Ranked progression is confusing and inconsistent

Games Halo Infinite
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59

It has nothing to do with early progress. Literally won a game went 18-16 with 1:39 ball time (won the game) and gained 2 onyx rank. Same game my brother had 5 seconds of ball carry went 39-20 and got 14 onyx rank for the same win.

Please, I would love to hear your theory on this. We are both in the mid 1500 onyx.

Rank progression at this time is completely broken and illogical. You cannot have this type of ranking system in a team arena shooter. Who cares about the team when you just want kills. Hate to give assists since they weigh so much lower. It’s just silly and needs to be fixed

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60

I get it, you feel this is fair, and then overall you think it’s a pretty fair system and maybe it is in terms of balancing gameplay but whoever said balanced gameplay was the funniest form of halo from what I’ve seen so far it’s far less fun than the ranking algorithms of yesteryear. Not to mention if it was truly “true skill” it should collect all data, not just kda, and match up to win/loss opponents skills.

If you can’t grind a higher rank what are we doing?
That’s the point of ranking. If I just wanted to play balanced matches I’d play the social clown show.

And how can a win not count as a win no matter who you’re playing against? That’s how it always counted in the past this is the newest latest and greatest ranking algorithm. Shouldn’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile or against specific ranked players you should just get a standard amount of rank for winning and then everything else would be a bonus. The way the weight wins and loss seem way off. Also, this is broken due to squid accounts. Massive loss to an unranked onyx and your get de-rank hard… aggressively hard. They are more worried about people grouping up and rank boosting then they are with the aim bot scrubs running rampant in onyx levels. (All of which my buddy records watches back, and then reports to 343 with video if it was in fact cheating). At least in Halo 2 the cheaters had to own their shame in post match lobbies, and it wasn’t so easy to hide (standbys) like todays sneaky minor aim boosts and wall hacks. Que the “get good comments lol” Try me Gen Z kids haha.

When you don’t have a standard bump for a win in ranked progression players all will reach a point it feels stuck, and I’m still gonna stress the point that all the objective stats are counted for little to nothing and there are massive contributions from these actions towards wins and they should reflect in true skill if we’re going to claim it’s a fair system.

So for a player like me, I don’t get rewarded for anything now. I’m just playing to play. And while I’m a long time Halo lover of 20+ years it’s starting to get a little boring. Stagnant progression and lack of content starts to wear on you. Not to mention having to sweat out every match to just get a diddly amount of rank after 3 wins to get a half bar de-rank after a loss =( come on man…My goals for halo are for it to be fun and for longevity, this ranking system ain’t it.

Heck can’t even escape to a little less sweaty ranked playlist right now.

It’s just weird Halo 2’s ranking system worked well outside of cheating, or was that just my experience. Maybe we can get a 1-50 rank playlist and a TrueSkill separate one as well. Getting rank 30+ meant something back then. Maybe my time in the sun has come and gone. Maybe this old CE goat needs to let the youth take over for me lol.

OK 78 edits later 343 wants you to reach your rank wall to help the system to balance matches…this helps the overall game, but may hurt the players overall experience. While this might be one’s true skill it makes the hope for improvement/progression feel too steep to climb IMO.

I should mention everyone in here seems chill and wants a better Halo, and that’s why I’m here as well.

I also apologize for dummy glitching some flags in Halo 2 I was 13 years old lol…

-A 31 year old Halo Boomer

2 Likes
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By early progress I was referring to the shape of your MMR skill curve. If you haven’t settled into a consistent rank it will be wider and more volatile.

Until 343 do a Q&A we are all in the dark.

For some reason your brother’s MMR drifted higher than his CSR and it used the win to catch him up. Was it an error in the system? His KD? (keeping in mind we’ve seen people with poor KD in a game jump as well). Some other criteria?

But the bottom line is that people are getting upset over a handful of game to game MMR points. I’m not sure the system can give them what they want from it.

It’s not good for anyone’s sanity if they are changing the way they play for a bit extra MMR. It’s fruitless. There isn’t enough confidence to say somone who is 1830 is definitively better than someone who is 1800. And the more separated they are as populations the less relevant their actual values are to each other.

Not illogical. And far from ‘completely’ broken.

I agree that if they have carried the weighting of KD into objective games without anything else… that would be silly. But it’s not clear that they have. Or what that weighting is if they have.

Hopefully we will get some sort of Q&A… Or regular matchmaking feedback… Or even access to the stars API.i

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I can say the Flag stats and ball time are not highly rewarded sadly tested that out all on my own.

