The CSR System is Designed to Gatekeep

Games Halo Infinite
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Today has been an endless treadmill of nightmares.

Yesterday, I won multiple ranked matches and reached 1477 CSR, which was about halfway through D6. Today I have played most of the day, and its been a thorough test of my willpower not to delete the game.

Match after match the game was enforcing its “you have to lose 50% of matches” rule, and aggressively. On top of that, every loss is SIGNIFICANTLY more CSR than any win. I went all the way down to 1408 at once point, and was contemplating just deleting the game entirely since its designed to leech fun away like a fun vampire sucking all the fun out of everything. But I started winning against all odds again. I dragged my CSR back up to 1426 (the last game I had a 2.0 KD and carried the team and only got 1 CSR for instance).

Whether its’ anchor teammates, unrealistic matchups (I literally ran into Onyx 1700’s consistently, and a couple of lesser known pros ffs), people quitting, horrendous lag and hit detection, or just plain me playing bad because I was in such a rage state, the game was just kicking me in the face over and over all day long.

51 CSR was actively stolen from me by the system because it wants me to lose more matches. That’s it. That’s the long and short of it. This system is extremely toxic and unfun to take part in. I’ve not heard a SINGLE person ever say it was a good way for the ranked playlists to work. Not one. And now I’m just plain not getting Onyx before the reset because 343 didn’t think I should.

Artificial manipulation of who wins and who loses is 100% gatekeeping, and 100% unfun. Its not fun for the Gold 6 who has to play in Onyx lobbies, its not fun for the D6 that is right at the win threshold for Onyx and they just decide its time to lose CSR instead, its not fun for the Onyx players who are forced to carry platinums and never rank up even when they do.

Its toxic, and it needs a massive overhaul.

Edit: this terrible system is the reason none of my friends play the game. They constantly make fun of me for playing it because they all consider it such a bad game. The game is HEMMORHAGING PLAYERS and has been for months, and a tremendously unfun and illogical ranking system is a major part of it.

I played this game all day, for hours, and have absolutely nothing to show for it. I lost more than I gained in every possible regards. How is that good game design.

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It must be frustrating to be sooooo close. :frowning:

I feel for your situation.

But a little bit of context. From Halo Tracker… you had been sitting around 1400 for a few days. So we can probably take that as your baseline heading into the last few days. Wins and losses over that time didn’t seem to move your CSR much (as far as you can tell on HaloTracker) so your MMR was likely aligned over that time.

You then went on a 14 game winning streak :astonished:

One could argue this actually goes against your theory of the system deliberately stopping you from going on winning streaks and ranking up!

What we don’t know is how much your MMR went up.

On a run of losses your CSR dropped quite quickly - so your MMR probably didn’t go up much at all. You dipped back to 1408 and then seem to have stabilised at 1425.

So really, for the couple of days you seem to have increased your rank by 25 points. You went on one long winning streak and then had a couple of bad streaks. But overall you came out ahead. This is actually quite good. And more than you would reasonably expect in a short period.

I don’t know where the “stolen” 51 points comes into it.

If you haven’t played well enough, or consistently enough, to bring your MMR up to anchor those CSR points then they are probably more “borrowed” than earnt.

The same factors were still in play during your winning streaks. And for your opposition.

As you suggested - the rage state is probably the biggest factor. And it’s the one you can have some control over.

Obviously you keep playing when you are on a winning bender. But sometimes it’s best to step away if you are losing a few. Take a deep breath. Restock. And come back refreshed.

The reality is you are not getting into Onyx because you didn’t play well enough to get your MMR up. Sure, your CSR went up on the run of wins and then down again on the run of losses. But the key is to get your MMR up.

KD means nothing.

How was your KPM and DPM?

You can now check these on waypoint now. Have a look to see if you really did carry the team (ie. kills > expected and deaths < expected). Your CSR only goes up on the basis of the skill gap between the teams and your MMR position (hence the single point) - but if you did genuinely perform above expected then your MMR will go up and it will “leak” back into your CSR on the next game.

I’ve been reading back through Menke’s posts on Waypoint and you can definitely go up in MMR if you carry a loss. The system specifically rewards looks to see if team mates are under perfoming.

