Sick of sweaty halo

The aggressive SBMM and the terribly thought out challenge system and its bizarre and random incentive structure for every individual player are both anchors tied around this game’s waist. They leave the game feeling too sweaty too much of the time in casual playlists, and force players to engage with the game in strange and often counterintuitive ways to try to tick off their personal challenges.

I really, really hope 343 looks at tweaking SBMM again. This weekend in particular has been a total sweat fest and not much fun for me personally. And random arbitrary challenges are enough of a chore when you aren’t playing matches that demand the utmost attention and engagement. Social playlists shouldn’t feel this way.

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The reward? You sweat your yoink off and win the game. Sit up straight and go to work fellow Spartan.

Yeah. In ranked, sure, that’s the whole point.

But social? Sure you try and win the game, but how do you get a sense of pride if you don’t know who you have beaten? You could have beaten a stack of onyx’s or a team of D1s, you have no idea. That’s why it works in ranked. You get pride in defeating a better team. In social you don’t know, so you don’t get that rewarding feeling. So what is the reward in social? Because to me winning in social isn’t rewarding

If they want to go this route then they just need to make the entire game ranked. Otherwise there is no point in the distinction

Now that stats are made available here on Waypoint for Infinite I believe that social playlists is going to get even more sweatier now.

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Haha, yeah probably. Cant wait

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This and an actual progression system. The heck w these challenges. Just drop a Spartan rank progression like I dunno…every other game out nowadays. Why the hell is it taking so long to do this lol.

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I think I am piecing together a trend here. From this and the other recent SBMM threads.

  1. Have to play other people of my own skill - that’s sweaty.

  2. Have to play people above my skill - that’s sweaty.

  3. Play with people of lower skill then me and have to “carry” them - that’s sweaty.

  4. Not being rewarded for the win - that’s sweaty?

  5. Not having a leader board with my double figure K/D plastered all over it - sweaty.

  6. Not having a least one opponent thoroughly humiliated and quit Halo forever - sweaty.

It’s slowly making sense.

Apparently lobbies where you go 20/5 and your team wins by 50 points is the key to making everyone happy. But only if your K/D is plastered on the post game screen for everyone to see. And if we only had post game chat so we could all scream “get gud” to drown out the tears.

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I think you fundamentally miss understand this point,
Skill isn’t a static number, its not a rating you play at 100% all the time.
Its arguably just your max proficiency when playing at your personal highest level.
Dosed on Adderall and utterly cracked.

But you need to understand that state of Horribly bad for your mind and body,
It’s a mental state that puts alot of stress on you. Its what leaves you feeling pretty exhausted after extended game play.

It Makes you feel like you’ve just done a workout, it MAKES YOU SWEATY.
I get that there is a subsection of the population that likes that feeling,
But judging by the volume of complaints about the system,
they are a minority.

When you’re not playing a competitive mode, that is just naturally going to be sweaty,
You don’t want the game to place you in games that push you towards that limit.
You want games that allow you to play sub optimally, so you aren’t as severely punished for easy mistakes.

Thats the point of a social game, thats the point of it being casual.
You don’t want to be forced to play games at 100% ALL THE TIME.
You want players from different skill levels to mix.

So that high Skill players can play at 50%
And low skill players can play a 80%
The Gap between player skill will naturally close with some breathing room.

That’s how Bungie designed the Original games, and it made the experience better for everyone.

Well… yeah,
If its above your skill level, you’d already need to be playing at your highest proficiency threshold;
For the entire match. I don’t know why this needs to be pointed out, but that’s just how it goes in comp modes.

I’ve literally never met anyone who held this sentiment.
While it might be true sometimes, you’d need the biggest most over inflated ego to ever think like that.
The player is making the choice to push to compensate for their teams lower skill margin, if they become sweaty doing so, that’s really on them. If it buffs their Ego and they like it.

Whatever, let them enjoy the game that way.
It helps lower skilled people enjoy a game that was going to be an uphill battle for them.

Also,
Literally have never heard anyone call this sweaty.
And judging purely by your forum history I’d probably throw this point out.
This is an overly aggressive fabrication and dragging another complicated issue of progression into this unrelated topic.

TL;DR
This is a straight up lie to tie in an unrelated point.

most players Hate the progression system,
most players would prefer to have a tangible reward for their efforts for play.
there is nothing sweaty about having reasonable expectations that were set in Halo since Reach.

Call of Duty Logic,
Don’t know who made this complaint, or if this is just another fabricated strawman argument.

Frankly no one actually cares?
K/D is such a meaningless metric when the game has a heavy emphasis on objective game play, and moment to moment player interactions.

You forget that the forums HAVE a search function.
Literally NO ONE is talking about this point you’ve made.

So I really just have to assume you made it up.
Please stop lying.

I…
Yeah no this is just a stupid strawman.
Reality is no one really does this, and for anyone who has, their target literally does not care.
They lose, the join the Que, they play another game.

You know what really annoying?
You thought this was a clever post,
you thought this was the truth behind the SBB debate and what people think about it.

But, no.
You haven’t the slightest clue what you’re talking about.
You’ve told several lies.
And the reality is that you’re being extremely toxic about as well.

Why are you like this,
Who hurt you.

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Agree that skill and intensity of play can be separated.

The problem is that competitive players can’t separate them. If you play relaxed in Social then you get a MMR in that mode that is reflective of your input.

