A wider variety of Bot skills. Also, programmed to possess more strategic team awareness and mode-based intelligence in accordance to its overall skill level; meaning, Bot skill isn’t almost solely determined by varying aim accuracy skills.
Thus, allowing the matchmaker (within the social environment) to substitute-in Bots when necessary in order to provide a more balanced match experience for all involved.
I imagine this would primarily occur when a searching party features a large individual skill-gap between its members. This is because that disparity in skill creates a difficult scenario for the matchmaker to formulate a balanced opposition within a reasonable search period.
I stopped playing this game, due to sbmm. I moved on to other games for a month and a half. I have come back to halo and within three games want to stop playing again. I’ve had enough. Despite my break I am playing the exact same level of opponent as if I didn’t have one, getting destroyed. This is not fun. They have had long enough to recognise the community do not enjoy this in social modes. I’m done waiting.
I’m sorry, but it seems like you really don’t understand the problems caused by SBMM.
You could look at past titles, like Halo 3 for example, which had minor skill based matchmaking. Bungie themselves even said they had to turn it down due to the games being always too sweaty for unfun.
This would be, and I mean no offence in this, one of the worst things to implement in the game. So if I’m a Onyx player and a Bronze player shoots me, do I instantly die to make it more fair because of the handicap system?
Almost every interaction in the game would become inconsistent and cases would undoubtedly pop up where players unload a full mag into a player and they shrug it off like it’s nothing.
The game is already inconsistent af because of desync.
Plus, why should I play at a disadvantage because the game says I’m good? Again, punishing players for learning the game and driving them away over time.
Here’s how you solve these issues. Tone down SBMM to the point of Halo 3 and Halo Reach. Then, make the game much easier to play. Way more aim assist, more similar to what we had in Reach. Make the game easier for everyone to play so more people can play it and have fun. Reduce the range of weapons and nerf their damage to vehicles to encourage BTB gameplay. Increase the TTK slightly and add more fun things into the game like assassinations or vehicle combat (currently you just get destroyed for even entering a vehicle).
Ultimately, make the base game more casual friendly and then have a different ruleset for ranked. Reach was incredibly successful because it appealed to the casual audience. Infinite has the tools, it just needs a different mechanic.
Just to respond to this aswell. Bots in higher levels are more of a hinderance than anything else. In slayer they go 0 to 12 most the time. They’re only decent in objective gamemodes, and even then they don’t do too well.
They’d be better off if the bot followed a player around, trying to track their movements, and then assisting in a team fight.
But I also feel that the problems caused by random-BMM are much worse.
All systems should be constantly tuned.
I also liked it when Bungie said that the difference between ranked and social was just one of perception - and the aim was to get all of the hyper competetive -yoink-holes into the ranked playlists.
Not sure why you would jump straight to an extreme example.
I would have thought we’re talking a more subtle combination of buffs and nerfs.
But it shouldn’t be a problem for someone of your skill. How often would a Bronze player even get a chance to get a shot off anyway?
So, reload, And go again. Chances are with your skill in movement, positioning, and grenade throwing - they are working hard to hit you as well.
Essentially you want to make the 1v1 a 50:50 contest.
And now we are back to the crux of it.
You want to show off your skills.
Which is fine. Fun is subjective. But what you are then asking for in playing random teams, or those matched to your Gold ranked buddies, is the chance to constantly stomp teams.
And that isn’t fair. Or fun (for anyone else).
You are the one who wants to play with your lowly ranked friends. That doesn’t work very well with SBMM. Obviously. So we need to think outside of the box to how it could work going forward.
Not sure how that fits your “helping people to improve” ideal?
But yep. I’d be in that. Increase the aim assist for the lower ranked players.
Some good points. But probably a bit separate from the pure SBMM argument.
Agree.
Half the problem is that Social and Ranked play way too similarly. There needs to be different maps, layouts, and rules in Social. To discourage ranked type play. Moving to 5v5 or 3v3v3 scenarios for a start.
I feel you don’t, and allow the following points to be evidence of this.
So two points here.
If you want to talk subtle then let’s talk about the mangler one shot melee combo. Fine tuning that by a tiny amount would allow some players to perform the combo whilst you would be unable to perform it back. That already is a major problem as you’d go in expecting it to work, and it would only work… let’s say 40% of the time for no other reason than the game believes you’re worse than your enemy.
The game would become a balancing nightmare and again, we’ve seen how bad desync is and how people are complaining about the inconsistency. This would make it a thousand times worse. Heck, you have people complaining about M&K vs Controller giving unfair advantages to either side.
I get you like your idea, but it’s a bad one and would never work. I’d challenge you to find a game where this has worked.
