CSR, or Competitive Skill rank, is the system that we use to rank and match players in Halo 4 Matchmaking. For more information and details, read on!
There are two different ways we calculate your CSR. CSR is closely based on your TrueSkill rank, which ensures that you’ll be ranked – and matched – against opponents of comparable skill. Your CSR is dependent upon your personal performance as well as the rank of those you play with. While several playlists will use a win/loss system to determine whether or not you rank up, others use individual scoring, which rank you based on your performance against everyone in the match, teammates included. In some playlists, you’ll rank up faster than others – these vary in order to create the most optimal experience for each playlist.
The following playlists use individual scoring and measure your performance against all others in the game. This ensures that the players who play the best in each match will have their CSR adjusted accordingly. Players who win consistently in these playlists will rank up faster than they will in the playlists that use team scoring.
Playlists that use individual scoring:
• Big Team Battle
• SWAT
• Team Action Sack
• Team Snipers
• Rumble Pit
• Flood
The following playlists use team scoring, and your CSR is based off wins and losses. This system rewards players who work towards the objective and win the match. It will take longer to rank up in these playlists.
Playlists that use team scoring:
• Team Slayer
• Capture The Flag
• Ricochet
• Team Doubles
• Grifball
• Proving Ground
Here is additional information about these two systems:
In the mainstream playlists, we sort players by their performance (score) after every match, regardless of whether their team won or lost. The system will expect the players with the highest CSR values to rank consistently higher in the match. So if you bring all your awesome friends into those playlists and they dominate while you end up at the bottom of the scoreboard, your rating will NOT be carried by them; it will decrease instead. Your friends’ CSRs won’t change much since the system already expects them to do well. For these playlists, it will be very hard for friends to carry another player without bringing down their own CSRs and risking losing a lot of matches.
We use this in the mainstream playlists because it is incomparably faster at finding the skill of the players and making sure better players get into challenging matches in a timely fashion (and newer players get into fun matches in a reasonable timeframe as well). Our priority on these main playlists is on fast, fair Matchmaking.
In select playlists, instead of updating CSR based on the rank of every player, we will update based on the total skill in each team and who won the match. This makes teamwork as important as your solo play. The CSR on these playlists will be technically more pure from a competitive point of view. It will also take longer for these CSRs to converge but when they do, they will more accurately represent a player’s ability to help their team win. To get a 50 in the more prestigious playlists will require players skilled enough to consistently bring the win to their entire team so that they can be matched against better and better players.
Now, can you then carry a worse player? In a sense, yes, but only as high as the average skill of the group. Two 40s won’t bring a 10 up to a 40, but instead they will all end up around 30. Does that accurately represent that 10’s skill? Well, if that 10 plays alone, then no, it is grossly overestimating that player’s skill. However, if that player ALWAYS plays with two 40 CSR friends, then 20 of that player’s skill is playing with the right friends.
For more information, check out the 4.3.13 Halo Bulletin. To leave feedback on your experiences with CSR, head to the CSR feedback thread.