CSR Update Change
A change went in last week that fixes two issues with how we update your CSR
#2 means smurf boosting no longer works well at the Champion level. It also means Champions can earn more CSR playing with other Champions, especially at the beginning of the season.
#2 also has some implications for Champion-level players playing with their noob friends. Basically, something has to give. Extremely high CSR players playing with low ones causes systemic problems, even when done honestly.
Many other competitive games put a hard block on high ranked players playing with low ones. Instead of doing that, we'll allow you to play together with the same matchmaking experience, but with the softer penalty of losing some rank if you’re at or near the Champion level.
If a Champion level player decides to play with their noob friends, their Rank will descend gradually to the average skill between the Champion and who they play with. Which I think it a fair compromise.
Or, said another way, if you want to keep your Champion-level Rank, you have to play with Champion teammates, which I also think is fair.
Overall, this update also means that CSR now more accurately reflects the skill of our players than ever before. There will still be some lingering inflation this season, but I'm hoping next season results in the best ranks we've seen yet. This does mean that the higher Ranks like Onyx and even to a lesser extent, Diamond, will be harder than ever to attain, but I think that's for the best.
What about a party-up option?
We like it, but I don’t think it’ll get in any time soon.
What will happen if a high Onyx player parties up with a legitimately Silver player?
This totally fine, we don’t mind it at all. Don’t worry about this if you are doing it legitimately.
If the gap gets too big, then you will see something like this:
Why don’t we show population counts?
This question has come up on several different game teams that I have been a part of. There’s this careful balance because showing a number tells players where they should play. This means if the number is healthy, the list stays healthy, but if the number is low, people might not try it and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
On one hand, I like setting expectations about a playlist’s wait time, but on the other hand there’s this argument that low numbers don’t give the playlist a chance to grow.
A common compromise I’ve seen for this is to give approximate wait times, but that has some of the same issues.
I don’t remember 100% how we landed on the current implementation, but it’s something we still discuss.
Low pop region matchmaking
I am looking at how we can improve this within our current framework. Searching expanded is currently your best bet. I can’t currently change the allowed skill gap based on location, and if I could, it would mean you couldn’t leave those places once the skill gap expanded. So it would do this:
HCS Settings and Matchmaking
Some of you have probably been following the HCS settings discussion. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been included in the internal process on this, so I may answer some questions on that, but except for playlist and matchmaking-related questions, it would be over on this thread and not here.
What playlists will the new HCS Settings affect?
The current plan it to put the new settings only in Proving Grounds, and we will evaluate how well they work out. That evaluation will include feedback from you as a community as you play on those settings, the HCS players as they also play on them, and also watching the data itself. We may also discover there are few more adjustments we can make to improve them, and then we'll evaluate those as well. If the evaluation suggests these settings are better overall for everyone, we could see some of them migrate into Team Arena, and maybe other lists. If not, then we'll consider the best place for them at that point. I think the ideal is to always have the HCS settings in at least one playlist. If it turns out the HCS settings are by far the best for the HCS scene and players, but aren't working out for even the highly competitive portion of the mainstream, that may suggest we would need to maintain both lists as has been done in past Halo titles.
A change went in last week that fixes two issues with how we update your CSR
- We were comparing a deflated version of CSR to the opponent’s MMR. This resulted in too much CSR on a win, and too little removed on a loss. This has been fixed. Players with already inflated CSRs will see a steady net loss while their CSR restabilizes at the correct value. In FFA, this also fixes an issue where 4th and 5th place would earn CSR even on a loss. Those players with FFA CSR inflated because of this will lose CSR even in 2nd place until their CSRs float down to where they belong. There will still be some cases of earning CSR even in 4th place, etc., but only if, e.g., the 5th and 6th place players have much higher MMR than the 4th
- In general, we consider FireTeam MMR in the CSR update. This meant that if you had a high MMR or CSR, it was better to not play with other high MMR players because it would always make the CSR update small --- even at the beginning of a new season. In addition, this rewarded high MMR players teaming with highly-skilled but lower MMR players to artificially inflate their CSRs. We have changed this so that very high MMR players can now team up with their highest-skilled friends and earn more CSR at the beginning of a season. In addition, players trying to team up with much lower MMR teammates will end up not getting much CSR.
#2 means smurf boosting no longer works well at the Champion level. It also means Champions can earn more CSR playing with other Champions, especially at the beginning of the season.
#2 also has some implications for Champion-level players playing with their noob friends. Basically, something has to give. Extremely high CSR players playing with low ones causes systemic problems, even when done honestly.
Many other competitive games put a hard block on high ranked players playing with low ones. Instead of doing that, we'll allow you to play together with the same matchmaking experience, but with the softer penalty of losing some rank if you’re at or near the Champion level.
If a Champion level player decides to play with their noob friends, their Rank will descend gradually to the average skill between the Champion and who they play with. Which I think it a fair compromise.
Or, said another way, if you want to keep your Champion-level Rank, you have to play with Champion teammates, which I also think is fair.
Overall, this update also means that CSR now more accurately reflects the skill of our players than ever before. There will still be some lingering inflation this season, but I'm hoping next season results in the best ranks we've seen yet. This does mean that the higher Ranks like Onyx and even to a lesser extent, Diamond, will be harder than ever to attain, but I think that's for the best.
What about a party-up option?
We like it, but I don’t think it’ll get in any time soon.
What will happen if a high Onyx player parties up with a legitimately Silver player?
This totally fine, we don’t mind it at all. Don’t worry about this if you are doing it legitimately.
If the gap gets too big, then you will see something like this:
- Matchmaking is the same as today.
- The lower-skilled players’ CSR will move like normal
- The higher-skilled players’ CSR will go down towards the middle of the two MMRS.
Why don’t we show population counts?
This question has come up on several different game teams that I have been a part of. There’s this careful balance because showing a number tells players where they should play. This means if the number is healthy, the list stays healthy, but if the number is low, people might not try it and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
On one hand, I like setting expectations about a playlist’s wait time, but on the other hand there’s this argument that low numbers don’t give the playlist a chance to grow.
A common compromise I’ve seen for this is to give approximate wait times, but that has some of the same issues.
I don’t remember 100% how we landed on the current implementation, but it’s something we still discuss.
Low pop region matchmaking
I am looking at how we can improve this within our current framework. Searching expanded is currently your best bet. I can’t currently change the allowed skill gap based on location, and if I could, it would mean you couldn’t leave those places once the skill gap expanded. So it would do this:
- Try worldwide at the normal skill gaps, not find enough folks
- Try regionally at a wide skill gap, but still not find enough because there aren’t enough at this particular time in the region.
HCS Settings and Matchmaking
Some of you have probably been following the HCS settings discussion. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been included in the internal process on this, so I may answer some questions on that, but except for playlist and matchmaking-related questions, it would be over on this thread and not here.
What playlists will the new HCS Settings affect?
The current plan it to put the new settings only in Proving Grounds, and we will evaluate how well they work out. That evaluation will include feedback from you as a community as you play on those settings, the HCS players as they also play on them, and also watching the data itself. We may also discover there are few more adjustments we can make to improve them, and then we'll evaluate those as well. If the evaluation suggests these settings are better overall for everyone, we could see some of them migrate into Team Arena, and maybe other lists. If not, then we'll consider the best place for them at that point. I think the ideal is to always have the HCS settings in at least one playlist. If it turns out the HCS settings are by far the best for the HCS scene and players, but aren't working out for even the highly competitive portion of the mainstream, that may suggest we would need to maintain both lists as has been done in past Halo titles.
