Three Tiers of Play

Games Other Halo
1

@ rating system: I think Halo 4 would benefit from a three tiered system of play:

Social
Competitive
Ranked

Why you ask? To better improve the ranking system for higher levels of play while still providing a place for those who are more competitively minded to play, and meet up with other competitively minded players with the eventual goal of moving into the Ranked system.

As I’m sure most will agree, the Arena system had its flaws. However, it did have its own advantages over the older systems. The separation of Competitive and Ranked should take into account the pros of Arena and the pros of 1-50 while eliminating a number of the cons.

Basically, the idea of Ranked revolves around the creation of teams of at least 4 and up to 6 players who will be committed to some degree of playing with each other on some basis. Teams will compete in placement matches, and then be put into brackets, where they will move up or down in rating based on wins and losses. Once a team is formed, there is NO OPTION OF NEW PLAYERS JOINING THE TEAM. At the end of a season, they will receive some ranking, similar to the Arena system. Players can be joined onto 3 teams of each Ranked type at a time.

With Win/Loss in place, more gametypes open up for high level play, also, players have a clear objective and there is no reason to grief their teammates. Placement matches helps to create more interesting matches once teams are on the ladder, instead of having a system of players in the middle of the ladder being stomped by smurfs moving their way up. Additionally, since the teams are locked, carrying shouldn’t be a significant issue and neither will griefing.

Competitive exists for players who want to meet new players their skill level to form up teams for ranked, or for more serious play when a Ranked players team is finished with their matches. Competitive will likely follow the same ruletypes as Ranked in terms of gametypes and weapon layouts, but there is less pressure due to lack of ranking over them. Matchmaking will be stricter than social in terms of putting together teams.

Social will more loosely match make and will contain all the other goofy gametypes. Additionally, the custom game browser would fall into the domain of the social playlist. Stats won’t be tracked at all, although players will still be able to retrieve footage of their games. The removal of stats should ease a lot of the tension that exists and “stat farmers” will end up moving to competitive, so that social can remain a place for more laid back gameplay.

Feedback appreciated.

2

and further split up the player base? no thanks

3

> and further split up the player base? no thanks

Legitimate point. However, that’s really only an issue later down the line once the playerbase starts dying down. At that point, it makes sense for a lot of playlists to consolidate and eventually if the competitive playlist starts fading away then players can move back into the two part system. Early on though once the game has a fair amount of players, this sort of system is better for ranking players, and I think the game will retain more players with such a system.

4

This post has been edited by a moderator. Please do not bump.

5

Too many playlists. We just need a Ranked/Social again and maybe a weekend playlist those always did well.

6

May work like Halo 3, where there was initially:

Social: unranked
Ranked: 1-50
Hardcore: also 1-50 but considered to be a more competitive playlist.

There needs to be something that distinguishes the 3 genres instead of having all skill based (e.g 1-50) or all playtime based (e.g Exp/cR only). Each playlist should offer exp/cR and in ‘Ranked’ and ‘Hardcore’ (Halo 3 system) / ‘Competitive’ and ‘Ranked’ (your system) should have a rank or representation of skill attached to it.

7

> May work like Halo 3, where there was initially:
>
> Social: unranked
> Ranked: 1-50
> Hardcore: also 1-50 but considered to be a more competitive playlist.
>
> There needs to be something that distinguishes the 3 genres instead of having all skill based (e.g 1-50) or all playtime based (e.g Exp/cR only). Each playlist should offer exp/cR and in ‘Ranked’ and ‘Hardcore’ (Halo 3 system) / ‘Competitive’ and ‘Ranked’ (your system) should have a rank or representation of skill attached to it.

You mean like how social in H3 used to be? How you had to reach a certain skill cap in any ranked playlist and then your social rank could continue to advance?