So I have been working on a project of making a menu for Halo 5, and came across the issue of if Casual playlists should have ranks. Or at least visual ranks.
What do you guys think?
You can view my project here: Halo 5 Menu v2
As you can see I left out the numbers beside the casual playlist, cause that was my initial impression, but I want to know what you guys think.
I don’t see the point of calling a playlist “casual” or “social” if you’re going to have skill ranks.
I don’t think it really matters that much, also this should be on the halo xbox one forum not the halo 4 forum.
> I don’t see the point of calling a playlist “casual” or “social” if you’re going to have skill ranks.
The point would be to still make sure you are matched up with people your own skill. Even in playlists like action sack, if you get matched up with a team of pros, they are still going to destroy everyone in that playlist, regardless of how “social” it is.
> I don’t think it really matters that much, also this should be on the halo xbox one forum not the halo 4 forum.
I think it still applies to Halo 4 cause it has ranks for casual playlists, which it seems like so far you guys could care less if they were actually there or not.
I’m just using what we have now to make something accurate for the future, that is all.
> The point would be to still make sure you are matched up with people your own skill. Even in playlists like action sack, if you get matched up with a team of pros, they are still going to destroy everyone in that playlist, regardless of how “social” it is.
I believe that even in Halo 3’s social playlists, you still had a TrueSkill rank, it just wasn’t visible. I could be wrong though.
All playlists should try to evenly match players regardless of whether or not they are “ranked.”
As far as the ranks being visible in game, I feel as though they should have limited visibility. What I mean is that I should be able to view my own rank at anytime via my player card, but I can only view yours after I have played a game with/against you via the carnage report or anytime via waypoint.
If we get purely “social” playlists back they shouldn’t track anything, except for maybe games played but that would be it. I suppose we could have a visible progressive rank like Halo 3 or Reach (Captain, General, etc.).
I don’t know if a social/competitive split is the best model though. I still like having a rank in playlists like Action Sack, even though it is the furthest thing from competitive play. Another problem with a ranked/social split is that it makes duplicate playlists which could share a population instead of splitting it. This model worked okay in Halo 3 because the population was high enough to support it. Halo 4 could not support a split, and I’m unsure of whether or not Halo 5 could.
No social , casual , or whatever should not have visible skill ranking because it destroys the point of the hopper . It still has it but it is not visible and is less restrictive to allow faster search times. Every halo after 3 still operated this way.
> I believe that even in Halo 3’s social playlists, you still had a TrueSkill rank, it just wasn’t visible. I could be wrong though.
Yeah, I was under the same impression, it would only make sense that way in order to prevent people thrashing on noobs for “fun”.
> All playlists should try to evenly match players regardless of whether or not they are “ranked.”
>
> As far as the ranks being visible in game, I feel as though they should have limited visibility. What I mean is that I should be able to view my own rank at anytime via my player card, but I can only view yours after I have played a game with/against you via the carnage report or anytime via waypoint.
I’m not sure if I agree with that though. If the game is done properly, then there should be enough players to properly support the ranking system and have even matches most of the time. Then I would want to see the ranks, that way if it does do a poor job of matching I can back out cause nobody wants to play a lopsided game.
> If we get purely “social” playlists back they shouldn’t track anything, except for maybe games played but that would be it. I suppose we could have a visible progressive rank like Halo 3 or Reach (Captain, General, etc.).
That is a good idea, showing xp rank vs skill based rank for social playlists, then you know that if someone has played a lot of a playlist odds are they will be at least decent at it.
> I don’t know if a social/competitive split is the best model though. I still like having a rank in playlists like Action Sack, even though it is the furthest thing from competitive play. Another problem with a ranked/social split is that it makes duplicate playlists which could share a population instead of splitting it. This model worked okay in Halo 3 because the population was high enough to support it. Halo 4 could not support a split, and I’m unsure of whether or not Halo 5 could.
It is the best model, but it needs a good game to back it up. And sure it makes duplicates of the same gametype, but they are not even close to being the same playlist. Think throwdown vs normal team slayer, there kind of needs to be that separation even though both are team slayer (minus obj in Thrdn)
> No social , casual , or whatever should not have visible skill ranking because it destroys the point of the hopper . It still has it but it is not visible and is less restrictive to allow faster search times. Every halo after 3 still operated this way.
