Halo's infinite matchmaking system

Games Halo Infinite
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Personally, I’m not a big fan of this system at all, I don’t like how unbalanced the matches in this game are, the SBM system is really scuffed, by this I mean that, if you’re really good at the game, you’re going to get matches with teammates that don’t play the game very well, on the other side (the enemy team) you get people who are really sweaty, the game tries to balance matches by doing this but honestly, I think it’s pretty scuffed because the system expects me to always be in the mood to carry my teammates to win the match and expects me to be at 100% efficiency all the time, something that I don’t feel so comfortable with, considering that in some if not most matches I just want to chill and see if I can find some friends while I’m playing the game, sadly I can’t do that because if I were to underperform in matches, I have a slight risk of getting banned from the game.

Let’s look at Fiesta for example, Fiesta is a very casual game mode where players get random weapons and equipment, random vehicles spawn around the map as well, this game mode is supposed to be casual but thanks to the scuffed matchmaking system, it’s not, it’s just a completely unbalanced competitive match because my teammates aren’t good at playing the game but the enemy team is, combine that with the fact that everyone gets random weapons, it’s pretty much an unbalanced mess.

What about the newest gamemodes such as BTB Fiesta (Slayer, Stockpile, Total Control and CTF), BTB Skockets (Slayer) and BTB Shotty Snipes?

Well, BTB Fiesta suffers from the same issues as normal Fiesta but not as much thankfully, as for BTB Skockets, pretty much the same, then there’s BTB Shotty Snipes, a game mode that I haven’t been able to play for some reason, everything I’ve been getting is just BTB Fiesta or BTB Skockets, mostly BTB Fiesta though.

In general it seems like BTB matches don’t suffer from the SBM system trying to balance matches as much as normal 4v4/Arena matches do, but it shouldn’t be this way.

I would like for you guys to tell me what your experiences were with this system and what are your opinions on it (and please, be civil).

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I remember a thread from several months ago that talked about the fact that it seems like the system “shares” your skill across the various playlists. I don’t know if this was fully confirmed or debunked or anything, but if it is so, then that is the biggest cause of my issues as I often enjoy stomping around in Bot Bootcamp and when I finally do end up playing other playlists (like for events, for example) and I’m not queueing with anyone else, I very often find people at Onyx level and that’s way beyond something I care to ever achieve.

In my opinion, I just want it to be like MCC; let social be social. Let everyone just get matched at random. Not only will this speed up searches (I had to wait 3 minutes for a Yappening match just now. 3 minutes for an event playlist? wut) and yeah, sometimes you’ll get stomped and sometimes you will be the one stomping, but the overall “sweaty” sensation will no longer be present.

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My wait times aren’t too bad on most playlists, usually takes about a minute max during peak hours here, I’m playing on NA servers by the way, the yappening is one of the playlists with the highest amount of players in matchmaking.

As for the “make it be like MCC let social be social. Let everyone just get matched at random”, I agree, social playlists should be social and casual, not competitive like the way Halo Infinite does it, ranked should be ranked, competitive and balanced carefully in order to give players the best experience.

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I’m playing on NA servers by the way

Normally I would say that that would make sense since I’m playing in EU and it’s currently 4:30 AM but if people are currently playing in NA the game should have no problem matching me over there. I often get NA servers anyway based on my ping when playing :stuck_out_tongue:

I have a ton of other issues with Infinite (all of which people often talk about on these forums) but I can look past most of those if, like you said, every match doesn’t feel like I have to play my best every time. It’s exhausting, to say the least.

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Me every game.
20 ch

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If you are referring to the wider range of ranks across the teams - it’s more that the population has dropped. The match maker is doing what it can with who is available.

What else is it supposed to do?

The alternative is to stack your team with better players - or drop the quality of the opposition. Both those options leave you winning easily.

Why do you think you are the only one who is carrying?

The game result depends on those “scuffed” players too.

