Ranked progression is confusing and inconsistent

I have watched this type of rank placement several times, from Unranked to Diamond and Unranked to Platinum. Those streamers maintained their rank and continued to move upward in the days that followed.

That isn’t exactly the case, however. The forum has had reports whereby gamers lost 9 or 10 Unranked matches, had a negative K/D, and they still were ranked high. There is something wrong in the algorithm.

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It depends your opponents. The highest you can place is also D1 right now I believe. There’s a lot of factors that go intoit, and sometimes even players that place daimond have a real skill rating much higher but it won’t place them higher. So the more they consistently do well, win, etc etc their rank sky rockets where another person may barely scrape a few rough wins here and there and be close to where they’re really at.

Some people can have good matches and place a bit higher than they may really be, and some can have bad matches and place under where they should be. As matches go on it will adjust though.

This is quite possible with the “algorithm”.

It’s going to come down to the rank you went in with, the quality of your opponents in the losses vs those with the wins, and the K:D in the crucial matches.

If you went in as Diamond/Onyx (there is a suspicion that your social ranking was used as a seeding rank)… won your key matches vs teams below or equal to your rank… but then lost to teams higher than you… you can easily come out of placement with a higher rank then your W/L would indicate.

The key here is did any of those players, despite their results, end up being placed in a rank they weren’t comfortable competing at?

Yep. Some of those D1 may actually be D1 and now have a narrow skill curve. They will need to work hard to rank up as the system will tend to resist change.

Some may be D1 but the system isn’t as confident and they have a wider skill curve. They could move up (or down) if results go their way.

Others will internally be higher D or even Onyx. Wins will drag them quite quickly towards their higher ranking.

I appreciate your insight man. I hope they do a details sticky about the ranking system soon so there’s a quick link for everyone. As it is now we can’t even view old forum topics about the last ranking system we had in 5. Like the threads won’t even load.

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Yes. Very frustrating. There were some insightful threads there with lots of responses from 343.

Yeah that’s true skill just leaves players feeling like there’s a little to no reward for all the grinding effort and playtime that goes in. Wins should count for more no matter how balanced or unbalanced or whatever reason why the system thinks you shouldn’t get credit for your win. Not to mention all these squid onyx players out there that cause massive losses when the system it thinks that you lost to a worst team, and then super de ranks you. I’m always been the objective guy for my squad. I have insane ball time, flag grab, flag secures, and steals…all that counts for little to nothing because of true skill ranking. There are many things that happened during a match that contribute to a win in often when I play with my buddies it’s a collective for the success. This “true skill” is not rewarding players for these efforts. Especially when you reach the supposed rank wall that you should be at, and then you end up in the endless cycles of up and down in the ranking which kind of feels like an endless cycle of depression.

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Adding some additional thoughts. I’ve been playing ranked consistently now for weeks, on Open: Crossplay at Diamond 4/5 and in Solo/Duos around Diamond 3/4. Some of this is anecdotal, but what I’ve noticed:

  • In general: wins at my level move me up a bit, but losses often move my rank down a lot. It feels like I can spend 3 hours slowly grinding toward D6, only to go halfway down in rank within an hour over a few losses.

  • Players who hold the oddball for their team tend to get less gains in ranked progression than their teammates on a win. My only working theory is this is due to their KDA going negative while holding the ball.

  • There are games where I’ve had a modest KDA, had more zone / flag captures than teammates, and had less gains in rank than someone who did extremely well on KDA, with zero flags / less zones captured.

  • The way the system matches ranks is often inconsistent. At D4/5 I’ve matched with Plat/Gold/etc players who are paired with Onyx. My only conclusion is they are in a party together for this to make any sense.

  • There are many different views on what is ranking us up in this playlist. Occaisionally I’ll team up with someone from a match who had a mic, and they’ll be just as confused as I am on what moves rank upward.

  • One theory I see a lot is ranked uses an expectation-based algorithm: Win against a team you were not expected to win against, you get a lot. Lose against a team you were expected to win against, you lose a lot.

  • In line with the point above, the game has a collective MMR for each team that factors into how much is gained or lost. Teams with a higher, total MMR are expected to perform better.

On that last point, a friend of mine and I discovered something a couple nights ago I had ZERO idea about. He’s a PC player and I’m on console. Apparently PC players can see each team’s MMR on TEAM LINEUP in the bottom left of the post game menu, and console players cannot.

I’m not sure why, but I checked my settings on console and I cannot find any way to turn this on. Another friend of mine on console could not see each team’s MMR either. I feel like this would really help clarify the results of progression gain / loss after each match.

Has anyone else noticed this as well?

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I’m on PC and I’ve only seen the collective MMR stat once in BTB. Never seen it again after that one match.

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yup, very good post. I‘m playing solo and i’m at a point where it is just frustrating. started at D5, right underneath the N. 4 matches, 1 win… now I’m almost D4.

wheres the point in keep playing?

edit: another win and not even close getting back what I lost even though the last game was against an Onyx. It’s so freaking pointless:D

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The more I think about it, the more I don’t like a system that places players where it thinks they should go. Not only was a significant portion of the player base put into Diamond 1, which I think is contributing to the huge skill disparities in matchups, the sense of satisfaction one gets from going from the bottom to the top is removed all together.

I play Rocket League, and this is a criticism I have with it (as well as with modern gaming). I’ll start a season at Gold, and then get to Platinum, but not further. I’d much rather have the feeling of satisfaction I get having conquered Bronze and Silver first, then achieve Gold, instead of skipping it all together and then never moving much further beyond.

People want the feeling of moving forward, not feeling stuck.

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I wonder if the team MMR stat is a bug then – something “behind the scenes” showing up when it shouldn’t. When my friend sent me the screenshot of team MMR under TEAM LINEUP – it stood in stark contrast to anything I’ve seen before on that page. I haven’t seen it once on console.

Yea I’m pretty sure the appearance of it was some sort of bug.

thats it… one effect is the appearance if smurf accounts which just destroys the lower tier player base.

right now infinite offers absolutely no motivation to play further.

the great gameplay ist outmatched by desync, broken melee and maps/modes i am forced to play.

Additionally i dont give a -Yoink!- about the mediocre cosmetics. So there is no thrill in playing. losing means a drastic dropdown, winning a minimal gain IF the kd is above average.

All in all another flawed system provided by 343

edit: i was going for onyx completely singlehanded, just like in h5. But apparently, 343 wants me in diamond 5.

That’s on the player. You can’t just grind a higher rank. You earn it by getting better.

Sounds like you need an XP rank to play for.

Doesn’t… and simply can’t work that way.

If an Diamond team beats a Bronze team (extreme example) the system shouldn’t promote the winners to Onyx.

If you lost ‘massive’ rank… it is because you lost to a team you shouldn’t have.

I’m sure you gladly accepted big rank gains when your team won a game it wasn’t expected to.

Sounds like you are the type of player I would love to run out with

But overall all those efforts do add up to you win / loss… and finally TrueSkill rank.

That’s also natural. You have your rank… But it will fluctuate with form, luck with team mates, and game selection.

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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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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

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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

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