That doesn’t make any sense. The system in place shouldn’t need to sacrifice enjoyment in order to rank you. It’s not rocket science to design a system that ranks you while being enjoyable. It’s a video game for christ sakes, pretty sure there’s no incentive for someone to play if they aren’t enjoying themselves
hence the massive population drop off of this game. Obviously not all due to the ranking/matchmaking system, this game has plenty of obvious issues. But that is most definitely one of the main reasons and its extremely flawed. Needs a complete overhaul
I beat onyx 1600 players in these matches and lose to D1 players. The ranks in this game are pointless because they in no way reflect anything of value. Because the system is broken.
I tell them what to do and they typically ignore it completely. Barely anyone uses mics and almost everyone I encounter doesn’t speak English.
I’m telling you straight up, they designed this game’s ranking system wrong. It probably sounded good on paper, but in practice the vast majority of people are not the actual rank they should be. Most onyx players should be Diamond. Most Diamond players should be platinum, etc.
And then the opposite is true and a lot of lower ranked people are being punished by the system because of how manipulative it is, and should be higher.
The ranking system should rank you. As quickly and as accurately as possible.
That way you give the matchmaking service the best info available.
The enjoyment / reward for the player is their rank. It shouldn’t be hidden from them. And you should be sugar coated with a higher rank than you deserve for the sake of “enjoyment”.
I am D2. I’ve worked hard to get there. I’m proud of that effort.
So don’t make me or tell me I’m a D3 if I’m not.
I guess that’s the role of the CSR. And whatever other level awards that 343 want to dole out.
I’ve been more than critical of the way they present CSR. The scale of 1-1800+ doesn’t make sense. The system isn’t precise enough. You have a CSR that’s chasing a moving range of possible ranks (your MMR) - and it’s doing so with it’s hands tied (having to give CSR for any win).
To incentivise ranking and play I would;
Change the scale. Make it 1 to 100 (max). Take away the toxic grind for points.
Award championship points for winning a game at your current division / tier. For any game where every player is the same rank and with acceptable ping (sadly, not that common at the moment). You can then award military ranks for the number of points earned - and have regional, country, and world leader boards.
Bring in an XP rank. Weighted to wins and performance (eg. medals / score).
And hey presto. You still have a super accurate ranking system telling nothing but the truth… and multiple ways of rewarding the player for playing and winning.
Yep. Desync and content drought say hi.
The ranking, TrueSkill2, is good.
The CSR is flawed. I wouldn’t say extremely, but they can do a lot better.
You can’t just pick and choose a player from the other team.
You need to look more at the team ranking. The average MMR.
If you are consistently beating teams with an average MMR of 1600 then you will be ranking up with a bullet.
But also keep in mind it depends on the shape of all those MMR curves. The system is more likely to rank you up vs narrow, less volatile, MMR opponents (eg. less overlap of your possible ranks). And we have no way of reading that data.
The other team’s are drawing from the same pool. What are they doing differently to get the win?
And you’d be surprised who is listening.
I am guilty of not being a great communicator. Likely one of the reasons my rank has ground to a halt at D2. But I do listen. And I follow the instructions of good players who take control of the game.
And even for the OS team-mates. In H5 I ended up running with quite a few people speaking Spanish or Japanese. A lot of these players know enough English to get on the same page.
I’m sure everyone on the planet feels like that.
The key is to keep an eye on the average MMR of the team’s you are beating. How do you specifically go against teams ranked 1400 and above (ie. D4).
And what is your KPM and DPM at this level. I don’t think we know for sure but I think the expected K and D on waypoint is calculated from your values. So if you find some opponents who are 1400+ and see where your KPM and DPM sits.
Most onyx players I ever see that play any playlist are absolute dog water at the game, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how they could have gotten to Onyx without cheating or buying the account or something.
I know of only a handful that are actually good at the game.
The ranking system is broken so long as people who are bad are getting high ranks and people who are good are getting low ranks.