When I play with my sons the game expects me to go negative. But I can help to carry the team by going less negative.

Why should you get the credit or blame with each result?

eg. If you are expected to go 30 and 10 and you go 28 and 12 - then you didn’t actually carry anything.

You are assuming those lesser skilled players are putting in less effort than you.

Chilling is fine.

But why does it have to be from going from 100% to 0%. And still expecting to win of course. Why can’t you chill at 90% intensity?

My personal experience if great.

I sweat to the eyeballs in ranked. And muck around in Social with mates. The SBMM takes care of itself.

I can quite happily have close matches in both - but with a completely different intensity - both on and off the field.

Pretty much debunked.

You have a global MMR that holds your game data. But each playlist has an offset MMR that becomes more and more independent as you play.

The bot thing was pretty much new accounts that built up a high bot MMR and then took that account into ranked - which then copied the only MMR it had on the system (ie. the bot one).

And besides, 343 have dropped the MMR of the bots.

Please no.

If you are Onyx level you would spend game after game smashing the opposition. You would be the best player in the game in more than 9 out of 10 games. Your average level of opponent would be Gold 6.

That only works for bullies and streamers.

Except if you are any good. In which case it’s stomping >>> being stomped. And even then the chances of you being stomped to the same extend are even rarer.

Social is mind set.

I think the biggest barrier is the type of games they have in social.

You can’t put competitive players onto the same maps with the objectives, weapons, and routes to run - and expect them to play any differently.

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Not my idea of “chill”, I guess.

I can play relaxed, but it’s a clear difference in results between Infinite and any title on MCC, on the latter which I am consistently doing fine without feeling like it’s a struggle while Infinite is often a struggle due to the fact that the game is trying to match my skill level.

If you have some sort of proof I can read about this I’d love to. Not trying to “call you out”, but rather my experience is that I often play Bots, which is not a challenge and occasionally I play Tactical or Team Slayer and I often lose, with at least one Onyx-level player on the enemy team.
This makes me believe that this is either false, or the system is just broken. It should lower my MMR for these playlists then and not have this occur as often as it does. I doubt it’s only related to a weaker playerbase.

It’s how it’s been in the past and that still feels great to me. There’s a reason I have 2k hours on MCC (on Steam, + several thousands more while it only was on Xbox) but only 300 hours on Infinite.
Yes, if you are a brand new player you are going to struggle, but that’s true in general, has nothing to do with a specific playlist or how the playlist works.

I feel you’re definitely making this a bigger problem that it really is.
I primarily play MCC titles (and most often BTB) and it’s not common for me to lose and I consider myself a decent player, but not amazing. Naturally when I find someone much better than me, it stings a lot, but it’s temporary and the next match might be better.

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Hopefully it is trying to match everyone’s skill level… so everyone can get a chance to play.

In this case your global MMR will go up. Think it of a reflection of “form”. Not as much as it used to before 343 dropped the MMR of the bots. So all your playlist MMRs, because they are essentially offsets, move up as well.

So when you go to a play list you don’t play often - the MMR there has bumped up a bit. And because you don’t play there often those MMR’s are wide and volatile. All of which can give you a relatively tough experience in a playlist that may not necessarily be your “jam”.

It should only take a game or two for the MMR to realise it’s mistake and tone things down.

If you play enough games in Tactical Slayer (etc) you will mature that MMR to a stable point. And it becomes a little less sensitive to your global form.

No system is perfect. But the assumption here is pretty fair. If you are dominating in one playlist (moving those MMR’s up) then it’s safe for the system to assume that you will perform at the higher end of your MMR in another playlist.

But it doesn’t always go like that. Especially when you duck into a playlist you don’t like (eg. for a challenge) and only play at half rat power.

We should learn from our mistakes :slight_smile:

And if you are in the top 5% or so of players - of course it feels great.

There’s only a 1:20 chance that any single opponent is ranked equal or above you.

