Yet another update from 343 that shows they have no clue what this game needs

Games Halo Infinite
83

Thank you for your insightful contribution to the discussion.

Ok then… insert whatever name is appropriate to call you back… I’m not sure? Was that an insult?

As long as I can stand by the equally obvious observations that;

  1. Halo 3 used TrueSkill and Infinite uses TrueSkill2 -which is demonstrably better.

  2. I don’t recall it being that well received.

  3. If you want to talk about inaccurate and meaningless- let’s talk about a Halo 3 ‘50’ - which could have been anywhere from a Diamond 3 to the highest Onyx. And that’s before you consider they probably just bought the account (the ultimate abuse),

  4. Rank locking.

I’m not blindly defending their implementation. It needs work. I’m just not sure throwing the baby out with the bathwater is the way to go.

They need to get rid of the CSR number. It’s pointless, frustrating, and encourages toxic play. Replace the grind with an XP rank and then go back to a simplified skill ranking of just the 36 division/tiers (make Onyx 1-6 like the others). Or if you want more then make it 10 tiers per division and essentially have a 1 to 60.

Change up the CSR gains for a win/loss. Make them different for each division/tier and adjust them as needed to keep everyone in a normal distribution. But importantly show the players what is happening each game.

Put a cap on skill ranges for squads. Be a bit more pro-active on anti-Smurfs. And change up how you deal with 3v4.

There is still quite a bit wrong / not working. But TrueSkill2 isn’t the problem. And I just get frustrated when the conversation gets derailed.

85

Maybe…
Maybe not…

But 343’s implementation of Trueskill 2.whatever is definitely a problem.

87

Can you name a game that uses TrueSkill2 where the players of that game love the ranking system? Not trolling, I’m genuinely curious.

Because everyone loved H2 and H3’s ranking system. The same can’t be said for Infinite or H5. I know Gears of War uses TrueSkill 2 and its community has had a fair share of backlash against its ranked systems.

Unless I’m really missing something as regards games that use this system and are well received, the only evidence I see that TrueSkill 2 is actually good is a bunch of developers patting themselves on the back at GDC talks.

But a skill system is good when the player base recognizes it as good, not when developers get to high five one another for their alleged algorithmic prowess.

True Skill 2 does not do a better job at creating even matches than Halo 3’s system did (it makes matches all the time where it predicts one team has less than 20% chance to win, for example). It does not do a better job at approximating player skill, either… it’s just as common to play with/against a trash Onyx player as it was to play with/against a trash high skill 50 player in H3. What it does do a better job at is frustrating and angering players. For example, an opposing player in a ranked game last night won, went positive, and lost rank… even though three of us on my team had a higher CSR than him.

TS2 is just a bunch of out of touch developers over-thinking and over-complicating a problem so that they can feel good about themselves, at the expense of the quality of their game and community experience.

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88

I mean 343 could literally not be stupid and just exclude bot playlists. Probably not that simple I bet, but they could do it at some point, and if they can’t they should rebuild their system.

And guess you’ve never played with people back in the day who were 40+ in swat but legit can’t get to 20 in slayer. Can’t get 10 in snipers. It’s a different skill set. Even the difference between FFA vs team slayer is a different skill set. MMR should be different per playlist.

2 Likes
89

It doesn’t matter what ranking system you use. It doesn’t matter how great you think that ranking system is.

If the ranking system does this, it needs to be replaced.

The ranking system in Halo Infinite is trash. Throw it out. At this point, a simple win/loss system would be better. At least a win/loss system would make sense to the players.

90

Yeah some people don’t transition too well across playlists, but they have a breadth of player data to evidence how players perform so they’ll know if a large % of players have a skill correlation.

91

So what. They also claim their system is amazing at figuring your skill after only a few matches so there should be no need to correlate cross playlist skill.

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92

If you collect all this data and use it to create a system your community hates, what’s the point? What is gained by that?

343 have lost touch with the most basic design goals for a video game… make a fun game that your community loves and finds fun and compelling to play.

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93

Yes. Players don’t understand it and players don’t like it. So why do it?

The same reason 343 does anything… Because they think they know what you want better than you.

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94

As opposed to what alternative? People begged them to go back to H2 trueskill for MCC and that was an absolute disaster.

Players will always hate ranked for some reason or another. Everyone has a difference of opinions. Personally I think the modern H5/Infinite ranking system is significantly better than anything that cane before it.

95

It takes a few games to understand approximate skill but this can wildly fluctuate. The official point is around 40-50 matches where it’s very confident about your skill level. That’s a lot of matches in every new playlist. I’d rather this system than novice players get absolutely hamfisted by me for 5-10 games.

