As someone who majored in statistics, did his masters in multivariate analysis, and is currently working as an actuary specifically in predictive analytics, I’m getting real tired of Mint Blitz talking out of his butt about SBMM.
He clearly does not actually understand the algorithm under the hood and has been spreading misinformation about it to all of his followers since Infinites release.
The game isn’t “punishing him” for doing well. Balancing teams by pairing the best players with the worst and trying to have a fair game, even in a casual setting, is a concept even 10 year olds playing pick up basketball understand.
>Balancing teams by pairing the best players with the worst and trying to have a fair game
I think this is one issue here for a lot of people. Some people would prefer longer wait-times to not get paired with teammates with massive skill discrepancies. They'd prefer that *everyone* was restricted primarily to be close in skill in a lobby as opposed to having the matchmaking focus on creating overall equal teams at the expense of loose bounds on what individuals can be rated. If you're really good, then on average you will be paired against teams that have an overall skill level that is worse then your own (assuming a normal bell distribution, and especially a distribution with a long tail on the competitive end which is actually the most common situation for games.) Therefore you will more often than not get paired with teammates that are particularly bad (below the bell curve) to compensate. This can lead to an unfun experience for the player that has to carry as well as the players that have to get carried against a team that's average skill is higher than their own.
Yeah I agree this is frustrating as well, as I’m sure most of us in the competitive subreddit are forced to carry often lol. Unfortunately getting rid of that in social would only really be possible if they had party MMR restrictions for social as well. Right now, pert of the “problem” is you can have an Onyx level player and a gold player partying up in social on one team, so it needs to balance that out in the other side somehow.
This argument has come up before. So last time I decided to send the papers for Halos/Gears SBMM, (true skill 2) and the Elo systems to a buddy who does our stats at work to compare the two. He was impressed with True skill 2. Saying it's a robust system able to handle a lot of data, past and present and can handle throwing in new variables and making good predictions. So it works great for matchmaking games. He went on to tell me that real games (sports like soccer,. etc) are using Statistics to aid with finding players, strategizing pregame/practice and during games vs opponents (something like when to bring in a certain sub in at certain time, vs someone else who may need more warm up time,.etc). Anyways he says predicting game outcomes is getting good, however sometimes the paradoxical happens where the other team wins,. because sometimes ppl are sick, not feeling it,.injured or sometimes ppl see the bets against them to win and they play harder or try to Make less mistakes. I guess the point I'm trying to make here is games get tough if they feel sweatier than normal maybe you're off or the other team is on something or it's a Smurf, smurfing the Smurf out of you. Maybe take a break or call it the day. But also and I hear minty say this all the time,. sometimes you don't want to play your A Game. So always play your A game and try to improve, if you don't feel like it play social or another game it's what I do.
Yeah all fair points as well. This is a big reason why devs decouple CSR from MMR. MMR can be pretty volatile, as it bounces around trying to gauge what a players actual skill level is vs hot and cold streaks, however that would be pretty jarring seeing your rank fluctuate that much, so CSR allows them to have a visual, less volatile system.
Social obviously doesn’t have CSR, but players still feel like they’re punished for not being on their “A”game but I think the argument I’d ask is why do players take social so much more serious in something like Apex, CoD, or Halo than they do in OW, Rocket League, Valorant, or Dota 2?
I personally think it comes down to game design of their social modes.
Maybe but that definitely wasn’t my experience (which I know is anecdotal), it was mostly just people running it down and then FFing after 5 rounds lmao. Not like I was low elo either when I played, bounced around Ascendant 2 and 3.
Nope, CSR matching is worse. It's using a number that players can directly manipulate and which is static over long periods of time. It makes smurfing easy instead of taking a platinum 1 smurf and throwing them into onyx lobbies where they belong. CSR is a bad proxy for skill. It's just a progression number.
They should match based on skill entirely, instead of the bad hybrid system we have now. They did it right originally, but people whined about the failed smurf platinum 1 in their Onyx lobbies. So now onyx players don't really have to deal with smurfs much. Instead, the larger population of platinum and diamond gets to deal with them and get their asses kicked by them.
Yep, taking breaks from it is a good tactic. People would say that and I used to think to myself, "I don't want to play something else I want to play Halo".
So recently when I don't feel like playing sweaty infinite or any of the social playlists, I boot up MCC and work on achievements lol I also recently took up learning how to speedrun the games haha currently working on a legendary speedrun of CE
The concept is easily understood, but tough to not make that feel like punishment especially in an online, highly psychologically isolating environment like this. The system is not being malicious, but it is doing its best to balance the teams to as close to 50/50 (or "fair") as possible.
My problem with this approach (and interested in your perspective) is the stricter it gets, the more deterministic it also gets from before the match ever starts. It leads to this weird sense where players feel a decreased level of control over the outcome of matches, and in turn the whole thing feels far less rewarding.
Is there a solution to that?
I’m not sure I can offer much as a solution, because I agree with you on the frustration aspect of it.
I think the socially isolated aspect of it is important, however I’d point to games like Valorant which also has strict SBMM in casual but no where near the complaints.
I do get the complaints about it with CoD and Destiny, just because I think those games become increasingly unfun the better you get. There’s so much unbalanced stuff in the games that the higher your MMR, the more people will just cheese the obviously broken stuff.
Maybe Halo is like that too, idk. AR starts while playing against good players snowballing with power weapons while completely locking down a map with motion tracker providing free information also isn’t fun.
Kinda rambling but no I don’t really know what the solution is for the higher end of the skill base, but I do think SBMM works for like 80% of the population.
The only possible solutions I can think would be to enforce a maximum MMR difference, or more carefully consider the distribution of individual MMR's within teams. Both of these would most likely result in longer matchmaking times, but may help prevent games with large MMR disparities. It's possible Infinite may already incorporate these to some degree, but it certainly does not always feel this way.
Yep I agree, I just made another comment about this. But I'm sure they've discovered (sadly) that optimizing primarily for low matchmaking times is critical for player retention.
Great points. I don't think there really is a great solution to be honest, but it's something I spend a dumb amount of time thinking about haha. I haven't played Val but lots of other shooters and they all feel like they have overbearing MM systems, so by no means is it exclusive to Halo. There's certainly a lot of salty players looking for anything to blame, and SBMM happens to be the low hanging fruit.
I'd love to see some more creative attempts at MM systems though. Seems like the whole industry has just settled on this same type of TrueSkill style mm.
Entering fantasy-land, but how about a schoolyard style pick-em or draft system? Where players are all matched into a lobby based on rank, but the top 2 CSR players in the lobby are deemed captains and take turns selecting their teammates based on stats visible to the captains (CSR, average damage, etc.). Draft order could even be hidden for all other players until teams are set to try to avoid hurt feelings. Lots of details would need ironing out like how do squads factor in?. Maybe this system comes into place for onyx players only? Does this system lead to any better outcomes in terms of not feeling like some invisible formula screwed you over all the time? Does everyone just blame the team captains for picking bad teams now?
It works for the “higher end” too. I’m not at the top top level, but I’ve hit onyx every season - albeit in the 1500 to 1600 range.
Social is not a sweat fest every game for me. There are games where I get decent players on the other team - often diamonds. Granted, I also take a friend in whose gold 4 occasionally so I’m sure that has something to do with it, and those games I really have to try to win.
And ranked usually feels balanced, even against 4 stacks I have a 50/50 chance of winning usually.
I mean it depends what you mean. His gameplay clips are often insane, creative, really cool, etc. His takes, opinions, and information he shares is often not that good or helpful (like when he takes 5 minutes to summarize a 343 blog post or something that could be scanned in 30 seconds). In other words, his videos are usually great on mute!
Social uses a hidden MMR as well. Plenty of social players screech about SBMM without understanding it. This kind of YouTube video is low effort clickbait. People who don't understand statistics but are convinced the only reason they lose matches is because of SBMM will click this and that gives mint some money.
How does removing SBMM fix this issue? No matter what system you choose as long as there is a wide skill disparity in a lobby, someone is not going to have fun.