I use the extreme example because I remember in Halo 5 I was playing with a top 500 player and two bronzes in ranked against two top 500 players and two bronze player. (Strangest game I’ve ever played). These instances can happen, and whilst those bronze players had some of the best players against them, they still contributed by landing shots and getting assists.
My point more so being, these instances can, and have, happened. I’d be pretty annoyed if these bronze players joined in and suddenly had overshields on for the entire match and could laser us down like we were nothing.
Also, to address this now.
Brilliant idea… until you realise that M&K players don’t have aim assist anyways, so really you’d just be destorying the experience for controller players…
You want to make it a 50:50 contest… by giving one player a unfair advantage over the other… Yeah, because that makes complete sense
Completely missed the point.
I want to play with my friends because playing with my friends is fun.
My friends being forced into matches where they stand no chance whatsoever is not fun for them. Watching them enter games and go like 1 to 19 is just awful to see. Because Infinite has such awful aiming and terrible SBMM in place, they never even stand a chance. That isn’t fun for anyone to experience.
Again, we used to be able to play Halo just fine in Halo Reach. Me and my friend would take it in turns to drive and gauss hog and we’d all have a good time.
Furthermore, a core part of your argument seems to be that if the teams were random then people would always get stomped. This is just simply untrue. We would have people from past games asking to play with us and because of those random games we made loads of friends and built our own little community.
I kid you not, we had players who were bronze to silver level being able to perform pretty well because they were with good players who were willing to teach them. Be that being driven around in a hog allowing them to get some kills, or flying behind enemy lines and flanking the enemy. With the current systems in place, we simply cannot recreate that.
We were able to make communities within the game and all have fun because of it. I haven’t seen anyone even experience that in Halo Infinite, and that’s one heck of a shame. (Also likely the reason the game has like what? 2,000 players a week?)
And I just have to draw attention to this comment you made.
Sorry, am I not supposed to want to play with my friends? My friends want to play with me too, and because they can’t they uninstalled Halo Infinite.
I know I’ve touched on this before, but decreasing aim assist for higher level players only makes the game feel worse and turns people away. Please stop trying to turn away players from the game.
I’m also not sure if I need to explain how making the game more accessible would allow players the ability to be able to improve more, but let’s try.
Imagine the aiming like riding a bike. When you first start off, you’re not going to be brilliant at it. However over time you’ll get used to it and can focus on other parts of the experience. Now just because you can ride the bike, it doesn’t mean you’re a pro bmx biker, however you can still enjoy the experience of riding a bike. Let’s say 80% if people learn how to ride the bike properly.
Halo Infinite it more like trying to ride a unicycle. It’s much more difficult, it feels more awkward and most people won’t learn how to ride the unicycle properly. They’ll instead say it’s too hard and move on to different things, and maybe only 10% of people will be able to ride the unicycle properly.
Now let’s change bike for high aim assist and unicycle for low aim assist.
More players can enjoy the experience of high aim assist and work on improving movement, positioning and teamwork. However with low aim assist, most players are struggling to even get the basics down because it’s too difficult. Making it easier, allows for players to enjoy the rest of the game.
As a disclaimer, I’m not saying the game should play itself. I still believe that there would be weapons which are more difficult to use like the Sniper, however that’s for the more competitive side. Arena shooters are more than just aiming, which is what makes them pretty darn fun.
I wouldn’t really say 5v5 or triple teams. Really the solution is BTB. Most casuals flock there because of the vehicle combat. Halo Infinite has some of the worst vehicle combat in the entire franchise due to all the anti vehicle weapons. I mean seriously, they removed the Spartan Laser saying it was too strong, then added the Skewer which is like a Spartan laser, but fires instantly and looks way less cool. Heck, even the Hydra is insanely anti air, and the Sniper can 3 - 4 tap the Wasp.
Halo Infinite just isn’t designed for the casual audience, however I find it funny that the competitive community don’t care for Halo Infinite either despite it being tailored for them.
As a summary, I don’t want you to think I’m having a massive go at you or doing some kind of personoal attack. I get that the way I word things can sound… a bit much. I write as I speak, and I speak with a very nice English accent which softens the blows of whatever I’m saying. Unforunately, typing doesn’t convery that.
You are however welcome to join my party one of the days and discuss this via voice chat.
Lately I’ve been getting invited into random Fire teams after matches. Feels like people are starting to learn a little bit in game that premade parties are the way to go lol. Also glad to see setting up fire teams with randoms isn’t too difficult.
I agree that the self-awareness of Bots in relation to non-slayer based objectives and team coordination needs to be improved within the programming. And these things need to scale appropriately across the skill spectrum.
