Servers are working as intended, geo filtering is a huge problem (for 343)

Games Halo Infinite
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The servers for this game are working as they are designed to. After 20+ years in the video gaming industry, 30+ if you consider the dawn of 9x based PC’s and early online gaming, Microsoft knows how to design servers that can support users correctly. Microsoft knows that the proximity of the user to the server is vital, and that clustering users in the same area to one particular server is the best way for matchmaking to occur. The unfortunate reality is that Halo Infinite is not designed around connection based matchmaking, it is based around a skill based matchmaking system that is cranked to 11.

Skill based matchmaking is the reason why you are paring with some dude in South America when you are in New York, and not so you can have a fair match. Skill based matchmaking is essentially deciding what games you will win, and what games you will lose before the match even begins. When you are matched with players from another country, perhaps a different continent, you are usually going to be connected to their server in that country putting you at a sharp disadvantage any way you cut it. Your stats will be terrible and you will more than likely lose that match.

After you lose that match, your next match you may or may not lose, and you may or may not be connected to a terrible server for your location, depending on if the dialed to 11 SBMM system decides you will win or lose the next match. You might be asking yourself, why would 343/Microsoft do this? Well this all lies in the decision to push this game into F2P territory, They are wanting every player to turn into a payer, no matter if that is through battle pass, limited time only cosmetics, or weekly challenge swaps, 343/Microsoft desperately need YOU to spend money on this game that took them 7 years to develop. The challenges are so grindy because they need you to put as much time into this game as humanly possible, and the skill based matchmaking helps them serve that goal.

Recent patents filed by EA, Activision, and other companies reveal that companies are implementing “retention based matchmaking”, to keep players addicted to online multiplayer gaming as long as possible. Microsoft has absolutely put these same methods into this game, and probably in most other multiplayer games they offer. These patents boil down to this- the more time you spend in that game, the more likely you are to spend additional money on this game. I can promise you that they have either licensed out these methods from Acitvision, who they are now acquiring, or have their own version of SBMM (they actually do, its called TrueSkill2)

When you win a game, you get a shot of dopamine for winning, moreso if it was a really tight match. When you win a few matches you really feel like your doing good. Maybe you have been matched against people far less skilled than you. But all of a sudden you lose a match, and you dont just lose, you get absolutely demolished. Microsoft knows that you’re not going to end the night on a loss, so youre going to keep playing, and so on and so on. The system is designed to keep you as hooked to halo as an addict is to his drug of choice.

And why do they want to keep you playing as long as possible? Mostly so you forget about every other game you own, or any other real life hobby you have. They want you to see that awesome limited time armor in the cash shop, they want to make you want it. Maybe you are getting stomped by someone wearing that new helmet, or maybe the guy on your team is doing exceptionally well wearing it. So when you decide to whip out your wallet and buy the helmet, the game puts you in more easy lobbies so you truly feel like maybe, even though you know the armor is “cosmetic only”, maybe it helped you in some way.

You know how when you’ve played multiple games in a row, and you get to a really close 1v1 and all of a sudden your aim just goes crazy, or your bullet spread is turned up to 11? Maybe you’ve been playing at 5 sensitivity but all of a sudden it feels like your controller is at a 10? Thats the SBMM at work, or as I’ll now call it retention based matchmaking. That guy you were just shooting needs a few good kills in order to keep him playing, so your skill no longer matters and oh by the way, none of your shots are registering on him, even though your connection is great.

Geo filtering narrows your connections to people around your location, which destroys 343’s implementation of skill based matchmaking. For this system to work, there needs to be a TON of players, (F2P for such a well known franchise basically guarantees this) 343 needs tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of players across all skill levels, all over the planet to match you against so the retention based matchmaking system can pre determine that matches outcome, your connection to the match be -Yoink!-.

This is all made to keep you hooked into “just one more match” mentality. All so you can go into the cash shop and spend some money, and keep spending money over years to come. 343 doesn’t want 60 dollars. They dont want 70 dollars. They want you to be playing this game for the next 5-10 years, buying as many season passes and limited time shop items as possible.

This is far different from how SBMM worked in classic halo games. In ranked, they would first prioritize connection, then use skill to match you against other players. There wasn’t a cash shop back then, so there was no incentive to have predatory systems designed to keep you hooked. Social playlists still took skill into account, but cased a far wider net. You would be playing H3 BTB with people who significantly worse than you, and significantly better. SBMM actually made sense back then. But now that gaming has become the number 1 entertainment medium, grubby CEO’s and companies will try to take as much green from you as possible, and sell you lies in return.