Onyx players taking on teams ranked Gold 6 are expected (that’s the average, around 900). What’s the chance of an Onyx 1500 player taking on a team with an average of 2100 (ie. the same gap). Pretty much zero to never.

SBMM gives every player on the match equal footing. I agree Social needs to be looser. Some flexibility built in. Maybe even give players the individual option of wait times vs strictness.

But random is a bad place to go back to.

Did anyone else find Mint Blitz’s recent video on SBMM a bit ironic. Literally in the first 15 seconds of the video he showed off an overkill he got against a bunch of gold players (and one unranked player with just over 50 games to their name). Versus an Onyx 2000+. While advocating that SBMM isn’t the way to go.

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I’ve never heard of a concept like this before. No game I’ve ever played uses a system like a “global” rating.
If Infinite does use this, it’s a first for me, and also flawed. Each playlist should have ideally have its own as the various gametypes don’t always corralate between each other.

Unless by “global” you mean the initial X rating you start at on each playlist. I wouldn’t call that “global” but I see your point.

I agree. But this is not the case. It simply isn’t happening in the game.
I’m not a new player who’s waiting for my MMR “to settle”. I play Infinite about every week and has done since it’s early “beta” launch.

No system is perfect, no, but this is probably the worst system I’ve ever seen if this is how it works. My performance in Tactical should not affect my MMR in Land Grab.

So all the past Halo games had a poor matchmaking experience to you?

I am not. I am maybe above average at best. I still say it feels great.

This makes no sense to me. Onyx should play with Onyx and Diamond players, and the occasional Platinum who is climbing through the MMR faster than the CSR can adjust for.

I’d accept this as a good solution. I like being able to choose at the risk of dealing with a slower queue.

We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this point then.

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Section 11 of the TrueSkill2 discussion paper.

Why?

It makes sense in terms of reducing the data footprint.

We know that it worked well in Halo 5. The MMR in each ranked playlist functioned independently.

It does. Each offset MMR behaves as it’s own curve; standard deviation etc.

And it may go even further. Out looks like we may have a separate MMR offset for each game mode that are then averaged for the playlist. So in Ranked you have a MMR for Oddball and one for KOTH, etc.

Doesn’t matter. If your MMR in that list is still wide and volatile it will act differently. Like in and around placement.

It’s a “form” thing. If you’ve improved significantly in one area it’s a safe assumption that you have improved in another.

I’ve been happy with the improvements from H3 onwards.

I was talking about random matchmaking in Social.

I agree that Ranked should be right on the player.

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The system is probably good when the population is high, but not how it is now with like 5000 players.
In Halo 2-3 you also had problem finding good games when you were at a rank between 40 and up. A level system would not work with a low population.
Thats why social lists are important, just to play and have fun.
I want to play a social team slayer without SBMM.

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Not just that, the difference between the teams as a whole is (very) unbalanced. There is always a clear winner.

And it’s still almost impossible to win if you are even an average player. I quit playing because in the month of june i was only allowed to win 34% of my matches (i say allowed, because most matched where just unbalanced and literaly unwinnable).

I now return for the Yappening: not a single win in 10 matches and most matches not even close! This is just disgusting!

This is why people hate the game. What fun is it if you are literaly not allowed to win? Because it’s also not that matches where realy close and you had just bad luck. Even then being 10 times on the losing side of that is a chance of 0.098%!!! So extremely unlikely. Yet this keep happening to players. My friends all quit because of this unfairness.

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I’ve played 20 games of The Yappening and only won 6 of them. Crazy, because I’ve had an absolute blast. It’s the most fun playlist I’ve played. Had I not just checked I’m sure I would have won way more than that. Guess not.

My win record across all playlists is 56% so I guess The Yappening just ain’t happening for me. Quitting the game because you’re losing?

What a world where only the winners can enjoy the game.

Used to always make me laugh when you’d lose a game 50-49 and the post lobby would be little men shouting you suck etc etc. Like bro we went down to the wire, that game was epic, why you so salty? Especially when you won.

