I feel my Team Slayer rank has been artificially inflated by being put on teams with good players, while my own performance has been average at best. This is really the only Arena playlist I play, and after having initially been placed in Platinum, I have worked my way up to a promotion, but not only do I feel I don’t deserve it, I strongly wish I could forfeit my rank.
I understand that to a significant portion of the Halo community, the thought of not caring at all about skilled play is more alien than the Covenant itself. But really; I’m not too bad at Halo (I usually go positive whenever I’m not playing an elite squad of pro players,) but I am in no way competitive either, and that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I play Halo simply to have fun, I have no interest at all in esports or any sort of advanced play. My own playstyle involves near zero planning or tactics, I almost always play by myself, and I avoid using the microphone because frankly, talking to randoms on XBL is almost literally never an enjoyable experience.
But now that I’m in Diamond league, I am being placed in matches against players who are supposed to be among the best in Halo 5, which I suppose is flattering, except for the fact that it has had a strictly negative impact on my multiplayer experience. I feel that Platinum league was the perfect rank for me. I rarely ever dominated, I won about as much as I lost, and I nearly always had a positive K/D spread as long as I didn’t play like a total -Yoink!-. Conversely, I am 100% outmatched in Diamond league. I have won maybe a single match since my promotion, but more importantly, I go negative practically every match. Breaking even is difficult to do. And you know what? Getting dominated every single game, dragging your team down at worst, and being carried at best; these things are the antithesis of fun.
“Well, get good. Try harder. Halo is about learning from your mistakes and improving blah blah blah,” I can see your pseudo-philosophical big-brother-patting-little-bro-on-the-head motivational response from a mile away. And my reaction is, simply, “no.” I don’t want to. Maybe that’s Halo to you, which I respect, but that’s not why I play. I enjoy 4v4 sci-fi run and gun shoot and punch and nade combat, I love the Halo universe, but I don’t want to expend the energy practicing and trying hard to become the very best Spartan there is. I don’t have the time nor the dedication, Halo is one of a handful of games I split my free time playing in between work and school.
What am I getting at here? In prior Halo games, I almost never played Ranked playlists because I don’t enjoy that level of play. I want to be able to sign on every once in a while and play a few matches of Halo that feel balanced and where I don’t necessarily do awful as long as I don’t play awfully. Halo 5 does not give me this option; I either play Warzone, which is fun but ultimately not what I’m looking for, or Arena, which is what I’m looking for but ends up not being fun.
I wish I hadn’t hit that win streak while at Platinum 6, I wish I could defer my rank without engaging in -Yoink- ban-worthy behavior, and I wish Halo 5 featured an unranked 4v4 playlist for me to enjoy.
Do I expect the developer to do anything about this? Absolutely not, Halo 5 is not built to allow room for ‘filthy casuals.’ This is an airing of grievances, mostly. I at least want 343 to know that people like me exist. Thanks for reading, have a nice day, and know that if you decide to spend any time screaming and -Yoink!- about how much of a scrub I am, your efforts will have been utterly wasted.