No 1-50 Ranks in Halo 4

i really liked the H3 system of having a social and ranked "rank".

the social worked just fine as is and didn't bring to many problems with it because it was social.

the ranked system had lots of flaws but, assuming you want to get whatever rank honestly, it worked. as far as the boosters go, there is always going to people trying to cheat the system.

did the boosters put kinks in the system? sure. did it totally break it? no.

i would like to see the same type of system, but with one borrowed feature from REACH. if you don't keep playing it, you'll lose rank. i don't want it to reset all the time though.

no reset then brings up multiple accounts. that brought about more problems at the lower levels getting matched against a low rank that has a 45+ account. BIG DEAL. they'll move on unless they're deranking. if they're doing it to see how "perfect" a run they can get to the top...more power to them. i say go for it. that's part of the fun of the game.

deranking to help boost a friends is a lot of effort for a goal that will expire because it can't be maintained. deranking for stat padding could be addressed through methods like the one discussed in another thread here on how to fix flag games. and possibly a forfeit option for slayer games.

i just wish there was something more than a "participation" rank and a competitive rank that doesn't work. 

LAST SEASON I WAS ABLE TO GET A GOLD RANK! i did this by going in alone and whoring every power weapon and stealing every kill i could...and it worked!

in all reality i'm a solid silver player and maybe an upper silver with the right team. when i just played my game in Arena, that's what i got when playing alone and with a team of friends respectively.

it's not something that will make or break H4 for me, but it sure would be better if they could make it work more like it was.

I like the idea of seasons.  Reset ranks periodically and have folks have to attain them again.  Of course, provide a record of high historical watermarks.  After that, 1-50 doesn't sound so bad.  That way, you can have "prestige" ranks.  Hit 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, or 50 after a reset?  Your rank gets a little star by it.  Hit that rank again?  Two stars or another small symbol.  Maybe even assign a color scheme to it as well (thing along the current Reach Arena rankings).  Here's the difference, though: matchmaking puts you in with folks that hit those watermarks too.  You're not going to face off against someone that hit a 45 once if you've hit it 3 out of 3 seasons.

I like shiney things, so the idea of losing your "rank" at the end of each season is horrible. I like Dixon's idea of incentives though. The 1-50 system did seem to have all sorts of problems so I'm glad it's not returning. Reach went the other direction with an indecipherable system of "hero", "legend" and "eclipse" that are all tied to experience and not skill. I'd like to see some indication of a person's skill (and be matched accordingly) but I also like to collect badges and emblems ala COD. Hopefully they can come up with a good compromise. Either way, it won't be a deal breaker.

I thought the 1-50 rank system worked well in Halo3. Sure there where boosters, but my rank was a 42 and I thought it was pretty legit. If I played people around that rank the match where away close and exciting. If you give people the incentive to keep playing there will alway be people trying to cheat, but you can't punish the whole community because of it. I really don't want playing to be pointless like it is in CoD.

I think Reach was really close with The Arena. I think if Bungie had allowed players to see a better representation of their actual skill, it would have been a much bigger success.

StarCraft II uses a similar system of divisions, but the divisions also have a numerical rank. I'm not familiar enough with the SC II system to know all of the details, but it would be similar to assigning 1-50 Ranks for EACH division. If I'm playing in Arena and I see my division rank increase, then I will be more inclined to keep playing to increase my rank and hopefully increase my division.

The SC II divisions are broken up into seasons as well, but you only have to play one game to regain your rank/division - assuming you play well enough.

I never thought I would miss 1-50 ranks and I was initially very excited when I heard Bungie discuss the Arena. Then I started trying to play Arena and realized the incentive to play was very low - not to mention a low population. In Halo 3, I was a mid-level player and struggled with the seemingly constant stream of boosters and people making new accounts to sell or beat up on lower ranks. So I do not think having just 1-50 will be enough, but combine it with some of the above ideas and we could have something interesting.

