The objective modes in ranked should give higher boost in rank to players who play the objectives. The current focus on player’s K/D makes the ranked experience less fun and unfair.
You can hold ball in the Oddball for two minutes, win the game for your team, and the player in your team who ignored the ball for a better K/D gets a bigger boost to their rank.
Or if you lose, the player who ignored the objectives and focused on better K/D is rewarded by smaller decrease in their rank.
I would argue that the K/D value in the objective modes is almost meaningless stat. The overall score from kills and scoring the objectives only should decide the changes to the rank. Deaths should be ignored for ranked scoring from the objective modes.
In Ranked Slayer mode, ranking players per K/D is perfectly fine.
It’s frustrating that we don’t get access to a breakdown of rank changes post game. The necessary data should at least be in the API so we can look it up via services as HaloTracker etc.
How much you gain or lose on a game depends on the rank of your opponents, the rank of your team-mates, the shape of your ranking curve (wide is more volatile), personal performance, and how well aligned your CSR and MMR are.
I think most of what you see when a team-mate goes up or down more is the shape of their MMR curve. The more games you play at a consistent rank the narrower the curve becomes and more resistant to change.
But there is also this bugbear of personal performance. We don’t know what parameters 343 have included. Nor their weightings.
The discussion paper by MS definitely focusses on K/min - and tends to walk away from other combinations of K and D (which tend to reflect the win anyway). It also specifically mentions that it’s not helpful for objective type games.
343 seems to have put a bit of work into the game score - so hopefully they use that somehow. And in that case, we could then start to argue about more points for acts around the objective.
I would like to know the weightings. Right now it looks like capturing flags, or holding the ball don’t really help your rank unless you win the game. And even in wins, playing objectives seems to be less good for your rank when compared to the players who largely ignore holding objectives.
In CTF, the ranking system should take into account things like flag captures, and time spent on holding the enemy flag. That could be done through overall score.
I understand the reasoning behind being a bit secretive about the parameters and the weightings - it may encourage toxic play.
But we’re getting that anyway. So they may as well be a bit more upfront about it.
It may be a bit easier in Season 2 as you will see your CSR change per game (not session) - and hopefully everyone else’s as well.
I’ve definitely had games where I’ve got just as much as everyone else despite not many kills. But I’ve also had those where I’ve lost more despite doing well objectively
I suspect a lot of what people see as unfair distribution of points is more related to either a reconciling of CSR to MMR (when they drift apart) or the shape of your MMR curve (wide and volatile early so big changes vs narrow and stable later so resisting changes).
But it would help a lot if they would just come out and say it. How much weighting does K/D or K/min have in Slayer - and how is it changed in objective games. Does your objective score have any say?
And if the system is locked into only rewarding kills - why can’t they internally score things like holding the oddball as a kill (eg. one kill for every 15 seconds).
I imagine it’s quite difficult to determine exactly how much value each team member brought to the team. I know that when I’ve played with team mates who communicate properly, we usually have loosely assigned roles. ie. the most effective killer will take out enemies, one guy will try to get the ball, someone else might lay down supressing fire etc. We all played a vital part, but that isn’t reflected on scoreboards.
In Oddball they reward kills, but they could also reward the players for carrying the ball.
Right now it feels like the players with kills are rewarded but not the player who spent most of the match holding the ball.
If you give players points for kills, time on ball/flag, capturing zones, and enemy carrier kills, and it goes to the overall score, it should not be too difficult to rank all the players in game just from the overall score.
K/D is the worst stat when you want to determine which players were most instrumental in winning objective based game modes.
Deaths are extremely meaningful in objective games.
They reward score so objective work is mostly counted for They also reduce the weighting of K/D importance in objective but they also acknowledge that it is still an extremely important stat for assessing player ability and game impact so should be rewarded appropriately.
Generally if a player is getting lots of kills in Objective and you’re losing, that often means YOU are the problem, not them. You are not playing the objective efficiently within the team slays. If you don’t understand the importance of kills, and minimising deaths in objective, then it is also likely you are playing the objective gametype with a low skill ability. So the idea you should be higher and rewarded more than other players is inappropriate. It is ridiculous to think that someone who sits in the corner with the Oddball is having a greater impact on the game than the person(s) protecting them. The skill from Oddball comes in teamplay, protecting, moving and rotating the ball, minimising enemy time by playing it effectively. A lot of teams will make the worst player hold the ball once a team setup is established because it is the lowest skill requirement for a team. The exception being if said player is unable to determine when to drop the ball/throw it into a dangerous area, then a higher skill player will likely need to hold it for periods of time to make sure this player is not accidentally sabotaging the team from within.
I hope everyone has fun with objective gametypes, but pinning the blame on the main slayer is poor etiquette. There may be times a player makes mistakes, or doesn’t capitalise properly due to a bad decision, but you will also be guilty of that as will most players at most skill levels.
Agreed. I’ve played quite a few games where teammates don’t even pick the ball up… just treat it like a slayer game. Is that because they don’t want their stats messed up?
This is the best solution… infinite has become too cute with their ranking gymnastics and algorithiums… in objective, you either win or lose…keep it simple and it will focus the gameplay on the objective not “protecting”or “goosing” a players KD.
Absolutely, the challenge system remains very scuffed and incentivizes players to play against the interests of their team in pretty much every mode, but especially in objective modes.
It seems like we’re stuck with it to an extent, but I really think it was the wrong way to structure progression for these Battle Passes.
This is not about pinning the blame on the player with most kills. This is about rewarding players for playing the objectives and not giving an incentive to maximise the kills for better ranking score whilst hurting the team.
Players should get points for kills, and being the best slayer in the team. But the ranking system should also reward the players who got fewer kills whilst they were scoring points for their team.
The current ranking system is not working if at Diamond/Onyx level players are not scoring objectives. It is quite frustrating to see 2 - 3 teammates who barely managed to touch the ball in three rounds of Oddball.
Lastly, the reason why I say that the number of deaths should be meaningless outside of Slayer is because in the objective game modes getting yourself killed can sometimes be the right play.
They already are rewarded. Obviously you can maximise kills, but not Objective as there is a finite score to be earned so Objective will always be a slower way of showing you are better than your current rank. The system won’t know that someone who gets all the Oddball times is a much higher rated player, but a player who goes 40-0 is clearly much better than their opponents.
Usually that is the case, some games players will have fairly even scores across the team. But that usually indicates a scrappy and poorly managed games. Most games there should be 1-2 players with almost no ball time, the two best players. Although sometimes they will need to pick up the ball. If they don’t then that explains why they’re stuck in Diamond/low Onyx. Clearly they are winning enough to stay at that rank though so it’s working. Don’t forget Oddball isn’t everyone’s gametype, not everyone knows how to play it in the most efficient way. Compared to the pros they’d probably think my strats are idiotic too.
True, but it is largely negligible. Same is true for Slayer. Sometimes it is better to give your life to secure a power weapon/2v1 trade off to gain advantage and you won’t be rewarded for it because the system can’t calculate that. It’s infrequent enough that if it’s constantly happening then it’s safe to say that player is likely below the appropriate skill level.
