Infinity League: the new Arena

Games Other Halo
1

So the other day I did a little brainstorming on the train. Several ideas were running through my head:

1)The Arena was a failure
2)The idea of divisions was, fundamentally, not a bad idea
3)How could 1-50 be improved on, or built upon
4)How could team names (i.e. Team Fury, Team Demon, etc) be used
5)How could 343i make money out of matchmaking
6)How could the idea of a training simulation be used to expand the matchmaking experience
7)How could leaderboards be integrated into matchmaking
8)How could clan matches be brought back
9)How can we make matchmaking a sport for the vast majority of us who are not professional gamers

And, most importantly:
10) How could matchmaking be a fun, competitive, constantly evolving, and forever rewarding experience even after the max rank has been reached?

Please note, I do not pretend to know the answers to all of these issues. However, I do believe Infinity League could be a decent starting point. Also note all numbers and values are purely used to illustrate my examples.

So, what is Infinity League?

Picture Infinity League like the English Football League System

Given War Games is a training simulation for hardened war-veterans, battling each other on a holodeck is bound to turn competitive. Spartans would naturally gravitate to other Spartans, teams would form, and these teams would compete with each other to become the very best. Good teams would begin to make a name for themselves and the best teams would be known throughout the ship. They would be famous. War Games would become a sport.

I feel a hierarchical format (i.e. divisions) with promotion and relegation between divisions would be good because it would create intense competition and rivalry between teams in all divisions. Further, the best teams would have the opportunity to rise to the very top of the system.

But these ideas are all about teams I hear you say. What about me, as an individual? Well clearly, sports have superstars. And you too can become a superstar.

This is how I see Infinity League working. Upon entering War Games you have several menu options: Infinity League, Social Games, Custom Games, Theatre, Forge. Within Infinity League there are two options: League Matches, and Ranked Matches.
Ranked Matches will work much the same as the Halo 3 ranking system. You have a rank dictated by your skill in the game which is displayed either numerically (1-50) or in combination with the progression system to give an overall rank (Private → General). Theoretically you can be matched up with anyone else playing in Ranked Matches and your stats in Ranked Matches tie into your overall Infinity League record.

Now this is where things get interesting. Upon entering League Matches for the first time everyone starts out in the ‘proving grounds’. The Proving Grounds acts as a sort of limbo area. Your rank from Ranked Matches is still displayed in the Proving Grounds, and you can still increase your rank whenever you play in Infinity League (rank in continuous between Infinity League and Ranked Matches for each specific playlist). Proving Grounds is driven by TrueSkill.

This is where things get really interesting. In order to get out of the Proving Grounds and into the League, you have to receive an offer. You may receive an offer from any division. The divisions could be named as follows, from worst to best; Steel, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Onyx. Offers are given out by Team Captains (think Team Manager or Clan Leader) and are accompanied with a credit amount. For example, imagine I have played some Ranked Matches and have recently entered the Proving Grounds. I am a Warrant Officer Grade 3 and have a 2.1k/d ratio and a 65% win percentage. By all accounts, I am an ok Halo player. Given this record, I attract interest from a Bronze division Team Captain. I log onto Infinity League and I open up my ‘Offers’ section within my Service Record. Up pops the message: “You have been offered 50,000cR to join Team Fury: Bronze Division.” Before committing, I am obviously able to check in-depth statistics on the performance of Team Fury: Bronze. After checking their statistics, I decide to join the team as a ‘Recruit’. The more loyal I am to my new team the higher my standing, and the better the perks (i.e. Team Captains can make offers to gain new members, Officers gain a weekly credit bonus and can suggest new Recruits to Team Captains, Recruits gain no bonuses). Having accepted the offer, I can now play in League Matches with my team against other teams within our division (Bronze in this case). After some predetermined time period, the season is over and the best performing teams are promoted to the next division and the worst performing teams are relegated. In this way, the best teams move up to tougher competition and the weaker teams move down and can be more competitive in a lower division.

