I was lurking on reddit while waiting for a doctors appointment and came across this interesting post complaining about Infinite that made me laugh.
A good matchmaking, Im tired of playing against sweaty no life. Each game is either we stump or get stump, or its a sweet fest. Its really boring. I dont want to play anymore for this sole reason.
Ignoring the spelling and grammar, the main complaint seems to be that all of their matches are either easy wins, bad losses or hard fought close matches. Like, what other options are there, what is it they actually want? More crashes and disconnects to add variety perhaps. Have other games come up with different match outcomes that I’ve never even considered?
For all the arguments on here about matchmaking, at least we do it better than Reddit.
I had to read the reddit quote five times before I realized he indeed want close matches.
Thing is, I do have an answer to that.
But first;
No, we can’t.
This ties in with my answer.
This has been up so many times here as well regarding matchmaking, but unfortunately it’s not a Matchmaking issue, and no programming in the world will solve it, unless of course we personally want to spend some 100k on extra equipment and stuff to monitor our emotions and mental responses to what’s happening in the match.
Okay, the person doesn’t want to get stomped or be the stomper, that gets boring and frustrating.
Yet when the matchups are close, it’s not fun for them because it’s too… stressing.
People want to have a laid back experience but are involuntarily too competitive to be able to do so.
Unable to handle the subtle stress of watching the scores being close no matter how relaxed the game start out, they press themselves harder and harder, performing marginally better.
Simply put, it’s an attitude problem no matchmaking can solve.
I should know because I’ve been there. Mind you, not the “I want a relaxed match and everything turns out sweaty if it’s a close match”.
If anyone says winning isn’t important, but a close match frustrates them to no end, then winning is important if they want to admit it or not. They’re part of the problem they see with Matchmaking.
They make it “sweaty”, they take it seriously even if they say they don’t.
I’ve come to accept my serious take on competitive play, I want to be on top, and I’ll be frustrated if things don’t go as planned but I’ll let it go quick and move on. Unless there’s some real nasty stuff going on like desync, incredibly bad matchups or smurfs, to name a few.
Anyway, hope that clears some stuff up regarding the “I’m not happy with anything the MM system does”.
The answer is to Smurf with a fee account for casual games by the time it finds your skill you have had more fun than playing sweats all the time. Or you sandbag on the account and give it dog crap stats and keep it low rank. Don’t let the sbmm take advantage of you make it work in your favor
People worry too much about winning or losing the matches. Which I get.
But now, winning to me is playing with my friend, and either celebrating our wins or plays, or complaining about our loses or when something stupid happens — which is never ever our fault, of course.
The solution is quite simple, nerf the trueskill algorithm like bungie did for H3 and Reach MP back then, allowing a better balanced and more fun experience than this competitive stomp or get stomped or have a sweatfest bs we have in social rn
But the redditor doesn’t want close matches. They call them ‘sweat fests’ and complains about them and every other type of matchup. They are just too angry at life to realise they are the problem, not the game itself. That’s not to say Infinte’s matchmaking is great, I think it can and should be much better but this person would still hate it no matter what.
I totally agree about the sweaty games being an attitude issue. The games are as sweaty as you make them. If you want to sweat that’s great, if you want to relax then that’s on you. Do it consistently and your matchups will get easier in response. No matter how you play, your winning percentage is likely to settle around 50% once your MMR has stabilised. You will just be playing against a different skill level on average because you are performing at a different skill level.
Ever since Halo 2 I’ve always felt matchmaking was flawed. It assumes usually that everyone plays the game the same way and attempts to simplify the set up and make it easier to get in and get out of games. Yet it takes a lot of control out of players hands as a result.
I much more preferred custom game browsers, that were created and controlled by both Dev staff as well as the community itself. I don’t know why games that use matchmaking set ups often neglect custom game browsers ever since Halo 2. CGB’s often let players play matches with special set ups that they prefer and generally offer much larger variety.
maybe the problem is risk vs reward. infinite does not have much of it so it reiys heavily on uncreative combat. halo needs mechanics where if you play incredibly risky, you make the game really easy. everything is too balanced which is where the feelling of sweatiness comes from i think. being creative is fun and makes you forget that your sweating.
the thing with risk vs reward is it still needs balance and is harder to design.
Matchmaking is garbage. Yesterday i got some good games where i had 25-30 kills, today i’m matching sweats and i lost like 6 games in a row.
Then i play another match where i have 29 kills and i can finally win and start eating my lunch. Total YOINK
Yep. People sometimes can’t enjoy a game that forces them to really work hard in the moment. A lot of times they just want easy wins. But how does one improve there right?
Alright, so let’s explain what he likely means by this
Matchmaking in Halo Infinite sucks because of a multitude of problems. Bad servers, desync, and skill based matchmaking. To focus on SBMM, you have to ask why is it so bad?
