How to make Halo: Infinite a long-term success
Everyone wishes for a plethora of additions to the upcoming Halo: Infinite, and rightly so. Art styles, campaign elements and every little thing in-between will help toward keeping players coming back for more. But, long after a completed campaign; after the effects of a fresh Halo experience wears off, the long stretch of time until the next Halo begins: Where are all the players? In multiplayer.
There are tons of important features multiplayer need (specifically) to keep players coming back for more for years to come, and I hope some of you can respond with ideas on what those features are. I will focus on what is arguably the most important feature, the foundation; matchmaking; the function that decides which players you get on your team and which players you will play against. Every single game will be shaped by this function, and the difference between a good experience and a bad experience, largely is decided by it. Here are some important points that I think a great matchmaking system should have.
- Queue time vs focused skill-matching. There is always a trade-off between queue times and matching players of similar skill, and when Halo 5 still had a large population, matchmaking was leaning too heavily toward providing fast queue times. Players got into games very fast, and that’s great, but it came at the expense of providing a good experience for all players involved. Sure, players had the option to influence matchmaking toward closer skill-matching, but most players don’t bother. The baseline, pre-selected option needs to be more in favor of matching people of similar skill. Instead of having a queue time of 10 seconds and matching players that aren’t really similar in skill, maybe it should allow a queue time of 25 seconds if it means everyone having a better game experience. That will pay off in the long-term, keeping players coming back for more the next day. Instead, Halo 5’s focus on fast queue times helped lead to a fast decrease in population because players aren’t having good games, eventually forcing the matchmaking system to focus even more at keeping short queue times because there simply aren’t enough players searching.
- Pre-made teams vs all randoms. This is another function that pays off in the long-term; don’t allow pre-made teams to match all randoms. Sure, if searching as a full pre-made means you can only match against other full pre-mades, it also means longer queue times. This worked great in Halo 3, which kept a massive population for many years. You could possibly relax the rules a bit, allowing for example a 4-player pre-made to match a 3+1 or a 2+2, so as to not instead drive people away because of long queue times. But never a full team vs all randoms. This will increase the probability of everyone having a good experience, and by extension increase the probability that players want to play more.
-
Quitting penalties and ‘stay-in-game’-rewards. A good penalty system is also important for a functioning matchmaking. I don’t think current penalties in Halo 5 are too soft, but they are only time-based. If you quit, and consequently ruin everyone else’s game, you should of course be penalized, at least for the second game it happens within a day (to allow for the odd disconnect etc.). But time-based penalties aren’t as effective as 343i seem to think, which is proven by how common quitting is currently. Penalties also need to be rank-based, dealing a marked blow to a quitters rank. Reversely are the arguably more important function of rewarding players to stay in games in the first place, instead of only focusing on penalizing players that don’t. Rewards could include a plethora of desirable items, points, etc. Incentivizing players to stay in games, and properly penalizing those who regularly don’t, increases the probability of a larger long-term playerbase. Remember, quitters are a minority that causes major problems. 1 quitter in a regular 4v4 ruins the game experience of 7 other players.If anyone has ideas, specific to matchmaking, or pertaining to multiplayer in general, that will increase the probability of Halo: Infinite becoming a long-term success, please share them!