Anyway. Good luck. And take a look at the waypoint stats. If you want to rank up you should be doing better than your expected kills and deaths. You can even drill down to your KPM by dividing it by the match time.

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As soon as i read this posts title, i already knew you were gonna be hard at work. Youre gonna wear yourself out lol.

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Probably.

Just been on a work trip. Lot’s of time in a hotel room by myself. So it’s been a fun distraction.

Back to real life now though.

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I don’t know why they’re resetting CSR. I know they’re changing the system slightly and introducing team doubles but I don’t think that’s enough justification to reset people’s CSR. Especially if they’re close to achieving onyx. Seems unnecessary to me.

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It is supposed to be reset every 3 months.

It’s the best way unlock anyone’s rank that may have become a bit “locked” (although it never gets as bad as H3 did).

It also lets them reign in all those people out there grinding their CSR above their MMR.

Plus - it lets them look at the population curve as a whole and make any adjustments they need to keep it normally distributed. They needed to push everyone left a fair bit after Season 1 - but from here on it should be more subtle nudges (in either direction).

The only issue for those players, including @M1STA_WU1FY, is the timing.

All that happens in placing is that your MMR curve is widened (and made more volatile). You still seed it with your old MMR value. So if you play consistently before and after you should come out with exactly the same MMR.

You CSR will be lower given the width of your curve. But it won’t take long to pretty much be back where you started. One or two days at most.

And if you can time a run of form to hit your placement games - it’s absolutely the best time to push your MMR up. So the OP definitely has the chance to ride their good form into Onyx.

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Forgive me for being daft and hopefully not too far off topic, but how can i view my current/actual CSR # ?
All I can see in game is that I’m Platinum 4 or whatever. Thanks.

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Platinum 4 is your CSR. Along with the number. Somewhere 1050-1100.

Your CSR is your “visible” rank.

Your MMR is in the background. It’s a bit more volatile (especially early). Your CSR chases it - going up for a win and down for a loss - but to a maximum of 15 points a game.

People get a bit frustrated that their MMR is “hidden”.

But it’s not really all that hidden. If you are playing consistently your MMR is pretty much your CSR. You won’t change much CSR with a win or a loss. If you are going up a lot of CSR with a win then your MMR is higher than your CSR. If it’s going down a lot with a loss then your MMR is lower.

Remember that your MMR isn’t a number. It’s a probability range of probable ranks. And it can jump around. So the CSR is used to smooth it out and give you more of an “averaged” journey.

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Thanks for the explanation!

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Gee its as if someone designed this system to keep you grinding rather than hit a peak and stop playing. Nah, that can’t be.

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@Darwi you should write a guide/blog about this MMR/CSR stuff. I’ve read a lot by you about it the last couple of days on here.

I also remember an official blog post on here about it once (I think)

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My MMR is upwards of 1700, so pretty much all of that is moot

But even then, your theory is proving my point. My MMR should be the CSR rank, not the other way around. Winning in a lobby with higher CSR people should net higher rank. Instead it nets 2 points per win. How the hell does this game expect you to rank up when you have to win 25 games and not lose in order to go up a tier, and if you lose even once that takes you back 6 games?

Let’s also reiterate that 90% of matches are some form of objective, and thus KPM and DPM should NOT be the deciding factor in the first place. This ranking system should be built on win/loss and the ranks of the lobby. Nothing else.

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That was frustrating for me this week. I played an objective game where I would keep going for the objective (oddball or hill, I can’t remember) and ended going negative because of it.

Other teammates (randoms as it was solo queue) sat back and padded their k/d. When we won the game I only increased slightly in my gold rank, but the stat padders went up a lot more in their platinum rank.

After that I realised there wasn’t much incentive to play the objective if I’m going to go negative, so just tried to go positive on all the games and often let other teammates play the objective instead (and go negative).

That feels like a broken system to me.

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This kind of system is why I got two games where a teammate hid instead of helping because they probably thought kd was ALL that mattered. I got a clip of them just hanging out back tower on live fire during king of the hill. Punching the wall.

The core problem is the algorithm deciding what your rank is and not giving you the chance to change it yourself. The “stolen 51 points” I mentioned was the algorithm screwing me over so hard because it didn’t want me to have done that good, I shouldn’t have done that good, this is against all our algorithm believes in, you need a gold 6 on your team

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If your MMR was 1700 with a CSR of only 1420 then you would be getting 15 points for every win and losing 0-1 pts for every loss.

