Ranked system is getting old, fast

Games Halo Infinite
262

There has to be a “cap” of sorts. Skill is a normal distribution and rank should have to fit into that curve (which 343 get to define via the x-axis).

You should earn the rank, not grind it.

That’s where we definitely need a skill based XP rank to fill the gap.

But for your skill rank, the “leaderboard” should be where you sit on the curve. It’s just a slightly different way of thinking it.

But at the moment, if someone tells me their rank is 2200. I don’t automatically think… wow, you a great player. I think wow, you really ground the system for that. Which is wrong.

I mean, they are obviously a great player. But I should be able to tell that from a rank of 1755 on a proper curve. A number they got by beating those above them and only losing to those above them.

Not a number they “earnt” by grinding out win after win of teams ranked below them. And often because they manipulated the system into giving them teams they could beat.

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On a system that functions properly having an open ended ranking system works fine. Just because someone can grind their rank doesn’t mean that it doesn’t reflect how good they are. It DOES reflect how good they are because they are playing the best ranked players consistently and constantly climbing.

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Only if that system produces results that reflect the actual skill of the population.

If we assume that the skill is a normal distribution (and it should be) then the system is fine as long as the results reflect said curve.

And open ended is fine. All normal curves are open ended. But only 0.13% should “escape” the curve (as defined by 3x standard deviations from the mean).

I don’t think the current system is doing this.

We have players 2400+. That is heading towards Onyx-20. Way too open ended in terms of a skill rank.

It doesn’t reflect for or against them.

And that’s the problem. At some point the number stops telling me much except that they have a lot of time on their hands.

Honestly, if I see a player at 1700 and try to compare them to a player at 2100 - I have no context to how they actually hold up. It’s safe to deduce they are both very good players. But my main thought is that the 2100 player just better at stacking their team.

But more so grinding wins against lesser teams.

That’s how an “open” system works.

If you want to rank and sort the best players consistently - you essentially have to constrain them to the spread of the population curve. The system has to be “closed” to achieve this.

You have to remove the “noise” from the data. The games where the match-making service couldn’t produce. And more so when we know teams are trying to manipulate their squads to take advantage of the system.

I would recalibrate the MMR’s on a, let’s say, weekly basis. Let match-making do it’s thing but only collect data from matches where the spread of skills are meaningful. The grind is to earn and keep your percentile. eg. top 30%, 25%, 20%, 15%, 10%, 5%, 2.5%, 1%., and 0.1%

You could have themed names for each, eg. Champion for 0.1%, or even get all nostalgic with military ranks. To add to the grind you could tie the ranks into streaks… eg. a five star General has been top 1% for five successive weeks.

Or you could have a minimum number of weeks in a certain bracket to qualify for season awards.

Have permanent leader slash honour boards on waypoint for everyone who has achieved a certain % for ‘x’ number of weeks in a row.

And now that you are re-calibrating the curve it is easier to compare the MMR’s between different playlists. You could have awards for reaching minimum % ranks in multiple lists.

265

Having more intrusions on a players rank by an automated system that “recalibrates” is only going to cause problems and prevent people from grinding/playing at a higher rank.

The problem with having a capped Rank is just that, there is a limit to what one can achieve. Look back at halo 3, the cap was 50. Did you have to be decent to get 50? depending on the game type, for sure… Team Slayer vs MLG 50s were vastly different in skill.

The problem still lies within the cap of 50, that the variance of skill within rank 50 players was still massive and at times you would wonder how certain people attained their rank. Having an open rank system fixes this.

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Not really. It’s just a different mindset.

You are working hard to earn your position inside the curve. Jostling instead of sprinting.

Which gives you a much more meaningful number.

And it’s just a number. 343 have complete control over the range. They could make the MMR 0-50,000. The could change how much Onyx players get for a win (they have a few times).

But that number only has meaning if it fits a normal curve (the skill distribution of the population). Anything that changes the shape of that curve (eg. allowing players to grind a higher number by playing lots of games vs lower ranked teams) takes the meaning out of the numbers (in regards to actual ranking).

Yep, as we’ve chatted about before. We need a skill-based XP rank. Now.

That was a problem with Halo 3. The ‘50’ started at Diamond 3 (they kept the other 20 levels hidden). If we spread those levels out evenly across the curve then a 50 would be the 1764+ mark - so very good players.

That’s because people would buy accounts. This wouldn’t be a problem as Infinite would have a proper ‘50’, no rank-locking, and seasonal updates. By the time someone made a 50 to sell the next season would be looming.

