This thread is for discussing Skill, Rank and experience, and how they should be tied together to make a quality, effective, and efficient system for Halo 4.
If you have any negative feedback, I’d be glad to hear it, but please make it constructive.**
Definitions
Firstly, I will define these terms in my own words, to prevent any ambiguity.
Skill. How well a player plays the game. Not simply K/D, or KA/D, or win/loss, but beyond that. Skill is hard to define, but I’m sure we all understand what it means.
Rank. Without a context, this word is almost meaningless, but I refer it to be a visible object that consist of parameters or enumerations. To rid the programmers speak, it is the scale in which players are placed, and the first thing you see when you hover over a player in a pre-game lobby.
Experience. This ties most directly to the amount of time a player has spent in a game, but takes traits from skill, and knowledge. A player can be experienced, but unskillful (like myself), and a player can be skilful, buy not experienced. An example of experience could be knowledge of weapon spawns, tricks to holding a position in a map, or general knowledge of the game. This is easily the most difficult to measure with algorithms.
Processing & Visibility
Each Halo game (excluding Halo CE and Halo 3: ODST) has their own system for ranking players. That is, to calculate both skill and experience, and put them into a Rank. Be it an emblem, a word, or a number. Each game’s systems had their flaws, but they all had strengths.
I’m going to use Halo 3’s and Halo Reach’s ranking systems as a basis for this post, as I believe people reading this will already have at least a basic knowledge of how the both worked.
Halo 3’s rank calculation was very skill dependent, however, it did take experience heavily into account. Essentially, every game you won you were rewarded with an experience point. To rank up, you hit a certain amount of experience points, but for higher ranks, an amount of skill points were required. This stopped people with no skill from reaching high ranks. However Halo 3’s system becomes more complicated when it comes to individual “ranked” playlists, where you receive one “sub-rank” per playlist, based of the amount of games you have won. This was the rank visible next to your name in these playlists, so it forces your actual rank across to your player card, not immediately visible. Attached to your “Sub-rank” is your skill points for that playlist. I’ll bring these up later.
Halo Reach’s rank is calculated almost purely from your experience. Every game you play, you are awarded credits, for things such as commendations, performance, and game-time. Despite this systems exploits, it does moderately measure a player’s experience with the game. This system is much simpler than Halo 3, and is more elegant, but really does not function as a competitive gauge for skill, as a rank should. The Arena is the only current “ranked” playlist. Where your wins and losses determine your Division from the set of “Steel, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Onyx”. This overrides your rank in the specific playlist. No skill is displayed other than that of your division. Which is fairly accurate.
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
The Good:
Halo 3 had a lot of great ideas with the rank system, and it is generally the preferred of the two. Halo 3 was great for competitive players, it displayed an accurate version of skill, relevant to each playlist, and it worked fine with social playlists as well.
Halo Reach had a system that rewarded experience, and that is a good thing.
The Bad:
Halo 3’s ranking system was horrible if you were the only good player on our team. You could get 25 kills in a game of Team Slayer, and still lose, due to a poor team. Even though you are skilled, you will not receive EXP, which is the floor in the win/loss ranking schemes.
Halo Reach’s credit system was horribly exploitable. From BTB Banshee spawn killing to earn quick credits, or continuous firefight boosting, or even AFK’ing. The rank system is not at all competitive, which is why a lot of people hate it, and possibly lead to Reach’s sub normal popularity, and online population, as people are forced to custom games, or to another game to find competition.
The Ugly:
Halo 3’s system was ugly. It got messy with playlist specific ranks, as Reach did when there were 3 Arenas. It was difficult to tell a players overall skill in both games, as there were so many variables, and time in the pre-game lobby is often short.
In Reach, a lot of players navigate to another player’s service record for Matchmaking, and calculating their Kill death spread, as a positive or a negative. Not only is this a horrible forced method, it is also inaccurate to quite a degree.
Desperate times calls for desperate measures
Combining systems, and smoothing out bugs is sometimes a good way to take feedback from two old systems. It allows creation of a completely new, but well understood system for ranking.
After my analysis of the previous ranking systems, and reading innumerable amounts of posts, I have found that it is better to take elements from systems that worked, and refine them to make a quality system that will suit the majority, and be maintainable.
