Halo Infinite: Multiplayer Progression

Games Halo Infinite
1

I think it’s important for the longetivity of the game to have two separate ranking systems and a variety of unlockables to keep the population numbers high. One that promotes time played (although a bonus should be included for winning) and one for skill based matchmaking.

Time Based Progression
I think this game could borrow a lot from the Call of Duty franchise. Hear me out. The idea of prestiges which allows players to reach max rank and reset to 1 with a different rank given to those that do. This allows players to feel much greater progress as instead of taking 50 hours to move from one level to the next at the later stages, you will be seeing steady levelling throughout.

With the earlier ranks moving faster than the later ranks, it gives a greater sense of progression and refreshes the later level grind. Gears of War and other big titles have already started using this format.

Rank Based Progression
Lets be honest, the numbers for ranked are very low for Halo MCC and Halo 5. The population for Halo 3 remained decent even after the release of Halo 4. Why is this? Well I believe newer players are discouraged by the current format. Ranking should be easy and generous at first and get progressively harder to the max rank. Let’s for argument sake say it’s no longer 50, and is now 100 instead. Players could move through 1-30 incredibly fast and then have progress be more difficult as it gets higher. It will split out the players evenly and quickly so you don’t have good players stuck down low for ages and discouraging other players. It should always math parties vs parties too, no exceptions.

You want to get the good players out quickly and reward those that persevere in it so they keep coming back for more. Halo 3 did this very well, but deranking accounts were a plague (people who purposely lost to get bad records so they could boost their friends to higher ranks).

Easy solution, use a similar format to Halo 3, but have the enemy teams ranks compare to your own personal rank and NOT your teammates. Let’s say your account was decided similarly to how Halo 3 ranked you, the average of the other team would be taken and if your account is higher than their average then you are expected to win, so you get less rank for winning and more rank lost for losing than if their team average is higher than your rank. This rewards players who beat solid teams, like Halo 3 did, without encouraging derankers.

Unlockable and Rewards
The nameplates are a good idea with MCC and again looking at something like Call of Duty or Street Fighter, nameplates as online rewards is a good way to reward continuous play. A nameplate for reaching level 40. A nameplate for winning 3, 4 and 5 games of ranked team slayer in a row. A nameplate for 100 needler kills, 100 BR kills. By setting out little goals it will encourage players to continue working for them. Once someone has got the 3 in a row, you can be sure they’ll want that 4th in a row. Having lots of little and often rewards, especially early on is a great way to build up the mentality for the fans to stick around.

Something to consider. I think MCC shows that Halo 3 is the clear favourite of the franchise, so it’s worth them using that data on building the core mechanics of Halo Infinite. Slightly reduce kill times, a fresh vibrant more cartoonish colour scheme, skill based progression and some 10/10 core maps. Small aggressive maps with interesting movement and lines of sight, let’s be having you.

If you have gotten this far, thanks for reading my suggestions and let me know how you would change or argue with this proposal. Would love for them to read through this, although I imagine they’ve already designed a system and are pretty content with what the talented guys and gals at HQ have come up with.

2

Okay as for the first point, id prefer there were no prestige given xp required per level can be less of a grind even if the levels continue progressing just upwards, its just a play on numbers basically. Its just as grindy as the devs make it be will there be prestiges or not.

Additionally Halo shouldnt have unlockable weapons/gear which with you start the rounds so otherwise prestiges wouldnt have much of an impact except reset the rank back to 1. So no thanks to prestiges. I would rather keep monkeying other big franchises to minimum.

As to rank based progression, definitely, im with it no matter whether it will be separate or mixed with the xp progression. This is just one of those basic topics on waypoint and this is basically a sum-up answer given Id prefer not to write a novel about it on each topic that includes skill based ranks.

As for the unlockables through several varying gameplay feats, another common topic with easy answer, definitely, as long as its not just quantity over quality. Id rather have scarce unlockables if they are good rather than hundreds of coy pastes of each other. Nameplates though could be some low-resource requiring reward to spread wide along the challenges. Better those be unlockables than emblems, I prefer to have even a fraction of personalization to my profile and emblem system in at least older Halo games provided that while armor was the one to be earned.
Though armors should be more thought out and perhaps more of a scarce rewards while nameplates would be more widespread.
That and the rewards could be more divided between campaign/multiplayer/ other modes and not put everything for multiplayer exclusively while perhaps putting 1 reward as campaign unlockable.

