[Locked] Matchmaking Feedback Update – June 26

ZaedynFel wrote:

GhostX 117 wrote:

Honestly I think merging the playlist isnt too bad of an idea.

I wanted to ask you a seperate question though about party matchmaking. One annoying issue right now is having someone in your party drop out while searching for a game. As then they either have to sit out for the remainder of that game or all of us quit out of the match. Is there any possible way for the game to either back us out or notify us and give us an option to back out when someone lags out? A lot of the times someone lags out isnt obvious either for example ive had plenty of occasions where we are searching, find a game, and then get told by someone in my party that they are still in the search screen. The rest of the party only ends up seeing them lag out and get replaced as the game is pretty much done loading. We have even seen them still be present on the party list on the right of the screen but not in the list of all the players being matched up. This seems to have been quite often recently too.

On a similar note. In terms of ranked play. Is there any way that you guys could allow players that lag out to rejoin the ranked game they lagged out of? This is present in games such as CS:GO and R6: Siege and it would be nice to see it in Halo. Maybe even punish quitters by not allowing them to join any game other than the one they quit out of. Im sure this has been mentioned before but I thought i might bring it up again.

These are all features we also like and are considering for the future.

In the future of this game or the next game?

Dead End 24 wrote:

ZaedynFel wrote:

Dead End 24 wrote:

This is an interesting idea, but I find that people who want to play ranked, just want to play ranked. The problem with this type of system that you suggest that I see are,

1. People will quit social matches right off the bat because they just want to play ranked
2. People will quit to "home screen" as soon as they see they are playing social and not ranked and/or
3. (and this may be the worst one) People get frustrated, bored etc. in getting social matches when they just want to play ranked games that they ultimately just quit the game (maybe for good...) and go play something else.

I don't mind playing social when I feel like playing social. I'll play a few social matches to warm up before going into ranked (like a lot of people do) but otherwise when I'm playing ranked, I want to just play ranked!! and in my experience other people are the same way.

Maybe I was unclear. You wouldn't matchmake and "hope" to get Ranked. You would pick between them and then queue for the match. If you choose Ranked, the match counts. If you didn't, it doesn't.

The match itself, might be a mix of people who picked Social and Ranked. The ones that picked Ranked will have the match affect their Ranked CSR/MMR. Those that didn't, won't.

If you pick Ranked, it'll be Ranked, if Social, social.

The win is that you can matchmake them together and get a higher quality experience.

Ok I get the first part... Now just so I understand the rest of this, your saying under this kind of system I could have people on my team who picked Ranked or Soical and I could have people on the other team who picked Ranked or Soical as well? Correct?

If so, wouldn't it then be possible that one whole team could pick that they wanted the match to be ranked for them, and other whole team could be the opposite? A other example could be, 1 player of the 8 say picked they wanted the match to be Ranked for them and other 7 didn't? Am I getting this now? LoL if so, I'll have to think on this more and respond again.

Are you thinking of it as the 8 players voting whether they want the match to be ranked/social? Like in previous Halos where we'd vote what map or gametype to play? Because that's not what I get from his explanation. Say me and you want to play Slayer and you want to play ranked, but maybe it's my first game in a while so I don't want this game to mess up my rank. You could pick ranked and I could pick social. We'd both be in the game, the only difference would be that it'd be ranked for you and whoever else picked ranked and social for any of us that picked social. Even if I'm the only person in the game that picked social, the system would still treat it as a social match for me while counting it as a ranked match for everyone else.

its just really difficult to get games on balenced in any ranked playlist if your from eu and if you have onyx. only possible in hcs between 5-11pm and even impossible to get games in expanded in playlists like breakout and team arena no matter what time. slayer and dubs are not exactly short expanded wait times either and on balenced no chance of a game.

HCS is the only playlist I can get games in fast and sometimes even matches in. But in varys from one end of the spectrum to the other when I'm playing in that playlist.
The other day I had a player on my team that had to look down to pick up a weapon, I don't understand how a player like that is somehow platinum, when I'm only low diamond. And yet I've seen low platinums that play like the have on aimbots. All I want is consistent matches.

And I'd also prefer if doubles and FFA got an update to the HCS radar and some of the maps from old Halo games be added to it like there are in Super Fiesta.

And as far as playlist population goes, just remove Breakout, Arena, and Swat from ranked or all together. That will move many players to the other playlists.

poppin curbs wrote:

ZaedynFel wrote:

Dead End 24 wrote:

Maybe I was unclear. You wouldn't matchmake and "hope" to get Ranked. You would pick between them and then queue for the match. If you choose Ranked, the match counts. If you didn't, it doesn't.

The match itself, might be a mix of people who picked Social and Ranked. The ones that picked Ranked will have the match affect their Ranked CSR/MMR. Those that didn't, won't.

If you pick Ranked, it'll be Ranked, if Social, social.

The win is that you can matchmake them together and get a higher quality experience.

Please do not do this, people have complained that 343 has strayed far enough from what was proven to work just fine, I can already envision the mayhem this will cause.

