MATCHMAKING FEEDBACK UPDATE – APRIL 17

Games Other Halo
1

Can we have 1-3 count as a win in FFA?
This is something we would like to do, but is currently deceptively difficult for technical reasons related to the current specific implementation of how wins and losses are reported. I don’t think this will get fixed for Halo 5, but it’s something we are aware of and would prefer down the road.

Search changing from Expanded back to Balanced
We have found the issue that is causing this and are working on the fix. I can’t give an exact estimate on when it will happen, but if we’re lucky, probably in the coming few weeks.

Why does rank carry over from Proving Grounds into HCS Summer Preview?
Since the audiences for Proving Grounds and the HCS list had a high overlap, we wanted to preserve matchmaking quality as best we could when transitioning. Matchmaking in an existing playlist is always better than in a brand new one because we already know the skill (MMR) of many of the players. To preserve the quality, we
wanted to bring the MMR from PG over to HCS.

However, we don’t currently have a way to preserve MMR without preserving CSR, so in order to preserve the MMR from Proving Grounds, we have to also carry over the CSR (Ranking)

This also makes it easier for us see how the different settings feel without being biased by poor matchmaking.

FFA feels broken now
Just to recap.

  • FFA is not broken, but I agree it does feel that way. If you keep losing points even in 2nd and 3rd place, that means either your CSR is still inflated, or a player with a really low MMR ranked above you. - Once the season rolls, it will be more common to go positive for 1-3rd, and negative for 4-6th and no one will be inflated. From that point on, strange point gains / losses will only happen due to surprising finish positions.
    A few of you have suggested that MMR would have also fluctuated to match up with the CSR inflation, and that you shouldn’t be out of synch and have this issue. Let me clarify that the CSR inflation was completely arbitrary and not related at all to fluctuations in skill. Instead, we were just wholesale handing out TONS of extra CSR in FFA to everyone. FFA had basically become a grind and not skill-based at all, so the ranks were meaningless.

Unfortunately, since we made this fix mid-season, we now have a mix of meaningful and not-meaningful ranks depending on whether or not you are brave enough to play and have your CSR re-calibrated. I know some of you felt you had fought hard to earn your Onyx and Champion ranks, and it’s mean of us to tell you, “actually, no, most of you are not Onyx nor Champion”

Next season, however, should end up being one of the most skill-accurate FFA seasons we’ve had. So if you want to find out whether you really are Onyx or Champ material, prepare for next season. Even though this season’s Ranks may be frustrating, I encourage be ready for the “real deal” next season. Or, just play because you like FFA.

2

Thanks Dr. Menke. Appreciate the update.

3

> 2533274839818445;1:
> Search changing from Expanded back to Balanced: We have found the issue that is causing this and are working on the fix. I can’t give an exact estimate on when it will happen, but if we’re lucky, probably in the coming few weeks.

There should be lots of people happy to hear this.

4

> 2533274839818445;1:
> depending on whether or not you are brave enough to play

Are you talking to me

5

Quick Addendum

Gold Platinum Players in the HCS List are not True Gold / Plat and are Owning me. Obviously Smurfs

I don’t think this is the issue. I think the issue, instead, is that a Gold / Platinum in HCS is not the same as a Gold / Platinum if you are used to Team Arena. I haven’t run the numbers yet, but I suspect that the average player coming over to HCS is higher-skilled. I’m not saying they’re all Onyx, but I’m suggesting that if you were, e.g., Diamond in Team Arena, you are probably more like Gold / Platinum in HCS.

This also means that if you are used to be a “legit” Gold player in Team Arena, you may be Silver in HCS. This means Gold and Platinum players will “feel” a lot stronger than you are used to, and you may be tempted to think they are “smurfs”, but I suspect it’s just a skill shift between TA and HCS.

It’ll take a bit longer to know for sure, but that’s what I am thinking.

6

HCS Summer Preview matchmaking is so broken, I’ve been in around 10 3v4s just this past weekend, and the system doesn’t recognize when other players hold you back, regardless of KDA. Getting a couple of 3v4s/games with bad teammates completely screws with the ranks/MMR.

