Halo 4 is too hard

Games Other Halo
19

> > While I find that saying that Halo 4 or any Halo game is too hard is a rather ridiculous statement, I understand your point. It’s not easy to get matched up with a whole party of people of your skill level when you’re playing a playlist that only has a couple thousand, or even a couple of hundred players. The only real reason for this is the low population of the game, and there isn’t much that we can do about it…
> >
> > But the addition of ranked/social playlists is definitely a must, I don’t get why they never implemented that in Reach or Halo 4…
>
> Maybe they have a crippling fear of success?

Hmm, yes, that does sound quite plausible! Why listen to the fans and make them happy to guarantee success when you can make wild assumptions like “the DMR is a clear favourite”, “The fans didn’t want equal starts” and “The community wanted a progression system” in order to give us a less-than-great Halo multiplayer experience?

20

Telling the guy to get better isn’t exactly advice just by the way…

Neither is telling him the game is easy…

21

skill based matchmaking doesn’t really work very well when the online population is as low as it is.

22

Oh no…

343i is allergic to success…

Comedy gold.

23

> Okay, I don’t want every single game I play to be against sniper wielding crouch jumping try hards. But that’s what I always run into.

No offence, but that’s a bit stupid. What are they supposed to do? Run around with it?

24

Actually CSR and True skill works just fine, theres another problem however that you guys are ignoring.

You see matchmaking use filters to make your match: Connection, region, CSR, xbox live avoided players. The problem with Halo 4 is not the filters, its the dead population of play lists. When you have 1000 players worldwide that greatly diminish who you can play with, if the game finds only 20 players to match you with using the filters will diminish it even lower meaning at some point the system doesent have much choice but to pick people out of your skills, theres just not enough players.

First the number of players you see in the playlist arent in queue, its a total of players playing. If theres 1000 players in that playlist, there probably only 100 in the queue or less at any given times with players joining and leaving game constantly.

So you have 100 players the game can pick, all varying in skills and regions. The game will prioritise good connection before CSR, because well its better not to lag.

As can be seen by complaints the smaller the play list the more you notice lag and skill unbalanced games, the game has no choice here.

So next time you see halo 4 low population and think, duh who cares if halo 4 population drops every day i still find games! You are missing the point, its the direct cause of all your matchmaking problems. The least players the more matchmaking compromise will have to be made so you can even play. Now you know and knowing is half the battle.

25

> halo 4 is by far the easiest halo for anyone to do well in

i agree

but still, is sad when u see some players just play Spartan Ops and look their K/D and they never play again MM, i asked a few ones by messages, many of them say the MM is hard.

sad, just sad… everyones needs to enjoy MM

26

Halo 4 is by far the easiest halo game in the series. There are a thousand crutches for new players that cant move and shoot at the same time.

Also, the problem doesn’t lie with the sniper. The problem is no descope.

27

> Actually CSR and True skill works just fine, theres another problem however that you guys are ignoring.
>
> You see matchmaking use filters to make your match: Connection, region, CSR, xbox live avoided players. The problem with Halo 4 is not the filters, its the dead population of play lists. When you have 1000 players worldwide that greatly diminish who you can play with, if the game finds only 20 players to match you with using the filters will diminish it even lower meaning at some point the system doesent have much choice but to pick people out of your skills, theres just not enough players.

I have to disagree with you. While low population does mean longer search times for a closely ranked and low lag game, the lack of optional search filters is the real killer.

Sure the MM system has filters in place, but it seems like if it cant find something within those filters in about 30 seconds then it throws the filters out and puts you in whatever game it can find.

Most people dont mind waiting longer in order to get a good game. And theres nobody who wouldnt like to atleast have the option to search by good connection or close skill rank. It takes so much longer to get into a good game without these filters because you have to endure horrible lag games and totally unbalanced games before finally finding one. Id much rather wait a little longer than play in a laggy -Yoink- game or stomp on new players.

