Influx of new players?

Games Halo Infinite
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Has there been a massive influx of new players recently?
I’ve gotten into a habit of checking the game profiles for players both on my own team and the enemy team’s, checking for potential smurfs and whatnot.

I have seen a huge number of players with double digit amount of matches on their account who perform like a newcomer would do. It boggles my mind why these new players would be thrust against people who have 2k or even 3k amount of matches, and even be paired up with players who have yet to break the quadruple digit mark.

Yes, we assume the population is too bad to maintain a good and healthy multiplayer environment but if it says the estimated wait time is 33 seconds, yet find one after 10 seconds, and I’ve only encountered two players twice. How desperate is the system to put together matches that it needs to put newcomers with long time players?

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I believe the answer to your problem is that Infinite is a free to play game now. Something being free always comes with a catch, that’s just how the world works. The low amount of dedicated players playing regularly is obviously making things worse as well.

I think a big negative that could be causing your particular problem is there is no actual investment for this new ‘broader audience.’ They have no care in the world to stay and commit to learning Halo’s story or playing the game to get better. It’s all about flashes and loud bangs, cosmetics/Battle Passes, and watered down Challenges that reward you just for starting and finishing a match. They intentionally had to lower the skill gap of Halo for the Free to play players. The progression system being traded in for a cosmetic shop, the loss of player collisions, and the addition of player outlines, etc was all most likely flipped around just to accommodate this newer audience 343 wanted.

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Im stuck in Platinum on ranked because I get paired with people who have less than 500 match making games played while the other team is stacked and I check player stats all the time… It happens so much even in social playlist… This is the price we pay because the game is F2P so all it does is attract people who dont take Halo serious as most of us do. Its trash man… The game overall is lacking players so unless youre playing with friends then you will have a hard time winning matches. I know you cant win them all but… I just… Idk man… its frustrating… Hopefully we get more of the OG people to come back for S3 and hopefully its appealing enough to make them stay… Infinite is in a tough spot for OG players that play solo… youre either smashing or getting smashed… sucks…

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It’s not a problem that new players come into the game.
Just that I’ve seen quite a few new ones recently, and it’s a little disheartening at the same time.
What are those players doing in these kinds of matches? There’s no value for the game in throwing new players in as cannon fodder. They’ll just uninstall the game, even if there were no other massive issues.
I even felt like I was back at early 2022, as I also had to win 3 matches as a challenge and boy did they game throw me some massive curveballs. Barely saw anyone below 500 matches on the opposing team, yet I had plenty of what seemed to be newcomers.

New players aren’t going to continue playing this game even if Season 3 manage to fix everything as long as they’re getting matches like this.
I’m invested and had a challenge to complete, and I was on the verge of taking a massive break with how the MM system thought it’d match me.

What chance does the newcomer have if they’re thrown at a brick wall?

I refuse to believe there’s a massive amount of skilled long term players, but not enough to get together a properly balanced match, and matches have to be filled with whatever’s available.

The system of an F2P game can’t be “inexperienced vs massively experienced”. That’s not sustainable.

Is it though? If it consistently find matches after 10 seconds, and barely any players are the same in another match.
Really doubting that the situation is so bad, the MM system is scraping the very bottom of the barrel to get matches together.

And new players how’d benefit from playing each other?
Majorly smashed.

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It probably does have a lot to do with the match making… I just finished a match… had 2 people on my team with less than 600 games and one of them had only 107 games but they decide to come to RANKED for whatever reason… Its sad whats going on man… I have almost 2k games(would have double that if I actually enjoyed the game).

This is why I cant dedicate all of my time to this game until they give us things to do OTHER THAN PVP…

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Not sure why that would be a problem or what you think is ‘enough’ games to be playing ranked. There are plenty of very good players with way less than 1000 games. Once they have more than say 50 games the match making should have measured their skill level pretty accurately.

Not saying the match making does a good job, because I think it’s often pretty poor, but I don’t think overall experience is that relevant. I have more than 2000 games and I regularly get outplayed by people with way less games under their belt. I also see people with many thousands of games who are genuinely terrible.

