The Incentive to Win : Competitive + Casual

Games Other Halo
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> in·cen·tive - [in-sen-tiv]
> noun
> 1. Something that incites or tends to incite to action or greater effort, as a reward offered for increased productivity.

The only thing that will make Halo 4 an instant hit, is if there is incentive to win games.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about when you play in matchmaking with your friends, against other friends. When you win, you get something that the losing team cannot have. This is commonly referred to as experience, credits, points, visible rank etc. When two teams are fighting over the same objective to get something, it’s only because it can be awarded to one team.

Lets look at the history of Halo games on Xbox Live:

  • Halo 2: Visible 1-50 ranking system; If you lost a game, you lost rank; if you won a game, you gain rank and experience
  • Halo 3: Visible 1-50 ranking system; If you lost a game you lost rank; if you won a game, you gain rank and experience
  • Halo Reach: Invisible 1-50 system (barely) :If you lost a game, YOU RANKED UP; If you won a game, you gain credits to rank up.

See the problem?

In Reach if you lost a game you still earned credits and ranked up. Nothing screams no more incentive to win with a ranking system like that. In fact, the whole commendation system encourages not even caring about winning the game. Why isn’t there a multiplayer commendation for actually winning games?

Why many people are arguing is because of that last fact on Halo Reach. If you lost a game, you ranked up. How does that make any sense. From first hand experience, and I’m sure others can agree with me on this:

> “In the Halo 2 and Halo 3 ranked matchmaking system, even after level 20, how many players were actually trying to betray, team-kill, AFK, and cause YOU to lose the game?” barely any, if at all.

With a ranked matchmaking experience and the incentive to win, players are going to actually try to work together and win, rather than doing nothing to help their team out. It’s mind blowing to hear from young players that have played Reach, complain about Team killing, AFKing, and Betraying - yet the DON’T want an incentive to win for matchmaking?

That is the missing piece of the puzzle. You HAVE to create that incentive and REASON for players to win a game. Otherwise as awesome as you can make all the guns, weapons, vehicles, armor or whatever in Halo 4, if there is no reason to win games - you’re just going to end up with another Halo Reach, just expect more Team Killing, Betraying, and AFKing.

Because in all honesty, the reason people do those things, is because they can. Yet, they STILL rank up for it. I want this fixed.

Sincerely,
An avid poster and follower of the entire Halo series.

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Give us 1-50!

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MFW: Did OP ever play Halo 2? 1-50 didn’t prove -Yoink-. I didn’t meet a higher level them me that I didn’t end up beating or only losing by a few.

Also winning didn’t always make you rank up, It was a huge problem in Halo 2. People would win a -Yoink- load of games and not rank up. And I never remember re-ranking, ever, in my life of Halo 2.

Ranks can’t work. Until you find a suitable intelligent working ranking system that can’t be cheated, flawed, glitched or have some other un-needed effects then 1-50 is as important to Halo 4 as if the Pistol has the symbol on the bottom of the magazine.

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My argument for player visible ranking rather than lobby visible ranking has several reasons. Cheating the least of them. The first reason is the atmosphere which visible ranking has a tendency to produce. For example, a 48 gets the crap stomped out of him by a 45, the 48 then starts screaming about deranking and so on ruining the lobby for a lot of the other players. Wether the 45 deranged or not. It breeds an atmosphere for false allegations and poor sportsmanship, same goes for bought accounts.

Secondly, you have the situation that we’ve all seen. There’s a higher rank in the lobby dumping on everyone he comes in contact with. This tends to drive other players away and ruins the game before it even starts. No body likes this guy. Except for himself.

Third we have the bought accounts issue. This is kind of an amalgamation of the first two but with a little black market twist. In this case we have a market for good players to foster high rank accounts then sell them off to kids that want to gloat and dump on lower ranks regardless of the fact that they didn’t earn the rank they are sporting around with.

Fourth, skill should be determined in game. Period. Just because a ranking system is visible only to the player doesn’t mean that it can’t work. A lot of people act like if the ranks are hidden the matching system simply won’t work. This is an asinine assumption. Ones rank should be special to them and quite frankly if you play the best you can in every game you should rank up. You should want to show your skills off at every opportunity.

Fifth, a hidden ranking system keeps people on their toes. In my mind the mystery factor could infact help foster a competitive atmosphere in all playlists. In effect making everyone happy. If everyone goes in on equal ground mentally there’s another layer added to combat. If you were to SEE a 50 in the lobby most people automatically handicap themselves mentally. Sad but true.

