I’m fairly new to the Halo scene and have only been playing a short while.
Throughout my games i have noticed the drastic decrease in my teammates… common sense. I’m not that great at the game but every game i join it seems to be severely high ranks in a group in the opposing team, and the ‘Just got an Xbox for my B-Day’ players on my team.
I have no idea how the matchmaking system works, but to a newbie like myself being paired against several stacked high rank teams when i have players who really couldn’t care less is basically handing over the win. I’ve selected ‘WINNING’ on my psych profile, but it doesn’t seem to have helped the issue. Could anyone explain to me, please.
Actually you have a pretty high K/D ratio and W/L ratio. So far you have earned three times as many kills as you deaths and three times as many wins than loses. Matchmaking is still trying to find where you belong. I recommend you stop searching for random teammates this very instant and find a team of competitive players right now. Protect your stats and only go with teammates you trust. Hell, I’ll add you. My stats look very bad when compared to your w/l and k/d, but that’s because I did what you where doing for 9 months.
My only evidence of skill I have is my win percentage for invasion is 93 percent… Only 70 people in the world can say they have a higher win percentage in invasion than I do. I’m pretty sure you can beat me 1v1, but Im a team player… I keep my teams alive and I’m sure you would like to meet some of the teams I’m with.
> Reach matchmaking is random. You have an equal chance of getting good and bad teammates.
This. I have been matched with Recruit before and I’m an inheritor. I honestly feel bad for the Recruit because he/she is trying to learn the game when I have so much experience already.
> The TrueSkill matching is so loose, it isn’t even noticeable, I matched someone who only got Halo: Reach today before.
That’s exactly how TrueSkill is designed to work. The system has no idea how good new players are, so they can be matched with anyone. Matching with a large variety of skill levels allows the system to converge on their “true skill” much quicker than if they were forced to slog through the lower ranks.
Yeah there is no working skill matchmaking system. But at the same time, I think that the only way to get better is playing people who are better than you, so maybe it’s secretly a blessing All I know is that when I started playing Reach I was terrible and had a 0.4 K/D, but I’ve gotten a lot better since then and I know I wouldn’t ever have advanced if I wasn’t playing people that destroyed me and made me realize my mistakes.
> > The TrueSkill matching is so loose, it isn’t even noticeable, I matched someone who only got Halo: Reach today before.
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> That’s exactly how TrueSkill is designed to work. The system has no idea how good new players are, so they can be matched with anyone. Matching with a large variety of skill levels allows the system to converge on their “true skill” much quicker than if they were forced to slog through the lower ranks.
Quite right. New players start with a medium skill value and a maximal “uncertainty” value.
I wonder if the problem could be partially solved by matching new players with new players more often.
> > The TrueSkill matching is so loose, it isn’t even noticeable, I matched someone who only got Halo: Reach today before.
>
> That’s exactly how TrueSkill is designed to work. The system has no idea how good new players are, so they can be matched with anyone. Matching with a large variety of skill levels allows the system to converge on their “true skill” much quicker than if they were forced to slog through the lower ranks.
Match a new player with other fairly new players, if they do good, then match them up with better players, and continue until they get to the point of winning/losing games on a common basis.
Reach lacks this, I never match players of equal skill in Matchmaking, it is either a complete shut out when we win, or a complete shut out when we lose, it is incredibly rare we have extremely close games.
Welcome to halo Reach. The result of casuals who complained about halo 3’s ranking that matched you much better based on skill. If you were in halo 3 ranked your first games would have been much fairer and better for you. But they got rid of that excellent matching system for a more casual and worse system where good players are going around killing at will unchecked and unbalanced. It’s a rampant mess in Reach with the lax trueskill.
In Reach people like myself can face new players 2 years later in the same playlists which is absurd. But whatever, they chose their poison as I like to say and are paying dearly for it now =)
I created a new account not too long ago as a test and my first matches were against 2+ year Halo Reach veterans. I still mopped the floor with them since I actually know how to play but was hilarious that my first match for a new account was against players most new people to halo wouldn’t even be able to stand a chance against. and yes, I had the “match me based on skill” and all those other ‘preferences’ checked. They don’t do a thing.
Bungie relaxed TrueSkill restrictions in Reach to speed up match times, because they expected the population to be high enough to cancel out the imprecision. Obviously, that expectation never came to pass, but it’s ludicrous to blame “the causals” for the failed system.
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> That’s a little presumptuous, isn’t it?
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> Bungie relaxed TrueSkill restrictions in Reach to speed up match times, because they expected the population to be high enough to cancel out the imprecision. Obviously, that expectation never came to pass, but it’s ludicrous to blame “the causals” for the failed system.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to do it the other way around though? If the population is high, then you already have fast matching times. Then you can tighten your Trueskill restrictions with little to no repercussions in terms of search time.
> >
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> That’s a little presumptuous, isn’t it?