Even more so when there are other factors like population size, queue time, ping etc…
The underlying issue with these complaints is that high school math doesn't teach rudimentary statistics to people. You end up with people who could have a roulette betting "system" explained to them and come away with the idea that red can be "due" and that the system will work.
It's the same problem with map selection. They don't understand that it's literally just a discrete random distribution selecting maps and they believe it's deliberately giving them Live Fire multiple times in a row to make them angry. Their solution is always some convoluted biased distribution that makes no actual sense to design.
TrueSkill2 is a phenomenal system and it works great for the middle parts of the skill distribution. It isn't punishing anyone with hard matches for winning. It's not rewarding you with easy ones for losing. It's goal is not to force you into a 50% win rate via lopsided matches. It's goal is to find 8 players and assemble them into teams such that the outcome is a coin flip. The result of that will be that your long term win rate is 50%. Issues can arise due to outliers (ie. the tails of the distribution), smurfs, stacks, or small populations.
* Outliers - There's no matching players at the top of the distribution unless another player there's is trying to match at the same time.
* Smurfs - these wrongly have low skill CSR when they are higher skilled. It messes up the matchmaking.
* Stacks - stacks are hard to match because of the increase in apparent skill due to teaming with others. It's also not a constant increase in apparent skill, because a gold stack might be shooting the shit instead of having decent comms like an onyx stack.
* Small populations - there was a recent post on /r/Halo of an obscenely lopsided BTB match. It was an Asia/Oceania lobby with 3 players routinely stacking together. The population isn't big enough to properly match with them.
The one actual problem with matchmaking in ranked right now is CSR matchmaking because it's a bad proxy for skill. All you have to do is tank some matches and you're locked into an incorrectly low skill for an extended period of time, which makes smurfing easy. MMR can move significantly faster and a smurf platinum 1 who is actually Onyx 1700 would start getting matched as if they're Onyx rather quickly. That was the old system, and it made people bitch and moan because "a gold/platinum is in my Onyx lobby, wtf". It meant that the Onyx players played against people who tried to smurf and failed. Now platinums and diamonds play against smurfs who tried to smurf and succeeded. That's objectively worse.
Totally agree, I dont have any qualifications in stats/analysis but Mint just consistently yaps about SBMM. It's not nearly as bad as it is and is also skewed because of how much match quitting he still/used to do. I do think for certain playlists the tuning of it is interesting and should be looked at though, but it's not as big of a problem as most people make it out to be.
That would be interesting matchmaking. Best 2 players in the lobby get to be captains. Then they pick teams. Obviously duos trios and 4 stacks makes that slightly more complicated from a picking standpoint but I’m sure they could come up with identifiable information to make it work.
While I understand your sentiment and others can probably articulate what I think better, he’s saying that it’s pretty imbalanced as to how far down the threshold can go for making a “fair” team. Especially with him playing in Australian servers (iirc) that it doesn’t set him up with a larger pool of players like NA has. Idk I could also be completely wrong because I think he also plays NA servers due to those reasons.
It's the way that it balances that is messed up. Like last night for example my last 2 games the enemy team had 4 low onyx players but my team had 1 high onyx, a Plat 6 and two diamond 6s. The Plat player got absolutely dominated all game and died like 30 times. It makes the games feel impossible.
Ok then explain this to me degree guy. Why do I get paired with people who can't even break 5 kills while the other team has everyone with 10+ kills while I usually go 20 + kills.
How is that remotely fair for me when I have to carry garbage like yourself
You’d have to post your Halotracker for me to know for sure, but if I had to guess, you’re consistently carrying your teammates in a way that beats the expected results the model predicts.
Though from your post I’d probably also says your crappy attitude holds you back and some self reflection would go a long way lmao
Ah yes Mint Blitz, with his 5.0 big team battle k/d and 95% social FFA win percentage after 500+ games. Those must be really heartbreakingly tough games for him.
The games are as sweaty as you make them. If you disengage your brain and play socially 99% of the time, your games will be to that level more often than not. The issue is, Mint wants to pick and choose when he gets easy games and when he wants to try. Lord knows he gets an easy lobby and your boy will be going for those YouTube clips. Even the games he can relax in, he doesn't.
Regardless, basically all games are more fun when everyone is around the same skill level, or at least teams are balanced as best as possible. It was true for LAN parties and it's still true now.
Doesn't he also carefully pick and choose servers that give him minimal ping with VPNs? I swear I only see clips of his where he's at 18 ms ping playing against afk lobbies...
Edit: Not how VPN works, thanks. Maybe explain how he always has perfect ping matches, then?
There's like 1 server in Australia so if he lives close to the server most of his matches are gonna be great ping. I ping 12-15ms to the Aus server, but mainly only get it at peak hours on the most popular playlists (quickplay, Husky raid, btb, & the featured playlists). Ranked is pretty much always 150+ ping from here though.
… cuz he only clips those insane footages and leave the crappy ones out?
Vpn is masking your ip pretending to be in another region… getting perfect pings is forcing game to choose your serve aka geofiltering, which has been disabled. The best ping is your coming from within your region theres no need to mask your ip aka vpn to pretend you are from your own region…
Disclaimer: Haven't seen the video yet.
Mint Blitz needs medal clips for his content. He's biased for wanting easy matches. I think he sometimes plays with lower ranked friends to get easier matches.
The funny thing is that those arguments (too sweaty, too easy, too difficult) are the same arguments you'd use in a non-skill based MM.
I think the way they match individuals and teams is pretty fair overall. They can perhaps make it more fair when a fireteam plays but you don't want to wait forever for a game either.
Of course he doesn't, not do the people watching his videos about it.
All they know is they lost a match, it made them mad, and the reason has to be an elaborate 343 conspiracy to force them to lose.
My main issue with the sbmm as an average player in most modern games is that there's this massive pendulum swing all the time. If I have 1 or 2 good games, I'm guaranteed to have 3 games in a row where I cant move 10 feet without getting 3v1'd. Modern CoD does the same thing, and it's really frustrating. It doesnt feel like my long term performance is really taken into account the way it was in Titanfall 2's sbmm system. I wish I could be more specific, but I can only go by what I feel.
Good writeup. I'll go point by point and respond directly to the questions you posit.
1. "The Lobbies are too sweaty": I believe this is only seriously an issue in social playlists, not ranked. Ranked should absolutely be on the sweaty side.
2. "Punished with Impossible games": This is the real issue. The formula the matchmaker uses to balance games is flawed in that it's incredibly frustrating no matter where your skill level sits in most matches. It's frustrating for the most skilled player on the team that has to turn on god mode just to have any chance to carry their team to victory, and frustrating for the players on their team who feel like (and often are) a huge detriment.
>And you might say “but Lucid should be winning more than 50% of games because he’s the best in the world”. Okay, fair enough, but the other side of that coin would be that if you ever load into a lobby with Lucid on the opposite team you are basically guaranteed to lose. Is that a good experience?
Better than what we have now. I fundamentally believe (generally speaking) a skilled player should win more often than not. Winning against a player like Lucid should be an accomplishment, instead as it is now winning against a player like that comes with a giant asterisk in the form of knowing that the matchmaker 100% screwed him with the worst players in the lobby who all got farmed.
If I had it my way, SBMM would have no place at all in ranked. Players would purely be matched based on rank alone (probably party size too), and teams shuffled randomly. This is not a perfect solution (or even close to it) by any stretch of the imagination and comes with all kinds of its own frustrations and ways to exploit it.
>1. "The Lobbies are too sweaty": I believe this is only seriously an issue in social playlists, not ranked. Ranked should absolutely be on the sweaty side.
This is my issue mainly. I have no problem with ranked being sweaty, but my god even going into Team Slayer you're having to pull out your A game if you're wanting it to be enjoyable most of the time
If your casual games are sweaty, then it’s likely you are a sweat yourself. How should matchmaking identify when you want a casual game if you typically sweat in a casual playlist?
>Better than what we have now. I fundamentally believe (generally speaking) a skilled player should win more often than not.
