I don’t ask this as a rant, it’s a sincere question. I’ve played multiplayer in Halo 3, Reach, and no Halo 4, and I never cease to be amazed by how often games have seriously unbalanced teams. I played a game of Big Team Slayer Pro on Settler yesterday and we lost 1000-530. Everyone on my team went negative; five people on the other team went positive.
I’m not saying it’s always this bad, and sometimes I’m on the winning side. I would have thought that after 12 years of doing this they could do a better job of generating evenly matched teams. Is there some technical challenge I’m not considering? Have they just never made a serious effort to address this? Does anyone even know why we get so many unbalanced teams?
Whatever the reasons I really wish they could improve on this. I really hate being on the receiving end of these bloodbaths, and I feel bad for people on the other team when they’re on the receiving end.
This happens in pretty much every game you’ll ever play.
One of the main reasons I tend to only play cooperative games over multiplayer as you play with friends and people not against them.
Some people might find this to be boring but I actually rather fight along side then against someone even if I don’t know them as I’m that type of person.
I feel more rewarding when helping someone in some way then beating someone or a team.
I agree that this is most frustrating. I understand that matching players of similar is a tricky task, but creating balanced teams? I would have thought to be much easier. The only two game that I have seen make a reasonable attempt to balance teams is Call of Duty and Crysis. Both of those games use lobby systems (you stay with the same people unless you leave) and use the scores from the previous match to balance such teams.
> > This happens in pretty much every game you’ll ever play.
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> But why?
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> > One of the main reasons I tend to only play cooperative games over multiplayer as you play with friends and people not against them.
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> Yet you play this.
I actually don’t play Halo 4 multiplayer that much. Check my game history as I only tend to play SpartanOps or I go about playing other games like Lostplanet 2 or Borderlands 2.
If you look at my history you can noticed I have at least nearly a weeks gap between my games and when I do play some games I tend to play very little of them.
It’s all about prioritizing speed over quality. A balanced match means longer search times when the game is trying to find players near your skill level, which means less options in terms of potential matches. Additionally, in terms of Halo 4, the population is very low, which means less potential matches, and so again, a choice has to be made between quality and speed.
They could certainly provide you balanced matches, the infrastructure is there. But at this point in time, I believe the search times would become so ridiculous that it doesn’t make sense. Having both balanced matches and short search times requires a very large population which very few games can actually support.
> It’s all about prioritizing speed over quality. A balanced match means longer search times when the game is trying to find players near your skill level, which means less options in terms of potential matches. Additionally, in terms of Halo 4, the population is very low, which means less potential matches, and so again, a choice has to be made between quality and speed.
>
> They could certainly provide you balanced matches, the infrastructure is there. But at this point in time, I believe the search times would become so ridiculous that it doesn’t make sense. Having both balanced matches and short search times requires a very large population which very few games can actually support.
Sorry, but I don’t buy this argument. First, once they find 16 people for a big team game they could assign them to teams more evenly.
Second, search times are already ridiculous for most games. I a few months ago I timed how long it took to start a new game after one ended. That time it was six minutes, and there were over 15,000 people in the playlist back then.
> Sorry, but I don’t buy this argument. First, once they find 16 people for a big team game they could assign them to teams more evenly.
>
> Second, search times are already ridiculous for most games. I a few months ago I timed how long it took to start a new game after one ended. That time it was six minutes, and there were over 15,000 people in the playlist back then.
Was that six minutes on average or did you just decide to time one search? Because the reality of it is, sometimes you just get long search times. And even if the search times are long nonetheless, it still doesn’t get you over the fact that speed is prioritized over quality. However, that doesn’t mean the speed is what you might consider optimal.
As for mixing the teams evenly, sometimes you just can’t do that. It’s often the case when there is a party of friends playing you just can’t split. If this party consists of good players, the only solution would have been to find better opponents to them before the match. So, that’s why the best way to guarantee an even match is prior to the match.
You might not want to believe it, but you were asking for an explanation, and that’s my explanation. The reality of it is, the match is not balanced because the matchmaking was done sloppily. On the other hand, the reason the matchmaking isn’t done well is because it impacts search times. You don’t happen to have a better explanation, do you?
> (Why do people want a quick easy partied-up game instead of a clutch last seconds fun game?)
Because people who do that want to make sure that they’ll win. They don’t care that they ruin the game for others.
> The only two game that I have seen make a reasonable attempt to balance teams is Call of Duty and Crysis. Both of those games use lobby systems (you stay with the same people unless you leave) and use the scores from the previous match to balance such teams.
And unfortunately the problem with both of those games is that being in a squad allows you to unbalance the game very easily. It’s silly how the squad option can override an important feature.
> > It’s all about prioritizing speed over quality. A balanced match means longer search times when the game is trying to find players near your skill level, which means less options in terms of potential matches. Additionally, in terms of Halo 4, the population is very low, which means less potential matches, and so again, a choice has to be made between quality and speed.
> >
> > They could certainly provide you balanced matches, the infrastructure is there. But at this point in time, I believe the search times would become so ridiculous that it doesn’t make sense. Having both balanced matches and short search times requires a very large population which very few games can actually support.
>
> Sorry, but I don’t buy this argument. First, once they find 16 people for a big team game they could assign them to teams more evenly.
>
> Second, search times are already ridiculous for most games. I a few months ago I timed how long it took to start a new game after one ended. That time it was six minutes, and there were over 15,000 people in the playlist back then.
six minutes? even when i play the dlc playlist or objective (both with well under 1000), it takes no more than 1 min max (i would say avg 25-30 seconds)
> if you want a balanced competitive non lopsided match you needthese things for these reasons.
