Halo Bulletin 4-3-13

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Clicky​

Happy Thursday! The first week in April is drawing to a close, and that's good news for us because lots of great stuff is coming next week.


Castle is Coming

With all the info coming out before PAX East it's amazing they still have more to show us. Though I'm sure the hype train still has plenty of momentum to keep us excited for the new maps coming.

343i has started to come out with new information about the forthcoming map pack. They already dropped the new achievement list on us yesterday. Click the image below if you're into that sort of thing:


I've never been one to actively try and get achievements, they're just one of those things that pop up on my screen from time to time.


From today till Saturday they'll also be releasing "Strategy" guides to the different new maps. Inverting the order of how they showed us the Certain Affinity previews, we get Daybreak first and Outcast last. Which is good by me, since Daybreak is the one I'm most excited for:

Daybreak: Thursday 4/4

Daybreak reminds me of classic halo map design. Organic grassy scenery and advanced structures. I'm very excited about this, even if it's only quasi-symmetric.

Perdition: Friday 4/5

I've heard plenty of good things about perdition from people who had a chance to play it at PAX East. I'm only mildly excited about this (because we can't get hit by the train :( ) but it still seems like a solid design.
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Outcast: Saturday 4/6

Outcast is without a doubt the most visually distinct of all the multiplayer maps in Halo 4. It harkens style designs from Halo 3 Ark and Sandtrap maps. Though the hardened surfaces give a more desolate feel and less of a sandy wasteland. The tight corridors mean the wraith will have to be very careful with their mortars and constantly watching their back for hijackers.
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Live Stream: Sunday 4/7

343i will be repeating their live stream demo they did for the last map pack on Sunday. We get our first in depth look at a first person perspective of the new maps. Unless of course you were lucky enough to go to PAX East.

The stream will be on their twitch.tv channel


One final thing of note from the bulletin on Castle news:

We have a few other things up our sleeve as well, including a CSR challenge where playing the Castle DLC playlist and reaching level 35 or higher between April 8 and April 22 will award you with an exclusive Avatar t-shirt




Competitive Skill Ranking

For many players in Halo, being able to show how much better you are at a game is of the utmost importance. So important that people have been crying about it since Halo: Reach launched.

Well your cries have been heard, and our beloved 0-50 ranking is once again returning. This is most certainty enough, and very fashionably late. Maybe CSR will help drive the rank lovers back into the matchmaking playlists. I'm not hopeful, but at least they'll shut up about it, or not.
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So what is CSR?

Competitive Skill Ranking is a means of putting an analytical value on how you rank in the world of Halo. All players will start at level 0 for an equal chance of leveling up. Judging by the notes in the bulletin, CSR has already been implemented into the game behind the scenes. Giving them a chance to see how it behaves with real world metrics.

Is CSR just TrueSkill?

No, not exactly. For those of you who don't know what TrueSkill is and understand statistics might benefit from a read of Microsoft's description. Though as you can see in this TrueSkill mostly takes into account wins/losses based on your opponents level. This was how Halo 3 worked and the end result was a system that essentially locked you into a certain rank, regardless of how many times you won in a row or how well you personally did.

How is CSR better than TrueSkill?

TrueSkill is not great at measuring individual metrics in a team game. CSR places additional weighting on your individual performance in a match. So while a loss will most likely harm your CSR, if you play well and are just dragged down by bad teammates the game should recognize this and reduce the severity of your CSR loss. Same holds true if you end up winning but you were doing poorly, you'll get less of a CSR bump.

What about Objective games?

Those of us who love objective gametypes know that you can do amazing working the objective and still end up with a wretched k/d ratio. Since objectives are much more team based, your individual ranking is not counted in these playlists.


So which is which? To make it easy on us to know which playlists are individual based and which rely on teamwork, we get a nice breakdown.

Playlists that use individual scoring:
  • Infinity Slayer
  • Big Team Infinity Slayer
  • Rumble Pit
  • Multi-Team
  • Team Action Sack
  • Flood
  • Team Snipers
  • Regicide
  • SWAT
Playlists that will use team scoring:
  • Castle Team DLC
  • Team Objective
  • Capture the Flag
  • Dominion
  • Team Throwdown
  • Team Doubles
  • Grifball
Now these changes seem to come at a cost. Unlike in Halo 3 you could just play on an Alt account and boost your way to 50. Now if you try and do that it won't work, and you'll probably lose rank if you try that. Hopefully this stops people from selling accounts, which was just all sorts of disgusting.

Though it's not all gloom and doom. The enhancements brought on by TrueSkill should help make matches better and quicker. Providing more fun throughout all skill levels. Just don't go crying to me when you actually have to play people at your own skill level. It's what you wanted after all.

