So SBMM is designed to decide when you lose…?

[Darwi]

@esnoox

having a winning streak, ranking up and boom, you get a game where you play as good as before, maybe carry the team

And part of this is 343’s decision to award every win with CSR.

In this “winning” streak you CSR’d up - but you probably didn’t MMR (ie. actually rank) up. And that’s a communication problem.

I can see why they did it that way - but I can also see how it frustrates people.

@esnoox

but have one dude going -15 in slayer.

Ouch. That sounds bad.

But keep in mind they may have been expected to go minus. Not -15 obviously. But it may not be quite as bad as it sounds.

@esnoox

Back to sqaure one and we have the foundation of this thread: a system that maintains the 50/50 win/lose rate.

And the foundation of the response.

In those few games, did you actually improve your skill / rank?

You can’t blame your inertia on one game and/or one opponent. I’m sure there were games you went negative. Or even went positive but below expected number of kills. Games where a team mate carried you. Or an opponent had a shocker and handed you a win against the tide.

@esnoox

No, but they occur and therefor distort the rank. The fact that everyone experience is not really comforting, especially as a non US player.

I feel you. I’m playing from a geographically isolated area and the pings this season have been horrendous.

Fingers crossed the population picks up soon.

But still. The ranking system can’t do much about it.

@esnoox

If I would play with my usual H3 or H5 squad, Onyx would be pretty easy. Not necessarily because of tactics and communication but because I would have a very low amount of losses because of ONE dude getting stomped for whatever reason.

And that is part of being a squad. You get control over team mates.

But you would also be balanced by a weighting.

Would you rank higher. Probably. As much as Onyx 1600? Who knows. It would be interesting to see how you go if you tried it.

@esnoox

How fast you can get kills isn’t the only way to determine your skill.

It’s not.

But it’s the only metric that improves the predictive value of TrueSkill2.

All those other metrics you mentioned are still valuable. But they are reflected in the win. By winning it is already implied you are doing those things well.

@esnoox

Really? I rather have 10 losses because I get outplayed by better players and receive a rank where I belong than winning game after game,

Sounds a bit counter productive because straight off the bat you’ve just gotten a rank you don’t belong at. That’s why you’ve gone on a 10 game losing streak.

@esnoox

grinding small numbers of CSR, losing one game for whatever reason and start at square one 1.

This is a CSR problem.

We need a smaller scale. Even the old 1-50. People would happily play for days, nigh weeks, to go up or down a rank.

Now we lose our mind over 15 points in a night.

@esnoox

Fun fact is: most of the games ARE close, but very often because one player is carrying the team.

Mostly because of the population and the wider range of ranks.

And you need to broaden your definition of carry. A good player can go positive and underperform vs expectation. A lower player can go negative but either get more kills or less deaths than expected (and thus carry the team).

@esnoox

I still believe that the game is much more influenced by ping, hit detection and FPS than 343 tells us. I even tend to claim, the aim assist is different in some games. May it because of technical unfluences like desync or on purpose.

Desync etc is a huge concern. But it’s not implemented on purpose.

[esnoox]

@Darwi

Desync etc is a huge concern. But it’s not implemented on purpose.

We already had the discussion several times so I don’t thinks its necesarry to go over all the points again.
But I want to say something to this:

I’m honestly not that sure about it. I played a decent amount of games and it happened so many times that the aim assist either feels like a freaking magnet plus I had a clear advantage in fire rate (thats how it felt) or it feels like there is no AA at all and I’m losing every gun fight despite shooting at the same time or even a little earlier. Desync? Bad ping of mine or my opponent? Difference in FPS? I don’t know… but knowing 343 for several years now I REALLY wouldn’t be surprised if it was on purpose.

Afaik GoW had a system where new players got a damagae adavantage in their first games, I’m I right?

But we probably will never get an honest answer about this…

[Dormiglione]

So im back. 10 matches later. Still 36% win rate the last 25 matches. The last 10 matches 4 win 6 lost. Lot of desync, bad hit detection and a few matches on +120 ms ping.
Low player base is a problem.

