Yeah Trueskill2 can make it happen quicker. Even if you were constantly stomping teams under Trueskill1 you would still need a fair number of games to rank up. Losses are more punishing in Halo 3 than in Halo 5 if you are on an upward trajectory too. In the old H5 system you could rank Onyx from the placement games too which was bittersweet as you didn’t need to grind beyond getting a higher CSR.
It’s hard to differentiate the players but I’d say Onyx in H5 gave me more balanced games. In Halo 3 I was still able to carry most my games at level 50, this is definitely not the case in Halo 5.
True true but it could also be a case of players catching up or one getting older. Those 8 or 9 year old who grew up on H2 or 3 have got that memory muscle built in and are stomping big time. I have a little brother that’s testament to that.
But again yes the TS2 is definitely more fine tuned and finding more even games. So the balance should be more consistent.
My argument for this thread though… is that the 1-50 didn’t need to change it could have been improved. The system they have now with the bronze to onyx is just another way of expressing the same information.
If so, I agree. Military ranks for progression are much more interesting, and by extension divisions are more interesting than numbers for skill ranks.
I actually think players skill based tanking is better as some sort of actual rank system than just some numbers. Just numbered levels should be for stuff like xp as it will go up no matter what… Skill based should be a little more prestigious than just numbers.
It was posted by Josh Menke (343) on the old waypoint forum.
This left 20 or so hidden levels in Halo 3.
It wasn’t necessarily broken. What you describe is pretty much how Halo 2 (proprietary) and Halo 3 (TrueSkill) worked.
But we know that TrueSkill2 is faster and more accurate than TrueSkill.
So it’s more a case of “If we have something better we may as well use it”.
If you are talking about Halo 3 it was because of the XP requirement (having to get a certain amount of wins to rank up) and the dreaded rank lock.
What happened was the shape of your skill curve narrowed too quickly and locked you into a rank. You had to win an obscene amount of games to rank up. But if you opened a new account (wide curve) you could quickly rank up to your current skill level.
This created a market for 50 accounts. People would start a new account and quickly get to level 50 (because they were well and truly better than Diamond 3) and then play it enough to rank lock it and sell it to someone who couldn’t be bothered with the grind.
And the hidden ranks were somewhere between 20 to 25. I think the actual number was vague - but it makes sense because ELO systems are open ended.
As I suggested the top end of town is broken. Not 343’s fault so much - more the way we play. ELO systems are suited to tournament systems where the good players play each other regularly in a structured system - which provides the data needed to rank and sort the players.
In Halo good teams / squads dominate their local (server) region. They play game after game against teams that can’t beat them - so their MMR’s drift up.
343 have tried to mitigate this by capping the CSR you can gain for a win (in Onyx) and weighting against losses. For mere mortals this creates a pattern where you slowly rank up with a run of wins and then lose it all on the next loss. For the Halo Gods, who never lose, it’s an elevator to the stars (albeit a slow one).
It was. TrueSkill was pretty good, even back then.
But TrueSkill2 is demonstratably better.
And where Halo 3 let itself down was the hidden levels and rank locking.
30 to 40 is still quite a skill gap.
In Halo 3 it’s approximately Gold 4 to Platinum 4.
In Halo 2, or how we would distribute the ranks in Infinite, it’s about a Platinum 4 to Diamond 6.
But that’s pretty much what the system tries to put together now.
In an ideal world the population playing would be so big that you would get game after game against players with nigh on the same rank as you.
But matchmaking has to make compromises.
Most of the “uneven” games are because someone is playing with a mate who is different in skill to them. As a solo player you tend to get lumped with or vs them a lot. It happened to me a lot in Halo 5 (but not so much Infinite). The only way to stop this would be to limit the skill range of squads (which would be unpopular).
Player’s “without” a rank do actually have one - you just can’t see it. And if they are into the latter part of their placement they are more than likely playing at a level that will match their ranking.
In a competitive skill based ranking system, the main thing that defines if a rank is good or not is how the ranks are distributed across the player population.
A good ranking system would probably be one which describes how large proportion of the player base that are better than yourself with something like “top 7%” or “top 49%”.
I’m not 100% sure but I think it was closer to Halo 2. So not TrueSkill.
It was probably easier to put Halo 2’s ranking in Halo 3 than the other way round. Especially with Halo 3’s problem of rank locking.
With the addition of Reach I think they added the XP based ranks from there.
You’ll have to forgive me if I’ve sent you on the wrong path - I haven’t played MCC.
And btw, there is nothing inherently wrong with Halo 2’s system. It ranked the players post match and allocated points for and against. It would have ranked players eventually. But TrueSkill is more accurate and (importantly) much faster in finding your rank. And the final nail in H2’s coffin is that it doesn’t work with objective games very well (how do you accurately rank the players 1-8). TrueSkill just needs the win to work.
Maybe this is the way they could break up Onyx (instead of the 1 to 6 for the other divisions).
I would love to know if they have set % they are aiming for… or if they just let it settle into standard deviations; which would make it Bronze 3.2%, Silver 13.6%, Gold 31.1%, Platinum 31.1%, Diamond 13.6%, and Onxy 3.2%