To gain recognition, within the League Matches section of Infinity League, top performing teams in each division are shown and top performing players are also highlighted. Players can then look at the statistics for these teams and players and can also manually search for players and teams. There would obviously also be leaderboards for all divisions. Furthermore, when playing in League Matches, all other players can see your ‘Worth’. Displayed alongside your rank will be the credit value you were given when you first joined the team. In this way, the best players will be ‘Worth’ the most money, and everyone will be able to see it (think Quarterback). Players can finally be proud of more than just getting to level 50. Just imagine beating a team with a player ‘Worth’ twice as much as you. The post-game carnage chat would be incredible!

Now, all of this means nothing if Team Captains can just offer as much as they want for any and all players. To combat this, I propose the concept of salary caps. Teams Captains in each division should be given a salary for each season with which to buy players. For example, Onyx division teams would have a salary cap of 10,000,000cR, Gold teams 7,000,000cR, Silver teams 6,000,000cR, Bronze teams 4,000,000cR, and Steel teams 3,000,000cR. Remember, no one player will be online at all times so your star player may not actually be contributing to your team if he hardly plays or no longer has Xbox Live, regardless of his Service Record. For this reason, it would be important to have a large number of players, who play often enough to contribute enough to your team. In order for a team to be considered for promotion, they must play a minimum number of League Matches.

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So now, just how DO I become a Team Captain? This is where 343i can start making some money, justifying the immense effort that would be required to develop such an in-depth system such as this. Essentially, there would be three ways to become a Team Captain:
1)Buy the rights to become a Team Captain in any division. Players would use Microsoft Points to become the Team Captain of a team in a division of their choosing. Higher division teams would obviously cost more. Remember, teams move up and down divisions, so buying an Onyx team does not mean you will always be an Onyx team and vice versa.
2)Use credits to become a Team Captain. This should be a highly time consuming method and the price of admission, credit wise, should be quite high, even for a Steel division team captaincy.
3)Become Team Captain after the former Team Captain steps down. This may happen for any number of reasons.

3

Nobody would become “famous” in this system, and the “top” players would just go play in real tournaments for money and gain more attention that way. Interesting idea though.

4

I don’t mean famous in the real sense. I simply mean players would be able to recognise who the top players are in their respective division.

5

I some of it. I hate the “Pay to Play” deal. Anyone should be able to do this the team thing. We already paid for this game, and if the goal is to get more publicity, the cash-in for people buying copies of the game just to join in should be more than enough.

6

> I some of it. I hate the “Pay to Play” deal. Anyone should be able to do this the team thing. We already paid for this game, and if the goal is to get more publicity, the cash-in for people buying copies of the game just to join in should be more than enough.

I do agree with you to some degree. I do not like paying for these extras either. I did also mention that players should be able to use credits (and I meant in-game credits [cR]) to purchase a team, albeit at quite a high price.

I thought about it a bit though. It would be easy to whack on a ranking system and people would be happy. However, I think I’m ready for something a little more involved…to feel like winning has a purpose beyond getting to 50. I want to see who the best players are, and what team they’re on, and what their perceived worth is using factors other than just the k/d and w/l I used in my example.

I thought the payment scheme would be needed to prevent a flood of teams that would essentially destroy the system. If everyone were a Team Captain who would be the team? Only the most devout would pay, and that would be ok. It would actually make the teams that do exist larger and in that way those teams would post more League Matches, resulting in a more accurate ranking and a fairer promotion/relegation scenario.

I think it is fair enough if a company tries to make money out of a system if its existence in the first place is more than what was to be expected. We can expect a ranking system. We would expect not to pay for that.

7

> I some of it. I hate the “Pay to Play” deal. Anyone should be able to do this the team thing. We already paid for this game, and if the goal is to get more publicity, the cash-in for people buying copies of the game just to join in should be more than enough.

I think you’d only have to pay to become a Captain though.

Basically, in a nut shell, the OP is ‘kind of’ talking about a clan system, but this is a little more in depth.

