So SBMM is designed to decide when you lose…?

Games Halo Infinite
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OK. Back in the hotel. Watched the video.

I love Minty. He’s a national treasure. But this isn’t his best work.

Straight off the bat he claims the game is purposefully handing you a loss after a run of wins. With no proof. And no acknowledgment that any win has a 50:50 change of being followed a tougher match (likely loss). Just like flipping coins there is nothing unusual about runs of two or three results. Even four in a row is 1 in 8.

So exactly how does getting a tougher match after a run of wins constitute a conspiracy?

His calling ranking a “participation trophy” is a ridiculous statement. But I guess he’s feeding his target audience. And doing whatever he can to undermine SBMM - which is good for casual players but not so good for streamers.

He lets himself down by being “surprised” that his actual and expected kills and deaths match up. Just what was he expecting to happen? The graph uses your previous performances against that level of opponent (KPM and DPM) to calculate these numbers. It’s just describing what you have done before. The bar is set by you!

This data does nothing more than validate the accuracy of your ranking!

And now we get to the “banned for playing better than expected”. The bans were for unsporting play. Not for playing better than expected. The system assumed they were de-ranking. This sort of thing should be in place to stop Smurfing (although I think 343 admitted the Lethul one was the system being a bit over zealous).

He then goes on to use match making times as an excuse. Given that he found 93 seconds as too long (as per Menke’s tweet reply) I’m not sure how much weight to give him here.

And finally he goes on to say that lobbies with one player out ranking everyone else is a unfair. But isn’t this his schtick? He deranks and/or uses squads to make sure he’s the highest ranked player. Run the players in his kill streaks and you’ll find heaps of Golds and Silvers.

Of course the system is set up for retention rates. We know that close games outweigh losing streaks, wait times, and even personal performance. But this is because these games are the most fun for everyone.

This is not Mint’s best work. Not by a long shot.

But too his credit he did contact 343 who replied along the lines of “they said the system by design doesn’t hand out losses or wins”.

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64

I did play 5. A lot. Loved it. Miss those thrusters :slight_smile:

And what I mean is that objective games favour teams who are co-ordinated. And even more so with the lower population stretching the ranks. In Slayer you can simply out slay to carry - but in Objective you have to also help the weak links contribute and not be exposed.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all that a solo Slayer would rank lower in Objective playlists. Off hand I wouldn’t have guessed a whole Division though. But still, not surprised.

In Infinite, with the mixed modes, your ranking probably falls somewhere in the middle. Not quite as high as pure Slayer. But higher than pure Objective. And it’s all relative as we’re all in the same population curve. If you changed the frequency of Slayer games up or down you would probably see peoples rank’s drift slightly in either direction.

But overall I think we are saying the same thing?

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No i think he has a pretty good point here. When the system is set up such that you gain quick rank points towards your “expected rank,” and then subsequently halts your progress just because youve met your “appropriate skill level.” Why shouldnt my rank drastically increase when I do well against players at the same skill level as me? Shouldnt i then move on to the next tier of players afterward? Nope, if the game determines youre a platinum level player, youre probably not leaving platinum for a loooooong time.

The proof is the fact that if you are the best player in the lobby, all of your teammates are guaranteed to be unable to play well, while the enemy team would be comprised of mostly competent, if only average players. The system is handing you a loss in that game, because no one person can single handedly win any objective based game mode.

Then i misremembered that point. Also, smurfing is kind of impossible to stop. People just create new profiles for free and have access to xbox live for free. This is not the way to stop smurfing, especially when your game is free to play anyway. They cant even stop cheaters.

What? So just because he makes montages of insane kill streaks that means he isnt allowed to sit down and just play the game normally without needing to worry about carrying his team? Shouldnt he be allowed to just drive around in a warthog all game and not worry about losing the game because of it?

That is a blatant lie. There are myriads of players on this forum alone that are not pleased with the amount of effort they have to put in to every single SOCIAL GAME that they play.

Sure, in a vacuum, its not the worst system for ranked lobbies. It still feels a bit too deterministic for me, especially when theres an algorithm predicting my kills and deaths, and then subsequently locking down my progression after a certain point, but the worst part about it is that its applied across the board, not just in ranked. I dont want to sweat in BTB.

