I mentioned in a post a few days ago that I was going to post a thread explaining why 90% of the complaints associated with the Arena can be attributed to pure ignorance or simply the fact that people like to complain.
Firstly, I’m going to start out by saying that I don’t think the Arena is perfect, and I will mention a few fixes that I think would help (at the end of this post).
This thread is going to be in a complaint vs. answer format, for simplicity and easy reading.
Before I begin I want to state that your division/percentile is solely based of win/loss. Rating means NOTHING.
Compaint: “I want 1-50 back! Divisions suck.”
Answer: The Arena uses almost the same (just slightly looser, so “level locking” doesn’t happen) trueskill formula as the 1-50 ranking system. Essentially, a division + a percentile = a number from 1-50. The only difference is that your Arena rank is your trueskill relative to all the other players in the Arena.
Complaint: “I don’t want to have to play 4 games on 5 days to see my division!”
Answer: You either don’t have time to play 4 games a day (in which case it’s likely you’re not playing video games in the first place), or you’re just stubborn. Understand that even though you won’t see your division until you get rated on 4 days, every games you play counts. You’re trueskill is being calculated behind the scenes, your division is just invisible.
Complaint: "I played 30 games in the Arena, won 27 of them, and got put into a division…but I’m only a silver! Wtf?
Answer: You simply haven’t played enough games to have your skill properly determined. It usually takes around 100 games to properly determine your trueskil. Note that this complaint does NOT favor the 1-50 system. Do you think your highest skill was properly determined after 30 games in Halo 3? No, it wasn’t. You shouldn’t be single digit Onyx after 30 games, just like you shouldnt be a 50 after 30 games (unless you’re playing with a booster, in which case shouldn’t be complaining in the first place).
Complaint: “My teammates are so bad, I’d be ranked so much higher if I had better teammates!”
Answer: You’re butthurt. Everybody gets bad teammates just as often as they get good teammates. To say otherwise simply defies logic. You’re trueskill depends on how often you win, and who you beat. Over the course of, say 50 games, how often you win will be a direct result of how often you can positively contribute to your team. Yes you will have games that you play well and your team hold you back, but you will also have games where you play badly and your team carries you. When you get carried as often as you do the carrying, you’re at your proper trueskill.
Complaint: “I don’t wanna have my division reset after 3 months!”
Answer: This one is totally the fault of the Halo community. Re-setting divisions after 3 months prevent people from selling accounts. If people hadn’t sold 50’s in Halo 3, maybe we’d be able to have an ongoing ranking system.
Complaint: “I don’t like the settings, they don’t promote competitive gameplay”
Answer: The settings for the arena (dmr starts, 1 frag, sprint - jetpack - hologram) are the most competitive “Reach gameplay” based settings in the game. Yes, MLG settings are more competitive, but MLG isn’t Halo Reach. Its settings are closer to Halo’s of the past, which while I do agree were more competitive than Reach, are too different in gameplay to be compared. I would never play Reach to play MLG. If I wanted to play MLG, I’d play Halo 3’s MLG, which is much more competitive than Reach’s MLG anyway. Basically, if you want to see how good you are at Halo: Reach play The Arena. (unless you’re ACTUALLY trying to go pro, in which case none of this applies to you)
Actual Problems with the Arena
The only two real problems I have with the Arena are:
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jetpacks can break map boundaries
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the two’s trick
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boosters
In my opinion, jetpacks should not be in the Arena in the first place. However, if 343 decides that they should be kept, then I believe that there should be numerous hard kill zones added. I’m not going to go over all the places where jetpacks can break maps, but I will say that any place accessible only by jetpack that allows for 100% cover should be a hard kill zone.
The last 2 problems only really apply to higher level Onyx players. Onyx players know what the 2’s trick is, and it simply shouldn’t exist. People searching random should be scrambled prior to the game so that the 2’s trick won’t be possible.
Finally, boosters have only really become a problem in this season (people did boost in prior seasons, but I have never seen it this bad). In Halo 3, if you played against and lost to a team with a booster, you might go down a rank or two. In Halo Reach (because its trueskill system is looser than Halo 3), if you play against and lose to a team with a booster, your rank takes a huge hit. Not only this, but the player being boosted likely isn’t as good as his percentile indicates, because of “relative rank,” he’s likely playing at a rank he doesn’t belong and bumps everyone’s rank down in the process. To solve this, I think that people should only allowed to play The Arena with players in there division +/- one division.
I also believe that to add variety, the Arena should include a few more playlists. Arena FFA, doubles, and MLG.
I’d like to add to this thread, so if anyone has other complaints that they’d like me to post an answer for, just respond.