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I think this is secondary to the wider range of ranks. If, for whatever reason, a team doesn’t gel then it all falls apart. Often spectacularly.

And it’s just amplified in Objective games - which makes sense because they rely so much on team work.

If I was 343 I would push any game that has a wider range of solo ranked players into Slayer. Maybe Oddball. But definitely not CTF - that’s going to be a recipe for disaster.

I say this as a generalisation - I know nothing of your playing attributes - but I think the situation suits some players more than others. Those who have a game style that helps and supports the weaker links in the team will do better. Those who excel as a lone wolf, and have traditionally been able to save the game by just upping their own output, will struggle.

First up - should you really care? The Yappening seems to be designed to just be random chaos. That’s why people are finding it a bit of a refreshing experience.

Secondly - what were you expecting? You can’t really jump back after 2 to 3 months off and expect to dominate from the outset.

Fingers crossed the population recovers - and the match maker gets the chance to work as it supposed to.

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343 have still not woken up to the fact that high level players play on another account with a low rank to to help drag their friends into a low level game to get easy wins.

They do this then swap over, this results in mismatches to an epic proportion’s.

Match high rank
Playing with a low rank player against two others and don’t say that’s hard because thee are 1000’s of people doing it, let them try and out Smurf each other !!!

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Well, it seems as though a lot of people say that the matchmaking system is doing what it can with the game’s low population, they might be right, but steamcharts doesn’t tell us all the players playing Infinite in other platforms.

Still though, the system is doing a terrible job with what players are available and it keeps doing that.

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What else would you like it to do?

Without huge increases in wait times?

Or not matching outliers at all!?

From what I can see the teams are pretty evenly matched. But widely ranked. And that unfortunately increases the chance of a blow out, particularly in objective matches.

We saw the exact same thing happen in H5.

I don’t think it’s quite as simple as that.

TrueSkill2 is pretty good at weeding out Smurfs. Probably the best of any system.

But the squad manipulation was a different kettle of fish. Particularly the use of ‘smurfs’ to maintain the status quo. They weren’t there to dominate the game. Just to do the bare minimum to make sure the players ranking up won and got all the kills. And to quit out if the result wasn’t going as planned.

That a lot harder to control. Hence 343 putting limits on squad by CSR.

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The Fiesta modes in the Yappening are indeed fun :slight_smile:

And i have quit for about 2 months yes. It was just getting very infuriating getting loss after loss even though i outperformed most of the time (seeing the stats), had an average k/d of almost 2.0 and most of the matches still don’t even come close to a W is just to much.

I don’t mind losing from time to time, but almost every time is just not fun. At a certain point it just drains the fun away.

Just like now i was getting very frustrated with a 10-losing streak. That is just to much. Luckely the tide has turned (for now) and i won the 2 matches after that. The last match (fiesta CTF) i even went 24-1, with an overkill, 3 triple kills, a rampage, and a wingman (14 assists).

But here’s the problem: you would think that with that KDA (27.7) i would be the best player in the match. Nope! There was even a dude with a KDA of 39.7 (45-8-8)!!! And i just barely performed better then another one that had a KDA of 25.0 (30-8-9). And those two where my teammates!!! On the other team the best KDA was just 5.3 and the second best only 2.7. That i so frustrating We won ‘only’ 1-0 but the KD’s tell a whole different story, we clearly were stronger better. We got the flag at least halfway every time we grabbed it (and the one we scored it took ages, because the carrier kept standing at our flag and didn’t realise it wasn’t supposed to hand in there) and the enemy team never got farther then 2 meters with out flag.

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Cant enjoy ranked anymore.
The matchmaking system doesnt work with low population.
It also seems that the servers have some issues. Experiencing more lag than usual. Get connected more than usual to servers with a ping > 100ms.
Taking now again a longer break from infinte. My last break went from january until may.
I will stay on the forum and watch closely if there will be netcode improvements.

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