- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Posted by: TheMoose15
Hey guys I figured I'd just put my 2cents into this thread and give you some practical examples based on my own experiences. On this account: TheMoose15 I achieved a rank of lvl 49 with a team of 4 almost a month ago, and due to our disparate schedules couldn't really play together all that much anymore. So, I decided to go into slayer by myself in an attempt to get my 50. Now don't get me wrong I'm not a pro player or anything, but I consider myself at least above average at the game. So long story short I wound up losing my 49 and dropping to a 48 where I would win maybe 2-3 games then lose one due to playing with random teammates. Now if I knew how the ranking system worked in the past I would've never bothered playing extra games in Team Slayer by myself, because playing additional games drastically reduces your leveling potential. This is because overtime the system hones in on your apparent "actual" skill level. Recently I began playing with my team again and won close to 10 games before finally losing one. The funny thing was the teams we were playing were far lower ranks than us. Our team consisted of 48.48.48.46 while the opposing teams would all be low 40's such as 41.40.42.39. Here's an example from that 10 game run of wins.
http://www.bungie.net/Stats/GameStatsHalo3.aspx?gameid=195850 892&player=THEMooSE15
These game can be found around page 3-4 on my profile with a couple more recent one's on page 1.
As you can see our opponents are far lower level than my team making a win for us almost a pointless endeavor. I'm not exactly arguing for a change in the ranking system however, I find it slightly humorous that playing more games actually penalizes you in regards to ranking. The true skill system is actually a pretty clever mechanic but being basically penalized for going in and just playing some games by myself is my only beef with the system. Is my true skill a 48, yea it may be but in order to bring the system back into functional leveling territory you need to play and win an absurd amount of games which basically requires a functional TO4. Can you get a 50 by going in by yourself, sure, but the amount of luck involved in getting matched up with capable teammates at a higher levels is one of the deciding factors. Versus opponents of lower skill level it's possible to carry your team however as you approach people who have a similar/higher inherent ability this options becomes very limited. Basically it's just a word of warning for people playing loads of TS for fun and then complaining about having a static level. If you are in there and value your rank you need to play to win almost every game.
So in summary the system definitely works like it is supposed to, the only real problem with it was the lack of education about it's inner workings that would've prevented me from wasting my time in ranked playlists only to be penalized for it with a static rank. Also I'm not sure if you guys noticed that table they have on the trueskill microsoft research website where it lists how many games it takes in a specific gametype in order to gain a skill level. I believe the reference for 4v4 was around 10 games although I might be mistaken.
EDIT: Link info midway down page: http://research.microsoft.com/mlp/apg/faq.aspx
On a side note I recently made a new account by the tag: "Moose Snacks" where my goal was to see how high I could get by just going into slayer by myself. On my ascent through the levels I played on a couple teams. The first being a group of guys who were legitimate level 12-15's and were amazed at how I would rank up 3 levels per game while they were completely static. . Anyways counting up my games from lvl 1 to lvl 47 beginning on page 7 and ending with the link provided below my record was 42-14 going in by myself with a couple spurts of playing with random parties. I was amazed at how quickly I leveled up and since trueskill doesn't take into account individual game performance I was wondering if anyone has any insight. A similar occurrence was brought up during a win steak of double team where my brother who was a lvl 7 at the time and me who was a lvl 1, won about 25 games straight, bringing his skill to a lvl 17 while mine got to around a 32. Now the question is my brother who had hardly played any games in DT to achieve his lvl 7 should've been leveling proportionally to me in the playlist, however his leveling completely stalled once he hit around lvl 15 requiring 5 or more consecutive wins in order for him to rank up. A decent example of this is shown on page 4 of Moose Snacks. Anyways I'm bored at work and thought I'd jump in here, if anyone actually takes the time to read through this feel free to fire some feedback / questions whatever at me. Thanks.
47 game, page 4
http://www.bungie.net/Stats/GameStatsHalo3.aspx?gameid=189508 878&player=MooSe%20SnAcKs
You bring up a few very valid points:
1) Dont play ranked until you are happy with your skill level...you will be penalized with a slow grind to your true skill. Basically don't learn how to play this game in the ranked lobbies.
2) There seems to be something additional to number of games played within a playlist that Bungie uses (your doubles example). A friend of mine and I started TS at the same time...maybe 10 games total seperated us. We have played togetehr ever since and were almost the same rank when we started (I think 1 skill level diff), and now we have an 8 point skill rank disparity on that playlist. It's possible Bungie does some other "off the books" analysis on your gamertag...maybe things like EXP, total games played across all playlists etc, but only applies minor importance to those numbers.