Skill Based Matchmaking Confirmed for Infinite

Games Halo Infinite
1

Written in the smallest sentence in the official Halo Infinite Multiplayer Blog that was released shortly after Halo Infinite’s Multiplayer Reveal, 343i confirmed Halo Infinite’s Multiplayer runs on Skill Based Matchmaking, as if it’s some sort of great and good thing, sugar coating it for us all. For those of you wondering if SBMM will be applied to Ranked only, no it will not. SBMM will be corroding Social/Casual Halo Infinite’s Multiplayer Day 1. The Mods on the Official Halo Subreddit have been given direction to apply “immediate deletion” tags to threads mentioning Skill Based Matchmaking or SBMM. Go try it for yourself. Unfortunately censorship has been applied to the Voice of all Gamers and 343i are the ones unleashing it on their Player Base.

Amazing how they introduce the most corrosive matchmaking practice in multiplayer gaming history than silence anyone who wants to speak up about it; hence why I am here on the official forums. We’ve been silenced because they know tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of players will object and scold them for putting SBMM into Halo. For those of you who are thinking about how it has been confirmed SBMM has been in Halo since Halo 2; If you haven’t played countless hours on Original Xbox Halo 2 Xbox Live Multiplayer, you don’t know how completely unnoticeable it was in unranked Halo 2. It was almost not there. What you also don’t know is that Halo 2’s Multiplayer on Original Xbox Live, was super bugged, exploited and even when the “SBMM” worked, it was almost non-existent in the matches in any noticeable manner. You could argue it was in Halo 3’s Social Playlists on Xbox 360; where again, barely noticeable and Party Matching voided SBMM in Social Halo 3.

So here we are today; MCC"s playerbase has been dropping continuously since Crossplay and Skill Based Matchmaking was introduced together months ago. Halo 5 also received the same backlash from the vast majority of Halo’s Playerbase for having Skill Based Matchmaking in the game; hence one of the main reasons it was regarded as a bad Halo game. Halo Infinite has been confirmed to run on Skill Based Matchmaking and…nobody is talking about it.

I believe people simply aren’t aware of it’s oncoming existence in Infinite, either they didn’t read the blog line-by-line like I did, or they read over it because the Sentence that it was confirmed in is literally the tiniest in the entire blog and it sandwiched between two (amazing) Halo Infinite Multiplayer Screenshots.

EDIT: Holy smokes this thread blew up after I posted it! There’s no way I can reply to the 160+ comments but I will try and clear out the major ones.

"I read the official 343 blog that was posted right after Halo Infinite’s Multiplayer was revealed and I can’t find where it says Skill Based Matchmaking written anywhere." -> Scroll down to the paragraph in the blog titled “A new generation, built to fight.” Beneath this portion of the blog you’ll see the picture of a green-camo’d spartan with a sword and an orange spartan on the right. Directly beneath this picture is posted as follows:

With new training options, bots to spar against, skill-based-matchmaking, and improved systems that deliver better communication of key info to players during a match, we’re excited to welcome Spartans of all skill levels and help you battle your way to the top each season.

"What do you mean your threads are getting automatically deleted?" -> Go to the Official Halo Subreddit and title your thread with SBMM/Skill Based Matchmaking and your thread will be immediately deleted.

Alright, now that we got that out of the way, understand what is on the horizon for all of us Halo Fans and the screaming competition Halo Infinite is faced with this year.

BF2042 does not have any sort of Skill Based Matchmaking whatsoever. The game’s multiplayer runs on an official Server Browser and Player Hosted Dedicated Servers, making any form of Skill Based Player Matching impossible. These servers have EXP progression enabled on them, essentially letting you progress through like you normally would on any other FPS. Halo Infinite does not have a Server Browser or Player Hosted Dedicated Servers. You are therefore having your matchmaking experience dictated for you. Your maps are chosen for you, your game modes are chosen for you, the players you match against are chosen for you. You essentially have no choice. Whether you’re an absolute beast at Halo Infinite wrecking opponents every match or if you’re the player getting wrecked, you have no choice in the matter and you will never get truly better at the game because you will be constantly facing yourself every match.

Thank you everyone for commenting and having a lengthy read. Take from it what you will. Good luck!

