It looks like Halo 5 is upping its competitive features, and that means taking a few cues from Riot and Blizzard when it comes to multiplayer matchmaking and rank. But one unique feature will act like a safety net for your rank, just in case you go on a bit of a losing streak.
Halo Waypoint detailed the process in a blog post. After ten placement matches, the game will estimate where you should be in the grand scheme of Halo skill, and drop you there to climb the rest of the ladder by yourself.
One might assume it’ll err on the side of dropping you lower than you should be, instead of higher. Not only is that a typical move to give you a feeling of progression, but the game won’t actually drop you in rank. The six tiers within a rank are one thing, but you won’t actually be demoted for losing:
As you win, you will progress through the 6 tiers of your rank. If you are skilled enough to continue winning at tier 6, you will advance to the next rank (yay!). Losing games will cause your progress within a rank to decrease, but you will never drop down a whole rank from losing. For example, if you spend all month working your way into Silver, losing won’t drop you back to Bronze.
Of course, the ranks and tiers could all just be a bit of smoke and mirrors to make you feel good, while your actual matchmaking rating will be hidden — until you reach Onyx rank, that is, when it will pull aside the curtain and reveal the hidden wizard. At that stage, you can see your matchmaking rating, and when you’re in the top 200 of that category, you’ll rise to Champion rank.
It’s a bit like how Hearthstone acknowledges the highest rank you achieved in that particular season. Except, Halo will always be acknowledging it. Because that’ll still be your rank.
There are some other interesting decisions as well, such as the choice to not allow drop-ins or drop-outs in certain modes. Check out the full post here.
Comments
8 responses to “Halo 5 Comes With A Safety Net For Your Rank”
it goes both ways, if you’re on a losing streak, enough to lose 6 games in a row chances are you’re playing above your skill level. this is pretty stupid, it’ll just lead to people thinking they’re better than they are and becoming assholes who blame their team mates for losses. they’re just coddling casual fans of the series who won’t ever make it to higher ranks. I don’t see how this leads to healthy competition.
I don’t disagree, but I think your argument hinges on the idea that the type of players who are arseholes aren’t already arseholes who blame their teammates for losing.
I also think eventually the tier system will be self levelling, the shit players will move down to the bottom of the tiers, and you might find matches get easier after graduating to the next Rank. So a Tier 6 Silver match will probably have much higher competition than a Tier 1 Gold match.
There will definitely be cases of worse players at higher ranks, and better players will be dumped lower than they deserve and have to work their way up. But most of these systems, in the absence of a solid elo number, are just smoke and mirrors to make you feel better. I’m happy that the higher ranks get to see the real number at least.
Well, presumably the same is going to be true for every other player in your rank. I suspect that with this system the skill level for players at the lowest tier for a rank will often be lower than the highest tier of the previous rank.
The multiplayer ranking designer is the same guy who did the system for Starcraft 2… so it’s not surprising that there are similarities.
That top pic of the spartan. The top of his head looks like a Dragon Quest Capsi Chum. In particular the red counterpart of one.
http://dragonquestmonsters.wikia.com/wiki/Capsichum
Hopefully better than some other “ranking” systems that pits a poorly performaning relative noob such as myself against players who have been in there 24/7 for a week prior with 10:1 K/D ratios. RNG.
Still better than Master Chief Collection Matchmaking. Still yet to get into a game. Last night it came up with ‘Downloading the latest Matchmaking data’ and did this for half an hour…after which i just gave up and went back to Destiny.