7

> 2533274839818445;5:
> Quick Addendum****Gold Platinum Players in the HCS List are not True Gold / Plat and are Owning me. Obviously SmurfsI don’t think this is the issue. I think the issue, instead, is that a Gold / Platinum in HCS is not the same as a Gold / Platinum if you are used to Team Arena. I haven’t run the numbers yet, but I suspect that the average player coming over to HCS is higher-skilled. I’m not saying they’re all Onyx, but I’m suggesting that if you were, e.g., Diamond in Team Arena, you are probably more like Gold / Platinum in HCS.
>
> This also means that if you are used to be a “legit” Gold player in Team Arena, you may be Silver in HCS. This means Gold and Platinum players will “feel” a lot stronger than you are used to, and you may be tempted to think they are “smurfs”, but I suspect it’s just a skill shift between TA and HCS.
>
> It’ll take a bit longer to know for sure, but that’s what I am thinking.

I think this is 100% right. For the past 3-4 seasons I’ve been Onyx in TA, but I’ve been stuck in diamond 1-4 in HCS. I don’t think there’s a reason to complain though. The new playlist is definitely more challenging in terms of settings and the people that are playing it.

But at the same time, I believe To4s or people quitting are still slowing me down a little bit.

Is there a way to not play against the same To3-4 =twice in a row? If there’s not enough people to make soloQs play mostly againts them and to4s against to4s, there should be a way to minimize playing the same team again and again. I know there’s enough people to avoid this.

8

> 2533274839818445;1:
> Next season, however, should end up being one of the most skill-accurate FFA seasons we’ve had. So if you want to find out whether you really are Onyx or Champ material, prepare for next season. Even though this season’s Ranks may be frustrating, I encourage be ready for the “real deal” next season. Or, just play because you like FFA.

Really looking forward to this!

9

> 2533274839818445;5:
> Quick Addendum****Gold Platinum Players in the HCS List are not True Gold / Plat and are Owning me. Obviously SmurfsI don’t think this is the issue. I think the issue, instead, is that a Gold / Platinum in HCS is not the same as a Gold / Platinum if you are used to Team Arena. I haven’t run the numbers yet, but I suspect that the average player coming over to HCS is higher-skilled. I’m not saying they’re all Onyx, but I’m suggesting that if you were, e.g., Diamond in Team Arena, you are probably more like Gold / Platinum in HCS.
>
> This also means that if you are used to be a “legit” Gold player in Team Arena, you may be Silver in HCS. This means Gold and Platinum players will “feel” a lot stronger than you are used to, and you may be tempted to think they are “smurfs”, but I suspect it’s just a skill shift between TA and HCS.
>
> It’ll take a bit longer to know for sure, but that’s what I am thinking.

Now this makes more sense, i always knew something was off on HCS. I cant ever reach gold 6 due to how intense this playlist is compared to team arena but this made it clear.

10

I don’t know if it’s a mix of the settings, matchmaking changes, or what but HCS has been giving me super accurate matches. I solo queued over 100 games this weekend and w/l ratio is chilling right at 50%. Grinded up from placing Gold 2-3 in PG to low Plat now, and a lot of the time my teammates/opponents are almost exactly the same skill as me.

The only time matchmaking becomes unbalanced is when I fireteam up. For example, this game I was playing with one friend, had one solo, and one afk.

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/games/halo-5-guardians/xbox-one/mode/arena/matches/7bdc090a-697e-40fa-98b6-4976409d6335/players/yah0oit?gameHistoryMatchIndex=4&gameHistoryGameModeFilter=All

I’m really curious to know the ‘behind the scenes’ of why matchmaking decided to do this. I’m guessing the MMR of everyone is off from what shows in CSR, but the results show something different.

11

> 2775209234672000;3:
> > 2533274839818445;1:
> > Search changing from Expanded back to Balanced: We have found the issue that is causing this and are working on the fix. I can’t give an exact estimate on when it will happen, but if we’re lucky, probably in the coming few weeks.
>
> There should be lots of people happy to hear this.

What was the issue??