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736 flag grabs 165 returns 256 secures (many more stolen) 402 steals
1H 49M 06s ball time --I held the ball for almost 2 hours now how can one KDA during that…
All my higher ranked buds not even close in objective stats just better KDAs
Heck even my damage dealt is higher then theirs or close

KDA or bust

If you want a higher rank do not play with better ranked players. You will pull in better matches solo or with lower people. Do not be me. Don’t help the team with objectives only long range BR for KDA boosts it being the main stat of value. See how this effects the game poorly.

I’m struggling to stay Dimond 2 while the guys I play with are now on a D5 push to Onyx. Off the coat tails of a lot of my objective work, and what do I get. We play almost all these matches together. Everyone has a role I did mine right and they did theirs, yet I get no rank back rub.

1 Like
64

Yep. I think it’s fair… And works well.

Just not for what you want.

Maybe some sort of XP rank where you get points for executing game/objective relevant skills and a multiplier for the win vs opponent ranking.

And I’m all for something like that to work alongside the TrueSkill rank.

Agree whole heartedly.

Back to XP. Throw in a military rank and voila.

Because from a skill rank point of view who you beat is the most important piece of the sorting puzzle.

Sadly people will find ways to run any system.

This is the crux of it.

The population skill curves are the same.

The underlying MMR is even more accurate!

But where people used to be happy to simply be a ‘48’ they now get hung up on the fact that they were a 48.87 and they just dropped to 48.75 with that loss.

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All valid points but 3 wins for nothing and one loss for a lot is kind of odd no matter the system behind it. I guess maybe I like the old more forgiving MMR system it let you earn in a less aggressive way. Kind of feels like how adding more stats and slow-mo to sports might actually be hurting it.

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I don’t think it’s solely KDA, but the weighting for a large KDA definitely seems to be more beneficial for gaining rank. To me it’s very clear, because I’ve had matches where I won the oddball game for my team by holding the ball the entire time, but came in 4th and gotten far less of a gain in rank than the person who got 1st with a large KDA ratio.

I’ve seen similar things in Strongholds and with flag caps in CTF. I’ve had teammates verbally acknowledge and agree they got more than I did for their KDA, despite the fact I had more flag caps or zones captured than they did.

It’s to the point where I’ve seen teammates avoid the oddball in game to get the KDA. That said if this isn’t the case and is just a misconception, then it needs to be cleared up – because a lot of people are thinking / playing this way right now.

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I legit got in onyx match where no went for the ball for the first halve. Its like they were KDA stat blanketing before they could risk touching the ball. I had to double check if it was slayer. It was almost comical.

Trueskill is too true lol

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I agree it’s not intuitive… But I remember Josh Hanke describing why they had to do it. Along the lines of stopping MMRs artificially driving upwards when the system tended to make you the favourite in most games.

The down side is the drift up followed by the reset back. Your actual rank somewhere in between.

Previously games have smoothed this out by either not showing your raw MMR (using softer divisions such as 1 to 50 instead) or cushioning the first drop (but only delaying the inevitable).

I really think that showing the game to game MMR was a mistake. They should just show your division alongside your highest MMR for the season. Maybe add a few subdivisions into Onyx (but military ranks instead of the I to VI of lower divisions).

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I’m 100% for multipliers based on performance that incentives the objective – this would go a long way. I think it would be great to have the feeling of “yeah, we had a bad match and lost, but I really went hard on the flag captures / returns / etc and that wasn’t for nothing.”

Anything that takes the sting out of losing a ton of rank over one game would really improve the experience, I think, for many.

2 Likes
70

They added the cushion in Halo 5 which is what Id expect to happen in this as well. The first de-rank wont hurt as bad which I’m cool with since the game hammers you sometimes for bad matches or lag outs. I can normally flip my play enough after that or I take the night off and come back fresh. Idk at the early days of Halo 5 the ranking seemed good I felt the matches felt more fun once ranked up. Now Halo 5 wasn’t my thing with the built in movements, but ranking up and play felt less stressful.

Halo 2 was super hard in comparison to today IMO. It really took skill, but rank wise it made sense and I knew where I stood.

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71

yeah the poop fix we are gonna get is a derank nerf instead… same thing happen on Halo 5.

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I remember those days. The system was brutal and at times frustrating, but I agree – I always knew why I de-ranked or what was going on, and it was pretty clear what I needed to do to keep going.

