After all the ambiguous posts by Frank in HaloGAF and all the silence they wait until within a week to tell us this BS news. Its a freaking cop-out. The worst part about it is Ellis was acting like we are still getting what we want. Let me make this clear No One who wants a visible UI skill-based ranking system will think in any way that they have gotten what they want. Of course getting even matched games is important but when has that ever been on the table for discussion. The real issue is and always has been visible ranks and 343 knows this and so do all you haters.
The issue now is why wait this long to tell us? If their answer is to make sure people don’t cancel their pre-orders that goes against Frank’s reasoning that only around 1% of players actually care about sill based ranks. If they don’t care about pre-orders being canceled, why not get this out of the way months ago. The only thing I can think of is that it has been in “flux and dev” and either they didn’t finish what Frank said they have for people who are obsessed with sill based ranks or they don’t like what they developed and decided to scrap it.