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This topic has moved here: Subject: Party Split ? FAO Bungie staff
  • Subject: Party Split ? FAO Bungie staff
Subject: Party Split ? FAO Bungie staff

Simplish question.

When joining a game parties can split.
Say I go into BTB with 5. Some peeps might stay on my team. Some might go to the other team.

I have no issue with this and I think I know the exact reason why but I would just like to confirm that my thinking is correct to confirm this to members of the Xbox.com forums and for my own peace of mind.

Really I would appreciate a response from a Bungie member of staff / someone who can provide the definitive yes or no so it's 100% true.

I think it's a pretty simple formula.

I would call it... Non-divisable party sizes.
e.g.
My team = 5
BTB.
Assuming 16 total players are found.
If these 16 players are made up of...
My party of 5
Another party of 5
Another party of 5
and
1 random.

Being 16 players BTB it's going to be 2 sides of 8.

There is no way, with the above combination, to ensure that everyone's party stays together. There is no way to set out the teams to make sure you are all on the same team.

e.g.
My party of 5 plus one of the random parties of 5 = 10.
Leaving the other party of 5 and the 1 lone gunner.
It keeps all the parties together but results in unfair teams (10 vs 6).

Basically if the parties have a certain set of numbers that cant be divided to keep the parties together then it will split. Thats even if its party of 7, party of 7 and party of 2.
It wont necessarly keep the two 7 parties together and just split the pair. As long as it cant fairly keep all parties in their party it will do the split and in most cases everyone has a split in their party somewhere.

Searched for clarification on this but all I see is people asking why they get split with no definitive answer from Bungie.

I can regularly with Reach or H3 look at the party sizes on the right and predict a split using this so I just assumed it was common knowledge.

Perhaps I am wrong but the evidence doesn't seem to point to this.

Can a Bungie member of staff confirm my findings?
Can someone direct me to a FAQ / thread where this clarification has been given?

[Edited on 02.11.2011 10:00 AM PST]

  • 02.11.2011 9:53 AM PDT

No FAQ. No Bungie Employee post. But that is what is assumed. Social gametypes have very lax matchmaking perimeters due to people being able to both bring in guests (who have no trueskill level really) and being able to be on both teams in one party.

So people get split. In Big Team Battle in particular parties are noted for getting split the most. You know how BTB is 16 people? Sometimes it'll match up with just 14. In which case 7 on a team and one stranded ( I could be mistaken, but I think it tries to still give the lone person an extra party member... but perhaps that's in Reach I'm thinking of). That's why in a lot of BTB parties you'll get one person designated to 'back out' at a certain point, allowing the team to restart searching and find a new game of 8v8.

In the past, parties of, say, 5 in the 5v5 Social Slayer were getting split up. It does happen in Halo 3, and it isn't too rare an event. But after these reports started coming in, Shishka (the person who 'ran' matchmaking at the time) came out and said that was not intentional- it was an error on their part, and asked for people to give examples so he could find the solution.

To be honest, I'm not sure if that was ever fixed. But either way, it shows that getting split could happen either way- either the way you described, or by a glitch where teams would just randomly get split.

From my understanding anyways.

  • 02.11.2011 11:10 AM PDT