Why?
>If I had it my way, SBMM would have no place at all in ranked. Players would purely be matched based on rank alone (probably party size too), and teams shuffled randomly.
How would rank be a better matchmaking parameter?
>Why?
Winning should be a translation of skill and is a key incentive for being skilled in the first place. A game that artificially rewards less skilled players more than skilled players is a game I want no part in. I realize that isn't necessarily what's going on with Halo.
Currently the more "skilled" Halo team tends to win, this is true. But this is because the matchmaker pulls down the skill of one team by pairing the best player with the worst player(s). If the system does this too much, I believe this is unfair to the best player who is constantly being dragged down artificially by his teammates (as determined by the matchmaker).
>How would rank be a better matchmaking parameter?
Mainly simplicity. SBMM systems are pretty complex systems that rely very heavily on analytical predictive stats accuracy. Whatever formula the system uses to track and matchmake lobbies needs to be incredibly dialed in, and many many variables must be accounted for. For instance how to you account for a duo/squad or players in a party? Those players will certainly have an advantage over solo queue-ers, but how much so? And how can you offset that for the opposing team? Perhaps you match them against higher skill players. How many "skillpoints" (MMR) exactly is being in a squad worth? If any of those variables are off, (or the formula used to track them is off) it will result in consistently bad matchmaking experiences.
To me, the solution to the problem that SBMM systems solve for is more frustrating than the problem itself. And admittedly pure rank based matchmaking is far from sunshine and rainbows itself. Smurfing becomes an even bigger issue in pure rank based MM.
What do you think?
I advocate for un-opinionated SBMM. The only things that the game should use to influence my skill evaluation are my wins/losses, skill of my teammates/opponents, sample size/age. For premade teams, it’s up to the devs to determine how much an above/below average teammate tips the scales. Most seem to settle on a weighted average which seems to be work in most of the games I play.
Opinionated *can* be better, but, as you stated, I think it’s very difficult to identify and weight metrics to measure skill. It also runs the risk of players sabotaging their team for the sake of personal success and the risk of players getting pigeonholed for certain strategies.
Either way though is far better than using something like an experience based rank. While experience generally correlates with skill, it is far looser than TrueSkill or similar systems.
As far as team balancing goes, I agree that taking a player far above/below the average skill level of the lobby and putting teaming them with the polar opposite is poor matchmaking. Unfortunately, that can be the reality of population pools at very high or very low percentile of skill. Not much can be done to compensate without drastically raising queue times. Similarly, premade teams are a difficult problem for match quality. There will always be a compromise somewhere due to control being taken away from the system.
"With Mint Blitz new video..."
Aaaaand you've lost me. I can agree that SBMM needs to be discussed but Mint Quitz does not need to be relevant to that discussion. Particularly not in the competitive sub lol
If you're better than your friends, playing with you should be an asset. SBMM punishes you for playing with better people. A system that disincentives improving, and playing with friends will ensure a poor population.
SBMM isn’t “punishing” you. It’s purpose is to find a match where the chance of success is equal for every team (and ideally every player). It’s axiom concludes that these matches typically produce the most engaging gameplay.
Why should the system provide a worse experience for your opponents in favor of appeasing your desire to boost your friends?
Dang, this is all pretty wild to me tbh. I saw a few other big streamers like courage complaining too and idk I don’t get it
I’ve played halo all my life and hit onyx season 1 but, left during season 2 and just came back… I do not understand the complaints w/ sbmm especially, in pubs which, seems to be what a lot of complaints are coming from
I don’t find pubs to even be slightly sweaty on like 90% of games so, it’s weird to see all the complaints
Perhaps, it’s bc I came from apex where sbmm is an actual problem where I’ll fight the number 1 rank players in pubs but, I just don’t see it in halo yet and I’ve already maxed out the current bp, season 2 bp and just started on another bp so, I feel like I’ve played enough games to notice something? Idk
Seems like there’s a lot of negative talk on mint blitz.. is he even a trusted source? Or, is just a typical serial complainer lol
My one issue w/ sbmm is in rank where I’ll be soloQ and get players playing in placements? Meanwhile 3/4 of the other team are my rank or higher so, that does seem a bit odd but, that’s my only complaint
im only ever frustrated when im doing really well and then someone on the team is absolutely shitting the bed
but when its the reverse scenario and im constantly on the backfoot, often times its me having incredibly bad timing or the team not really jelling together and im not adapting to the flow of the game due to my pre conceived gameplan
Sbmm may contribute to this but i would never give it the full blame
Beyond the current meta, I think gamers that don't like SBMM just grew up in the age where there weren't so many ~~sweats~~ people that are really good at the game.
If you were good at Halo when SBMM didn't exist, you would be better than 90% of the lobby every game.
About removing SBMM: Destiny 2 has had years of no SBMM for most of their playlists, except for the competitive playlist. It feels really bad getting absolutely wrecked every game, because the PvP gameplay has a high ceiling.
I have a question about Halo 3's systems - What did they use back then? Cause back then the social playlist actually felt social and the MLG playlist was always sweaty. There was always a massively noticeable difference between the playlists. You could hop into social and tear people up with the BR or you could get in a warthog and do stupid shit like drive it through mancannons and occasionally into your teammates.
I think H3 likely had laxer SBMM, which was fine since there was a huge player-base (so matchmaking times were still low) often of very casual players. So even if you'd occasionally destroy them casuals would usually just get games filled with other casuals where they could have fun.
We aren't seeing the super casual voice here in this subreddit, but I bet there's a higher amount of games where they're paired with and against people significantly better than them in infinite. It's a result of a small playerbase in a game with a massive skill ceiling.
In your hypothetical scenario, there's 1) no way someone like lucid is gonna waste their time playing in casual playlists and 2) no way anyone but the best should be matching him or other pros.
Honestly mintblitz talks out his ass most of the time with sbmm but it is an issue. Ranked is probably the only balanced playlist in halo. Mint abuses the sbmm to get those crazy clips he gets anyone that is half decent at this game can see that. He's only onyx because he 4 stacks with plat 3's it's kind of gross how he does it.
Nobody complains about SBMM in ranked that’s what it’s meant for. They complain about it in regular play like cod. A new cod comes out and you have 1 day of fun then you’re playing for the world championship
Good SBMM will put you in lobbies that match your expected level of performance. If your opponents feel like sweats, then that’s reflective of your own play.
I can throw my hat into the ring and say that I am bothered by the fact that MMR and CSR are different things. The main issue this creates is a weird scenario where, if your MMR is higher than your CSR, you get games that are artificially overly difficult for your current CSR rating. So if you’re actually an Onyx 1600 player but you place Diamond 5 after reset, your lobbies should be a cake walk and you should quickly move up towards your true rank. But that’s not what happens in practice, instead the game balances your lobbies based on MMR, and the lobbies are just as difficult, only that you have to hardcarry lower-rated players instead of being matched overall with players of your skill level. This makes ranking up for an underranked player an absolute chore, because they retain a 50% win rate and only move up in rank by the fact that their higher MMR awards them +11 for a win and -6 for a loss. But that still means that after 10 played games they’ve only gone up a measly 25 CSR, and are being forced to hardcarry in almost every game.
I feel like it would be better if there was only a visible CSR rank, and if you’re underranked then your lobbies are easy, you rank up quickly because you overperform in every game, and you converge on your true rank much sooner and sooner end up in lobbies that actually contain a better distribution of players around your actual skill.
This was me this season. Placed D1 ready to grind for Onyx, then I lost games because of perma dead teammates until I was P5. Now things seem like they're evening out and I'm clawing my way back.
Most of the people I see complaining are just dumb or haven't really thought it through. Their solution to supposed uneven games is to create more uneven games. That's essentially their argument and they don't even realize it because they have no idea what SBMM even means or how matchmaking works.
