Nooob is a hero!

NonToxic4026 · February 26, 2023, 9:11pm

dont take this from him

hudso8 · February 26, 2023, 9:19pm

Or it can be the guy contributing little. If he’s dead, he isn’t adding up points to our team.

Nohr_Tenko · February 26, 2023, 10:19pm

Thank goodness his teammates are out there killing the enemy team so he can safely hold the ball/hill/point/carry the flag/seed.

I understand that a K/D ratio isn’t everything, but just because you do 1 thing, doesn’t mean I’m going to think you’re a hero for the multitudes of other small (sometimes big) errors you made before then.

Case-by-case basis though, I do enjoy having an adept oddball carrier.

KCD0DGER · February 26, 2023, 10:43pm

Nah. Every one of the four needs to be killing. The best way to win OBJ is to outright prevent your enemies from playing OBJ.

Darwi · February 27, 2023, 2:17am

There is always room for a damage sponge…

RadiantRock13 · February 27, 2023, 2:28am

Ehhh I’ve seen y’all not play objectives and loose a match

RadiantRock13 · February 27, 2023, 2:31am

I’ve also pulled a win cause y’all ain’t playing objective

KCD0DGER · February 27, 2023, 2:48am

You didn’t pull the win. The whole team did, allowing you to play OBJ.

Tell you what, show me how good you are that way, get to Onyx that way.

RadiantRock13 · February 27, 2023, 2:49am

No thanks. I’m a trash noob who can’t hack it in ranks. I concede

RadiantRock13 · February 27, 2023, 2:51am

Maybe that one guy pulled a play allowing us to win, eh?

whorigin · February 27, 2023, 3:20am

It would only work on something like KoTH or Oddball where the guy who can’t slay well can just stand in the corner and keep the obj going while the other 3 spartans go out and slay.

Freeland7 · February 27, 2023, 8:31am

“What is our teammate doing?”

“Their best.”

Darwi · February 27, 2023, 9:35am

Always makes me think of this classic Reach forum post;

From Redislove:

I used to consider myself a bad Halo player. I would play for hours on end, only to consistently find myself deep in the red. My opponents and teammates alike would cruelly harass me in the postgame lobbies.

For months I kept digital records of all of the gamertags that had taunted me. After all, I put forth my very best effort in every game I played; what right did they have to mock me thusly? Unfortunately, I quickly ran out of disk space and begrudgingly abandoned this encyclopedic endeavor.

On the plus side, ceasing my bookkeeping operations freed up, on average, 2 additional hours of playtime each day. Elated, I committed more firmly than ever to mold myself into a supreme Halo combatant. Without surcease, I labored and toiled through the same 3 maps night after night after night after night.

Not quite 3 months ago, I thought I had finally reached a new apex. For the first time in my Halo career, I had reached double digits in the kills column! I will admit that I notched a staggering number of "miscalculations" (my entertainment therapist has recently advised me to avoid using the word "death" in conjunction with Halo) while accomplishing this great victory, but I nonetheless looked forward to the respect due to effusively flow my way in the postgame lobby.

They still laughed. They took my finest hour, turned it back, and laughed! Discarding my usual cantations, I made a hasty departure and proceeded to angrily submit negative reviews on the entirety of the opposing team. This did not completely quench my rage, but it at the least diminished it to the point where I could play another game.

Oh, the folly! The game began disastrously, and it went downhill from there. Even as the very end of the game rapidly neared, I had failed to score a single point for my team. Their laughter tormented me as I desperately lobbed grenades, vainly pursuing that tangible moment, only to watch in great suffering as they bounced off of the wrong wall and lowered my score into the double digits.

As the enemy closed in on their decisive and humiliating victory, I reignited the rage I had found in the previous contest. In vain, I hopelessly sought to suppress my emotions, to endure the defeat, to accept my fate. I could not! For the first time in my lengthy Halo career, I yielded to rage and quit a game.

One day and one new controller later, I strapped back on the Mark V helmet that I chose completely independently (and most certainly not copying any other player) and returned to the battlefield. Following a few uneventful skirmishes, I met someone who completely transformed my view of myself.