Yeah, we are only 6 months away from the launch of the game. Whatever system they plan to use would surely have been in place for a while now since we've been hearing about all of the internal testing that's been happening. You know "trust us"...

OMG don’t get me started on this subject,….

Many reasons why I would not want to see the rank 1-50.

First of all in HALO 3 – the ranking system sucked in the way it calculated your ranking, in reverse it created a lot of de-rankers to try and beat the system.

With a good de-ranker account you could boost someone to level 50 in doubles in about 25 to 35 games only,.. no joke.

Like explained here in this tread, it takes a lot of work to maintain a booster account,.. no shit!  But what better do these kids have to do, but make other players frustrated by losing a game, when he see a player jump of the cliff to his death. How many times did we see this in H3, and even more as the levels got higher. Your trying to win your game and you see a player with a sad face, meaning he is de-ranking. I use to hate that, especially when you are trying to level up.

The problem with the ranking system is the way it used to calculate Skill and sku (Gaussian function)  http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_function

To simply it for DEEPNNN – LOL     Ranking = mu-(K*sigma)

• Mu => Your player Skill level – based on your postgame
• Sigma => uncertain factor (numerical representation of your range
• K => Arbitrary value assigned by developers

Anyways all this to say that for you to rank up higher and faster, your friends account has to have the worst booster stats, that way the quicker the new account is leveled.

In Reach, the ranking system removed all this nonsense,… and we had a great time playing without anyone quitting or jumping off a cliff – Well at least the % went down.

When I join a game and my Death/kill ration is below 1, I get other players close to my ratio if I ask for it.

When I use to go in Swat in Halo 3, and I was at level 25 and leveling up, I sometimes would get another player that is level 50 in Doubles and Team Slayer,…ect.

You would do a quick calculation, and his ratio could be sometimes 2.5 an up,… you had no chance.  Sorry but this does not happen in reach when I play alone, the highest I will get is someone with a .5 to .8 ratio lower or higher than me, giving me more chance.

What does Levels 1 – 50 create (De-rankers, kids buying accounts left and right to look good in-front of their friends, and much more mentioned above)

Without Levels like Reach,. – None of this nonesense mentioned above, and yet we have a ranking system in Arena, and very,very few players go there, like DEEPNNN mentioned.

They have a place where they could go and have a good challenge and yet the % is very little, goes to prove that players don’t seem to want to go for the challenge but for the glory of having a 50.

Best system to suggest is keep it as it is now, with special helmets and more as you get in the higher level, to keep the players coming back. What I mean is even if you reach Inheritor and more there should be more surprises afterwards,… if not what is the deal to continue.

And a separate section with a pre-determined # of levels to make the hardcore players happy. But it is only visible in that section (Say Arena).

But I want to keep the same ranking system as reach, and have them improve the preferences ->

• Same Ratio
• Play alone or Team player,…ect

Those kind of options

I told you not to get me started on this subject DEEPNNN

there just has to be something beyond being defined by how many matches you've played/credits you farmed. i don't have a problem with that existing, but there has to be more on top of that.

i know a ton of the population wants to have bling, so give it to them. all of that's already in place and nobody really bitches about that.

for others though, if you can't measure yourself against your peers there isn't "the carrot" that DEEP mentioned. the 1-50 gave us that. i'm sure they can improve upon it and i hope that's the direction they've been working on. i know there won't be a 1-50, but something along those lines has to be there. playing in a competitive environment adds something to the game you can't makeup somewhere else if it's missing.

i coach youth ice hockey. when we play in a tournament and don't place, the "participation trophy" gets tossed in the trash on the way out of the rink by all the players over the age of 12. why? because it means jack shit! they know they were there. they don't need something shinny to remind them that they participated and got their asses handed to them. when they play and win, the team championship trophy is fought over for who gets to take it home first. they all carry it with pride. they earned it and it means something to them. they didn't earn the participation trophy, they paid for it when they plopped down their cash to enter the tournament...and they'd all rather have the money back. they came to compete and put it all out there to go for the win. they did not come just to say they played.

