Because the data suggests it increases player retention.
They still are
When everyone is mad at the system, no one is, I guess?
I beg to differ. That’s the gatekeeping aspect in a nutshell. Right when things are going fine you suddenly have the most lopsided, worst game possible that will flip the table and backtrack all the progress you made in the play session.
Maybe 343 just looks at it like a boss battle. Like, if you can beat a higher ranked team with anchor teammates on a server across the world, then you’re worthy of the next tier.
I am in East coast NA playing solo, why am I getting placed in a 200-ping server in Japan, and also team 3 of players? The game’s population situation has to be very bad. Now my second ranked match has 2 teammates quitting out in the middle of the game.
And they always will be. Grinding players and an open system will do that.
But they can be a little bit skewed (like now) or way too skewed (Season 1).
Most people seem to have ended the last two Seasons a tier or two below where they did on Season 1. I did, you seem to have, all my friends did. Pretty much every HaloTracker account I’ve looked up has their highest rank as Season 1.
Whatever they did has pulled the curve a little back to the left.
You just need to direct your frustrations in the right direction.
It’s not helpful or constructive to be mad at “everything”.
The matchmaking is a random walk.
The results are a random walk, that naturally follows the matchmaking walk (assuming you are playing at a consistent level).
But the CSR isn’t so random. And this is where you are probably applying your observational biases.
If you go W-L-W-L-etc then your CSR goes +3, -3, +2, -2, or something similar. And you are happy.
If you go W-W-L-L it goes +2, +3, -5, 0, or so. Annoying, but you probably don’t notice it that much.
But when you go W-W-W-L-L-L it goes +3, +3, +3, -9, 0, 0 and you going to into a melt down.
In reality your MMR didn’t change (just winning doesn’t automatically prove you deserve to rank up) so the CSR takes it’s first opportunity to go back to your MMR.
And it’s only worse if you have a run of four or more wins. It may take a couple of losses to wipe your debt. But the principle is the same.
You get disproportionately upset about that game. You look for something to blame. Team mates, matching, ping, the system. But it was just a loss. The match maker may have thrown you a harder game, you may not have gelled with your team mates, the ping may have been dodgy.
But it is just random happenstance.
In reality nothing has really changed. You won some. You lost some. You didn’t skill up and so you didn’t rank up. Your CSR is just oscillating a handful of points around your rank.
If you have actually gotten better though. That is a different story. Not just a very common one.
searching random solo in this game is tragic, because people that play this game are terrible at video games
Of course I’ve gotten better. Why else play the game at all? This is where the flaws in your theories start to become apparent. Your assumption is that someone who just got the game should have the same rank throughout their entire time playing it. They start where they start and they don’t get any better.
Frosty ranked in at low platinum. I’m guessing there’s many factors to that though, and I would assume if he played a lot of doubles he would move far away from that. I ranked in at P3, and I’m nowhere near his skill level. I think he had some really tough matches for his 10 games, and his buddy that always plays with him is a onyx level player. So to me, I think perhaps its maybe the luck of the draw, and perhaps a new cap might have been put on maximum placement rank to be lower? It’s probably harder to rank in high at the very beginning because its a new game mode that seemed to not use mmr from ranked arena. My first match was against a bronze player. True bronze. The matches scaled up bit by bit, and I ranked in after facing gold 6 and plat players. Seemed kinda fair in my experience, but…I could imagine some can have bad experiences. Luck of the draw man. New game mode.
I read many players ranked in low(in a thread here at some point), and even some friends of friends saying they ranked as low as silver while being like daimond or low onyx in ranked arena 4s.
I had watched spartan stream that day (Probably 1st day the game mode became available) and he was at that point in I think low daimond, I’m not sure where he placed.
So maybe it was just due to new game mode, new mmr in said game mode, and the threshold for max rank in on 10 game being different. Perhaps they want players to have more to play for idk. That would be like maybe 1 division lower of max rank in than what we are used to.
You get to the stage where your playing of the game is just to sustain your peak performance.
If you think you are going to magically rank up just by “playing” - you are not going to be very happy going forward.
Any minor improvements by time in the game are eventually mirrored by all your peers who are also improving in the same way.
The flaws in MY theories?
Never said that.
You would start at a baseline. There is usually a brief difficulty curve blip while you come to terms with the basics (rules, skills, set up etc) and then sustained improvement until a plateau.
That is pretty much what happens with anyone who takes up a new skill; playing Halo, golf, or chess.
It’s pretty a well described behaviour.
For a lot of player’s the climb isn’t that great. You already have a head start from other Halo games and/or video games. It’s not like taking up something completely different like crochet.
The weird thing is expecting that you can break through your skill ceiling by just playing the game. That is setting yourself up for a world of disappointment.
