Recently we have multiple threads created to discuss what H4’s skill-based ranking system should look like. I am creating yet another one but from a different angle
As demonstrated by H3 and Reach, the skill-based ranking system is a hard problem to solve. Fortunately, this has been solved by Starcraft 2’s league system with great success (defined as well received by players). Furthermore, Black Ops II is planning to support a skill-based league system of its own. Although they have kept most of the details under wraps, from the info revealed so far it does look like very similar to SC2’s.
I personally did not have direct experience with SC2’s system. However, based on what my friends told me and the info I read on the Internet, I am convinced that it is a great system that can be applied to Halo 4 too. In fact, Reach’s Arena system is not too far off from it, so it is not impractical for H4 to do it.
In this thread, I will share my understanding about what SC2’s system is like:
There are 5 standard leagues that represent top 2-20% (diamond), 20-40% (platinum), 40-60% (gold), 60-80% (silver) and 80-100% (bronze) respectively;
There are 2 master leagues: Master League - top 2%, and Grand Master League - top 200 players.
Player’s skill level is tracked by an internal rating invisible to players, which is going up and down based on W/L only. The amount of gain/loss is dependent on the strengths of your components. A new player needs to play 5 placement matches to have an initial rating determined and an initial league assigned.
A structured party can participate in the leagues. Each team has a separate skill rating. Individual team mates have very little effect on the team rating, except to determine what placement matches they are put in.[5]
Leagues are divided into divisions with 100 player per division. The players in your division have similar skills and from the same area. Players within the same division are “ranked” and ranks are visible to players. Note: “rank” is completely different from the internal rating mentioned above. Rank is local to the division and visible, while the internal rating is global across all players and invisible.
A construct called “bonus pool” is used to encourage people to play regularly, and give people who play regularly a higher ranking in their division. It keeps people from obtaining high rank then never playing again, yet still being ranked highly.
Matchmaking are done solely by the internal rating. A player can be matched against players outside of his division (which is often the case), and even players from a higher/lower league.
Seasons are periodically played. Bonus pool will be reset, however the hidden rating is carried over to next season. For players who have been placed in the previous season, only 1 placement match needs to be played.
In the past the division’s place within a league was not transparent. That has been changed: climbing to (for example) Rank 2 Diamond will mean that you are in the top 2% of all Diamond players, and you are very close to moving into the Master League. Similarly, Rank 50 Platinum is in the top 50% in the Platinum league, and so forth.
SC2’s rank-system worked in SC2, but I doubt it would transfer well into an FPS like Halo, because, more often than not, you lose because of your teammates being sucky, not yourself, so it’d probably have to be based off of a complex algorithm of sorts, to be practical. I hurt my mind with these sentences…
> SC2’s rank-system worked in SC2, but I doubt it would transfer well into an FPS like Halo, because, more often than not, you lose because of your teammates being sucky, not yourself, so it’d probably have to be based off of a complex algorithm of sorts, to be practical. I hurt my mind with these sentences…
That’s a valid point, I have the same concern as well.
However, with recent announcement from Black Ops II on implementing a skill-based league play system, I became hopeful that the ideas can transfer well into FPS.
What we know about BO2’s system so far:
It has 7 leagues;
It is purely W/L based;
Although the info is quite sketchy, it does look a lot like SC2’s system.
If you are forced to play with a team, that could make it work. Since everyone complains about crappy teammates, forcing them to party up with other players before entering this playlist could possibly solve that.
You only have yourself to blame for your crappy teammates.
Also note that “crappy” teammates is not a FPS specific problem. If you play alone in SC2, you will have random teammates as well.
The key here though is that if you are truly a diamond league player, you will be matched with diamond level teammates as well as diamond level enemies. Although these teammates are random, they are not “crappy”.
Of course, if you really want to do well you can form teams with friends. As mentioned above: “A structured party can participate in the leagues. Each team has a separate skill rating. Individual team mates have very little effect on the team rating, except to determine what placement matches they are put in.”.
In other words, each unique combination of structured party has a separate rating. SC2’s official web site, battle.net, will show all of them (I believe).
