Ranked Matchmaking Tweaks with Social and Warzone Polish
We have done a pass on the Ranked playlists in addition to polishing last week’s Social and Warzone pass a bit more.
The results are that anyone who searches for a match should now be able to find one in a relatively timely manner. It will still try its best for as tight a match as it can, and then eventually dip as low as it needs to be sure everyone can play.
Pros:
Faster matchmaking - Everyone should be able to match without multiple timeoutsCons:
Less popular playlists may need to create less fair matches to let higher-skilled players play at all.
Playlist Popularity
Here’s an update on playlist popularity, using the last week.
Super Fiesta
Slayer
Warzone
Heroic Warzone Firefight
Quick Play
Infection
Big Team Battle
Legendary Warzone Firefight
SWAT
HaloWC 2018
Action Sack
Doubles
Extermination
Team Arena
Castle Wars
Snipers
Breakout
Free-For-All
Warzone Assault
Mythic Warzone Firefight
Grifball
It’s such a shame free-for-all is pushed so far down that list.
Honestly miss playing it; hopefully in Halo 6 FFA is once again seen as of of the top 3 game modes.
> 2533274820654115;2:
> It’s such a shame free-for-all is pushed so far down that list.
> Honestly miss playing it; hopefully in Halo 6 FFA is once again seen as of of the top 3 game modes.
>
> Playlist exp would help this so much
This. They need more FFA gametypes as well. Playing just Slayer gets a bit boring after a while.
Are you trying to do anything about game freezing? Trying to host a custom is hard as someone will leave then half the time match freezes. This breaks the game…often.
Freezing after the match ends in custom is constant. Also sometimes after a MM game.
Extermination is back! Hope one day it’ll become a permanent playlist instead of a rotational one… Also, wouldn’t be interesting to play extermination in breakout maps? It’s just a thought
I didn’t rank Extermination this week, just to show that without it, the playlists that are technically ranked lower didn’t really move much. - The biggest mover was Castle Wars. I’d imagine a lot of the Castle Wars players moved over to Extermination.
> 2533274820654115;2:
> It’s such a shame free-for-all is pushed so far down that list.
> Honestly miss playing it; hopefully in Halo 6 FFA is once again seen as of of the top 3 game modes.
>
> Playlist exp would help this so much
I agree, FFA has always been one of my favorite playlists in the series. For me personally it’s how you gain and lose CSR in FFA now that makes it so frustrating. I mean, losing CSR even when you finish 2nd or 3rd? I get that if you’re losing CSR for finishing 2nd, the system must see the person that beat you as being one you should’ve beaten, but with the settings making the games feel so random at times, the best player doesn’t necessarily win. I’ve been stuck at pretty much the same rank all season. I’ll get close to ranking up, like only needing maybe one more good game, I’ll finish 4th and my CSR plummets to where I’m only about halfway to ranking up again. Obviously that’s on me, I should be winning more so maybe I’ll get matched against better players, so will earn more CSR if I beat them and not lose as much if they beat me. I’d personally like to have competitive settings in FFA, or at least have comp settings on the maps used for competitive FFA matches. Or something like back in Halo 3 where you’d have Team Slayer and Team BRs, just in this case it’d be like FFA and HCS FFA. I think having competitive settings might cut down on some of the randomness and make it more likely that the most skilled player wins, not just the one who camped with an AR the best.
That’s good news about I think about the overall speed of match making. It’s unfortunate that the low populated playlists might have more unbalanced games, but not much you can do there I feel at this stage of the game.
> 2535462173306214;3:
> Super Fiesta is top 1? well okayyy then.
I’m not surprised super fiesta is 1 because it’s a crazy, chaotic game mode and people like that. Also, I’m willing to bet a good chunk of the people playing that playlist are doing so just to get the weapon commendations. Because of things like that, I think some playlists are a tad higher or lower then they should be.
> 2533274823295390;6:
> > 2533274820654115;2:
> > It’s such a shame free-for-all is pushed so far down that list.
> > Honestly miss playing it; hopefully in Halo 6 FFA is once again seen as of of the top 3 game modes.