12

> 2533274800873677;11:
> > 2775209234672000;3:
> > > 2533274839818445;1:
> > > Search changing from Expanded back to Balanced: We have found the issue that is causing this and are working on the fix. I can’t give an exact estimate on when it will happen, but if we’re lucky, probably in the coming few weeks.
> >
> > There should be lots of people happy to hear this.
>
> What was the issue??

Link

13

> 2533274839818445;5:
> Quick Addendum****Gold Platinum Players in the HCS List are not True Gold / Plat and are Owning me. Obviously SmurfsI don’t think this is the issue. I think the issue, instead, is that a Gold / Platinum in HCS is not the same as a Gold / Platinum if you are used to Team Arena. I haven’t run the numbers yet, but I suspect that the average player coming over to HCS is higher-skilled. I’m not saying they’re all Onyx, but I’m suggesting that if you were, e.g., Diamond in Team Arena, you are probably more like Gold / Platinum in HCS.
>
> This also means that if you are used to be a “legit” Gold player in Team Arena, you may be Silver in HCS. This means Gold and Platinum players will “feel” a lot stronger than you are used to, and you may be tempted to think they are “smurfs”, but I suspect it’s just a skill shift between TA and HCS.
>
> It’ll take a bit longer to know for sure, but that’s what I am thinking.

Makes sense. I’m gold/platinum in everything but get completely destroyed in the hcs list. I’m not dependent on the AR much so I thought I’d do ok. Nope. It’s definitely different.

14

<mark>This post has been edited by a moderator. Please refrain from making non-constructive posts.</mark>
*Original post. Click at your own discretion.

Look at how awesome the ranking system works, guys! I was solo searching and got matched up against these players, who knew spawns and moved around the map so well. It wasn’t that they were slightly better than us, they were extremely better than us and on a whole different level.
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/games/halo-5-guardians/xbox-one/mode/arena/matches/9126bba6-b6a5-4af8-93ac-73f3e86d29ff/players/quincy?gameHistoryMatchIndex=2&gameHistoryGameModeFilter=Arena
I get placed Diamond 6 and lose one and go down. Didn’t know I was playing Halo 2. This system is garbage, but that is expected from 343.

15

> 2533274839818445;5:
> Quick Addendum****Gold Platinum Players in the HCS List are not True Gold / Plat and are Owning me. Obviously SmurfsI don’t think this is the issue. I think the issue, instead, is that a Gold / Platinum in HCS is not the same as a Gold / Platinum if you are used to Team Arena. I haven’t run the numbers yet, but I suspect that the average player coming over to HCS is higher-skilled. I’m not saying they’re all Onyx, but I’m suggesting that if you were, e.g., Diamond in Team Arena, you are probably more like Gold / Platinum in HCS.
>
> This also means that if you are used to be a “legit” Gold player in Team Arena, you may be Silver in HCS. This means Gold and Platinum players will “feel” a lot stronger than you are used to, and you may be tempted to think they are “smurfs”, but I suspect it’s just a skill shift between TA and HCS.
>
> It’ll take a bit longer to know for sure, but that’s what I am thinking.

I agree that higher skilled players are in this playlist, but I’ve experienced this quite a bit in team arena over the past two seasons. Players ranked in gold, but are at least daimond oynx tier in skill. I check players profiles for almost every game and most of the gold players have hit oynx in at least 1 playlist. I think part of the problem is that there are so many smurf players in placements combined with quitting that people are getting much lower ranks at the start of the season. Ranking up is more difficult throughout the season for the same reasons.

16

> 2533274815037297;14:
> Look at how awesome the ranking system works, guys! I was solo searching and got matched up against these players, who knew spawns and moved around the map so well. It wasn’t that they were slightly better than us, they were extremely better than us and on a whole different level.
>
> https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/games/halo-5-guardians/xbox-one/mode/arena/matches/9126bba6-b6a5-4af8-93ac-73f3e86d29ff/players/quincy?gameHistoryMatchIndex=2&gameHistoryGameModeFilter=Arena
>
> I get placed Diamond 6 and lose one and go down. Didn’t know I was playing Halo 2. This system is garbage, but that is expected from 343.