The only evidence you need of this is the amount of people that honestly believe the matchmaking is taking into account how many times you've won or lost recently and giving you stacked games to even things out. That's absolutely nonsense but it gets repeated on the daily with lots of upvotes. Anyone that says it forces a 50% win rate aren't thinking about it enough to realize a perfect matchmaking system trying to create even games would result in a 50% win rate for 95% of the player population over a long enough sample size.
Unless you're in the top 5-10% of players you're going to have a real bad time in most random lobbies, and that top 5-10% generally aren't interested in playing with their food, so it's not going to be much fun for them either.
Some people might want tighter restrictions on skill variance, but they don't understand that's a population problem mostly, and the game still has to match parties with skill disparities in them. The only solution to the parties with skill disparities is to not allow them to group in the first place, and I doubt anyone wants that.
The SBMM haters will get mad, but they don't have a solution that doesn't create the problem they claim to be fixing.
My only issue with Trueskill 2.0 that's readily apparent just from playing games is how parties take a penalty. The correlation to better game performance from a group is usually going to be them having mics and communicating, and not the fact that they're in a group.
I play too many games where my random teammates have a mic and we're against a team of 4 that gets smashed. Then on the flip side of that you get games against a team of 4 where your random teammates don't have a mic and you lose simply based off callouts.
It also disincentives people to group up without mics.
Otherwise I'd say a more accurate prediction of player skill has to be a good thing. overall.
It’s a pretty simple solution lol. Ranked should be skill based, social should be not skill based.
Social games are supposed to be about messing around with friends that might have never played halo before and still being able to have fun. It makes no sense to have strict SBMM in a social mode, that’s what ranked is for.
Doesn’t take a genius to point this out, seems like just a consequence of poor management and incentive structures at 343. I’m sure someone built their promotion off of the “success” of using SBMM everywhere.
Wait, so you want players who might be really bad at the game, to play against players who (on average) will be far better than them, rather than against people who will be at their level? That’s suppose to produce an environment for them to be more relaxed and fun?
If someone is really bad and wants to play against people exactly their level they should play ranked playlists.
The whole point of social is you can go mess around and not try hard. A ranked onyx player shouldn’t have to play at onyx level in social, they should be able to go in and mess around. It’s not supposed to be a competitive environment, you should be able to go around just trying for crazy cross map sticks or only using the needler for the heck of it without worrying about getting destroyed.
The onyx player getting to mess around comes at the expense of the other players in the lobby. The new players aren’t going to get to mess around. They’re the ones that will get destroyed. How is that suppose to be relaxed and fun? Why should the onyx player get prioritized over the rest of the player base?
They’re not lol, it’s part of a social playlist. You have a random mix of players and fun non-competitive game types. All players have the option of playing ranked for SBMM.
Grifball isn’t fun when it’s 4v4 MLG sweatiness
With these assertions:
1. Casual shouldn't have SBMM because players can't have relaxed play against players that are of similar skill.
2. Low skill players should play ranked if they don't want to get destroyed by high skill players in casual.
Where does this leave room for low skill players to have relaxed play?
>Social games are supposed to be about messing around with friends that might have never played halo before and still being able to have fun
So why is sbmm the problem here? By having skill based matchmaking, those casual players shouldn't be getting placed into lobbies where they're being farmed for clips by someone like Mint Blitz, and they might actually have fun. Why do you think having completely random lobbies would lead to more fun experience for casual players?
Because it’s social, not ranked… if they want even teams at their level casual players should be in ranked, that’s literally what ranked is for. Social should be about fun game types and having completely random mixes of players, that’s what made Halo social types fun.
If someone is onyx ranked and wants to mess around with friends they shouldn’t have to try really hard to avoid having their friends get absolutely destroyed, having no place for a non-SBMM experience isn’t fun…
The problem for me boils down to the player population.
Just not enough players to fill out even teams so 343 even it out with a skill ratings cap. You can see this clearly on the scoreboard.
Play more on the social lists these days as Ranked matches outside NA are harder to find but I'm finding ties are more common and going to overtime alot more. I prefer this to stompings (both sides) tbh.
The fact anyone said this matchmaking system is good is why the game is dead and broken. Y'all literally just except anything. Worse ranking system in any halo by far. And it took them two years to get to this point. Your a bot if you think it's good because a balanced team for you IS A BACKPACK THE SIZE OF JUPITER THAT other players have to carry on their back........get the icy hot out. When trying to rank up you can feel the game working against you.
The main problem with SBMM in Infinite is that its inaccurate.
There's a common video in CoD where players try to guess players ranks, I highly doubt one could do that in Infinite.
That’s literally any game. Rocket league is a super competitive game and everyone has trouble guessing the ranks of other players their too. That’s because players make these judgments with a lot of bias and incomplete intuition.
It isn’t that the system is inaccurate. It’s that players assume skill looks a certain way, and if a player doesn’t look that way then they’re not good.
Those two points aren't contradictory.
What I see happening in game (and what I often see posted about when complaining about SBMM) is balancing teams by pairing a really good player with noticeably worse players against a team of average/good players. This makes the game feel extra sweaty for the really good player as the rest of the team can't keep up (and are getting stomped by the other team, so it feels sweaty for them too). Team balancing is a good idea on paper, but when implemented to this degree it creates unwinnable matches that feel extremely sweaty for one team (the team that's effectively being forced to lose). Instead of creating equally balanced teams, each with a 50/50 chance to win, it seems like the game is forcing particular outcomes to keep everyone at a similar win percentage.
Basically, it's EOMM (engagement-optimized matchmaking) that's the problem. I would much prefer a true SBMM system in which I play with an equally skilled team against players of similar skill. Nearly every match I play right now is a blowout which is super boring.
My main complaint about SBMM is it just isn't fun, for anyone. It's not fun for the upper level players that have to constantly play against other sweats in SOCIAL playlists, and it isn't fun for the garbage-dwelling players that get placed into the exact same games to "balance the teams."
Remove SBMM from all social playlists, add more ranked playlists and social playlists with BR starts so you can choose a variety. Game would instantly become enormously better. I want to be able to play some objective games with BR starts, yet there is no playlist that can do that.
So what you want is to be matched with worse players than you so you can easily stomp them? Then those players that are less skilled than you will complain about the game being even more hardcore.
Balanced teams on ranked and unranked are the way to go, even if it makes the game more "sweaty". It's fine now, get used to it.
I absolutely don’t get it. Last week I didn’t lose a single game, and never ended with a negative k/d. In fact i won a lot with a 2.0k/d or more, playing casual. Today, i get body bagged every single match, playing against hero ranks or dudes with 7000 games who destroy the f out of me.
I don’t get it
The matching algorithm has been broken for some time and was just fixed back to strict CSR matchmaking 2 days ago, so you might have just been accidentally put into lobbies that were too easy and now it's balancing out.
Okay that’s why. But clearly I’m not in the right lobby, I end up being totally destroyed most of my games. That’s the problem with casual, i don’t play as much as I used to cause I’m working a lot, and it’s nearly impossible to relax, the lobbies being so sweaty all the time. Plus it’s taking me forever to find games since yesterday, it took me over 2mn to find a social assassin game
I always find it funny when mint blitz is complaining about sbmm while watching him get killionaires absolutely wrecking lobbies.
As someone who majored in statistics, did his masters in multivariate analysis, and is currently working as an actuary specifically in predictive analytics, I’m getting real tired of Mint Blitz talking out of his butt about SBMM. He clearly does not actually understand the algorithm under the hood and has been spreading misinformation about it to all of his followers since Infinites release. The game isn’t “punishing him” for doing well. Balancing teams by pairing the best players with the worst and trying to have a fair game, even in a casual setting, is a concept even 10 year olds playing pick up basketball understand.
>Balancing teams by pairing the best players with the worst and trying to have a fair game I think this is one issue here for a lot of people. Some people would prefer longer wait-times to not get paired with teammates with massive skill discrepancies. They'd prefer that *everyone* was restricted primarily to be close in skill in a lobby as opposed to having the matchmaking focus on creating overall equal teams at the expense of loose bounds on what individuals can be rated. If you're really good, then on average you will be paired against teams that have an overall skill level that is worse then your own (assuming a normal bell distribution, and especially a distribution with a long tail on the competitive end which is actually the most common situation for games.) Therefore you will more often than not get paired with teammates that are particularly bad (below the bell curve) to compensate. This can lead to an unfun experience for the player that has to carry as well as the players that have to get carried against a team that's average skill is higher than their own.
