[Locked] Matchmaking Feedback Update – January 8, 2018

Any chance of getting server selection?
The community have been asking for this since dedicated servers were announced. Displaying the ping would be nice too. As well as displaying population of the servers.

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/58b8518e005f432381ab99fbcaf931e0/topics/do-halo-5-need-a-server-selection/1118c778-4646-4bba-8fc3-f7c802feb28d/posts

There is no evidence from a players perspective that "dedicated servers" actually exist.
Searching for dedicated server could actually mean - We're selecting a random player to host this lobby on their xbox. No server name or ping is displayed at any point.

If I knew the moment I joined a game that I was getting over 250 ping, I would simply exit and search again. As I am sure many other people would, not many places on the planet this day in age are not able to access a reasonably populated server that is under 250 ping.

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/news/how-fans-helped-shape-the-multiplayer-of-halo-5-guardians

Taken from the above link
MATCHMAKING
One of the challenges with matchmaking for a competitive Halo experience is the need to find matches of appropriate skill (due to the skill gap between players) and ensure that matches don’t start unbalanced. These priorities are weighed against matchmaking speed. If you loosen the skill requirements and allow games to start with less players (backfilling live with join-in-progress) it makes the process much faster, but it does so at the expense of fairness. We need to balance these factors carefully and for beta we weren’t satisfied with the balance that we achieved.

Coming out of beta we have a number of fixes and improvements already in flight for matchmaking but at a high level our focus is on the following:

• Much faster matches
• Better skill matching
• Better feedback to players in the lobby and matchmaking experiences
• Allow players to set desired datacenter for matchmaking (may impact matchmaking speed and skill balance)
• Improved party vs party matchmaking
• Hide CSR ranks until in match to de-incentivize quitting
• Punish quitters with CSR penalties and matchmaking bans

https://bestgameever.co.uk/2015/09/29/halo-5-guardians-chatting-with-josh-holmes-from-343/

Taken from the above link
BGE: Are we able to choose our region for the dedicated server used in matchmaking/custom games? Or at least a preferred region?
Josh: Our services detect location and assign players to the nearest and best datacentre to ensure optimal experience. We considered allowing players to limit themselves to a specific datacentre but this introduces a number of issues with matchmaking, particularly in an experience where matching for appropriate skill is so important. We have been running closed beta tests consistently over the months since beta to optimize our matchmaking and QoS (Quality of Service) detection and we are very happy with how it performs today. (From experience, it’s working really well – Sik)

I guess 343 never reviewed this matchmaking and QoS detection (or just not outside of North America). Because knowing from experience, I've not once found a Focused game and have not found a Balanced game in at least 12 months.

Some screenshots of end results of games where the latency is very high and thus people either quit or just afk. Resulting in such a nice experience for all involved,
http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/Agony%20Q/screenshot/8062425
http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/Agony%20Q/screenshot/8062455
http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/Agony%20Q/screenshot/8062456
http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/Agony%20Q/screenshot/8062568
http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/Agony%20Q/screenshot/8062569

And some videos of me not finding games on expanded, a lobby glitch and some really good server selection resulting in a 3 or 4 shot magnum perfect kill from my pov.
http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/Agony%20Q/video/42290117
http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/Agony%20Q/video/42290834

http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/Agony%20Q/video/42290867
http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/Agony%20Q/video/42292109

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP5tVti1_x8

So to summarize.

Server Selection instead of Focused, Balanced and Expanded.

Nice

LUKEPOWA wrote:

Edit: I just saw the Quickplay description and I think it needs to be redone. Aside from the 4 player bug, "Start off strong, Spartan!..." doesn't really translate that this is a playlist for new players and could mean a few different things when I read it. I think it needs a more straightforward description that it's for newer players to get acquainted with the game.

What about something like "Recruits! It's time for you to tryout your new armor and see what you can do!"

LUKEPOWA wrote:

A druNkRABb1T wrote:

PLEASE give us a playlist that can give us a better opportunity to play Halo CE and Halo 2 big team..

MCC?

