As with most things 343 does, the current ranking system only works for pros. For casual gamers, it’s a joke. It’s not fun. It’s not rewarding. My ranked experience is this: Win 3 games go up a smidge, lose 1 game and all your progress is gone. Repeat. The fun in ranked is grinding up having an opportunity to level up. TrueSkill 2 is designed to keep you in place based on your skill and when you improve your game you can then level up… That system makes NO SENSE unless you are playing with the same squad of 4 every time. Single players don’t stand a chance. I’m not getting better either. I’ve hit my ceiling. So based off this system I am forever stuck in Diamond 5.
Also, GET RID OF THE SESSION PROGRESS. Just show me how much I go up or down every single game.
343 have tried to keep ranked inclusive for teams / squads - but the abuse is increasing. Stacking squads, having a low rank player to sacrifice (quit) if you are losing, and so on.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they put a limit on the ranges of rank you can squad with.
The problem is that they have lost control of the top end of town.
If the population’s skill is a normal distribution then the MMR should have a ceiling around 1800.
But it’s an open ended system and with manipulation we are seeing way too many players going past this. Some 2200+. And they can do that because the nature of matchmaking is that the pool of opponents has to be drawn from what is available at the time from the local servers.
So at some point they start capping the CSR gains and weighting for losses.
Ideally it would still be a struggle to push your MMR up… but everyone should be struggling to push it towards 1800. Not above and beyond.
The simplest way to do this would be a regular reset - where everyone’s MMR is normalised back to the ideal population curve. On a daily or weekly basis. But this would be a very hard sell to the general populace.
No personal experience… but lots of empathy here.
No you shouldn’t have. As I mentioned above the natural ceiling of MMR should be around 1750-1800, the equivalent of Onyx 6 is the tier system continued past Diamond.
The fact that so many people are outside the normal distribution curve shows that the system isn’t working.
And it’s the same for everyone. 343 are trying to contain the problem by limiting CSR gains and weighting losses.
You (and others) are trying to go where the system shouldn’t let you.
At your level matchmaking simply can’t provide enough challenging games for you to rank up.
The fact that you have a near “maximum” MMR and a win rate of 60% are huge alarm bells that it’s broken.
The people defending the system are doing so as a general ranking and matchmaking tool. Nobody is defending the actual numbers it is spitting out. People are manipulating things (squads, quitters, kill farming) to grind the number outside it’s functional range.
The metric is kills per minute - which is fundamentally different from KD or KDA. Does this change the perspective?
And keep in mind their MMR may be at a different point relative to their CSR… so they will have a different pull or push on their CSR when the game result comes in.
Yep. It’s a pretty universal frustration. We need something different. Leave a hidden MMR to do it’s job and give us a skill based XP to grind.
Halo 5 was similar. Obviously hidden for everyone except Onyx… but when you did get to Onxy there was a fixed CSR gain for a win and a weighting against losses. It wasn’t quite as volatile as Infinite - they have obviously tried tweaking some of the parameters - but it was inherently the same. But what we didn’t have then is this insane need to push your MMR towards 2500. That is new.
Actually no. It gets more and more broken the further you head towards pro (whatever that means).
If your 3 wins were against equal or lower ranked teams you don’t deserve to rank up. Your CSR may have gone up - but your internal MMR doesn’t (and shouldn’t) go up. So when you lost (to a team ranked below you) your CSR is matched back to your MMR.
If you wanted to keep your “borrowed” CSR you needed to beat a team ranked above you.
But matchmaking sometimes struggles to find teams ranked above you - especially if you have a couple of good players running as a squad.
But isn’t this the very definition of what a RANKING system should do?
I think what you are requesting is an XP based system to grind. I really think they need to add one. With weightings for medals, objective scores, and wins.
They do. There are plenty of solo players in Onyx.
But it is a team game. If you want to rise above your “personal” skill level… you need a team to run with.
Hopefully they will add ranked FFA soon.
And there is nothing wrong with that. I dream of being Diamond 5
But yes, if that is your skill ceiling, it is going to take a lot of time and effort to move up. That is the nature of all skills.
So, this is what happened today (something that happens to me regularly)
(I wanted to add a really nice screenshot, but I can’t as a new user)
Me - Diamond 4
2 of my teammates - Diamond 6
Random player - Diamond 5
Lost a CTF game on Bazaar 2:1
My stats (Diamond 4) 23/21 - I am getting -14 CSR
1 of my teammates (Diamond 6) 25/19 - -1 CSR
1 of my teammates (Diamond 6) 23/23 - -1 CSR
Random player (Diamond 5) 10/28 - -7 CSR over two losses in a row (half of what I lost in a single game)
Please, is there anyone at 343 that will explain to me why the game punishes me the most every single day that I play with my Diamond 6/ Onyx teammates? I really don’t understand how the lowest ranked player can be penalized the most when having comparable (and sometimes better) contributions to the team effort.
People mention MMR often, I don’t care what my hidden MMR is, cause that’s not something that you see and get/lose in game. Game shows me my CSR and I want to know why am I always penalized
I don’t know about 343… But it’s an age old problem. The lowest ranked member in a squad will always be up against it.
