Rank, Credits and Custom Game Finder Proposal

Games Other Halo
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Introduction
Hey everyone, my name is Kenny Katastrophe. I don’t post here much - I call HaloCouncil my Halo home - and recently, I made a thread there called ‘Ideal Ranking System’ that I wanted to get more exposure for and broaden the audience, so I’m recreating the thread here. It’s important to note that while it’s primarily about a ranking system proposal, it also includes a way to implement a Custom Game Finder. With some luck, perhaps someone with some authority at 343 can give their input. While the system has received a ton of praise from other THC members and even Gandhi mentioned how much he loved it on stream, it’s largely going unnoticed. I encourage everyone to try and find flaws with this system and to give their honest opinion. I will consider and reply to all constructive feedback as best I can. Also, because I’m mostly copy/pasting this, please let me know if there are any errors. You can find the original thread here. Brace yourselves - this is a long read.

Also, I’m aware that such a system is impossible for Halo 4. My hope is that we can see this implemented in Halo 5.

Thanks!

  • Kenny Katastrophe

The Ideal Ranking System
It’s something we’ve had for the first half of Halo’s online career, it’s something that was taken away from us. A lot of people few ranks as a tool for the competitive community - just a bragging right - and that the no other community can benefit from it’s existence. This is incorrect. The primary purpose of a ranking system is to ensure that all matches consist of players of approximately equal skill so that the matches are exciting, fair and balanced. Halo 3, however, brought out the bad side of ranks - the reasons that they’ve been undergoing a change and why Frank O’Connor seems unwilling to bring them back. Ranks have two negative connotations - cheating and flaming, to summarize it simply. In Halo: Reach, Bungie attempted to address the issue to little success, while in Halo 4, 343 Industries has chosen to completely omit the idea of ranks and skill based matchmaking from the game, only allowing them on Halo Waypoint to an extent that is not yet clear. So the issue remains: how do you create a ranking system that works, cannot be cheated, provides an accurate measure of skill and, most importantly, keeps people coming back for more? The answer, I believe, is the system I had hoped to utilize for The Orion Project, which I will outline in detail.

Part I - Your Rank and You
You’re no doubt wondering what this system is… leagues? 1-50? ELO? The answer is all of them. This system takes the best from both worlds and combines them into a single system that ensures accurate matchmaking, thwarts cheaters, and provides you with continual incentive to come back for more, day after day. So let’s talk about what you see when you view your service record.

  • Your SPARTAN model
  • Your Gamertag
  • Your ‘Global Rating’.
    Your Global Rating is actually the average your Top 3 playlists. While this is not meant to be a definitive measure of skill, it’s mostly just ‘at a glance’. For those who primarily play only one playlist, playing another infrequently could keep your Global Rating low. This is to encourage people to get out there and play different playlists and continue to play them.
  • Your Top 3 playlists.
    This is where things get good. When looking at the service record as a whole, you’ll just see the playlists name, your league placement, and rating. Selecting this will expand it to show some new and more detailed information specific to that playlist. This should include your Win/Lose Ratio, your seasonal K/D and KA/D, your Wingman (most played with) and your Nemesis (most killed by).
  • Your overall K/D, your seasonal K/D and your total Win/Lose Ratio.

Part II - What’s in a Rating?
When you first join a playlist, you’ll be given a default 1200 rating and your ability to rise and fall is entirely based on whether you win or lose. This system does not factor in other individual’s ratings or your personal performance. The rate at which you move up and down depends on only one things: the opposing team’s rating. Using the ELO system with a starting rating of 1200, this will create a sort of bell curve with no min or max values, but the vast majority of players will find themselves between 600 and 2400. So aside from being just a very accurate measure of your ability to win (or lose) games, what is the rating for?

Part III - League Play
Something that Halo: Reach did incorrectly was the implementation of ‘League Play’, so no doubt you may be concerned. However, League Play is vastly different in this system - it’s only purpose is expand the depth of the system and given you a reason to play day after day. First, know that each playlist has it’s own league. Also know that your rating is what places you within the following leagues, from worst to best.

