I have been focusing my playtime onto the Slayer gametime to see if I can get good at Halo 5 and improve my skills. Well , I have improved tremendously from my starting days but my rank doesn’t reflect that as it’s based on the result of the match which is team based. I haven’t gone up very far as it’s pot luck that the teams are well matched or that my teammates don’t throw a fit and disconnect which has happened for over half of my matches leaving me often in a 1v4 situation.
When it comes to matchmaking, I mostly find that I never game where everyone is off the same main rank (Bronze, Silver, etc) and when there are people in that match of lower or higher rank, the teams are not balanced. As a Platinum rank, I shouldn’t be seeing a Diamond unless there is a Gold in the same team but I consistently see a Diamond with a group of Platinums and there is a Gold on my team which is hardly fair.
With my other point, regardless of team skill on either side, I don’t know how severe the ban is for disconnecting from matches repeatly or the number of matches required to get hit by a ban but it must not be severe enough when the odds of having a full room of 4v4 at the end of a match is close to 0. It is not fun for either side when people leave on a consistent basis. For the winning team, the game is boring as you wander a nearly empty map and for the losing team, they face being killed over and over again as the winning team have dominance over the map. Both of these factors makes every team based mode outside of Warzone, a game of luck on if you have a balanced game of players and no one quits over losing their perfect k/d which then results in a unfair loss most of the time and you’re swiftly ranked down. I feel this wouldn’t be a big problem if the e-sports competitive nature was not in every facet of the game and didn’t rule over the progression in nearly every mode. This could be alleviated with social playlists to have fun, but everything has to be war for glory where loss is looked down upon severly.
My main point is that the ranking system does not represent your skill at all. It just shows that you happen to won a bunch of games. This system only works for Free For All. For team games, which is most of Halo, the ranking system just portrays the amount you have won without losing which is mostly luck. It does not take into account personal contribution so it doesn’t matter if I get 20-4 if team have died enough to lose the match (and yes this sort of thing has happened more than once). How am I supposed to be motivated to get better, to get to the illustrious Onyx and Champion ranks where I’m constantly punished for trying to win a game and get the rank get shoved down.
To propose a better system would be measure how much a teammate is contirbuting to the mode objective and have that affect CSR. For the winning team, the CSR will increase by your contribution amount (maybe make it a percentage based on how much the player affects the objective). For Slayer and Breakout, this would be the number of kills and assists scored (and flag captures for Breakout). For the Capture the Flag, this would be flag captures, flag assists, escorting/protecting the flag carrier and kills. For Strongholds, it would be bases captured, base defense and kills. For the losing team, the CSR would decrease based on how much that player contributes to the loss. For Slayer and Breakout, this will be based on number of deaths. For Capture the Flag and Strongholds, as there is not much of a way of measuring how an individual would contribute to a loss with the current systems, the lost CSR would be the same for all members of that team.
However, for all team based modes, if a player on the losing team made a huge contribution to the objective and but the game was still lost, they wouldn’t lose CSR, they gain a small amount as recognition for their skill. Additionally, if members of a team leave a match, the CSR would adjust for the remaining players of that team. For a winning team, the CSR that would have been originally split between the 4 players, would be split between the remaining players based on their contribution as a reward for winning with less members. For the losing team, the remaining members would lose less CSR than they have lost based on their contribution for being placed in an unfair situation. For those who leave, they should lose a larger CSR amount that a player would lose for losing a match under normal circumstances. This would happen whether a player deserts a winning team or a losing team.
I know the system I have proposed is not perfect and I know that 343 Industries had the best of intentions when making the CSR system for Halo 5 to make it a contender in the E-Sports scene and let players rank themselves competitively. I actually love the way ranks are split into sub ranks with Onyx and Champion at the top for those that rise to the top. However, with the lack of individual skill shown for team based CSR, I feel that the system falls a bit. I believe my system is the best of both worlds with both match results and individual contribution being factors.
I don’t believe changing the CSR system for Halo 5 is feasible as it would anger players who have worked their way up with the current system but it would be nice to see this sort of system in Halo 6.
For those that have read this far, thank you, I know this post is long and ranty but I feel I needed to place my feedback on how the flaws in the CSR system is making the game not fun for me with constant punishment for things that are outside my control. I didn’t want to come off as some angry gamer that spouts problems without a solution to make the game better. I love the gameplay of Halo 5 and 343 Industries have done an amazing job with the game. This is just a major sour point for me that has led to me to walk away from the game for a long while. I’ll be following updates on the game, but won’t come back until I think the game is better to online.