>
> 1) visible skill rank like H2 or 3 that doesnt match you with anyone beyond +5 or -5 your rank
> - this ensures everyone is near the same skill level, even with csr I still get matches where i vs lvl 10’s or 20s and im 50
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> - it also motivates players to try their best, since something lasting and visible will portray their game performance
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> 2) no join in progress
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> - if people know that they can quit and it wont effect their team since they will be replaced, they will probably quit more
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> -it takes time to replace said player all the while its 4v3 and usually the other team gets too much of a lead.
>
> these things wont be in the next halo so expect more lopsided games.
The skill rank doesn’t really need to be visual, although the problem it just being there in the background is that you can’t really know is it doing its work properly. So, to be fair, having it be visual is preferable but not necessary.
Additionally, I would say that a very integral part of balanced matchmaking is matching parties appropriately. Big parties need to match with big parties and small with small. Because to me one of the most apparent balance issues is full parties against randoms. It simply doesn’t work in anyone’s favor.
obviously the issue here would be when you have something like a seven player party in 8v8 or four players in 5v5. But I don’t think a full match would be necessary. It doesn’t really matter if both teams have one less player, as long as the teams are balanced.
> > if you want a balanced competitive non lopsided match you needthese things for these reasons.
> >
> > 1) visible skill rank like H2 or 3 that doesnt match you with anyone beyond +5 or -5 your rank
> > - this ensures everyone is near the same skill level, even with csr I still get matches where i vs lvl 10’s or 20s and im 50
> >
> > - it also motivates players to try their best, since something lasting and visible will portray their game performance
> >
> > 2) no join in progress
> >
> > - if people know that they can quit and it wont effect their team since they will be replaced, they will probably quit more
> >
> > -it takes time to replace said player all the while its 4v3 and usually the other team gets too much of a lead.
> >
> > these things wont be in the next halo so expect more lopsided games.
>
> The skill rank doesn’t really need to be visual, although the problem it just being there in the background is that you can’t really know is it doing its work properly. So, to be fair, having it be visual is preferable but not necessary.
>
> Additionally, I would say that a very integral part of balanced matchmaking is matching parties appropriately. Big parties need to match with big parties and small with small. Because to me one of the most apparent balance issues is full parties against randoms. It simply doesn’t work in anyone’s favor.
>
> obviously the issue here would be when you have something like a seven player party in 8v8 or four players in 5v5. But I don’t think a full match would be necessary. It doesn’t really matter if both teams have one less player, as long as the teams are balanced.
skill rank needs to be visible if you want everyone playign at their best, it acts as a motivator since it reflects your ability. As it is now we have people who care about winning a game mixed with people who play for lols. if it is not visible people wont care nearly as much and it will be reflected in how they play.
if people dont want ranked gameplay and want to leave their xbox during a game to grab food and not care about matches they can play social. There is 0 reason to not have a visible rank system, 343 just needs to be on top of it to prevent abuse of the system.
ranked in h3 and h2 matched parties with parties and singles/doubles with singles/doubles. Social in H2 and H3 didnt and this is what we are playing now, 100% social playlists. and no it does work in full parties favor, they get better stats and incorrectly feel they are good at the game, hence why they do it.
4v5 or 7 v8 is not a big issue and its teh smaller parties fault anyway for starting a search with a man down. but teams of 3 or 4 should not be matched with a party of singles, same skill or not.
its funny all of this is still being discussed when all these issues were fixd in the H3 days with rank/social divide.
I agree with tsassi, back when I played h4 MP (last time I played i, believe was just before they started that CSR junk)with my friends we would almost never go in a 8 v 8 without 8 players (and we used our mics for call outs and stratagy, something randoms never do), when we played against another full team (not randoms) those were great games with close scores of 1000 to 990 being frequent and even ending in a tie a couple times, but when we would go against a team that were mostly or all randoms, we would win with scores like 1000 to 450, because the randoms would just run around spraying and praying.
and with low population its hard to match a team of 8 with another team consistantly, so that team plays mostly against randoms and you get lopsided games that way
> if people dont want ranked gameplay and want to leave their xbox during a game to grab food and not care about matches they can play social. There is 0 reason to not have a visible rank system, 343 just needs to be on top of it to prevent abuse of the system.
>
> ranked in h3 and h2 matched parties with parties and singles/doubles with singles/doubles. Social in H2 and H3 didnt and this is what we are playing now, 100% social playlists. and no it does work in full parties favor, they get better stats and incorrectly feel they are good at the game, hence why they do it.
>
> 4v5 or 7 v8 is not a big issue and its teh smaller parties fault anyway for starting a search with a man down. but teams of 3 or 4 should not be matched with a party of singles, same skill or not.
>
> its funny all of this is still being discussed when all these issues were fixd in the H3 days with rank/social divide.
Oh, I wasn’t talking about ranked, just on a more general level. Of course ranked should have the ranking system be visible because that is kind of the point of it. But at the same time, I think social benefits equally from having matches based on skill because obviously no one who plays social just to mess around wants to run into a full party that just plays to dominate.
And again, on a general level, full parties don’t really benefit from bad matches either. Of course I don’t speak for everyone, but I’ve heard good players who often play BTB in big parties complain about having to play against unorganized randoms. Because let’s face it, if you are truly a competitive player, absolutely dominating the game isn’t fun because it poses no challenge.
As for teams of unequal sizes, sure if the game can’t find another four man team they can be matched with five. But it would be optimal that if a team of four jumps into matchmaking, and there is another team of four searching the match, that these teams would be matched against each other. Of course if another four man squad can’t be found, then the game widens the search to full five player parties.
The ranked in past Halo games had a lot of this in place. And returning that ranked/social division would solve a lot of these issues. But many of these features also benefit social play because it doesn’t matter if you’re just messing around or playing competitively, balanced matches are always more fun than lopsided ones.
