Why visible ranking works elsewhere (long)

Games Other Halo
1

I know, I’m as grossed out as you guys that there is another thread with “ranking” in the title. Hear me out.

(I ignore the argument about boosters and cheaters intentionally. If other games can figure it out, there is no reason why 343i can’t make it work. Horrible argument in my opinion)

I always wondered why games like world of warcraft and league of legends could implement a skill based, VISIBLE ranking system that works, and pleases the majority of the community. It always appeared that Halo fans took rank more personally. It was always a way touchier subject than in the other games mentioned.

The reason for this is because in halo, it IS more personal. I will explain below, the reasoning in which I believe other games succeeded with their ranking systems, and where Halo could finally put this thing to rest.

First, lets look at World of Warcraft’s arena. Right off the bat, the player doesn’t have a personal rank. They have team ranks. Way different. If your rank is low, it isn’t YOU that performed badly necessarily, it was your team. I’ll admit this is a very subtle difference and might not be all that important. The biggest difference, however, was that at any moment you could disband your team, completely erasing any evidence of your shameful performance. You could start over with a clean slate at any time, without changing accounts. If you were proud of your rank, show it off. If you weren’t, just delete the rank and start again. Or don’t start again right away and go do something casual. Nobody can see it or that it ever happened.

Same thing in League of legends:
1.Disbanding teams provides a fresh start
2.hiding team rank if it was below average

These are intentional decisions that were made. They might seem small, but they work to alleviate the anxiety that a lot of players get when rank is involved. This lets players develop on their own time, without scrutiny, keeping them in competitive playlists where otherwise they might have left. I can’t think of a better way to promote a healthy playlist.

There will always be self conscious gamers. People should stop alienating them and start figuring out a way to ease the frustration. WoW and LoL seem to have figured it out.

In halo, your rank is forever attached to you. Even though it is a team game, your rank feels personal. Tied to your account. If you had 1000 games played and were level 25 in Halo 3, everyone could see it…There was just something so final about it that seemed to stress people out. Even in arena, people could scroll through if they wanted to and see what you got in each season. You could always start a new tag, but that obviously was an inconvenience for more than one reason. Whether you want to believe it or not, this causes people to stop playing, which hurts the playlists for all of us.

The argument is always between creating a competitive atmosphere or a casual-friendly environment. We can do both. It is being done elsewhere. Let’s make it happen.

2

If substandard performance makes players feel bad, they have options. Play social, strive to get better, or play something else less stressful. Problem solved!

3

Double post

4

> If substandard performance makes players feel bad, they have options. Play social, strive to get better, or play something else less stressful. Problem solved!

Yes, but it pushes people out of the ranked playlists which leads to entire playlists being removed due to low population…which leads to the game becoming stagnant. A game should offer social playlists but also offer an easy way for a new player to start out on the ranked playlists. I think it’s a great way to promote longevity for the game in general.

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gah dbl post

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In Halo 3 you could achieve level 50 in around 20 games (the lowest I have seen was in 13 games), then a permanent ‘YOU ARE THE BEST!’ medal was applied to your gamertag. This allowed multiple highly skilled players to boost and sell accounts.

Get rid of that permanent ‘YOU ARE THE BEST!’ part, and the incentive is taken away. AKA, get rid of ‘highest level achieved’, and the incentive to buy a used account is almost gone. Now the progression, exp over time, gets rid of the incentive to sell. You can’t put all that time into getting the top rank (even if you were to boost, it would take months and months, possibly years to get the top rank, or even up to 50 would take a long while), so that’s not good for the selling accounts business, which is good.

Now to make the skill of an individual actually show. How do you do that? Not by W/L alone. W/L alone makes it easier to boost, and it doesn’t show individual skill. If I were to be AFK the entire game, but my team won, I rank up? But I did nothing… that doesn’t reflect my skill at all.

Now, there could be a special playlist that forces you to play with a team of 4. If you don’t have a team of 4, you can’t play that playlist. Perhaps, you need the same team from your first match. Like registering a team with the matchmaking. But I don’t see this working well for a game like Halo.

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> In Halo 3 you could achieve level 50 in around 20 games (the lowest I have seen was in 13 games), then a permanent ‘YOU ARE THE BEST!’ medal was applied to your gamertag. This allowed multiple highly skilled players to boost and sell accounts.
>
> Get rid of that permanent ‘YOU ARE THE BEST!’ part, and the incentive is taken away. AKA, get rid of ‘highest level achieved’, and the incentive to buy a used account is almost gone. Now the progression, exp over time, gets rid of the incentive to sell. You can’t put all that time into getting the top rank (even if you were to boost, it would take months and months, possibly years to get the top rank, or even up to 50 would take a long while), so that’s not good for the selling accounts business, which is good.
>
> Now to make the skill of an individual actually show. How do you do that? Not by W/L alone. W/L alone makes it easier to boost, and it doesn’t show individual skill. If I were to be AFK the entire game, but my team won, I rank up? But I did nothing… that doesn’t reflect my skill at all.
>
> Now, there could be a special playlist that forces you to play with a team of 4. If you don’t have a team of 4, you can’t play that playlist. Perhaps, you need the same team from your first match. Like registering a team with the matchmaking. But I don’t see this working well for a game like Halo.

