How does Matchmaking work?

[Beta55]

For the past couple days I've been pinned against people that are level 50-87 and often in parties, while I'm almost always getting dumped in to an ongoing game where my team has effectively already lost.

 

This is starting to frustrate me. Why aren't parties pinned against other parties, and why aren't I pinned against people in my own general level? It wasn't a problem when I got the game on Monday, nor was it a problem on Tuesday or Wednesday.

 

Can someone help explain Halo 4's matchmaking to me, please?

 

Also, is there a way to ensure you'll get set up for a new game, rather than one already in progress?

[fzdw11]

For the past couple days I've been pinned against people that are level 50-87 and often in parties, while I'm almost always getting dumped in to an ongoing game where my team has effectively already lost.

 

This is starting to frustrate me. Why aren't parties pinned against other parties, and why aren't I pinned against people in my own general level? It wasn't a problem when I got the game on Monday, nor was it a problem on Tuesday or Wednesday.

 

Can someone help explain Halo 4's matchmaking to me, please?

 

Also, is there a way to ensure you'll get set up for a new game, rather than one already in progress?

 

Okay, let me attempt to explain how the system works, though I can't guarantee that it is 100% accurate. Your SR# means very little, as far as your actual "skill" goes. Everybody can get to SR-50 and above, just by playing the game. That being said, somebody with a high SR could be good, or they could be terrible. This # has nothing to do with how they match you up with people.

 

Behind the scenes, they have a skill based system in place, but not visible to anybody as of yet (come early 2013, it'll start showing on Waypoint, whether they reset your skill or not is yet to be determined). This is how the system determines who to place you against, it looks for people of similar skill to your own. How much varience is included in this, I do not know, but as an example, if you were a 30 in Halo 3, it would attempt to match you with other 30's, and then 25's - 35's, and so on and so forth, until it found a match. I'm assuming it is doing something similar in this situation, but it is currently not visible, like I stated earlier. So, when you first started playing on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the system was trying to find a baseline for your skill rank, and now that it has, it is going to start matching you against players of similar skill to your own.

 

As for matching against parties, that one is a pain and I agree, parties should match against other parties (or at least parties of 4 or 8, if they don't want to match parties of 2 against other parties of 2). And currently, I am not aware of any way to make it so you only search for new games, and not games in progress. Though whenever I've joined a game in progress, it's never been at a point where the game was already lost, I've always been placed in a game that was within 5 (8 at most) kills of catching the other team and taking the lead, and I have taken the lead in a few of those games.

 

Anyway, I hope I've helped explain some things for you, and keep on playing.

[Beta55]

I've lost the past dozen games. I'm just about finished with Halo 4.

 

I was having so much fun initially, but the past couple of days have been absolutely brutal. Nothing quite like going from every game being my team's MVP to being brutally raped every game by an entire party of people that seem to be more skilled than myself.

 

Thanks for the info.

[FaTaL]

I am almost certain that parties ARE matched up against other parties of the same size. Party of 3 is matched with at least a party of 3 and so on. But, randoms can be added into the mix. This is just knowledge I have pulled from previous games and as well as playing online Halo 4 Matchmaking.

[Epique Phael]

Not seen anyone lvl87 yet. Don't know who (with a life) would have the patience to grind spartan ops/MM that much