Proposed example system
As an example system, I would like to propose a complete ranking system for Halo 4, it will best display Rank via skill and experience, as it should, and it will be more difficult to exploit than previous Halo games. It will also be simpler, and cleaner, and have the right incentives where they should be.
GET ON WITH IT!
You’re probably thinking, when is this guy going to get to the damn point? I hear you. I’m there:
A rank should consist of two variables:
1) Experience based rank, a la Halo Reach
2) Skill based sub-string, like skill points from Halo 3.
These should be combined into a RANK, with a CLASS.
Here is a short example of RANKS, effected ONLY by Experience (cR):
* Recruit
* Sergent
* Captain
* Major
* Commander
* Brigadier
* General
Here is a short example of CLASSES, effected ONLY by Skill. These will act as suffixes to the RANK.
* None (Default, before enough data is found to give a class)
* Steel
* Bronze
* Silver
* Gold
* Onyx
Here are a few example ranks:
* Major. Gold Class
* General, Silver Class
* Captain, Steel Class
It is immediately clear how skillful and experienced a player is.
NOTE, the Classes will only be visible from ranked playlists, and the service record, not during social games, or customs. The CLASS information will be gathered only from ranked playlist, not from social.
As a suggestion, the CLASS could change the color of the emblem of your rank, or attach a sub-medal, etc, as long as it is visible at a glance.
Continues next post
Calculating Rank: Skill
The Skill part of the rank should be determined using algorithms similar to Halo 3’s 1-50, but with bugs smoothed out, and added elasticity. What I mean by elasticity, is room to improve. For example, if I play bad for a whole year, then play well for a month, my skill will improve significantly. In Halo 3, it was hard to go up in skill points if you were stuck. Just as it is hard to improve a k/d after thousands of games.
So, if we bring back 1-50, but put it behind the scenes (or to the service record), give each 10 a band, for example:
0 = No class
1-9 = Steel
10-19 = Bronze
20-29 = Silver
30-39 = Gold
40-49 = Onyx
50 = Onyx Max (Added flames :D)
However, the system I propose should be slightly less “progressive” than Halo 3. Meaning that you have to play less games to boost your skill points, so long as they are great games. This falls under elasticity.
Calculating Rank: Experience (cR)
Experience, as per my proposal would run very similar to that of the credit system of Halo Reach, except for the way you earn them.
Earning Credits:
Now, I’m going to try to keep this simple, but if you don’t get it, I understand, I’m probably explaining the idea incorrectly.
Halo 4 needs to find a player reward system that rewards you for a good game, but at the same time promotes teamwork and Objectives. Reach unfortunately has no credit incentive to complete objectives, when arguably they are the backbone of Halo.
The main adjustment I propose, is replacing commendation credits (per kill/medal, not tier unlocks), and replacing them with fixed rates.
Each action or medal will be rewarded a fixed amount of credits, based on difficulty.
Your credits pool up during the game, and at the end, the matchmaking game-type decides on a win/loss modifier. If you lose the game, you will receive the same amount of credits as what you’ve earned throughout the duration of the game. If you win, however, depending on the game-type, your credits will be multiplied. For example, winning a Team Slayer game could be x2. Winning a CTF game could be x4, winning a game of Stockpile could be x3.5, etc. Such that it balances the need to win, with the need to get kills. Something that Reach doesn’t do.
Incentives and use
Apart from the ranking itself, there are several incentives that we can use to promote ranking up, and to reward the skilled.
Armor:
Ah, the armory. A thought I had was with helmets:
Helmets would be unlocked via reaching a certain rank (Captain, etc), and bought with credits. However, to unlock variants of these helmets, you would have to be a certain skill class. So, for example, to unlock CBRN/CNM for the Security helmet, you would have to be a Gold General or above.
I suppose this could be translated to other armory items, if they chose to add variants of shoulder pieces, etc.
Matchmaking
My proposal uses ranked and social playlists.
Social:
Social Matchmaking will be like Halo Reach in the way it matches players
Ranked:
Ranked Matchmaking will begin by searching for players within your class. “Searching for Silver Class players” will display in the searching screen, for example, and expand, just like the 1-50 system.
