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Details on Halo 5: Guardians matchmaking in Arena mode

Theorry

Member
COMPETITIVE SKILL RATING
The Competitive Skill Rating (CSR) system in Halo 5 is designed to ensure high quality matches between players of equal skill, on a per-playlist basis. When you first hop into any of the Arena playlists, you will play a series of placement matches before being earning your CSR. After you complete 10 games, you will be placed into one of 7 CSR ranks based on your performance.

Coming out of the Arena beta, we’ve renamed the ranks based on community feedback to provide a more familiar and easily understood sense of progression between ranks. The final CSR ranks for Halo 5: Guardians are Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Onyx, and Champion.

BRONZE
csr-banners_bronze-83ff2e5e41784d15b9b4725756fd80bb.jpg


SILVER
csr-banners_silver-4373a4c4bdde46efa48885e96c042405.jpg


GOLD
csr-banners_gold-3885724f4edb45b3a29a42b8fcdc365f.jpg


PLATINUM
csr-banners_platinum-02f54da5f2434528ba72a1869303c624.jpg


DIAMOND
csr-banners_diamond-b570faa93f384c59b4ce5dfb52a4b8a0.jpg


After earning your starting rank, the ONLY way to increase your rank is by winning. For team-oriented playlists, this emphasizes the importance of team play. Whether you drop 30 kills in a game of Slayer or single-handedly capture every flag in a CTF match, wins are the only way to improve your CSR. As you win, you will progress through the 6 tiers of your rank. If you are skilled enough to continue winning at tier 6, you will advance to the next rank (yay!). Losing games will cause your progress within a rank to decrease, but you will never drop down a whole rank from losing. For example, if you spend all month working your way into Silver, losing won’t drop you back to Bronze.

ONYX
csr-banners_onyx-439ae581c6ad4a268779d330e97235fa.jpg


CHAMPION
csr-banners_champion-4c12c8877bb744f48bc77def1f77ff77.jpg


At the highest end of the ranking system, we have the Onyx and Champion ranks which behave slightly differently than the other ranks. Once you reach Onyx, you will be shown your raw CSR score. Winning no longer increases your tier – it instead increases your CSR score. This allows you to compare yourself with greater precision to other players within the Onyx rank. If you establish yourself as one of the top 200 players in a playlist, you will earn the highly coveted rank of Champion and be shown your place within the top 200.

SEASONS
Seasons are a new competitive feature for Arena that gives you a chance to continuously challenge yourself while having the opportunity to earn monthly rewards. When Seasons debut later this year, your CSR in certain playlists will be reset and you will play your placement matches again. You get a fresh start each month to try to prove yourself in select Seasonal Arena playlists. This gives you a chance to top your performance from last season, and see how high of a rank you can achieve. Seasons will last for a month, and anybody who earns a CSR in a Seasonal Playlist will earn cosmetic rewards to commemorate the Season. (Here's a sneak peek at the emblem rewarded for the December season)

banner-banner-f261c60b26d944ce9c2693521fabb236.jpg


Season boundaries will also be an important milestone for when we make changes to the Arena experience based on community feedback. Once we launch, we will be listening for all types of feedback regarding Arena: favorite maps, mode settings, playlists, etc...We plan to implement all of these changes at season boundaries.

MATCHMAKING
Finding a balanced, low-ping match is of the utmost importance when playing Arena. Halo 5 is designed to have a high skill ceiling, and we know how frustrating it can be to play with or against players who aren’t at your skill level. We prioritize match quality above all else when finding matches in Arena. We begin by trying to find other players that are at your exact CSR. If we can’t find enough players, we very slowly open up this limitation and look for players that are around your same skill.

EVERY ARENA MATCH STARTS FROM THE BEGINNING
In Arena, you will never join a match that’s already in progress. You will get a fresh match every time without fear of putting your hard earned CSR at risk and joining a losing team in the middle of a match. Your skill, teamwork, and decision making during the entirety of each match will decide whether you win or lose. Since joining a match in progress is disabled for Arena matchmaking (still available in Custom Games and in Warzone), quitting out of a match damages the quality and experience for the other seven players in that match. Leaving your teammates high and dry is not cool. If you quit out of games, not only will you suffer a loss and forfeit any REQ points or XP but you’ll also receive a temporary cooldown penalty (ban) preventing you from matchmaking in Arena.

THE BANHAMMER STRIKES!
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It’s important to us that everyone enjoys their experiences in Arena play. To maintain the quality of the Arena experience and sanctity of competition, a number of rules are in place for all Arena playlists. Halo 5: Guardians is engineered to detect and track the following behavior:

-Quitting matches
-Betrayals or team killing
-Idling (AFK)
-Intentional suicides
-Excessive disconnects

If you repeatedly engage in negative behaviors such as the ones listed above, you will receive a ban and be prevented from entering matchmaking. The duration of each ban is dependent on the offense and becomes more severe with each successive infraction, so continually killing your teammates to steal the Sniper Rifle will quickly lead to long timeouts from matchmade play.

