Before I get started on today’s blog I just want to say that Chapter 2 of “Forming a Team” is in the works! It’s just taking forever to do it.
Ever since I wrote my last blog “What Happened” I’ve been thinking about my ideal ranked playlist(s). I believe everything should have a numerical rank, but with numerical ranks come cheaters. Oh really? You don’t say? Of course there’s going to be cheaters. Every sport has cheaters. Hell, there are people who cheat in board games. The point I’m trying to make is that it’s inevitable to stop cheaters completely, but what you can do is install a system to help moderate these cheaters. Developers need to give players the ability to notify them if they have had the misfortune of playing against a cheater. Then it is all up to the developer to decide what action to take against the offender. It should be noted that there will be people who report those who they lose against, so it has to be the developers decision. Just don’t put someone in charge who’s power hungry. The fact people cheat should not take away ranks completely.
Now since cheating has been discussed, let’s move onto how the play-list should be broken down. If there’s one thing I learned from Gears of War 3 is that less is more. Gears had a lot of playlists and everyone was all scattered. Now this is fine, but for what is necessary for a good online experience it’s going to cause a lot of work the developer. Oh well right? The normal person is going to be playing matchmaking by themselves, so why is there never a “solo or duo” option for each playlist? There is nothing more frustrating than playing against a team of four when your teammates don’t even have their mics in. Regardless of the skill level this is still a HUGE advantage. That might be hard to visualize for some of you so let’s take Team Slayer Pro and use it as an example. If my idea was implemented, when you went to join Team Slayer Pro it would bring up another list of options. These options would be: Quick Match, Normal, Solo/Duo Ranked, 4v4 Ranked. Now the user has the ability to choose everything he wants. Sadly, some of you are reading this and are saying “Well what about the other playlists?” My idea applies to all playlists.
Last but not least its time to discuss ranks. It was brought to my attention that Halo 2 actually used true skill to determine if you should level up or not. This was news to me, but it left me with the question of “what the hell has happened to true skill since then?” Halo Reach’s’ true skill was a complete joke. I remember the pros having to deal with playing AWFUL kids all the time. They would win games 50-0. Hell, I believe snipedown and his team actually committed suicide all the way to -37 and came back to win. With this said I extend my middle finger to the true skill system. So what does that leave us with? Should we create some new algorithm? Absolutely not. It’s quite apparent most console FPS games are following in Call of Duty’s foot steps, so let’s just steal ELO from League of Legends. Stop trying to come out with the “new cool thing.” It didn’t work for Spartan Ops. In fact all it did was force me to buy a flash drive. Now, ELO is a very solid rank system but it should be noted that it’s not perfect. It will get the job done but four months later there will be people complaining about the fact they’re stuck in “ELO Hell.” Oh well. At least we have ranks. I would go into more detail about ways of fixing the annoying problems of ELO, but I doubt we’ll even get this style of matchmaking so I’m not going to bother.
I know the casual scene is saying “ranks aren’t the answer,” but I’m seeing it completely different. All of you “casuals” were excited as fuck for Spartan Ops but I haven’t seen anything good regarding it. When I think of casuals I don’t think of campaign players. I think of people playing team snipers, Shotguns only on Chiron (Halo CE reference), and team SWAT. If there was a rank for those playlists you’d be proud of the rank you earned. You would enjoy playing people that are your skill level and who knows you might become slightly competitive.
“I HAVE A DREAM THAT ONE DAY, THE HALO ONLINE EXPERIENCE WILL NOT SUCK. PEOPLE WILL NOT JOIN GAMES IN PROGRESS, UNLESS THEY PLANNED TO DO SO. THAT PEOPLE WILL CONTINUE TO PLAY THE GAME BECAUSE THEY STRIVE TO GET BETTER.”
By the way, I would love a spectator mode but I’ll take ranks over spectator mode any day. All I ask is that you don’t fuck up the rank playlist. If I join ONE GAME in progress and it’s ranked I’m done. I’ll sell the disc and give up.
Peace.