After the game ended, I found myself waiting for the inevitable laughter from my teammates. I heard nothing from them at first, though. I patiently waited for them to plug in their headsets, awaiting their merciless taunts and such. Never, though, did they lash upon me even the faintest hint of scorn or judgment! Confused, I sought an explanation from the teammates who had carried me to victory.

"Well," one of them said, "you only had 1 kill, and you didn’t have any assists, but you did a lot for our team. Much more than you must realize, in fact."

Bewildered, I suspected a trap. After wracking my mind for any hidden punchline they might wield in secret, I finally remembered how I had betrayed 2 of my teammates simultaneously with a rocket launcher while I was falling off of the level.

They only continued to cultivate my self-confidence, however. "I did get a little angry when you betrayed us," another of them confessed, "but I harnessed that anger and went on a killing frenzy. I can’t thank you enough for betraying me!"

The third member offered the most ringing endorsement of them all: "We can’t thank you enough for the work you did in that game, you know? You repeatedly ran into the middle of the other team, distracting them and absorbing all of their ammo. You’re a damage sponge: you take all of their punishment, freeing the rest of us to clean up the aftermath while the other team is stuck reloading. Thank you so very much!"

When I play Halo these days, I take so much pride in my miscalculations. Do you know that I went -25 in a game just last night? I saved that one in my fileshare. Now that I truly understand the vitality of my role as a damage sponge, I feel completely rejuvenated. I have never taken such pride in my skills as I do after that one fateful postgame conversation.

Damage Sponge for life…

LITTLE_LEVEL · February 27, 2023, 11:40am

That story was absolutely beautiful…

LITTLE_LEVEL · February 27, 2023, 12:48pm

“He is just running in circles being a bullet sponge…”

“I know, I am so proud. They grow up so fast. ”

DERK_91 · February 27, 2023, 1:11pm

Rank is not the end all be all determinant of a player’s skill and knowledge of the game and how it’s supposed to be played.

KCD0DGER · February 27, 2023, 5:55pm

Ranked absolutely is the best way to determine if someone is good at the game or not.

kasonac2012 · February 27, 2023, 6:38pm

Good post actually. I feel like the guy getting killed over and over taking the hill or carrying the ball should get some credit for obviously taking the brunt of the other teams attacks. Without those guys you end up losing which bring me to ranked. I do feel like rank is probably the best judge of skill that halo infinite has currently but I don’t think it’s that accurate. I don’t think if you are playing solo and getting paired with questionable teammates who play poorly or don’t play the obj or up and quit that’s a good reflection of the individual. When rank is based on if you win or lose the team decides how good you are. When a guy quits gets dropped or whatever and it’s 3v4 2v4 and you lose that doesn’t show at all how good of a player you are…. Unless you win a 1v4 playing KOTH or oddball and then you should have a csr of like 3500. anyway be nice to see a score related to the individual and if you played better or worse than your baseline to determine if you’re skill is going up or down vs luck of the draw on teammates and not losing 15 games in a row.

Darwi · February 27, 2023, 9:48pm

A true Damage Sponge doesn’t seek credit.

The job is it’s own reward.

It is.

Essentially it’s a just a sorting algorithm.

That’s where you have to look at your rank in context.

Your rank is your “skill” at performing within the team(s) you are playing with.

It’s as much your skill at working with other’s as it is raw ability.

So you will have a different ranking endpoints for solo and various squads.

If you do a bit of both - your rank will reflect the proportion of each.

If you want a truly individual rank you need to go FFA. Or even better, some sort of 1v1 playlist.

And I did have an interesting discussion with a player last year - who actually did better solo than with his squad of mates. It’s all about skill mix. eg. There probably isn’t a lot of point have two sniper specialists in one team.

Welcome to team sports.

Probably not very well in that individual game.

But quits and bad team-mates happen to both teams. So you will end up winning as many games as you lose because of those issues.

It all comes out in the wash.

But also keep in mind that you can at least control your behaviour. So if you are a good team mate and aren’t a quitter - the bias will actually tilt a bit in your favour.

There is a weighting for KPM.

So you are influencing your MMR, even in a run of losses. Your CSR may drop (as it has to) - but if your MMR stays high you will climb back up very quickly when your luck changes in regards to teams.

Legitti · March 4, 2023, 2:42am

if you weren’t 1/11, the game wouldn’t be so close in the first place.