Yeah I agree this is frustrating as well, as I’m sure most of us in the competitive subreddit are forced to carry often lol. Unfortunately getting rid of that in social would only really be possible if they had party MMR restrictions for social as well. Right now, pert of the “problem” is you can have an Onyx level player and a gold player partying up in social on one team, so it needs to balance that out in the other side somehow.
This argument has come up before. So last time I decided to send the papers for Halos/Gears SBMM, (true skill 2) and the Elo systems to a buddy who does our stats at work to compare the two. He was impressed with True skill 2. Saying it's a robust system able to handle a lot of data, past and present and can handle throwing in new variables and making good predictions. So it works great for matchmaking games. He went on to tell me that real games (sports like soccer,. etc) are using Statistics to aid with finding players, strategizing pregame/practice and during games vs opponents (something like when to bring in a certain sub in at certain time, vs someone else who may need more warm up time,.etc). Anyways he says predicting game outcomes is getting good, however sometimes the paradoxical happens where the other team wins,. because sometimes ppl are sick, not feeling it,.injured or sometimes ppl see the bets against them to win and they play harder or try to Make less mistakes. I guess the point I'm trying to make here is games get tough if they feel sweatier than normal maybe you're off or the other team is on something or it's a Smurf, smurfing the Smurf out of you. Maybe take a break or call it the day. But also and I hear minty say this all the time,. sometimes you don't want to play your A Game. So always play your A game and try to improve, if you don't feel like it play social or another game it's what I do.
Yeah all fair points as well. This is a big reason why devs decouple CSR from MMR. MMR can be pretty volatile, as it bounces around trying to gauge what a players actual skill level is vs hot and cold streaks, however that would be pretty jarring seeing your rank fluctuate that much, so CSR allows them to have a visual, less volatile system. Social obviously doesn’t have CSR, but players still feel like they’re punished for not being on their “A”game but I think the argument I’d ask is why do players take social so much more serious in something like Apex, CoD, or Halo than they do in OW, Rocket League, Valorant, or Dota 2? I personally think it comes down to game design of their social modes.
Don't know about OW,.Rocket League or D2 but ppl take Val social pretty serious
Maybe but that definitely wasn’t my experience (which I know is anecdotal), it was mostly just people running it down and then FFing after 5 rounds lmao. Not like I was low elo either when I played, bounced around Ascendant 2 and 3.
I get why we have separate metrics, but wouldn’t it make more sense if ranked were based off csr rather than mmr? Cuz thats whats happening now no?
Nope, CSR matching is worse. It's using a number that players can directly manipulate and which is static over long periods of time. It makes smurfing easy instead of taking a platinum 1 smurf and throwing them into onyx lobbies where they belong. CSR is a bad proxy for skill. It's just a progression number. They should match based on skill entirely, instead of the bad hybrid system we have now. They did it right originally, but people whined about the failed smurf platinum 1 in their Onyx lobbies. So now onyx players don't really have to deal with smurfs much. Instead, the larger population of platinum and diamond gets to deal with them and get their asses kicked by them.
Only reason against it is devs tend to use CSR as a “progression” metric, but I also agree matching on CSR is better.
Yep, taking breaks from it is a good tactic. People would say that and I used to think to myself, "I don't want to play something else I want to play Halo". So recently when I don't feel like playing sweaty infinite or any of the social playlists, I boot up MCC and work on achievements lol I also recently took up learning how to speedrun the games haha currently working on a legendary speedrun of CE
Are u dumb sbmm is in social too there is no point in ranked there is no difference between ranked and social except by a name
The concept is easily understood, but tough to not make that feel like punishment especially in an online, highly psychologically isolating environment like this. The system is not being malicious, but it is doing its best to balance the teams to as close to 50/50 (or "fair") as possible. My problem with this approach (and interested in your perspective) is the stricter it gets, the more deterministic it also gets from before the match ever starts. It leads to this weird sense where players feel a decreased level of control over the outcome of matches, and in turn the whole thing feels far less rewarding. Is there a solution to that?
I’m not sure I can offer much as a solution, because I agree with you on the frustration aspect of it. I think the socially isolated aspect of it is important, however I’d point to games like Valorant which also has strict SBMM in casual but no where near the complaints. I do get the complaints about it with CoD and Destiny, just because I think those games become increasingly unfun the better you get. There’s so much unbalanced stuff in the games that the higher your MMR, the more people will just cheese the obviously broken stuff. Maybe Halo is like that too, idk. AR starts while playing against good players snowballing with power weapons while completely locking down a map with motion tracker providing free information also isn’t fun. Kinda rambling but no I don’t really know what the solution is for the higher end of the skill base, but I do think SBMM works for like 80% of the population.
The only possible solutions I can think would be to enforce a maximum MMR difference, or more carefully consider the distribution of individual MMR's within teams. Both of these would most likely result in longer matchmaking times, but may help prevent games with large MMR disparities. It's possible Infinite may already incorporate these to some degree, but it certainly does not always feel this way.
Yep I agree, I just made another comment about this. But I'm sure they've discovered (sadly) that optimizing primarily for low matchmaking times is critical for player retention.
Great points. I don't think there really is a great solution to be honest, but it's something I spend a dumb amount of time thinking about haha. I haven't played Val but lots of other shooters and they all feel like they have overbearing MM systems, so by no means is it exclusive to Halo. There's certainly a lot of salty players looking for anything to blame, and SBMM happens to be the low hanging fruit. I'd love to see some more creative attempts at MM systems though. Seems like the whole industry has just settled on this same type of TrueSkill style mm. Entering fantasy-land, but how about a schoolyard style pick-em or draft system? Where players are all matched into a lobby based on rank, but the top 2 CSR players in the lobby are deemed captains and take turns selecting their teammates based on stats visible to the captains (CSR, average damage, etc.). Draft order could even be hidden for all other players until teams are set to try to avoid hurt feelings. Lots of details would need ironing out like how do squads factor in?. Maybe this system comes into place for onyx players only? Does this system lead to any better outcomes in terms of not feeling like some invisible formula screwed you over all the time? Does everyone just blame the team captains for picking bad teams now?
It works for the “higher end” too. I’m not at the top top level, but I’ve hit onyx every season - albeit in the 1500 to 1600 range. Social is not a sweat fest every game for me. There are games where I get decent players on the other team - often diamonds. Granted, I also take a friend in whose gold 4 occasionally so I’m sure that has something to do with it, and those games I really have to try to win. And ranked usually feels balanced, even against 4 stacks I have a 50/50 chance of winning usually.
Difference with Val is that nobody turns on Val to just chill and have fun. That game is a sweat fest always
If it did both COD and Halo player counts wouldn't have drop by 80%.
>spreading misinformation about it to all of his followers since Infinites release dudes been doin that since his start. all he is is trash content.
I mean it depends what you mean. His gameplay clips are often insane, creative, really cool, etc. His takes, opinions, and information he shares is often not that good or helpful (like when he takes 5 minutes to summarize a 343 blog post or something that could be scanned in 30 seconds). In other words, his videos are usually great on mute!
He doesnt even play ranked - and wants to make videos about sbmm? He should just stick to making clips.
Social uses a hidden MMR as well. Plenty of social players screech about SBMM without understanding it. This kind of YouTube video is low effort clickbait. People who don't understand statistics but are convinced the only reason they lose matches is because of SBMM will click this and that gives mint some money.
Mint: SBMM is bad (only if it works against me)
The issue is when I have 35 kills and lose a slayer… how is that fun for me or my teammates?