If you think about it… a team you would be comfortable against would be slaughtered by your higher ranked team mates.
There is no other way to do it. Square pegs and round holes.
As for your “share” of the contribution… it’s hard to quantify that into a simple algorithm. As far as we know the only significant weighting is for kills per minute (not KD).
And it’s hard to compare CSR changes between players. It depends on the MMR, the shape of your skill curve (narrow or wide), and a few other weightings thrown in.
A lot of games use a CSR over the top of your MMR.
And you’re not be being penalized. It works the same for everybody.
I think they made a mistake giving out CSR for wins of no significance (when you are the higher ranked team). I assume it was to give a sense of progression… but it does more harm than good when a loss takes it away.
SBMM has no place in ranked. It’s hot garbage and was only created because of whiny babies with big egos complaining about “carrying” their team. You can thank them for ruining our Ranked experience.
If it is like that, it is a system that has no place in Halo. Halo has always fundamentally been about team play. Assists, to me, count just as much as kills. If I have a good team, we are team shotting the other team and applying pressure the whole game. Another useful stat is damage dealt. Even if they don’t convert to kills you are applying pressure to the enemy team. Halo has more depth than kills per minute. That is honestly why a basic win/loss system should really matter. I would gladly trade playing against people that are boosting in order to have a ranking system feel fair.
I actually don’t think this is totally true for Halo 5… In Fall 2021 (https://www.halowaypoint.com/halo-5-guardians/leaderboards) season the highest ranked player is 2417. That is only ~80 CSR from the highest ranked player in Crossplay right now according to Halo Tracker. I think Halo Infinite’s ranking system is just broken. Simple as that.
Also, I guess just as a side note, Halo 5 also had Champion rank which was the top 200 players in each playlist. So, in a sense, 343 is incentivizing the uncapped grind of ranked to be the top 200 players. I think in Onyx, the CSR is intentionally uncapped so that people can fight for prestige at that point.
I do appreciate the empathy <3 Just wish a 343 employee would get in here and comment on the situation. Radio silence is not the way to maintain players. My play sessions are getting shorter and shorter. And I was looking past some gameplay issues like desync and beatdowns not working etc. but now since every match requires me to be sweating to gain that 1 CSR, I can’t afford to die behind walls to desync or not have my beatdowns register.
The efficacy of K/minute is detailed in the TrueSkill2 discussion paper.
And it makes sense. High kill rates would suggest that you are above the skill pool of the game you are playing.
It can be used as tool to help players rank up faster. And the key is “faster”. Because as you near your actual rank the increased quality of your opponents will drop your kill rates back to normal. So it shouldn’t be pushing your rank higher than it is.
The important part here is that it only contributes to Slayer type rankings. Or, at least, I’m desperately hoping that it does.
You are preaching to the choir here.
I would love to see damage and all is various ratios (for, against, effective, escaped, initial, final, etc) explored.
Much better than K/D.
Honestly, read the paper. It’s trying to be exactly what you are asking for.
Sadly that just tells me that the current system hasn’t fixed the problem.
At least they saw the folly that was Champion and abandoned it.
Yep. Josh Menke was great with H5.
The mindset needs to be more that you are sweating to maintain your CSR.
I don’t know where this incessant focus and grind on MMR comes from. It has to stop… for the love of all that is ranking we need simple tiers and divisions. No CSR value.
People used to be very satisfied with a simple label of 50. Nobody spent hours trying to manipulate the system into making themselves 50.1
Too me, Champion was the “50” label from H3 kinda… BUT, I would LOVE for a 1-50 ranking system. That would be ideal to me. Don’t know why they ever changed it. And once you achieve the 50 ranking, it stays on your profile forever.
Unfortunately, I think modern gaming has influenced ranking systems to be season based and have bronze - diamond and then some type of uncapped rating.
I disagree heavily with this. If I wanted to maintain my CSR, I should’ve just stopped playing at 1908. That would’ve been the most advantageous for me. A game should not encourage me to not play it. That is very counterproductive for all parties involved. I should be sweating to rank up and improve. That, to me, is the point of a competitive playlist: to compete.
I was also looking around and somehow missed this but I think just before the holiday break, 343 released a rank patch that I think is the cause for all this frustration. About a month ago is when I hit my peak and I didn’t feel this frustration before. I was losing and winning reasonable amounts of CSR. But then, after that patch it seems, I am now losing way more than I am gaining. Here is the post if anyone is curious:
Here is an excerpt I found interesting and pretty telling that they ****** up the ranking system:
Particularly that last sentence interests me. It may prove your point that the CSR has drifted up more than they would’ve liked and they are trying to reconcile it now. Unfortunately, I think they may have tweaked it too much or something cause this has been my worst ranked Halo experience so far. Seems they are failing to “be careful not to make changes that will have a negative effect on players who have already achieved these … CSRs”.
