You can only rank up if you play and beat a team better than you. There is no other way for the system (or any system) to work.
What they do, to make you feel better, is give you a small amount of CSR with each win - but your MMR stays pretty much the same. It’s up to you to convince the system you actually deserve that CSR. If you eventually lose to a team ranked the same or below you the system says “nope, you haven’t really gotten any better” and takes it away. If you go and beat a team ranked above you then it says “ok, maybe you deserve to rank up”.
The problem is that in reality, you get to a point where matchmaking lets you down. You are more likely to run into a group of bad team-mates vs a lower ranked team than good team-mates vs a better team. So you tread water… slowly drifting up and then being brought back to your actual ranking.
Again, read the paper on TrueSkill2. It’s kills per minute.
And it’s a weighting.
High end players are using it to grind out extra ranking. But it’s unlikely that this is actually of any real significance given how inaccurate MMR becomes the further to the right of the curve you get.
I’ve heard of good team delaying the objective to get more kills. But I doubt it really helps that much as the game goes longer (remember it’s kills per minute). But that would only work if you are squadded to the max and matchmaking can pretty much only give you teams ranked a fair bit lower than yours.
Yeah, I was kind of hoping for this sort of thing too! See how long someone’s been playing/have a sort of accrual rank of experience either overall or divided by mode.
This is gonna be a weird comparison, but I liked the way Puzzle Pirates had their different puzzle mode skills ranked, for every puzzle there was a proficiency that was accrued experience over time (may or may not have decayed if you didn’t play a while, idr) and there was a skill type rank that recorded how well you did in the puzzle mode separate from just the experience accrual. I’d love to see that sort of system in other games but most places I only see like. Total time spent/experience gained or skill-based only.
Being able to look at both the time put in and the actual level of skill separately is something that’s a lot more useful to me, even just for judging my own level of play. But hearing horror stories of people being bullied off of League or Battlefield for having just started playing, I can also see why they’d be reluctant to let people see others’ stats. I really would like to at least see my own tho
The difficulty is everyone wants something to grind… and to be rewarded for time and skill.
Your MMR isn’t that. It’s perfect for ranking into groups and matchmaking. But it’s not a grindable number. Someone in the US with an MMR of 1750 is not necessarily any better than someone in South Africa and an MMR of 1749. They may actually be a lot worse. The comparison accuracy is in the 10’s (closer to 100’s).
So it just doesn’t make sense getting hung up over losing 3 vs 23 points.
That’s why we need an XP based system - with weighting for wins and medals. It gives people something to grind for. Throw in some Military Ranks for posterity and Bob is very much your uncle.
So… As long as your team carries you to the win objective-wise it’s better to be a selfish solo-slayer not playing the objective at all? Because while carrying flag or ball it’s harder to get the kills, and in stronghold you have to stand and wait to capture the zone or to defend it instead of running around to get more kills…
If that’s true, that system is deeply flawed for most types of games except for pure slayer matches…
Unfortunately that’s what we are seeing. Players ignoring the objective and trying to pad their stats. Or teams holding off on winning the game when routing a lower ranked team.
It’s not how it was intended.
And the sad thing is that all this toxic play is probably for naught. The kills per minute is a weighting. It probably isn’t even used in non-Slayer games (or at least I hope not). The win is the key to ranking up.
And that’s before we even discuss that grinding your MMR is kind of pointless. It is really not that accurate.
A false idol if you like.
There is no way the system can sort and accurately assign the MMR at the tail ends of the curve - it just simply doesn’t have enough data. That would require tournament type structures.
You can tell 343 have given up by that stage because they had to introduce a set increment for a win and then weight against losses. Purely because the matchmaking can’t stop really good teams grinding their MMR higher and higher (with even less accuracy).
A 1750 on one side of the world is likely completely different to a 1750 on the other side of the world.
And if you think how toxic K:D have become in Slayer type games… imagine if they weighted for objective scores. The most dangerous part of CTF would be trying to cap your flag - you would have three team mates desperately trying to team kill you and take the “honour” for themselves.
I think it could be solved by using the points we see during matches (but somehow they aren’t visible on the final scoreboard after the match). You can get points by playing the objective, you can score by slaying - but preferably slaying defensively or offensively when fighting for the objective (like stopping the flag runner).
Then it’d just be the matter of fine-tuning actual points assigned to different actions to make it balanced - actually even now it isn’t that bad, even though I’d probably add some points for objective-related kills.