>
> Bungie relaxed TrueSkill restrictions in Reach to speed up match times, because they expected the population to be high enough to cancel out the imprecision. Obviously, that expectation never came to pass, but it’s ludicrous to blame “the causals” for the failed system.
I place the blame on them. Their complaining about it never ceased and we ended up here. The majority sadly won in this case and bungie made Reach more casual than it’s previous games so they could get more people to play as opposed to catering to the dedicated fanbase that actually will stick around.
But whatever, the damage is done and still being done. Every time the game puts me against players who I shouldn’t even be facing it’s not going to make me play any easier. If we had social and ranked playlists like a good halo game should have we wouldn’t be in the predicament that we are in. I hardly consider ‘arena’ a single playlist to make up for all the ranked ones halo 3 had.
> Match a new player with other fairly new players, if they do good, then match them up with better players, and continue until they get to the point of winning/losing games on a common basis.
>
> Reach lacks this, I never match players of equal skill in Matchmaking, it is either a complete shut out when we win, or a complete shut out when we lose, it is incredibly rare we have extremely close games.
That’s how the modified Halo 3 TrueSkill was set up, and it didn’t work very well. First, it takes much longer for player convergence, since matches between new players have much less statistical significance than a match against a known quantity. Second, it created the illusion of a progression system, so people felt like if they played enough they would continue to move up, which is not how a matching system should work. Third, it created a terrible problem where veteran players could simply make new accounts to destroy new players for a bunch of games. A matching system should strive to create a bell curve of skill levels. If you looked at the skill distribution in Halo 3, none of the playlists came close to that, proving the system to be a failure. That’s why Bungie changed back to unrestrained TrueSkill in Reach, and added a separate progression system.
It’s also worth noting how incredibly difficult it is to set up an even match in a Halo game. There are so many factors that control how games play out, from in-game random occurrences (nade bounces, power weapon swings, etc.), to out-of-game issues, like players having bad days or games, players being better on certain maps, or teams simply having conflicting playstyles.
I will agree that Halo: Reach Matchmaking prioritizes speed over skill, but in some cases there simply aren’t players in the search pool that match perfectly in terms of skill while still being compatible in terms of networking. I would also suggest playing more Arena if you are really looking for close matches. I play it all the time, and usually get pretty decent games (although not quite as much this season for some reason).
I play with full parties alot and also search by myself sometimes and I will say that being in a full party means we will find another team alot more often than when I am by myself and im sick of randoms complaining that full parties never get matched together. They just cry and quit.
Playing on my Inheritor account I will find more higher ranks than my other account.
The MM system isnt perfect but its alot better than most of you give credit for.
> I play with full parties alot and also search by myself sometimes and I will say that being in a full party means we will find another team alot more often than when I am by myself and im sick of randoms complaining that full parties never get matched together. They just cry and quit.
> Playing on my Inheritor account I will find more higher ranks than my other account.
> The MM system isnt perfect but its alot better than most of you give credit for.
It is there, but its SO loose as to be worthless. I regularly get teams of four when i’m searching by myself in team slayer. I get people with a tenth as many kills as me, with vastly lower ratios.
Personally I don’t think the matchmaking system is broken, it’s the system of putting teams against single players that’s broken.
Taking the example of big team battle: I search BTB by myself and usually get a group of players similar in rank and skill to myself, but probably half of my matches are against a team of at least 4-8 (usually 8) players matched together and talking in party chat. What chance will 8 randomly chosen players have against a cohesive team of 8 who work together and communicate? It’s about a 90% chance that the team will win.
So I guess my point is that, setting trueskill aside, there should be something done to stop these teams from being matched with single players. And the solution is not “find people to play with”, if I wanted to do that I’d join a clan. And funny how you never hear teams complaining about not being evenly matched with teams, I guess when you win 100 to 60 there’s nothing to complain about.
hmm my exp in matchmaking… well its not unfair this is true see people have friends they buddy up making a whole squad ready for battle. My stats suck as it is but when i play with mic in toe it won’t make a difference cause it won’t be team work at all cause in matchmaking lets be honest there is no team gamming only best of the fit best of the controls ^^ but over all in a team of swat i can hold my own pretty damn well. but matchmaking is random the problem is you’ll just meet people who party up, i suck an i still get paired with better players than me all the time
I hate these random match ups. its one of the main reasons spawn trapper teams are so regular these days. because they arent all playing only with each other as it should be.
I know exactly how the OP feels. I’m almost at Legend, so the system’s had plenty of time to properly adjust my trueskill. And yet, I still get paired up with quit-happy power weapon betrayers against a team of jesus incarnate.
It certainly doesn’t help when everybody (my team included) abuses the hell out of active camo and armor lock.
All I know is that when I started playing Reach I was terrible and had a 0.4 K/D, but I’ve gotten a lot better since then and I know I wouldn’t ever have advanced if I wasn’t playing people that destroyed me and made me realize my mistakes.