Unless of course you go into a state of denial and blame 343 for manufacturing your skill ceiling.
The reality is that you are a Diamond 6 (or whatever rank you are now). You have worked hard to get to this point. If you want to move up the food chain you actually have to improve. Stop blaming the system for holding you back. Identify a weakness in your game and improve it.
If you don’t want to that’s fine. Diamonds are forever.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
The system should have greased the wheel with a similar MMR curve. I would have thought it would take it from the main ranked MMR. Maybe it genuinely gave them a default one in error.
Wonder if it took doubles MMR from Social? If you played one or two games there in jest it could glitch your ranking a bit?
Or maybe it was just that they were the first ones in and the system ranked them low on the basis that the other good players were playing better at the time? But even then you would think that they should be a bit higher than that after 10 games.
I would love to see an explanation of these early behaviours. It would be a great insight into how the system works!
But in the end - the system has always had the rider that it needs games to rank you. It’s 46 games for a player from a 4v4 playlist. Should be quicker for 2v2 - but I don’t know the actual number. As long the rank is sorted out by then there is no genuine problem.
Man are you going to look bad when I get my Onyx back. Like, are you sure you want to keep trying to tell people they’re not good at the game from down there in the dugout?
Idk but for season resets, my rank in games for 4v4 usually start with daimond and onyx and fluctuate with my performance and wins. If I do bad consistently, it will skew high plat to mid daimond. While I do good, it stays daimond and onyx lobbies.
For 2v2, it legit gave me very low ranked players (as an enemy team) Started with bronze and low gold. Like my accuracy was almost 80%. Those guys were teamed up, definitely not playing like they were throwing the game, rather they chased every corner and fell into all the traps most higher skilled players avoid. Didn’t seem to really even strafe much, and would fight right out of cover regardless of my team mates position or theirs for that matter.
I played social 2s after ranked 2s. I won every single match by a landslide. Like not competitive matches whatsoever. So that bit tripped me out. I played a handful of those . The MM felt much looser, and I kept thinking eventually it will be me as the player playing way better players but it never happened. I played maybe…8 games i think. Its possible the tables could have eventually flipped. Naturally…those social matches were chaotic, but fun. Not necessarily cause I always did well, but because i could just to ridiculous stuff in it since everyone wasnt positioned up with a BR lol.
Imo, 2v2 is just insanely sweaty and more difficult than 4v4 (less opportunities to flank players that are occupied by other team mates and make those crazy multi kill plays). The entire point of a 2v2 besides the obvious controlling of weapons, is to punish the other team immediately after you kill 1 player. The best teams basically send each player on respawn in a certain flow that makes the entire match feel like a 1v2 for each individual player. So man, it is hella sweaty. lol.
I like it since its new and something different to play. I’m pretty casual competitive. I enjoy the challenge and close matches, but I usually never play 2s because the matches can feel sometimes overkill. I’ve usually always seen 2s as a playlist that isnt super high populated (because its so dang hard the higher you get into it) so eventually all players gets a bunch of lopsided matches due to that. For now tho maybe it has a healthy population because people are so burnt out of 4s and nothing else to play as far as ranked goes. I do hope whomever returned stays. We need all the players we can get.
Pretty much everything I’ve said to you was with the intent to help you rank up; stop focussing on what you can’t control, use expected kills (KPM) to your advantage, look for your weakest game mode to bring up your average MMR, look for weaknesses to improve.
I would never begrudge anyone going up (unless they were cheating the system and/or grinding CSR at the expense of others).
If and when you work out how to improve and climb back into Onyx (from memory you got very close) - I will be the first one to congratulate you.
I have never told anyone they weren’t good at the game.
Nor have I ever belittled anyone for being a lower rank for me.
Envious of those higher, sure. But that’s natural. It’s what we in the “dugouts” do.
You go into placement with the same MMR you had from the season before. Just wider and more volatile.
And it looks like they have left the MMR to be a bit more volatile than we probably thought. So swings in form are probably going to be mirrored reasonably quickly by swings in opponents.
They’ve backed the CSR (limited to 15 points a game) to smooth the ranking journey. And I think this is a good thing.
