As a lifelong Halo fan and now father, I recently bought my son a Series S to play Halo together (no local co-op so only option). Every Sunday we set our systems up and dig in for some Halo. The only problem is when we play together my son gets demolished by the high-skill players I bring in. you see, skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) tries to match us to evenly skilled players. The problem is that my son is just learning and I am a weathered old veteran who tends to have high-kill games.
This dynamic takes all of the fun and social elements out of the game in exchange for perpetual even skill level at all times. Because of this, we end up playing side by side, on different screens, in different matches simply doing our own separate things. A far cry from the CE couch co-op or even the social experience of H2 and H3.
I understand that the algorithm gods have determined that evenly matched games produce the highest player retention metrics and blah blah blah. However, this rigid system does not leave room for mixed-skill level groups like my son and I to play together. Heck, I have a hard time playing with some of my other grown friends for the same reason.
Iâm not asking for SBMM to be removed from every playlist, but perhaps we could have a couple left untouched for groups like mine looking for a more SOCIAL experience? Letâs say BTB and the featured playlist of the week to start. That way mixed-skill level groups can play the weekly challenges together and jump into some BTB . To be fair, BTB feels the least punishing so perhaps this has already been implemented to some degree in that playlist.
If there could be a little disclaimer in the description of each playlist to indicate which ones are friendly to mixed-skill level groups, it would be amazing for my son and Iâs gaming experience. And Iâm sure there are many other groups out there with similar experiences.
Stick to Big Team, the larger teams mean a wider range of skill levels are present in the game and more likely to be players around your sonâs skill level. It also has lesser skilled players in general than some other modes.
You could always play on a new account and just ease off the gas pedal.
Or find a new game you can both learn together and both be new and inexperienced at.
How do you a create an opposition lobby that is friendly for your son⌠but not where you go on a double figure KD rampage.
How do you make it fun and rewarding for everyone?
And I ask this genuinely as someone who has a friendâs group with very wide range of skill (Iâm in the middle).
The only solution that seems to work is handicapping. Buffs and nerfs to level the playfield. Weâve had some great games with Onyx running around with low Gold. Forge and scripts.
As much as I sympathise, if they didnât do matchmaking like this other people would use friends with smurf accounts so that they get easy matchups. I donât think a special playlist would help either because then you would be up against the people trying to exploit it for easy games.
As youâve already figured out BTB is more friendly for squads with large skill gaps, just by virtue of having more players with a wider range of skills. Bot Bootcamp is also great for while your son is learning.
Another option is to create yourself a secondary account that you only use when playing with your son. If you deliberately take it easy and donât ever let your competitive spirit take over, you can keep the account rated at roughly his level. You get to take it easy and have fun and he gets a fair challenge.
I hear you fellow Spartan and I wish this could be implemented. Something I love about the MCC game. Infinite is new, but sadly I doubt this will ever come true. Hopefully over time your son just improves. My nephew is 6 and we play BTB and his job is warthog driver or gunner. Simple choice.
Older FPS games seemed to have way loser SBMM. I can remember playing the original MW2 and in lobbies I never knew if i would be the worst or the best player.
Some games i got romped and some i stomped. Then if you got better it felt like on average you would do better during matches. I miss that randomness to matches.
Having persistent lobbies helped too because you would build rivalries and sometimes go man to man and pit your best player against the enemy teamâs best. Then if the enemyâs best player was way better than yours you doubled up on trying to stop him. Pull out all the irritating tactics and weapons.
Devs have coddled players by trying to make each match so close. Now lots people leave matches as soon as one side starts to pull ahead. And only if there is a blatant cheater on the other team is it even somewhat okay to leave (and course not counting real life emergencies are okay to leave for). But outside of that, no matter the odds everyone should try their hardest. Starting a match means you agree to all possible outcomes so quitting shouldnât be an option.
Ranked should have very strict SBMM but social should basically have none. Social is like a pick up game at the local park (no SBMM and connection is the most important matching criteria). Ranked is like signing up for a team sport where they match you into leagues based on skill.
TLDR: I would just suggest lowering SBMM drastically on social modes.
At your hypothesis local pickup game if one team is significantly more skilled than the other you change the teams around. Or you take it easy on the opposition. Either that or soon you wonât have anyone willing to play against you. SBMM is just the enforced version of that because you canât rely on people to do it by themselves.
I know i always had more fun with less SBMM (and no i was not someone who was top every game, especially not back then). You learn to have fun while getting trashed on when it happens and i donât recall anyone complaining about not having SBMM but in recent years as devs tighten up SBMM people have started to complain because its no fun to constantly have to sweat at you peak performance or get dominated.