THE NEXT GENERATION OF HALO ESPORTS STARTS OCTOBER 27!
No matter what your skill level, Arena is the place to be if you are looking for old or new school multiplayer competition on Xbox. With our new CSR System, finely tuned matchmaking, fair starts, and a banhammer stricter than a MLB World Series Umpire - we are incredibly excited to offer a live eSport for all owners of Halo 5 to participate in.

Whether you roll solo or with friends – the time has never been better to step up and define your Halo career, relive the legacy of Halo, trash-talk your friends, or show our Pro-Team how it’s done!

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/community/blog-posts/enter-the-arena
 
This does sound awesome - assuming the algorithms work well. Too tight and people get hit by false positives. Too loose and dickwads carry on getting away with it.
 

Omni

Member
Sounds good. They've got a lot riding on this, so I hope it works day one.

I don't see it quoted but will a person's highest Arena rank be displayed on their profiles?
 
Great. A ranking system that priorities teamwork and wins and drops when you lose, monthly seasons to participate in, no join-in-progress, and bans to discourage mass quitting/idling/bad sportsmanship.

Now just get those dedicated servers working day(week) one with fast matchmaking.
 

TrounceX

Member
This. Looks. Amazing.

Can't wait to see the complaints about winning being the only way to rank up. K/D ratio means very little in Halo, it's about doing whatever it takes to win the game.
 

link1201

Member
Awesome. I've been waiting for this breakdown.

Edit:
We prioritize match quality above all else when finding matches in Arena. We begin by trying to find other players that are at your exact CSR. If we can’t find enough players, we very slowly open up this limitation and look for players that are around your same skill.
Sounds awesome. The ranking was a highlight for me during the beta....so many close matches.
 

Akai__

Member
Not a fan of Seasons and I hope not every list is ranked. I don't want to compete all the time so a Social playlist would be welcomed.

Also, I'm a huge fan of these bans. Every game with ranking needs to have strict penalties.

How does it determine what an "intentional suicide" is?

Jumping of the map for example and I'm sure they have figured out how to detect stuff like intentional grenade suicides. I'm also confident that it will only kick in if it's excessive.
 
How does it determine what an "intentional suicide" is?

It's probably looking mostly at quantity. i.e. if you have 10 suicides in a match, it's extremely unlikely it's an accident. They can definitely factor in other values easily as well, but quantity will almost certainly be chief.
 

Madness

Member
After earning your starting rank, the ONLY way to increase your rank is by winning.

Crosspost: Oh God. I spent my first ten matches in the beta learning the mechanics, got placed in garbage tier rank, and then spent the next several weeks winning/losing with random and never going up. Almost every match I started to go like 20-2 and yet I couldn't be placed higher.

Those first ten matches are the difference between getting gold and maintaining near onyx or getting bronze and spending months and months of grinding to possibly get up.

So I'm wondering if Ram, Tawpgun, Overdoziz, ExWife and the other semi-pro players here can backpack us up, if possible.
 

LycanXIII

Member
Jumping of the map for example and I'm sure they have figured out how to detect stuff like intentional grenade suicides. I'm also confident that it will only kick in if it's excessive.

What if I was trying to jump over a gap and was too short? It's not intentional.
 

Lingitiz

Member
I'm hoping this ranking actually balances itself out with how only winning teams get ranked up. I usually play Halo matchmaking solo so I always reach a peak at some point where I only get matched against stacked parties. Initially I put up some unrealistic numbers early on before hitting a brick wall where +1 is considered good for me.
 

jesu

Member
If it works as it's supposed to I won't mind playing Arena against my fellow Bronzers!
I just have to suffer through those first ten matches though....
 

op_ivy

Fallen Xbot (cannot continue gaining levels in this class)
I take it onyx is the new semi pro and champion is pro (from the beta)?

Love the strict banhammer stuff but please tell me the system will look out for and take care of harassers, or players that don't betray but constantly harass teammates with friendly fire so they die easier by enemy fire? This has been an issue since betrayal boots were invented and really needs to be squashed. Many a halo match has been ruined by such shitty people.
 

Nutter

Member
Crosspost: Oh God. I spent my first ten matches in the beta learning the mechanics, got placed in garbage tier rank, and then spent the next several weeks winning/losing with random and never going up. Almost every match I started to go like 20-2 and yet I couldn't be placed higher.

Those first ten matches are the difference between getting gold and maintaining near onyx or getting bronze and spending months and months of grinding to possibly get up.

So I'm wondering if Ram, Tawpgun, Overdoziz, ExWife and the other semi-pro players here can backpack us up, if possible.

LAWL at Tawp being semi-pro.
 

Dynasty

Member
Was hoping for some non party matchmaking mechanics. I think Halo3 did this if I'm not mistaken. Nothing is worse than playing a full team of 4 who are communicating while you play with randoms.
 

Daemul

Member
If you quit out of games, not only will you suffer a loss and forfeit any REQ points or XP but you’ll also receive a temporary cooldown penalty (ban) preventing you from matchmaking in Arena.

rejoice.png
 
My post from the other thread:

Sounds fantastic. At least they took feedback about the placement matches. In the Beta I got Gold Tier I despite winning 7 out of 10 games (and carrying my team most of the time). It is good to know that placement matches now rely on individual skill to determine your initial rank, then let wins determine the results of your future ranks afterward.
 
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