Once a match starts and you decide leave, the game counts it as if you were the lowest scored player on your team or a loss for your team in objective. So it's advisable not to leave matches (duh!). Personally I'd like a more severe punishment, but what can you do. They also modified Join-In-Progress to only allow new players in the first minute of the match, but only in the more competitive playlists. You also can't join a match with your buddies even if you're in that window.

Overall we should be very happy with CSR, but a certain vocal minority isn't. Their precious 50 is finally back, so why are they so upset? Oh you can only view your CSR in Halo Waypoint?

While I can sort of see the point of having your skill show up in game, it's also good it isn't. Players obsess over it to dangerous levels, and making that separation should mitigate this. Especially those willing to drop cash to buy someone else s account. Stupid stuff if you ask me, but people care about these things.

With Microsoft's push into the tablet world, I've noticed a disturbing trend in xbox gaming. The forced integration of tablet apps and xbox games. In theory it's a great idea, but it just isn't practical. Though I'm guessing this push towards integrating the two is the prime reason why 343i is keeping CSR off the game, and on Halo Waypoint. Perhaps Xbox Glass will be able to show you the CSR of your opponents while in pregame lobby, but you probably don't want to know anyways. Nothing is more frustrating than losing a match to an opponent the game decided you were supposed to beat. Hiding this fact should help that frustration, at least until you get on Halo Waypoint.

This turned into way more than I intended, but I'm excited about CSR and hoping it will breathe some life back into Matchmaking.



Playlist Update - 4/8

Coming on Monday is a wealth of changes coming for matchmaking. Those of you that enjoy a bit of FFA madness with your buddy will be happy to hear that Multi-team is making a triumphant return. This time around we're back to the more traditional 6 teams of 2 with more specific information coming on Monday.

Along with multiteam we'll be getting the Castle Map Pack playlist, Castle Team DLC. This playlist will feature a variety of slayer and objective gametypes for 6v6 teams. Click the Spoiler below to see exactly what will be on each map.

Daybreak:
  • Infinity Slayer
  • Capture the Flag
  • King of the Hill
  • Extraction – 1 Plot
  • SWAT
  • Snipers
Outcast:
  • Infinity Slayer
  • Capture the Flag
  • King of the Hill
  • Oddball
  • SWAT
  • Team Regicide
Perdition:
  • Infinity Slayer
  • Capture the Flag
  • King of the Hill
  • Extraction – 1 Plot
  • SWAT
  • Snipers

The Castle DLC will also be integrated into existing playlists. As Castle maps are designed for 6v6 play, the objective playlist will bump up to this size. While not quite the BTB Objective people have been clamoring for, this will hopefully fill some of that missing hole.

Finally we hear the winners of the FFA Forge contest:

FIRST PLACE: Edifice by Redemption1272
SECOND PLACE: Opus by SHIFTY time
THIRD PLACE: Plaza by Smexi Bilzo


Congrats guys!


There was also some talk about some Accessible Spartans or something or another. Perhaps our friends over at HaloCouncil.com might have more of an opinion on this. Feel free to check it out if you rage every time a game is designed for more casual players.

Well with all that information out there that's all for this weeks bulletin. I hope you liked my analysis and if you haven't give it a read!

Question of the weekend:

What castle map are you most excited to play on?



Well with all that information out there that's all for this weeks bulletin. I hope you liked my analysis and if you haven't give it a read!

Thanks,

Vincent
 
CASTLE MAP PACK! So stoked! But I'm not sure if I'll be able to get off of forge island in time to play any of the new maps. Lulz
 
CSR not showing up in-game = Not giving a flying poop. I myself honestly don't care about skill rank but I laughed when this is only going to be put in waypoint. Theres really NO POINT in CSR well, not like it mattered anyways :laugh:
 
I don't like the hit on players for leaving games, really. I like playing Binary Slayer in Action Sack A LOT, but I get stuck in so many Lightning Flag and Fiesta matches that it gets ridiculous how often I have to pop out of a game as soon as I pop in.
But otherwise, looking forward to all the changes.
 
Still wish they were showing the CSR in game >.<
In game rank is the only way out will work. Remember arena? (Onyx what? ) It's not bragging rights if you have to say, "check my online stats" at any point in the conversation. This will go in the history books just like BPR and arena ranks. It needs to be right by a player's GT to inform, influence and integrate into the online game/gamers.
 
i want the ranks in-game only because its just more efficient, plain and simple. its annoying that i have to check online after each game.
 
i want the ranks in-game only because its just more efficient, plain and simple. its annoying that i have to check online after each game.
343i just simply doesn't want a real competitive ranking system in-game cause they be all like "Oh noes! If we put this in-game then EVERYONE is going to cheat and boost!". So what they did is slap it online just make it look like their trying to please the fans but its just so half ass its awful, rofl.