I find that the way skill-based matchmaking ensures that everyone keeps a roughly 50% win rate just breaks real skill progression. If I absolutely shred in matchmaking I’ll get teamed with horrible players to even out that win rate. I’ve gotten to a point where I can predict how likely it is that I’ll win the next match entirely based on my performance during previous matching. Winning should be based on performance in the match you are actively playing, not matches you already played. I’d love to hear what other people think
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Might be worth your while having a read through this:
https://forums.halowaypoint.com/t/so-sbmm-is-designed-to-decide-when-you-lose/541434
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The 50% win rate is one of the reason why i stopped playing infinite. I got teamed up too many time with team mates that ended with a k/d of 0.5 while i went positive and played the objective. But still lost the match.
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I agree 100% but 343 is also 100% convinced that sbmm is a good idea. I don’t think they’ll listen but hey, we tried
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The SBMM just tries to make the matches even.
It’s not forcing you to win or lose. It doesn’t need to do that.
If you are winning the matches against better ranked teams (the system doesn’t make every match exactly 50:50) you will rank up.
And if you are “absolutely shedding” your high KPM will push you MMR up.
The match making system doesn’t know how you performed in the last few games.
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But if you had a higher win rate (ie. Matching was broken) - even more people would quit as they would have a correspondingly lower win rate.
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You got put in a team that was matched to the other team. That is all.
That team mate when 0.5 but may have been expected to go 0.4. They may have played above themselves.
You went positive but may have failed to reach expected kills. So you may not have carried as hard as you thought!
But you did play the objective.
You opponents may have protected their lower ranked players better. Helped them to go 0.6 instead of 0.5. Or utilised then better for the objective.
Team game.
Went a lot over expected kills. But as long we are losing the match, it does no benefit. It doesnt help that MMR goes up. Next match its going down because of whatever reason.
There are 2 sort of people dying too much. First are playing the objective as hard as they can. This one i defend at every cost. Second are just low skilled player. Im not their babysitter.
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Well done!
You will lose CSR on the loss. That has to happen. You lost.
But if you can stabilise your MMR (and even make it go up) - then your CSR will go up harder on the next win.
It has a huge benefit over time.
The key to ranking up (higher CSR) is to push your MMR up and keep it up.
If those reasons are a loss to a better side and/or poor KPM vs harder opponents then it’s OK - you aren’t ready to rank up.
Not if they aren’t pulling their weight in killing to get the objective… and then simply holding onto the objective until they die, all while giving the opposition the objective and the advantage in numbers.
You need the objective players helping out in the fight.
By all means, play the objective. But not at ANY cost.
I’m getting a lot better of dropping the oddball to help protect it. Even working out the best place to drop it is a skill (to both control the way the enemy approach it and to stop them picking it up and disappearing out the back way).
But you are. It’s a team game. You need a team mentality to get the best out of your team.
Professional sports do it all the time. It’s not just the stars that win the games - it’s how the teams structure up to cover deficiencies. It may be as simple as putting a faster player on one side of the ground to cover for another’s lack of pace.
I’ve played with lots of Onyx players (sigh). And some are very good at communicating with you - telling you where to go, what weapons to pick up, what they need you to do with the objective. They don’t have to run with you - but they make sure that you aren’t left stranded by yourself.
Other’s run around as lone wolves yelling at you because you aren’t there to pick up the rockets they just dropped taking on three opponents by themselves.
I’ll let you guess which teams tended to do better on the scoreboard, and in which games I tended to break even in as opposed to going negative.
Your team work is part of your team skill rank. If you want to rank up you need to improve those factors as much as your individual 1v1 plays.
I’d like to believe this isn’t true anymore since they decided to test loose SBMM with Yappening. The positive reaction to Yappening’s looser SBMM resulting in quick matches and being more fun than before should shake up their belief that SBMM is the be all end all to matchmaking quality.
Still, I’d like them to test 1-50 for Infinite. The current CSR system just doesn’t work.
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SBMM is a tricky topic and there are a few reasons why.
