Honestly, somebody chime in here.
I’ve been playing Halo for at least 10 years, to the tune of several thousand hours invested. I did the super-competitive MLG only thing for 5 years straight, my team was in the top 12 in MLG’s first online ladder for Halo 3. I had a 37 in Team Hardcore in H2, four level 50’s in Halo 3 (48 in MLG Playlist), and made Onyx four times in Reach.
I just don’t care about ranks anymore. I’ve done it, I have no need to “compare myself” to my peers or the general player-base… I know without a shadow of a doubt that I’m overall more skilled at this series than at least 90% of the player base. Those who want to dedicate most of there personal time to a game in hopes of making it into professional E-Sports or ego stroking… Good luck to you, just keep in mind there are other outlets for this (MLG, Gamebattles).
The old ranking systems were broken. Period. Standbyers, host bringers, De-rankers, griefers, boosting, tons purchased accounts, people on 2ndary accounts, and poor implimentation. To top it off, many, many people who achieved a level 50 in Halo 3 never played that playlist again. There was no reason to keep playing on level 50’s, no progression, just actual competitive matches. You’d risk having your General Rank be downgraded to a laughable Brigadier. Halo: Reach, for all of it’s game-play blunders, did get one thing right in Concept; its division system. Just the overall execution & implementation of it was lacking.
Everyone points to Starcraft 2 or League of Legends for a Ranking system, or past Halo’s. Halo’s past systems have not been that great, just one of the few skill based ranking systems out there. Starcraft 2 is a 1v1 competitive game based on win’s & losses, Halo is team based and its skill system is trying (and failing) to assess individual players. If you don’t understand the fundamental difference between these two systems and how they don’t apply to each other, I’m not going to bother to explain them to you. There are so many factors beyond simple Win/Loss numbers. Things like Ka/D ratio’s, accuracy, head-shot percentage, weapons used, and objective plays. Even then this is only half of the story… No ranking system can sit there and monitor your map movement and decision making, even if it’s theoretically reflected into other statistics.
The only thing that skill-based rankings promote is a competitive environment. The drive to win, something to ‘try’ for while you play, goals, and the desire to improve (so you don’t look like such a scrub compared to your friends)… But what happened to just playing and trying to win without some stupid number in the game? The ranking system has already been announced to be viewable through Waypoint…
The Call of Duty community (Now, before you all jump down my throat over this, I’m no fan of Activision, the excessive milking of the franchise, lack of innovation, and general ridiculousness that is CoD. I own the 3 Modern Warfare titles and have never made it past level 50 on any of them) has had to make due with just a progressive system for many years now… Yet those players play for 1-2 years straight, prestige’ing multiple times in the process… Why is the competitive player-base here such whiney brats who can’t just play the game, have fun, and play to win?
I’m glad that they’ve done away with the in-game 1-50 system, it’s full of holes and is extremely vulnerable to abuse in a variety of ways. I also can just relax, play Halo, have fun, and not have to worry about losing a few matches because I went in without a team of four, got matched up with idiots, and lost. Good riddance, bring back a division like system that’s well done, or don’t have in-game rankings at all.