267

Yes, I agree :100:

The current rank system feels like playing darts blind folded or rolling dice after the match ends….even if I play well I sometimes get a huge punishment because of the other players rank…this is especially stupid since anyone can create a new account at anytime and abuse the system.

3 Likes
268

Imagine if you lost bro. It wouldn’t have been-1 or -2csr points. Each time I experience a win like that, that is always my immediate reaction. Imagine if we lost? Psh that would be the end of the session most times. The most annoying thing to deal with.

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Right – I’m all caught up. I have read the thread and the paper on TrueSkill2 (and mostly understood the principals). I understand there’s people that are frustrated with the chosen ranking system; however, I do not think there’s any bugs causing it to not function as intended. Maybe to add to the frustration, this is just how it works. I also think there’s been a lot of assumption in this thread, possibly caused by poor naming: “Ranked”, “Rank”, “Ranking.” While TrueSkill2 ranks players, I think there’s a lot of assumption that when you play ranked, you’re playing to rank up and the more you play and win, the more you should rank up. Much like grinding through ranks rather than actually finding where you stack up in the ranks. I get it, that sounds like more fun so maybe using TrueSkill2 was a poor decision by 343i. But be assured, pretty sure it’s not broken… I think. (I also acknowledge that they made changes to the curve not too long ago because it was placing the majority of players in Diamond when they should really be Platinum.)

This thread goes into great detail as to how TrueSkill2 actually works (many thanks to @Ken and @Darwi for that) . For those of you that are frustrated, I want to reinforce a fundamental change in how you should approach ranked in HI as it looks like people are just dismissing it. Note the following:

  • It’s not perfect: TrueSkill2 has 68% accuracy when predicting match outcomes.
  • Skill ceiling: This is impeding further progression, especially for top tier Onyx players, but given that this is stack ranking, it makes sense… but could have a better implementation or solution.
  • Your rank is more heavily weighted by your first majority of games.
  • You’re not supposed to be able to grind out a bunch of wins and rank up consistently. You’re initially playing to find where you stack up, and then you’re basically playing to keep your rank rather than increase it, UNLESS you actually get better at the game!

I’m currently Platinum in Solo/Duo. Initially I was put at Gold 2 (which I felt was a mistake due to many years of playing Halo); however, HI is very different and I’d been playing MCC, not 5, up until the release of HI, and not very regularly at that. I shouldn’t have expected to be ranked much higher in the first place. Since then, I’ve been playing regularly, I’ve learned the weapon and player spawns, how to traverse each map to effectively live to fight another day, learned how to use each weapon to its best efficiency, improved my accuracy, and overall KDA. As such, my rank (or place in the ranks) has increased. I’m literally a much better player than I was when I was assigned Gold 2, not just winning, but also placing first more frequently.

I think I still haven’t hit my ceiling and who knows, maybe I’ll hit Diamond before the season is out. I’m also going to see where Crossplay puts me given my improvements. I’ve currently played 6 out of the 10 games to get my initial rank with the following stats:

  • W5 - L1 (83%)
  • K/D Ratio 2.00
  • Placed 1st in 3/6

I agree that it would be great if there was another type of ranking system in place. I hope 343i continues to work on it or introduce new ways to progress. BP is OK but again, you get stuck at 100. If you’re ranked Onyx and max out the BP, why continue playing competitively? Yea, it’s fun to play with friends, but 343 is shooting themselves in the foot not giving the more competitive players something more to aim for. More reasons to play Halo rather than switch to some other game. Playing to maintain your rank might be fun for some, but if I continue to play better and ever hit Onyx I’m likely to stop playing ranked until the next season. As a recreational player with little time on my hands, what’s the point in trying to further that? We need more ranked playlists to be honest. That would at least help with the issue of reaching the ceiling.

Bottom line for those of you complaining that it’s broken, it’s not! You’re just not as good as you think you are when stacked up against others. Get better at the game! Lucid actually just released a video where he gives Sean W tips. There’s always room for improvement, even in the smallest aspects. Give this a watch and see if after some more practice, and then hitting ranked, you don’t start improving: h-t-t-p-s://youtu.-be/_x3_l_yhKPg (strip out the -)

1 Like
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I disagree with this.

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If only more people would do the same.

:heart_eyes:

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Lol you played whopping 6 games and came to the conclusion it is working. Just wow. Play at least 100+ ranked games and give a more informed opinion.