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Not really. You made kind of a statement as if 5 did not have objective. Team arena It’s the same thing with objective mixed with slayer, except its tournament settings. So I dont understand why you tried to make it sound like one game was harder because one had that mix and the ither didn’t when in reality they both do and essentially they both were hard.

The funny thing about infinite and 343…is thay with ALL the data these people had moving on from 5…team arena was one of the LOWEST populated playlists…while ranked slayer in the highest populated…these people decided to launch a game WITHOUT a ranked slayer…and in its place…the new version of team arena…and people wonder why population is dropping like flies…that only added to it.

…this developer has just dropped the ball on so many different occasions over so many different things man. I know thats off topic…but the game is just hard to digest sometimes. Ive uninstalled the dang thing so many times and watched all of my friends ditch the game or hardly get on and pick up apex. Its just crazy how much people are unsatisfied with it.

When it comes to the ranking system, that’s an enormous can of worms man. I’m suprised you keep opening it up and trying to talk to people about it. Idk where you get the energy for it. Idk what the difference is in the system apex uses vs halo infinite, but somehow all the dudes playing it like it more. That game seems to just grow more and more population while this game…man not so much.

Btw, definitely mean no offense with anything I’m saying. Sometimes i word things weird so I hope none of it comes off that way

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67

In theory yeah, in practice it’s frankly quite mind numbing. Because at Diamond III I’ll sometimes get an absolute stomp, zero effort win, right - then I’ll face like two Onyxes and two high Diamonds while paired with a damn Gold.

It is a rigged system. Don’t bother checking my games, I haven’t played in like… I don’t know, a month and a half?

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The system has two choices.

Reward players for doing well at the current level or wait patiently for them to show improved performance at the higher level.

The former has two problems;

  1. You then have to harshly derank players for not doing so well at the current level.

and

  1. You have to accept that you won’t do well at the higher level. Lose a lot. And derank very quickly.

I can see why they chose the cautious route.

But that’s only because once you hit your skill ceiling it’s very hard to improve from there.

You are not leaving Platinum because it takes a lot of time and effort to actually become Diamond.

And I learnt that the hard way :slight_smile:

The make up of the teams is admittedly more labile than ideal.

But you still have your team to deal with. They have theirs.

If you look closely there are plenty of wider ranked team that beat those more averaged teams. You are just applying a retrospective bias to certain results.

And the funny thing is I often see / hear players claim they are “carrying”. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you checked their performance of actual vs expected - they aren’t carrying as hard as they think. Hence the loss.

And this shouldn’t be a surprise. As I mentioned before the objective games add an increased skill gap for team performance.

It is what it is.

It’s not the fault of the “ranking” system.

I imagine the result of the game is a very distant second or third to the result.

In fact, he probably prefers the loss for the Smurfing.

It was presented at GDC.

Players were more likely to log off of for the night (more than 8 hours) after an unbalanced game.

More so than a long wait for the game, a continued losing streak, or personal performance.

You can do your own diligent research and watch the talk.

You have a skill level.

You will tend to lose harder games and win softer games.

I guess that’s deterministic.

And it’s so complicated.

It just looks up your recent kill and death rates vs that level of opponent and multiplies it by the game time.

Hardly deterministic.

The only thing locking you down is you.

Start winning those harder games and you will rank up.

Just out of interest - what have you done recently to change the way you play to try and improve?

You have different MMRs offset for each game mode

As long as you play consistently in each mode you will be allright.

You don’t have to sweat in BTB. Unless you mean compete in matches that either team can win. In that case I don’t have an answer for you. How much you sweat or chill is entirely up to you.

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Wasn’t my intention.

Just pointing out that objective games have a different pressure on team cohesion.

Some solo players will adapt better than others.

Initially I was frustrated - but I’ve grown to love the Objective games.

I like the mix.

But I do see people’s point now. The uneven intra-team ranks does make it harder in Objective games. Not enough to really affect your ranking. But enough to make the games frustrating and lead some to blowouts (in either direction).

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I hardly play this game anymore. Its too shallow of an experience for me to consistently enjoy anymore. The novelty is gone and i can only sweat for so long in an attempt to complete these extremely narrow and specific challenges before i get burnt out and log off for waaaaayyyyyy more than just 8 hours. No its more like 8 days. Usually more.