They need to have a forfeit option. It sucks for everybody when people quit/lag out and the team that’s down has to suffer through a capture the flag massacre. Just copy Rocket Leagues forfeit option.
I think it already was supposed to be getting a reset after every season.
But i hope they will get SBMM out of ranked, SBMM is something for social, not ranked. In ranked people with the same rank should face each other, otherwise skilled players would just get stuck in lower ranks, since they will keep fighting against higher ranks with noobs as teammates and thus getting a hard time to win.
My ranked match just now (i only played it for the challenge, between brackets the k/d in the match):
unranked (10-14) + gold-5 (7-16) + gold-3 (5-15) + silver-5 (13-6) against platinum-4 (12-12) + Platinum-4 (11-10) + platinum-4 (12-8) + platinum-4 (15-5).
(i am the silver-5 one. I was placed in silver, because in the first week when i got my placement i got dc’d a couple of matches, got lag in a couple and the AA didn’t work yet and i rarely play ranked since then).
My experience with ranked has been frustrating. I played mostly quick play for ages, as I haven’t really played a halo properly since halo 3. So it came back to me quite fast and now I do pretty well in quick play. But then I jump to ranked, my first ten matches weren’t great. My teams were so bad in at least half of them I did well just to go positive and rack up a bit of objective time, so I got put in plat 3. I’ve ranked up within a handful of games to plat 5. But I have to say, the ranks of the people I am playing against have absolutely no correlation to my rank at all. I recently played a game against an Onyx, a Diamond 4 (onyx in open), and a diamond 2 (Diamond 6 in open). So the obvious question is why am I playing against people who are 13 ranks above me….
If the above was rare I would understand it, but I play against Diamonds more often than I play against platinums. But it never works the other way. I’ve never played against a gold for example. Which is causing my progress to slow, because my team lose, and I don’t progress even though I topped my team.
I don’t know, I love the gameplay in infinite, but I really don’t feel the ranking makes any sense.
Also, if what people are saying about my quick play performance being considered for ranked is true, then that is some BS. If it is true then at least it would make sense why my matches are all against people way above my ‘rank’.
Don’t want to put a downer on the game though. Gameplay wise it is the best halo since 3 in my opinion. Hopefully this stuff gets worked out.
Yeah, as I understand it, this has more to do with the hidden MMR underneath – which begs the question of why we even have visible CSR if it doesn’t match the underlying MMR.
I completely agree with you and the post above yours. The way the game matches people is bizarre and makes little sense – you shouldn’t be playing against people 13 ranks above yours.
I played a few ranked matches with a friend last night who took about a month long break from the game, and I am pretty sure he got Onyx before that patch. Having jumped back in tonight, he repeatedly commented on how much harder everything felt and asked what changed. Granted, maybe it was re-acclimating to Infinite – but he’s a solid player overall.
Initially people were saying “it’s so easy to get into Onyx.” Now I hear everywhere how people feel incredibly stuck / punished with where they are at in the ranked system.
But remember that you go into placement games with your previous MMR. You are not “starting again”. It’s just the shape of your skill curve that changes. By making it wide they increase it’s volatility and give you a fresh chance to re-rank.
It’s the opposite of Halo 3’s rank locking (where the curves got very narrow).
The MMR is “hidden” because it isn’t really a number. It’s a range of numbers across a normal curve. The system technically never knows your actual rank - just the mean and variance across where it is most likely to be.
The CSR just converts the average of this range into a displayable rank; 1 to 50, Bronze to Onyx, or a number.
Most of the time these are the same. The mean of the MMR will be the CSR number.
But it’s useful for games to allow them to temporarily separate. The classic example is when you have just earnt a new rank - and the system will buffer your CSR for the next few games so you don’t lose it on the very next game.
Halo seems to allow them to drift apart in two main circumstances.
After placement your CSR is set to the left hand side of your MMR curve (to a maximum of Diamond 1). This gives the system a chance to breathe as it takes closer to 50 games to accurately find your rank as opposed to the 10 you get in placement (although it’s amazing how it ballparks you so quickly). If you play well your CSR will quickly catch up.
If you beat a lower ranked team you are given a small amount of CSR - but not MMR. If you go on a winning streak of such games your CSR can drift away from your MMR… only to come crashing down when you lose a game and the system resets your CSR back to your MMR.
The matchmaking has to make do with what is available.
But I think it’s exacerbated by higher level players squadding up with lower ranked players - either playing with mates, or as a strategy to manipulate the opposition’s rankings and help them rank up.
But also, 343 did publish some early rank distributions which showed the top end of town was relatively bloated - particularly Diamond. They went on to further limit the amount of CSR gains to rectify this.
But I think they have a lot more work in front of them. If you think of the population as a normal curve - the ceiling should be an MMR of 1800 (Onyx 6). Only 0.13% of the population should be above this - and not by much. Yet we are seeing players moving well beyond 1800 with W/L ratios of 70-80% and KD’s above 1. The best player at the moment is 2400+ which is equivalent to Onyx 19.
343 need to normalise the players back into the Bronze-1 to Onyx-6 range.