The SBMM system is broken. Let’s word it in the easiest way possible. If you’re the highest skilled player, you’re put on red team. the 2nd to 5th most skilled players are on blue team. The 6th to 8th players are on red team. If you’re the most skilled player in the lobby, you have 3 pretty unskilled players on your team who will feed since they’re all against higher skilled opponents. This is frustrating for the highest skilled player, and the lower skilled players because it’s almost always a loss for them. For the 2th to 5th skilled players (blue team) they basically have a game where there’s one guy they can’t beat, and 3 players who are like bots. It’s just not very entertaining. So either stomp or be stomped. The only time you’ll have a close match is when that highest skilled player is playing out of their mind, which really beats the purpose of SBMM.
Ultimately, this leads to the view that your opponents are just sweaty, because if you’re the top player and play casually, you’re going to be destroyed. The middle players will see someone of a much higher skill sweating against them, so feel they need to sweat a little to catch up, and the lower players just feel awful xD
Playing with friends at different skill levels. This often leads to the example above where my friends are at gold level, I’m around Onyx, so the enemies are all Diamond to Onyx. Absolute stomp on my friends. We can’t play together anymore due to the SBMM in place.
There is a much higher focus on competitive play in Halo Infinite. Don’t take my word for it, take 343i’s when they say Halo has always been a competitive shooter since Halo: CE (spoiler alert, it never was and 343i are wrong as usual). Because the game is based around competitive play, it’s likely why the games feel more competitive.
I’d say look at Overwatch. It has a massive competitive scene, but you can still play casually and have a ton of fun. Look at Rein for example, the guy literally charges around slamming people into walls. It’s fun to charge, and it’s also somewhat fun to see a Rein suddenly charge at you as you panic and try to dodge. That right there is why Overwatch works whilst Halo Infinite doesn’t. In Halo Infinite it’s simply not fun to get into fights with others and since the matchmaking lacks social playlists you’re left with only sweaty playlists.
Ranked is super unpopulated and almost impossible to find matches. As a result, competitive players have moved into the more populated playlists.
Personal conclusion.
I never really had issues with the matchmaking in Halo Reach. I think that was because we didn’t care if we had a positive K/D in a match, or if we won. So long as we had a good time playing the game, that was all that mattered.
Having my friend drive around in a Gauss Hog as I manned the turret.
Flying a Falcon behind enemy lines and launching a assault on their backlines.
Playing Infection and burying a friend under crates so the infected couldn’t reach them.
Sitting for hours customising my Spartan without wondering how much it would cost me in real life.
Playing custom games until the early hours of the morning.
They’re all memories I have and were only really available with Halo. 343i doesn’t understand this. Their primary focus is competitive, because if they have the next big competitive game then it will generate money. They’re honestly fools. If they made a fun game first which was packed with content, then the competitive side would be allowed to thrive.
No, he complains about that when the match is close, he/she is personally outmatched. He wants a close match with people his own skill. The skill gaps within matches in social are realy enormous sometimes and if that player is one of the weaker players, it will be an big sweat fest for him/her, even though the match is close.
The SBMM is just way to weak. I am about an average player, my highest rank was high gold, but that was only after placement matches, so mid to high platinum would probably my real skill (at least on this laptop that can only play the game on the lowest settings). When i play with my friend who is bronze tier (highest rank was silver for her), you would expect that players we match would be our skill or something in between, since there is already a high gap between us. But no, we often get players that are still more skilled then me (wich is not that much a problem for me personally, but my friend then literaly can’t get any kill in such a match) and we even got into a match with an onyx player… That is literaly the entire skill spectrum, what skill does the SBMM then limit if you get a match with skills from bronze to onyx? There lies the real problem people are complaining about.
That is by far the biggest issue. Social needs an actual SBMM that limits the individual skill within a match. The higher skilled players are getting annoyed with lower skill people ruining their matches, while the lower skill players are getting annoyed with the higher skill players ruining their matches. And they are both right, but both not to blame ofcourse. And with huge skill gaps it is also very difficult to balance matches.
Another problem with the SBMM is that it is an artificial MMR you get assigned. That system is designed around that famous clockform (the most people are in the middle and the lower and higher edges have a small amount of players), but that is not how the actual skill is distributed. In reality it is more of a hyperbole form, where the biggest group are the lower skilled players. But since the system is designed to make it into a clockform, people with lower skill are artificially made into (close to) average like players. This also creates imbalances, since the system things two players are closely skilled, while in reality they are not even close.
The only way to get a fair match is to play ranked but we don’t want to always play competitively. And most of the time there is a low population issue so we have to play social playlists.
Loosing every single game doing every thing you can, finishing with 25+ kills, 3 or 4 K/D and see 3 newbies getting stomped in your team is frustrating.
And if the best player doesn’t involve himself = > steaktacular.
It’s absolutely not fun. For example today at least 1 or 2 newbies left before the end during 7 games maybe … and I can’t be mad at them.