2

> 2535464104676004;1:
> Written in the smallest sentence in the official Halo Infinite Multiplayer Blog that was released shortly after Halo Infinite’s Multiplayer Reveal, 343i confirmed Halo Infinite’s Multiplayer runs on Skill Based Matchmaking, as if it’s some sort of great and good thing, sugar coating it for us all. For those of you wondering if SBMM will be applied to Ranked only, no it will not. SBMM will be corroding Social/Casual Halo Infinite’s Multiplayer Day 1. The Mods on the Official Halo Subreddit have been given direction to apply “immediate deletion” tags to threads mentioning Skill Based Matchmaking or SBMM. Go try it for yourself. Unfortunately censorship has been applied to the Voice of all Gamers and 343i are the ones unleashing it on their Player Base.
>
> Amazing how they introduce the most corrosive matchmaking practice in multiplayer gaming history than silence anyone who wants to speak up about it; hence why I am here on the official forums. We’ve been silenced because they know tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of players will object and scold them for putting SBMM into Halo. For those of you who are thinking about how it has been confirmed SBMM has been in Halo since Halo 2; If you haven’t played countless hours on Original Xbox Halo 2 Xbox Live Multiplayer, you don’t know how completely unnoticeable it was in unranked Halo 2. It was almost not there. What you also don’t know is that Halo 2’s Multiplayer on Original Xbox Live, was super bugged, exploited and even when the “SBMM” worked, it was almost non-existent in the matches in any noticeable manner. You could argue it was in Halo 3’s Social Playlists on Xbox 360; where again, barely noticeable and Party Matching voided SBMM in Social Halo 3.
>
> So here we are today; MCC"s playerbase has been dropping continuously since Crossplay and Skill Based Matchmaking was introduced together months ago. Halo 5 also received the same backlash from the vast majority of Halo’s Playerbase for having Skill Based Matchmaking in the game; hence one of the main reasons it was regarded as a bad Halo game. Halo Infininite has been confirmed to run on Skill Based Matchmaking and…nobody is talking about it.
>
> I believe people simply aren’t aware of it’s oncoming existence in Infinite, either they didn’t read the blog line-by-line like I did, or they read over it because the Sentence that it was confirmed in is literally the tiniest in the entire blog and it sandwiched between two (amazing) Halo Infinite Multiplayer Screenshots.

Where is your source that they are deleting these tags? If this did happen then the official forums would be the place where the deletion would occur and there hasn’t been even a hint of that. I also fail to find the evidence of SBMM in Infinite. I assume it will exist unfortunately however it could always be a better implementation. I do not think it is as detrimental as people believe either.

I would love the direct source and more importantly the quote from the source about SBMM.

3

Lol I always find the hysteria against SBMM funny. Siege, Valorant, CSGO, LoL, Dota, and Rocket League all have SBMM in their casual/unranked modes and those games are doing great.

I’m Diamond in Valorant and when I play unranked I play against other Diamonds, but guess what, legit no one cares because it’s unranked. Barely anyone tries and if they do, no one cares.

4

> 2535410773397964;3:
> Lol I always find the hysteria against SBMM funny. Siege, Valorant, CSGO, LoL, Dota, and Rocket League all have SBMM in their casual/unranked modes and those games are doing great.
>
> I’m Diamond in Valorant and when I play unranked I play against other Diamonds, but guess what, legit no one cares because it’s unranked. Barely anyone tries and if they do, no one cares.

Exactly. Do some of the games have to fix it after launch? Absolutely. They stated they are going to listen to community feedback so if it exists, and creates issues I imagine they will act accordingly especially since the game is F2P.

5

I think having a SBMM system that has looser parameters compared to the ranked SBMM would be ideal.

6

> 2535444514063000;5:
> I think having a SBMM system that has looser parameters compared to the ranked SBMM would be ideal.

i like how this guy thinks, everyone else should think more like this guy.

7

Yep.