I don’t think you have much to complain about, from this one game. Here’s the link to the game stats with more detail on rank breakdowns. The two teams had fairly similar average CSR, and the result of 50-33 wasn’t really that awful - not even a steaktacular. Do you expect every game to finish 50-49? that’s not reasonable.

In your 19 SWAT games this season, you’ve won 10 of them. That’s right near a 50% win ratio, which is precisely what a good matchmaking system ends up producing for most players (except for very high skill or very low skill players who run in full parties). If you play like an Onyx, you’ll rise to onyx.

What exactly is the problem…?

17

Thank you for the updates and the fixes to FFA. It is frustrating losing CSR even for placing 2nd, but since there were plenty of times I gained CSR for finishing 4th-5th before the update, I don’t mind so much. So excited for next season to start to really see the changes take full effect :slight_smile:

18

> 2533274815037297;14:
> Look at how awesome the ranking system works, guys! I was solo searching and got matched up against these players, who knew spawns and moved around the map so well. It wasn’t that they were slightly better than us, they were extremely better than us and on a whole different level.
>
> https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/games/halo-5-guardians/xbox-one/mode/arena/matches/9126bba6-b6a5-4af8-93ac-73f3e86d29ff/players/quincy?gameHistoryMatchIndex=2&gameHistoryGameModeFilter=Arena
>
> I get placed Diamond 6 and lose one and go down. Didn’t know I was playing Halo 2. This system is garbage, but that is expected from 343.

It’s not the system, the system is not perfect and it needs some improvement but this problem right here is due to population. Specially on a somewhat dead playlist. Not many people play Halo 5 and certainly very little people play Swat.
The skill gap becomes even larger when there’s really good players jumping on these low population playlists. There’s not enough people to fill in for all the skill levels in order to have consistent ‘fair’ matches.

19

> 2533274839818445;5:
> Quick Addendum****Gold Platinum Players in the HCS List are not True Gold / Plat and are Owning me. Obviously SmurfsI don’t think this is the issue. I think the issue, instead, is that a Gold / Platinum in HCS is not the same as a Gold / Platinum if you are used to Team Arena. I haven’t run the numbers yet, but I suspect that the average player coming over to HCS is higher-skilled. I’m not saying they’re all Onyx, but I’m suggesting that if you were, e.g., Diamond in Team Arena, you are probably more like Gold / Platinum in HCS.
>
> This also means that if you are used to be a “legit” Gold player in Team Arena, you may be Silver in HCS. This means Gold and Platinum players will “feel” a lot stronger than you are used to, and you may be tempted to think they are “smurfs”, but I suspect it’s just a skill shift between TA and HCS.
>
> It’ll take a bit longer to know for sure, but that’s what I am thinking.

ZaedynFel, I have a question: Why is the matchmaking so inconsistent? For example, I played about 7-10 games of the HCS preview thing today and the first match was a win. I had equally skilled opponents against, and with me. But the next game, I came up against four clearly out of my league players so I obviously lost by a huge margin. It went back and forth constantly. I don’t believe that the “Focused” search preference works and I certainly don’t believe that MMR and CSR has a small impact in who I match. Unless my MMR is extremely back and forth.