MMR should not be the deciding factor in a CSR ranking system. It makes absolutely no sense and is manipulative. If they want MMR to matter that much, MMR should BE THE RANK. But they don’t even let you see what yours is because they’re scared it will make you play differently or something.
Whoever made any of these choices did so without playing the game themselves.
343 are at least beginning to address this. And I get the impression that Halo is one of the few games out there that let people play ranked with friends that have a much different rank.
It probably won’t be for much longer.
And it’s where the things I’ve been talking about would help.
A smaller scale with a maximum rank will help reduce the toxic grind. At least above the maximum rank.
And I wouldn’t be against locking the CSR from such games. By all means let friends play with each other - and let their MMR go up or down. But hold the CSR change until they play games with and against other people of that rank - to prove to the system that you are actually at that level.
Your MMR is a range of probable ranks. Your CSR chases the left hand edge of that curve. And on a mature account (50+ games for the season) your MMR curve is very narrow.
So if your CSR is oscillating around 1350 to 1365 then you know that your MMR is pretty much there as well.
It doesn’t make sense though…obviously yes it should rank you accurately, I don’t disagree with that - but it should still be enjoyable. At the end of the day it’s a video game man. And no one said anything about sugar coating your rank in order to enjoy it (if your insinuating that I’m suggesting to inflate ranks to make people feel better about themselves by giving them something higher than their skill level). That’s not what I mean, and I am just talking about enjoyment as in playing the game. It matches you up with idiotic teammates to force a certain win rate, the CSR gain/loss is inconsistent and illogical, ect. I can go on and on. Right now playing ranked is not enjoyable for probably upwards of 95% percent of people playing it.
Did I just pull that number out of my *** ? absolutely.
But in all seriousness - I doubt it matters to you and you are most definitely aware, but the VAST and LARGE majority of people who play this game hate the ranking system. That should tell you something right there. And yeah, desync, lack of content, bugs, the list goes on and on. There’s a ton of problems with this game. But the entire matchmaking and ranking system including social and overall progression needs a complete overhaul. I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure the 343 dev who designed it isn’t even with the company anymore so hopefully they bring someone in with a better vision to overhaul it.
You’d be surprised how many people aren’t. They want a ranking system that rewards them for any wins - regardless of the quality of opposition!
It matches from a pool of players. Your opposition is made up of the same players.
Whoever can organise themselves into the better team has the head start.
But in the end it is the individual skill ceilings that are preventing your team from doing better.
It’s confusing and not well explained by 343 - but it is consistent and logical when you take the time to work out where you are in your ranking journey.
But I get that having to put the effort in isn’t fun.
Which is why I’ve been advocating a reduced scale, a maximum rank, and then some other way of rewarding players (XP rank or champ points etc).
You are pulling both numbers AND adjectives out of thin air.
I would agree that the majority of players are frustrated because they;
a) don’t understand the system.
b) 343 have made some poor CSR choices.
Not sure re: complete overhaul.
Let TrueSkill2 do what it does best in the background.
Simplify the CSR system. Reduce the scale to 100 (or even back to 50). Have a maximum value. I actually like the division/tier system (it describes the standard deviations of a normal population) - so you could simply make it Bronze 1 to Onyx 6 (and call everyone above that a “champ”).
Either abandon squads or lock CSR changes to evenly matched games.
Provide alternative progression paths. eg. XP rank.
I’m sure most of them are gamers. How good is probably irrelevant.
But a degree in maths would help.
And I’m sure that a lot of people in game’s companies would have such degrees.
But having said that I can pretty much follow the principles of TrueSkill2 and I’m no mathematician. I did Maths out to Grade 12 and did ok. Sadly, any calculus skills are long gone and it’s easier to pay a tutor to help my son through matric.
Yes you can. A game is typically lost by the worst player and won by the best player. Just because someone is an anchor on a winning team doesn’t mean they’re a winner. They’re bringing everyone around them down.
None of what you said has made sense because the Onyx 1600s are in lobbies with a much lower than 1600 average MMR. That’s what we’re trying to explain.
