Completely unfair matchmaking

[kalez238]

In what universe is a lvl 33 with 6csr fighting a lvl 130 with ~30csr proper matchmaking?

 

I'm trying to have a good time with my family and friends here, but 9/10 matches result in matchmaking like this on the same maps over and over, and we get slaughtered. Whose idea was this?

Edited October 15, 2014 by BeckoningZebra1
Removed cursing

[Unease Peanut]

Well let's be honest... The game is already over a year old,most players have maxed their rank. It isn't that hard you know.

There are not a lot of low levels out there which makes it harder to be paired up with them.

Then again, level doesn't reflect the skill in Halo 4.

[kalez238]

True, but for the higher levels I would say it does. Sure, a lower level could be really good, and that is fine, it happens, but I highly doubt a level above 100 is going to suck and thus should not be paired with someone level 20-40.

I understand that we can't always win. Fair enough. I would not call myself an expert at the game. I am a decent player, I played Halo3 for years and could hold my own, but these matches... for some of them my average life span time was like 10 seconds or less with only 2 kills. No one in my family who plays with us has a higher level than me, and it is getting to the point where online play isn't even fun. Is it that hard to ATTEMPT decent level matching? What is the point of having SR or CSR levels if the game isn't going to match them accordingly?

[RedStarRocket91]

Unfortunately, this is a population thing rather than anything to do with the matchmaking system itself. When you've got 5,000 lobbies and 40,000 players in a single playlist, then it's fair to assume that there'll be at least several dozen matches where all players are at an appropriate skill level for you. Even as populations shrink, it's still often possible to get into a reasonably-balanced game: someone with a CSR of 30 probably doesn't play that differently from someone with a CSR of 28 or 33, for example, and so it's still possible to get into games where everyone is at least roughly even in skill.

 

The problem with Halo 4 is that the populations for most playlists are just so low that there aren't enough players to allow lobbies to be divided by skill level to any meaningful degree. At around 2-4k populations, matches played in Big team and Team Slayer still tend to be reasonably balanced (though even then, it's becoming frustratingly common to get really imbalanced lobbies in team Slayer), but as most other playlists consistently have populations of fewer than 1k, there just aren't enough players to try and separate by skill in any meaningful way, especially as the skill level of the population isn't evenly distributed. Put another way - how do you set up a lobby with a skill of CSR 15, when there are only ten CSR 15s in the whole playlist - and half of those are already in other matches?

[Twinreaper]

And this is yet another prime example of why having a low number of lobbies is the best type of matchmaking setup. Since Halo 2, the amount of lobbies has increased and further divided the population out too thin. Red hits the mark with his response. As population dwindles, it would be far better to have lobbies compacted and merged to maximize the experience and level gap.