  • Bronze League: 100 - 85%
  • Silver League: 85 - 65%
  • Gold League: 65 - 35%
  • Onyx League: 35 - 15%
  • Master League: 15 - 1%
  • SPARTANs: Top X.
    This varies for each playlist. FFA features Top 8, 2v2 features Top 16, 4v4 features Top 32, and BTB features Top 64. These people are considered outside of the population for league placement. When in a playlist’s lobby, there will be an option to view the SPARTAN Leaderboard for that playlist. This will show you the Top X player’s with their gamer tag and rating, and also if they are actively online or offline by a small indicator light. Also to note that inactivity for one week within this playlist will cause you to be removed from it and put back into Master. However, once you become active, if your rating would give you your spot back, you take it. This is to prevent boosting again.
    In order to qualify for a League, you will play 5 ‘Placement Matches’ the first time you play any new playlist. While the outcome of these matches will affect your rating, your actual League placement will be withheld for the time being. At the end of each season (which will last 3 months), your League will be hidden once again. However, you’ll only be asked to play a single match in order to be earn it back. So why the seasonal reset? The seasonal reset serves only one purpose: to prevent those who boosted/bought their placement from keeping it. Your Rating and League placement will never be reset seasonally.
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Part IV - ELO at a Glance
So now, you probably want to talk about the rating system and all that math goodness. The numbers do have a meaning. I will no complicate things by explaining the math behind ELO and why it works so well. If you’re really that interested, look it up. ELO is pretty simple, really. You compare two numbers and the greater the difference, the more you move up and down. You also never stay still, something a lot of people refer to as ‘rank locking’ in Halo 3. To explain Halo 3 briefly, there was no such thing as a rank lock. Rather, the system had collected certain that dictated whether or not it thought you should rank up or down and by how much based on your teammate’s and your personal Win/Lose ratio. If you did nothing but win, the system would expect you to win and never reward you for it, but instead punish your severely for losing. If you had a pretty even Win/Lose ratio, and especially if you had a lot of games under your belt, any change would be so minor that in order to have an actual jump in your rating, you’d have to improve your win/lose ratio greatly. This system rewards you for winning and losing, always. By using a 4 digit number instead of only a total of 50 numbers, those changes will be far more visible and no one should ever have that feeling of being ‘rank locked’.

So now we’ve established that each playlist gives you a rating that is only adjusted by winning or losing. The rate at which it is adjusted is dependent on how much better (or worse) your opponent was ranked compared to you. These ratings are then used to put you into a League based on percentages of the entire population, with a privileged and elite few earning a special place on the leaderboard. So now, how do they match you?

Part V - Skill Based Matchmaking (FFA)
So say you want to play the FFA playlist. This playlist will feature 6 people, all without teams, with the Top 3 ranking up and the bottom 3 ranking down. Once you search the FFA playlist, your rating is thrown into the hopper. Much like Halo 3 where it slowly expands it’s range, so too will this system. So say if you’re searching with a rating of 1200, it will start by looking between something like 1150 and 1250. This will slowly expand until a full party is found (no smaller games). For the sake of visuals, let’s say the following people have been matched up:

  • Jake - 1200
  • Steve - 1267
  • Mark - 1186
  • Sarah - 1242
  • Tim - 1154
  • Larry - 1222
    Let’s also assume that these are the end game scores, from 1st to 6th. The top 3 will rank up and the bottom 3 will rank down. But how, especially considering that the ELO system is designed for 1v1 play? First, the system averages the ratings of everyone who isn’t you together to come up with an ‘opponent rating’. So for John, with his 1200 rating, his opponent rating would be 1214. Then, you throw it into the ELO equation (personally, I use this calculator with the weighting set to 25) and plug in the numbers. You find that, for his victory, John’s rating is increased to 1213. So now, what of Steve, who placed 2nd?

Once again, you average the other player’s ratings together to get an ‘opponent rating’ which comes to 1201 this time. When you plug these numbers into the equation again, you see that for his victory, Steve gets a rating of 1277. However, this creates a problem. If all three people rank up equally, what’s the incentive for 1st place? Why not just get 3rd and hold it? The answer is that the Top 3 and Bottom 3 rank up on a scale. 1st and 6th get 100% of the rating change, 2nd and 5th get 66% of the rating change, and 3rd and 4th get 33%. That is to say that because Steve’s rating would have only moved up by 10, because he got 2nd place, this is reduced to 7 (rounded up) and thus, his new rating isn’t 1277, but rather 1274.

For the flip side (losing), let’s look at Sarah. She had the 2nd highest rating in the game, so losing is going to hit her hard considering the average rating is only 1206. Because she lost, her rating would drop from 1242 to 1228. However, because she got 4th, she only receives 33% of this 14 point drop, or a 5 point loss to 1237.

