Lets talk about the Halo 5 Ranking system. I have put about eight (8) hours of gameplay time into the beta since I initially was able to join as a preview member. The system, once I was ranked reminded me of a clone of the Starcraft system. And since finding out that Joshua Menke was a developer behind this CSR system, which makes perfect sense. You start with the 10 game placement matches which allow the user to be properly placed with other like skilled players. The system ultimately is based on winning and also who/what rank you are winning against. But does the system really work properly?
The system, understandably so, is team based, so the old school factor seems to be gone in the fact that if I dominate as a single player I still gain ground, or so it seemed. In the new CSR system it is all about wins. My firsthand experience was fine as I went in solo and came out with 7 wins and 3 loses in my placement matches. This gave me a silver III ranking. This is the ranking I have kept ever since. I mostly play solo with randoms and usually finish first or second on my team and mostly with a positive K/D. I though the system is pretty good.
That was until my coworker started playing the beta when everyone was able to access it. I am admittedly a more skilled player than him. He will be the first to admit that. I am no Halo master by any imagination. I would say I average 14 kills and 10 deaths per game. My Coworker is more of a 7 kills and 12 deaths kind of player. We played 8 of his 10 placement matches together. He went 1&1 outside of our games and finished 9&1 in the placement matches. He ended up being ranked a Gold II even though I stayed a Silver III. This is where the system feels broken. He helped win each of the games that we were in, but never dominated any of the games. I wont go as far as say I carried the team as we had other randoms that helped push us towards the wins with good team play, but if I dominate in the game and he does not play at the same level, it feels wrong to rank him at a higher level.
It is problematic for him as well as he is now going into the game solo with a gold II rank and he is not a gold II player. He has complained to me about it because he just gets demolished in those games when he has no team communication or effort.
I believe I understand the reasoning behind his ranking though, as he was unranked when we were being match, so the system paired him against players of my skill/rank. Because we won those games against higher level players he became a higher rank. So does this mean that 3 semi pro players could carry a player to a semi pro level just by teaming with a new account and winning? Does the system really not take into account individual players results in the team game? If player A goes 20-2 and player B goes 7-18 they still win the game does player B receive the same points as player A?
How are the teams paired when multiple players on a team have multiple ranks? The rankings are Iron Bronze Silver- Gold Onyx as the lay person ranks and then the top 1500 players fall into the semi pro and the top 200 being in the pro rank. Lets just play around and say each ranking system has a number assigned to it. Iron equals 1, Bronze 2, Silver 3, Gold 4, and Onyx a 5. Semi Pro and Pro players play in the own sandbox. If we play a 4 vs 4 match do the ranking levels have to match? Example: 2 onyx, 1 gold, 1 silver one team would equal 17 points for team A So team B would also have to equal 17 point in some combination? 3 onyx and 1 bronze would equal 17. This is a simple look at the matchmaking, but it makes me wonder if this is a similar, although simplistic algorithm that they might be using. If that is the case how does this benefit the one user that would be paired with team B that is a lower rank? This is all speculation on my part so I might be completely off base here, but it brings potential concerns. Is the ranking system destroying solo play by focusing on team rankings and not solo performance?
So for the wall of text, I just had a great conversation with my coworkers about the ranking system today and I wanted to share it with everyone. Thoughts?