I’d say you were beating teams ranked around the Gold 6 mark - hence your rank.
When you were given a team ranked higher than that - you lost. So it started to settle you into Gold 6.
You need to win those key matches for the system to “up the ante”. There is a bit of luck involved - you also need a bunch of team-mates you gel with.
And remember your individual performance doesn’t count for much.
There was a murmering with Halo 5 that you started a tier back from where you were placed. The theory being it was better to place you a little lower and give you the satisfaction of ranking up as opposed to over-calling it and seeing you rank down.
But take heart. Your skill curve will still be wide and have some inherent volatility. If you are good enough you will rank up pretty quickly. I went from Gold to mid/high Platinum (where I was in H5) pretty quickly after a bit of rocky placement run.
First handful of games were against a mix of Plat and Gold. Around the Gold 6 to Plat 1 area. Losing that first game wouldn’t have helped your cause.
Then Game 5 let you down. You won the game… but from a MMR point of view there is an error where it gives the win to the side with the total points (in this case they ‘won’ 275 to 247. It does suck… hopefully it’s fixed soon (this is definitely something to be annoyed about).
You then won your remaining games against what appears to be teams based around the Plat 2 area.
And then Game 10 ripped you off again… quitters really suck and reduce the MMR gains / losses for those who are left behind.
But anyway… from looking across your placement I would have thought Platinum 1 to 2 would have been fair. You were given Gold 6 - but only 13 points off Platinum 1. If you consider they “place” you a bit below as insurance - you are probably much closer to Platinum 2 internally.
I would think a handful of solid wins would see you done right.
Well it’s a known fact this games Ranked System rewards Kills more than Objective Play. Because of this, Objective games, CTF and Oddball, are the only two game modes where you and your team can Slay for the most points you can earn.
CTF: Get 1 or 2 caps above the enemy team, sit back at your flag area, and kill any enemy attempting to rush your teams flag until time runs out.
Oddball: All your team needs to do is be up by 1 point. Drop the ball on the edge of a map, and slay any enemy attempting to retrieve the loose ball. If you believe the enemy will get the ball? Shoot or grenade the ball off the map for the reset. Camp the ball spawn, and kill any enemy trying to take it. If your team does this, than all 4 of your team are free to slay the enemy. Nobody has to hold onto the ball if your up in score for a win.
Players can get a lot of points for their rank, if they do this.
Couldn’t they weight very heavily team kills to compensate for that? And reintroduce betrayal booting? That way way objective play is encouraged and team killing is heavily discouraged.
That’s why a KD based system isn’t very good in my opinion. That, and supportive roles, like destroying shields so a teammate can headshot aren’t rewarded very much either. Plasma Pistol into a BR is fast, but plasma pistol then having a teammate headshot is faster, it’s good teamplay, but not good for your rank
They could… but they would be constantly chasing their tail.
I’ve been team killed twice just as I’ve literally stepped up to the flag spot.
And a few times I’ve been under attack and a team “mate” seemed happy to not intervene until I was pretty much dead so they could swoop in, clean up the injured enemy, and then cap the flag themselves.
Kills per minute… and we don’t know for sure it’s weighting in objective games.
It’s all a bit anecdotal and hyperbole so far.
The tricky bit in delaying the objective is that they need to get more kills faster.
Remember it’s kills per minute not total kills or K:D.
I wouldn’t think a decent opponent would fall for this trick very often - so hopefully matchmaking is reducing the uneven games. Personally I’ve only seen it when it was 4v3 so probably didn’t count much for the winning team - especially when we started to hide / stay away from the now futile objective (which would have actually dropped their overall kills per minute).
Again, we don’t know this for sure. It’s all anecdotal and hidden under the fixed CSR gains of Onyx players. The really good players (pros) appear to swear by it… but they are all doing it… so we don’t have any clear examples comparing one player who is doing it vs another player of similar skill who isn’t doing it.
For your average to very good player it probably makes very little difference at all. The kills per minute may get you to your ceiling rank faster (which is it’s intention) - but probably doesn’t add a lot of cream on top. Mainly because at this higher rank you have fewer opponents that you can exploit.
And finally, once again. The MMR system just isn’t accurate at these extremes. So it’s a lot of effort finessing over a handful of MMR meaningless points. Finger crossed that 343 abandon the showing of MMR altogether. Give Onyx tiers to separate the players and give us a win/skill based XP to grind.
but 