3

OP, thanks for a very well put together initial post. So many of these types of topics don’t have people put the proper effort into them.

I’ve always liked the idea of prestige in progression systems, but very few do it well. If they choose to do it in Halo, it’ll be interesting to see how they handle the risk/reward aspect of it. The best prestige systems have you give up something besides just the number, usually access to weapons, but of course that’s not an option with Halo.

As for the skill ranking, I’ve always been partial to Halo 2’s system, but it’s been so long since I saw it in a fully healthy playerbase to know if it still works as well as I remember it. My one request would be for there to be a ranked Big Team playlist. My favorite way to play Halo is vehicle based objective games, so being able to make progress on a skill rank while enjoying that gameplay style would be really nice.

As a complete aside, you mentioned Halo 3 being the “clear favorite” among many fans. I love a lot of things about Halo 3, but one nitpick I’ve always had is my absolutely hatred of the Battle Rifle in Halo 3. Halo 2’s Battle Rifle is still my favorite incarnation of the gun.

4

Well one thing they could do is reset exp based challenges. Maybe the nameplates unlocked could be reset? So if you had a perfection nameplate, you’d lose it if you prestige but could then unlock it again. By tying exp to each nameplate you could also help progress faster by playing a variety of gametypes and games.

From what I remember of Halo 2 back in the day, it was a long and often unrewarding system. My suggestion is to make the beginning journey far easier to entice players and keep them coming back. The average player searching alone will not win multiple games in a row so they’ll be stunted early on in Halo 2’s system. I know Halo 3 had a few problems if you won too many consecutively early on, so that would also need to be addressed. The idea is to get the good players out sooner. Pretty much how the Arena style ranking works, but not resetting as that hasn’t held the population.

I agree about the BR, but halo 3 is the current heavyweight if you search most MCC playlists with all options on so that’s what a lot of people must be searching. I’m sure 343 are very aware of this and are using this data while they look at Halo Infinite.

Ranked BTB was always a bit crazy. Personally I preferred Big Team Battle, 6 Vs 6 with some BTB maps and gametypes but also smaller maps like Isolation. It would be cool to see a ranked vehicle based gametype again although it wasn’t popular enough to survive H3.

5

> 2533274801036271;1:
> I think it’s important for the longetivity of the game to have two separate ranking systems and a variety of unlockables to keep the population numbers high. One that promotes time played (although a bonus should be included for winning) and one for skill based matchmaking.
>
> Time Based ProgressionI think this game could borrow a lot from the Call of Duty franchise. Hear me out. The idea of prestiges which allows players to reach max rank and reset to 1 with a different rank given to those that do. This allows players to feel much greater progress as instead of taking 50 hours to move from one level to the next at the later stages, you will be seeing steady levelling throughout.
>
> With the earlier ranks moving faster than the later ranks, it gives a greater sense of progression and refreshes the later level grind. Gears of War and other big titles have already started using this format.
>
> Rank Based ProgressionLets be honest, the numbers for ranked are very low for Halo MCC and Halo 5. The population for Halo 3 remained decent even after the release of Halo 4. Why is this? Well I believe newer players are discouraged by the current format. Ranking should be easy and generous at first and get progressively harder to the max rank. Let’s for argument sake say it’s no longer 50, and is now 100 instead. Players could move through 1-30 incredibly fast and then have progress be more difficult as it gets higher. It will split out the players evenly and quickly so you don’t have good players stuck down low for ages and discouraging other players. It should always math parties vs parties too, no exceptions.
>
> You want to get the good players out quickly and reward those that persevere in it so they keep coming back for more. Halo 3 did this very well, but deranking accounts were a plague (people who purposely lost to get bad records so they could boost their friends to higher ranks).
>
> Easy solution, use a similar format to Halo 3, but have the enemy teams ranks compare to your own personal rank and NOT your teammates. Let’s say your account was decided similarly to how Halo 3 ranked you, the average of the other team would be taken and if your account is higher than their average then you are expected to win, so you get less rank for winning and more rank lost for losing than if their team average is higher than your rank. This rewards players who beat solid teams, like Halo 3 did, without encouraging derankers.
>
> Unlockable and RewardsThe nameplates are a good idea with MCC and again looking at something like Call of Duty or Street Fighter, nameplates as online rewards is a good way to reward continuous play. A nameplate for reaching level 40. A nameplate for winning 3, 4 and 5 games of ranked team slayer in a row. A nameplate for 100 needler kills, 100 BR kills. By setting out little goals it will encourage players to continue working for them. Once someone has got the 3 in a row, you can be sure they’ll want that 4th in a row. Having lots of little and often rewards, especially early on is a great way to build up the mentality for the fans to stick around.
>
> Something to consider. I think MCC shows that Halo 3 is the clear favourite of the franchise, so it’s worth them using that data on building the core mechanics of Halo Infinite. Slightly reduce kill times, a fresh vibrant more cartoonish colour scheme, skill based progression and some 10/10 core maps. Small aggressive maps with interesting movement and lines of sight, let’s be having you.
>
> If you have gotten this far, thanks for reading my suggestions and let me know how you would change or argue with this proposal. Would love for them to read through this, although I imagine they’ve already designed a system and are pretty content with what the talented guys and gals at HQ have come up with.