28

> I have to disagree with you. While low population does mean longer search times for a closely ranked and low lag game, the lack of optional search filters is the real killer.
>
> Sure the MM system has filters in place, but it seems like if it cant find something within those filters in about 30 seconds then it throws the filters out and puts you in whatever game it can find.
>
> Most people dont mind waiting longer in order to get a good game. And theres who wouldnt like to atleast have the option to search by good connection or close skill rank. It takes so much longer to get into a good game without these filters because you have to endure horrible lag games and totally unbalanced games before finally finding one. Id much rather wait a little longer than play in a laggy -Yoink!- game or stomp on new players.

Except its not a realistic goal with playlist with under 1000 players sometimes. You could queue for an hour and not find a match for every single players that meet all filters. It has to drop them for people to even get matches to play with such low population. As i said 1000 players you see are the one currently playing, not the one looking for a match. Because of the time it takes to complete a game, in average less then 10% of the total population of the playlist will be currently looking for games.

Unless the population of some playlist dont drop any lower, which they will, the problem will only get worse. Giving players more control over the filters wont help with such a problem, infact it will make it worse because it will devide the player pool even more if you enforce 100% of the time some of the filters like CRS. Theres just not enough players to do it on a world wide scale. CSR is especially hard to enforce on such a small play list. Theres probably not enough people between CSR 40-50 in some of the smaller play list to even fill 1 game at any time of the day. So in order for that game to happen theyd need to all queue at the exact general time (talking minutes here). Otherwise it will have to pair them off with someone else and once they are playing in the game, its one less matching player in the pool.

All it would do is make it next to impossible to get games going for:
-people with high CSR or too low under the average.
-people from regions of the world that dont even have enough players to fill a single game at any given times of the day.

You want people matchmaking, need less playlists or playlists with more players. More players mean more filters can be applicable and find game in a respectable times. Halo 4 fails on both fronts. Because of that self enforced filter will only focus that problem, not help it.

29

Halo 4 is by far the easiest Halo to date. You just need to get the right TV (with the lowest frame delay or whatever it’s called) and some good team mates. Then practice some more and play competitive playlists (not grifball) and watch what the good players do.

30

> > Okay, I don’t want every single game I play to be against sniper wielding crouch jumping try hards. But that’s what I always run into.
> >
> > Why am I always getting put into games where people have 1.5+ kds, when i’m not nearly that good?
> >
> > There needs to be a social/squad slayer playlist.
>
> People of the same rank/skill should be pared together. I always seem to get stuck with low levels on my team, while the other team gets all 130’s.

SR130 has nothing to do with skill. Anyone can level up to 130. CSR is the main issue here. The CSR should be matching people with similar Competitive Skill Ranks. It looks like it’s not working correctly.

31

> SR130 has nothing to do with skill. Anyone can level up to 130. CSR is the main issue here. The CSR should be matching people with similar Competitive Skill Ranks. It looks like it’s not working correctly.

Its working correctly, theres just not enough players to pick from at any given time. The only 2 playlist where CSR is allowed to work is infinity slayer and big team infinity slayer. The smaller playlist CSR takes a backseat to finding the best connection to match you. The even smaller play list (out DLC play lists with 120 players playing lol) Everything took a backseat to even start a game, meaning all filters turn off because otherwise youd never get a game.

32

when the population is low, the casuals go away but the try hards don’t, hence more try hards.

33

> Except its not a realistic goal with playlist with under 1000 players sometimes. You could queue for an hour and not find a match for every single players that meet all filters. It has to drop them for people to even get matches to play with such low population. As i said 1000 players you see are the one currently playing, not the one looking for a match. Because of the time it takes to complete a game, in average less then 10% of the total population of the playlist will be currently looking for games.

Your clearly exaggerating the search times for finding a good game, an hour is not going to happen and if it appears to be, then its atleast up to the person playing to decide if they want to sacrifice some things for a quick match instead of being told by the system that it knows best what we want in a game.

Bare with me for a bit while I explain my reasoning on the search times.