Eh, I've never cared about ranks.  A high rank means nothing to me if you can't back it up.  But I guess I understand that it's something players like to compete and strive for.  I'm sure we'll have some kind of skill based ranking system in halo 4.  However, no matter what 343 does, people will find ways to break and abuse it.  It happens in every game.  Hell, when Reach came out, one way to attain a high arena ranking was to let your teammate and enemy battle it out (without you helping) until either the enemy was one shot and you steal the kill or your teammate dies and you finish it off.  Now arena is more team based (higher reward for winning) and it's now full of boosters and booters.  

when i first started playing ranked in H3 i was playing by myself. some random kid stayed with me after a match. he asked me to stick with him. he was pretty good and played a team match and saved my ass several times.

he then told me he could make me a 50 for some microsoft points. i told him i wanted to earn it. he laughed and said, "not being a dick, but your not going to get it." we both laughed.

he then told me if i played with him, he would help me get a better k/d and while he boosted his account. i really had no idea what he was talking about, but he wasn't an ass telling me how bad i sucked and actually helped me instead of betraying me in the game, so i partied up with him

a few matches in, some timmy from the other team tells me why he's playing with me. i was just like, "yeah, i know." he got all bent at first because i didn't care what he was doing...then he asked if i would party up with him instead. lol

i played with the first kid for a few hours. never saw him again. 

looking back knowing what i know now, i would have reported him.

i guess the worst part about it is this kid was profiting off of other people that are that desperate in their lives that they would pay money to have a prestige they didn't earn.

There has to be some way they can tell when someone is purposefully deranking. If you make it to a 50 legit then you must have been doing fairly well, going positive in your games and not having suicides. So when all of a sudden you have several games in a row where you go negative 20 or have lots of suicides or something it should throw up a red flag for your account to be watched and if its a repeating pattern maybe you get blocked from being able to achieve any ranks at all.

The problem is that people will still find the cutoff for the banhammer.  Let's say it's 20 suicides that triggers the watchful eye of 343.  Players will figure it out and max their suicides at 19 each game.  Maybe it's a max of 25 suicides in 3 games.  They'll kill themselves 24 times over a 3 game period and let the enemy kill them for the remaining time.  With the advent of the internet, as soon as someone finds out (and kids have a LOT of time on their hands), word spreads fast.  

The answer may just be not having a hard number like that, but simply taking note of a players account when there's a large variance in their stats. If someone is level 50 on Monday and level 3 on Tuesday, clearly something is up. You can tell in game when someone is attempting to derank so adding a simple "report duchebaggery" button could be added. Then if a players account has been flagged and they get several reports maybe they get looked into and when it's clear they're boosting they get banned from the ranks and leaderboards.

I don't think there's ever going to be a way to set up any sort of ranking system to stop people from boosting and being an asshat, but perhaps if 343 shows they have a zero tolerance policy for it and aren't shy about busting out the ban hammer it might keep most people from doing it.

Personally I don't care what they do with the ranking, I just hope they add more Grifball maps.

Some background: this stuff is very related to my real world work and I've had conversations with some higher ups at Microsoft about Trueskill, as recently as within the last few weeks (including the possibility of me fixing it for them but we haven't gone that far yet mainly because I'm not sure I can spare the time to do it).  My take: all of what you guys are saying is correct.  However, the problem is not inherent to any 1-50 ranking system.  It is just that Trueskill is very poorly designed.  These problems could be fixed!

Trueskill is poorly designed in many ways, but the biggest problem by far is that it is not "incentive compatible".  What that means is that the algorithm assumes that all the players are trying to win the game, but the algorithm itself gives players an incentive to lose sometimes and misreport their rank (the derankers/boosters).   If people were simply playing to win all the time then the algorithm would still have problems but it would be okay (but could be better).  As things are now, the algorithm is so bad that a 1-50 system is untenable.

I love Halo ranked play and I wish they would fix it and bring it back!!!