Edit: Can’t say I’ve noticed many new players over the last couple of days but I’m in Australia so maybe the latest HCS just didn’t generate any excitement over here.

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Before I continue, I must say that all new players are always welcome. I am only pointing out the “free to play” aspect as being your issue because it brings in a different kind of gamer. These are usually uninvested gamers. I would feel confident enough to bet that a large majority of the free to play players didn’t even finish the Campaign. Before in previous Halos, a gamer had to first invest money into the promised product. That already gives a certain amount of assurance that the prepaid player is going to engage further in some way, at least maybe care a little bit. The game being free can have this same effect but it always draws in players who normally would have passed but hey cuz it’s free, why not? That can be good AND bad though. And depending on search variables, you might get more chances for “good team mates” but it also opens the search for more “scrubs” to slip in as well.

I’m sure there are plenty of skilled players out there, long or short term. But are they playing at the same time? Same side of the planet? Any skilled players playing right now are tossed into the hat just like all the the other folks and Infinite’s matchmaker is what you get as a result.

It’s always best to find a dedicated squad, and if you can, find one for different time periods. That way you can have a crew ready to get the fairest match possible on your team’s end at least.

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So are you saying that someone who has 50 Matchmaking games played has the same amount of map knowledge as someone like me that has almost 2k match making games? :thinking: :man_shrugging:t6:

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Of course not. I’m saying that map knowledge is not the sole determining factor in player skill. If they have some combination of better reflexes, higher accuracy and reasonable map knowledge there is no reason they can’t perform on your level or higher.

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50 games is enough for TrueSkill to work out your placing.

If you are facing them at this stage - it’s in spite of their map knowledge (or lack thereof).

If they stick around for 2K+ games you won’t have to worry about playing them for much longer. :wink:

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Take me for example, I have quite a few matches, and yet I’m totally garbage. It goes both ways.

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I don’t really understasnd the ranking system. I have a lot of matches under my belt, and yet at the start of the season I ranked in at Gold 3, when I was Plat 3 the previous season. If anything, my playing is better now, not worse. In all my matches since, I’ve never come across anyone lower than mid Gold, and yet some of them were absolutely terrible! Others were much better than me. I genuinely don’t know what you have to do to rank in at silver or bronze now… just stand there and get shot?

It often feels like there are so many players above my standard, I just wonder how they do it. Then, maybe once in about every 20 matches, I’ll be smashing the enemy team. It seems all over the place to me.

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I have recently returned after a long break. Figured I would play a few matches since the new season is coming up… I was quickly reminded why I left. These maps are just terrible, Halo campfest. Hopefully we can get some maps were you aren’t just fighting over hallways the majority of the time.

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Okay, I accept what youre saying. Im still not confident that “TrueSkill” is fair… at least not for me… When I have these people on my team that have less than 500 games, we get stomped… Happens like WAY to often… I try to play upto a high level every match. Ive studied the maps, Ive studied each gun, I shoot average 50% accuracy or higher and I average 15kills in Ranked… It makes no sense man… Its almost to the point, if you dont have a 4 stacks with comms, youre not gonna have a good time. again, I know you cant win them all but man… When Im losing in matches, Im getting stomped and thats not cool at all… Its like the other team all of a sudden are pros playing on smurfs…

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i think F2P has also to do with it but i think that most part is also that it has to do with the lot off negative news from last year it has got.
since new players do sometime’s first some reasearch about the review’s the game has.
and since halo infinite has a so far only got a lot off negative news from things that has going wrong and have been scrapt it seems there not going to try it out also since it got the worst review’s and reputation it has got thanks to the problems from last year.

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Lol, I appreciate an honest person. I can’t say I’m an amazing player either!

