Match Making

Games Other Halo
#1

I know this isn’t the first time this has been brought up, but this is just venting a little frustration.

Its really frustrating when the number one thing wrong with matchmaking is the match making (sorry, not sword base). I submit as anecdotal evidence: Rage!

Obviously one game doesn’t prove the point, but I suspect no one will be bold enough to suggest this isn’t disturbingly routine. My teammates were hopelessly outmatched. How is that fun for them? I never had a realistic chance of winning (needed to go +28). How is that fun for me? Even the other team was not able to get a fair fight. Either they got easy kills on my teammates or they got killed by me when they encountered substantially different game behavior. How is that fun for them?

I hope and pray Halo 4 will bring back competitive play lists. I know that arena suffered in popularity in Halo Reach, but I have a number of ideas about why having ONE ranked play list with questionable matching tendencies will exclude all but the very hard core players. Halo 3 seemed to have very little difficulty interesting players in the competitive play lists while social still had a very healthy population.

The team slayer experience in Halo 3 is the best experience I have had in a Halo game. Teams were comprised of similar party sizes. The 1-50 system which PREFERRED SIMILAR LEVELS ACROSS ALL PLAYERS created what were overwhelmingly fair games. The system got things close enough that it often seemed the number of players using a mic would determine matches.

I recognize that deleveling and boosting were issues in Halo 3, but surely there is some way to bring back accurate and effective true skill usage without exacerbating the old problems to the point where the negatives outweigh the positives.

Bring back party restrictions so there isn’t a game of

4 randoms: noble, major, commander, commander’s friend

vs

team of 4: inheritor, inheritor, eclipse, forerunner

Even disregarding the obvious advantages of the team of four, I think we can all agree that while experience does not lead to skill, a higher level player is more likely to be skilled and certainly his experience will contribute to lending an advantage on the map specific encounters versus a raw player.

Wall of text is complete. I love Reach, and truly wish this problem didn’t exist. I will be giddy if they fix this for Halo 4.

#2

Agreed. (and I’m an Inheritor)

It’s absolutely ridiculous to not have party restrictions. Teams should face Teams. Plain and simple.

And yes, a Recruit should NEVER face an Inheritor.

#3

They could definitely experiment with more team restrictions now that the players are pooled into few playlists now.

OP is unaware that progression ranks have nothing to do with skill though, and that the 1-50 is still there in the background. Also arena is actually pretty damn strict with matching, to the point that top of gold division and upwards can make you wait forever for a match i gather.

#4

> They could definitely experiment with more team restrictions now that the players are pooled into few playlists now.
>
> OP is unaware that progression ranks have nothing to do with skill though, and that the 1-50 is still there in the background. Also arena is actually pretty damn strict with matching, to the point that top of gold division and upwards can make you wait forever for a match i gather.

Not directly, but obviously an Inheritor is going to be more familiar with the game than a Recruit. Them saying the 1-50 is there in the background is absolutely absurd. It’s completely random, I don’t even think it attempts to create a fair game honestly.

When I played Arena and was Onyx I would get stuck with Silver players sometimes. I hardly ever played a game full of all Onyx people (as it should be.) The player pool is so limited though.

#5

> the 1-50 is still there in the background…

It baffles me that you still say this.

#6

> > They could definitely experiment with more team restrictions now that the players are pooled into few playlists now.
> >
> > OP is unaware that progression ranks have nothing to do with skill though, and that the 1-50 is still there in the background. Also arena is actually pretty damn strict with matching, to the point that top of gold division and upwards can make you wait forever for a match i gather.
>
> Not directly, but obviously an Inheritor is going to be more familiar with the game than a Recruit. Them saying the 1-50 is there in the background is absolutely absurd. It’s completely random, I don’t even think it attempts to create a fair game honestly.
>
> When I played Arena and was Onyx I would get stuck with Silver players sometimes. I hardly ever played a game full of all Onyx people (as it should be.) The player pool is so limited though.

Yeah there is a correlation between playing time and skill for sure. I hope H4 takes consideration of this. But its also true that you can get to inheritor while being totally rubbish at the game. Some people just think that people are matched up based on the progression rank, which is wrong. Thats all.

The 1-50 trueskill system really is there in the background, and matches are not completely random (even though it seems that way a lot of the time i dont dispute that) because microsoft requires every xbox 360 game to use their system. They will not certify for release a game that doesnt use it for online play. Its as simple as that. I dont know how many times i have to say this.

The argument has always been between does the system exist vs is it currently working satisfactorily, to which the answers are categorically yes and probably not for many people, respectively.

We know the system CAN work though, just look at H3 and the Arena when there is sufficient population to avoid onyx vs silver games. It just needs readjusting again which is a job for Halo 4.

#7

> They could definitely experiment with more team restrictions now that the players are pooled into few playlists now.
>
> OP is unaware that progression ranks have nothing to do with skill though, and that the 1-50 is still there in the background. Also arena is actually pretty damn strict with matching, to the point that top of gold division and upwards can make you wait forever for a match i gather.

While the progression ranks are in no way determined by skill, a higher rank will often correlate with a more capable player. Rookies in any sport league will not perform at the same level as veterans. There are obvious exceptions but we are talking about the norm, not the exception.

The 1-50 is working in the background, but based on my many hundreds of games I’m going to guess that there is very little weighting on finding matches close to your skill level. It seems to me that it prioritizes match making speed over a narrow range of skills.

Halo 3: 34, 36, 37, 38 vs 35, 35, 36, 39 is fair.
Halo Reach: 15, 30, 35, 38 vs 30, 30, 31, 31 is fair.

In both cases the levels average out, but there is clearly one individual in the game that does not belong there. Its like putting a 4’ tall guy on a professional basketball team.

#8

> > the 1-50 is still there in the background…
>
> It baffles me that you still say this.

It is in the background. It’s just waaaaaay in the background.