Stop expecting to win

Games Halo Infinite
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**Edit: If you don’t want to read the huge wall of text below, then here’s the shortened version. Basically, if you feel frustrated losing when trying your best, try not to let it get you down. Try to learn from the losses and understand that you can always keep trying. Understand that everyone will be trying their best. You win some, you lose some. If you can’t help but feel down from losing, it’s always nice to play another mode or game that helps you feel better. **

I’ve seen a lot of forums and posts about how unfun Halo Infinite’s matchmaking is. I can relate because I would get frustrated a lot if I kept losing over and over again. Heck, years ago I made the same kind of forum with Halo 5. I played a lot of every Halo game up until Halo 5 and it felt so different to play. I’m not nearly as good in that game as the others. The same principle also applies to Halo Infinite. It’s a new game that feels different and I’m not very good at it.

There’s a mindset I’ve given myself for a while now, and it’s to stop expecting to win. This may sound like I’m saying, “don’t try” or to “just let the opponent win”, but no. What I’m getting at is if you stop expecting yourself to win, it becomes less frustrating. At least for me, as soon as I had this mindset, I stopped getting so frustrated. Trying my best, expecting myself to win every match, only to lose most of them only caused pain to myself, and thus, I was being a bad sport.

I know it may not be the most fun to die to good players or lose against players who are probably a higher rank than you but think about it. When playing a game that involves any sort of competition, the opponent will always try their best to win. I try my best to win, you try your best to win. If we were playing a match one on one with each other, we have an equal mindset. Now imagine if I was worse than you, at a lower skill level, and you were much better with a higher skill level and imagine if you had the mindset of not expecting to win, while I have opposite. When you mop the floor with me, you feel good that you won. But I would feel disappointed in myself. Now imagine if our skill sets were swapped. What if I was really good at the game expecting myself to win, while you were not so skilled and didn’t expect to win. If I win, I would kind of gloat about it, but you on the other hand, would learn something.

See, if you don’t expect to win, it’s a way to be find amazement with the opponents’ tactics. You can see how you lost a gunfight and be like “wow, look at how he was able to do that thing that he just did. That guy is pretty amazing.” You yourself learn something which can help you get better at the game over time. The important thing to remember when playing with other people is to expect many losses. Learn how to deal with losing properly so you can try again, because after all, the game isn’t going away, and neither is the people.

Try not to let it get you down. If you lose once, try again. Maybe the next time you’ll win. See, every match you play is unique. I’ve had many matches where I lost against the enemy team, but just barely made it out alive in some gunfights. Those encounters were breathtaking, because it shows that I can still pull through in some way. The fun for me is in the fight and not the outcome. Now to those players who are pros at the game naturally, but just so happen to get frustrated when losing, remember that same thing.

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Holy cow wall of text.

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Sorry about that. I just edited it into paragraphs to hopefully make it easier to read. I had a lot that I wanted to say about this subject.

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Know what you mean. In social i just play for fun. I dont care about W/L or K/D. Just playing.

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For sure you can have a good and/or enjoyable game even if you or your team loses.

I think part of the problem is the challenges. Players are rewarded for completing challenges and often to achieve those challenges players may have to play in a style that is less helpful or even hinders the team they are playing on, this can be frustrating both for those players (as they may be being pushed to play in a style that they don’t enjoy and/or because they feel bad about not contributing) and for others on their team (as they are putting in the effort to work together but have those that are playing in a way that doesn’t support the team).

If you’re going to give people goals and reward them for meeting those goals but they have a finite window to do so then I can understand people getting frustrated.

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That is true. It doesn’t help that the challenges are limited time. That and the fact that they may make it more difficult for you (challenge to get kills with the pulse carbine for example.) It can be a lot of pressure for the player.

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Going off topic slightly but it would be nice if when using a challenge swap the game would ask you why you swapped out a specific challenge, might be helpful for 343 to understand why people avoid certain ones

“I never use that weapon”
“It’s beyond my skill level”
“I don’t like that game mode”
“It wouldn’t support my team”
“It wouldn’t be fun to complete”
“It would take too long to complete”
“What’s required isn’t clear”

Etc

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That’s a good idea. Always neat to have some sort of way to give feedback to the devs in-game.

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That’s a good idea. It might also help 343 custom tailor the challenges since I think they said something about that.