I think anyone can reasonably join ranked. If the system places a newbie silver with a pro onyx, I think it’s more of a problem with the system than the newbie. Someone new to the game might be diamond upon first ranking because they’re just good at FPS and are quick to learn the game. While that’s not especially common, it’s possible. Anyone has the right to join any playlist. As for me, I joined Ranked and scored Gold 5 back when we had some ranked-specific challenges, but I haven’t played Ranked since. I get my bum handed to me just fine in other playlists :joy_cat:

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I do agree that the match making has problems. It’s obviously struggling with less players to pick from at the moment but I don’t think it ever did a great job. I just thought that using experience was a strange way to judge its effectiveness. I mean, on average you expect more experienced players to be better than less experienced but it’s definitely not a reliable indicator.

You’re also right that playing in a 4 stack is giving an advantage. It always has but with Infinite’s population get smaller it’s getting to be a bigger advantage. The team picked to play against the 4 stack them has to be assembled out of a small pool of players and it’s getting harder to do that fairly.

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You can create a free Microsoft account and create a brand new gamer tag with any email address. Add that to a free game like Halo Infinite… It’s limitless. The only restriction is that a new account must play 25 match making games prior to playing ranked. Some food for thought.

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I wouldn’t really call it an issue because every single person who starts a game is new at some point, and new players will come in.
First and foremost I’m curious if there’s been a wave of new players testing Infinite out after almost a year and a half, because I’ve seen so many players with a low amount of matches and behaving as a new player, aim flailing, aimless wandering of the map, ignoring objectives and power items, even other weapons altogether.

Basically the only positive aspect of the F2P model is the extremely low bar of entry, which is a good thing. The other baggage not so much.

However it’s not really a good thing when the game throws new players to the meat grinder in multiplayer.
I’m genuinely confused as to why search times are so extremely fast, and yet there seems to be an endless supply of long time players to play against, with an endless supply of newcomers.
Something in this system isn’t doing its job properly, and it’d be an incredible relief knowing which gear hasn’t gotten its oil.

But why are they playing with long time players?

If the system says half a minute wait time and it takes at most 10 seconds to find a match, quite a few players are playing at the same time, or the system doesn’t consider matching anything anymore and just throws players into matches.

Yes, of course, I do believe in that and have often suggested it in the past, and I do have people I’ve played with who I play with from time to time.

I do recognize that matches played isn’t everything, and natural talent as well as familiarity with the gameplay through other games contribute to doing good, and a high number of matches doesn’t necessary mean an actually good player.
But there’s quite a disparity between sub-100 matches, and 2000 - 4000 matches, as long as you don’t count smurfs.

Yes?
But why the sudden increase of new accounts I’ve been playing with who aren’t performing like smurfs?

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Probably because of the differences between individual player rankings and the low player population around the world and the times at which specific players are playing the game. Obviously there isn’t enough similarly skilled players playing at all the times throughout the day that can make all of the matches in Infinite feel “fair.” Some matches can be fair even when Soloing but most matches without pre-picked squads have lopsided teams and random outcomes. The matchmaker tries it’s best to fill in the gaps with other levels of skilled players to get the match as fair as it can but it’s impossible to be perfect for a majority of the time. That’s how matchmaking has always worked.

Now, toss in Infinite’s low population of players that are mostly Free 2 Play kids that just want to play a free game with only a certain percentage of Pros and diehard fans mixed in there too. And boom, you got Halo: Infinite. I believe that if Infinite was not a free to play game, the player population would be around the same as Halo 4’s was a year or so after it’s launch as well. So, in other words free to play saved Infinite, but it also lowered the quality of the Halo product a lot.

In any low populated online games, the most Skilled players end up having to carry their team of unskilled players. If you want the fairest outcome for your team, then pick a compatible squad before you go into matchmaking. Relying on the matchmaker was never meant to be the end all, be all tool to finding “perfect” matches. The matchmaker has too many variables to work with, but as players, we can eliminate several of these variables ourselves be simply picking a squad before we play.

The system could be broken and maybe 343 refuses to fix it. Or maybe the system is working fine BUT there is such a scarcity of equally leveled players available 24/7 that Infinite’s matchmaker is doing the best that it can but unfortunately it pretty much appears like it is spitting players out in matches at random.

Just because your match fills up in 10 seconds or even 1 second doesn’t mean you got matched up fairly with equally skilled players. All that means is the system found some people waiting for a match already.