Halo What was wrong with 1-50?

[Sgt x Slaphead]

Halo 3 had an excellent ranking system in my opinion. Can people please tell me why the hell they can not implement a successful playlist system (Ranked/Social) and the skill system (1-50) that was created around 6 years ago. The reasoning behind why things are worse for Halo after all this time and room for improvement is beyond me. The crazy thing is that a simple separation of competitive and casual playlists would have been so easy to implement yet would have done so much for Halo 4. CSR does not replace what Halo 3 had. If anybody knows why these old systems have been changed to what they are now I would be interested to know.

 

[Dividing MDH]

Probably because the old system meant you had to play for hours and hours and hours to rank up, and Halo 4 had a pretty short life-span in terms of a Halo game. Not sure why they took it out in Halo Reach though.

 

[Sinogard]

I think 343 had the feeling that this game wouldn't last long. I mean they tried their best but they designed their system for a short term amount a play and threw it to the community to keep alive then they realized it was too short term and applied a fix using the minimal amount of resources.

 

[UNSC Spartan-II]

It was 343's first real Halo game so I guess they were trying something new. At least now they know not to make that mistake again.

 

[RogerDodger]

This is how I think ranking systems should be arranged:

• No unlocks with necessary game content like in H4. Even if H5 has Loadouts, let everyone pick what they want off the bat. "Leveling up" for that wasn't fun, just a royal pain in the ass. Armor unlocks are good, though.
• Social playlists that aren't strictly your classic Competitive game (notably Action Sack) and Rotational playlists don't give any rank whatsoever. The former doesn't have a skill gap, while the latter is just too inconsistent for a long-term rank to be implemented.
• All other playlists will be represented as either Team or FFA. FFA is solely based on your performance to determine rank in that playlist. Team games throw a curve in, win/loss difference, to the personal performance. If one's team wins or looses by a large margin, the sway values in rank will be affected quite a bit. If there's not a large margin of who one or lost, then there's little deviation from what the personal performance value would have been.
• About the rank itself:
  • Scale will be 1 - 50, starting at one and moving upward.
  • All ranks are available for a given playlist through the Service Record, but only visible after or outside of a match. Lobbies hide Service Record so that people don't rage-quit when they're paired with players below their rank.
  • Gaussian "bell-shaped" curve in regard to how it's calculated. So, it's very difficult to stay at a low level like 1, or move up to 50 by just performing well/poor every match. Removing extremes will help balance out ranks among the average players.
  • It will be a long-term rank, but hundred(s) of games will be able to affect it.

As an aside, I have a unique case where I'm approaching 2000 War Games played. So I took my total playtime of 17 days, 2 hours and did some division:

17D 2H = 19500 min​

19500 min / 2000 games = 9.75 min/game​

That's a fairly standard value. Now if we say that it would take one whole "day" of game time to significantly sway rank, then we can find out how many games it might take:

1 day = 24 hrs = 1140 min​

1140 min / 9.75 min/game = 117 (whole) games.​

HOLY SHOOP. 117.

 

[Sgt x Slaphead]

That damn number 117...
It always turns up somehow

 

[DeadlockDrago]

are you forgetting that in halo 3 that you could be demoted for losing/ doing bad to much?

 

[UNSC Spartan-II]

are you forgetting that in halo 3 that you could be demoted for losing/ doing bad to much?

That's what we like about it. If you aren't as skilled, you will go down. It keeps you on the ball and shows your real skill at the moment.

 

[DeadlockDrago]

That's what we like about it. If you aren't as skilled, you will go down. It keeps you on the ball and shows your real skill at the moment.

i will agree on that note, and maybe it should pair you based on those ranks (something a certain moba game has yet to do)

 

[UNSC Spartan-II]

i will agree on that note, and maybe it should pair you based on those ranks (something a certain moba game has yet to do)

Halo 5 will be just like this and somehow better. 343 won't let us down.

 

[DeadlockDrago]

Halo 5 will be just like this and somehow better. 343 won't let us down.

atleast we hope so

 

[VaultingFrog]

Because that number still didn't mean a damn thing in reality.

 

[theSpinCycle]

TBH I'm not really sure what was wrong with 1-50.

The Ranked/Social split was a workable idea IMO. For Halo 5 I think it would be a good idea just to have a ranked/unranked feature.

Also, ranked and unranked shouldn't have very different maps or gametypes. It makes no sense to be playing two different games at once. I can understand disabling friendly fire and that sort of stuff in unranked games, but playing two different games like we are now (Infinity Slayer and Team Throwdown) confuses players, especially new ones, and looks messy for everybody.

As for a ranking system itself: The spartan ranks with armor unlocks and stuff are a good way to keep people interested in leveling up, but they can't work independently of ranks to determine who you meet in MM. So I'd suggest a two-part rank. One part (a la Reach and a la H4 SR) would go up as you play, never down, and would unlock armor, etc. A second rank would go up and down like 1-50, and this would control who you meet in matchmaking, et cetera. Both should somehow be visible in-game - otherwise, there is no motivation.

Agreed with Zeroflame about hiding service records.


Anyways, I'm not too worried about ranks. I think Josh Menke can come up with something good..

 

[Sgt x Slaphead]

Totally agreed.