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Try again. Start with reading the whole post this time, @SiLVi_I_Be

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Still only played 27 games and just broke onyx on crossplay. And claiming it’s working as intended, maybe it is for the average Joe. If thats the case there is no point in playing once you hit onyx. Doesn’t change the fact they need to change it if they want to retain players. Having other playlist would be pointless If there is no point past Onyx. Need to give players a working system that motivates to climb to the top 100-200 players. Once you push past 1700ish and also adding a specific input like MnK you will get plat teammates, cause “balance/fair”. Creating a huge skill gaps and ruining the game if you are looking for quality matches. End up having to hold another players hand and micro manage while performing at the same time. That’s just not fun. So I don’t buy this BS the matchmaker/ ranking system is fine. It’s sad you can find more quality matches in pug groups and running customs vs playing ladder. :smiley:

276

So, I agree somewhat with you but only partial.

I’ve read the TrueSkill 2 papers three times now just because the mathematical calculations where pretty hard to understand and I had to filter out the difference between Trueskill and TrueSkill 2.

I do think the system isn’t optimized to it’s fully potential yet, mainly die to the fact that losses and wins get a whole other rank point distribution. As in if you win you’ll get 5 - 10 CSR and if you lose minus 50+

I actually believe that it’s not the TrueSkill2 system that’s broken but the way matches are made. I also trully believe that whenever the same ranks are matched against each other a lot of the problems would be solved.

But also… this adjustment would only work whenever the hit registration, rubber banding and stupid stuff like that gets fixed.

277

Agreed. TrueSkill2 works as advertised.

Ideally a ranking system would be fed lots of high quality game results. Regular games above and below your station so that it can start to sort everyone into a nice ordered structure. The way to do this is with regular tournaments.

Instead what we get are players/teams who dominate a local server and then get way too many games vs teams ranked below them. This means that most games they play just give them padding CSR without any meaningful change in their MMR.

The problem is further exacerbated when people start stacking their teams to maximise the number of games vs lower ranked sides.

The end result is player’s with MMR’s heading towards 2500 (when the upper limit should be much closer to 1800).

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gyazo.com/00e8d662b53f343ba5a3819502b9075b

You were saying?

1 Like
279

You do realize there are people who consistently outperform and still lose a ton of CSR thanks any number of issues plaguing the game, from desync to badly matched teammates…?

280

You’re clearly a good player and you can see this reflected in your rank history. In Crossplay, you’ve gone up 93 points and continue to trend upwards. Checking your last 10 games where predictions are available, one was 50/50 and you won, you won 3 where it was predicted that you wouldn’t. The other 6 you were already predicted to win.

It’s definitely not perfect, especially the matching, and more so at the Onyx level. People are fighting for individual CSR points when the stat shouldn’t even be revealed, but if you consistently win more games when you’re predicted to lose or that are 50/50, you see CSR increase.

Where do you think you should be when stacked up? If you just want your CSR to go up when you win and evenly when you lose, that’s not TrueSkill2. That’s another ranking system you’re after. Maybe that is the answer. I’m not here to defend the decisions of 343, but the ranking system isn’t busted, you just don’t like it. That’s a valid opinion that a number of people share. I’m not a fan either. I recall having much more fun with the system in Halo 2 and 3.

Your win ratio is great and with continued play I think you’ll continue to increase; however, your K/D, which is also taken into account, is bouncing around a lot, giving you a 1.15 overall. It’s inconsistent which will detriment your overall rank. When you look at players ~200 CSR above you that have approximately the same number of games under their belt, you can see their K/D and average KDA is higher than yours, and more consistent.

My previous comment:

You’re just not as good as you think you are when stacked up against others

Again, where do you think you should stack up? 100, 200 CSR more? Checkout those players stats and you’ll see that you’re actually accurately portrayed, taking number of games into account. You can see the difference in consistency across the board. If you expect to be 200 CSR higher, you need to play 200 CSR better overall. Not just a game here and a game there, it has to be consistent for a period of time. Whether that’s good or not? I dunno. Seems like less fun to me, but it will stack rank you accurately on a long enough time period and it forces people to actually get better to rank up, rather than get lucky in a couple of games (not that you fall into this category).

Yea man. This s**t happens, but don’t you think it’s happening to… I dunno, everyone else? This evens the playing field across the board making it a null point. Yes, these issues should be addressed, but as long as they affect everyone, it doesn’t make any difference overall.

281

I just want to increase rank so I can play vs better players consistently. The problem with using KD is it isn’t justified to what the game requires, and that is objective play. I can be selfish and just slay and go super positive every game, but the system is punishing you for playing the game properly.

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282

Yea, the matchmaking isn’t great. It doesn’t give you the opportunities you want but on the other side, those players want the same thing. You should be playing better and worse players as evenly as possible, but when trying to find matches as quickly as possible, it’s not possible as often as anyone would like.

Hopefully 343i listens to feedback, determines what the majority of the player base is asking for, and isn’t afraid to make adjustments.