Hello?! Anyone out there? Please respond, that’s an order.
Your feedback would be appreciated, peace out.
I like it, but how would the skill system work exactly? I’m asking because if it has resemblance to the Halo 3 system, it can lock you into certain rank. If this can happen, the system needs to have a way for the player to reset their skill without making a new account or deranking because we don’t want to make the experience worse for lower skilled players. Notice that this class reset wouldn’t affect the way TrueSkill matches you, you would still be playing against players on your skill level.
I completely agree with a combination of the two ranking systems. As for the experience side, were you thinking about a set amount of credits per game, or varying per participation?
An example of what I was thinking;
A game of team slayer = 50 kills
10000 cR available for each team for kills (percentage of kills is percentage of the credit pot gained), and credit bonuses for medals like:
Headshot: 10 cR
Killing Spree: 15 cR
Killing Frenzy: 25 cR (+10 higher each higher spree)
Stick (if its in Halo 4): 15 cR
Flag Cap: 50 cR
So after the game you would have:
Game completion: +4000 cR
Medal Bonus: +145 cR
Winning Bonus: +500 cR
Total: 4645 cR
Experience: blah
Competitive Playlists - Halo 2 Ranking System
Social Playlists - Reach’s Ranking System
I like the names for the ranks, but there needs to be more for a longer life span of the game. There also needs to be ranks that require little cR to give new players a feeling of success
Here is a short example of RANKS, effected ONLY by Experience (cR):
- Recruit
- Apprentice
- Private
- Corporal
- Sergeant
- Lieutenant
- Captain
- Major
- Commander
- Colonel
- Brigadier
- General
- Hero
- Legend
- Mythic
- Noble
- Eclipse
- Nova
Here is a short example of CLASSES, effected ONLY by Skill. These will act as suffixes to the RANK.
- White - Default
- Steel
- Bronze
- Silver
- Gold
- Platinum
- Pyrite
- Onyx
Do you mean prefixes?
seal of approval
> Do you mean prefixes?
Yeah
Also, I think “Gold General” “Bronze Mythic” and “Onyx Nova” flows better.
[deleted]
> > Do you mean prefixes?
>
> Yeah
>
> Also, I think “Gold General” “Bronze Mythic” and “Onyx Nova” flows better.
That’s not really a problem, but yes prefixes would work too. My train of thought was to use “Heroic, Legendary, Mythic” as prefixes, but I changed my mind to use Arena divisions, and I thought they could be classes. Prefixes would work fine.
Two types of questions brought up so far regard credits, and skill rank/class. I’ll be honest, after submitting the post I was going to go into detail for the both, but I had to leave. I’m back, and I’ll now complete the thread.
> I like the names for the ranks, but there needs to be more for a longer life span of the game. There also needs to be ranks that require little cR to give new players a feeling of success
>
>
>
> Here is a short example of RANKS, effected ONLY by Experience (cR):
> * Recruit
> …
> * Nova
>
> Here is a short example of CLASSES, effected ONLY by Skill. These will act as suffixes to the RANK.
> * White - Default
> …
> * Onyx
Of course. My list was simply to give a quick demonstration.
> > > Do you mean prefixes?
> >
> > Yeah
> >
> > Also, I think “Gold General” “Bronze Mythic” and “Onyx Nova” flows better.
>
> That’s not really a problem, but yes prefixes would work too. My train of thought was to use “Heroic, Legendary, Mythic” as prefixes, but I changed my mind to use Arena divisions, and I thought they could be classes. Prefixes would work fine.
>
> Two types of questions brought up so far regard credits, and skill rank/class. I’ll be honest, after submitting the post I was going to go into detail for the both, but I had to leave. I’m back, and I’ll now complete the thread.
>
>
>
> > I like the names for the ranks, but there needs to be more for a longer life span of the game. There also needs to be ranks that require little cR to give new players a feeling of success
> >
> >
> >
> > Here is a short example of RANKS, effected ONLY by Experience (cR):
> > * Recruit
> > …
> > * Nova
> >
> > Here is a short example of CLASSES, effected ONLY by Skill. These will act as suffixes to the RANK.
> > * White - Default
> > …
> > * Onyx
>
> Of course. My list was simply to give a quick demonstration.
