I am very confused about how the CSR ranks work in this game.
On one hand, I played one match of Flood. Joined in on my girlfriend while she was playing, and only managed 30 points before the game ended. I check the site, and I had jumped from 1-13 in Flood.
On the other hand, I have been playing my -Yoink- off in Castle DLC. I will win a few games in a row, and maybe lose a few, then win a few and so on. My CSR hasn’t budged from 3. I am attempting to reach level 35 for the Halo week challenge, but it seems as though it is just not going to happen.
So what counts towards the CSR?
The first obvious answer is wins and losses. But I think this is flawed because you can join into a game in progress that your team is losing terribly. How is that a fair representation of skill? Why should I be punished for joining an inprogress losing game?
The second contributing factor I would guess are Kills/Deaths and objectives. Since I have had a decent chance to learn these maps by now, I am finding myself tho be performing at a pretty good level that reflects my usual skill. But as I stated above, consecutive wins with good game play have not raised my rank.
Sorry for the TL;DR, but this is confusing, and I want to know if it is worth perusing the CSR 35 challenge.
-Billtac
Honestly I was wondering the same thing, I was doing some pretty good games today almost all of them I was top of the team, and we won half of them, at first I figured it was just because it was early on and it needed more data but even then I’ve gotten to 7 now after like 20 games most of them fairly well on my part.
Maybe it’s just still doing its thing and it needs more time to add up, like maybe daily adding into your rank. I was hoping someone would have some more information like all the factors to what changes your rank and what would be the most important part.
I was hoping to get the same challenge done, we have a couple weeks so who knows?
First you have to know that there are two different kinds of CSR.
Individual and Team. Team is harder to budge, because it relies on winning games against people who have a higher CSR than you.
Individual deals more specifically with if you placed higher than the higher ranked people in the gametype.
There’s a list somewhere that shows which games types are based in what, but generally if it has the word “Team” in it or is an Objective game, its a Team CSR.
Just noticed something else. I played several matches in the CTF playlist today. I won most or all of the games. But my CSR for CTF still displays “-”. 
Ahhh, thinking about it, we only played a small few games that weren’t objective or some sort of gamemode that was not simple slayer. In fact I believe I only played 4.
Two of those were Snipers, one was Slayer, and the last was Swat. Still in all 4 I went at least positive 8, and we won them all. But that would explain the small number. Still I would have expected it to be higher since there was nothing it was based on beforehand. :s
Yeah it appears that everyone is having issues. It would be nice to have a member of 343i to publicly comment on the matter.
When you were previously playing an existing playlist (such as Flood) you had already built up your ‘TrueSkill’ rank. An invisible rank that helps matchmaking choose suitable opponents.
CSR is just a visible representation of this invisible TrueSkill rank.
So, for example, you were playing Flood. You are being match against players who already have a TrueSkill of X, If you were to place well your CSR is updated and reflects that you have beat players of X TrueSkill rank.
Castle DLC in the other hand is a brand new playlist, everyone’s TrueSkill for this playlist is, lets say, 1 i.e. brand new. Even if your team wins your CSR already reflects your TrueSkill i.e. 1 and you will progress through the ranks at a ‘normal’ pace.
Hope this helps.
My BTB CSR is only 13, which is odd considering I averaged about a 1.7 KD in the games I’ve played…
Well I have played a LOT more CTF than Flood, and I still do not have a rank in that. Sooo this still makes zero sense to me.
Well I’ll see sometime soon what my rank is in all the other playlists, sometime i feel like doing it perhaps, but I’m still going to focus on the Castle DLC until I hit 35 for that. One way or another.
It will take a number of games for you CSR to normalise.
I had a quick look at a few of your recent games (people above) and you haven’t played a significant amount of games in the playlist you are referring to.
Playing a Capture the Flag gametype in the Castle DLC playlist counts towards Castle DLC, not Capture the Flag.
No, no I knew that everything in Castle DLC is apart of Castle DLC.
I gave up on this…
Was a 39 in Action Sack. I won 5 games in a row and took 1st-2nd overall in the game in every match now I’m at 36. Only thing that possibly could’ve dropped it was I got put into two games already half way over and still managed to finish 4th overall. But that should drop somebody 3 ranks…
Idk i don’t understand. Even after I dropped to a 37, I scored 330 in Rock n Rail (next closest score was 185) and we still won but I dropped to 36…
thanks for the info now we can close this thread.
CSR is basically a visual representative of your skills within the general skill grouping that -Yoink!-'s TrueSkill system characterize’s you to be in, plus it’s indicative of your individual and/or team skills and experience within different playlists. It may or may not assist, or coincide, to some degree with -Yoink!-'s TrueSkill system during the actual matchmaking search process as an extra refinement to the parameters, but the point is don’t mistaken CSR as replacing the role of the TrueSkill system, which is still the backbone of the search and pairing process.
Now, I suspect based on my understanding of the Bulletin that what is meant by individual CSR, or what I’ll refer to as iCSR, is that certain playlists actually determine a player’s finishing rank or position strictly by looking at their finishing score. For instance; some matches will reflect a player on the losing team as the best player, or MVP, of that particular match just because he or she had the highest score. Anyways, then through some complicated formula, which was not disclosed by 343i, a player’s CSR is calculated or determined as to what change it gets if any. I’m sure the key factors will involve looking at the player’s finishing position in relation to what was expected considering their TrueSkill, and/or existing CSR, and comparing those metrics to those of the other players and their finishing positions and expected positions.
The difference for the team CSR, or tCSR, is that certain playlists actually rank the finishing order of the players first by separating who won and who loss before stacking them in order by score. This could mean that the lowest scoring player in the game could finish higher then all the other players on the opposing team if his or her team won. Another look at this explanation from a different perspective is, lets say you had by far the highest score out of anyone, but your team lost in a 4v4 game, then you’d be ranked no higher than 5th and that lowest scoring player in the game that just so happened to be on the winning team finished 4th. After that, then the formula crunches the calculations in regards to your finishing positions, TrueSkills, and/or CSR values. Maybe it also factors the score quantities per the finishing position in too, but only 343i can say for sure.
Now, I’m also sure that there are additional formula complications associated with the CSR meant to prevent dramatic shifts from happening all the time, instead with the more experience that’s accumulated within the specific playlist I’m sure that movement becomes less and less. Plus, there’s probably something that presents an initial progressive upward climb in rank when starting from zero, instead of an immediate launch to 50 if you have an outstanding first game, but again only 343i can say in detail how that all works.
> Well I have played a LOT more CTF than Flood, and I still do not have a rank in that. Sooo this still makes zero sense to me.
We had a minor hiccup in the stats reporting yesterday, and quickly fixed the problem after identifying it. Your Halo 4 CSRs should now be accurate and correct.