The thing is…. SBMM was created to maximise the probability of a draw. I’m not sure about yourself but that moment when you get a 50-49 is fantastic.
It’s at the point now where I’ve played so many social games against players who try all the time that I’ve become better at playing the game. Not really a bad thing but… I don’t want to have to try every time I hop on the game to have a fun experience. Getting steamrolled isn’t fun, and steamrolling isn’t exactly fun either. Matchmaking is always super close.
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Try playing bot boot camp if you want to slay out. Otherwise, you might find it difficult going on a tear because players don’t want to die. They want to get you just like you want to get them.
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Yup. Halo used to offer both a competitive and a casual experience with H2 and H3. They have taken that away now.
Games don’t get better by having fewer options for how to play. Reach and 4 didn’t become better games by the removal of ranked matchmaking, and 5 and Infinite aren’t better games because of the removal of social.
I stopped playing halo 5 because of this issue, and I can see myself eventually going back to the MCC instead of Infinite because of it. There are plenty of game modes there in which you can just goof around doing whatever you want.
The current system prevents friends of different skill levels playing together and having a good time. Nobody benefits from the removal of casual/social play.
I didn’t realize SBMM was in casual. No wonder I get stomped when I play with my friends and feel like I’m carrying hard.
No it didn’t. H2 did not offer casual experience for the majority of players, because for them it was a choice between ranked with the stress of needing to win (or being scolded when you didnt go for it) or an die-fest by pro’s. There was no casual experience for them. Your view here is very elitist, because since you are good you think everybody has to have an casual experience when you are stumping. That is just not the case.
Infinite does have an mix:
- competative in ranked
- casual in social, where everybody can play without the stress of needing to win, but without being cannon fodder when your not in the top of the playerbase.
- easy and relax in Bot Bootcamp for people who want to stump or people who don’t want to break a sweat and still easily go positive.
The problem is not the existance of SBMM in social, it is your elitist attitude that it can only be casual when others be used as cannon fodder for your entertainment. If you want to stump, there is already bot bootcamp for you. But ofcourse that ain’t good enough for you, because you can only feel good about yourself when you can make others feel bad…
The vast majority of people just want to have matches against evenly skilled players without having the pressure to have to win. That is what social is all about. Even in this forum you already see a lot of people agreeing with that, even though this forum is vastly skewed towards the better half of the players and the more competative players. Says enough. You don’t even get the input from the playerbase in the lower 50% of skill here. Not that you seem interested in that.
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Yeah, I don’t remember at all there being a casual laid back version of Halo 2 or 3 either. It was maybe a tiny bit more laid back then it was in the ranked at best…
Lol SBMM is not hurting the game at all and -Yoink!- hurts fiesta is the crap distribution of weapons.
Nah there are other actual good reasons the player base I’d dropping. Sbmm is not one of them and is only a complaint bad players use
I’d say that systems which punish people for partying up and playing together definitely contribute to people not playing.
I have had friends log off and stop playing because they get frustrated that the SBMM implementation makes it so that they cannot play with me in this game.
That was never a thing before halo 5. But here, SBMM is so tightly implemented that it’s more or less completely un-fun for people to play together if they are more than one or two skill divisions apart.
In un-ranked, un-competitive game modes, it should never be a thing that playing with friends leads you to think “wow, I’m playing people of a completely different skill level than if I play by myself”.
I think population is dropping because people have nothing to do.
It’s too easy to level up, I hit 100 within a month of casual play.
There’s no XP to grind for, no credits to grind for, nothing at all.
Love the game to death but my god I need something to do, it’s getting boring.
I have to agree with @Primus_Ego_Sum and the OP on this one, the current strict SBMM in Social paired with that same MMR-based matchmaking in Ranked (and not matching on visible rank) is a real problem for teams of friends. My friend group has started playing solo queue more. It’s sewn discord within our team because everyone wants to top-frag to get that rank gain. Removing SBMM is definitely not the answer, but the current SBMM IS hurting this game, maybe not as much as some of the bigger issues, but it is a factor.
But op and the others are arguing for more social and less competetive playlist, meanwhile you say your friends want to give their best to be top fraggers. Personally, the only really social and laid back halo has always been big team battle.
They’ve ruined that experience with bad maps and (again) too strongly implementing SBMM.
MCC’s BTB is currently the best casual way to play halo if you just want to chill and play without being forced to tryhard.
Infinite needs better maps for BTB (larger, more open for vehicles, etc) and relaxing/removing SBMM from it.
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Relaxing SBMM in socials, yes.
I honestly believe the maps are a good size, it’s the player count that needs adjusted. Make it 8v8, not 12v12. bigger isn’t better. This will add breathing room and improve the experience.
We’ll see. The theory of this game is fine. The problem is that the game does not work well. What good is a ranking or a match if the game is faulty? Virtually all the games you win or lose are “fake”. Records of shots, melee, delays, etc. They are a disaster.
Sometimes you blow to death the players of the opposing team and other times there is no way to kill them by hitting all the shots, throwing two grenades and punching them.
The games end 50-7, 10-50 no matter how hard the players work in the game. It’s a game disaster and that’s it.
What is the use of a classification if what happens during the game is all a lie?
I’m beginning to wonder if the problem is strict SBMM or just bad SBMM.
When people of different skills party up, it just really seems to be strongly skewing the matchmaking towards the highest skilled player in the group. This in turn doesn’t just affect the people in the party but makes the game miserable for their entire team.
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I dont think it’s skewed to the top, but it DEFINITELY affects the entire game. Even if you have 1 Onyx on each team, the match is just going to be a race of which Onyx can hit more targets.
The problem is that isn’t how it works. It doesn’t just put one onyx on each team. That would actually be better than what it seems to be doing.
I think it tries to get close to that, but if it cant, it will just try to get close to an average MMR for each team, so you could potentially have a team of all Diamonds and a team of Plats and an Onyx. Which is still miserable for the Plats.