That’s not the way it seems to be behaving on HaloTracker.

And I wouldn’t have thought anyone’s CSR and MMR would be that far apart this late in the Season.

Your MMR is a curve representing a range of ranks. It’s not straightforward putting it out there as a number. And it needs to have some volatility. It probably has even more volatility than I thought - after seeing a few MMR graphs published by Menke back in 2020 or so.

In that case the CSR is even more important to smooth out the game to game changes and act as a summary of your MMR.

Only netting two points suggest that your MMR isn’t as high as you think (it may even be lower than your CSR) and/or the opposition’s MMR isn’t that much different to yours.

You literally went up a tier and a half (in CSR at least) in one winning streak.

And one loss can only take you back 15 points max. Just like one win can net you 15 points.

If you want to rank up keep winning (the most important thing) and make sure your personal performance is above expected.

I’ve already set up my own spreadsheet for the next ranking period. I’m going to record the opposition MMR and chart it against my KPM (expected kills / match time). The only problem is going to be precision as the expected kills is rounded to the nearest integer.

It will be interesting to break it up by game mode as there could well be a separate MMR / KPM for each one (I’ve found a post by Menke in the H5 days that suggested each mode had it’s own MMR - but that the matchmaking used the average MMR in the playlist).

Except that they clearly showed that KPM and DPM improve the accuracy of the ranking system.

Even in objective games.

And even though it is only a weighting - it works. They have shown that over literally millions of data points.

To the point that it is nigh on irrefutable unless you can provide solid data to prove otherwise.

The harsh truth is that if you want to go toe to toe with Onyx players in an objective game you have to be able to match them 1v1. If Onyx players go 1.5 KPM vs other Onyx players in Oddball - and you want to be Onyx - you have to 1.5 KPM against them. If you can’t you are going to spend a lot of time respawning and leave your team outnumbered and exposed.

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My MMR is very high. The post game lobby shows and average, and my lobbies typically run in the 1500-1700 range. I typically do the best IN THE GAME, so I would assume based on your own theory that mine would be the highest and the other people are diluting my high number, especially since I’m also the highest rank on my team usually.

The game is treating me like an Onyx player but refusing to allow me to rank up because it’s broken.

I generally do better than any onyx in the 1500-1600 range.

By your own admission, this means the system is broken.

Nobody thinks this system is a good system besides people who don’t play ranked. Anyone playing ranked hates it.

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You would need to know the MMR of each player to work out your own. And whatever weightings they are applying (eg. squads).

And HaloTracker is frustratingly inconsistent with how it shows CSR - but I’m only seeing the occasional Onyx in your lobbies. At least over the last dozen or so games. And most of them are barely Onyx.

This is where Josh would come in handy. He could look up your MMR and tell you win % and KPM vs Onyx level teams. We definitely need someone from 343 to fill that void. Or even an automated system to produce the jpgs for us.

In the mean time - what is your expected vs actual kills and deaths in these games? Is your graph on Waypoint showing that your personal performance is strong enough to push your MMR up despite a recent 44% win rate?

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I mean, it calculates the expected AFTER the game is over so it doesn’t do any good. It assumes I’m supposed to go x/y, in an objective game with worse teammates than the enemy has, so the system is broken.

Most games it comes down to either winning or meeting that absurd kd expectation. Often it assumes I should have 30+ kills and less than 10 deaths

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A friend of mine brought up a good point in Discord.

The core issue with this ranking system is that the vast majority of low onyx players stop playing in order to preserve their rank, meaning the system doesn’t have a pool of weak onyx people to pull from when you’re high Diamond.

You’re either the highest person in the match or you’re playing against high onyx, because there’s a huge gap in the algorithm that doesn’t know how to get filled.

ALSO, it skews the MMR to CSR ratio, because the numbers will never match up or make sense together.

The system is broken. Everything about it is a dumpster fire.

It’s gatekeeping by design

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I agree with the OP on this one…I’m in the same boat pushing from D6 to Onyx…

It’s just frustrating and not fun to loose 5 wins worth of CSR because you can carry some -Yoink!- that goes 3:20 in a lobby they shouldn’t even be in in the first place.

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