Is this a real thing or is the community making stuff up again? Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised either way but if anyone can link tangible evidence that the algorithm was changed in the past couple days I’d appreciate it.
Speculative videos/tweets don’t count.
Real or not, all I know is I’ve been having trouble entering matches, too as of late.
The more people speak up, the higher chance that 343 sees it and can investigate.
It seems to be affecting BTB only though.
It could just be no one wants to play BTB. I can think of plenty of things I’d rather do with my time.
Trouble, as in finding BTB matches? Last night I didn’t notice any difference in match quality or wait time, but there was one instance where my game stalled (wasn’t frozen) on the loading screen (the season 2 art + tips) for over 10 minutes.
While I agree people should speak up about technical issues they experience, I do think it is dangerous for people with influence to say something was intentionally changed without any concrete evidence and then the community starts referencing it as fact.
Skepticism aside, what makes you think Blitz is wrong in his findings?
I didn’t say I thought he was wrong or right. I just prefer that people don’t throw other people under the bus based on anecdotal evidence. Also, what started as speculation on his part has transformed into “fact” on various forums due to repetition.
I would prefer if a 343 employee officially commented. If his evidence is that he’s having a harder time matchmaking, I think it’s also just as easy to conclude the game is just dead in Australia and not necessarily anything to do with a tightened SBMM. I personally haven’t had much issue, though I am in the eastern US so that’s not a great reference point.
Well, that too. I would’ve been much more selective in my wording if I wasn’t sure this was 343’s doing. Then again, I’m not in Australia and don’t really know what going down there.
I know thry didn’t purposely do it to spite people, but if 343 did implement some shadow changes that negatively impact the services, they need to know and fix it.
I hate the latest update. They did so much under the radar stuff to change things without telling anyone. And the changes are almost all bad.
Because Mint Bliitz only mentioned longer search times an never mentioned noticing closer KDA’s in his matches or any other form of actually noticing less big skill gaps. Longer search times don’t have to be caused by stricter SBMM, but can be caused by other things as well (lower player count, stronger region based matchmaking, etc.).
I first also thought that Mint Blitz might be right, untill i saw the tweet of XLR8 on the YT vid of KevinKoolx. XLR8 mentioned on twitter that he had trouble finding matches when searching with more then 4 players, rergardless of their skill. This made me doubt that it was an stricter SBMM, because if the SBMM was realy upped, XLR8 would have seen a difference based on the skill of his friends he partied up with, and not just with the number of friends he partied up with.
This makes me believe the SBMM is not changed, but that 343 implemented a form of party searching to prevent full stacked teams going up against 12 solo-players, since even with the same skill this would create unbalanced matches.
Since lately even on this forum you have seen people complaining about this problem on BTB, it could very well be that 343 saw that that might be a problem and therefore implemented a form of matching based on party size. Since most players don’t search BTB in parties more then 4, it would make sence that those bigger parties therefore are having problems finding matches.
It would also explain Mint Blitz’s complaint, since he also mentioned when searching with friends and he often searches with full teams.
I’m not really savy in the SBMM department so half the stuff you said made no sense to me.
Whatever the issue is, I just want it fixed so it won’t be happening to anymore players.
Very short (without getting to much into details):
SBMM is about the skillgaps between individual players in the game and to try to get the average skill on both teams to be as close as possible. A stricter SBMM means the skill gap would be closer, meaning the gap between best player and worst player in that match is smaller.
Party matching is that the game tries to find a match against a team with simular size. If you search BTB with a team of 5, the game tries to get another team of 5 (or perhaps 4 or 6) to match against you, since partying up gives advantages on top of your skill.
So if you get party matching implemented, there is more of a limit of what you can match with. Because the game is still searching players within the same skill range (SBMM hasn’t changed), however now with the requirement that they need to be in a team of X-amount of players. That means less players that are within the skill range are still eliminated from matching with you, because they are searching solo/in a to small party or they are searching in a to big party.
Okay. That explains some things.
No problem 
But this is just my guess with what i hear now. Untill 343 comes out with a statement, we won’t know for sure ofcourse.
343 never changes things to the better.
They do the opposite to want the fans want.
Halo fans never wanted SBMM in the first place, Halo has always been level based and you cant even see your own skill in team slayer or big team ??
Did they though? The whole point of this thread is to reconsider the legitimacy of these somewhat irresponsible claims.
I was linked up at my brothers house on Friday for a LAN party and we ended up playing MM for like six hours. We found matches every time in less than a minute. I’m not sure, but it seems like things are working appropriately.
I just hit Onyx 1700 and I’m a top 1.1%. I think the new balance system works because of how fast matches are found for me. Then again, I live down the street from 343 and get Seattle ping most matches.
Congratz on reaching top 1.1% 