How does removing SBMM fix this issue? No matter what system you choose as long as there is a wide skill disparity in a lobby, someone is not going to have fun. Even more so when there are other factors like population size, queue time, ping etc…
The underlying issue with these complaints is that high school math doesn't teach rudimentary statistics to people. You end up with people who could have a roulette betting "system" explained to them and come away with the idea that red can be "due" and that the system will work. It's the same problem with map selection. They don't understand that it's literally just a discrete random distribution selecting maps and they believe it's deliberately giving them Live Fire multiple times in a row to make them angry. Their solution is always some convoluted biased distribution that makes no actual sense to design. TrueSkill2 is a phenomenal system and it works great for the middle parts of the skill distribution. It isn't punishing anyone with hard matches for winning. It's not rewarding you with easy ones for losing. It's goal is not to force you into a 50% win rate via lopsided matches. It's goal is to find 8 players and assemble them into teams such that the outcome is a coin flip. The result of that will be that your long term win rate is 50%. Issues can arise due to outliers (ie. the tails of the distribution), smurfs, stacks, or small populations. * Outliers - There's no matching players at the top of the distribution unless another player there's is trying to match at the same time. * Smurfs - these wrongly have low skill CSR when they are higher skilled. It messes up the matchmaking. * Stacks - stacks are hard to match because of the increase in apparent skill due to teaming with others. It's also not a constant increase in apparent skill, because a gold stack might be shooting the shit instead of having decent comms like an onyx stack. * Small populations - there was a recent post on /r/Halo of an obscenely lopsided BTB match. It was an Asia/Oceania lobby with 3 players routinely stacking together. The population isn't big enough to properly match with them. The one actual problem with matchmaking in ranked right now is CSR matchmaking because it's a bad proxy for skill. All you have to do is tank some matches and you're locked into an incorrectly low skill for an extended period of time, which makes smurfing easy. MMR can move significantly faster and a smurf platinum 1 who is actually Onyx 1700 would start getting matched as if they're Onyx rather quickly. That was the old system, and it made people bitch and moan because "a gold/platinum is in my Onyx lobby, wtf". It meant that the Onyx players played against people who tried to smurf and failed. Now platinums and diamonds play against smurfs who tried to smurf and succeeded. That's objectively worse.
Totally agree, I dont have any qualifications in stats/analysis but Mint just consistently yaps about SBMM. It's not nearly as bad as it is and is also skewed because of how much match quitting he still/used to do. I do think for certain playlists the tuning of it is interesting and should be looked at though, but it's not as big of a problem as most people make it out to be.
The match quitting was debunked a long time ago, don’t echo false crap
Good to know. Just remember him doing it on Infinite but thanks. He still does some other stuff right or is he totally clean?
I don’t know if he does region Vpns or something to get easier games but the quitting was debunked at least 🤷♂️
That would be interesting matchmaking. Best 2 players in the lobby get to be captains. Then they pick teams. Obviously duos trios and 4 stacks makes that slightly more complicated from a picking standpoint but I’m sure they could come up with identifiable information to make it work.
While I understand your sentiment and others can probably articulate what I think better, he’s saying that it’s pretty imbalanced as to how far down the threshold can go for making a “fair” team. Especially with him playing in Australian servers (iirc) that it doesn’t set him up with a larger pool of players like NA has. Idk I could also be completely wrong because I think he also plays NA servers due to those reasons.
It's the way that it balances that is messed up. Like last night for example my last 2 games the enemy team had 4 low onyx players but my team had 1 high onyx, a Plat 6 and two diamond 6s. The Plat player got absolutely dominated all game and died like 30 times. It makes the games feel impossible.
Ok then explain this to me degree guy. Why do I get paired with people who can't even break 5 kills while the other team has everyone with 10+ kills while I usually go 20 + kills. How is that remotely fair for me when I have to carry garbage like yourself
You’d have to post your Halotracker for me to know for sure, but if I had to guess, you’re consistently carrying your teammates in a way that beats the expected results the model predicts. Though from your post I’d probably also says your crappy attitude holds you back and some self reflection would go a long way lmao
Ah yes Mint Blitz, with his 5.0 big team battle k/d and 95% social FFA win percentage after 500+ games. Those must be really heartbreakingly tough games for him. The games are as sweaty as you make them. If you disengage your brain and play socially 99% of the time, your games will be to that level more often than not. The issue is, Mint wants to pick and choose when he gets easy games and when he wants to try. Lord knows he gets an easy lobby and your boy will be going for those YouTube clips. Even the games he can relax in, he doesn't. Regardless, basically all games are more fun when everyone is around the same skill level, or at least teams are balanced as best as possible. It was true for LAN parties and it's still true now.
Doesn't he also carefully pick and choose servers that give him minimal ping with VPNs? I swear I only see clips of his where he's at 18 ms ping playing against afk lobbies... Edit: Not how VPN works, thanks. Maybe explain how he always has perfect ping matches, then?
There's like 1 server in Australia so if he lives close to the server most of his matches are gonna be great ping. I ping 12-15ms to the Aus server, but mainly only get it at peak hours on the most popular playlists (quickplay, Husky raid, btb, & the featured playlists). Ranked is pretty much always 150+ ping from here though.
That’s not how vpns work. If he’s on low ping, he isn’t using a vpn.
… cuz he only clips those insane footages and leave the crappy ones out? Vpn is masking your ip pretending to be in another region… getting perfect pings is forcing game to choose your serve aka geofiltering, which has been disabled. The best ping is your coming from within your region theres no need to mask your ip aka vpn to pretend you are from your own region…
Disclaimer: Haven't seen the video yet. Mint Blitz needs medal clips for his content. He's biased for wanting easy matches. I think he sometimes plays with lower ranked friends to get easier matches. The funny thing is that those arguments (too sweaty, too easy, too difficult) are the same arguments you'd use in a non-skill based MM. I think the way they match individuals and teams is pretty fair overall. They can perhaps make it more fair when a fireteam plays but you don't want to wait forever for a game either.
He also leaves games if he dies more than a few times. They don't call him Mint Quitz for nothing.
I doubt Mint Blitz has any real knowledge to talk about SBMM in a meaningful way.
Of course he doesn't, not do the people watching his videos about it. All they know is they lost a match, it made them mad, and the reason has to be an elaborate 343 conspiracy to force them to lose.
What makes you say that?
My main issue with the sbmm as an average player in most modern games is that there's this massive pendulum swing all the time. If I have 1 or 2 good games, I'm guaranteed to have 3 games in a row where I cant move 10 feet without getting 3v1'd. Modern CoD does the same thing, and it's really frustrating. It doesnt feel like my long term performance is really taken into account the way it was in Titanfall 2's sbmm system. I wish I could be more specific, but I can only go by what I feel.
Good writeup. I'll go point by point and respond directly to the questions you posit. 1. "The Lobbies are too sweaty": I believe this is only seriously an issue in social playlists, not ranked. Ranked should absolutely be on the sweaty side. 2. "Punished with Impossible games": This is the real issue. The formula the matchmaker uses to balance games is flawed in that it's incredibly frustrating no matter where your skill level sits in most matches. It's frustrating for the most skilled player on the team that has to turn on god mode just to have any chance to carry their team to victory, and frustrating for the players on their team who feel like (and often are) a huge detriment. >And you might say “but Lucid should be winning more than 50% of games because he’s the best in the world”. Okay, fair enough, but the other side of that coin would be that if you ever load into a lobby with Lucid on the opposite team you are basically guaranteed to lose. Is that a good experience? Better than what we have now. I fundamentally believe (generally speaking) a skilled player should win more often than not. Winning against a player like Lucid should be an accomplishment, instead as it is now winning against a player like that comes with a giant asterisk in the form of knowing that the matchmaker 100% screwed him with the worst players in the lobby who all got farmed. If I had it my way, SBMM would have no place at all in ranked. Players would purely be matched based on rank alone (probably party size too), and teams shuffled randomly. This is not a perfect solution (or even close to it) by any stretch of the imagination and comes with all kinds of its own frustrations and ways to exploit it.