Some good videos to watch regarding all of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fP1_nXbiUY (EA pioneers SBMM)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv9KZpOrk38 (Overview of SBMM)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAwlVl0VGhc (Halo infinite SBMM)

Bottom line- Until this crap is fixed, stop playing any game implementing Skill based/Retention based matchmaking.

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Even when geofiltering and getting 10 ping, matches will still queue lobbies of far-away players while the majority suffers packet loss, aka desync, despite their connections, good or bad.

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I agree with everything said here. Unfortunately this type of talk goes over people’s heads. People have no idea how bad the pyshological manipulation is. People have no idea that this entire game is based on you potentially spending money on MX.

the one thing I notice the most is the reg on the shots. There are some times where the connection is great and everything is playing smooth but a perfect four shot doesn’t kill the other player. It will be clear as day too. All shots connected. I heard the sounds and saw it happening and it just didn’t register. Sometimes other players notice this and stop playing thinking they had just died but they didn’t. They know they got shot but nothing happened to them.

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They absolutely are not. SBMM is built into every Halo ranked mode that exists, and there’s never been an example of it being this bad since the early days of Xbox Live.

The servers have been this way since day 1, and no amount of gaslighting and misdirection is going to change that.

Or how to spell it

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Idk… what’s more reasonable to believe? That after 20 years of making halo games/online games, Microsoft “forgot” how to make servers work properly, or someone intentionally threw a wrench into the machine to monetarily benefit from it?

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Hah, jokes on them.
Either I win most of my matches, and end.
Or I get a BS match and go do something else.

But yes, it’s quite noticeable doing good, and then all of a sudden feeling like I’ve forgot how to aim ( still got issues with it ).

My wife also takes care of the connection at times.
When she starts watching some stream series, boy does Halo start lagging.
50ms to 500-600ms in ping with unstable connection, especially when it’s around an opponent.
No need for microsoft interventions there.

Unfortunatley the game pass opened up a whole new avenue of games I’m testing out and playing instead of Halo Infinite at times.
Tetris is awesome, Medieval Dynasty is tricky but enjoyable, Morrowind a welcome classic, have Minecraft from before and that’s getting a fair share of screentime as well.

Also doing a lot more Warhammer stuff, and Magic is also there.

But yeah I get the idea, it’s the overall public it’s aimed at, me as an individual have no impact on that as long as the majority fall for it.
Though I’d argue that if what you say, even some of it, is the case, they kind of overdid it on a lot of things.
Getting intentionally laggy matches against far superior opponents isn’t keeping me playing the game, and I suspect others share the sentiment.

What if I play, and not pay?
The use of Credits for real money, and then purchase items is just another trick they use, and that pushed me away from the shop ages ago, I barely even look in the store at all unless there’s some new uproar on here, or elsewhere. Haven’t even looked after the individual items debacle.

The only thing MS did to me was issue a challenge, and I took it.
How many items can I get for free?
Lots 'n lots of free items to unlock through gameplay alone you said?
Let’s see how much I can customize after a year, an average player. Perhaps below average, but still.
Let’s see how much energy I have for the game before I call quits and go play another game.

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That considering the poor optimization, unwieldy UI, crashes, glitches, desync, bugs, the former seems more likely than a conspiracy theory that barely makes sense.

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Good write up, it’s all accurate

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Why not both?

On a more serious note though.
Yes, actual performance issues is thee most likely explanation.

However, we must not forget that Activision actually have patents which were covered by media a few years back. Covering match making procedures which would motivate purchases in game stores.

I don’t recall them properly at the moment.
But I think one was matching some paying players with non-payers, and then at convenient times highlight items which were bought. Like, getting killed with a weapon having a special skin, the game would subtely highlight the weapon and the skin.

Another was something along matching players in unequal matches, three good ones and three bad ones.
I think this was actually researched and found that overall players are more engaged with the game in that case, more so than more with evenly matched matches.

It’s not our of this world that Microsoft would take measures like these.
The whole challenge system feels “rigged” in terms of getting specific game types at times. Been a while since I had one though.

Heck, I needed a Grav hammer kill yesterday, and 2000 fiesta points.
Majority of spawns over three games were pistols of all kinds unlike any amount I’ve experienced before. Yes, it’s random, yes it can happen, and no I’m not alluding to even being rigged.

But challenges sure can be, there’s been quite a few with gametype issues, someone had 30+ matches before a single oddball match, I had 15 matches of Slayer and Total Control before a single stockpile match which I had a challenge for, also had a CTF challenge.
Remember that they said the Challenges had to be “disconnected” in some way from the playlist system?