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So you’re not actually trying to rank up - but frustrated that you aren’t?

Hmm.

But anyway… Going back to the original premise of the thread.

How does “expected kills” prove 343 are manipulating your rank? I’m still waiting for any explanation from anyone apart from “it just does”.

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Can’t find the comment where you @Angelosophy mentioned people getting banned for winning, but I’m not surprised because infinite seems to ban players for everything except using cheats.

As for mints video, It was good for a 4min video but a lot of details seems to be skipped over. I would like to see a video where someone (not me) goes down a list live looking up at least the last 200 people they played with and look at what their W/L is and if the perditions the system made about their performance is accurate.

Close sweaty matches are fun here and there, but not when that’s all you get. Not saying most games should not be close matches, they just should not be sweaty. There is a difference.

73

Here you go.

But that’s OK. We’ve clarified it’s not what Mint actually said

Understatement of the year!

Just like the OP of this thread we jump straight from “expected kills” to proof that 343 is manipulating your rank.

But, not surprisingly, no one can actually explain the connection.

How does your past KPM vs a rank prove anything except your actual skill?

There is no deep dive explanation because there isn’t one.

I’ve gone through mine in great detail. Looking for changes in opponent MMR swapping from ranked to social and back

Couldn’t find any significant pattern.

And I suspect anyone else who has tried failed as well. So much easier to complain loudly about vague anecdotes.

Agree. Not every match had to go down to the wire 50-49

But both teams should feel they had a chance.

And “sweating” is all about the intensity you play at. You control the difference from ranked to social. The trick is to apply it consistently.

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You know what, you’re spot on!!! Now i am actually getting put with bad teammatez & against more pc players frequently to keeep losing until i lose a rank o.o

Thats why i got so fed up months ago training harder & harder to point blistering my fingers just to 1v4/carry when all teammates could not kill wow… and looks like im experiencing same crap this is really lame & toxic to punish good players for playing good by making them lose harder to make sure they keep playing to buy lame cosmetic skins…

Pathetic :confused: ty for pointing this out this explains sooo much…

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75 posts in and still yet to see someone explain why “expected kills” is proof that 343 is evil.

But I’m not expecting anyone to.

And I don’t get this eco-centric conspiracy theory stuff. If 343 is forcing all these players to rank down - who the Hell is ranking up? How did anyone get to Onyx in the first place?

It’s certainly not positive posting or spending $$$ in the store - otherwise I would be semi-pro by now.

In my games I see wins and losses. I see teams that gel and teams that don’t. Sometimes I feel it’s the lower ranked players that let us down. Sometimes it’s the better players. Sometimes I know it’s me. I’m working hard on ranking up - but I know I’ve hit my skill ceiling. And it’s going to take a lot of work from here. Plus I haven’t been able to spend a lot of time online recently - and I certainly don’t expect to jump on and rank up without putting in the time and effort. In fact I fully expect to rank down when I get home next week.

I do feel there are extra blowouts - courtesy of the wider ranks. But it happens in both directions. It hurts but I try to not single out the odd loss and blame it on certain team mates.

And I get that it’s frustrating. Good players carrying. Lesser players surviving. It’s tiring. But it’s just the lower population stressing the match maker. It isn’t 343 going out of their way to make your life miserable.

And I think you also need perspective. There are different degrees of “carrying”. If your share of the workload is +10 but you only go +8 then you have let the team down as much as anyone! And you can go negative and still contribute. If you are expected to go -10 and you go -8 that’s a good performance.

And that, in a nutshell, is the value of “expected” kills and deaths. To self evaluate your contribution to that game. It lets you know how you performed compared to your previous efforts.

Hopefully next week’s reset boosts the population. Then Forge. And then Season 3. Fingers crossed.

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Yea, way to do your due diligence Darwi….

Don’t you remember 343i is paying you to explain all this to us.

You better put in more work for you expect to keep your job!

