Agree with everything, especially the friends part. Cant enjoy halo with my friends cuz of sbmm. Gotta play solo and that will make us all quit sooner or later
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Yeah, I have 2 friends that I regularly play with, one is currently Diamond along with myself, and the other is Platinum. Socialâs SBMM is currently so tight that our Platinum friend is getting eaten alive every match. Is that fun? No. It brings the mood of the whole team down. Itâs not a great experience.
If said âOnyxâ player was really not playing at peak (chilled)⌠then they would actually have a lower rank in that playlist and attract appropriately lesser opponents.
But the universal problem is that they feel they need to win (not chill) and play hard to carry their team to a win (tending back to sweaty).
And it only takes a couple of games of them flexing 20-nil and TrueSkill2 has them pegged as sweats.
Itâs tough⌠but Social needs to be fun for everyone. Itâs not fun if you are a group of average punters and you are being flogged by an Onxy player showing off to his mates.
And the usual call is that the opponents deserve to be hammered and just have to âget goodâ. But for some reason the same doesnât apply to his/her mates though.
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ok, lets put it this way. If you were an average player. In a completely random match, you would match against in Onyx maybe 15% of your matchesâŚthe rest would be 70% other average players, and 15% bottom of the barrelâŚdoesnât sound so bad to me. Low skilled players probably have just as much fun against bots.
Itâs not important if your friend is âgetting eaten aliveâ. The important part is that both teams have an equal chance of winning / having some fun.
He/she should be content in playing their (small) part in the victory.
If you expect your lowest ranked player to rock a positive K:D⌠imagine what yours would be! Why does the other team deserve to be ridiculed like that?
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Agreed. If you already have a ranked mode designed for fair matchmaking, there is absolutely no need to try make a casual mode into just another version of it. It should be focused on quick matchmaking with minimal matchmaking criteria imo.
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Exactly. Right now âSocialsâ is just a disguised form of Ranked. If you want to implement this much SBMM, call it what it is. Ranked.
Also, side note. âRankedâ Fiesta is a terrible experience. SBMM in Fiesta has got to be a joke 
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Itâs about 8% chance of at least one Onyx opponent if you are right in the middle of the normal distribution.
And for people who are completely average - then random works well. You really do get a mixture of people above and below you.
But itâs people on the tails of the curve where random falls down. If you are below average you get stomped - all the time. And if you are very good - then game after game is just you humiliating people. Neither scenario is good for the long term health of a population.
Remember⌠SBMM increases player retention by 30%.
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ok, my mental math was a bit off, but I was taking into account that, on average, Onyx players tend to play more than others.
Also, where is the number that shows SBMM increases player retention by 30%? Was that in a game that doesnât have a playlist divide for Ranked and Social? Was it specifically Halo?
Feels pretty good to me. I just played a few games with some mates who are better than me. We won some. Lost some. Felt reasonably competitive in all but one game of CTF (they thrashed us).
As the lowest ranked player I was kind of holding on for the ride. Sometimes it felt like my best contribution was to die a bit more slowly. 
Why?
It would still fall down if completely random. Probably even more so. Iâd imagine a skilled player K:D farming until the cows come home if served up random opponents.
It may be a different experience for others, but once you get into the Diamond lobbies, the chaos of Fiesta is way too controlled. Everyone feels like a pro with their given weapon. Itâs just a completely different feel than traditional, goofy FiestaâŚItâs hard to explain without experiencing it.
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Donât worry. My mental math wouldnât cope⌠I just ran a sim of 1,000,000 random picks from a normal distribution.
I am assuming a perfect normal curve. I guess it could be skewed to the right because the skilled players would play more often. But wouldnât the system / algorithm just normalise the curve again? And in social⌠maybe the curve is actually skewed more to the left as thatâs where the lower skilled player would tend to hang out?
Interesting.
And the quote of 30% was on the old Waypoint forum. Mentioned by Josh Hanke (343 match making dude). Was mentioned in the context of Halo⌠but was probably global across other games using TrueSkill (such as Gears of War).
Itâs not a true normal distribution because of skill gaps and crossplay. But I wouldnât even begin to know what that would look like, haha. Always interesting to think about. But because of those dips in the non-perfect curve. those are the ones that get âhurtâ by SBMM. Those that fall just short of a skill gap. The system thinks that those just above the skill gap are âreasonablyâ close, and in practice, theyâre not. Assigning a value to skill is a difficult thing.
Question for those active in the thread already - how would the removal of SBMM stop people getting thumped by high-level players? If you totally randomise it are you not likely to encounter those players more often?
I should stress, I generally play ranked (warm up in Social), and am just curious and playing devilâs advocate. I too would rather Social didnât have SBMM but I canât personally see how itâs removal helps. It might reduce sweaty games, but a high-level player playing casually is still gonna thump people who arenât of the same standard.
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IMHO, it wouldnât stop it. But I believe that it wouldnât impact the average player (who would see top-tier players in a few more matches), but the main thing is it impacts low-skilled players the most because theyâre getting destroyed by everyone. So weâre talking the bottom 15% or so would almost never see a win. So SBMM really flips things on their head by bringing down the enjoyment for top-tier in order to please the low-tier.
As an above-average player, I would MUCH rather play Ranked, but almost always only have a squad of 3 playersâŚIâm not gonna do a solo like that 
And, Iâm not rallying for the REMOVAL of SBMM, but either a change in how it works or at least turning it down, because it feels VERY strict right now.
My three buddies and I rotated between ranked and quick play last night. EVERY time we would play quick play it was an absolute sweat fest and going back to ranked felt like a breath of fresh air. A breather shall we say. Pretty insane if you ask me.
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Out of curiosity, are you guys pretty close in skill-level?
Iâm really interested to know WHY matches are feeling this way. Maybe this is an argument to INCREASE SBMM in socialâŚbut I think that brings us back to the problem of playing with friends of widely varying skill levels.
we are all high platinum/ low diamond so yeah close in skill
I would love for some feedback in this thread from players of Gold or lower skill level and their experience between Ranked and Social play in regard to SBMMâŚ
343 also says things like âfeedback is split on player collisionâ and âyou will have millions of customization optionsâ. Oh, and player retention was sooooooooo excellent in MCC and Halo 5. Sorry if I donât buy the argument from authority on this one.
Imagine thinking that things like fiesta slayer are the same as a sport like tennis. 
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