I don’t think that Reach had any sort of ranking system in place. Some of those matches were so lopsided… cringes
> I’m not sure if I agree with that though. If the game is done properly, then there should be enough players to properly support the ranking system and have even matches most of the time. Then I would want to see the ranks, that way if it does do a poor job of matching I can back out cause nobody wants to play a lopsided game.
If the game has a high enough population you shouldn’t have to worry about lopsided matches too too much. They will happen regardless, but not nearly as often.
My suggestion of having ranks with limited visibility is supposed to prevent ppl from backing out. If you happen to get stomped on (or do the stomping) you can tell after the match if you played to your potential (or not), or if the game did a poor job of matching players / teams.
ALL of Halo’s online games had a ranking system. Halo 2 had the system as part of the engine and was a variation of ELO, a system developed to match players in chess tournaments. With Halo 3 and beyond, all Xbox Live game matchmaking used TrueSkill which was developed, I believe, by Microsoft. Bungie modified it for Halo 3 and tightened it up a bit for Reach, and it is in use today in Halo 4.
Microsoft has developed a new matchmaking algorithm for Xbox One called Smart Match. It’s supposed to be better.
The ranking systems (TrueSkill) were for matchmaking purposes only. Bungie used the TrueSkill results to apply a game rank, but the actual matchmaking was and is accomplished using the raw TrueSkill results.
IDEALLY, casual playlists do not need ranks at all. As I saw it in Halo 3 (which I thought had the best ranking system of all time in any game ever) there was no need for a rank in a social playlist because the point was that you get matched up with random people of varying skill. This would allow you to have some games where you have adequate competition and heated battle, some where you accept you’re going to get owned and struggle to survive, and some where you beat up on noobs. To varying degrees, they are all fun. This was the idea that I always perceived to be behind social playlists.
Ranked playlists are where people always went if they wanted a good challenge every game, and this was what was so good about Halo 3. Don’t feel like trying or have friends that are worse than you and may hurt your ranking in team playlists? Go play social.
No social rank should determine who you get matched up against because for the majority of players, their social play does not accurately reflect their true skill level.
Now in the world we live in today, there are not enough people to carry on the social awesomeness that took place in Halo 3. A team of noobs may get matched with a team of pros 9 times out of 10 because they’re simply the same party size and there aren’t enough people playing that certain playlist. If these problems arise I can see the need for a hidden social rank of some sort, but it should never be displayed.
> All playlists should try to evenly match players regardless of whether or not they are “ranked.”
>
> As far as the ranks being visible in game, I feel as though they should have limited visibility. What I mean is that I should be able to view my own rank at anytime via my player card, but I can only view yours after I have played a game with/against you via the carnage report or anytime via waypoint.
Why would you make ranks have limited visibility? Having ranks visible to everyone promotes a culture where you would not want to quit. People care more about what other people see when they look at a service record then when they look at their own.
Casuals? Really? You know, games are meant for leisure anyway so you could call everyone a “casual” theoretically. It doesn’t matter either way. Playlists never needed ranks anyway; just a way for people who never met each other to have an internet -Yoink!- contest.
>
It was the arena and matches were pretty balanced .
I don’t think that they should be visible at all, after it is a CASUAL playlist which is for people to chat and have fun and not compete for skill or to thrash others, so no.
But I would suggest that there is an actual skill system, it just shouldn’t be visible. just make sure that your skill is shown for competitive IN-GAME!
> Casuals? Really? You know, games are meant for leisure anyway so you could call everyone a “casual” theoretically. It doesn’t matter either way. Playlists never needed ranks anyway; just a way for people who never met each other to have an internet -Yoink!- contest.
You know, sports are meant for leisure anyway, yet we pay people millions of dollars to compete against each other.
Could you imagine what would happen if sports didn’t have ranking systems? It would probably ruin 90% of sports. Same goes for Halo or any other skill based game.
I’d love to see Halo broken down into Ranked and Social again. Keep letting matchmaking evolve and separate the players by their attitudes. The “serious” players and the “casual” players. I really feel that this is where Halo 3 had it right.
As far as ranking goes between them, yes rank them both in order to match up like players together, but only show the ranked players what their rating is. That is what they are looking for, so let them have it. Social players are more interested in wasting clips and having a good time. at least thats how I looked at it in Halo 3.