  1. SBMM had to underpin social. Completely random gamesI would be -yoink-. Seriously.

  2. Threads only get deleted when they pop up a dime to the dozen. There are already multiple threads on the subject…

Here’s what I posted in one recently…

> I think people get worried that SBMM in social is going to fill the game with clones of the exact same skill level
>
> Sure, that is the goal of Ranked SBM
>
> .Social can, and should be a fair bit looser. Each team can have a wider array of skill levels. Just as long as the teams are matched.
>
> In Ranked - everyone should be the same, Platinum 4 for example. In Social it’s ok to have a mix across a range; eg. of Golds, Platinums, and Diamonds… as long as they are similar across both teams. And that is where SBMM comes in.

Roughly even teams increases the chance of a close game. And a close game is a good game for both sides.

8

> 2585548714655118;7:
> >
>
> Roughly even teams increases the chance of a close game. And a close game is a good game for both sides.

I think the issue is getting the formula right for that. How do you measure someone’s skill on a match to match basis? Hopefully they found a better solution.

9

> 2533274792737987;8:
> > 2585548714655118;7:
> > >
> >
> > Roughly even teams increases the chance of a close game. And a close game is a good game for both sides.
>
> I think the issue is getting the formula right for that. How do you measure someone’s skill on a match to match basis? Hopefully they found a better solution.

They are using TrueSkill2 based Matchmaking Rating (MMR), and it’s been working pretty well so far.
They are able to measure player performance in a game, and once the system has collected enough data on you, it is able to predict how you are going to perform in a game against the opponents the matchmaking system has selected.
More info there: https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/58b8518e005f432381ab99fbcaf931e0/topics/matchmaking-and-ranking-faq/18727055-32bc-4a12-8d06-0edb49309ad3/posts

10

> 2533274817157770;9:
> > 2533274792737987;8:
> > > 2585548714655118;7:
> > > >
> > >
> > > Roughly even teams increases the chance of a close game. And a close game is a good game for both sides.
> >
> > I think the issue is getting the formula right for that. How do you measure someone’s skill on a match to match basis? Hopefully they found a better solution.
>
> They are using TrueSkill2 based Matchmaking Rating (MMR), and it’s been working pretty well so far.
> They are able to measure player performance in a game, and once the system has collected enough data on you, it is able to predict how you are going to perform in a game against the opponents the matchmaking system has selected.
> More info there: https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/58b8518e005f432381ab99fbcaf931e0/topics/matchmaking-and-ranking-faq/18727055-32bc-4a12-8d06-0edb49309ad3/posts

Yep.

And in ranked… Where you wanna get sweaty. Your MMR (Trueskill2) will be the best you can be.

In social it will probably be lower… depending on your chill. But it will find that skill level you wanna cruise at… And match you appropriately.

And I’ve never really understood the whole sweaty vs chill bit anyway. I have no idea if my opponent, playing social at Platinum 1… Are they an Onyx player chilling… Or Gold player sweating.

It only matters in my head… If I let it.

I imagine the real definition is that if I’m winning easily I’m chill. But if I’m losing the other team is sweaty. It’s silly really.

11

> 2585548714655118;10:
> > 2533274817157770;9:
> > > 2533274792737987;8:
> > > > 2585548714655118;7:
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > Roughly even teams increases the chance of a close game. And a close game is a good game for both sides.
>
> I imagine the real definition is that if I’m winning easily I’m chill. But if I’m losing the other team is sweaty. It’s silly really.

Here is an explanation for you, when I’m in a ranked game, for us to stand a chance at winning I have to have a strong opening, contest power weapons comparative to my team, hit most of my shots, win stressful 1v1s, map control, time restocks and generally be very aware of the positions of my team and enemy players at all times, predict and influence spawns etc etc.

However in social, I’m playing that to relax from most of that. I don’t want to have to play against people where this is expected of me to have a fair chance of winning. If anything SBMM in Halo MCC is too loose, I have like a 70% win ratio I think.’ I’d be fine if that was 50% honestly. I’m not contesting having SBMM in social, I don’t want it in big team and the reason for that is because having a certain level of skill intrinsically affects the amount of fun I can have in big team because with high skilled players in every game it just changes the way it is played and trueskill2 will expect me to be playing a high level because I’m a high level in every other playlist.

Same goes for the random fun stuff like Grifball (which I suck at).