I’ll accept that it’s all random, because it can happen, but it sure feels deliberate considering all surrounding factors.

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I can relate to quite a bit about what you’ve said, but I think a lot of it falls down on the simple fact that I can’t believe for one minute that it was their intention to create, develop and release a game as fundamentally broken as Halo Infinite.

If it was then that is one crappy business plan because this game is only going to go one way if they don’t address and resolve a lot of the issues plaguing the game…and it’s not as if it’s a short list!

There is so much wrong with this game and the store that it’s actually quite embarrassing at this stage…and the silence from 343i speaks volumes as all the noise (or lack of) sounds like they genuinely don’t have a clue how to fix the ongoing issues let alone make significant improvements to get this game to where it should be and to where it should be going.

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I really wish people would be more self aware to the reality of this.

I might be an idealist but people need vote with their wallet to stop this nonsense. They got me with the first battlepass. Certainly not the next one if I’ve not long quit, due to the lack of content, before then.

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First of all, thank you for your consistent exposition. I think it will allow us all to find an explanation for what is happening. What you say does not sound conspiracy and it is verifiable if you pay attention to the history of your games.

The situation you describe is very recent to me. As recent as yesterday. I played a great series of 6 or 7 games in which everything worked fine, my shots registered, my melee was perfect and my spartan resisted everything. wow! I thought. These people have fixed something.

Suddenly, the next game, a minute later, everything went wrong again, my shots had no effect, my melee was useless and my spartan died on the first shot. That was the next 4 or 5 games until I got bored and stopped playing, cursing this game again.

If this is what it sounds like, they don’t deserve a single dollar from anyone.

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I went and got a Nintendo switch and started playing some OG super Mario 3. Enough of this modern brainwashing nonsense.
Mario never did me wrong lol.

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If their intention is to make me spend money, they don’t know me very well, they’re making me look at different titles including that of a South Korean/Finnish dev team. The first non halo title, I’ll play and take seriously in 20 years.

I’m not even buying the campaign until things are better.

I once bumped into Yoda and told him fur was cruel, he said “fur cool”, I disagree with him but coincidentally that’s how much I’ll pay 343 (congrats if you’re capable of getting that joke).

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Same, but I mostly only started doing that due to my dad not letting me spend a cent on Infinite because of the PS5 (I played Campaign with Game Pass).

Also, is this “geo-filtering” thing illegal? If not, can or should I be able to do it on Xbox One?

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I don’t believe this for a second.

I’ve only spent $19 dollars on this game so far and I rarely even touch multiplayer. Why would I bother with it when it’s missing so many features and hardly functions properly?

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In short: you already made the same claims a month back and they still lack prove in the same way they did back then - here’s the original thread for reference: https://forums.halowaypoint.com/t/a-very-interesting-write-up-on-how-skill-based-matchmaking-is-altering-gameplay-itself/484717/21

You are mixing SBMM in with severe gameplay manipulations of which the is simply no prove whatsoever. Yes, SBMM improves retention because matching players of equal skill naturally leads to a win some, lose some outcome which keeps people engaged. I see no foul play there in any way, shape or form.

Of course the geo filtering is new in this post, so lets talk a bit more about that. I as a EU based player get to play the vast majority of games on EU servers. If I play at off-peak hours however it gets more and more likely for me to get placed on US servers. This is kind of the expected behavior when you have a declining population. This could be mitigated by changing the way matchmaking factors in connection quality (either by switching to “favor connection quality” the way it was done in H5 or by adding a region select in game the way it was done in MCC).

The issue with geo filtering right now is a technical one. The game puts together a mixed lobby (e.g. one EU player with 7 US players, due to low population in the EU at that time). Only following that the game receives an error message that the player can’t connect to a US server. So everyone gets shifted to the EU server. So 7 players have a bad connection, instead of 1. It gets even worse when people have conflicting blocks (basically there is no server all players can connect to). At that point people have shot themselves in the foot. The more people applying the filter, the more likely this is to occur.

As for mixed lobbies being done to boost retention or somehow nefariously disadvantage players: once more this is alleged without any kind of prove of this happening. It’s simply losely strung together hypotheticals.

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What actually happens there in the real world is that if the EU player is running geo filter then that player is unable to connect to the game and has to restart his search. The game does NOT shift or force the other 7x US players to the EU server.

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Please do not discuss geo-filtering on these forums.