This idea is mostly a non-starter without those things.
I disagree. The idea here is that with better Bots and more Bot variety (in skill) you wouldn’t necessarily need to offset a potential AI team crutch with another for the other side.
In fact, the idea here is to specifically deal with situations where a group of friends are teamed up in a party, but possess very different skill levels, and the matchmaker is unable to quickly pull-in a similar mix of player skills.
I say this because I think it’s difficult to expect the matchmaker to find and put together a similar mix of diverse player skills on the opposing team; at least, within a reasonable search period given the game’s current population.
Therefore, the matchmaker should do its best to initially match the best player or players to other similarly skilled real players, and if it can’t find players of a similar skill to the less skilled party members within a reasonable search period then just substitute-in Bots that possess a similar skill level.
That grants the lower level players opposing targets (the similarly skilled Bots) that they can find some success against. I imagine this would be most important when the party of friends, that possess a wide variety of skills, make up a full Fireteam.
And there are multiple ways to approach it. And the solution may very well be multifactorial.
My group had a lot of success with OS in Halo 5. We just forged a bunch around spawn points - and only the damage sponge type players were allowed to pick them up. It helped to balance the game.
Or at least it definitely increased the fun factor for them not automatically being the easy kills.
Again, never said OS for the entire match. Or that anyone was getting lasered.
The idea is simply to take 8 random players and apply a bunch of buffs and nerfs so that everyone can run around and have fun in an evenly matched game.
A social nirvana.
And I would think that for the majority of players the buffs and nerfs would be fairly subtle. Although for you and your friends, with such a big gap, it would be more noticeable.
Hang on? I thought it was actually your idea.
All I changed up was giving it to the lower skilled players to help them compete.
It makes sense if your objective is to play games with your mates across a wide range of skill levels.
It certainly makes more sense than solving the problem by just offering up four hapless opponents for your team to play with.
Cool. I’m with you there. Had a blast last night with a bunch of mates.
But you have to decide if it’s fun enough that you are happy to play a fairly balanced opposition (as per current SBMM) or have your output nerfed down to their level.
Again. Your team chose and created that dynamic.
Why should solo opponents be forced into matches against you where they are actually the ones who stand no chance whatsoever?
The gap between you and them must be freaking huge.
It’s a strong core. At least for those to the left of the skill curve. Or versus teams that have player(s) to the right of the skill curve.
And that just attenuates the problem.
Once you start squadding up the game has no chance to even the teams. With RBMM, two Onyx players together would have over three quarters of their games with an average team MMR advantage of more than 50 points! And compare this to around 2% in the other direction.
Of course their little Bronze buddies enjoy tagging along for the ride.
You are supposed to want to play with them.
But accepting that something has to be put in place to even the teams. To make it fair for both sides. That needs to be SBMM and/or handicapping.
I get into the same problem. Typing doesn’t always accurately portray the Australian sense of humour and/or sarcasm.
Don’t think of me as particularly pro-SBMM. I’m just anti-RandomBBM.
Once scripting has the bugs sorted out I’ll have to link you some of our handicapping games for you and your mates to try out in customs. Currently it’s scoring on K/D, OS on spawn (proportional to your K/D below 1.0), and a limit on picking up weapons and equipment if your kill streak is over three.
To buff a side when player’s are relatively weak… and then also to nerf a side who are relatively strong (the team has to work harder to protect the bot).
I’m not sure how you read any of that as “someone getting punished”.
3v4 hurts both sides. It’s a struggle for the 3 side (and largely pointless in any game type except Slayer). And it’s often boring as bat -yoink- for the 4 side.
So why not explore options to even up the game and make it interesting for both sides.
How isn’t it a punish when you bench an innocent player? Why not just kick him out from the game all together as well? Someone leaves, it becomes 4v3, you really think those 4 care, whether ranked or social? They’ll just win the match in no time, before the boredom even kicks in.
The solution is, like in other games out there, to fill the missing spot with a new player, as soon as possible. And get rid of that awful 8s respawn time if we’re at it, honestly, waiting for the map to load is enough already, just let people jump into the action ASAP and help the team who is most likely losing by quite a margin by now.
I guess it depends if you think those being left behind by the quitter are already being punsished.
Subjective, of course, but more a case of the lesser of two evils.
I don’t think being benched for 20s or so is quite the same as being kicked out altogether…
But kicking someone out is also an option. If there is a player on the 4 team who is a regular quitter themselves - boot them. And leave the rest to play 3v3.
Agree. But a suitable player is not always available.
