Uncapped MMR team balancing ruining social enjoyment

Games Halo Infinite
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Now that the game has been out a few months, its incredibly difficult to enjoy social games in Infinite due to the way team balancing is working with a hidden uncapped MMR value being in social, as well as ranked. I know I’ll be berated by the ‘you shouldn’t be stomping on new players’ crowd, but sometimes I want to just relax and not think in social, without being required to drop 30-40 kills to make it even close to a win. Also, it doesn’t stop the new players getting stomped more so than them just ALL being on one team and requiring a herculean carry just to make the game moderately close. Because the way TrueSkill2 works with matching in this game, if the game predicts I will go +20 due to past performances, the game compensates with a team of players who ‘should’ go -20 collectively, meaning unless I go +20 like I ‘should’, we will get stomped because the handless teammates I will get paired with.

The problem with doing well in social and the MMR gains being consistent while not having a ceiling, means for a good player that the more you do well, the more your MMR will increase and the more the SBMM will attempt to ‘balance’ teams. This is obvious, but without a cap, a skilled player with 1000 games will have a massive MMR score as opposed to a only slightly less skilled player with 200 games, who will have a significantly lower MMR number. That player might be only slightly better ‘skill-wise’, but will be paired with ALL the newer players, as the game attempts to even out the game to make the team-wide MMR scores as close as possible. It doesn’t help that team-balancing happens AFTER the match and players are found, instead of SBMM during the search.

Not only is it not fun for the player basically doing a 4v1 with bot teammates, it can’t possibly be fun for the low skilled players getting destroyed by a team of average to good players, all because of one player in the games’ MMR is substantially higher than everyone else’s. If you have 20k MMR and everyone else in the game is 1k to 6k, the game will give the 20k player ALL the 1k players in an attempt at balancing.
It’s often less sweaty in ranked due to having much closer match parameters and SBMM, but even then I find Plat teammates in Onyx quite consistently against full 1800-2k Onyx opposition, because personal MMR seems to carry over wherever you search.

Idk which 343 employee reads these things but please take MMR team balancing out of social, or at least give the value a cap so team balancing isn’t super unfair. If everyone at the cap is spread out across the teams, it will also help spread the lower MMR players evenly so at least they have someone their skill level to kill in the game. And yes, I’m aware I can completely circumvent this by making a smurf, but this shouldn’t be required for ‘social’. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

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Yea the system is flawed. I’m also match made to almost always be the best player on my team and it gets old having to drop 20+ a game or get blown out usually. It absolutely sucks to play with lesser skilled friends because of this.

And as you said - if the game balances your team by just putting worse players on your team - those guys are still getting stomped - but by people in platinum or whatever the middle ranks are in between you and those bad teammates.

Then throw into the mix that I think just about everyone has forgotten - we can all have bad games. Trueskill 2.0 ASSUMES we are playing 100% perfect.

I don’t know what the fix is exactly.

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those bad players dont care theyre getting stomped as long as they contribute to a win then they still get satisfaction. the people who want a more relaxing time are playing the wrong game and should find a new game until halo has more chilled gametypes

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I mean the solution is just to remove MMR balancing in social playlists so the teams are sorted completely randomly like previous Halo games’ social. Obviously in ranked to make balanced teams it’s required and a good thing, but the disparity between a good player and bad in social is so great that a high MMR skews team balancing like crazy. The problem is if this is possible depending on how reliant current matchmaking is on this system.

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I’m bumping and replying to this a few months later bc it’s still true and remains unaddressed. Social playlists are no longer “social” for ranked AND casual players.

I’m consistently in the same shoes where if I don’t drop a 30 bomb in slayer, we won’t even get close to winning. Game-wide MMR the game for social and ranked players.