Tighter Matchmaking
As part of last Thursday’s blog post we mentioned that based on community feedback and our own data, we decided to tighten matchmaking in the Ranked playlists. Instead of allowing matches within 2- and sometimes 4-tiers, we now only allow matches within 1-tier of your MMR across all Ranked lists.
Keep in mind this is MMR and not CSR, so there will be the occasional exception where you see a gap that looks like it’s more than 1-tier (e.g. Gold v. Diamond), but this can only happen in cases where the Gold is already expected to play as Plat, or the Diamond is expected to drop soon to Plat. Or both.
For those used to Halo 3 numbers, this is equivalent to 7-12 levels, depending on the playlist (e.g., HCS is 9.5 levels). H5 tiers are resized according to the actual population and skill dynamics, whereas H3’s were never “corrected” after ship, this accounts for the differences, and why the level to CSR map changes over time. For example a “50” in HCS was 1800 Onyx the first season, but is now around 1600 Onyx because more people have passed that point. We shifted Onyx up higher to preserve the actual percentage of people who can get that far into Onyx, whereas in Halo 3 we never re-scaled to prevent more and more people from getting 50s.
The “1-tier” rule also applies to Onyx, but considers all of Onyx and Champion as 1 wide tier. It’s wide in skill gap terms, but very narrow in population terms. Keep in mind that Champs are just the top 200 Onyx players, so they are technically still Onyx.
To do this, the matchmaker now considers any player at 1800 MMR (not CSR) or higher to be the same skill. This means, the top Champ can instantly match with an 1800 MMR player because they “look the same” to the matchmaker. This allows us to make sure the top players can still actually play, while simultaneously keeping the mid-tier of players in tight matches. Note that 1800+ players will almost never if at all see Diamond unless parties are involved.
This is similar to Halo 3 where the matchmaker ignored skill differences above 50. In Halo 3, this meant that a true party of 75s could immediately match with a party of 50s and destroy them. In Halo 5, this means a party of Champs can match a party of mid-Onyx and do likewise.
This isn’t ideal, so we plan to add a feature down the road that allows us to preserve the 1-tier rule for anyone lower than 1500, and allow anyone 1800+ to first try for closer matches before giving up and hitting 1800 players, and then eventually reaching down to 1500 players like today.
I don’t have an ETA on this, but it’s “on the list” per se. I’m not going to rush it because it affects a very small group of players who are a little more “thick-skinned” than the rest. Usually.
One more note with this change. We will probably still have to tweak a playlist or two in the coming weeks to make sure everyone can match.
12-player Fireteam Warzone
We’ve heard some of you wanting 12-player Warzone in some form. We have the concern that while players say they want to wait long periods of time, they actually have more fun getting immediate matches than not playing at all, even if they are in parties of 6.
Nevertheless, we have heard your requests and feel it would be worth testing this to see how well it actually does versus just speculating.
We still have some verifying to do before actually turning the switch on, but I think we have the ability to allow 12-player fireteams to matchmake in the normal Warzone playlist with the following caveats:
If you feel you can live with these restriction, then this might be a nice feature for you. We’ll be listening to your feedback, as well as monitoring stats on our side.
This is also only if we can verify beforehand that this is possible. If not, we won’t be able to do this. But we’re pretty confident right now that it will work.
Warzone Changes vs. Matchmaking
The last blog post also mentioned some Warzone gameplay changes. I just wanted to give a little motivation from a matchmaking point of view on these changes.
From monitoring the matchmaking data, we noticed that around 75% of Warzone matches were won by whichever team had the higher total MMR. This is despite having a pretty large population of players playing in Warzone.
We also found that tightening matchmaking didn’t have a strong enough effect on this, at least not without making it way tighter than people are currently used to, and drastically increasing wait times.
Usually, when both population is high and tighter matching doesn’t immediately help, it means that the game mode itself could use some attention.
So the matchmaking designers met with the original Warzone designers and asked what they thought. The settings changes we are seeing are the results of that cooperation, and part of an effort to increase match quality in Warzone.
Why am I Platinum or even Diamond in most lists, but Gold in HCS?
When the HCS list originally formed, we grabbed all the HCS players who had played a lot in Team Arena previous to the split and looked at what their MMRs had been in the Team Arena list. We found that the foundational population in HCS was around 1- to 1.5-tiers higher than the mean in Team Arena. This means that the mean of the player base that moved over and established the Ranks in HCS was around Diamond level.
Since we don’t use other playlist MMRs to inform new playlists (see below), this meant that the average player moving over from Team Arena (where they were Diamond) would now find their Rank right in the middle of the system, which is the border between Gold and Platinum.
In fact, even former Pros were starting in Platinum coming off their Placement matches, which would be the same as starting in Onyx in Team Arena.
So, yeah, HCS’s ranking system is shifted quite a bit from Team Arena’s and will probably stay that way since the foundation has already been established.
As part of last Thursday’s blog post we mentioned that based on community feedback and our own data, we decided to tighten matchmaking in the Ranked playlists. Instead of allowing matches within 2- and sometimes 4-tiers, we now only allow matches within 1-tier of your MMR across all Ranked lists.
