Can we ban Platinum and below players from queuing with Onyx players in ranked?
I’m tired of boosters and goats. It completely messes up the MMR rewards.
If you Onyx players want to play with your goat friends, play social not ranked.
This rank system is such trash.
Excusing my ignorance - but what’s a Goat?
But yes it’s frustrating. In my S2 placement games I played the same team three times in a row; 2 Onyx players, 1 Gold Smurf, and 1 Silver Sandbag.
It was beyond frustrating.
343 have started addressing the issue with the new minimum number of games before playing ranked - and a tighter reign on ranks in squads.
Hopefully this is just an opening gambit before they make things even tighter going forward. Like, a lot tighter.
If it was up to me I would revamp the whole CSR system to remove the toxicity that comes with grinding. I would have a maximum CSR, like at 1800. Ideally you would even reduce the scale to 1-100 and make 100 the maximum.
Your MMR can keep going up in the background to ensure best match making.
Then, for the “grind”, I would have “Champion” points. Every time you play a game with 8 Onyx players (all with acceptable ping) then the game is for Champ points. The winner gets a point and there are various Season leader boards (world, country, region, city, age, etc).
You could even have similar tables for all the other Divisions.
The key though is that everyone in the game has to be the same Division for points to be up for grabs.
Someone please get Darwi a job at 343i. I always appreciate your feedback.
A goat is kind of the opposite of a Smurf, an actual Platinum player that cost you the game because they go 3:20 is slayer and have no business being there.
I was getting confused. I kept thinking of “the GOAT”… as in Greatest of All Time - essentially the best player on your team (and they know it).
I usually call those genuinely bad players in the manipulated squads “sandbags”. Because they weigh down the opposition’s average MMR.
The Onyx grinder’s prefer using genuinely bad players because it leaves more kills for them to pad their KPM. Plus of course, their accounts are expendable, so they can quit out to protect the Onyx player’s MMR if the game isn’t going their way.
Just lost two games… and a heap of CSR on the back of two Onyx led teams.
The second one had a G2 on their team who went 4 and 21 - and they still won comfortably.
It is very frustrating.
Great idea, I was just thinking Onyx needs something like this or maybe an end all rank because Onyx doesn’t really give it to me with all these random ques with people platinum or lower.
It kills a flock of birds with one stone;
Stops this ridiculously toxic grind for meaningless CSR. There is no longer a need to create these booster squads.
Is a better option than the old H5 Champion - which would just make the grind even more toxic.
Encourages people to keep playing once they have reached their ceiling rank.
You may be shocked to hear that many of what you call booster squads, are in fact crews of friends playing together and I would never want to stop people from playing together, however…
I agree that a solution needs to occur and it will never be one to make all players happy. Here are a few options that I think would work, in descending order of fairness:
Modify Quick Play to include all BR variants - BR slayer, BR Objective. *This would allow Team Slayer to maintain relevance, while providing an extremely versatile everything in one lobby at the top of the lobby options! Hello short wait times!
Get rid of rank concept altogether! Release an experience based progression system even grander than Halo Reach and Halo 5! Reviewing the Azure PlayFab API Matchmaking JSON leads me to believe that TrueSkill2 can be maintained across the board, but ignored for social lobbies, where connection preference would be key criteria, leading to lobbies that feel more random as in Halo MCC social hopper.
Enact the ranked Onyx 600/900 CSR gap that is already deployed(?) If it exists I haven’t felt it. This would divide a lobby and turn people away from the game, at least those who play games together.
Honestly a tangent, but my option number one would be better with an actual social hopper as in Halo MCC. That is a far greater instrument than lobbies. It is actually embarrassing that they pioneered such a strong lobby launcher and forgot to continue iterating it in later games.
That’s what I initially thought too.
But I followed up a heap of such squads early in S2 (when they seemed to really come into prominence).
Most of the Smurf and Sandbagging accounts were less than 20 or so games old.
I doubt they knew each other by first name.
Except in ranked.
I understand that Halo is fairly unique in allowing squads with a wide spread of ranks? But I don’t know how that holds up across the other major FPS games.
More options are good. And if we are going to banish friends to Social - then more options is going to be welcomed.
I definitely think there needs to be a separate XP based rank. Weighted to wins and performance (medals, score, challenges, etc).
You’ve lost me here though.
Random lobbies are bad.
You need (loose) SBMM to create evenly matched teams.
The gap needs to be there. And probably even tighter.
Sunday evening, searching with a squad of three, our fourth teammate was an unranked Season 2 player twice. Just absolutely absurd.
You’ve lost me here though.
Random lobbies are bad.
You need (loose) SBMM to create evenly matched teams.
Reproducing randomness in social lobby matchups would reduce the impact of TrueSkill2 modifications to matchmaking queues, reducing the feeling that “Halo Infinite is too sweaty” and increasing the odds of landslide games for and against all players over time.
I personally think TS2 is the better model. I often feel bad for the enemy when I finish with 30k/5d in Halo MCC H3 4v4 social hopper. Nobody is coming online just to get stomped and I prefer playing sweaty with average results leading to growth in my skill.