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The manipulation of the rank comes from the teamates they match me up with not my expected kills. When my friends played I didn’t have this problem. However now, when I get an extremely long other players loading as a game is about to begin something fishy usually follows. Can I put a specific on it, yes and no. If you’ve experienced this you understand, if not consider yourself fortunate. I’m not judging someone’s skill I’m simply saying that to base my rank on a game when my teammates feel like those wind up toys that go in every direction with no concept of objective. Again not judging but my rank will take a hit after a match like this. I still enjoy it most of the time, but the idea of a wind up toy as an analogy made myself laugh.

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Just throwing this out there…

If back in the day Halo 3 had Infinites SBMM it would have been like:

Playing solo in ranked - I’m a level 45 brigadier and I’ve won the last four games I know if I win the next game I’m going to be Level 46….

Game matches - low and behold there’s 2 level 50 Generals on their side.

I lose the game and go down to a level 44.

…

If that had ever happened back in the days of Halo 3 I would have stopped playing the game after a month.

The drop is too much - I’m beating Diamond 2/3 players all day (with no mic) but as soon as it puts me against D5/6/Onyx players it take a swath of level off.

If I’m beating D2/3 teams then it should match me against D3/4 no higher and then see how I do.

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Thank you.

But the OP, a couple of similar threads, and a Mint Blitz video seem to think otherwise.

It’s definitely frustrating. And not what we expect from ranked play.

But the match maker is doing the best it can with the stretched population.

And it’s frustrating when you can’t connect with your team mates. It’s a team game and you need them to do their bit to get a win - especially in objective games.

But overall, everyone cops their share of the player pool. You will get those who know how to chip in and/or use (or at least listen) on their mics. And you will get those who run around like chickens sans their heads. Just as you will sometimes get Onyx players who know how to carry a team and at other times, those who don’t.

I chuckled too. And can think of a couple of recent apt examples.

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First confession - I didn’t play a lot of ranked Halo 3 (didn’t particularly like it).

But Level 46 to 50 in Halo 3 could be as low as 105 MMR points. Little more than the difference between Diamond 1 to Diamond 3 in Halo Infinite.

And losing a game would only cost you a maximum of 15 points. So you would still be a 45. And I only point that out because I’m all for having a lower scale on the CSR.

I think everyone, including 343, would agree.

But the matchmaker is doing what it can with the population at hand.

The important thing is that despite the wider range of teams the ranking system still allows you to rank up or down if your skill changes - and the teams you get are by chance. It’s not a conspiracy by 343 to keep you down.

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When playing solo in H3 at rank 45… you wouldn’t come across many 50’s it was very rare so for me to say two 50s that would be even more so… just to say…

But the point I’m making, even at the beginning of S1 in Infinite it’s been like it from the start so I can’t really say that it’s low population as it hasn’t changed and there was loads of players at the beginning.

I’ve always felt the matchmaking is too aggressive and that’s what gives an intention that there is foul play at hand.

When the game tests you, it really does. It’ll match you against players too high. It will match you with players that are too low so carrying becomes impossible or just unfair. It’s meant to be about team work.

I just feel the algorithm needs to tightened so when you are tested it should just be above your skill rather than out of your skill and the penalty. Then the penalty should follow justly as the difference between player should not be as much.

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Here I will end this topic… why Halo 2 and 3 worked so well was because trueskill (or SBMM) was independent for “each” playlist… whether that playlist being ranked or social they did not combine making the match feel fair based on your playlist performance.

Halo Infinite calculates both social (playlists) and ranked (playlists) together and then matches players based on that logic… simple but very flawed… If you have someone that goes 20-3 every game in BTB and play 200 games and completely wrecks people… then they go to rank and play ranked it will match them with the exact same MMR… It’s bad logic just because you are good in BTB camping and getting 20+ K/Ds a game doesn’t mean you will do the same in ranked… This causes you being matched with “higher players” but not performing at that level… It hurts your team and the overall experience in MM…

If you never played social and only play ranked it will take a long time to rank up because the logic doesn’t know your social MMR to find players… That is why players make alt accounts never touch social and play ranked and have friends play on their onyx accounts and rank up because that “gold” will take a very long time to rank up even if you go plus 20+ a game…

Desired Result: Ranked playlist should have its own SBMM/Trueskill/MMR whatever you want to call it and it should only be weighted for that playlist…

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