20

> 2533274839818445;1:
> > **Can we have 1-3 count as a win in FFA?**This is something we would like to do, but is currently deceptively difficult for technical reasons related to the current specific implementation of how wins and losses are reported. I don’t think this will get fixed for Halo 5, but it’s something we are aware of and would prefer down the road.
>
> To be clear here, you just mean if I get 1,2 or 3 it would count as a win In the W/L section correct?
>
>
> > Search changing from Expanded back to BalancedWe have found the issue that is causing this and are working on the fix. I can’t give an exact estimate on when it will happen, but if we’re lucky, probably in the coming few weeks.
>
> That is good news!!! (saying it like Anchorman! lol)
>
>
> > **Why does rank carry over from Proving Grounds into HCS Summer Preview?**Since the audiences for Proving Grounds and the HCS list had a high overlap, we wanted to preserve matchmaking quality as best we could when transitioning. Matchmaking in an existing playlist is always better than in a brand new one because we already know the skill (MMR) of many of the players. To preserve the quality, we
> > wanted to bring the MMR from PG over to HCS.
> >
> > However, we don’t currently have a way to preserve MMR without preserving CSR, so in order to preserve the MMR from Proving Grounds, we have to also carry over the CSR (Ranking)
> >
> > This also makes it easier for us see how the different settings feel without being biased by poor matchmaking
>
> Makes sense to me
> .
>
>
> > FFA feels broken nowJust to recap.
> > - FFA is not broken, but I agree it does feel that way. If you keep losing points even in 2nd and 3rd place, that means either your CSR is still inflated, or a player with a really low MMR ranked above you. - Once the season rolls, it will be more common to go positive for 1-3rd, and negative for 4-6th and no one will be inflated. From that point on, strange point gains / losses will only happen due to surprising finish positions.A few of you have suggested that MMR would have also fluctuated to match up with the CSR inflation, and that you shouldn’t be out of synch and have this issue. Let me clarify that the CSR inflation was completely arbitrary and not related at all to fluctuations in skill. Instead, we were just wholesale handing out TONS of extra CSR in FFA to everyone. FFA had basically become a grind and not skill-based at all, so the ranks were meaningless.
> >
> > Unfortunately, since we made this fix mid-season, we now have a mix of meaningful and not-meaningful ranks depending on whether or not you are brave enough to play and have your CSR re-calibrated. I know some of you felt you had fought hard to earn your Onyx and Champion ranks, and it’s mean of us to tell you, “actually, no, most of you are not Onyx nor Champion”
> >
> > Next season, however, should end up being one of the most skill-accurate FFA seasons we’ve had. So if you want to find out whether you really are Onyx or Champ material, prepare for next season. Even though this season’s Ranks may be frustrating, I encourage be ready for the “real deal” next season. Or, just play because you like FFA.
>
> (Bold) THIS!!! THIS x 1000000000!!! Thank you!!! I’ve been saying this forever!!! When someone calls me out and says I’m terrible because they are a Champ in FFA, I just laughed to be honest, because that meant nothing to me. Everyone figured out FFA was more a grind and not actually skill-based so a lot of people played it because they wanted to hit Champion. People are just mad because it’s hard to hear that your not as good as you think you are. It’s sad though, because there are people who are actually REALLY good at FFA but they don’t get the recognition they deserve because of this issue. I for one absolutely love the tweaks to the ranking system and I’m 100% certain it will make things better. Even more so i’m looking forward to this being in off the bat in Halo 6 as you’ll already have worked out all the tweaks in Halo 5 :wink:

> 2533274839818445;5:
> Quick Addendum****Gold Platinum Players in the HCS List are not True Gold / Plat and are Owning me. Obviously SmurfsI don’t think this is the issue. I think the issue, instead, is that a Gold / Platinum in HCS is not the same as a Gold / Platinum if you are used to Team Arena. I haven’t run the numbers yet, but I suspect that the average player coming over to HCS is higher-skilled. I’m not saying they’re all Onyx, but I’m suggesting that if you were, e.g., Diamond in Team Arena, you are probably more like Gold / Platinum in HCS.
>
> This also means that if you are used to be a “legit” Gold player in Team Arena, you may be Silver in HCS. This means Gold and Platinum players will “feel” a lot stronger than you are used to, and you may be tempted to think they are “smurfs”, but I suspect it’s just a skill shift between TA and HCS.
>
> It’ll take a bit longer to know for sure, but that’s what I am thinking.

I also agree on this 100% I’ve always thought for example that someone that is say a 2100 onyx in Team Arena, is most likely better then someone who is 2100 onyx in Team Slayer, SWAT, FFA etc. (especially FFA in how it was…) I think this is also the same in the HSC playlist as I’ve told people. These playlists is where the most skilled player generally want to play so it’s going to be the hardest. I look forward to hearing more information on this when you get more data.

Thank you for these updates and information. Keep it up!!! I actually look forward to these updates more then the weekly updates now lol