[Locked] Matchmaking Feedback Update – Feb 13

To touch on other points:

• Please make Onyx a lot more restricted. One of many issues with the ranking system currently is that it is far too easy to get into the highest ranks. Champion and Onyx should be a rare sight.
• Good explanations re: party matching/restrictions
• XP per playlist would be great and would add another incentive to grind as it did in Halo 3. Potentially adding rewards for reaching X rank in a playlist?
• I urge you to communicate with the team currently in charge of XP payouts for Halo 5 and ask them to add a dramatic increase in XP per game once you reach later ranks (SR140 to SR152).
• Please keep progression ranking and skill ranking separate. Far too many people look back at Halo 3's progression and skill ranking with nostalgia goggles on - there's a reason it was phased out.
• In-game leaderboards are a must. If not, at the very least visible on Halo Waypoint. Currently players have to get all hacky with the API (to my understanding) to get a rough estimate of what position players are.
• I don't think you need to constantly generate new rewards each season. Every couple of seasons maybe but I don't think that's necessary, especially if it's as phoned in as it currently is. The season to season rewards just for completing your placement matches are plain boring and I personally lost interest trying to get them all a year ago. Ideally just a reward for Champion (unlocks Onyx and Diamond reward), reward for Onyx (unlocks Diamond reward) and a reward for Diamond.
• Breakout shouldn't be a playlist, period. In its time as a playlist in Halo 5:
  
  - Released as a ranked playlist in October 2015, population quickly died because it was stale and the meta couldn't ever evolve (just like Walshy told them during the development process as seen on The Sprint).
  - Eventually new maps were added to the playlist and it was turned into a social playlist because it likely didn't have enough players and resulted in slow matchmaking times
  - Someone decided that instead of reducing this playlist to a rotational one, it needed more resources dedicated to it with a full rework completely removing the uniqueness of Breakout, managing to piss off the current Breakout fans and for some reason making it ranked again.
  
  Breakout should have taken a short time out, brought back in as a rotational social playlist constantly swapping with other playlists like Assault (4v4, please!), Triple Team, Super Fiesta, etc. I bring up what Quinn DelHoyo said when Monitor's Bounty was released - "Halo 5's ranked playlists will be approached and handled more sacredly, and with a higher degree of scrutiny."
  
  Breakout existing as a ranked playlist completely goes against what he said in December. I saw that some underpopulated social playlists got the axe recently (and will be returning as rotational playlists) - this should be the case here. Breakout should return as a rotational playlist which features both old and new Breakout.
• Thanks for clarifying leaving and surrender - I've been looking for a source for what 343 are able to detect when a player quits a game and this helps tremendously.

Amazing update, Josh!

In terms of consolidating the Onyx distribution, I think it is worth the "risk". People will be understandably upset if it is more difficult for them to achieve Onyx or if they get dropped a division or two, but I don't think we should cater to player's feelings over maintaining the competitive integrity of the system. I would happily lose my Onyx rank if it meant skill distribution became more balanced and Onyx returned to its intended state.

As for your idea for rewards, I'm not sure if injecting a percentage/lottery-based system would be the right idea. I feel like every single player who achieves a rank and participates in a Ranked Arena season should receive something, but it should vary based on how well you performed. Competing and knowing that there is only a percent chance that I might earn something is very discouraging. I want to be shown that A) Competing will allow me to be rewarded and B) Improving will increase the quality of my reward. Additionally I think intertwining season rewards (earning last season's reward this season) is also a bad idea, because then each season loses a bit of its identity and there is less context to the rewards that are handed out.

This doesn't necessarily mean that each skill tier needs reward exclusivity, though. Overwatch offers global Ranked weapon skins that everyone can purchase with their Competitive Currency, but higher ranked players receive that currency in larger sums, meaning they can earn and collect the skins at a faster rate. I.E. I'm Platinum in Overwatch, so it'll take me a lot of wins and maybe 2-3 seasons to earn my Gold Weapon Skin for Ana, but a Grand Master player may be able to earn that skin in just one season of play time.

Perhaps you could work with the Requisition team to create tier-based REQ Packs for Team Arena:

• All Divisions: Season Emblem
• Bronze-Silver: 2-3 Uncommon-Rare cosmetic REQ items
• Gold-Platinum: 2-3 Rare-Ultra Rare cosmetic REQs
• Diamond-Onyx: 2-3 Ultra Rare-Legendary cosmetics
• Champion: 2-3 Legendary-Mythic cosmetics

Depending on your skill at the end of the season, you'd earn your division's respective pack. It'd tie in with the current Requisition rarity system, would create incentive to push further into divisions, and would maintain the ability to dole out consistent rewards to players of all skill levels. Obviously, a much more satisfying and intricate system could be created for future Halo titles.

I imagine this would be fairly easy to implement. There are already systems in place that automate REQ Pack deliveries (such as the Timmy Helmet), and this could easily be managed at the end of each Arena season. You wouldn't even have to create new packs each season, it would be a one time implementation that would be effective for the remainder of Halo 5's lifespan.

Love the thought process being laid out here, thanks for sharing.

I'm curious to see how the evaluation of the "+500" skill designation for teams would be evaluated and assigned. Attaching a quantifiable number to a qualitative trait is an interesting challenge, and I'm sure it requires a fair bit of trial and error.

Hello,

I have a point to bring up in regards to surrendering. When a game starts 3v4 because someone lagged out at the start of the game, it is not fun for either team nor is it competitive. I honestly do not care about the csr in these situations, but to penalize the remaining 3 players for quitting the game with a potential ban seems extremely harsh. That is where I think a surrender option can be implemented. Give the remaining players an option to all surrender, lose the xp they would lose anyway, and get back to playing some halo.