Lastly, cheating, it happens, but it’s not as big an issue as those listed above.

In conclusion all these reasons are detrimental to a games online population. As we all know in order for a MM system to work there has to be a population. If we have all the aforementioned issues it can and will hurt the population. Once the population fails any MM system will fail. I’m not sayin my argument is perfect. But I believe it has valid points.

Thanks for reading

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I do agree on a better ranking system similar to Halo 3’s. Though to be honest, winning the game and beating the other teams is incentive enough for me to play.

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> Secondly, you have the situation that we’ve all seen. There’s a higher rank in the lobby dumping on everyone he comes in contact with. This tends to drive other players away and ruins the game before it even starts. No body likes this guy. Except for himself.

This happens in Reach. See my player history for BTB, everyone just quits. And that has invisible ranking system.

> Third we have the bought accounts issue. This is kind of an amalgamation of the first two but with a little black market twist. In this case we have a market for good players to foster high rank accounts then sell them off to kids that want to gloat and dump on lower ranks regardless of the fact that they didn’t earn the rank they are sporting around with.

If winning is meant something, and someone bought an account they would just lose all the games they play on that new account since they really aren’t that rank anyway. This is nothing new.

> A lot of people act like if the ranks are hidden the matching system simply won’t work. This is an asinine assumption.

Asinine? Have you played Reach? It’s a current reality? That system doesn’t work.

> Fifth, a hidden ranking system keeps people on their toes.

How? Having a “time based” rank AKA Reach, just keeps people quitting as usual.

> In conclusion all these reasons are detrimental to a games online population. As we all know in order for a MM system to work there has to be a population. If we have all the aforementioned issues it can and will hurt the population.

The problem is that you’re supporting the Reach style ranking system, when in fact has had the lowest populating in it’s given time span compared to any prior Halo game. Which completely renders your argument contradictory to itself.

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> MFW: Did OP ever play Halo 2? 1-50 didn’t prove Yoink!. I didn’t meet a higher level them me that I didn’t end up beating or only losing by a few.

Absolutely. The reason that could happen with you is because if 1.Party system 2. Specific playlist searching 3. Bought Accounts or 4. Searching with other high ranks in your party.

> Also winning didn’t always make you rank up, It was a huge problem in Halo 2. People would win a Yoink! load of games and not rank up. And I never remember re-ranking, ever, in my life of Halo 2.

If you won a game in Halo 2, your algorithm did rank up every game. The visible system didn’t always update after each game, simply because the game is already predicting who is going to win ahead of every game based on their current win/loss. If you beat someone who has a better win/loss ratio than you, you rank up faster - because the game think you’re going to lose.

If you constantly beat up and win against players who have a horrible win/loss record, then you’re going to need more games - because the game already predicts that you’re going to win those games.

> Ranks can’t work.

Why not? It worked fine in Halo 2 and Halo 3. In fact, many players left after Halo Reach was released, because there is no reason to win the game.

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> Third we have the bought accounts issue. This is kind of an amalgamation of the first two but with a little black market twist. In this case we have a market for good players to foster high rank accounts then sell them off to kids that want to gloat and dump on lower ranks regardless of the fact that they didn’t earn the rank they are sporting around with.

> If winning is meant something, and someone bought an account they would just lose all the games they play on that new account since they really aren’t that rank anyway. This is nothing new.

I knew one person that bought said account that was ranked lvl 50 in team slayer on Halo 3.
He never played team slayer after that because he knew he would looses it if he played.
So, he just played social games and flaunted around that 50 like he earned it. Poor little guy.

I myself never quite made it to 50. I got to 43 on rumble pit and despite winning 10 games in a row I was stuck. It felt like if I lost one game I had to win 20 just to rank up. That’s how I went from 42 to 43.

If 1-50 comes back I hope that’s one thing they fix. But, a better incentive to win would be nice to. If it makes the randoms I get stuck with want to win.

Plus a mic would be nice. Lol

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One of the glaring flaws IMO for the rank system in H3 was that the number of games played on that account dictated how quickly you ranked up.

If a player has a 30 in swat and played 100 total games, he has a better chance of ranking up than a player with a 30 in swat with 500 total games played.

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> One of the glaring flaws IMO for the rank system in H3 was that the number of games played on that account dictated how quickly you ranked up.
>
> If a player has a 30 in swat and played 100 total games, he has a better chance of ranking up than a player with a 30 in swat with 500 total games played.

really? lol Thats why I leveled up so fast in FFA