From what I’ve watched about H4, there appears to be a cR or point based ranking system (AKA - like Reach). There’s nothing wrong with that, I actually enjoyed grinding through the ranks in Reach and found myself playing more when I was near a rank up. This ranking system instantly rewards you for playing and that’s what players want - instant gratification.
However
The Reach Arena style ranks (Iron to Onyx) failed. In theory, they looked great:
“Hey, I’m a 1% Onyx! I’m that much better than you; you’re only an 85% Onyx!”
It was supposed to seperate out the best from the good. However if you take a look at the Season 11 Arena final placements, I want you to notice something that plagues competitive players. Notice how as your percentage gets lower and lower, the number of games played tends to decline.
Why? I’ll tell you:
- Games are really hard to find at low Onyx:
- I used to watch TV while searching Arena with my friends at single digit Onyx. It’s not fun waiting 20+ minutes for games most days. It becomes a chore. And what makes that chore worse is waiting a day to find out how you did… for the previous day. Instant gratification is a requirement.
- There are only a certain number of spots available and they’re based on population:
- Why’s this bad? I can name over a dozen cheaters on that Season 11 list that have host booted their way to their placement Most times they’ll even host boot while Iron boosting so they can obtain their single digit quickly (most times you can Iron boost to low Onyx in 20 games or so) and then sit on it and hold that spot from someone who deserves it - making it even harder to find games. Not to mention, when the cheaters do search, you have a VERY high chance of matching them since not many other people are searching at that low Onyx percentile. I stopped playing Arena when I hit single digits and got my team hit offline 3 games in a row - it’s not fun to only find them.
HOW IS THIS RELEVANT TO H4 (and how can H4 succeed?)
For Halo 4 to succeed, there needs to be the instant gratification for BOTH sides of the spectrum - competitive and casual. I’m not trying to assert that competitives don’t like the cR / Spartan point system or vice versa - quite the opposite.
There should be certain skill based ranked playlists. I don’t care what they use as the indicator of skill (1-50, Arena style, different fruits, I DON’T CARE) so long as there is instant gratification that doesn’t limit the search times based on population size as the Arena system did. If you’re good enough to get a 50, or an Onyx, or a Pineapple - you should get it and make the search times easier by providing more people to match.
This will allow fair games for most players so long as the trueskill works based on wins and losses. It’s also very important to note that the rank HAS TO BE VISIBLE just like the cR / point rank will be.
Some other reasons the Arena didn’t work well were due to the stagnant gameplay and bad maps - which caused many players to not play the game. However H4 looks much more promising than Reach, so here’s hoping 343 can bring it home and ensure that BOTH the casual side and competitive side of this community can come together for another Halo game like we did for H: CE, H2, and H3.
There’s still much more I’d like to post about with this topic, so I’ll save that for the discussion that will hopefully follow.