And at the very least you can use the rotating player and other adjuncts (like removing power weapons) as an interim stop gap until a proper JIP is found.
There needs to be some penalty for death.
And in objective games the spawn time is a crucial part of making a push for said objective.
But they can play with you, they just don’t like the experience (understandably so). You have yet to provide any alternative match making system that will improve their experience WITHOUT making it unfair for the players who get matched against your squad. Your preferred option largely seems to consist of your squad winning easily and random luck will hopefully give the poor souls on the other team an easier matchup next time.
You certainly don’t have to like @Darwi ideas but I do feel like you’ve misunderstood the overall intent (or maybe I have). As I understand it, he’s not proposing these changes to apply to all matches. Most matches can and should be balanced by matching up an assortment of players as it is now.
For situations where the skill gap is too big or there’s too many good players in a squad that there are no suitable matchups available, a handicap system would provide a way for these players to play together in a fair environment. Everything after that is just brainstorming and would obviously require significant testing and balancing.
(I missed out the 20 minute wait times, which is my bad.)
Whilst I’m pretty sure I have, I’ll say it again.
Halo Reach.
I don’t remember anyone complaining about the matchmaking in Halo Reach. Games always had such a wide range of skill levels available, and nine times out of ten you didn’t care who won in the end. Players of all skill levels were having fun, even those who went negative by quite a lot.
Now this can come down to the way Reach was designed. For example, the range of most weapons were pretty reduced when compared to Halo Infinite. Vehicles were more prominant in the game (with far fewer counters) and of course there was proximity chat.
Halo Reach simply was designed for a more casual audience, but hey you could look at something like Halo 3 aswell. I believe that system had skill based matchmaking in it, however it was toned down a ton. 343i used a very similar formula to Bungie’s Halo 3, however didn’t tone it down whatsoever.
Here’s the solution I provided above.
I went into further details explaining this point here in later posts.
For a TLDR really, if it takes 20 minutes to find a game, and in those games the teams are completely / purposely mismatched, the matchmaking is unplayable.
I’m not asking for a multiplayer where every single game is a stomp. It was never like that on MCC Reach whatsoever so the arguments that I’m campaigning to stomp everyone I come across is totally and utterly false.
The Handicap system also would never work as for previously stated reasons. 343i already can’t get my skill rating correct, so I don’t expect them to work handicaps into the game without them being seriously inaccurate. It would only cause a influx of smurf accounts, and players like Mint Blitz would be unable to play (kinda like he already is unable to)
On this we definitely agree. I also don’t have much faith that 343i would get it working properly and balanced, at least not anytime soon.
Not sure about the Smurfing. I wouldn’t have thought that shouldn’t change much but occasionally smurfers would get a game where they got handicap assistance but they would probably still be deliberately loosing that game anyway. If they decide to make that the game they suddenly play well in, they might have a big win but depending on the system, any extra advantage would be disabled very quickly anyway.
As for making the game more casual, you’re asking them to change the game dramatically for the majority of their players in almost every game, so I think that’s even less likely than a handicap system. Either way it’s only going to narrow the skill gap, not eliminate it. The original problem still stands that your team is either going to be winning quite a lot or you squad mates are going to struggle but just not quite as much as before.
I think that most people look back on previous games and the match making within them with rose tinted glasses. They either won a lot and remember that fondly or they were middle of the road and don’t see a lot of difference. Most of the people at the other end of the skill spectrum probably stopped playing way back then and didn’t come back.
Edit: If match making is timing out for your squad in the more popular modes, that is definitely a problem and hopefully 343i can do something about it to help anyone in your situation without, it being able to be abused to create unfair matchups.
There’s a reason why we Remember Reach, and not any 343i title.
I know it’s not going to happen. 343i don’t understand Halo, heck they don’t even understand how Halo Infinite UI works. They said that Halo was a competitive based game, even since CE. They simply don’t get what made Halo so successful. I have no faith whatsoever in 343i, because they don’t have the correct vision and do not represent the fans. Harsh to say since I was one of their greatest supporters until Halo Infinite failed. I wouldn’t be SR152 if I wasn’t.
I couldn’t find a match in that new gamemode on launch day. The one with the Camo / Pulse Carbine vs the Commando’s / Swords. It told me there weren’t enough players because my SBMM went too high.
While I don’t personally mind so much, it’s true that 343i have taken Halo in a bit of a new direction that is absolutely not going to sit well with all of their long term fans. I quite like the balance they have struck with the gameplay in Infinite but that’s just my opinion.
We will never know if the game would have been more popular if it was more like earlier Bungie versions of multiplayers but it’s hard to imagine it could have done much worse from a player retention perspective.