The idea sounds incredibly awesome OP, the only thing I don’t like is the credit distribution. You shouldn’t just get credits for joining a team, I think the payment should be completely taken out or at least changed so the credits gained in the Infinity League are only viable in the said game type. Like, a team earns cR for winning, which basically gets funneled over to the Captains funds in which he can use to “buy” in more players . . . but then what else would cR be used for? Personally I would just scrap the cR idea completely and just let the player decide whether or not he wants to join a team based on it’s records.

Then another problem, would the infinity league follow traditional Halo rules and game types or would the newer custom loadouts and weapon drops be introduced here?

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> Basically, in a nut shell, the OP is ‘kind of’ talking about a clan system, but this is a little more in depth.

Yes, that is very accurate. Clan system with a bit of fantasy-league thrown in.

I imagined getting credits for more than just joining the team. You’d still get credits for actually playing the game, with ‘Officers’ also getting a little bonus each week or something.

The initial credit offer is more than just credits though, it functions as a status symbol (but only if you actually have the stats to justify that ‘worth’) that is displayed alongside your rank. Sure, in its current state, there is potential for abuse. Maybe only allow players to actually receive the offer amount a certain number of times or a certain number of times per month/year. I’m not exactly sure how Captains should be rewarded but funneling funds to them to buy players may skew teams eventually resulting in one team having too many players or too many high-value players.

I see it working much like ranked, although maybe fewer playlists? Loadouts and ordnance would be on a playlist by playlist basis.

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> > Basically, in a nut shell, the OP is ‘kind of’ talking about a clan system, but this is a little more in depth.
>
> Yes, that is very accurate. Clan system with a bit of fantasy-league thrown in.
>
> I imagined getting credits for more than just joining the team. You’d still get credits for actually playing the game, with ‘Officers’ also getting a little bonus each week or something.
>
> The initial credit offer is more than just credits though, it functions as a status symbol (but only if you actually have the stats to justify that ‘worth’) that is displayed alongside your rank. Sure, in its current state, there is potential for abuse. Maybe only allow players to actually receive the offer amount a certain number of times or a certain number of times per month/year. I’m not exactly sure how Captains should be rewarded but funneling funds to them to buy players may skew teams eventually resulting in one team having too many players or too many high-value players.
>
> I see it working much like ranked, although maybe fewer playlists? Loadouts and ordnance would be on a playlist by playlist basis.

I see. Well . . . here, keep the credit’s but give the captains a total salary cap for one season, maybe . . . depending on how many players are allowed to join a team. Let’s use 8 as an example, 4 players can play in one match at once but 8 players are allowed to be on one team. A captain gets maybe 100,000-200,000 cR to hand out to “buy” players. So with eight players (including the captain), if funds get spread out equally, each player would get 25,000cR (if the captains cap is 200,000) which is a nice standard, and nothing to boost over. I think you already covered this, but to keep players from reaping the benefits and cheating, a player will ONLY receive his cR amount at the end of a season, if he’s played a certain amount of games.

Then the next season starts and the Captain get’s 100,000-200,000 cR again (it won’t stack) to spread around his players. If the players don’t like the deal they received they can either head back to the proving ground or accept another teams offer.

I think that sounds pretty good. the cap can be raised or lowered by I’m just thinking of ways to keep the amount balanced so friends don’t just buy their friends, screw around in the league and get free credits.

10

> to keep players from reaping the benefits and cheating, a player will ONLY receive his cR amount at the end of a season, if he’s played a certain amount of games

A very good idea I think!

> cap can be raised or lowered by I’m just thinking of ways to keep the amount balanced so friends don’t just buy their friends, screw around in the league and get free credits

Exactly, the provision of credits is something that must be tightly controlled so as not to detract from its use in buying armour and other unlocks. I also thought using credits to buy a team would be a useful way to spend when you’ve bought just about everything else…saving up to buy an Onyx division team for example.

What does everyone else think about the idea of Infinity League? Good points, bad points? Possibility for abuse? No better than the Arena?