12

I assume you’re not seeing the topic brought up over and over because that’s just how games work now, whether you think it’s a good or bad thing. It’s not a new thing anymore it’s just expected. All games have had some form of it for years now so it’s not surprising Infinite has it.

13

> 2533274801036271;11:
> > 2585548714655118;10:
> > > 2533274817157770;9:
> > > > 2533274792737987;8:
> > > > > 2585548714655118;7:
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Roughly even teams increases the chance of a close game. And a close game is a good game for both sides.
> >
> > I imagine the real definition is that if I’m winning easily I’m chill. But if I’m losing the other team is sweaty. It’s silly really.
>
> Here is an explanation for you, when I’m in a ranked game, for us to stand a chance at winning I have to have a strong opening, contest power weapons comparative to my team, hit most of my shots, win stressful 1v1s, map control, time restocks and generally be very aware of the positions of my team and enemy players at all times, predict and influence spawns etc etc.

Yep. That’s ranked for you.

> 2533274801036271;11:
> However in social, I’m playing that to relax from most of that. I don’t want to have to play against people where this is expected of me to have a fair chance of winning.

So? Relax.

The people you are playing against don’t know you from a bar of soap. They have no expectations.

> 2533274801036271;11:
> If anything SBMM in Halo MCC is too loose, I have like a 70% win ratio I think.’ I’d be fine if that was 50% honestly.

Sounds to me like someone isn’t chilling as much as they think they are.

> 2533274801036271;11:
> I’m not contesting having SBMM in social, I don’t want it in big team and the reason for that is because having a certain level of skill intrinsically affects the amount of fun I can have in big team

So, really. You just want to run around stomping lower level players.

> 2533274801036271;11:
> … Just changes the way it is played and trueskill2 will expect me to be playing a high level because I’m a high level in every other playlist.

Only at the start. There will be an assumption of skill from other rankings… But if you really are relaxing and mucking around you will be ranked lower than your sweaty playlists and grouped with other players of that level.

But… If your idea of being chillaxed is to then run around and stomp the yoink out of them… It won’t be long before you’re rank bus up again.

> 2533274801036271;11:
> Same goes for the random fun stuff like Grifball (which I suck at).

But you probably don’t suck as much as you think you do. Your skills from other playlists would carry over.

I play ranked as hard as I can (for a mid level player). I do the best I can for my team.

But when I’m in social I do relax. I’ll use weapons I really shouldn’t be using. I’ll try and do insanely stupid sticky nades. I’ll grab a mate and see who can get the most headshots of the back of a mongoose. Silly stuff. Chill

14

@Darwi

I somewhat agree, but you would have to be destroyed many times for the system to allow you to do that. So you end up playing like it’s ranked to “keep up” and help your team win.

In CoD I can play at a very high level with the meta weapons, but when I switch out I’ll get wrecked. Then I’ll have a few games where I’m doing alright, but then if I switch back to the meta weapons I’m absolutely dominating. It doesn’t help that cod trueskill is based on last 5 games.

Again playing with friends is impossible. My one friend is a half decent CoD player and could barely get a kill in my lobbies.

All I’m saying is if it is too strict it really isn’t fun. For me at least, maybe it is for everyone else so I guess in that case keep it that way, it works.

I just want to be able to play big team battle with my friends and not screw the team over when I’m being counted as a 1600 CSR but I’m playing like a 600 CSR player.

15

> 2533274801036271;14:
> I just want to be able to play big team battle with my friends and not screw the team over when I’m being counted as a 1600 CSR but I’m playing like a 600 CSR player.

And so you should.

You’ll be able to join a fire team and play with them. I regularly play in a group that goes from Bronze to Diamond.

And MM will choose players in the other side to make a close and fair match.

And yes. If your are 1600 CSR the game will match you to that. But if you are truly running around with your mates having 600 CSR fun… You will be ranked 600 CSR… And that’s all the game / MM will expect.

What you can’t do is both

16

> 2535410773397964;3:
> Lol I always find the hysteria against SBMM funny. Siege, Valorant, CSGO, LoL, Dota, and Rocket League all have SBMM in their casual/unranked modes and those games are doing great.
>
> I’m Diamond in Valorant and when I play unranked I play against other Diamonds, but guess what, legit no one cares because it’s unranked. Barely anyone tries and if they do, no one cares.