There is a CE playlist, but it doesn't use classic settings and it's a rotational playlist. You can currently play on CE maps in Super Fiesta. For BTB, there are two remade H2 maps in the current rotation, but not sure what exactly you're asking for. I do want a BTB refresh, but getting H2 maps might not be likely.

I reread the original post and saw this was for Halo 5. Thought it was for the update mcc is getting this year. And I’m also saying it is hard to get H1 and H2. I don’t think mixed playlists work well. Because either way people always leave or idle when they don’t get what they want. Playlists in my opinion should be a little more separated for each game..

GsquadSports wrote:

Fix matchmaking it keeps showing me red error screens whne trying to find a match.

Then it blanks out and you cant even search for a match at all.

I have to keep restarting my halo over and over and over

There is currently an Xbox Live outage that is affecting multiple services
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/6e35355aecdf4fd0acdaee3cc4156fd4/topics/xbox-live-outage-13-14-january-2018/327b0364-c689-40ea-b859-ef553573b918/posts

I dunno if it's related to the season pass or what but matchmaking no longer works for me. It says encountering networking difficulties when I select a game and if I choose another game it just spins round and round but never loads. The weird part is it never happened before and it worked fine earlier today

AnTonySaurusR3x wrote:

I dunno if it's related to the season pass or what but matchmaking no longer works for me. It says encountering networking difficulties when I select a game and if I choose another game it just spins round and round but never loads. The weird part is it never happened before and it worked fine earlier today

Your issue is related to the Xbox Live servers having issues.

stckrboy wrote:

There is currently an Xbox Live outage that is affecting multiple services
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/6e35355aecdf4fd0acdaee3cc4156fd4/topics/xbox-live-outage-13-14-january-2018/327b0364-c689-40ea-b859-ef553573b918/posts

ZaedynFel wrote:

Thorulfr wrote:

TacSui wrote:

-snip-

I've basically stopped playing because of this and my friends list is also a wasteland. Anyone who values low ping has stopped playing or has soldiered on with custom lobbies.

I think a necessary goal is to not let the regional areas get to their current state with Halo 6. Server selection at launch is a great solution.

Introducing server selection now would incur hefty search times and skill matching problems in regional areas due to the low population and is unlikely to begin with, unfortunately.

Solutions for Halo 5 currently revolve around playlist consolidation for regional areas, and maybe timing that with another free weekend. One ranked playlist, one social playlist and Warzone FF could maybe be supported to a healthy level by the current population, at a guess.

Josh will be able to answer better.

Yeah. You're pretty much right here.

When you choose "Focused" and when most people choose "Balanced" you already ARE choosing a specific datacenter. It's the same thing. If you are unable to find a match on Balanced, then even if we let you choose your own data center, you still wouldn't be able to find a match. If you can't find a match on Balanced, then you wouldn't find a match picking the datacenter, it's the same thing under the covers.

If not enough people in your region want to play a given playlist at a given time of day, then it doesn't matter if you have the ability to choose a datacenter or not. The same thing would happen. People would choose a local DC, wait forever, give up, and choose e.g., a US data center, and deal with the higher ping.

If you want to play with better ping, it would be best if everyone just kept searching Balanced. If folks didn't give up on Balanced, then there would be more of you searching Balanced, and more of you likely to get together and play with a better ping.

Imo Josh I sure hope you guys at 343 do add sever selection with ping numbers. Features like this are good info regardless. Halo5 reminds me of a stripped down Cadillac with no features. And the thing is if your buying a Cadillac its loaded and has key features.Halo5 is vastly missing this. This whole thing with these search preferences seem sketchy and are to much under the covers. To many options are hidden from the player. It wouldn't hurt to show things like ping numbers and give the power to the players to pick there own data center. We don't need all these features hidden. Way to many things like this just make things look more and more suspicious when hidden. At times I think these search preferences should be made into toilet paper. .At least they would be useful..lol. Again regardless of what you tell us and players what these preferences do the fact that we cant see anything from them is my whole point here. Being more transparent is the goal here. Something I feel that has missing in Halo for many years. All the years ive been playing Halo Josh you are the only person I ever seen engaged this much with the players for this length of time. My hat goes off to you!