The problem is that competitive players feel the need to switch up gears when they are losing or not dominating. So they end up playing just as hard as they would in ranked. Hence the standard of opposition that SBMM tends to give them.

Again. This is fine if you are happy to play at 50% and lose.

I would venture to say that this isn’t the case with a lot of people who complain about SBMM.

Ditto. Play at 50%. Get an appropriate MMR at that level of intensity and be happy with a (close to) 50:50 win rate.

It’s a common sentiment in most of the SBMM threads.

People complain that they are forced to carry their team.

It’s apparently sweaty. Which is all I referred to.

Apparently this isn’t the only thread you haven’t read…

Again. Straight up lie is a bit of a push. It’s literally a comment in this thread in regards to Halo being too Sweaty. :slight_smile:

Seriously? Maybe I’ve been on Waypoint too long. But there are heaps of K/D threads. A lot of posters happily concluding that K/D is reflecting their skill. And that others should just “get gud”.

Not lying.

I agree the sentiment is stupid. But there are regular posters who have clearly posted in SBMM threads that new players should just cope with losing and get better.

I don’t know what your search skills are like, but I literally found this on the very first thread I searched;

I have literally quoted Menke and Microsoft in threads that SBMM improves player retention, or that the predominate factor for players logging off were uneven matches (more than lag or personal performance).

And the response is inevitably that they don’t care.

I’ve literally had posters tell me it is their right of passage to smash new players.

I did actually. Not bad overall.

Probably not.

Nope. Zero lies.

I’ve collated a bunch of sentiments into a single stereo-type. That’s undoubtedly an exaggeration.

But that’s not lying.

Somebody has to stand up for SBMM. :slight_smile:

I just want my bullets to work, I don’t care who I’m playing against. I’ve beaten pros and lost to Jimbo the circus barker with a broken controller. This game doesn’t care, you’re going to be able to damage people one game and not the next arbitrarily…or maybe it’s on purpose

Yep, that means 100% efficiency required at all times

Yep, that means greater than 100% efficiency required

Not one I complain about often, because I’m not good enough to experience it, but can see why others do. The game forcing a top player towards a 50% W/L ratio by fixing the teams. That is entirey unfair and puts a huge amount of weight on one person. Sweaty.

That’s a different point in my view. If SBMM is strict it works in ranked because there is a visible ranking for both you and your opponents. You don’t have that in social so the visible reward is completely missing. There isn’t even a normal xp based progression system to give some sort of feeling that it is worthwhile. But yeah, not sweaty.

Not one I’ve ever said, or seen anyone say.

Not one I’ve ever said, or seen anyone say.

So apart from the last two I think we are largely aligned on what people think is sweaty! We must just differ on whether we think that is good for the game or not. I think it is cripplingly bad.

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Oh yeah. My favourite stalker is back. Obviously got sick of just clicking “missed the point” on every second post.

Whether I have mad skills or not is irrelevant. I deserve to have same amount of fun and experience as everyone.

I am more than happy to be shielded from players like you. I imagine I’m more than happy to be shielded from people like you. Life’s too short for such toxicity.

Thankfully the trend is heading in the other direction.

Been on long 6 month hiatus from infinite. Decided to give it another go thinking it would be better. There are no words how much I hate pvp and the current reward system or lack thereof. The most notable of which is the fact the lobbies are so sweaty which is just making it worse for the casual player. I consider myself above average in FPS’s but hitting the respawn over and over doesn’t exactly scream ‘fun’. It’s sad to see how far Halo has fallen from what might have been.

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Sorry to hear that. Totally feel you tho. I think the best we can do is cross our fingers that they make a true social matchmaking system in the future

Don’t know about that. Just got done getting destroyed because it’s like my guns shoot rubber bullets. Never wanted to throw my controller through my monitor so bad in all my life.

I agree 100% with you. I’m working on a youtube video right now and I need to get multiplayer footage for it and it is agonizing how many games are ending 50-23 or things like that. Spawning into the game and getting shot from 3 different directions.

After this video I am taking a major break from Halo multiplayer for a while if not permanently. I don’t like what they’ve done with Infinite and MCC is just full of tryhard MLG wannabes.

Overall I’m kind of done with this franchise, that’s what my video is going to be about, too much has happened this past decade or so and I’m just fed up, I’ve had enough. I used to love this franchise and it’s really a shadow of its former self.

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Thats the experience i have aswell nowadays now. Its not fun to play any current available Halo PvP, especially as a Solo player.

Worked all day yesterday. You know what I used to like to do? Play games. For fun. Instead I loaded up halo infinite and jumped in to some social team slayer. Used to be a fun place to chill out and mess around. Here are the opposing teams for the three games I played last night.

Game 1:
Onyx 1528
Onyx 1607
D5
D5

Game 2:
A Smurf - 200 kills, 2Kdr outperforming onyx1600s
Onyx - 1675
D5
Onyx 1629

Game 3:
Onyx -1765
Onyx - 1672
D2
Gold 6 - Poor guy went 4-16

And people genuinely wonder why people are complaining about how sweaty social is in this game. Honestly?

The game has other focuses at the moment and this isn’t the top priority. Might not even be a priority.

What you get from Social is what you get out of it.

People’s ranked MMR’s can be completely different from their Social.

I’m sure there are plenty of super intense Onyx player’s who have no problem in playing Social in a much more relaxed manner.

Hopefully the Smurf will roast in eternal damnation.

And the G6 was probably having a ball with mates.