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What’s fun about losing?
There’s nothing else to do in this game but try to win.
Also, it’s even less fun when you’re losing because of things like the game not counting your actions.

At that point, shouldn’t someone play another game?
If I’m not enjoying a game because I’m always losing no matter what I do, I’m not going to keep playing.

Maybe if there was an opponent’s view replay feature after dying like in Call of Duty.

That’s something I’ll agree with though.

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Agree with the sentiment but the system still feels flawed with my 35% win rate or whatever pathetic number it is now. I’d be more than happy to get back near a 50% win rate (which I consider bad anyway compared to other past halo games except 5 since 5 also uses trueskill 2.0). Game regularly picks me to be the obvious top player on my team, and if I don’t play near perfect, it’s a loss 80% probably.

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You: “Don’t expect to win”.

343I: “make challenges that require winning”

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Op may want to add a tldr here

But I get what you mean I just okay halo cause we’ll it’s fun for me I don’t always expect a win every match but I still play

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That’s perfectly ok. If that someone isn’t having fun, they can play another game that is fun. I was just giving my ideas and hoping that might help some people have more fun with this game. I don’t expect my advice to help everyone, and that’s fine. It helps me though.

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This applies to most things outside halo. It’s a good message, but halo infinite isn’t that skillful. “Wow he strafed to the left when I accidently aimed the opposite direction and missed one bullet.” Or “wow he meleed me and my melee didn’t connect despite me hearing my arm smack him.”

It’s still a good message tho. Lol

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The ranking level up , level down is VERY inconsistent and leveling down is VERY VERY easy. Desync, cheaters and overcourse crashes…it’s easier said then done to not get frustrated with this nonsense.

Worst of all is when I feel the spawns are favoring the other freaking team in objective games which I hate. Hard to “appreciate tactics” when I just want the match to end.

If I’m going to lose, make it make sense. But this game? Barely anything makes sense when I freaking die.

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It’s a brutal mindset expecting to consistently perform at an exceptional level in basically any very competitive PvP game. No matter how much talent you have or how dedicated you are to winning, there’s always going to be someone in any given match who edges you out. It’s just not very much fun to lose more games than you win- and I don’t necessarily think that boils down to something as simple as a bad attitude or sore loser complex.

You’ve got a point regarding a constructive attitude to take towards being beaten in an encounter, absolutely. Taking a deep breath and then trying to parse out why you lost is much, much better than getting mad about having lost at all. That’s super valid and just plain good advice.

But really, systems like SBMM make this whole dynamic harder than it needs to be, IMO. By trying to ensure every match is tightly competitive, the game just ratchets everyone’s nerves up and encourages a sweaty mentality. The days of FPS multiplayer being a place where you could casually burn some time are gone, at least for me, and I think that’s a shame.

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Also don’t flame your allies for having a negative KD (especially if you do too) and supposedly zero awareness when you yourself don’t realize a player on the enemy team is 30-5 and magically had 7 perfects and a 71% accuracy.

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I think the mindset needs to be more along the lines of, don’t blame others or the game for your losses. Yes it’s online, weird things are sometimes going to happen. Don’t let that bother you. And when you die, try to LEARN from it. Why did you die? What could you have done differently that would have won you the encounter?

For me, one thing that I notice that causes me to lose a lot of fights is being double melee’d when the fight gets too close quarters. When I die to it, I try to remind myself “I should have melee’d again instead of backing up trying for a headshot” as I’m waiting for the respawn rather than raging or blaming lag or saying “that’s so stuuuupid” etc. So try to find something that caused you to lose THAT YOU DID (not the game or the internet or whatever) and actively take that into future matches working on it to improve.

Anyways, point is, if you look at losing as a learning experience rather than “omg I suck and can never win” that’s actually how you level up, thus performing better, thus winning more, thus… having more fun. Imo anyway. Perhaps this is because I learned this mindset from being a competitive fighting game player for quite a few years as there’s no one to blame for losses except yourself, but I think it’s a good way to look at competitive games.

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If you think about it the system should be setting you up to lose.

Once you settle into a rank you can be offered three types categories of opponent;

  1. vs lower ranked teams.
  2. vs equally ranked teams.
  3. vs higher ranked teams.

You actually want more of group 3 to help you improve and give you a chance to rank up.

The downside is a win % that may not be flattering.

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