And that’s pretty much the FFA ranking system. The higher ranked your opponent’s are on average dictates how fast or slow you rank up or down, along with your placement. To put it into perspective, if John had placed 3rd instead of 1st, his rating would have been 1204 instead of 1213.

Part VI - Skill Based Matchmaking (Team Playlists)
I’m summarizing this all into one category because regardless if it’s 2v2, 4v4, or BTB. In this example, I’ll be using 2v2 for the sake of simplicity and less numbers/people. Basically, the game initially searched for your teammate(s), again based on your playlist rating. Once you’ve been matched with a full team, the game begins looking for other ‘full teams’. It does this by average your team’s ratings and comparing that to other average. It’s essentially two matchmaking processes in one search - one for teammates of equal skill to you, and then another for an opposing team of equal skill to yours. Before I go into the example, I want to stress that this system first prioritizes team size like it did in Halo 3. Existing teams of 4 will only match other existing team’s of 4, teams of 3 will pick up a random and then match another team of 3 +1 random, etc. For this example, we’ll be using the following players.

  • Austin: 1475
  • James: 1364
  • Gabe: 1519
  • Isaac: 1424
    Let’s assume that this is a planned 2v2 game (both searching in a Team of 2) with James and Gabe vs Austin and Isaac. If you want to examine it, James and Gabe have an average rating of 1442 while Austin and Isaac have one of 1450. While a close game, Blue Team does have an advantage. But does the system care about that? Not one bit. So say the game plays out and Red Team pulls off the upset and wins 25 - 23. Does the game care that James went -8 and got carried? No. He won, and that’s all that matters. So now how do you determine who wins in team games?

The first step is to average the opposing team’s ratings together, which we’ve already done. Blue team had an average rating of 1450. Next, you plug in each player’s individual rating against the opposing team’s rating like we did before. This number is their new rating. So after plugging this in, we see get the following new ratings for everyone.

  • Red Team vs Blue (25 - 23)
  • Austin: 1461 (-14)
  • James: 1380 (+16)
  • Gabe: 1529 (+10)
  • Isaac: 1412 (-12)
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So these numbers show you a few things I want to mention. First off, note that because he was so low in rating compared to the average of the other team, James moved up quite a bit. Also, because Gabe was actually rated higher than the opposing team’s average, he actually moved the least. Considering what I said earlier about James getting carried, you might not like this. However, because the system is based entirely on the outcome of the game and how your rating compares to the opposing team’s, this makes sense since he was rated much higher than the opposing team’s average while James was much lower. The advantage of this system is that it allows you to play with anyone without worry about losing your rank because you want to play with lower ranked people. In my eyes, this eliminates the need for a ‘Ranked / Social’ playlist division.

Recall Halo 3, where if you were a 50 and wanted to play with your local friend who was ranked 35, the matchmaking process would search from for ranks between your rank and your friend’s. However, because the system only went +/- 10 and started from the highest skill, you’d search for ranks 40 - 50. The game wouldn’t account for the difference and thus match you against anyone searching in that range, including two people with 50s. This wasn’t much fun and meant that you couldn’t play ranked with less experienced friends out of fear of them dragging your rank down. This system doesn’t do that.

As you can see, because of the huge difference between the James’ and Gabe’s rating and the other team’s average (78 and 77, respectively) but when comparing average to average, it’s only a difference of 8. To put it into the Halo 3 perspective again, if you (rank 50) and your friend (rank 35) searched together, the matchmaking system would start at 43 - the average, and go from there. The only downside is that because your individual rating is so much higher, you still stand to lose more than your teammates. To use the previous example, had the scores been flipped, James’ and Gabe’s ratings would have been 1355 (-9) and 1504 (-15). That said, because the games are based on averages of each team, however, the games should remain close. While you will be expected to perform well in order to win, your opponent’s will be of lesser skill.

Part VII - League and Pool Play
As I mentioned before, this system utilizes a League structure that is designed to be what keeps people around, day after day, but the real ‘instant gratification’ comes from Pool Play. When you’re rating changes and you’re placed in a new league, you’re also placed in a Pool. You can also be placed in a new pool at any time during your movement within a League. At a League’s formation (game launch), players within are ranked and put into order of their rating. Starting at the top and going down, these players are lumped into groups of 50 called ‘Pools’. These basically give you a small, segmented look into your placement within the League. As I said earlier, Halo 3 had the problem of ‘rank locking’ because their skill range (1-50) was too small and only large changes could be noticed. Not only are you more likely to see your actual rating increase from game-to-game, but by utilizing these small pools, you’ll see immediate improvement in your placement and give you some idea as to when a new League might be headed your way.