> >
> > Playlist exp would help this so much
>
> This. They need more FFA gametypes as well. Playing just Slayer gets a bit boring after a while.
I know I don’t work for 343I (unfortunately… LoL) but I can’t see anything much happening to say FFA in Halo 5. People need to remember that playlists like FFA and Doubles are almost always lower to start with as they don’t require as many people to play in general right. The only thing I could see happening to FFA is to add HCS settings in rotation as well as what is there, but I think too many people aren’t fond for HCS settings, especially the radar. Maybe in Halo 6 there could be a HCS/MLG FFA playlist and just a normal ranked FFA playlist that includes game modes like Oddball along with the standard Slayer.
I’ve seen people asking about taking the breakout playlist away. As much as I personally am not a fan of Breakout, I don’t see going anywhere mainly because there are commendations and things linked to it. Again, the only thing I can see happening here is making it social and/or adding the orginal Breakout version to the breakout rotation. One more thing I want to add about Breakout. Some people seem to think it’d do so much better if it went back to the original style…well, it won’t. We know this. How do we know this? Well, if the orginal style was popular, 343I wouldn’t of changed it to begin with. People need to accept that breakout isn’t that popular and it didn’t do very well. I’ll be shocked if I see it return in Halo 6… I love Headhunter, but I know it wasn’t that popular. People need to face facts sometimes that the game mode that they like might not be liked by the majority. Just how things go. I do think that the breakout options and gameplay should definitely be available in customs in future Halo titles though.
> 2533274885398751;8:
> Extermination is back! Hope one day it’ll become a permanent playlist instead of a rotational one… Also, wouldn’t be interesting to play extermination in breakout maps? It’s just a thought
I couldn’t agree more! Extermination is SO much more fun then Breakout I feel and I think it’s gotten a much better response from the community as well. I guess it wouldn’t be a terrible thing to try the breakout maps in extermination but I already like the extermination Maps much more than any of the breakout ones. I can’t see extermination going permanent in Halo 5 but you never know about future Halo titles. That’s how SWAT started remember
> 2533274885398751;8:
> Extermination is back! Hope one day it’ll become a permanent playlist instead of a rotational one… Also, wouldn’t be interesting to play extermination in breakout maps? It’s just a thought
> 2533274814210937;11:
> Why did Extermination drop with more maps than SWAT or Breakout?
> 2533274815533909;13:
> I guess it wouldn’t be a terrible thing to try the breakout maps in extermination
Because there is some custom scripting that happens for Extermination maps that does not happen in SWAT or Breakout maps.
> 2533274889429520;12:
> I mean, losing CSR even when you finish 2nd or 3rd?
You actually can gain CSR for getting 2nd or 3rd (even 5th, as I point out in one of my posts a while back).
[edit]: here is the post I was talking about.
Getting anything other than 1st place counts as a loss though.
> 2533274815533909;13:
> I know I don’t work for 343I (unfortunately… LoL) but I can’t see anything much happening to say FFA in Halo 5. People need to remember that playlists like FFA and Doubles are almost always lower to start with as they don’t require as many people to play in general right. The only thing I could see happening to FFA is to add HCS settings in rotation as well as what is there, but I think too many people aren’t fond for HCS settings, especially the radar. Maybe in Halo 6 there could be a HCS/MLG FFA playlist and just a normal ranked FFA playlist that includes game modes like Oddball along with the standard Slayer.
The vast majority of FFA players request HCS settings because of the new radar changes and the lack of autos. FFA isn’t meant to be a casual playlist. As a ranked hardcore playlist, it should follow the HCS gametype. Halo 3 made this mistake withe lone wolves by adding AR starts and radar when they should have been MLG gametypes. Furthermore, the HCS settings are supported by, not shunned by, the majority of the community. Don’t know where you got that idea. The problem with the playlist is the amount of smurfs and the lack of casuals to pad out the gold/platinum ranks.
Wonder how bad Grifball really is when a weekend playlist which is the hardest FF playlist is always beating it.
Josh, are you still thinking of doing that idea where you combine the social and ranked playlists or is that idea scrapped? So when you pick Team Slayer as an example, you’ll have the option to either play ranked or social. At least that’s how I remembered it to be, but it could’ve been different.