For example: you can be diamond rank 10 player by yourself, diamond rank 2 with your buddy “B”, gold rank 50 with your buddies “C” & “D” (lower because C & D are less skilled), etc.
> SC2’s rank-system worked in SC2, but I doubt it would transfer well into an FPS like Halo, because, more often than not, you lose because of your teammates being sucky, not yourself, so it’d probably have to be based off of a complex algorithm of sorts, to be practical. I hurt my mind with these sentences…
Nothing is stopping “sucky” team mates in Starcraft 2 causing you to loose in a team game either.
I’ll be happy when we return to the fun of competition with games like CE, Mario Kart, Perfect Dark, Golden Eye. All highly competitive but fun and all without rank too. I think this aspect is more what 343i want to achieve.
Xbox Live TrueSkill is more than accurate, so -Yoink!- accurate at rating a player they actually had to tone it down and Bungie did that in two games already (3 & Reach).
The issue is not ranking itself but the implementation behind the scenes and the representation to the player or public.
I’m actually ok with a rank visible to the player only but invisible to the public. As long as ranked playlists keep guests out and account for all the nuances of quitting etc then I am fine with it.
I would like to see the return of ranked clan matches though. I do not like the repeated system of having to always attain a rank every month or week etc, which is what SC2’s appears to be.
I enjoyed the Halo 3 50’s but I never wanted to play Arena due to having to always play and reattain a rank etc. I also grew very tiresome of the cheaters and quitters at high levels. I did not enjoy the cheaters/modders rife with Halo 2 rank, I also did not enjoy the host cheaters in Halo 3. Further leaderboards in both games were removed due to cheaters making them meaningless.
So I’m happy 343i are most likely leaning more to the casual side this time.
Competitive play is for LAN where it actually matters and can be measured fairly, accurately and by the league or tournament organisers with their own systems. Playing online, while competitive, is not where such strict rank systems should come into play. Online multiplayer is widely different in quality and skill due to netcode and many other factors.
> I’ll be happy when we return to the fun of competition with games like CE, Mario Kart, Perfect Dark, Golden Eye. All highly competitive but fun and all without rank too. I think this aspect is more what 343i want to achieve.
>
> Xbox Live TrueSkill is more than accurate, so -Yoink!- accurate at rating a player they actually had to tone it down and Bungie did that in two games already (3 & Reach).
>
> The issue is not ranking itself but the implementation behind the scenes and the representation to the player or public.
>
> I’m actually ok with a rank visible to the player only but invisible to the public. As long as ranked playlists keep guests out and account for all the nuances of quitting etc then I am fine with it.
>
> I would like to see the return of ranked clan matches though. I do not like the repeated system of having to always attain a rank every month or week etc, which is what SC2’s appears to be.
>
> I enjoyed the Halo 3 50’s but I never wanted to play Arena due to having to always play and reattain a rank etc. I also grew very tiresome of the cheaters and quitters at high levels. I did not enjoy the cheaters/modders rife with Halo 2 rank, I also did not enjoy the host cheaters in Halo 3. Further leaderboards in both games were removed due to cheaters making them meaningless.
>
> So I’m happy 343i are most likely leaning more to the casual side this time.
>
> Competitive play is for LAN where it actually matters and can be measured fairly, accurately and by the league or tournament organisers with their own systems. Playing online, while competitive, is not where such strict rank systems should come into play. Online multiplayer is widely different in quality and skill due to netcode and many other factors.
At the very least I want a skill-based matchmaking system. So I can go in with confidence that I am neither getting destroyed by players much stronger than me, or getting bored beating players much weaker than me. I have full confidence that H4 can give me that, as you pointed out that XBL’s TruSkill system is more than accurate and H3 and Reach has already demonstrated the ability to use it effectively.
Just have that would be fine for me to enjoy H4. However, it would be even better if I can have a way of knowing that I am improving, measured by my rough positioning in the entire universe of the “active” players. SC2’s league / division / season can give me that.
From my point of view, it addressed your concern well: unlike Reach, the invisible rating is carried over from season to season (Reach’s rating reset per season is a huge mistake). Also, based on SC2’s experience it does look quite resilient to cheating/boosting behaviors.