Keep in mind this is MMR and not CSR, so there will be the occasional exception where you see a gap that looks like it’s more than 1-tier (e.g. Gold v. Diamond), but this can only happen in cases where the Gold is already expected to play as Plat, or the Diamond is expected to drop soon to Plat. Or both.
For those used to Halo 3 numbers, this is equivalent to 7-12 levels, depending on the playlist (e.g., HCS is 9.5 levels). H5 tiers are resized according to the actual population and skill dynamics, whereas H3’s were never “corrected” after ship, this accounts for the differences, and why the level to CSR map changes over time. For example a “50” in HCS was 1800 Onyx the first season, but is now around 1600 Onyx because more people have passed that point. We shifted Onyx up higher to preserve the actual percentage of people who can get that far into Onyx, whereas in Halo 3 we never re-scaled to prevent more and more people from getting 50s.
The “1-tier” rule also applies to Onyx, but considers all of Onyx and Champion as 1 wide tier. It’s wide in skill gap terms, but very narrow in population terms. Keep in mind that Champs are just the top 200 Onyx players, so they are technically still Onyx.
To do this, the matchmaker now considers any player at 1800 MMR (not CSR) or higher to be the same skill. This means, the top Champ can instantly match with an 1800 MMR player because they “look the same” to the matchmaker. This allows us to make sure the top players can still actually play, while simultaneously keeping the mid-tier of players in tight matches. Note that 1800+ players will almost never if at all see Diamond unless parties are involved.
This is similar to Halo 3 where the matchmaker ignored skill differences above 50. In Halo 3, this meant that a true party of 75s could immediately match with a party of 50s and destroy them. In Halo 5, this means a party of Champs can match a party of mid-Onyx and do likewise.
This isn’t ideal, so we plan to add a feature down the road that allows us to preserve the 1-tier rule for anyone lower than 1500, and allow anyone 1800+ to first try for closer matches before giving up and hitting 1800 players, and then eventually reaching down to 1500 players like today.
I don’t have an ETA on this, but it’s “on the list” per se. I’m not going to rush it because it affects a very small group of players who are a little more “thick-skinned” than the rest. Usually.
One more note with this change. We will probably still have to tweak a playlist or two in the coming weeks to make sure everyone can match.
12-player Fireteam Warzone
We’ve heard some of you wanting 12-player Warzone in some form. We have the concern that while players say they want to wait long periods of time, they actually have more fun getting immediate matches than not playing at all, even if they are in parties of 6.
Nevertheless, we have heard your requests and feel it would be worth testing this to see how well it actually does versus just speculating.
We still have some verifying to do before actually turning the switch on, but I think we have the ability to allow 12-player fireteams to matchmake in the normal Warzone playlist with the following caveats:
- We are willing to try it as a test. If it doesn’t work well, we would remove it quickly. If it works well, we might just leave it.
- 12-player fireteams would be restricted to only playing vs. other 12-player fireteams, for the time being. This is because our data clearly show that the current matchmaker can’t fairly match fireteams of this size otherwise. We are working to address this, but until then, this restriction must hold.
- We would only allow parties of sizes 1-6, and 12 because our party restriction system can only restrict full parties, not partial ones. This is currently our only option if we want to do this at all.
- There will be no way to tell if there are other available full fireteams, but you are welcome organize this on your own.
- If there are no other 12-player fireteams available, you will not find any matches whatsoever. You will instead get a red error screen every 5 minutes and must re-search manually.
- If you want to play but there are no other full fireteams around, your only option will be to split your fireteam down to a size of 6 or less
If you feel you can live with these restriction, then this might be a nice feature for you. We’ll be listening to your feedback, as well as monitoring stats on our side.
This is also only if we can verify beforehand that this is possible. If not, we won’t be able to do this. But we’re pretty confident right now that it will work.
Warzone Changes vs. Matchmaking
The last blog post also mentioned some Warzone gameplay changes. I just wanted to give a little motivation from a matchmaking point of view on these changes.
From monitoring the matchmaking data, we noticed that around 75% of Warzone matches were won by whichever team had the higher total MMR. This is despite having a pretty large population of players playing in Warzone.
We also found that tightening matchmaking didn’t have a strong enough effect on this, at least not without making it way tighter than people are currently used to, and drastically increasing wait times.
Usually, when both population is high and tighter matching doesn’t immediately help, it means that the game mode itself could use some attention.
So the matchmaking designers met with the original Warzone designers and asked what they thought. The settings changes we are seeing are the results of that cooperation, and part of an effort to increase match quality in Warzone.
Why am I Platinum or even Diamond in most lists, but Gold in HCS?
When the HCS list originally formed, we grabbed all the HCS players who had played a lot in Team Arena previous to the split and looked at what their MMRs had been in the Team Arena list. We found that the foundational population in HCS was around 1- to 1.5-tiers higher than the mean in Team Arena. This means that the mean of the player base that moved over and established the Ranks in HCS was around Diamond level.
Since we don’t use other playlist MMRs to inform new playlists (see below), this meant that the average player moving over from Team Arena (where they were Diamond) would now find their Rank right in the middle of the system, which is the border between Gold and Platinum.
In fact, even former Pros were starting in Platinum coming off their Placement matches, which would be the same as starting in Onyx in Team Arena.
So, yeah, HCS’s ranking system is shifted quite a bit from Team Arena’s and will probably stay that way since the foundation has already been established.