Dude shut up. A lot of average to above average players will play down to the level of their competition. Sbmm is really unnecessary in social because such a small percentage of the player base is sweating their nads off in those playlists. With sbmm, if the system detects you’re a half decent player, the amount of sweatiness you get from the team goes from “occasional” to “may as well play ranked.”
We’re not just talking about data here. We’re talking about PEOPLE playing a game. Most people don’t give 100% effort all the time in their video game “careers.”
And btw, most sbmm systems using prediction based methods. The computer predicts what matchups should be balanced etc. You probably know all that so why sweat the details. The problem is, with the bottom 50% of players, their performance is so inconsistent from day to day that your hypothetical bottom 10% player is changing probably on an hourly basis. Someone who’s in the 30th percentile today could be a bottom 10% player tomorrow. And vice versa. And not because the population changes, but because people who aren’t that good at things don’t usually deliver consistency. Those kinds of predictive models only work at the higher levels where people are far more consistent.
This is why just as many sbmm matches end up being slaughters anyway. People are too inconsistent for systems like that to really work effectively.
It’s actually called EBMM in Halo (assuming it’s the same system as Halo 5). I also hate the fact that the system always try to keep your win rate at 50%. I despise this mechanic that predetermines if I’m going to win or lose a match before it even starts. It really kills the competitive integrity of the whole multiplayer concept.
lmao I know. This person’s friends are supposed to be disadvantaged every single game they play together to avoid some randoms running into a skilled player once? Obviously I know it wouldn’t be just one time, but yea in old social it was kind of a mixed bag and it was what it was, but it made sense. Terrible players can also play ranked if they want to make sure the players they play are also terrible lol.
The same can be said about you and your friends.
Use bot matches to play together so that your friends don’t get stomped and start improving. Then increase difficulty over time until they are able to stand up to another players with you.
The root of the problem is you’ve put more time into the game developing your skills than your friends. I’m in that boat too.
My advice is to manage your skill when playing with your friends. This is the one scenario where I agree with making a smurf account so long as you remember to stay at your friends level and not the opponent’s. That way, if they start beating you and your friends, you wouldn’t take it to the next level just to win. If you’re there for fun, you’ll get what I’m saying.
This isn’t a 343 issue, it’s an issue that you need to manage personally.
What do you value more? Onyx rank in some game, or memories with your friends?
Whether or not they’re “sweating” is irrelevant. If they’re playing at a specific level with even 75% consistency, SBMM will still have value for the reasons I’ve listed.
Except ranked is a different experience with different rules that you’re not going to find in other playlists (no radar, BR starts, power weapons having reduced ammo, and so on)
Do you think outliers are just impossible to account for when determining values? Also I’d love to see some data to back up your claim that SBMM simply doesn’t work at all unless you’re in the top tier of players.
Wait, you’re saying that it doesn’t work effectively, but a second ago:
So SBMM doesn’t work, except it works well enough in Social that you may as well play ranked, but it doesn’t work because we’re talking about “people” instead of “data,” but we should absolutely get rid of it because it works so well that it ruined OPs game night with friends, but it only works for the top tiers of players and doesn’t work at all for everyone else…
Does it or doesn’t it work?
For someone that started this off by telling me to shut up, you’ve posted the most monumentally stupid thing I’ve read in this thread so far. The irony of you dismissing data to make some type of point about people, and then immediately making a broad statement about how people behave (not giving 100% effort) which can only be inferred by the use of data. It’s so comical.
There are ways to make the game fun for bad players without literally segregating their matchmaking environment from slightly above average players, who ourselves now have fewer fun games in the titles we enjoy, since we’re forced to sweat every other game.
343i could do things like placing more fusion coils and equipment on the map, introducing guns like the mauler (or maybe just putting more Bulldogs on the map would create such a dynamic), or brute shot (which doesn’t have an easy-to-use counterpart in Infinite, the Cindershot requires a decent amount of skill to use well). The two arena maps that have vehicles, already a low number to put it lightly, are not conducive to vehicle play in the slightest. Instead, 343i treat 4v4 arena as “competitive” by default, and try to funnel the “casual” experience into BTB.
Since i am that “slightly above average” player and i can tell you that the bad players are not segregated from people my skill. SBMM doesn’t limit the skills to just a slight sliver, but it only limits the ‘extremes’ (deliberately put this way, because the skill difference between a bad player and an average player is already pretty extreme). It mostly tries to get the teams to be about evenly skilled on average (not doing the best of jobs in that though…), but the skills gap within the teams are often big. The first match i played after the weekly reset i went 28-2… You realy think that would have happened if i wasn’t playing against bad players?
The biggest problem with SBMM you see when you play with a friend that is way less skilled or way better skilled, is that the SBMM treats teams as having a better skillrating then they would have had if they were searching solo. This because a lot of teams comunicate and therefore are stronger in battle as they would have been if they searched solo. But not all teams communicate (effectively) during matches and that is when the problems begin.
I think best thing is to have parties match against parties as much as possible and have the engine give players different skillratings for their performances while playing solo and while playing in a fireteam, so it can more accurately see what it does with your skill if you partied up.
I already made a smurf so problem solved thanks to SBMM I get to ruin everyone time and be the bad guy. But I’m going to look out for my friends before some random. Just like everyone said that my friends need to just get good well the other team can just get good now.
Are you hosting the game? I played fiesta with a friend who is terrible at the game and the opponents were literally just standing there or barely knew how to shoot
Making it random or at the very least tweaking SBMM would be a far preferable alternative, as it currently stands,
people who play grouped will always be at a disadvantage unless they are of similar ranking
making it random doesn’t make it unfair or ruin the experience for others as in OP’s case:
His team would ALWAYS consist of 1 Onyx, and then a mix of high gold and low plat
The enemy team could be a mix of Diamonds, golds, Onyx, Plats, and yes, the lower ranks are included (which is why I suggest at least tweaking SBMM or changing MM so that certain brackets won’t match others outside of grouped play.)
But this would be a far better alternative than just letting the grouped players always get stomped on becuase the game insist at matching with highest rank.
Yes, some of the bronzies and silvers are gonna have games that are tougher than normal, yes, Mr. Onyx over there MIGHT have easier games, but this removes the punishment of “playing with friends” which is a pretty big part of video games for some people and gives his friends a chance.
Hard to make good memories when every game consist of your friends all getting thrashed and you essentially having to fight a 1v4.
Nobody should have to manage their skill, that’s the entire point of MM, so you can just play and it does its best to accommodate. Throwing a team of 1 Onyx with 3 lower tiers against 3 Onyx and a diamond is not accommodating.
On a side note: no one should have to make a smurf account to play with friends, this is an opinion of course, so I won’t argue the point.
it was perfectly balanced then cause I didn’t feel like I had to sweat every game, my friends and I would actually be able to goof around and chat instead of obsessively making call outs and having to play perfect halo.