Source: Xbox Game Studios
Halo players have discovered a severe issue with the Halo Infinite matchmaking system: your performance in Social playlists (such as Fiesta or Big Team Battle) has a direct impact on the players the game will match you with in competitive Ranked Arena matches. Playing poorly in Social will result in the Ranked matchmaking system matching you with low-skill players, while getting lots of kills and assists in Social will cause the Ranked matchmaker to pit you against high-skill players.
The issue is directly related to your hidden Match Making Rating (MMR), which is what Halo Infinite uses to attempt to match you with players of a similar skill level. In most games, your MMR in non-competitive modes and your MMR in ranked modes is kept separate. In Halo Infinite, though, your MMR is influenced by your performance in both Social and Ranked playlists.
Source: Xbox Game Studios
Since Social performance affects Ranked matchmaking, players can abuse this by intentionally playing poorly in Social modes. This causes an artificial loss of MMR, which then causes the Ranked matchmaker to erroneously place them against players that are less skilled. They can then beat these players easily, gaining large amounts of Competitive Skill Rank (CSR) points. Once their MMR goes back up, they can simply go back into Social and “sandbag” more matches to lower it again.
Conversely, this issue also ruins the Ranked experience for players that like to warm up by playing Social modes. If an average player goes into Big Team Battle for a few matches and performs well before entering Ranked matchmaking, they’ll be matched against very skilled players. This effect even occurs with matches against AI bots — in fact, someone was matched with Onyx players in Ranked after only playing against bots.
This is a massive issue, and hopefully 343 Industries addresses it soon. In the meantime, though, avoid playing Social matches if you want your Ranked matchmaking experience to be as balanced as possible.
Halo Infinite’s multiplayer is free to play and is available on Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One consoles, and Windows PCs. It’s a ton of fun, and paired with the Halo Infinite campaign, it’s easily one of the best Xbox games available right now.
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