Sbmm was only trashed on when Call of duty:Modern warfare and cold war put it up to an extreme so if you do good in one match you’re matched with players that act like they’re in a tournament for 1 million dollars the next match. SBMM is fine if its used like, well… any other game out there.

17

> 2535424555550180;16:
> > 2535410773397964;3:
> > Lol I always find the hysteria against SBMM funny. Siege, Valorant, CSGO, LoL, Dota, and Rocket League all have SBMM in their casual/unranked modes and those games are doing great.
> >
> > I’m Diamond in Valorant and when I play unranked I play against other Diamonds, but guess what, legit no one cares because it’s unranked. Barely anyone tries and if they do, no one cares.
>
> Sbmm was only trashed on when Call of duty:Modern warfare and cold war put it up to an extreme so if you do good in one match you’re matched with players that act like they’re in a tournament for 1 million dollars the next match. SBMM is fine if its used like, well… any other game out there.

Yea, it also doesn’t help that CoD:

  1. Doesn’t have a good ranked mode. Like I don’t understand how league play even works. It’s so needlessly complex.

  2. Is an unbalanced mess. The higher your MMR gets, it’s gonna be more and more people just abusing obviously broken weapons/perks.

18

> 2535410773397964;17:
> > 2535424555550180;16:
> > > 2535410773397964;3:
> > > Lol I always find the hysteria against SBMM funny. Siege, Valorant, CSGO, LoL, Dota, and Rocket League all have SBMM in their casual/unranked modes and those games are doing great.
> > >
> > > I’m Diamond in Valorant and when I play unranked I play against other Diamonds, but guess what, legit no one cares because it’s unranked. Barely anyone tries and if they do, no one cares.
> >
> > Sbmm was only trashed on when Call of duty:Modern warfare and cold war put it up to an extreme so if you do good in one match you’re matched with players that act like they’re in a tournament for 1 million dollars the next match. SBMM is fine if its used like, well… any other game out there.
>
> Yea, it also doesn’t help that CoD:
>
> 1. Doesn’t have a good ranked mode. Like I don’t understand how league play even works. It’s so needlessly complex.
>
> 2. Is an unbalanced mess. The higher your rank gets, it’s gonna be more and more people just abusing obviously broken weapons/perks.

Its why I stopped playing, my k/d was 3.2 and I had to sweat every lobby. It’s just not fun getting to that point when you are required to use the meta and every broken weapon because they didn’t feel the need to balance anything and if they did it was minimal. Doesn’t seem like we would have this problem in Halo infinite because thankfully theres no gunsmith.

19

> 2533274792737987;4:
> > 2535410773397964;3:
> > Lol I always find the hysteria against SBMM funny. Siege, Valorant, CSGO, LoL, Dota, and Rocket League all have SBMM in their casual/unranked modes and those games are doing great.
> >
> > I’m Diamond in Valorant and when I play unranked I play against other Diamonds, but guess what, legit no one cares because it’s unranked. Barely anyone tries and if they do, no one cares.
>
> Exactly. Do some of the games have to fix it after launch? Absolutely. They stated they are going to listen to community feedback so if it exists, and creates issues I imagine they will act accordingly especially since the game is F2P.

Yeah I don’t see the problem either.
And if you bring up something like “mass-deletion” or “censoring” happening, you should probably cite sources.

20

> 2535410773397964;3:
> Lol I always find the hysteria against SBMM funny. Siege, Valorant, CSGO, LoL, Dota, and Rocket League all have SBMM in their casual/unranked modes and those games are doing great.
>
> I’m Diamond in Valorant and when I play unranked I play against other Diamonds, but guess what, legit no one cares because it’s unranked. Barely anyone tries and if they do, no one cares.

What is going on is this my guy.

1.) Can’t find matches because of SBMM
2.) It puts 1-2 good players on a team, and the rest bottom feeders essentially making it a 1v4, or 1v8 the entire match.
3.) It subjects noobs against pros frequently… they are used as “balancing” tools.

It is not a good system at all. Especially the way it’s implemented in MCC. It’s insulting to both casual and comp people. You should be paired fairly, and evenly in ranked. social should be random.