Part VIII - The Credit System
So now that I’ve catered to the competitive community, allow me to cater to everyone with the Credit system. This system was first introduced in Halo: Reach, returned (in a simpler way) in Halo 4, and will be perfected under this system. Like Halo: Reach and Halo 4, you will earn points at the end of every game based on your personal performance with a bonus for winning. These do not have any affect on rating/ranks at all but are used solely to buy cosmetic changes to your SPARTAN. These range from armor permutations, emblem options and weapon skins. Commendations will exist solely for bonuses, but will not be required to unlock anything. All options will be unlocked at launch but will cost varying amounts of credits. DLC and Preorder packs may exist for new armor permutations.

Part IX - Punishments
I think the primary issue that Halo: Reach and especially Halo 4 has brought to light is the lack of incentive to stay in a game. If your teammate picks up the sniper, what’s to stop you from quitting? If the other team kills you and scores and easy flag cap in the first 30 seconds, what’s to stop you from quitting? Now, in a social environment, especially one with a proper Join in Progress system, this isn’t much of an issue. But when ranks are involved…? Quitting needs to be punished. The answer is just a harsher punishment. Much like how your placement in an FFA game slightly alters how much you move up and down, so to will quitting. If you quit a game, you immediately lose the game (even if your teammates win without you) and the amount you lose is double what it would have been. Every time somewhat quits, the punishment is reduced by 100 / (MaxTeamSize - 1)%.

Part X - Custom Game Finder
This is a copy and paste from another thread. This outline how a custom game finder system of sorts would work, and how it would replace social matchmaking entirely. If you want to play ranked, play matchmaking. If you want to play social, play these custom games.

First, you just create some pre made lobbies as if they were a playlist. However, when you join, you’re put in a lobby screen but the options are locked. Once the lobby is full, a game starts automatically. You’d have options like “CTF” that would offer a variety of CTF games and maps. If you don’t like CTF Pit and that’s the option, back out, wait, search the lobby again and maybe you get CTF Sanctuary.

You also add the custom game finder via keywords like fileshare searching. When you host a custom game, the lobby also gives you an option to “Open” the lobby so it can be found. You enter in some keywords (like MLG, or Octogon, or Grifball) and when people search for that, bam! A whole list of lobbies and their current population. The difference is that then, the person who mad the lobby is host, so it’s not a playlist.

Fin.

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I have desperately wanted a ‘custom game finder’ since Halo 2 days. I love customs, I never have any to join.

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> I have desperately wanted a ‘custom game finder’ since Halo 2 days. I love customs, I never have any to join.

Whether you’re playing Grifball or MLG, Rocket Race or Indiana Jones, I think a ‘custom game finder’ has been something a lot of people have wanted. The issue has just been how, since Halo multiplayer doesn’t use servers like, say, StarCraft 2.

That’s why I suggest that Halo 5 feature the core playlists that are all ranked. We’re talking everything from Doubles to FFA to MLG to Infection. Then you create other playlists, but these aren’t normal playlists. Think of a mix between social playlist and custom lobby. This list would be populated with various built-in lobbies as well as the option to search for others with keywords much like you can search for files in the file browser.

So say you wanted to play some CTF games, without the stress of the Objective playlist. Well, 343 would provide a built-in “CTF (4v4)” Lobby. If you’re the first person to join, you’re basically put into a custom lobby screen where the gametype and map are chosen and everything is locked. So maybe it says “3Flag” on “The Pit”. As others search that lobby, they get put into your group. Obviously, you can back out if you want. After a full 8 player group is find, there’s a 5 second delay and then the countdown starts. The game plays, and everyone is kicked out of the lobby again. That first person to search it basically becomes the host and the next 7 people to search get put into that first person’s lobby. Obviously, you can search with a pre-existing party - it’s up to you.

Now maybe you want to host a custom lobby. Say you’ve just Forged a map and you want to test it for King of the Hill. Well, you’d set up your lobby just like you would and then there’d be an option under the party’s privacy labelled “Open”, much like there is now, but this means much more. Once you do that, you’ll be prompted to add up to, say, five keywords for your lobby. So maybe you add “KotH”, “Forge”, “Test” or something along those lines. Now you wait.