There's no need to break what wasn't broken. Have set "Social" playlists, and set "Ranked" playlists, it's clear people wanted that from the start of H5.

Granted, Halo 5 not launching with social playlists almost 2 years ago was stupid. But that has been fixed for a long long long time now.
But claiming that there are no improvements to be made or things that need to be fixed (or that the legacy ranking system was AMAZING!!) is just ludicrous.
The #1 factor to matchmaking quality is total population. The matchmaker can calculate player performance in the same gametypes separated between social and ranked and put together teams that are more fair by virtue of having a larger pool of players to draw from.
Higher quality matchmaking AND faster matches at the same time.
The only way someone could not want that is if they are making incorrect assumptions about how it will effect player performance or how the system actually works.

First, the assumption that people only play casually in social and always play seriously in ranked is false, so that's a wash. Its a mix of attitudes in both playlists so implementing a system like this wont water down ranked or make social more "sweaty".
Second, the delta of player performance between when someone plays social vs ranked is not nearly as wide as people assume it is. I bet Josh could do some statistical magic and actually tell us the average performance delta for players from when they play ranked vs social. If its more than a half-rank, i would be shocked.
Third, this isn't a brand new idea. There is precedent that shows systems like this work really well and improve matchmaking overall. Starcraft II is one example, which is a system Josh designed.

When things that make sense for Halo (like matchmaking and other quality of life improvements, NOT core gameplay elements) are proven to work better in other games than the system that Halo is currently using, those should be adopted.

@Appll0

Obviously games need to adapt but "Social" and "Ranked" playlists is a pretty simple concept that does not need tweaked IMO. Why overcomplicate things?

The thought of me playing a "Ranked" game with teammates and opponents who are playing "Social" in their minds is just dumb IMO and completely ruins the point of "Ranked".

It's basically saying "Well the game sorta counts if you want it to." and probably results in "Social" still being sweaty which people are already furious about in this game.

Get back to the basics and quit trying to over complicate things is my best advice to 343 for Halo 6. People begged for dedicated "Social" playlists, give them those at launch. This stuff is not hard, copy how H2/H3 handled playlists, that is what people expect in a Halo game.

SKAVENGER368 wrote:

Could it ever be possible to roster up to higher ranks if someone wanted?

Example:
If I'm platinum and I want to play diamonds or onyx, could it be possible to option into matches with player above my average in skill?

The reason I ask is I think playing against higher ranked player has a natural impact on your performance, I feel as tho you could over time learn how to compete on that level if you were to continue to play against higher tier players...

Or should I search expanded?

Plats can already match Diamonds. But don't forget it also takes into account your MMR so if the Onyx players are playing like Diamonds, you very well could match them too.

Thanks for the update. I have noticed a little longer wait times in swat but nothing outrageous. Any chance we can get some more variation of maps in SWAT, the small rotation list is kind of causing me to burn out.
Thanks
m@

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HighMeLow wrote:

ZaedynFel wrote:

snickerdoodle wrote:

SKAVENGER368 wrote:

Could it ever be possible to roster up to higher ranks if someone wanted?

Example:
If I'm platinum and I want to play diamonds or onyx, could it be possible to option into matches with player above my average in skill?

The reason I ask is I think playing against higher ranked player has a natural impact on your performance, I feel as tho you could over time learn how to compete on that level if you were to continue to play against higher tier players...

Or should I search expanded?

Plats can already match Diamonds. But don't forget it also takes into account your MMR so if the Onyx players are playing like Diamonds, you very well could match them too.

Yes, you will sometimes see better players naturally.

However, keep in mind the farther up you go, the less and less players there are. There around 2-3x more Plat than Diamond players, so it would be hard for the matchmaker to hold out Diamonds from Diamonds so they can play Plats.

No matter how huge your population is, there won't ever be enough Diamonds to match Plats.

You make a good point about not enough Diamonds to match Plats and I just experienced that in my last FFA game. Got matched (on Balanced) with an Onyx 1674, and I'm Plat 1. Everyone else was unranked but their other playlist ranks were at least gold. Needless to say he bet everyone fairly easily. That's infuriating to me. Like I get where you say that when you get matched with players like that you should feel good that you're going up against them, however this is a large skill difference. But, when their 25-5-6, and the next best is me at 12-4-15, he shoots for 63.8 accuracy and i'm shooting 47.7, and nearly a 1,500 damage difference? I know I'm ranting to you at this point and I'm sorry, but that shouldn't be a fair match to start with. Why did the matchmaker make it though? I don't know if the playlist needs the HCS update, but it needs more people for sure to avoid situations like this. I don't want other people experiencing this and then never playing again, cause that's just less and less people in a playlist that didn't have much to start with. Please let me know what you think Josh as it would be greatly appreciated. (If you want reference, go check my game history, it was FFA on Riptide.)

Based on what Josh has said before, it sounds like either you or the some of the other people in your match had been searching for a game for over a few minutes, so the skill gap widened to allow for faster searching.