/rant. How is matchmaking this bad? Whats the point of MMR?

Easier for smurfs and boosters to run amuck.

Games will be far less balanced on a consistent basis.

How long would smurf accounts work? 10 games at most? As opposed to what, 5 with mmr? Negligible at best.

As stated earlier, they’re already unbalanced on a consistent basis. Yet H3 managed to do it just fine matching by ranks and its regarded as the best Halo ranking system to date. Which obviously means 343 would 100% not use anything like that. You wouldnt get a random 50 at lvl 35 along with a lvl 10.

Depends, if a player ranks in Bronze, then they would take ages to get to Onyx. Can smurf the whole way like people did in H3 back in the day. Destroying everything in their path as they do it. You need a CSR cap per game too (it’s 15 now I think) as if players have some great games or RNG luck games then they’ll super inflate their CSR and have some super unbalanced games after that. If you have giant gains, you need to have giant losses to balance. You’d be able to smurf from like 600 bronze for 60 games until you got to Onyx.

I think for most players they are pretty consistent. I haven’t seen many profiles with under 40% winrate and any with over 60%. Most are 45-55% which is perfect range really. I rarely have one sided games in ranked. Almost all games end user close but that is of course anecdotal to myself and not representative of the wider community.

Have to disagree where. If it was balanced I wouldn’t have been able to win 150 straight games in Team Slayer on my level 50. The games weren’t even close. I even got perfections. I have to fight tooth and nail to break even in Halo Infinite usually. Halo 3 had an extremely bad deranking/boosting problem, new ranked playlists always failed due to the system, there was some serious rank lock going on, smurfs were rampant and dominated for about 60-80 games before they hit 40. Level 50 games were unbalanced because some players were actually hidden 70s.

True but a level 35 and a level 10 would play two level 35s and probably get panned. You couldn’t play with worse friends in Halo 3 either. A level 35 could also play a level 45. The best thing about Halo 3 was teams played teams.

People are already on here all the time complaining about smurfs and boosters with the current SBMM so I don’t see how it would be any different.

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They are less effective in this system than in previous Halo titles. They are still effective initially, but for far less games as their MMR increases dramatically after only a handful of games. Forcing them into more even matches quicker.

Personally I think they should implement some more anti-smurf/booster stuff into the mix like a minimum number of games played, wins, hours played and kills before a player can play ranked. Little excessive, but it would work.

Especially with it being free to play.

In a free to play game preventing smurfs/boosters should not be a reason to make the SBMM horrible. It doesn’t matter if it figures it out faster if people can just go create a new account anytime they want and keep on smurfing/boosting.

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That’s very true.

Although personally I’m fine with how sbmm works in Infinite. I actually made a topic before Infinite released asking that they don’t have sbmm in BTB. But after playing a bunch of BTB I’m fine with where it is at.

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My experience has been that it is okay for people who play by themselves.

But if you play in groups with friends, it is really bad. I don’t know why. It probably isn’t even a matter of making the SBMM looser. It’s probably something else that is going on… Maybe with it overcompensating for the higher ranked players in the group. I don’t really know. I just know it’s bad for a lot of people and the antisocial nature of it makes people not want to play.

It’s definitely consistently difficult for the worst player in the group and consistently easy for the best player in the group. Either way the games aren’t fun but unfortunately I’d say that’s the case for practically any game with friends if there is a large skill gap.

When my friends and I LAN we have to play certain games and on games like Halo I have to be severely handicapped every game. My friends are the same on FIFA, they absolutely obliterate me so if we play they have to have a half star team and me five and they still destroy me.

My only solution is when I play with friends I play on a separate account and use mouse and keyboard which im awful with.

I don’t think there’s a good solution. Either the party of friends is punished or the enemy team is. There doesn’t quite seem a good answer. I think maybe sack off the middle ground stuff? Don’t use 2 plat to balance 1 onyx one bronze. If it’s one onyx one bronze make them play one onyx one bronze.

Uh no… That would be expected but that’s not how it works. Rather it is consistently miserable for everyone. The highest skilled player is just expected to carry the entire team. 4 Diamonds will beat an Onyx and 3 Golds the majority of the time.

The weird thing is, the system knows it isn’t a fair match but it still continues to do it. When we go back and look at the game stats, it gives us somewhere between a 12% to 20% chance to win. Yet those are the matches the current SBMM thinks are appropriate.

(The issue is even worse in BTB.)

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MMR is now only used for bragging points it seems.
Rainbow Six also does shoddy matchmaking.

Ah I have had the opposite experience in social (don’t play ranked with friends), whenever I’ve played with worse friends my games have been significantly easier.

The lopsided games are usually a result of poor matchmaking suitability. The game aims to find 50/50 but stretches outside of that when it is not available. So in an ideal world you would get those 50/50 games but if you’re not then that’s very poor of the matchmaking system. Personally id rather wait longer to get more 50/50 games than quick games that are one sided.

Something the H3 system did just fine. If someone made a new account, they got to 50 pretty quickly if they were good enough for it. I myself made a few H3 accounts for extra 50s and after several games made it up to the 40s.

You make it sound like the majority of players were either deranking or smurfing. Plenty of people just played, it wasnt nearly as widespread as you portray.

