So I’ve played a lot of halo infinite now. While the game was a blast, progressing in rank, playing with the boys again…I’ve reached a rank wall at Dimond one. I’ve played a majority of ranked matches with the same people. We won a majority of the same matches together. Yet one is Dimond 5 the other Dimond 3. I’ll be the first to admit their kda is better. Yet all other stats I destroy them call me captain objective. Flag I got over 500+ steal alone. I have been the reason we have won a lot of these matches. I get punished for sacrificing my kda for team play. Now that our diamond 5 pulls in onyx players I am basically stuck. My issue is if you want people to play objective you need to reward them or pretty soon no one will grab the ball or flag. My only option now is to enter rank solo to get a rank buffer on my Dimond just to play with friends.
Yea sucks doesn’t it…welcome to trueskill 2 ranking system. I’ve found it next to impossible to rank up if you play with someone better than you.
Although there are definite benefits to the TS2 system. Like no smurfs and better match quality it’s simply not fun to play. There’s invisible numbers you need to hit for it to let you rank up. In H5 onyx it used to be 2 kills per minute, which only benefits hyper aggressive players.
Yeah I guess I’m just the salty guy. Balanced matches are great, but wins should always come with a prize. A win should be win with a standard boost that’s decent. All other performances above the win should just be icing on the cake.
It feels like I’m the designated flag grabber since CE. I dont care about k/d, I care about winning first
You should get xp for being the first to touch the flag, and for capping it.
Maybe your friends can hook you up and let you score it?
When I play with my son’s (onyx and diamond) I have to just hold on for the ride.
But at least they look after me 
And thankfully losses don’t seem to cost me too much rank at all.
The sad thing is - if you start to pivot on other criteria, it won’t take long for people to start abusing it.
I’ve already been team-killed just before capping a flag so that they could do it.
People suck.
I don’t understand why everyone wants to level up with the target of being Onyx even if they aren’t good enough. You don’t get “rewarded” by levelling up…the rank system is supposed to be designed to be a reflection of your skill level to give balanced matches.
There will be a time shortly when I know I’ll be pulling in players that are too good for my IRL friends to deal with but it’s not an issue at the moment as we play ranked sporadically and they are only all Silver/Gold…I’m literally a whisker away from Diamond in both ranked playlists so that scenario may well happen if I continue to climb albeit slowly as we don’t play that many games. For now it is fun, but we’ll have to wait and see if I can continue playing with them on that account in the future (it’s my secondary so I genuinely don’t care about my level).
I too am a rank struggling old man, but I play solo, so unlike you, I’m just bad. I’m right at the tip of being able to hit diamond 2 but I’m definitely at my skill wall/ceiling. Gotta figure out something to do to level up my skill. I feel like it’s likely my movement and my lack of spawn knowledge and that sort of thing. I typically either try to play defense on CTF or stick with the team in slayer/oddball but strongholds feels like I’m doing the wrong thing lmao
As to the previous post, why people want to rank up? It’s basically the only thing to do besides the battle pass currently unless you’re a “play and chill” type of person. I play to win so I’ll play other game modes mostly because the challenges are there (and where I play with my friends when they can actually play) but ranking up is a progression that I find fun and I’m sure others do too.
And this is why I just want ranked Slayer. No point in playing objective when many people show no interest in it.
I’ve been struggling internally with this since the game came out. On the one hand, I do try to talk myself into “this is my skill cap, if I (undeservedly) rank up too high I will get destroyed and won’t have any fun.”
But on the other hand, ranking up is a sweet dopamine hit and we all want that. Ranking up the Battle Pass just feels like “I’ve played the game some more and now I have a new number that shows that.” It doesn’t give me that same feeling as “I earned this new rank because I’ve gotten better at the game.”
I’m in Platinum 6 right now and can’t wait to finally hit Diamond 1, but at the same time I get destroyed by Diamond players so I know the games will suck for me when I get there. I also know that the only way to prevent that from happening is to get better at the game, but there is such little information out there right now about how to get better. It’s a weird catch-22 between wanting to rank up but also not wanting to get utterly destroyed. It’s a real internal struggle.
