Ranked FFA: Designed to Enrage

Games Halo Infinite
1

I have never been this mad, and I’m going to focus down and type this as objectively as possible.

Ranked FFA doesn’t work in this game. At all. Let me make the case.

  1. Let’s get the basics out of the way early, and this is a complaint/critique of what is wrong with FFA as a whole and what is generally regarded as the worst aspects of it: It is not about individual skill in a 1v1 fight.
    That might sound obvious, but what I mean to say is, the way to win in FFA is not to be a god at 1v1 BR fights, its about being the most underhanded person in the lobby. Your primary goal is always to steal kills. You start the game looking for people who are already fighting to clean up, you camp around corners to get easy picks, you use morally questionable weapons to get the quickest, easiest kills possible, you spam grenades into every possible doorway hoping to get a cleanup, you just run straight at people to melee them instead of trying to win a BR fight, etc.
    Its atrociously bad gameplay design with the Infinite sandbox for a few reasons. The most notable is part 2

  2. Grenades are too randomly strong. just chucking them around the map all game is one of the easiest ways to win the match, and it shouldn’t be. In social its just whatever, randomness is part of the package. But in ranked is should not be the easiest way to get kills, especially since there is no real defense for it. If you’re grenaded, you die, either from the grenade or one of the 7 people shooting you. And that brings us to part 3

  3. 8 people is way too much with these maps and the terrible spawns on them. Its a constant clusterfluster of utter chaos and unwinnable fights off spawn. If you die, you die about 4 times before you’re lucky enough to spawn in a less frequented line of sight, where you’re lucky enough to not be pre-naded in the process. It was so much better when it was a 6 person playlist, because it was less about just throwing grenades around corners and more about winning BR fights.

  4. Finally, the weapon and powerup layout being the same as the HCS settings is generally pretty bad. Swords don’t belong in ranked. The skewer is pretty much suicide in a FFA. Shotguns win the game much easier than more skill-oriented fare. There’s very little nuance or variety at play after all is said and done. Every map has one core strategy that wins the match. Get X weapon/powerup and have more free kills than the rest of the people. In a basically evenly skilled lobby, that’s the pattern every match. Its boring, and it really just makes you want to leave as soon as you missed out on first bulldog/heatwave simply because you spawned further away than the guy who will now go on to win the match.

  5. Oh wait, one more thing. The CSR/MMR thing in FFA is apparently nonsensical. You can go negative but place 3rd and lose CSR, or you can go positive and place 5th and gain CSR. Likewise, you can get 1st place and go positive and gain CSR, but if you got 2nd by just one kill, you gain nothing at all. This is wildly infuriating when every single match often comes down to 1-3 kills difference between the first place finisher and 6th place. And I’m not joking about that last part, this game is so easy to just mop kills in, even the worst person in the match has almost as many kills as the winner. Its infuriating for that to be what decides everything so often.

I don’t know who this is for, or who actually enjoys this. In my opinion it requires someone with severe psychological issues to actually be excited when you boot up a match, but maybe that’s true of anyone still playing Infinite at this point.

3 Likes
2

I gave ranked FFA a solid shot when it first arrived. The ever growing number of issues I have with this game aside (desync being at the top, it haunts my dreams like a soul-sucking demon creature), but again those aspects aside, ranked FFA is a total cluster you know what. Feels like very little thought went into the implementation of this game mode and it was not treated like it should have been. Careful consideration and design choices should have been factored in for what is a more unique mode, but it was put out haphazardly and cookie cuttered and it’s yet another failed, lackluster offering.

Now, on top of the above go ahead and add back in desync, with a significant increase in the amount of people attacking you and bam, nice little recipe for a bad time.

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4

When has this ever not been the case in any Halo game or FPS games in general, when it comes to FFA?

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5

They made an update where they added in 8 players instead of 6. Which was a massive mistake since the maps are so small and players have so many movement capabilities along with the nades that have a massive radius that they give out like candy on Halloween. They even realized 8 players was too much in halo 5 and those maps were huge compared to halo infinites maps. Why they continue to make the same mistakes 6 years later I honestly don’t understand.

6

I firmly believe one of Infinite’s biggest issues is the map design. They’re much smaller than previously made Halo maps and too many of the maps are symmetrical. Not saying symmetrical maps should go away but the variety is lacking in this department across all of the maps in this game. Some of my favorite maps from the past are asymmetric such as Valhalla, Sword Base, High Ground, Zanzibar, Lockout, etc. I’m sure this is due to the nature of designing them with Esports as a priority which IMO, big mistake.

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7

This has been how Free For All has always been, even way back in the days of Quake online. People steal kills because it’s the more intelligent way to actually play this game mode and always has been.

The only way they could possibly fix it is to design area’s where only two people can fight at a time, then have the loser switch out with another player. I forget what they called this type game mode, duels maybe. Quake had this set up and so did Team Fortress ( the original Team Fortress, not TFC or TF2 ).

1 Like
8

I’m not even going to lie. Check my service record. When I have a “play a rumble pit” daily challenge, I literally go in and just try to get kills. I play around the objective, but hardly ever pick it up. 8 player FFA is a lot on these arena style maps. I can’t really understand the happiness people feel playing FFA, but truly to each their own.

When Infection comes out, that will be my go to playlist for weird off days or when playing with my nephew.

