As someone who generally plays Halo socially but also likes to play competitively a healthy amount of the time, sometimes I want to play certain playlists socially so I don’t have to worry about being demoted if I lose (especially when I’m solo-searching, because I’m more likely to be paired up against coordinated teams when I get to the higher levels).
So I had this idea for how to split up the social and ranked playlists, and I felt like putting it here on Waypoint to see what other people think. Ironically enough, my “split” idea has nothing to do with actually splitting up the playlists into ranked and social; it’s actually quite the opposite of splitting them up. Warzone is obviously excluded from this because it’s completely separate and won’t be ranked. Please read through all of the bullet points before posting, and feel free to ask to for elaboration if something isn’t clear. Here it is:
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Every playlist (that means every arena playlist and BTB) is ranked.
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When you select a playlist to search in, you are prompted to search the playlist “ranked” or “socially”, and these settings can be changed at any time, except during a match or while searching for one.
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Setting the playlist to social will freeze your skill rank and you will only make progress on your SR rank. Setting the playlist to ranked will act as a normal ranked playlist, with all the risks and rewards.
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When you search, you will still be matched against players of a similar skill rank (exception below), you just won’t have to worry about any kind of hit to your skill rank regardless of the outcome of the match.
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The matchmaking process would prioritize matching people in “social” mode with other social players, even if it means a larger skill gap than normal. This will help to eliminate the possibility of people earning a high rank, then going “social” and deliberately sabotaging their team just to be a jerk.
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When you search as a party, you must choose to search the playlist ranked or social as a team, not individually.
To put it simply, all of the playlists are ranked and your rank always shows, but you have the option to search the playlist ranked when you’re feeling competitive, or socially when you’re feeling more casual. The matchmaking system would prioritize matching social players with other social players, and ranked players with other ranked players, even if it meant having to widen the skill gap.
Drop a comment below and let me know what you think. Ask questions, suggest tweaks, or flat out disapprove. Let’s keep the discussion clean, fellas.