I don’t see why making static teams couldn’t be one of the ranked playlists. Removing the “highest rank achieved” could be good. It would force players to keep rank maybe.

8

> > If substandard performance makes players feel bad, they have options. Play social, strive to get better, or play something else less stressful. Problem solved!
>
> Yes, but it pushes people out of the ranked playlists which leads to entire playlists being removed due to low population…which leads to the game becoming stagnant. A game should offer social playlists but also offer an easy way for a new player to start out on the ranked playlists. I think it’s a great way to promote longevity for the game in general.

Well a halo game without a ranked playlist pushes people out to other games, which leads to lower populations. Should the game only cater to the social community? Halo has always offered social playlists, so I’m not sure what your trying to say here. Reach is a clear example of a game that will not have longevity as a consequence of its one sided playlists.

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> In Halo 3 you could achieve level 50 in around 20 games (the lowest I have seen was in 13 games), then a permanent ‘YOU ARE THE BEST!’ medal was applied to your gamertag. This allowed multiple highly skilled players to boost and sell accounts.
>
> Get rid of that permanent ‘YOU ARE THE BEST!’ part, and the incentive is taken away. AKA, get rid of ‘highest level achieved’, and the incentive to buy a used account is almost gone. Now the progression, exp over time, gets rid of the incentive to sell. You can’t put all that time into getting the top rank (even if you were to boost, it would take months and months, possibly years to get the top rank, or even up to 50 would take a long while), so that’s not good for the selling accounts business, which is good.
>
> Now to make the skill of an individual actually show. How do you do that? Not by W/L alone. W/L alone makes it easier to boost, and it doesn’t show individual skill. If I were to be AFK the entire game, but my team won, I rank up? But I did nothing… that doesn’t reflect my skill at all.
>
> Now, there could be a special playlist that forces you to play with a team of 4. If you don’t have a team of 4, you can’t play that playlist. Perhaps, you need the same team from your first match. Like registering a team with the matchmaking. But I don’t see this working well for a game like Halo.

I’m not exactly excited how you seem to peg us 50’s for account selling goons. I work for a living and however much people sell accounts for will no way supplement my income in any worthwhile way, shape, or form. I do agree with you that ranking to a “50” should take a tremendous amount of time, and be a journey similar to the progression system. I can only hope 343 is able to overcome these challenges and deliver a ranking system that deters boosters. I myself was able to achieve 50’s without boosters, so I personally wasn’t affected. Apparently theses were issues to great to ignore.

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>

I’ll have you know, that people were cheating in WoW for Arena Ranks.

11

Comparing Halo ranks to ranks in MMOs is not a valid comparison. You should be drawing comparisons between ranking systems in other, similar FPSs.

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> I’m not exactly excited how you seem to peg us 50’s for account selling goons.

Higher skilled players are the ones to do this usually. Because it’s easier for them. The max I could reach in Halo 3 was 44 after hundreds of games. I’m not pegging all 50’s as account sellers, because not everyone who sells 50’s are 50’s, or should be. I’m just saying higher skilled players are the ones who sell alt accounts, because lower skilled players can’t get their easily, even with boosting.

13

who cares if people bought accounts to get a 50, once they got their 50 they wouldn’t play that playlist anyways cause they would lose. So i don’t see why they punish eveyone for a few bought accounts. They said we all have a rank its just hidden but i think that is dumb.

14

> who cares if people bought accounts to get a 50, once they got their 50 they wouldn’t play that playlist anyways cause they would lose. So i don’t see why they punish eveyone for a few bought accounts. They said we all have a rank its just hidden but i think that is dumb.

Because the people selling those accounts made life hell for the lowbies they farmed to get that 50 over and over again.

15

Just restrict visible ranks to ranked playlists- bam. Give options to hide online searchable stats, ect ect.

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> Just restrict visible ranks to ranked playlists- bam. Give options to hide online searchable stats, ect ect.

This is exactly what i mean. There are so many subtle things about a ranking system that are the difference between one that works and one that doesn’t.

Just because Halo didn’t get it exactly right in the past doesn’t mean it should be forever ignored