TLDR Version:
Friend who is better than me joined after I had already got 1 win in Team Arena. I went on to go 3-8 while he went 2-8 (because he missed the first game). He played better than me in the 10 games we played together, but I got platinum and he got gold, apparently because of that first win I got without him. It seems like it will take a while to go from Gold to Platinum, so doesn’t it seem like the game put too much weight on this one win that I got and he didn’t?
Long Version:
I played the game for a couple of hours last night and had a blast. In my opinion, the Arena is much better than all of the Halo 4 multiplayer. I personally still like the pace of Halo 2 and 3 multiplayer better, but that is beside the point.
One of my concerns is the ranking system (CSR). The reason for this concern is that me and one of my friends played our first game of team arena together and won. After the game, we joined up with another one of our friends. We went on to play 9 more games together, and only won 2 out of 9. I was dreading seeing my rank, because I was convinced that I was going to be Iron. To my surprise, me and my first friend were both platinum. This was a relief, and I guess the ranking system intelligently saw that we were fairly good players after our first win and subsequently matched us up against good players. It realized we weren’t as good as some of the diamond players and appropriately placed us in Platinum. I feel like this system worked correctly for the two of us.
However, my second friend who joined after my first win, played better than me in almost every game. However he missed our first win and went on to go 2-8. He was then placed in Gold. The reason this bothers me is that he is better than me and because of one game, he is a whole rank lower. And based on the Beta, it seems like it will take a while to go from Gold to Platinum. Because of one game, my friend who is quite a bit better than me will never be as high as me for this season.
I don’t know a quick way to fix this, and overall I really like the ranking system. I just wanted to put my thoughts here. Maybe the answer is to require more than 10 games to get an initial rank? Maybe 343 will better fine tune their rating system to more accurately account for skill in the first 10 games.
Regardless, the game was great and I can’t wait to get off work and play some more tonight!