Just played a game where one of the opposiing players was Silver division, yet had a 9.0 K/D. The game gave him good team mates while it gave me bad ones because I am Semi Pro.
Then, the very next game I ran into a team of four, (while searching by myself, by the way) of all Pro players and one Iron Division with a KDA of 25. Not 2.5, 25.0. Any guesses to what the gamertag was? I know I cannot single out specific gamertags, but I’ll just say that “Montage” was one of the words used in his tag. Really?
So I guess deranking is back, and its better than ever. Suppose I forgot about that lovely little qwerk that skill based ranks brought to Halo. Don’t get me wrong - we need a skill-based system. However, we desperately need a way to stop people from purposely playing bad during placement matches so that they get matched against bad players and can therefore obtain a high KDA.
One of the best ways to prevent people from doing this would be to stop showing KDA on player’s profile. I feel like having a high KDA is the main purpose for deranking right now, along with the obvious old reasons from Halo 3. Players who get an account down to Iron/Silver are able to search with their friends who are wanting to level up fast, and because the game thinks the deranker is actually bad, they get matched against lower-skilled payers and are able to easily win. This lets the deranker “boost” their friends and breaks the ranking system.
I have come up with various solutions to this problem, so I’m sure 343 can do the same.
Solution:
- When 3 highly ranked players are searching with an Iron/Silver player, the matchmaking should ignore the Iron/Silver person and place the team against another team of high rankings.
- Do not display players KDA. This simple stat causes many negative effects on the game. It encourages camping and passive play when players are trying to conserve their KDA stat, just like in CoD. Also, players become focused on their KDA rather than helping their team win. Players ignore objectives and instead focus on getting kills and not dying.
- If a player down in Iron/Silver is able to obtain and maintain a KDA of lets say, 10, as an example, then the game should realize that they do not belong in the division and rank them to something like Gold, etc. Obviously special parameters would need to be in place to prevent people from abusing this, but again its easily preventable.
- The game should feature a “Booster Buster” type button that allows players to instantly report a person that is obviously deranking. People who receive many reports should be investigated and punished accordingly.
- If KDA must be shown, then periodic resets to the stat should occur. Eg. Display only a person’s “Weekly KDA”, etc.
- If players commit multiple suicides/Betrayals during a game, teamamates should be given the option to boot the offending player. The player who is booted should receive a temporary MM suspension (eg. 10 mins). Multiple instances would result in an automatic ban/long-term suspension.
Please, 343, do something to prevent the mess that was Halo 3 boosting/deranking.
Any other solutions Waypoint?