[Darwi]

@esnoox

but knowing 343 for several years now I REALLY wouldn’t be surprised if it was on purpose.

Honestly. If you get to that point of the relationship with the game - you probably just need to move on.

[Darwi]

@FreshWheat17212

This is probably best practice when you ID a member of the 343 defense force, they’re either a troll, or delusional, either way, not worth talking to.

I’m far from a member of the 343 defence force.

Just happy to chat about anything ranking related. Good or bad.

But I don’t think just putting someone on ignore just because they have a different opinion to you does anything except suggest your argument isn’t all that strong.

Half the problem is nobody wants to actually chat about how to improve the system. It just seems easier to shout it down and replace it with “something”.

[HEART_n_S0UL]

@Darwi

The only thing that seems to be failing miserably is the low population.

If truskill2 is made for a higher population… then maybe it isn’t meant to be used for halo infinite? Perhaps reevaluate it and adapt it to a lower population? They might have to admit failure is the only thing, which I’m not sure they are ready to do yet… Denial is extremely powerful defense mechanism

[HEART_n_S0UL]

@Darwi

Half the problem is nobody wants to actually chat about how to improve the system. It just seems easier to shout it down and replace it with “something”.

I thought this is 343’s main job… am I wrong? I already have another job that doesn’t pay enough

[esnoox]

@Darwi

Honestly. If you get to that point of the relationship with the game - you probably just need to move on.

Believe me, if there wer ANY Arena shooter similar to Halo’s core gameplay out there, I already would have. Despite the fact I grew up with the franchise and have a deep connection to it (as far is it goes for a video game ;D)

But looking plainly at the facts and history of the dev team and management, their mistakes, their broken promises, their half -Yoink!- apologies… it’s not that far fetched for me.

But do you know what the frustrating part about is? If it is not on purpose, it means such games happen after 6 years of development, almost 500 milion budget, on bad -Yoink!- hardware with internet connection way beyond the capabilities of connections back in 2004 or even 2006. With the leading franchise of xbox. Thinking of that, I honestly have them rigg games via a bad aim assist rather than having plain incompetence on almost every level.

But we are drifitng away from the topic.

[eLantern]

@esnoox

if there wer ANY Arena shooter similar to Halo’s core gameplay out there, I already would have.

Splitgate

There’s obviously differences, but plenty of similarities too.

[brimastaLIVE]

Played Halo 4, Halo 2 & 2A matchmaking over the weekend on MCC. What is very odd about infinite is how much worse it feels when you lose or just fail your team. On mcc, when I won it felt great and I was rewarded appropriately for my skill. When I lost though, It didn’t feel as awful as losing in infinites matchmaking, I just felt like it was a fair loss and my opponents were a better team. Also - even after losing I was still rewarded for my efforts.

Idk if its just a different system or just that infinite feels more sweaty but I had a far better time playing MCC instead of infinite.

[M1STA_WU1FY]

@brimastaLIVE

Idk if its just a different system or just that infinite feels more sweaty but I had a far better time playing MCC instead of infinite.

It’s just that the SBMM is so aggressive, every member of the team has to put their whole back into it every match. The game doesn’t let you relax for one second if you have any interest in winning the match

The only solution afforded to us is to over-stack the team and stomp randoms, because the game does a terrible job of not putting randoms against full squads

[Darwi]

@Spartan_Belkis

MMR is the worst. There is no way to concede this.

Except we know that MMR is pretty much the fastest and most accurate way of ranking a player.

@Spartan_Belkis

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had matches with no difference in MMR but a significant difference in CSR.

We all have. For two main reasons;

1. Early in the season your MMR curve is wide. And your CSR sits to the left hand edge of the curve, three standard deviations below the mean. After a week or two your CSR and MMR are much closer together.

2. Weightings. There are weightings for form, time away from the game, and squads. Probably even more that we don’t know about. But they are only applied to your MMR for that match.

@Spartan_Belkis

And the results were mostly due to differences in CSR. It did not achieve any kind of 50% win rate.