how about no for the call of duty stuff in halo

6

I would definitely like unlockables specific to differing accomplishments such as a Helmet for beating the game on Legendary in Co-Op, a Visor for getting a Splatter spree, and emblems exclusive to rank earned. That is what I would like to see cosmetically speaking.

7

i liked

8

> 2533274937430970;6:
> I would definitely like unlockables specific to differing accomplishments such as a Helmet for beating the game on Legendary in Co-Op, a Visor for getting a Splatter spree, and emblems exclusive to rank earned. That is what I would like to see cosmetically speaking.

Yeah I agree that would be a good way to use unlockables as incentive for doing skillful things and playing the game more or playing in a variety of ways.

Halo 5 just goes to show how much customisation they can offer. Would be good to see Elites come back in matchmaking too and have some customisation surrounding them too.

9

> 2533274801036271;1:
> Rank Based ProgressionLets be honest, the numbers for ranked are very low for Halo MCC and Halo 5. The population for Halo 3 remained decent even after the release of Halo 4. Why is this? Well I believe newer players are discouraged by the current format. Ranking should be easy and generous at first and get progressively harder to the max rank. Let’s for argument sake say it’s no longer 50, and is now 100 instead. Players could move through 1-30 incredibly fast and then have progress be more difficult as it gets higher. It will split out the players evenly and quickly so you don’t have good players stuck down low for ages and discouraging other players. It should always math parties vs parties too, no exceptions.
>
> You want to get the good players out quickly and reward those that persevere in it so they keep coming back for more. Halo 3 did this very well, but deranking accounts were a plague (people who purposely lost to get bad records so they could boost their friends to higher ranks).
>
> Easy solution, use a similar format to Halo 3, but have the enemy teams ranks compare to your own personal rank and NOT your teammates. Let’s say your account was decided similarly to how Halo 3 ranked you, the average of the other team would be taken and if your account is higher than their average then you are expected to win, so you get less rank for winning and more rank lost for losing than if their team average is higher than your rank. This rewards players who beat solid teams, like Halo 3 did, without encouraging derankers.

I fundamentally disagree. The goal of skill ratings should be to give players as accurate representation of their skill as possible as fast as possible. It’s not a progression system. There should be no max rank, or a minimum rank. If you want a greater sense of progression, and want to reward newer and less skilled players, you want a progression system. That’s fine, but a progression system should never be regarded as a replacement for a pure skill rating system. I don’t want a false sense of progression, I don’t need to feel rewarded, and I don’t want to play a hundred games just to find out how good I am. I want timely, relevant, accurate information about my skill level. At that the Halo 5 system is superior to the one used in Halo 3, and I want to see it evolve rather than be replaced by something inferior.

10

I like a rank based progression system.