Perhaps it is best not to listen to these TS/TS2 complaints when they’re mostly argued through rose-tinted glasses of amazing teenager gaming sessions from 10+ years ago.
Regarding “loose” SBMM, it already is as such - aggregated MMR for a team is a snapshot calculated from each constituents temporal matchmaking dataset. An Onyx 1500+ with a platinum friend and two gold friends versing a team of four diamond-3 and the onyx player is an example of “loose” matchmaking - which we already have.
In that case the only answer for ranked is to draw a line in the sand which apparently exists (google Halo Waypoint Fireteam CSR Limit), but is apparently not deployed as expected with last drop pod (look up reddit posts - much evidence of it not working).
And just played a game with an obvious Smurf.
Gold 3 goes 17 and 7. They were nigh on unbeatable in a 1v1.
Didn’t even hide the fact with their username which included the word “onyx” in it.
Sigh.
That’s 3/4 games today I’ve lost against sides I’m sure are boosting.
Are you aware of TrueSkill2 details:
The issue occurring here is unfortunate; the person new to the game may have completed Bot Mode and quick play to decent results. This player goes to ranked for a BR and gets an assumed skill bracket from previous games in another lobby. They get destroyed and your team loses. Unfortunately rule 3 & 4 above mean it takes some time for the TS2 system to deflate the players expectations.
Yeah that is terrible, unfortunately no game on the market has punishment for performing well by using an alternate account (neg-boosted account) for example.
And another one.
Just lost a CTF game 5-0 to a side with D6 and D5. 36 & 15 between them.
They used a G4 to sandbag a game vs a bunch of Plats.
It’s heart breaking because the couple of matches I’ve had with narrowly ranked teams have been nail biters. Two of them went to overtime.
And the squadders are learning. All the smurf and sandbagging accounts are set to private.
Same i was like when did we start calling good players that i just usually call them good or extremely good players(ie able to hold a area down against 2 or 3 enemies with or without a power weapon and knows all the tricks of a map) unless they are in a group of fellow good or extremely good players in casual which i call them sweats which there’s nothing wrong with sweats I’m just sick of going against them constantly
You do realize that this is a direct result of this strict SBMM system that 343 has created and you endorse so strongly.
It is so bad that streamers and pros openly talk about how they play on Smurf accounts. 343/Microsoft does nothing to punish them even though this is blatantly against Xbox Terms of Service. So of course other players are going to do it because there’s nothing to stop them and it’s Free-To-Play.
For many players, the matchmaking is broken and 343’s decision to make it stricter broke it even more.
The one thing we all agree on is: SOMETHING needs to change to the rank system!
I don’t understand why 343i would trust the same community that popularized T-bagging killed enemies and invented “Standby” to adhere to sportsman like conduct….
It’s time to tighten up the reigns 343i…
PS KDA should weigh more than KPM, especially in a slayer match. An equally ranked player that goes 13:19 should not be rewarded more than the player that goes 12:4…the rank system rewards mindless zerging for kills over communication, strategic gameplay and victory.
My mind just can’t wrap itself around some of the decisions 343i made with their rank system…
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
And we’re talking Ranked here. The SBMM should be super tight.
If they ranked up players by their KDA it would back fire. You would end up being put up against opponents that are too good, you would lose a lot, and your rank would fall.
It was Microsoft that worked that out. Not 343.
You need to keep in mind that KPM is a better reflection of skill. Specifically your ability to seek out and win 1v1’s.
You can manipulate K/D and KDA. But not KPM.
In your example the 13:19 and 12:4 have pretty much the same KPM. But keep in mind there is a (smaller) weighting for DPM as well… so the second player will probably fare better. As long as their opponents were equal or better rank of course.
I don’t know if they ran KDA per minute. Maybe that would be better than straight KPM. You would think it would. But maybe not enough to bother with.
But then again, they have shown that assists themselves don’t predict ranking up. They do reflect good team play and help with the win, but then again they tend to suggest you have reached your limit in actually winning the 1v1.
So that is not strictly how it works. In order to gain CSR and increase rank you (broadly and simply) need to win, achieve more kills than expected of you, and achieve less deaths than expected of you.
I honestly cannot hope to breakdown how TS2 should be working in a forum post. I recommend printing it out for bedside reading. You can gloss over the math but pay attention to the anecdotal and evidenced statements. Below is an extract that counterpoints your perspective I quoted.
TS2 Extract - Page 15, but I also recommend reading page 3, or all of it!)
In TrueSkill2, the goal is to correlate kill/death counts with the existing player skill variable. In game modes where the objective to score the most kills, then we expect this correlation to be high. In game modes where the objective is to capture territory or simply stay alive as long as possible, we expect this correlation to be low. Even in modes where the objective is to score kills, there may be teamwork effects where players can help their team win without scoring kills themselves. We ultimately want player skill to reflect a player’s ability to win, not their ability to score kills.