9

I couldn’t agree more with you. Obviously, maps will be how they are designed and created, but when weapons are completely different on ranked than social playlists it just doesn’t make sense. There’re new weapons in the Infinite sandbox that should’ve started in ranked and gone from there.

10

FFA is 8 heads? It should be 6. LMAO

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11

the CSR system is also bad. Just won a match of FFA and got nothing… not a single point. This game is very rewarding…

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It’s not the best.

But 343 don’t help by putting zero effort into explaining it.

You would have got some CSR. But not enough to go up a point after being rounded to the nearest integer.

It’s perfectly natural to win and not rank up.

That’s how ranking systems work.

So you shouldn’t be looking to your skill rank for “reward”. That’s the job of XP etc (coming soon!). And maybe the “reward” should just be the win (congratulations, by the way).

You won, but may well have been the top seed. And with the low population you could very well have been short odds to win. So a win doesn’t necessarily guarantee that there will be a lot of up ranking happening.

And/or your CSR has already drifted well above your MMR and it’s trying not to get any further away (combination of poor design and zero explanations form 343).

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13

That’s what rank is though

14

Nope.

Your skill rank is your skill level.

If you rank people up on false metrics - like beating people ranked below you - you just end up being matched against teams better than you, getting soundly beaten, and deranking.

Same with trying to rank people up on the basis of assists or objective scores.

It ruins the next few matches for everyone - and upsets the whole ranking process because those people get rank for beating you as well. The integrity of the system relies on everyone having the most accurate rank possible.

Beating players ranked below you proves nothing to the system, or yourself, other than you are higher than them. But we already knew that.

Your skill rank there is to reward you for actually getting better. Not just a short term endorphin rush for any old win.

XP rank on the other hand. Perfect way to reward every win.

15

No, its your reward for playing the game better than other people

I have never understood why anyone puts any stock in this. You can be the worst player on earth but play the game constantly and have a high “xp rank”. In fact, most people that high in rank in xp systems ARE bad at the game, they just never stop playing it.

XP rank is pointless. Its a participation trophy.

16

Soooo close.

It’s your reward for playing the game better than other better people.

You can’t be ranked up for beating teams ranked below you. It just doesn’t makes sense.

For a start, you haven’t got any better, so you are going to lose more games at the higher level.

And then anyone playing you is going to get an win… and then rank up as well. It’s a cascading ripple.

A bit harsh.

It reflect commitment to the game. It doesn’t matter if you are good or bad.

It’s a badge of honour, if you like.

Which is what your skill rank will become if you start pushing people up purely on the basis of wins.

1 Like
17

Yeah like getting 152 in Halo 5, that got people lots of awards

That puts the blame of a bad matchmaking system purely on the best player. Your outlook on this continues to be irrational.

The ranking system isn’t a countdown to number one, it’s a functionally infinite progression upwards in number.

There should never be a scenario where you win and gain nothing. I know you think there should be because reasons

A pointless one. It’s like the xp ranks in MCC. It has nothing whatsoever to do with skill or anything but time spent playing. It’s invalidated by everyone just making alts anyway.
I have no idea why anyone would care about such a thing. I remember in Reach people talking down to other people for their “rank” then getting destroyed because their super high xp rank was just from them grinding challenges instead of getting better at the game.

18

What “rewards” they got were neither here nor there.

You can still respect their time and commitment.

And it doesn’t matter if they are good or not.

Respect.

It’s not putting the blame on anyone.

Pretty rational.

That’s somewhat irrational.

It’s a sorting system. And the spread of ranks should be constrained to a normal distribution.

You know, like it is in real life.

The x-scale, of course, is completely arbitrary.

If you add in good players to the population, or some of your player’s improve, there should be a shift of the curve to the left. The population should maintain a Bell shape. It’s not easy, what with grinders and people who stop playing, which is why we have regular Season resets. It refreshes the curve. I think they call it “rank debt”.

And if you only let Onyx players through to season 3 the ranking system should re-sort them into a new population Bell curve. Literally. From Bronze to (new) Onyx.

That’s how a ranking system is supposed to work.

And it’s why it can sometimes be hard to recapture your peak rank from a previous season (it may well be a significantly different population).

I think you will find that is at odds with pretty much every ranking system in existence.

I’m not even sure how that would work…

The key to ELO systems is to make a judgement call on the difference between the two sides and the shape of each’s curves (the confidence the system has in their rank).

You probably don’t gain “nothing”. There is probably “something”. But the evidence that you have improved in skill is probably neglible.

If you want to rank up - you have to beat the higher ranked teams.

Taking the example of a Diamond player, who should be beating 75% of Platinum teams, 50% of Diamond teams, and 25% of Onyx teams. So an extra win vs a Platinum team isn’t going to mean much. If they want to rank up - start winning more vs Onyx.

Which doesn’t mean their feats can’t be appreciated for what they are.

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19

The more wild part is that king of the hill was in the game mode when it launched. Like who thought of that? Not ranked at all. Maybe classic Halo 3 Lone Wolves but even that was only 6 with AR Pistol start.

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20

Every ranked FFA game has had 6 players for about 6 years since the advanced movement capabilities in H5 and infinite made 8 players feel like wayyy to much and did not allow for any 1v1s

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21

I find every reply in that chain to be nonsense and based purely on personal enjoyment of an xp system and distaste for a competitive ranking system.

I don’t respect any of it

1 Like