I did some math and I’ve found out a possible way to calculate classes.
eg:
Player automatically gets promoted to white once they win at least 1 game in any playlist
New player, plays game - loses, nothing.
Next game he wins, promoted to White.
Each playlist will have their own classes, and players will play other players in their own class
None = 1.00
White = 2.00 (Sergeants H3)
Steel = 3.00 (Lieutenants H3)
Bronze = 4.00 (Captains H3)
Silver = 5.00 (Majors H3)
Gold = 6.00 (Commanders H3)
Platinum = 7.00 (Colonels H3)
Pyrite = 8.00 (Brigadiers H3)
Onyx = 9.00+ (Generals H3)
skill = result + performance
result (win) = +skill^-1.7
result (loss) = -skill^-1.7
eg:
skill is currently at 4.64 (Bronze class) and he wins a match
4.64^-1.7 = +0.07 ranks
Perfomance = +((kills-deaths)/30)/skill + assists/500
eg:
+((18-7)/30)/4.64 + 5/500
+0.09 ranks
Combining the two gives:
+0.16 ranks, the player is now at skill 4.80 (still Bronze class)
As the player progresses through classes, the harder it is to rank up.
Figures can be adjusted of course. It might need to be adjusted to make it easier for players to rank up
I haven’t run test data through it, but that is a kind of system I was talking about. However I think it should be slightly more complex than that, as that kind of system would be linear, meaning after a point in time you will hit 50, so long as you are generally pulling positives.
Elasticity principles need to be incorporated, such as asymptotic or exponential functions. I could go into complex mathematics, but it really isn’t necessary to demonstrate the idea.
I actually agree with the Op a whole lot, hell, I had a similer idea for this before aso
I am completely against a full-blown Halo 3 style ranking system. Why? Because is allowed undeserving booster to obtain level 50’s (I’ve seen 50’s gained in 10 games).
I think a leveling system kinda like Halo2’s would be great, which is based more on a win/loss ratio plus what levels players were they you beat. They’re were 3 types of people who had level 50’s in Halo 2, highly skilled players, circle boosters and modders.
With bridging host, firewall forcing players into your game and modding not being as easy to do as it once was in Halo 2, plus combing with an advanced “Ban Hammer”, I think it would work out well.
I think there are elements that can be taken from the previous games to combine for Halo 4.
1.) Halo 2 style leveling
2.) Halo 3 Style overall/subranking
3.) Halo Reach Armory/Credit system (as a bonus)
The Halo: Reach Arena system, is a joke, throw it on the ground.
Another point-
they need to make it simple, and they need to express the relationship with your rank gain, cR gain etc. Not just throw all these numbers at you like Reach does.
By pressing the back button you should be able to see what gave you the most cR (medals, kills etc) to add up to the final cR gain
Same with rank, it should show you why/how you went down x amount of why you went up x amount.
I love it, I have been thinking the same thing for the past few mouths and you have made the idea better by adding the steel-onyx as the true skill ranks, I really hope that they have something close to this so bad.
I cannot tell you how many times I lost because of me getting like 25 kills and still losing due to bad teammates. But I still think we should the 1-50 ranking system a 2nd with exp like the 1 you made while still rewarding the best player on the losing team with the best K/D.
> I am completely against a full-blown Halo 3 style ranking system. Why? Because is allowed undeserving booster to obtain level 50’s (I’ve seen 50’s gained in 10 games).
>
> I think a leveling system kinda like Halo2’s would be great, which is based more on a win/loss ratio plus what levels players were they you beat. They’re were 3 types of people who had level 50’s in Halo 2, highly skilled players, circle boosters and modders.
>
> With bridging host, firewall forcing players into your game and modding not being as easy to do as it once was in Halo 2, plus combing with an advanced “Ban Hammer”, I think it would work out well.
>
> I think there are elements that can be taken from the previous games to combine for Halo 4.
>
> 1.) Halo 2 style leveling
> 2.) Halo 3 Style overall/subranking
> 3.) Halo Reach Armory/Credit system (as a bonus)
>
> The Halo: Reach Arena system, is a joke, throw it on the ground.
I agree with this.
I like it and I think this will work