I have played in many games where it starts lopsided or someone quits out after a few deaths. Then the remaining team members quit out and I am stuck in a slayer game 1v4. The game takes a solid 10 minutes for me to die 30 more times. Frankly, I should be able to quit this game and just lose XP instead of fearing the banhammer.

Just my two cents.
-Dan

ZaedynFel wrote:

<br data-username="ZaedynFel" data-postid="2" />BreakoutWe know there is a group of you who misses the old breakout. However, the new breakout is just as popular, if not more so, than before we changed it. So just changing it back would cause the same amount if not more concern as we have now --- just from a different group of players.

But we could consider rotating the old breakout in periodically, both so its fans can enjoy it, and so we can compare its popularity again.

aarrrgggggghhhhh!!!!!looks like it;s time to move on to something else. I do appreciate the communication FINALLY. By the way a group of us miss the old breakout? Read the 700+ replies a huge majority of them are for the OG breakout. looks like you still don't listen.

Thank you for the transparency.

Recently I came across a top 5 champion in a playlist who was rotating bronze account teammates in order to match lower tiered opponents.

• Will the newest CSR change effectively block the "champion boosting" going on?

Along with that, How much does MMR play into selecting opponents in FFA? Or is it purely based on CSR?

• In my 10 ranking matches this season, I think I faced two total Platinum opponents, and the rest were Diamond or Onyx, despite consistently ranking platinum in prior seasons.
• I'm an Okay player, but pitting me up against Onyx 2000+ opponents or high diamonds does not make me want to play that playlist anymore. I know some playlists are more popular than others, but I see less rank deviation in SWAT than FFA nowadays. Something seems off.

Bring Back Shotty Snipers!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The rest of this is great though.

Thanks Josh.

I used to rank in Onyx in Team Arena and now it's a struggle to even get to diamond. So it seems like it has already been made more exclusive. Could you publish the bell curve of overall ranks, and the number of players in each rank?

Also, can you publish the overall top playlists based on percentage of play?

How popular was the Assault Playlist this weekend? I played a great deal of it and it is super fun! We really need a dedicated 5v5 CTF and Assault playlist (with more symmetric Forge maps).

The CSR system is unbalanced and has been since release. Why is it still trying to be "tweaked" almost 15 months after the release of Halo 5? The entire system should be scraped in favor of something a player can actually enjoy grinding towards. You guys have been over-complicating a ranking process that worked absolutely fine in the past. Granted the two games (Halo 2/Halo 3) were much more enjoyable to the public from a multiplayer aspect, but that's besides the point. It worked, and people stayed around.

The reason is because it is all about more time played on the game than actual competitive wins. I've seen 150+ games played accounts with a 75% win percentage placed in Onyx almost 500-600 points still behind Champion gaining 4 points a win. On the other side, I've seen 45% win accounts with over 900 games played placed in Champ 100. I've gotten 1-4 points a win, and 16-20 points a loss where the CSR was supposedly "even."

Where is the actual balance?

Champion is supposed to be the pinnacle of a player's Team Arena success and is seen as a complete joke in the competitive community (maybe casual too).
There are about 80,000 players scoured throughout the Arena playlists (http://halotracker.com/h5/csrbreakdown). Half of them or more are Unranked in each Playlist! That means they aren't bothering with the playlist at all or played a few and stopped altogether. Some of H5's playlists only have 40% active players. That's insane! Where does your population go?

If CSR doesn't go by the end of H5, I would hope something new would be implemented by the next Halo title. The numbers DON'T LIE. Make playing for a rank actually mean something to the person actually holding the controller.
--
XP or Progression per Playlist
"But don't expect this in H5"
Leaderboards
"This won't happen in H5"

Two things that should have been implemented from the beginning of the game. You know it, we know it. Next title. We can move on.
--
I'd like to get your feedback on a few of my points when you have a chance. Thank you.

Jesse Siao wrote:

The CSR system is unbalanced and has been since release. Why is it still trying to be "tweaked" almost 15 months after the release of Halo 5? The entire system should be scraped in favor of something a player can actually enjoy grinding towards. You guys have been over-complicating a ranking process that worked absolutely fine in the past. Granted the two games (Halo 2/Halo 3) were much more enjoyable to the public from a multiplayer aspect, but that's besides the point. It worked, and people stayed around.

The reason is because it is all about more time played on the game than actual competitive wins. I've seen 150+ games played accounts with a 75% win percentage placed in Onyx almost 500-600 points still behind Champion gaining 4 points a win. On the other side, I've seen 45% win accounts with over 900 games played placed in Champ 100. I've gotten 1-4 points a win, and 16-20 points a loss where the CSR was supposedly "even."

Where is the actual balance?
Champion is supposed to be the pinnacle of a player's Team Arena success and is seen as a complete joke in the competitive community (maybe casual too).
There are about 80,000 players scoured throughout the Arena playlists (http://halotracker.com/h5/csrbreakdown). Half of them or more are Unranked in each Playlist! That means they aren't bothering with the playlist at all or played a few and stopped altogether. Some of H5's playlists only have 40% active players. That's insane! Where does your population go?

If CSR doesn't go by the end of H5, I would hope something new would be implemented by the next Halo title. The numbers DON'T LIE. Make playing for a rank actually mean something to the person actually holding the controller.
--
XP or Progression per Playlist"But don't expect this in H5"
Leaderboards"This won't happen in H5"

Two things that should have been implemented from the beginning of the game. You know it, we know it. Next title. We can move on.
--
I'd like to get your feedback on a few of my points when you have a chance. Thank you.

I whole heartedly agree with this. The CSR system should be scrapped it doesn't retain players and its fundamentally flawed compared to past systems. It just doesn't work, and it doesn't make players actually want to play.