So I would say that on average it take about 1 minute to find a game, or maybe up to 1.5 minutes, but rarely am I left waiting for multiple minutes to find a game and usually find one in under a minute. This is good but the percentage of games that dont have noticeable lag issues and/or are competetive (close in skill) is fairly low. If 50% of those games dont have noticeable lag issues (also an estimate I think is reasonable) and maybe 25% of the games are competetive (also a reasonable estimate but might be too high)then:

if somebody wanted to add a search restriction for a good connection, it should take on average 2-3 minutes ((average search time/(%of games with good connection))

If somebody wanted a close competetive match but is willing to sacrifice connection it should take 4-6 minutes on average. And this could be shortened with a ranking system that accurately portrays player skill.

If you want both itll be 8-12 minutes, but this could be shortened by alot (maybe 3-5 minutes) if the skill ranking was accurate enough that not everybody needs to be that close individually, just close as a team. I feel like these are reasonable search times for getting into a quality matchup.

> Unless the population of some playlist dont drop any lower, which they will, the problem will only get worse. Giving players more control over the filters wont help with such a problem, infact it will make it worse because it will devide the player pool even more if you enforce 100% of the time some of the filters like CRS. Theres just not enough players to do it on a world wide scale. CSR is especially hard to enforce on such a small play list. Theres probably not enough people between CSR 40-50 in some of the smaller play list to even fill 1 game at any time of the day. So in order for that game to happen theyd need to all queue at the exact general time (talking minutes here). Otherwise it will have to pair them off with someone else and once they are playing in the game, its one less matching player in the pool.

People who search with the optional filters will not impair the search times of people not using the filters unless the population of people not using filters is very low, like under 150. I dont think this would be the case for any playlist except old DLC ones.

> All it would do is make it next to impossible to get games going for:
> -people with high CSR or too low under the average.
> -people from regions of the world that dont even have enough players to fill a single game at any given times of the day.

I dont think this really matters in the big picture of things because it is up to the choice of the person searching. It might be very difficult or impossible to get a game of all 40+ CSR’s in low population playlists, but atleast you have the OPTION of trying to. If it is taking forever you can always just turn the filters off and voila its all back to the way it was.

While playlist population plays a very big role in the ability of matchmaking to give you an enjoyable match (no noticeable lag and/or close skill rank), optional filters dont hurt its ability to do so. If people want to wait longer for a better match, they should have the option to do so.

34

> Okay, I don’t want every single game I play to be against sniper wielding crouch jumping try hards. But that’s what I always run into.
>
> Why am I always getting put into games where people have 1.5+ kds, when i’m not nearly that good?

The population playing Halo 4 is one tenth the size of the population playing Halo 4 on launch day. The remaining population has been playing Halo 4 day after day for the past 6 months, Reach before that, Halo 3 before that, Halo 2 before that, and Halo 1 before that, for a total of up to 11 years of Halo experience. Think about it.

35

The problem is the fact that DMR has such a huge range that you can’t walk anywhere on maps like Ragnorak without getting your head blown off by DMR’s, then they get Sniper Rifles/Beam Rifles/Binary Rifles and you can’t even stick your head out to take a shot anymore because it’s a 1sk with any Sniper to the head, the exception being the Binary Rifle as it’s a 1sk to ANY part of your Spartan, but that is VERY rare in BTB in my experience.

36

> More evidence of failed CSR system…

What I’m about to post is both for you, and the OP.

The population count can’t support good matching in player skills. Either you get into a game fast and have a very broad skill difference with the players, or you sit in the lobby waiting for a game for ages.

Doesn’t matter how good the CSR or any other skill measuring thing is if there aren’t enough people available to actually match together people of similair skill.

37

> People who search with the optional filters will not impair the search times of people not using the filters unless the population of people not using filters is very low, like under 150. I dont think this would be the case for any playlist except old DLC ones.

This is where you dont get it, it slow down for every one, not the just person that added the forced filter. Its one less player in the pool of currently searching player. You cant have 100% filters in the current playlist some are just too small, it has to make exceptions.

Like i said you are greatly overestimating the number of players that are looking for games vs how many are playing in the play list. Can easily be seen in some PC games to give a logical stats. Like CS:GO. In the matchmaking competitive playlist you can so how many are currently playing the play list and how many players are still searching in average it looks something like this: 8000 playing, 150 searching. This is at what you are looking at, because games last for many minutes, mostly more then your queue time luckily.