It did have a +/- range of 5 or 10 i believe. And before the game you knew what you were up against. You also knew in general because of the transparent parameters i just mentioned which had a cap. Whereas you could be Plat 6 here and go against people much higher for the sake of mmr balancing and filling spots if you search solo or with a friend.

Nailed it.

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I’m not sure you are helping your argument by pitching against a simple fact.

Your MMR is represented as a curve. Not a simple number.

It’s a simple fact.

Not doo doo.

You could argue there is a better way to do it. But not against what it is.

It would be more transparent.

But those old fashioned rank sorting systems were problematic. They were slow and created a lot of unbalanced games (especially early).

ELO type systems can find your rank MUCH faster. So use them. Even if people find them a bit confusing. It’s like a microwave vs a conventional oven. You don’t have to understand how it works - just be happy it does.

They don’t have to “try” and get the numbers to match. They do it naturally as that’s how the system works.

And for each playlist? That’s a different subject altogether.

TrueSkill2 supports global sharing of data between playlists - but different offsets for each playlist. Each one has their own curve (mean and standard deviation). It was more obvious in Halo 5 where there were different ranked playlists.

Depends?

In most cases it’s just a window dressing option. Both 1-50 and Bronze-Onyx are just different CSR representations of the same MMR. Yes, even H3 had a TrueSkill MMR curve under the hood.

I think what most people want from H3 are the hidden levels. They felt like a God getting a ‘50’ even though it was merely the same level as a D3 in H5/HI.

That’s difficult. TrueSkill2 is the best option for ranking. It has an MMR curve. Get over it.

Agree, but different topic.

We have to do the same on our weekly Halo nights. Ranges from Gold to Onyx.

Even if it’s just telling my son’s they can’t use the power weapons or camo.

In H5 we used scripting to even out the matches. Trying to apply extra health and shields to those who were struggling. We plan on doing the same with Halo Infinite Forge - using in-game K/D dynamically.

If you had a playlist were players could enter and their attributes changed with their K/D; health, shields, damage, and equipment use. Every time you spawn the game uses your current K/D to work out what you start with. You could have everyone running around on the same playing field. Bronze and Onyx running free.

But the problem is that the same players who want SBMM taken away so that they can show off to their buddies how good they are… also don’t want to talk about levelling the playing field.

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But they don’t… thats the problem. Its not uncommon for Diamond ranks to play against 1700- 2000 Onyx. Thats obvious evidence that they dont naturally match. But at least its a litter faster as you suggest.

But maybe i should give 343 the benefit of the doubt with the way they made this the best Halo launch ever, right?

Along with the weak store week in and week out and no cumulative rank.

But they got this right… I’m sure. Sorry, I’d have more faith in their system if they didnt fumble just about everything else.

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The problem is that you are going in with a team of wide ranging rank.

The system has to do what it can with what is available.

And the system knows that wide ranges make unstable games, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it preferentially looks for other squads with wide ranges to put them together (a bit of “you brought this on yourself”).

What’s unlucky for you is that there are a lot of Onyx players out there pairing with Silver and Gold players to milk rank. A lot of them. And it seems to be getting worse.

So your set up, with mates who just genuinely want to play together, are suffering because a lot of people out there are trying to game the system. So you are hitting a lot of Onyx players (who shouldn’t be teaming up with lower ranks). And probably a lot of Smurfs.

I don’t know what the answer is. Except to put a limit on the range of squads. I want that to stop the people you are playing. Unfortunately those who are genuinely just trying to play together (such as yourselves) lose out.

No doubt that Infinite has issues.

I’m with you.

But I think what you are experiencing is driven by two things;

  1. Ranking systems don’t work as well with wide ranges of skill.

  2. Players (not 343) are rorting the system. The easiest way up is to get a couple of Onyx players, a mid-range smurf, and a lowly ranked sandbagger. A lot of people seem to be doing it and that’s who you are being matched against.

Thats funny. I play with friends that are a lower mmr and we get slapped all the time… yet you’re saying other players also play with lower mmr players and they slap everyone all the time. What a concept.

I too was an onyx in S1.0. And its obviously been pretty consistent with us being the recievers.

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It’s not quite what I’m saying.

They are different DNA.

There are a lot of squads out there specifically loading up with smurfs and sandbaggers. I’m coming up against them regularly. Yesterday I even came across an Onyx player who was running around with a “Bronze 6” (who somehow didn’t end up with a negative K/D).

While you are being matched on MMR. You are not being matched fairly on skill because of the way they are setting up.

Hence you are getting beaten more often than not.

And because you are a similarly large ranging squad you are being preferentially matched to play against them.

It sucks. It’s not fair. But it’s not the fault of the underlying ranking / match-making. It’s people rorting the system. 343 need to fix it.

Seriously?

I’ve been trying to help you work out why the system may be working against you.

I’m am making a few guesses. We don’t know how the system really works. But they are (somewhat) educated guesses. And in good faith.

I am not making things up. And I certainly don’t work for 343.

But you know, you’re right. The system hates you. Just you. Probably because you annoyed me in a previous thread and I got @KenCTF from matchmaking to flag your account and make sure you play nothing but our in-house pro-team.

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