According to halo tracker, I was rank 48 in Halo Reach Rumble Pit. I don’t know how accurate that is or if it’s comparable to the CSR system now in H4, but the point is I knew what I was doing and I was good in Rumble Pit (RP) by any measure.
I played a few games last week on RP in H4 and won 2/4 games pretty handily, and got 2nd and 3rd in the other two. Looking back, the top 2 players in the game I got 3rd place are now both 50s.
Anyway, that put me at CSR 17 and I played a lot of RP today. I joined in progress on the first game and got second place with 18 killa. Then I pulled a string of 6 wins in a row, obviously not against the greatest opponents, but a win is a win. This bumped me all the way up to a 31.
Then I started getting into lobbies where at least 4 or 5 of my opponents could out-shoot me most of the time and I was getting handled. I had several games where I only put up kills in the single digits and absolutely got destroyed and 5-shotted in every single 1v1 encounter.
It normally takes me a game or two to adjust from playing against noobs to playing against good competition, but I just couldn’t get anything going against players of this caliber. I feel like most of these guys could and should be 50s or high 40s because you just don’t get much more skilled than these guys are. I didn’t realize how bad my shot was until today - games of this magnitude are won purely on the basis of aim, grenades, and quick thinking.
Power weapon control and map control play a very minimal role in H4. Not that I want the games to be as campy as swordbase or coutdown often were, but even on those maps, the winner was always one of the better shooters in the game and the TOD of the top players would be DMR. I’m sick of sticky dets and needlers - their effect on the outcome is neglible and random drop locations and times take away from the element of map control and limit the number of power positions on the map. And why not a reliable shotgun instead of the inconsistent crapshoot that is the scattershot.
RP in H4 plays at a much faster pace than it did in Reach, and while the slower pace was more my style and strength, I couldn’t imagine getting stomped this hard in Reach in faster-paced games. Even in slayer pro games against strong players, I would consistently finish in the 20s or high teens in kills with the occasional victory - that’s not at all my experience so far in H4. I don’t have the most consistent shot, especially against strong players in H4, but there is nothing you can do in this game when most of your opponents can outshoot you.
Needless to say after a handful of miserable games I dropped to CSR 26, but I’m going to continue to practice and try to improve. Hopefully the CSR will adjust quickly so I can get games with players my skill level and not constantly be expected to keep up with semi-pros when I’m still below CSR 40.
Am I alone in this? Is anyone else getting stomped by players they feel they shouldn’t be matched with?