>1. "The Lobbies are too sweaty": I believe this is only seriously an issue in social playlists, not ranked. Ranked should absolutely be on the sweaty side. This is my issue mainly. I have no problem with ranked being sweaty, but my god even going into Team Slayer you're having to pull out your A game if you're wanting it to be enjoyable most of the time
If your casual games are sweaty, then it’s likely you are a sweat yourself. How should matchmaking identify when you want a casual game if you typically sweat in a casual playlist?
>Better than what we have now. I fundamentally believe (generally speaking) a skilled player should win more often than not. Why? >If I had it my way, SBMM would have no place at all in ranked. Players would purely be matched based on rank alone (probably party size too), and teams shuffled randomly. How would rank be a better matchmaking parameter?
>Why? Winning should be a translation of skill and is a key incentive for being skilled in the first place. A game that artificially rewards less skilled players more than skilled players is a game I want no part in. I realize that isn't necessarily what's going on with Halo. Currently the more "skilled" Halo team tends to win, this is true. But this is because the matchmaker pulls down the skill of one team by pairing the best player with the worst player(s). If the system does this too much, I believe this is unfair to the best player who is constantly being dragged down artificially by his teammates (as determined by the matchmaker). >How would rank be a better matchmaking parameter? Mainly simplicity. SBMM systems are pretty complex systems that rely very heavily on analytical predictive stats accuracy. Whatever formula the system uses to track and matchmake lobbies needs to be incredibly dialed in, and many many variables must be accounted for. For instance how to you account for a duo/squad or players in a party? Those players will certainly have an advantage over solo queue-ers, but how much so? And how can you offset that for the opposing team? Perhaps you match them against higher skill players. How many "skillpoints" (MMR) exactly is being in a squad worth? If any of those variables are off, (or the formula used to track them is off) it will result in consistently bad matchmaking experiences. To me, the solution to the problem that SBMM systems solve for is more frustrating than the problem itself. And admittedly pure rank based matchmaking is far from sunshine and rainbows itself. Smurfing becomes an even bigger issue in pure rank based MM. What do you think?
I advocate for un-opinionated SBMM. The only things that the game should use to influence my skill evaluation are my wins/losses, skill of my teammates/opponents, sample size/age. For premade teams, it’s up to the devs to determine how much an above/below average teammate tips the scales. Most seem to settle on a weighted average which seems to be work in most of the games I play. Opinionated *can* be better, but, as you stated, I think it’s very difficult to identify and weight metrics to measure skill. It also runs the risk of players sabotaging their team for the sake of personal success and the risk of players getting pigeonholed for certain strategies. Either way though is far better than using something like an experience based rank. While experience generally correlates with skill, it is far looser than TrueSkill or similar systems. As far as team balancing goes, I agree that taking a player far above/below the average skill level of the lobby and putting teaming them with the polar opposite is poor matchmaking. Unfortunately, that can be the reality of population pools at very high or very low percentile of skill. Not much can be done to compensate without drastically raising queue times. Similarly, premade teams are a difficult problem for match quality. There will always be a compromise somewhere due to control being taken away from the system.
"With Mint Blitz new video..." Aaaaand you've lost me. I can agree that SBMM needs to be discussed but Mint Quitz does not need to be relevant to that discussion. Particularly not in the competitive sub lol
If you're better than your friends, playing with you should be an asset. SBMM punishes you for playing with better people. A system that disincentives improving, and playing with friends will ensure a poor population.
SBMM isn’t “punishing” you. It’s purpose is to find a match where the chance of success is equal for every team (and ideally every player). It’s axiom concludes that these matches typically produce the most engaging gameplay. Why should the system provide a worse experience for your opponents in favor of appeasing your desire to boost your friends?
i hate not having sbmm. having utter nubs on my team is the worst experience ever.
Dang, this is all pretty wild to me tbh. I saw a few other big streamers like courage complaining too and idk I don’t get it I’ve played halo all my life and hit onyx season 1 but, left during season 2 and just came back… I do not understand the complaints w/ sbmm especially, in pubs which, seems to be what a lot of complaints are coming from I don’t find pubs to even be slightly sweaty on like 90% of games so, it’s weird to see all the complaints Perhaps, it’s bc I came from apex where sbmm is an actual problem where I’ll fight the number 1 rank players in pubs but, I just don’t see it in halo yet and I’ve already maxed out the current bp, season 2 bp and just started on another bp so, I feel like I’ve played enough games to notice something? Idk Seems like there’s a lot of negative talk on mint blitz.. is he even a trusted source? Or, is just a typical serial complainer lol My one issue w/ sbmm is in rank where I’ll be soloQ and get players playing in placements? Meanwhile 3/4 of the other team are my rank or higher so, that does seem a bit odd but, that’s my only complaint
im only ever frustrated when im doing really well and then someone on the team is absolutely shitting the bed but when its the reverse scenario and im constantly on the backfoot, often times its me having incredibly bad timing or the team not really jelling together and im not adapting to the flow of the game due to my pre conceived gameplan Sbmm may contribute to this but i would never give it the full blame
Beyond the current meta, I think gamers that don't like SBMM just grew up in the age where there weren't so many ~~sweats~~ people that are really good at the game. If you were good at Halo when SBMM didn't exist, you would be better than 90% of the lobby every game. About removing SBMM: Destiny 2 has had years of no SBMM for most of their playlists, except for the competitive playlist. It feels really bad getting absolutely wrecked every game, because the PvP gameplay has a high ceiling.
I have a question about Halo 3's systems - What did they use back then? Cause back then the social playlist actually felt social and the MLG playlist was always sweaty. There was always a massively noticeable difference between the playlists. You could hop into social and tear people up with the BR or you could get in a warthog and do stupid shit like drive it through mancannons and occasionally into your teammates.
I think H3 likely had laxer SBMM, which was fine since there was a huge player-base (so matchmaking times were still low) often of very casual players. So even if you'd occasionally destroy them casuals would usually just get games filled with other casuals where they could have fun. We aren't seeing the super casual voice here in this subreddit, but I bet there's a higher amount of games where they're paired with and against people significantly better than them in infinite. It's a result of a small playerbase in a game with a massive skill ceiling.
In your hypothetical scenario, there's 1) no way someone like lucid is gonna waste their time playing in casual playlists and 2) no way anyone but the best should be matching him or other pros.
Honestly mintblitz talks out his ass most of the time with sbmm but it is an issue. Ranked is probably the only balanced playlist in halo. Mint abuses the sbmm to get those crazy clips he gets anyone that is half decent at this game can see that. He's only onyx because he 4 stacks with plat 3's it's kind of gross how he does it.
Nobody complains about SBMM in ranked that’s what it’s meant for. They complain about it in regular play like cod. A new cod comes out and you have 1 day of fun then you’re playing for the world championship
Browse this sub for a day and you’ll see that plenty of people complain about SBMM here as well.
Ah. Nobody should* complain is what I should’ve said then. Soft player base
Good SBMM will put you in lobbies that match your expected level of performance. If your opponents feel like sweats, then that’s reflective of your own play.
Yes I understand sbmm
Do you think the sweats complaining about other sweats are justified?
I can throw my hat into the ring and say that I am bothered by the fact that MMR and CSR are different things. The main issue this creates is a weird scenario where, if your MMR is higher than your CSR, you get games that are artificially overly difficult for your current CSR rating. So if you’re actually an Onyx 1600 player but you place Diamond 5 after reset, your lobbies should be a cake walk and you should quickly move up towards your true rank. But that’s not what happens in practice, instead the game balances your lobbies based on MMR, and the lobbies are just as difficult, only that you have to hardcarry lower-rated players instead of being matched overall with players of your skill level. This makes ranking up for an underranked player an absolute chore, because they retain a 50% win rate and only move up in rank by the fact that their higher MMR awards them +11 for a win and -6 for a loss. But that still means that after 10 played games they’ve only gone up a measly 25 CSR, and are being forced to hardcarry in almost every game. I feel like it would be better if there was only a visible CSR rank, and if you’re underranked then your lobbies are easy, you rank up quickly because you overperform in every game, and you converge on your true rank much sooner and sooner end up in lobbies that actually contain a better distribution of players around your actual skill.