If your theory is correct, they should be in lobbies around 1600. But they’re not. Because their MMR and their CSR are mismatched.
They don’t have Plat 1 teammates who go 4 and 20 for starters.
It doesn’t matter what I do. These people can’t be helped. I hate playing with them and it causes me nothing but grief that I keep getting saddled with them. You tell them where to go and what to do and they just keep running around dying. They literally stand around watching you die. They refuse to touch the objective except at the worst possible time to rush it. Every annoying thing you can imagine. It’s very rare I run into any random that isn’t worse than the average bot.
A ranking system designed by a Gold 1 is going to be a failed ranking system every time.
What I meant is you can’t pick the best player on the team and then insist on being ranked above them.
You may have played an Onyx 1600. But you can only be judged by the quality of the team you are taking on.
A team of 4x Onyx 1600 is a completely different proposition. Win 50% of your games vs them and you will get the same rank.
Ideally the 1600’s would be grouped up to play with and against each other.
Bad sadly the population is unlikely to support this on a regular basis.
So they get grouped into mixed lobbies.
But it has nothing to do with their MMR and CSR’s being “mismatched”. I’m not even sure what you mean by this.
They will at times.
I see it all the time on both sides of the equation.
And again it comes down to the team balance and what was expected from them.
In your team make up, for that particular game - what did the game expect from them… and how far from that did they deviate?
It is likely they “under performed”. But that doesn’t mean they were the only ones on the team that did. It’s just as likely that someone who went super positive also failed to hold up their end of the bargain.
Maybe team games aren’t your cup of tea.
Doubles is coming. Which should provide you with 1/3 of the headache.
And surely FFA after that!
And I assure you I have seen some (supposedly) very good players on here propose some atrocious alternatives.
343 just need to address the deficiencies of the CSR system.
As I said. Start to win 50% of your games against 4x Onyx 1600 and you will soon be ranked as such.
You are not going to jump much on a one off win. That’s not how ranking should work. Just like you wouldn’t like to fall a bucket load of rank on one loss.
Win a few and your MMR will be above your CSR. Throw in a trend to good KPM and you will start to get +15 for each win.
The key is to ride the lag. As you rank up in performance your MMR will gradually come up to match. As long as your “form” is sustained.
And how do you work this out?
You need to lower your expectations for the lower ranked players in your group.
Some of them have no chance of going positive.
It’s up to the better players to help them get the best outcome.
You do realise if the game expects you to go 20 and 10 and you end up 18 and 12 you have essentially failed?
Why?
What are you going to replace it with.
And what evidence to you have that it is better?
Such inspiring words.
I’m sure any player would love to follow you into battle.
But I think you are also experiencing an exaggeration of the skill gap. The low population is spreading the players more than it would like. Hopefully things turn around going into Season 3.
season 2 has been nothing but horrible for me in higher diamond playing solo. I’m simply stuck in D5/D6 and can’t get out of it. Season 1 got onyx in no time and was climbing every other game. This season the experience of playing solo is just horrendous. The matches are set up for the loss with always 1 or 2 in the team way below the skills of the other 6. All I can do is do my best to keep a good KD to avoid a major drop in CSR. I’m pretty sure they’ve done this to copy the ranked system of games like Apex Legends where they force you to grind for a very long time to get somewhere.
With the Season 1 reset they reset the population back about a division.
The people I’ve spoken too seem to be settling into a Season 2 rank a few tiers below where they were in Season 1.
So D5/6 in Season 2 may be around where you were in Season 1.
I was D3 in Season 1… and have settled into D1/2 in Season 2. And that’s with some genuine improvement (worked hard to improve me strafe and general map positioning).
Lots of people seem to be struggling with rank separation in their squads. I don’t think it’s deliberate. Just a case of low population.
Hopefully things get better with their region selector etc heading into Season 3.
The grind is real. But that’s just because it’s actually really hard to improve. We’ve all been playing long enough now that everyone is at their skill ceiling.
They need something else to divert our attention (eg. XP rank).