I think a skill-based battle pass progression system would really help with this. Giving more battle pass exp based on your in-game score rather than arbitrary challenges would really help, as then if you have a good game, you can rank up the battle pass while feeling “rewarded” for your good play, and it would help mitigate the frustration of being “stuck” at your current skill level (Gold, Plat, etc.) If they made this one simple change, I would buy the Battle Pass. I haven’t bought it yet, as ranking it up just doesn’t feel rewarding to me.
You know this is an interesting topic. I know when the game first launched in November the ranking system took multiple things into account. Mainly objectives. Flag steals, captures, flag returns, enemy flag carrier kills, etc… the game used to also count your assist towards your KD at a 1:1 ratio. But since recent updates the progression system seems to be inconsistent. I’ve played matches where I’ve had the highest KD, assist, flag steals, and captures and either gained no rank off the win or even lost rank. I’m not sure what has changed but it almost feels like playing the objective or even having just the highest KD doesn’t always give you positive points.
We’re pretty much in the same boat tbh. I’m 47 years old and P6 in both ranked playlists…I pretty much carry my Bronze/Silver/Gold team mates every game, but whilst I know that I can handle going up to Diamond, my fear is that the games will become less enjoyable for them if we start pulling in more high Platinum or Diamond players.
Where abouts are you based? If you’re UK/EU we could get an old man’s squad up and running! 
If you’re D2 and playing solo then your next step up will come playing as a team. I’m all about winning too, but my point was there’s no point everyone aiming to be at a rank level that is higher than their actual skillset so they aren’t comfortable, can’t compete, maintain rank or enjoy the game.
Where abouts are you based? As I’ve said above, if you’re UK/EU we could get an old man’s squad up and running! 
I’m in Eastern US, but I don’t mind some ping here and there! Add me on XBL: JMertz22
I’ve got some other older heads on my friends list that we can squad up with!
Can someone explain how the rank bar works. Sometimes I win a game and it shows a red bar. Sometimes I lose and it shows a blue bar, but it still went down??
I also think your skill based progression/reward system is definitely what this game lacks and requires. At the moment there simply isn’t any longevity, and that goes hand in hand with satisfaction from achieving a goal and motivation to achieve the next one. Like yourself, I won’t put money into the game until I see things that I consider important to this game to be implemented or fixed…I’m more than happy to spend but they haven’t given me a reason to want to spend anything yet.
I think over time as more data is gathered they will be able to adjust the rank system little by little. I mostly solo que and majority of the games are pretty even. You can tell when a team has an onyx player when everyone is in the teens and low twenties in kills and one random has 40+. Yea pretty much every ranked game feels like a sweat fest just pull out a win but I don’t mind it. That is what ranked play is for. Some games I get a lot of xp and some I don’t. Just depends on what ranks I am playing with/against. Currently sitting at plat 6 but haven’t played much ranked recently. See a lot of stories about diamond players struggling ranking up. Not looking forward to that but its part of the grind.
I enjoy ranked play and thinking about the old Halo 2 days and it seems kind of similar. I remember grinding in the lvl 30s winning 4 or 5 games in a row to get a lvl. Lose one game and drop back down. Maybe I am wrong but that is how I feel. Maybe it is the fact that you can see your progress now makes a difference.
Sounds like the game has you at the skill set you are supposed to be at. Not everyone can get no Onyx, like not everyone will make it to Diamond, etc.
@AMAX_Reptile I’m pretty sure the bar just shows how much you’ve changed in either a single play session or day. Im not sure because it might reset if you stop playing for a few hours but it definitely resets every day. So not sure exact time frame but basically it shows recent progress
You can see other peoples too an be like “wow that guys having a rough day he was almost diamond 3 and now he’s almost diamond 1”
This.
The blue and red bars show your progress (or regress 
) for the play session. I’m not sure how long you have to be offline for it to reset to a solid white bar.