> 2533274863262182;16:
> > 2533274815533909;13:
> > I know I don’t work for 343I (unfortunately… LoL) but I can’t see anything much happening to say FFA in Halo 5. People need to remember that playlists like FFA and Doubles are almost always lower to start with as they don’t require as many people to play in general right. The only thing I could see happening to FFA is to add HCS settings in rotation as well as what is there, but I think too many people aren’t fond for HCS settings, especially the radar. Maybe in Halo 6 there could be a HCS/MLG FFA playlist and just a normal ranked FFA playlist that includes game modes like Oddball along with the standard Slayer.
>
> The vast majority of FFA players request HCS settings because of the new radar changes and the lack of autos. FFA isn’t meant to be a casual playlist. As a ranked hardcore playlist, it should follow the HCS gametype. Halo 3 made this mistake withe lone wolves by adding AR starts and radar when they should have been MLG gametypes. Furthermore, the HCS settings are supported by, not shunned by, the majority of the community. Don’t know where you got that idea. The problem with the playlist is the amount of smurfs and the lack of casuals to pad out the gold/platinum ranks.
Perhaps I should of been a bit clearer in my statement, apologies for that. People like HCS settings I agree, but most people want them to stay in the HCS playlist. Ranked FFA isn’t a casual playlist. Just because a ranked playlist (any of them) has a few autos on it, doesn’t make it causal. I guess your the kind of player who just wants precision weapons in ranked and that’s it, which is fine but I like a little variety personally.
I definitely agree on the pistol only starts though and would love too see more playlists like Team Slayer have those starts as well.
I would say HCS settings in FFA would be received with very mixed opinions, but I still think more people don’t want them in then want them. I came to this conclusion by talking to players when I play Halo, here on Waypoint, and soical media in general. I could be obviously wrong here, but I could very well be right as well.
As I’ve said (and many others) many times, HCS/MLG settings are fine in the HCS playlist, but most people want them to stay in that playlist. If all ranked playlists adopted HCS settings, the population of ranked in halo 5 and future halo games would plummet! And I’d bet my 500,000 REQ points on that too. Case in point, Ranked Team Slayer is second on the most played playlist, not HCS. If people want to play HCS settings, they would be playing the HCS playlist.
I think FFA is gonna need more than just HCS settings if they want it to be popular again. It needs some objective gametypes, more maps and I also think it should be social again. Just look at FFA in Reach if you need an example. It was great and I’d play that all day.
> 2535469658606456;14:
> > 2533274885398751;8:
> > Extermination is back! Hope one day it’ll become a permanent playlist instead of a rotational one… Also, wouldn’t be interesting to play extermination in breakout maps? It’s just a thought
>
>
>
> > 2533274814210937;11:
> > Why did Extermination drop with more maps than SWAT or Breakout?
>
>
>
> > 2533274815533909;13:
> > I guess it wouldn’t be a terrible thing to try the breakout maps in extermination
>
> Because there is some custom scripting that happens for Extermination maps that does not happen in SWAT or Breakout maps.
>
>
>
>
> > 2533274889429520;12:
> > I mean, losing CSR even when you finish 2nd or 3rd?
>
> You actually can gain CSR for getting 2nd or 3rd (even 5th, as I point out in one of my posts a while back).
> [edit]: here is the post I was talking about.
>
> Getting anything other than 1st place counts as a loss though.
Oh yeah, I know you can still gain CSR for those placings, but it typically matches me with players ranked below me, so if I finish anywhere besides first, my CSR takes a major hit. And even when I do win in those instances, I barely gain any CSR. I mean, I get why it is that way, it’s jut frustrating feeling like you’re playing well, but not getting rewarded for it even when you win (if the players you beat are lower ranked than you I mean, obviously if you beat higher ranked players you get more CSR. But it seems like I rarely get matched against players who are ranked higher than me, I’m only a Plat 2, so you’d think there’d be plenty of better players to chose from, but I’m consistently matched against high silver and gold players, therefore even when I win, the CSR gain is barely even noticeable.)