H5s was SWEATY bro lol. Yea I’m sure that would help if you had someone not too far from your range. I played with someone thats around my range and the matches were competitive towards the tail end of ranking in, and only felt bad due to network issues. In a good setting, good ping, good server, the experience was enjoyable even in a loss. I don’t have many friends that play anymore, so I don’t get on that much these days. Everyone’s on the apex train. Lol
I’m aware the mmr is used from previous 4v4, and the reason I added that was just for comparison as to how 2v2 seemed to not pull in any players right off the bat near my skill range from my 4v4 mmr. So thats why I believe it basically was a real new game mode(not in the sense that 2v2 is new to halo, but just meaning new to halo infinite), new mmr for said game mode etc. To have faced bronze and silver on an existing account that has plenty of data on it for the other ranked mode kinda tripped me out. (Its possible those players could be ranked higher in 4v4 though. )
I do like it though. Its not 4v4, and it would be hard to continue playing if my first matches were just these insanely difficult matches. Much better to start from the low end and scale up at an appropriate rate, and thats exactly how I felt my matches. Hopefully others had a decent experience. The first ones on probably didn’t though. I didnt play it the first day it came out.
You’ve said nothing I didn’t already know, and much that isn’t accurate.
Doubtful, since it will single handedly uproot your entire belief system about how this game works.
My friends and I have a few theories about that.
Its possible that since the playlist essentially started from scratch, during the early stages of placements the MMR was basically nonexistent and people placed just on the quality of each individual match, which is why almost nobody the first week got past Plat 2 or so in their placements, no matter how good they did or how high their other ranks/MMR are. I have a friend who is in the top 200 people in the world in Crossplay and Solo/Duo, and he placed Plat 3.
Another possibility is that the ranking is scaled to 4v4 settings still, and therefore you only gain half the MMR “credit” per match. That would explain the vast sea of low placement ranks.
Additionally, its a slayer-only playlist, so the way the MMR and CSR will be calculated will be more pure…untarnished as it were. If its expecting someone in a 2v2 to get 20 kills by themselves when they have a partner, though, that’s going to be problematic. It will say you’re “expected” to do better than is logical.
Just discovered that the crossplay playlist isn’t pairing teams properly… You can go up against a full clan while your whole team is solo. Also, diamonds are still matching up with Golds for free wins. Why is this still allowed?
It’s in-part due to the population shrinking over time.
Most veterans and dedicated players of the franchise possess the skills to populate the medium to upper percentiles of the population bell curve. And this can become particularly so when the population bell curve is full of players who exhibited intrigue for a recently release title, but may just be new to the franchise and/or possibly extremely casual FPS fans.
Still, the fact that they’re willing to invest some of their time trying out the new experiences that can be had; particularly, from the game’s ranked environment, leads to the lower rungs of the population bell curve getting populated by people who lack the skills to find much sustainable enjoyment. And as the population naturally recedes from the initial hype period a higher percentage of the players who rarely, if ever, return to the title will likely have existed at the lower rungs of the skill spectrum.
So this can cause many veteran players to achieve some of their highest ranks at the onset than what they may constitute as their “normal” skill range for much of the remaining lifecycle of the title. It’s just a natural inflation.
it changes everything, since you swear it isn’t possible
I don’t trust Microsoft, 343, or the MATH, since its not based on anything tangible. Microsoft and 343 lie often, are mistaken often, and are making a product with the sole purpose of making money from said product. The 50% win/loss encourages player retention through frustrating gameplay, and so they employ it with fervor.
They clearly do hate us, or this wouldn’t be a topic of discussion. Not one person actually likes this system. I don’t know, I guess you do since you’re so aggressive about defending it. But the SBMM forcing losses is a proven phenomenon, as we’ve shown you over and over and over without you being open to the clear proof provided.
For some reason, you like it, and you don’t say why you like it. So whatever.
If you improve your skill you will face harder opponents. If you beat them consistently your MMR will go up. Keep winning and your CSR will get dragged up.
It’s the way it’s supposed to work.
Fair enough. That’s your choice.
Seeing as you are still arguing that KPM and KD are exactly the same thing I’m not sure you are the best judge of this.
But you’ve shown me nothing. Zilch. Nada. A Roy Orbison.
Time and time again you put up vague anecdotal answers.
And when I’ve gone to your HaloTracker record to collaberate it does nothing but contradict what you are saying.
When you said that they force losses on you whenever you show some form there was literally a 12-14 game winning streak the day before.
When you said you are constantly fighting off high Onyx teams I could barely find the occasional Onyx 1500 player - and they seemed to appear equally on both sides.
When you say HaloTracker’s % win stat proves that you are being forced into a result I specifically found that over half the games in your record were won by the side with the lower %.
Apparently the occasional game where you are outclassed and HaloTracker says the other side was 75% chance - that is absolute proof that 343’s algorithm is rigging games. Even if the validity of that % chance is flimsy at best (it literally averages the CSR’s - seriously).
I believe the term is sore loser. A person is unable to cope with losing. They tend to reach for anything and everything beyond their control to explain it. It’s probably safe to conclude anyone embarking on an adventure into the mystical land of excuses, confirmation bias and cherry picking at every turn meets the qualifications.