Im being generous with Halo 4 and ill say when a playlist has 1000 players playing, 100 are in the queue. Halo 4 matchs are shorter so it make sense. You have 100 players looking, if half of them force the filter, thats half of them that will cut god knows how many combinations. The game still has filter and still tries to enforce them, it just doesent when it does not have a choice.

If they added filters that can not be overlooked sometimes, some players can never find a match, mabye for you as you said it doesent matter in your big picture, but it does to everyone else, the game creators as well. Youll have to suck it up or ask that they fusion some of the smaller playlist to have less more concentrated play list. That way it will mean the system wont have to drop its filters as much, thats why both slayers are for the most part, fine. Theres a “best filters in cod” if you go in some of the smaller playlist with like 5000 players you still get lag matches alot. If you go play TDM with 100000 players, lag is rare. Because even if i forced best, the best was still bad in that lower play count playlist.

Look at an older game with next to no population left, like halo 3 some of the playlist have next to no players, you can still find matches, but filters are all but gone now. You get what it can find. Need more players to have a choice, thats all there is to it. Some of halo 4 playlist have 500 players playing world wide, thats unacceptable for a matchmaking, thats next to not viable. Games with such low population usually switch or use server browsing instead so you can jump in/out. Otherwise the performance of games would be terrible, like what you can see now.

38

> This is where you dont get it, it slow down for every one, not the just person that added the forced filter. Its one less player in the pool of currently searching player. You cant have 100% filters in the current playlist some are just too small, it has to make exceptions.
>
> Like i said you are greatly overestimating the number of players that are looking for games vs how many are playing in the play list.

No, I do get it. And yes, I understand that about 10% or less of the people in the playlist are actually searching.

What Im talking about is an optional filter, not a forced one so its not a 100% situation at all. And before you say it again, Im aware that those searching with an extra enforced filter are less likely to be matched with the pool of people searching without it.

However, with a large enough population of people actively searching, say 100, those people searching without filters arent going to be negatively affected. Why? Because theres already going be enough people for them to get a game with right away. And since the filterless search time threshold is so low with this game (seems like less than a minute) those who searched without filters arent going to get a lesser quality game because of those searching with a strict filter. This game already throws the filters out the window for more than 50% of games it seems like, just so people can get into some kind of match.

> If they added filters that can not be overlooked sometimes, some players can never find a match, mabye for you as you said it doesent matter in your big picture, but it does to everyone else, the game creators as well.

Now, now, I definitely didnt say MY big picture. You stated that it would be impossible for players with high or low CSR’s to find games, as well as people searching in remote regions. My point was that even if it is impossible to find a game with strict filtering in a certain playlist, that doesnt really matter because its up to the person searching to realize that its taking forever so maybe they just want to search normally. And the only players who would never find a match would be those searching with the optional filters on, so I dont see the problem here. This is all assuming the population of people searching without filters isnt less than the people required to start a game, which is true in every playlist, and if it wasnt itd be hopeless to search anyways.

Search times are faster in this game than in other ones Ive played, even with the low population numbers, but the consistency of the matching is much worse.

> Look at an older game with next to no population left, like halo 3 some of the playlist have next to no players, you can still find matches, but filters are all but gone now. You get what it can find. Need more players to have a choice, thats all there is to it. Some of halo 4 playlist have 500 players playing world wide, thats unacceptable for a matchmaking, thats next to not viable. Games with such low population usually switch or use server browsing instead so you can jump in/out. Otherwise the performance of games would be terrible, like what you can see now.

In halo 3 the filters are at least there. Sure people using them wont find a game unless theres enough population, but nobodies forced to use them. Also Ive yet to run into a problem getting a match in a reasonable time (less than 3 minutes) in a playlist with 500 population or less in halo 4.

Let me try and summarize your arguments and you can correct me if Im wrong. You think that halo 4’s lack of good matchmaking is due to low playlist population. I agree with this. You also think that by adding the option for people to search more strictly for a good connection or close skill would be detrimental to matchmaking as a whole, in part due to the low population. Here is where we disagree. I think that halo 4 has enough population currently to allow users to have additional search options while increasing the overall matchmaking enjoyment for players.