So, I’m a horrible, awful, terrible player who’s made it a quest to try to raise my pathetic, abysmal all time high CSR as high as I can before I stop playing H5.
I’ll save you the 20 seconds of checking my service record - Gold freaking 1. Told you I was bad. I’d be happy if I could even make it Gold 2. 
I’ve decided perhaps the best way to do this is to grind FFA. After reading a bunch of older threads it sounds like that’s the playlist where it’s RELATIVELY easiest to get the highest rank relative to your skill, because I’m hearing that as long as you don’t finish dead last (which I almost never do), you nearly always gain a tiny amount of CSR or at least don’t lose much.
It also might be the best option because I always queue solo.
My question is - if I’m playing with the sole goal of grinding CSR, with no regards at all as to anything else - win percentage, K/D, anything - what should I have my search preference set to - Expanded, Balanced or Focused? The reason I ask being, I know you get more credit by the system for playing against better competition - will it give me better boosts in CSR to play on Expanded and finish in 4th or 5th to Platinums, or keep it on Focused and finish like 2nd or 3rd to Silvers?
Or am I overthinking it because search preferences don’t work half the time anyway? (I live in the US, play during peak times and notice a slight difference, but not much, especially in this playlist.)
Thanks.
Honestly, I don’t think the ranks of who you play against has any effect on how much CSR points you gain. You get the same amount of CSR points playing against a bunch of Silvers as you would playing against a bunch of Diamonds or higher. There does seem to be some instances where you seemingly get more CSR for a win than usual, but the system usually fixes that by docking you a whole bunch of CSR for a loss. Of course, this is just from my own observations. Perhaps someone with more info on the subject will chime in on that. I’ve been trying to figure out if there are situations that’ll earn you more CSR in a win, like how well you play (i.e. completely dominate) or something, but there doesn’t seem to be anything like that in place.
But yes, grinding FFA is the easiest gametype I’ve seen to gain rank. So long as you don’t finish dead last, it looks like you’ll gain something no matter where you place. Something that was contrary to what I thought in the beginning. I figured only the top 3 finishers would gain, while everyone else would lose relative to their places.
> 2586218893181855;2:
> Honestly, I don’t think the ranks of who you play against has any effect on how much CSR points you gain. You get the same amount of CSR points playing against a bunch of Silvers as you would playing against a bunch of Diamonds or higher. There does seem to be some instances where you seemingly get more CSR for a win than usual, but the system usually fixes that by docking you a whole bunch of CSR for a loss. Of course, this is just from my own observations. Perhaps someone with more info on the subject will chime in on that. I’ve been trying to figure out if there are situations that’ll earn you more CSR in a win, like how well you play (i.e. completely dominate) or something, but there doesn’t seem to be anything like that in place.
>
> But yes, grinding FFA is the easiest gametype I’ve seen to gain rank. So long as you don’t finish dead last, it looks like you’ll gain something no matter where you place. Something that was contrary to what I thought in the beginning. I figured only the top 3 finishers would gain, while everyone else would lose relative to their places.
Thanks for the reply. I’ll probably just stick with Focused then.