When I get sniped when doing some quick move or driving a car full speed I assume it by a PC player. Some shots are physically impossible to hit with a gamepad.
I mean if I donāt pull my weight during a match the game is not going to be close, thereās not much fun when itās me + 3 idiots vs a team of another decent dude + 3 idiots and itās a competition of how fast I can slaughter his team vs him slaying my team. Iād rather have 8 people of similar skill in a match, that way a game is gonna be close and exciting at the same time.
Nup. Iāve got a bunch of friends who are good snipers. Way better than me. And they use a controller.
Iāve seen my son snipe three players out of a Warthog at full speed - one after the other. He even asked me what order he should do it in. He was literally toying with them.
Which is essentially what SBMM tries to provide.
The problem is that the skill ranges get spread too much - a combination of low population (not enough players to choose from) and people running around in squads.
The latter was a huge problem in ranked with people creating squads that forced opponents into mismatches that allowed the top couple of players to grind CSR. Which is why they introduced the limit on squad ranges in ranked.
The other problem is that no system is perfect. You canāt predict how team mates are going to gel together - so teams can be perfectly matched on paper - but fall apart when thrown together on the battlefield.
We know how difficult it is to get four solo players to come together as a team. Especially if not using mics. And BTB was always felt ālooseā because eight players were even harder, if not impossible, to co-ordinate. It feels that the move to twelve players is almost exponential in the mis-matching.
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In social the game is definitely not trying to get 8 people of simular skill, even during peak hours the gaps between players are very big. Itās just picking 8 players and tries to get a balanced match. It has a little cap on the gaps it looks for, but only a little. Matches during peak hours with players ranging from silver to diamond are not that rare, even though it is totally unnecessary during that time.
And you find matches within 1 or 2 seconds, so itās also not that it tried to see if there are better matches available, it just tries to find a match as quick as possible. I rather wait 15 seconds to get matches with smaller individual gaps than those 2 seconds searches with huge gaps.
I just played a couple of matches on my alt and itās now with a low population (2am now) and i got way closer matches then during peak hours. Simply because most of the extreme ends (the way lower skilled and the way better skilled players) are no longer online and percentagewise there are more average skilled players like meā¦ That is telling.
This has always been my issue with the system too. If Iām playing off peak in Australia then I accept that I may not be able to get a great matchup.
When I play at peak times and it finds a match very quickly but there is still an enormous spread of skill, then the matchmaking should have done better.
It would be great to see how close they actually aim for.
I know they mentioned ālooseningā it a bit more in Social back in the H5 days. Mainly to combat the sense of āsweatingā. But I was never sure why. Sweaty is a state of mind (toxic players just have to sweat). And the natural difference in skillsets between players always pushed the teams apart anyway.
Whenever Iāve looked at those - they have almost always been in squads.
But you may also get the cases where a low end player is on their own - and it has to pick a higher player to compensate. Itās kind of the opposite of when a high Onyx player goes in alone.
I donāt know what the tweaks can be made to the algorithm.
The MM is clever enough to predict who is going to be available in the next āxā seconds. If nothing better is coming along then you may as well just get on with it.
It is. You are basically summarising what is the problem with the tails of the population. And itās exacerbated by low numbers.
And I donāt know how the algorithm works - but there are probably a bunch of players in pockets of rank who get sacrificed to these types of games more than others. Just by the way it works. Those in between the tails and the middle peaks.
Honestly, and I keep saying thisā¦ while I think SBMM is very important - it is constantly working uphill.
We need some sort of handicap system in place. Subtle buffs and nerfs - to even out the playing field and let the SBMM work better. And the bonus would be better pings for everyone.
Personally I donāt see 343 getting rid of SBMM in Social Matchmaking until more people start playing Rank matchmaking.
But to be honest Social Matchmaking should just be removed altogether or made with less Playlist like in the past. The only reason why Social Matchmaking needed to be a thing in Halo was to play with guest. But nowadays thereās no reason to keep it around.
So itās more of an assumption that itās āpesky mnk playersā, more so than āitās always the pesky mnk playersā.
And how often does that even happen?
How itās phrased makes it seem like itās constantly, in every match, and that mnk players are far more in number than stats would let on, and in relation to skills of mnk players.
With how things appear on the forums, I must be the absolute worst mnk player in Halo Infiniteās existence.
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Donāt see how they are related.
Weāre supposed to learn from our mistakes.
SBMM is needed to balance the games. We can, and should be arguing, how best to implement it. Especially in context of lower population and friends coming together in unmatched squads.
But to remove it entirely would be madness.
FPS games just arenāt designed around competition or rewarding effort anymore. A normal curve controls itself over the long term, it doesnāt need āfixingā. All of this matchmaking manipulation to try and force peopleās experience to be the same regardless of skill level is completely toxic and goes against the basic principles of fairness. Fairness is not nerfing and punishing good players and giving bad players a consistent leg up. And yet it is claimed by most defenders of these systems that it is fairness that is at the root of what they are trying to do.
What is fair about forcing everyone to a 1kdr and a 1 win loss ratio? That is completely against fair competition, and makes the game so much more stressful at the higher skill end. That is not fair. Why should your experience become more stressful as you practice and get better?
SBMM is just participation trophies all round, and taking away the actual awards while you are at it. It is giving a virtual hug to the new generation of gamers who need payoff immediately with no effort. Iāve honestly had enough of it.
The one thing Iām thankful for is that haloās sbmm isnāt quite as flagrantly manipulative as codās this year.
Best of luck on future endeavors