If we still use my analogy we can say that at a local park you can try your hardest or just relax and usually have fun either way. But SBMM being like joining a ranked league, if you donât always try your absolute hardest and sweat then you will get dominated as everyone else in that league is scaled to that skill ceiling you are currently at.
SBMM actively takes away the option to not fully sweat in a match ( i agree you should always try to win and in ranked sweat until you are digitally dehydrated but social modes should allow for some amount of relaxing to take place while playing a match).
The thing about the âgood old daysâ is that gaming (especially online gaming) was largely the domain of nerds and most people were at least moderately skilled. Gaming has expanded massively, almost anyone and everyone can and does play. Many of them are terrible players. If you donât implement systems that allow for these players to have some sort of chance at victory they will go and play another game. Itâs all good to tell them they need to get better but if they can do that in another game without getting stomped thatâs what they will do. That doesnât necessarily mean itâs the most fun system for serious players but itâs absolutely not going anywhere.
As already mentioned. Different time. Different population.
But now you are Onyx. Top 2-3% of the population (probably a bit lower with CSR drift).
On a random basis you are not going to get stomped. Each opponent will be 97% chance of being weaker. Your average opposition will be Gold 6. Thatâs a lot of stomping. And the chance of an opposition team being 600 CSR points higher than you and returning the favour?
As for weaker SBMM - itâs what weâre getting. A wider range of ranks to mix it up. And itâs not working. People are sick of carrying / being carried.
This is the bit where I start to drift. If it doesnât matter you can do what ever you like. The intensity you play is entirely up to you. Itâs only when the "fun"is defined by the result and/or personal performance that things unravel.
The problem is that for every player who will take their skill gap and have fun with it (mucking around) there are a dozen who will use that opportunity to buff their K/D or produce 12 minutes of streamable content.
The only solution to a looser SBMM is to balance the game in other ways. Either with more chaotic game modes (eg. multi-team) or some type of handicapping.
I would be very keen to explore options other than SBMM. But what we donât want is to go back to the âgood old daysâ. They really werenât as good as we remember them.
We need Big Team Heavies with even vehicle spawns back.
I would have to disagree here. I think the golden age of gaming was 2006-2011. Most every major series had what is considered their best game release during this time. 2007 alone is a stacked year if you look at the games that came out. Straight up remasters of those games wouldnât be as good now if they released them and only had visual upgrades but for their time those games i would say were generally better than what we are getting now.
Maybe some of this is due to series being milked and less âinnovativeâ (really just different but in fun ways) than games of that era. Like how we donât see the major graphical jumps per generation like we used to maybe its impossible as time goes on to see gameplay change per game as drastically in fun ways as gaming advances.
That is the nature of what happened back then too. Really good players generally did really well. Average players had a good amount of random variety in their performance. Bad players generally did bad more often. This tended to correlate with age and being younger i knew i was worse than other players generally and expected to perform worse and as i get older i expected to do better. It felt like if i put in the work i would be rewarded with performing better on average in games and i miss that. ButâŚ
you are probably right here. As gaming grows in popularity maybe more people who are less willing to tough it out during hard losses have joined the community (on top of what may be a âsofterâ generation in general). [So i totally missed that @SQUiB_2154 said this entire thing already in his last response before i made this response, anyways yeah you are probably right]
So maybe it is impossible to go back to that time with how large AAA games populations have to be in order to make money nowadays which is aad but it is what it is i guess.
Maybe something that would be nice (if there were enough people to maintain the game) would be to have a very loose SBMM social playlist and then a strict one and then see the population differences. At this time i am not sure Halo could do that though.
the problem is the games design. the weapons arent easy to use like classic halo plus infinite has that deplete shields then headshot mechanic on more guns that most average players dont understand.
I think Social playlists should be slightly more relaxed in terms of SBMM. Infinite also has no true social playlists like Firefight, Infection, or ActionSack for Social players to turn to when they are bored of playing in an imaginary tournament that has no real reward due to the minimal progression systems found in Infinite.
343âs idea of âsocialâ playlists is to toss some more randomness into everything. They stuff playlists with several different variations of specific gametypes which they think makes Halo âsocialâ but it really just turns each match into a random lottery. Now in most of the playlists for Halo, youâll never know what youâre actually going to be playing next, you just get a list of what might or might not pop up. The only randomness that should be in these playlists is what map or starting weapon you might be playing next⌠it should not be what gametype will you pull out of the playlist hat next. Team Slayer, Fiesta, and Tactical Slayer are the only playlists in Infinite where any player can guarantee that they are going to be playing what they want to play.
Infinite needs more relaxed SBMM in social playlists. It also needs more playlists that arenât solely about PvP or are at least not stuffed with a bunch of random gametypes like a HCS Arena. And lastly, Infinite needs an overhauled background progression system that keeps players interested in playing Halo for more than just a ranking.