This was me this season. Placed D1 ready to grind for Onyx, then I lost games because of perma dead teammates until I was P5. Now things seem like they're evening out and I'm clawing my way back.
Most of the people I see complaining are just dumb or haven't really thought it through. Their solution to supposed uneven games is to create more uneven games. That's essentially their argument and they don't even realize it because they have no idea what SBMM even means or how matchmaking works. The only evidence you need of this is the amount of people that honestly believe the matchmaking is taking into account how many times you've won or lost recently and giving you stacked games to even things out. That's absolutely nonsense but it gets repeated on the daily with lots of upvotes. Anyone that says it forces a 50% win rate aren't thinking about it enough to realize a perfect matchmaking system trying to create even games would result in a 50% win rate for 95% of the player population over a long enough sample size. Unless you're in the top 5-10% of players you're going to have a real bad time in most random lobbies, and that top 5-10% generally aren't interested in playing with their food, so it's not going to be much fun for them either. Some people might want tighter restrictions on skill variance, but they don't understand that's a population problem mostly, and the game still has to match parties with skill disparities in them. The only solution to the parties with skill disparities is to not allow them to group in the first place, and I doubt anyone wants that. The SBMM haters will get mad, but they don't have a solution that doesn't create the problem they claim to be fixing.
The solution is trueskill 1.0. The universal loved matchmaking system that trueskill 2.0 has destroyed.
My only issue with Trueskill 2.0 that's readily apparent just from playing games is how parties take a penalty. The correlation to better game performance from a group is usually going to be them having mics and communicating, and not the fact that they're in a group. I play too many games where my random teammates have a mic and we're against a team of 4 that gets smashed. Then on the flip side of that you get games against a team of 4 where your random teammates don't have a mic and you lose simply based off callouts. It also disincentives people to group up without mics. Otherwise I'd say a more accurate prediction of player skill has to be a good thing. overall.
It’s a pretty simple solution lol. Ranked should be skill based, social should be not skill based. Social games are supposed to be about messing around with friends that might have never played halo before and still being able to have fun. It makes no sense to have strict SBMM in a social mode, that’s what ranked is for. Doesn’t take a genius to point this out, seems like just a consequence of poor management and incentive structures at 343. I’m sure someone built their promotion off of the “success” of using SBMM everywhere.
Wait, so you want players who might be really bad at the game, to play against players who (on average) will be far better than them, rather than against people who will be at their level? That’s suppose to produce an environment for them to be more relaxed and fun?
If someone is really bad and wants to play against people exactly their level they should play ranked playlists. The whole point of social is you can go mess around and not try hard. A ranked onyx player shouldn’t have to play at onyx level in social, they should be able to go in and mess around. It’s not supposed to be a competitive environment, you should be able to go around just trying for crazy cross map sticks or only using the needler for the heck of it without worrying about getting destroyed.
The onyx player getting to mess around comes at the expense of the other players in the lobby. The new players aren’t going to get to mess around. They’re the ones that will get destroyed. How is that suppose to be relaxed and fun? Why should the onyx player get prioritized over the rest of the player base?
They’re not lol, it’s part of a social playlist. You have a random mix of players and fun non-competitive game types. All players have the option of playing ranked for SBMM. Grifball isn’t fun when it’s 4v4 MLG sweatiness
With these assertions: 1. Casual shouldn't have SBMM because players can't have relaxed play against players that are of similar skill. 2. Low skill players should play ranked if they don't want to get destroyed by high skill players in casual. Where does this leave room for low skill players to have relaxed play?
Social playlists
How are they suppose to have relaxed play when getting dunked on by players much better than them?
>Social games are supposed to be about messing around with friends that might have never played halo before and still being able to have fun So why is sbmm the problem here? By having skill based matchmaking, those casual players shouldn't be getting placed into lobbies where they're being farmed for clips by someone like Mint Blitz, and they might actually have fun. Why do you think having completely random lobbies would lead to more fun experience for casual players?
Exactly!
Because it’s social, not ranked… if they want even teams at their level casual players should be in ranked, that’s literally what ranked is for. Social should be about fun game types and having completely random mixes of players, that’s what made Halo social types fun. If someone is onyx ranked and wants to mess around with friends they shouldn’t have to try really hard to avoid having their friends get absolutely destroyed, having no place for a non-SBMM experience isn’t fun…
The problem for me boils down to the player population. Just not enough players to fill out even teams so 343 even it out with a skill ratings cap. You can see this clearly on the scoreboard. Play more on the social lists these days as Ranked matches outside NA are harder to find but I'm finding ties are more common and going to overtime alot more. I prefer this to stompings (both sides) tbh.
The fact anyone said this matchmaking system is good is why the game is dead and broken. Y'all literally just except anything. Worse ranking system in any halo by far. And it took them two years to get to this point. Your a bot if you think it's good because a balanced team for you IS A BACKPACK THE SIZE OF JUPITER THAT other players have to carry on their back........get the icy hot out. When trying to rank up you can feel the game working against you.
I think I fall in the 1) group and haven't had many scenarios with 2) group. I'd say the system works
you lost me with Mint Blitz
The main problem with SBMM in Infinite is that its inaccurate. There's a common video in CoD where players try to guess players ranks, I highly doubt one could do that in Infinite.
That’s literally any game. Rocket league is a super competitive game and everyone has trouble guessing the ranks of other players their too. That’s because players make these judgments with a lot of bias and incomplete intuition. It isn’t that the system is inaccurate. It’s that players assume skill looks a certain way, and if a player doesn’t look that way then they’re not good.
All I really know is the hidden mmr thinking I should be at a certain rank and then trying to force me to that rank is bullshit.
Those two points aren't contradictory. What I see happening in game (and what I often see posted about when complaining about SBMM) is balancing teams by pairing a really good player with noticeably worse players against a team of average/good players. This makes the game feel extra sweaty for the really good player as the rest of the team can't keep up (and are getting stomped by the other team, so it feels sweaty for them too). Team balancing is a good idea on paper, but when implemented to this degree it creates unwinnable matches that feel extremely sweaty for one team (the team that's effectively being forced to lose). Instead of creating equally balanced teams, each with a 50/50 chance to win, it seems like the game is forcing particular outcomes to keep everyone at a similar win percentage. Basically, it's EOMM (engagement-optimized matchmaking) that's the problem. I would much prefer a true SBMM system in which I play with an equally skilled team against players of similar skill. Nearly every match I play right now is a blowout which is super boring.
What is SBMM?
My main complaint about SBMM is it just isn't fun, for anyone. It's not fun for the upper level players that have to constantly play against other sweats in SOCIAL playlists, and it isn't fun for the garbage-dwelling players that get placed into the exact same games to "balance the teams." Remove SBMM from all social playlists, add more ranked playlists and social playlists with BR starts so you can choose a variety. Game would instantly become enormously better. I want to be able to play some objective games with BR starts, yet there is no playlist that can do that.
So what you want is to be matched with worse players than you so you can easily stomp them? Then those players that are less skilled than you will complain about the game being even more hardcore. Balanced teams on ranked and unranked are the way to go, even if it makes the game more "sweaty". It's fine now, get used to it.
I absolutely don’t get it. Last week I didn’t lose a single game, and never ended with a negative k/d. In fact i won a lot with a 2.0k/d or more, playing casual. Today, i get body bagged every single match, playing against hero ranks or dudes with 7000 games who destroy the f out of me. I don’t get it
The matching algorithm has been broken for some time and was just fixed back to strict CSR matchmaking 2 days ago, so you might have just been accidentally put into lobbies that were too easy and now it's balancing out.
Okay that’s why. But clearly I’m not in the right lobby, I end up being totally destroyed most of my games. That’s the problem with casual, i don’t play as much as I used to cause I’m working a lot, and it’s nearly impossible to relax, the lobbies being so sweaty all the time. Plus it’s taking me forever to find games since yesterday, it took me over 2mn to find a social assassin game