Can you provide a justification why I'm absolutely wrong?
From my viewpoint, I don't know what problem the split intends to solve. It's a bandaid solution.
Are higher skilled players ruining lower skilled players constantly? Then you need to improve your skill matching system. Doesn't matter if it's visible or invisible.
Are players not figuring out how to play? Improve your training system. Implement bots so people can learn the mechanics in the game at their own pace and without the anxiety of throwing themselves into the pits of Xbox Live. Make all aspects discoverable.
Are players winning because they're bothing to google more meta-game tricks? Aggressively patch out exploits and balance-changing bugs.
All the ranked/social split does is kinda sorta wall off the different styles from each other, but it has downsides.
- You split the potential playerbase, impacting search times. Because some want a number and some don't.
- Since Team Slayer is pretty much the only gametype that can support being split, then lists either end up being Ranked or Social. You have everyone in one list now, but the people that don't want to screw with ranks won't play, or it negatively affects the playlist from boosting. Example: I still think that making Team SWAT ranked in Halo 3 was something I wouldn't have done, because I liked SWAT and wanted to play 2 Flag SWAT but had to stop because I spent every other game getting bridged out or standby'd. If SWAT had been made social like it was as a DEXP, it would have had a much bigger population and been a lot more.. normal.
- It tends to end up being used to mark 'no guests' and 'guests allowed here' which is why Team Doubles ended up ranked in Halo 3. So you solve one problem but inherit a bunch of others at the same time.
So what needs to happen is this:
- Improve the skillmatch system to keep serioustime players playing serioustime players and more casual players rarely play against them.
- Make the system match parties with guests versus parties with guests.
- Force party vs party and randoms versus randoms across the board. Halo Wars does this
extremely well and I think it's probably why it's population is so relatively healthy for what the game is on the platform that it's on: in Halo Wars, randoms can't play parties. At all. Which means randoms don't get roflstomped by partied lifers and parties expect to go up against organized opponents. Trueskill gets to do it's thing with minimum of interference.
They've had the ability to do it since at LEAST Reach but I swear Halo 3 could do it too, but I'd like to see them try a Team Mercenaries at least once. Max Party Size 1, 4v4 or 5v5. Just please 343. Once.
- An option would be to have a ranking system in the game but make it so you can opt in or opt out. A long time ago
I did this as a joke but since then I've actually wanted the option to hide ranks from the UI so I could just be oblivious to my current rank. You'd have ranks in-game, but since you'd have to opt in, you can only see the ranks of other people that have opted in. It's still tracked for all players regardless. Kind of a bandaid solution though.