For starters, what you say is absolutely valid and true. I, like you, am constantly put with teammates who are essentially there to sandbag the team. It isn’t fun for me for plenty of reasons (not wanting to try my absolute hardest at all times, for example), and I can’t imagine it’s fun for the guy on my team going 1-16 against players he stands no chance against.
BUT…
The alternative, really, is to let matches unfold naturally and with little to no guidance. This often results in complete blowout matches, which are also no fun for really anyone involved. I can’t speak for everyone, but matches are boring if they are absolute slaughters one way or the other. Winning or losing, it isn’t fun. It becomes a slow crawl of waiting for everyone to quit out.
These blowout matches are likely very, very bad for player retention. It is a lot easier to convince someone to keep playing when they get pounded into the dirt over and over again. But when the match is 50-49? It makes it tempting for them to stick around and get that win.
But you are right. It hinders player skill advancement and expression.
I do not have the solution here. I just know I cannot stand SBMM. It isn’t fun for me, but I am also not tasked with designing a matchmaking system that accounts for the newest players all the way up to the upper echelon. I just play the game and know what I like and don’t like.
EDIT:
I’d also like to add that there are way, way too many people who use SBMM as a scapegoat as to why they lost. Because big streamers are starting to talk about SBMM in multiple games across multiple genres, it’s becoming a go-to for too many people who do not understand it.
I’m not saying anyone in this thread is doing that. But I am saying that I believe we are on the verge of losing the plot, broadly speaking. SBMM will just become another meaningless term that is defined poorly and applied where it shouldn’t,
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You know what happens when i’m trying to get the last win of the day and instead i get these kinds of close matches and i lose? (in any game, not just infinite)
It makes me want to uninstall the game, often i don’t even want to play for the next few days… so i don’t think it’s good AT ALL to have only these kind of matches. Just my 2 cents
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SBMM continues to change and so when searching with people not on your team, their SBMM is different and the game will create these quick matches to better support the 50% win rate. Regardless, over time you’ll still rank up.
For sure. That’s also understandable. But you also have the knowledge that SBMM is a thing. Most players do not. They just see it was a close match and if they try again they might pull it off this time.
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Agree.
Some game types are just naturally less competitive.
Fiesta for example.
I’m all for multi-team - it just ramps up the chaos.
And they could do heaps with the rules, maps, layouts, and even duration of matches to mix things up.
SBMM is about creating matches where people felt they had a chance. It’s not about making games 50-49 in the last minute (although that can be fun).
You are just trying to avoid the one sided matches.
Yep. I think making it the same scale as the MMR was a big mistake.
I’m not sure we can go back to 1-50. Halo 3 ruined that.
But 1-100 or 1-117 could work.
Maybe even just up the tiers of each division to 10 (effectively making it 1-60).
Skill advancement is for ranked play.
As for the expression?
I feel players tend to express themselves more in games where there is chaos and they don’t feel that every minute action or decision affects the result.
It’s no surprise that combining BTB and Fiesta is seeing players relaxing more.
I don’t know why 343 think that putting players in the same game types on the same maps as Ranked will somehow create less sweaty play?
More chaos please.
Why does skill advancement have to be confined to ranked play? Players can seek to improve in any environment. Hell, you could use campaign for that.
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Who are you and what have you done with Darwi
On a serious note i agree
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Yep. You are right in regards to basic skills.
I was thinking more in the team tactics that are used to dominate maps and positions in Ranked. The things that make it sweaty for players.
Good players should rise to the top. Which they do, in ranked. Because the visible rank justifies how hard they have to work each game. However in social, good players are forced in to difficult games every time with absolutely no indication that they are better than the general population.
That is a fundamentally broken concept. If the game thinks a player is good, then it needs to TELL the player they are good. Otherwise the player does not understand why they are having such a hard time and get frustrated with the game. This is the reason why these ideas should be kept where they belong, in ranked.
Social should be an open lobby. It pulls in 12 random players, it balances the teams as best it can with those players, and then it’s game on. The good players are visibly good, and the matches are roughly even over the long term. That is how social should work
The answer is game sbmm to your advantage