So say I want to play on some new maps, so I use the keywords “Forge” and “Test” to search and bam! There’s a list of lobbies currently open using those keywords. I find your list (Population: 1/8) and join in. Now we can chat and play. After the game’s over, we’re not kicked and you’re able to change to whatever. This would be especially useful for those players looking to improve (Keywords: ‘Sniper’ and ‘Practice’, for example), or those players looking to prepare for a tournament (Keywords: ‘MLG’ and ‘Scrim’, for example).

This would essentially replace the social playlists.

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> I have desperately wanted a ‘custom game finder’ since Halo 2 days. I love customs, I never have any to join.

I completely agree. Just had a lovely custom games sessions with someone who randomly invited me. Try posting here for a custom games session or on the Halo Reddit, they’re usually pretty up on that. :slight_smile:

And quite the post you made there OP. I think you quitting policy is a tad harsh. I wouldn’t have it count double the losses, I think having the auto-loss along with a quit ban (if you quit enough games) would be sufficient. Do they count DNF’s as losses already?

I don’t entirely agree on the custom games finder as well. I think it would be optimal to still have the set playlists in both Social and Ranked order, but have some kind of new area where players could “publish” a custom games lobby to be on the list and others could scroll through such a list and join the lobbies. I think this would be a great way for other players to easily find custom games and for custom game hosts to get them there.

The keyword/tag idea was good as well.

I care for CSR suggestions, but don’t know enough about it. I will let others comment on that.

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> I completely agree. Just had a lovely custom games sessions with someone who randomly invited me. Try posting here for a custom games session or on the Halo Reddit, they’re usually pretty up on that. :slight_smile:
>
> And quite the post you made there OP. I think you quitting policy is a tad harsh. I wouldn’t have it count double the losses, I think having the auto-loss along with a quit ban (if you quit enough games) would be sufficient. Do they count DNF’s as losses already?
>
> I don’t entirely agree on the custom games finder as well. I think it would be optimal to still have the set playlists in both Social and Ranked order, but have some kind of new area where players could “publish” a custom games lobby to be on the list and others could scroll through such a list and join the lobbies. I think this would be a great way for other players to easily find custom games and for custom game hosts to get them there.
>
>
> The keyword/tag idea was good as well.
>
> I care for CSR suggestions, but don’t know enough about it. I will let others comment on that.

First, thank you. :stuck_out_tongue:

Next, in regards to the quitting policy… I’m personally against matchmaking bans. If you want people to play your game, why ban them from playing? When I get a quit ban in Reach, I go play another game and that’s bad for Halo business. You want to make people not quit, not punish them for quitting. That’s why the punishment starts out at a 200% penalty. The next person to quit out in a 4v4 playlist would only receive a 166% penalty. Then 133%, then the last person just takes the loss. Frankly, you shouldn’t be quitting anyways.

This was discussed on THC as far as why people quit that wouldn’t warrant them a punishment. Obviously, getting spawn killed 5 times in a row and rage quitting warrants a punishment. Betraying a teammate and getting booted warrants a punishment. But someone suggested the idea that you have somewhere to be and have to leave. Maybe you have a doctor’s appointment and can’t wait to see the end of the game. At which point I have to ask, if the average Halo games is about 8 minutes long, why are you cutting it that close to get ready to leave for your appointment…!?

My point is that you want to prevent the problem (a strong penalty) rather than punish it.

As far as the custom game finder replacing social playlists… that’s entirely optional. I just fear that a split between ranked/social/custom lobbies would make populations in each category very, very small. If they don’t add premade lobbies, simply adding the keyword functionality for custom games would be nice and shouldn’t take away from the population much at all.

As far as CSR is concerned, I don’t believe we have been given adequate information to really form an opinion about it’s probability of success/failure. My only desire is that it allows for skill based matchmaking and isn’t a glorified win/lose ratio. Hopefully the coming bulletin will illuminate that. I also hope that it can’t be boosted like in Halo 3. When I sat down to make this system, my primary question with each decision was “Okay, but can someone cheat it…?”

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Great post. I agree with everything.

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Pretty damn good idea… Now if only 343 had thought of this…

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> Pretty damn good idea… Now if only 343 had thought of this…

Well that’s why I’m here. :stuck_out_tongue:

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More people need to see this!

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This is a great system and is much better than 1-50. It would allow for great and competitive matches while not attracting boosters and cheaters. 343, look at this thread if you want H5 to be as successful as H3.

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What a cool system. I hope 343 implements those ideas into Halo 4. Or else Halo 5 is going to be worse than Halo 4!