96

I think it’s hard to say that H2 trueskill was a disaster. The game itself was a disaster for 3+ years. It was basically unplayable. That didn’t really have anything to do with the ranked system. The game was dead by the time it was fixed.

I have already said what I think the alternative should be - the H3 system with improvements to prevent easily boosting to top ranks in a few games, and to prevent players from getting permanently stuck at a given rank after many games.

97

But what about the fact that rotational playlists and newer/less populated playlists died on impact. How do you solve the fact that for the first 40-100 games new players are going to get decimated by top level players.

Are we still capping at 50 and having 20 hidden ranks where players get demolished at level 50 by level 70s?

Halo 3 system was heavily flawed. I played a lot of H3 ranked and was 50 in most playlists. I think Infinite is way better.

Halo 2 system is Halo 3’s system but even more riddled with issues and unbalanced games.

98

I’m not exactly sure what you are talking about as far as playlists dying on impact. The MCC as a whole died on impact because it was 100% broke for 3 years.

And I think this is an imagined problem that is based on hypotheticals and counterfactuals. The argument is that preventing players from getting stomped for their first 20-50 games improves player retention. The problem with that argument is that no game using True Skill 2 has successfully retained players.

Where you cap the rank doesn’t matter when what is being discussed is the ranking methodology itself. I have already stated this in an above post - call it whatever you want.

Yes, it had two problems - it was abusable by new accounts and it eventually punished players who played a lot if they did not get a 50 early on.

I am not advocating we go back to Halo 2’s system.

99

In Halo 3 all rotational double exp ranked playlists, newly introduced playlists failed and had weird player distributions where players stagnated and population was exceptionally low past level 30. Made getting good quality games abysmal.

There is a wealth of data showing games that use sbmm are more successful. Trueskill2 is sbmm done better than Trueskill. The players don’t get stomper for their first 20-50 games, good players stomp for that many games. Means every time a good player enters at level 1, or smurfs they ruin games for lower level players. Imagine searching and constantly not knowing if you’d have to play a level 70 calibre player at level 4. They don’t get good and consistent games.

Derankers suck too.

100

There is a wealth of data showing that Halo 4, Halo 5, Halo Infinite, and MCC (and also the Gears games that used TrueSkill 2) did not retain players at all.

SBMM =/ TrueSkill 2

TS2 is a system made by developers, for developers, to solve a fake problem the developers invented, at the expense of their games and communities.

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101

Fair enough, enjoy your day.

102

Radar doesn’t belong in ranked. It should be 24m but it should never ever ever touch ranked

103

I couldn’t careless what the HCS crowd thinks. Radar belongs in all modes. Radar is a core feature of Halo and to remove it is stupid.

104

Sadly people are never going to “love” the ranking system.

Everyone has an inflated opinion of where they stand :slight_smile: and the “truth” hurts.

And the biggest problem is that most people don’t seem to grasp the concept that a win doesn’t always equate to ranking up. Which is kind of an inherent part of any ranking system.

You keep saying this. But they weren’t universally loved.

H2 was (incredibly) slow and produced large numbers of uneven games. And I’m not even sure how it would work with objective games. H3 had hidden ranks, locking, and a huge market for selling high levels.

There was a lot of arguments at the time.

The match-making algorithm and the ranking algorithm are two separate things.

But we do know that TrueSkill2 is faster and more accurate than TrueSkill.

Besides, you’ve already professed your love for TrueSkill (Halo 3).

I will have to defer to your experience here (I am nowhere near Onyx).

And I do see players, even in higher Diamond and low Onyx, who I feel I can match or better. But I guess that is the nature of a team game and what is essentially a “team ranking”. Some players are going to be carried up by better team-mates.

But I do think you are over-calling the comparison between onyx in Infinite and a 50 in Halo 3. That was such a mess of a system. Remember that the 50 pretty much covered anything from Diamond 3 to Onyx. And that’s without counting the huge market for people of any level buying a rank locked account.

To put in into context. I’ve been Diamond 3. So I would be a 50 in Halo 3. Just the same as Lucid.

Would love to see this. For my own learnings. Do you have the link?

Where they have let down the community experience are;

  1. Throwing the ranking system out with no explanation / guide.

  2. Putting the MMR number out to grind. That it not the nature of the metric. It was never going to work. This is the bit where they need to go back to Halo 2/3 and just leave your rank as a simple division/tier.

  3. Not explaining the player’s rank change post game. They tried to hide it a bit by having the “session bar”. But that’s only making things worse.

  4. Visibly penalising people in games where someone quit. Surely they can see this just inflames people’s frustrations.

  5. Not having an XP system to satisfy the itch of those who just want a number to grind.