If BO2 has this but H4 does not, Halo fans will definitely feel disappointed.
Yeah, the link in the OP give a pretty good overview of SC2’s system.
Some points in it does seem to be a little outdated. The link below from battle.net provides the most recent update:
Also, since I can’t figure out a way to check out what the leagues / divisions / ranks look like on the official battle.net with an account, I went to the unofficial web site sc2ranks.com to see what it looks like:
> Although im sure its a good system for that game im not sure if it would work for HALO .
>
>
> Besides Halo 4 already has a skill based Ranking system we just hace no, idea how it works yet…
Sure. What has been done is done. At this point we can only wait patiently for 343 to reveal the details, hopefully sometime next month.
I am just hoping that they did learn from SC2. As you can see from the overview above, it is not that far off from Reach’s Arena system. Shouldn’t be that hard to take Reach’s flawed system and SC2’s successful system and come up with something that works for H4, without having to re-invent the wheel from scratch. I am hoping (more like wishing ) that’s exactly what they did.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive also works with the Elo ranking system (the system used in SC2) and it works wonders for matchmaking. I can only hope a future Halo title incorporates it because it seems to make everyone satisfied in both of these games, one of which is a competitive FPS. It seems far more effective than a 1-50 system, in my opinion.
> Although im sure its a good system for that game im not sure if it would work for HALO .
>
> Besides Halo 4 already has a skill based Ranking system we just hace no, idea how it works yet…
How could it not work? It’s doing wonders in other games, chess, rts, fps games alike.
> Counter-Strike: Global Offensive also works with the Elo ranking system (the system used in SC2) and it works wonders for matchmaking. I can only hope a future Halo title incorporates it because it seems to make everyone satisfied in both of these games, one of which is a competitive FPS. It seems far more effective than a 1-50 system, in my opinion.
Here’s the ELO system. You have a rating and that goes up or down depending on your opponent’s rating and if you won or lost.
> > SC2’s rank-system worked in SC2, but I doubt it would transfer well into an FPS like Halo, because, more often than not, you lose because of your teammates being sucky, not yourself, so it’d probably have to be based off of a complex algorithm of sorts, to be practical. I hurt my mind with these sentences…
>
> That’s a valid point, I have the same concern as well.
>
> However, with recent announcement from Black Ops II on implementing a skill-based league play system, I became hopeful that the ideas can transfer well into FPS.
>
> What we know about BO2’s system so far:
>
> 1) It has 7 leagues;
> 2) It is purely W/L based;
>
> Although the info is quite sketchy, it does look a lot like SC2’s system.
Probably 343 will make something like this…A weaks ago 343 talk about a “Mix” between arena system (Divion per leagues) And the H3/2 One…Just to make it more acurate and make it more dificult to lvl up, That means that you need to play very nice everydays to keep into your divition (Individual skill we can say) And the numerical system represent your W/L (Teamwork) It will be more like a true skill system than a HS like H3.
On that way they are hoping to finish the bossting, and buy selling account cuz it will not be a restrict ranking (You can reach the sr50 whitout be onyx or have a 50 HS).
> SC2’s rank-system worked in SC2, but I doubt it would transfer well into an FPS like Halo, because, more often than not, you lose because of your teammates being sucky, not yourself, so it’d probably have to be based off of a complex algorithm of sorts, to be practical. I hurt my mind with these sentences…
Except that any and all players in the top 4-3 divisions are guaranteed to have a team that they play with on a regular basis. So it works.
Honestly if you’re playing with a team of Randoms at that level, you should expect to lose.
But yes, Leagues (Divisions to keep it more akin to Halo?) Are a fantastic means of tracking player skill and matching them with appropriate opponents.
This should apply to 3 or 4 ranked playlists though. Say, one FFA, one 4v4, one 8v8, and one MLG.
SWAT and Snipers IMO can migrate into the social setting.
> > > Bros, what do you think?
> >
> > It all sounded cool…
> >
> > But I’m a Girl
>
> My apologies for being inconsiderate to female fans of Halo. OP changed.