I’m sure that if you went back and actually counted them it would be the same on both sides of the coin.

@Spartan_Belkis

CSR in matching should be as close as possible in combination with time. Otherwise, there would be fewer close matches and it would not be satisfying to lose.

Sorry. I’m not quite catching your drift here?

[IronArcher148]

They rig my games with high ping where I can’t do anything. I can tell I’m better than the other players too.

[Darwi]

OMG.

My last couple of weeks have been awash with high ping games. Lots of them 200ms plus. There was even one or two that were even higher and came with a warning of “unstable latency”.

I must be playing like a GOD.

And yes. It’s a joke…

[Darwi]

@CanineHippo6923 I was trying so hard to stop being snarky. And my reward for slowing down, taking a deep breath, and calmly asking for evidence?

I’ve been blocked!

Some people obviously prefer drama

[CanineHippo6923]

There’s a word for those who can’t address thoughts that challenge their worldview. But you can’t say it just came out of nowhere, either. : P

Regarding one of your points though, SBMM was designed for a larger player base. With a smaller player base, might it be better to go random or have some other distribution method?

[Darwi]

@IronArcher148

They rig my games with high ping where I can’t do anything. I can tell I’m better than the other players too.

Just checked through my spreadsheet.

I’ve had 16 games at 200ms or above (sigh). But I’ve won 60% of them!

I actually have a higher win record above 180 ping than I do below.

There could be lots of reasons. One of which is that I’m harder to play from their end. But I don’t hear any team mates commenting re: rubber banding etc. And even if I was, I am getting shot around a LOT of corners to compensate.

I do change the way I play on higher pings. I concentrate on providing covering fire. I avoid close quarters / melees. And if I’m about to die I try and stay and fight as I’m just going to die around the corner anyway. It’s also as good a time as any to do your civic duty and hold the oddball.

[Darwi]

@CanineHippo6923

Regarding one of your points though, SBMM was designed for a larger player base. With a smaller player base, might it be better to go random or have some other distribution method?

Definitely not random.

We’re trying to avoid having one or two good players shredding a bunch of average ones - and I think the lower population base would make that happen even more often. And I’m saying that on the assumption that the players who have stuck around are probably more to the right hand side of the curve?

The problem is the wider range of ranks. And specifically that if a team doesn’t gel, for whatever reason, it all falls apart spectacularly.

So I would adjust the game hopper.

I would heavily favour Slayer games when the teams are widely spaced. Maybe Oddball in a pinch. But definitely don’t put those sorts of teams in CTF.

Could you adjust the match maker to go 3v3 when server numbers are particularly low? That would speed up finding games and help to reduce the spread of ranks in any one game.

Or shorter matches?

Match making has always been a bit of a throw it against the wall and see what sticks. And the wider ranks is exposing the AI shortfall in this regard. So if matches were shorter, or had some sort of mercy rule to stop blowouts, then players will be cycling through the pool faster and getting to the good games more often.

Random distributions are going to have the same spread of ranks. Probably even wider. But with a very high chance that only one side is going to have a good player to clean up.

[Darwi]

I see Mint Blitz has just posted another video rant about SBMM. It won’t be long before it gains traction is various threads through Waypoint.

Probably not going to watch it - because I pretty much know what he is going to say. And don’t get me wrong - I love Mint’s videos overall.

But I do find it a bit ironic that he starts his SBMM diatribe with a video clip of him going on an Overkill against a P2, unranked, P5, and a G6.

Someone with a CSR of what I’m assuming is going to be 2000+

And that unranked player - it was about the 70th game of their career. They probably don’t even realised what happened.

Does he even realise he is the poster child for what SBMM is trying to avoid.

[brimastaLIVE]

That deff plays a big role. I also noticed while playing infinite last night; the gameplay - while fun- is far sweatier and faster paced, if your teammates don’t give it their all it really impacts everyone else playing with you and to top it all off, the match loss music rubs salt in the wound. Not to mention that there is never any feeling of reward or accomplishment after each match -win or lose.