There was also that satisfaction of starting from the bottom and working through each number to the top. And I rarely felt like the matchups were wildly disproportionate in skill level, from what I recall.

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lol half the stuff that gave me the edge they built into the sandbox now…call outs, weapon spawns, item spawns, and player spawns.

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Now that you mentioned it I remember the slow MMR climb in the old system. Then a reset would happen. I remember that in Halo 5 and kind of didn’t mind it. See you felt like your where progressing, and once it resets your rank will be more honest again, but at least you felt progression. SR rank doesn’t feel as good just XP collection. So that’s not a fix, I just need an older style MMR system that feels like its for the player not the overall balance. Everyone loves balance so much it balancing its way into boring. Pretty soon it will be only 8 guys online that could keep their onyx somehow lol.

My main point not such a crazy concept someone can be statistically not a great KDA player but a great overall halo player…343

I totally get that some folks want the MMR system to be this hardcore, but all the forms I’m on say otherwise.

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All in all, I think players in theory asked for this balanced of an MMR system. What some of us forgot is that all our matches are balanced grinds now. So you have to work really hard to play well. So good say goodbye to rush of having win streaks or confidence boosts. Since the system wont late matches be that way. I know some guys really like to grind this hard, but with a life and job I’d prefer a little less strict MMR system.

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I imagined these same patterns have always been there. And always will. Maybe they are slightly exaggerated here, and 343 can fix it or hide them better, but they will still be there.

I was happy with the SR system… But there is plenty of scope for a more rewarding one.

Ha!

But the system would do it’s best to spread them bronze to onyx… and if it couldn’t they would all be Gold 6.

I hear you.

Long term team player here.

Firm believer that KD of just over 1 is all you need. Any more suggests selfish play or smurfing.

Hopefully 343 are listening. TrueSkill is great for rank and match making. They need something else to fill the void of grinding / progression.

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I think I may be able to offer some extra insight as I used to have conversations with Josh menke on the forums and twitter during Halo 5. Josh is the guy who helped develop Trueskill2.

So when H5 launched it used Trueskill 1 which is a very rough and ready ranking system. It’s what was used for H3. That was based solely on wins and loses, I won’t go into the details.

Trueskill2 was developed to try and better predict which team will win (which it does do by a significant margin) They did this by instead looking at individual performances and found what metrics were the best predictor for winning. Kills per minute was one (2 kills per minute was deemed to be onyx) There were others I believe but I can’t remember, I think deaths per minute was also a factor. Assists were confirmed not to be a factor.

The system is effectively nothing to do with ranking. It has a set of parameters for each rank level, if it believes you are diamond 1 it will try and keep you at diamond 1. If it believes you’re onyx 1560 it will try and keep you at that level. If you’re currently onyx 1580, wins will gain minimal csr and loses will bring you closer to 1560. The reverse is also true. That’s why you fly up to your cap at the start, losses don’t affect your ranking as it’s trying to get you to your “level”. It will keep changing it’s estimate of what rank you are based on how you perform and against who, it will then try to keep you at this level.

The way to rank up is to play “better” hitting their metrics for whatever rank is above you. In H5 this used to be extremely strict and would take several games before you started to move, they have 100% made some changes to this as it’s more lenient . Winning makes you rank up but the amount gained is related to your personal performance. It’s almost certainly based on kills again and less so on objective.

The problem is the system favors hyper aggressive slayers over support or objective players. I asked Josh could the system be tweaked to also favor support players to rank up as there are multiple playstyles that can win games in halo. His response was essentially no, because the data shows that hyper aggressive slayers are the best predicator to win games, so that playstyle will get to the highest ranks.

There are advantages to TS2. It’s much more accurate at trying to get a 50:50 win rate with close matches. Smurfing is eliminated as it detects immediately what level that person is playing at based on the metrics they are dropping. Boosting isn’t really possible as the player need to be able to hit the metrics and can’t be carried by someone else.

But I also think TS2 sucks. It’s not fun, which should be the most important aspect of a ranking system. You could say “fun” is people getting ranks they don’t deserve, yea and I think most people would prefer that system.

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I wouldn’t say no earned. With the amount of playtime and grinding people put in. TS2 is to harsh on the player in terms of feeling like you are accomplishing something. Idk about you 50/50 split matches isn’t very exciting. At least nerf the derank a tad and boost the win gain a bit. The fact the TS2 caps you is almost mind boggling so many win count for nothing.