:
> > Only thing I remember is that AI kills use to be calculated into the overall KDA. After the update, 343i made a patch that eliminated many of the AI kills from calculating into your KDA.
> >
> > I remember I had over 2.5 KDA and after the update, it dropped to 1.3 KDA because of all the AI kills being taken out from the calculation. My guess is it was because of that.
>
>
> It was the opposite. After the update ai kills counted toward your k/d. They did not before. You can verify this by looking at the carnage report.
It was the opposite of that. AI kills were initially calculated into the overall KDA. Here is 343 confirming the removal of AI kills from KDA. Just scroll down a bit til you reach the 343 post.
> 2614366390849210;8:
> There was another post a couple months ago with some evidence that warzone has an invisible csr for players. Likely this is more evidence of that.
>
> I personally don’t find this surprising. Social playlists in every halo game have had background ranking so I’ve kinda assumed it’s there.
WZ ranking is common knowledge.
“Warzone doesn’t feature a skill-based ranking system like CSR, but there we do use a hidden MMR value to track and match players according to skill so that teams remain balanced.”
> 2533274852660538;14:
> > 2533274875982754;11:
> > > 2533274852660538;4:
> > > Only thing I remember is that AI kills use to be calculated into the overall KDA. After the update, 343i made a patch that eliminated many of the AI kills from calculating into your KDA.
> > >
> > > I remember I had over 2.5 KDA and after the update, it dropped to 1.3 KDA because of all the AI kills being taken out from the calculation. My guess is it was because of that.
> >
> >
> > It was the opposite. After the update ai kills counted toward your k/d. They did not before. You can verify this by looking at the carnage report.
>
>
> It was the opposite of that. AI kills were initially calculated into the overall KDA. Here is 343 confirming the removal of AI kills from KDA. Just scroll down a bit til you reach the 343 post.
They re added ai kills a couple of updates ago. It is pretty obvious if you look at your carnage report.
> 2533274875982754;16:
> > 2533274852660538;14:
> > > 2533274875982754;11:
> > > > 2533274852660538;4:
> > > > Only thing I remember is that AI kills use to be calculated into the overall KDA. After the update, 343i made a patch that eliminated many of the AI kills from calculating into your KDA.
> > > >
> > > > I remember I had over 2.5 KDA and after the update, it dropped to 1.3 KDA because of all the AI kills being taken out from the calculation. My guess is it was because of that.
> > >
> > >
> > > It was the opposite. After the update ai kills counted toward your k/d. They did not before. You can verify this by looking at the carnage report.
> >
> >
> > It was the opposite of that. AI kills were initially calculated into the overall KDA. Here is 343 confirming the removal of AI kills from KDA. Just scroll down a bit til you reach the 343 post.
>
>
> They re added ai kills a couple of updates ago. It is pretty obvious if you look at your carnage report.
It shows in carnage reports no doubt but still isnt calculated into the overall KDA. They don’t want a bunch of people one-shotting grunts and getting a high KDA.
Only mode that has included AI in KDA was the firefight beta in April. Other than that Warzone still doesn’t calculate AI kills into KDA.
I just PMd Unyshek asking to confirm the removal or addition of AI kills in warzone. Hopefully he’ll respond soon.
How has no one pointed this out yet? You looked at Warzone, right? So don’t you think it’s logical to assume that more and more players are unlocking higher tiered and more lethal REQs now?
With all this uproar over farming, if 343 adjusted matchmaking in favor of lower skilled players, trust me, they would tell us. It’s not in their benefit to hide something like that.
> 2533274812650916;19:
> How has no one pointed this out yet? You looked at Warzone, right? So don’t you think it’s logical to assume that more and more players are unlocking higher tiered and more lethal REQs now?
>
> With all this uproar over farming, if 343 adjusted matchmaking in favor of lower skilled players, trust me, they would tell us. It’s not in their benefit to hide something like that.
Very nice!
Another point that adheres well to the OP’s timeline, was the introduction of Achilles in February.
No, I’m not arguing that people wearing the armor get killed more.
Rather, Achilles served to incentivize players to join Spartan companies, and play more frequently in fireteams, and likewise to communicate with each other. More organization in the player base = Stronger competition.
