Do you think 343 should change Halo SBMM?

I love it when the worst person on the enemy team has a higher score than the best person on our team. Totally not rigged.

Not to mention the sbmm updating match by match is the reason we can’t have pre/post game lobbies anymore! Which is the biggest problem in Infinite for me, as a casual player

the overtuned SBMM is the biggest problem I have with halo infinite currently. I want so much to learn this game and become a better player, but as long as there’s a system in place that actually *punishes* players for being better I’ll never have the motivation to try. Making sure new players don’t get stomped and ensuring all players have a good time without having to sweat every single match are NOT mutually exclusive. I don’t believe this false dilemma put forth by 343 and others who defend hard SBMM. It’s absurd.

i understand sbmm to an extent but being punished in social arena and sometimes having teammates not your skill range says a lot how bad it can be

Social is unplayable for me at this point. Either I'm getting destroyed or I'm carrying the entire team and still losing.

The game gives you a few wins, then lots of losses so you can get a higher dopamine hit when you finally get a win; It's ment to frustrate you so you'll play longer. It has the opposite effect because there is nothing to grind passed the sweat-fest for.

The idea that the computer decides who wins and loses each game is a large contributing factor to why I haven't picked it back up.

Thank you for your continued coverage of this. SBMM is my number one gripe with this game. And the devs never mention it.

Please keep bringing this up. 343 needs to act on this

I have lost 9 out of the last ten matches, and that one win I had to fight for my life in. By 343's own SBMM logic I shouldn't be losing this often, but when I'm constantly going up against the same four Diamond and Onyx level players that have iron grips on power weapons and vehicles and my team is made up of Bronze and Silver players it just seems like the game has it out for me. This is the worst time I've had in a multiplayer game, and I used to grind Crucible in Destiny 2!

It is sad that many great games are having strict match matchmaking. Old games were truly gold.

baffling how they don't just use the matchmaker that has been present in halo from 2 all the way to 4. nobody complained about it. its insane how this studio finds every little way they can to ruin halo for no reason.

This isn't a halo problem. All multiplayer games nowadays use this super strict sbmm. It won't change because it has become the industry standard. It feels worse in halo than other games because halo was always more of a social game experience.

I recently had a game to where I was 26 - 3 in kills to deaths meanwhile my teammates averaged to 5 - 15, sometimes you just get games that are too low for your sbmm. And then the game after that I get curb stomped by onyx level players decked out in that infamous master chief armor kit and Halo esports armor effect sweating his balls off

Every time I try to get my friends into anything. The first question they ask me is about the matchmaking. If there is strict SBMM, they don't even consider playing. They've been so hyped for XDefiant because of the reason that it doesn't have SBMM. It doesn't belong in almost any game, especially in non-ranked matches. Splatoon 3 also handles this system pretty well by letting variety be a thing while protecting "bad" players. SBMM is the true essence of a vibe killer.

I think completely pandering to the competitive community has just about ruined halo. I miss all the weapons we had before and I liked that there were unsc weapons and covenant equivalents. It felt like each faction was fleshed out and had armories that could adapt to any situation. Now in the campaign the banished use human weapons half the time, and weapons that have been around forever are gone.

I literally had fellow Halo community members crying and walk away from the game for how much SBMM has affected/bastardized their Halo experience.

I think this might be the hardest thing to get change on, because I imagine investors are happy with what they were sold on. This “engagement-based matchmaking.” It sounds like something that the people who pay 343i but don’t play video games would want to keep the numbers up. However, I also think it’s reached a breaking point. MWIII is getting raked over the coals for the strictest sbmm ever, and here is the halo tuber with arguably the most influence among 343i talking about it. I hope we can beat the corpo suits and ties and make games fun again.

Its abysmal - I'm consistently put onto teams where teammates can only manage 3-4 kills a game vs the enemy team who's dropping 12-14 kills

I'm convinced the fiesta weapon spawns are righed too. I spawn with the plasma pistol as a primary up to 4 times in a row most matches. Statistically its impossible for that to happen if the spawns are random

Such strict SBMM is the reason I go out of my way to keep my K/D ratio negative during matches. Saves me so much stress.

I hate sbmm. Almost every social match I play feels like a sweatfest. I really wish 343 could make it so that social games have it turned off or at least turned down.

I don't play nearly as long of a session in Infinite as I did in other Halos because the game so obviously creates an outcome based on my last game. Just knowing I don't have a chance to win 2 games in a row makes me not want to play. But I really love the gameplay so I keep coming back despite this.

I thought I was the only one. I can play very well (15-3) or average (12-11) for 5 matches, but then, I start questioning my abilities because I get absolutely demolished (talking about 2-15 or worse.)

It feels like every game I have a teammate who's playing on a steering wheel

we should have a menu like MCC where if you want to play slayer big team heavies you choose it and if you wanna play objectives then you choose that playlist.. sometimes is annoying playing objectives (Total control, CTF) 3-5 times in a row

Yeah it is an issue i am average player, and it varies like crazy, i feel bad for the players i play against that absolutely slams 30 kills 3 deaths but the rest of the team has like 1-4 so they lose, but then i have a decent game 15 kills 2 deaths suddenly i get in a lobby of john wicks. Its all over the place

I'm glad you made this video, I was literally thinking about SBMM last night. In my squad battle games it was smash or get smashed, every game back and forth with no in between. And on the games where we were smashed, I was doing like 12 and 7 and my second place player was around 4 and 11. I just sucks, so I hope if the community really makes a big stink 343 may start talking about it.

johsua menke single handedly on a mission from the latter day saints to make life for everyone in CoD, Halo and league of legends hell. What a legend.

Great video and definitely needed. To go along with this I also think there needs to be more discussion around fixing Ranked playlists to not penalize you when a player drops. I thought they had fixed this but I was in several games last night (like a 2v4 capture the flag) where I decided to leave. It seems it is penalizing 5 points even though someone else already dropped. When you get into these unwinnable matches and someone rage quits then you should be able to back out without being penalized.

Biggest issue with the current sbmm system is that it is so strict it actively prioritizes matching you according to your skill level over having a good connection.

SBMM is literally the one thing that puts me off this game, I constantly get team mates who play with their toes 😢

Thank you for covering this... The ranked matchmaking feels really hard to win. Couple that with players dropping after the first point lost or getting kicked from the server, and they're impossible. Its just not fun, especially this season.

Easiest fix: Only specifically ranked modes should take skill into account. All other lobbies should just throw whoever in together. Yes, sometimes that will mean there are utter stomps in casuals. Having been on both ends of that, it doesn't happen every match, and if a person can't handle it then they aren't going to be playing online much anyway.

We need to start something where we all mail in letters to the office to get them to stop the strict sbmm and overload their office with these petitions just like people sent them way too much pizza when MCC was made available on pc

I hadn’t played halo in months and felt like it was my first time ever playing the game with the matches I was in.

can we talk about how the ranked system team balances on mmr, I feel like this shouldn't be the case, you either are able to play as well as anybody in your ranked range, or you shouldn't be in that rank range to begin with, I hate that good players that deserve to rank up are matched with worse players of the same rank, it just makes it harder to progress

is anybody else bugged by the fact that fiesta isn’t actually fiesta? there’s a lot of preset weapon combos that you randomly get, instead of randomly getting two weapons

after the first video you made on this topic, ive slowly noticed this also happens in Overwatch 2. some matches my team stomps, the next multiple we get stomped. very few matches are even semi even in skill

I think sbmm is ok to an extent. 343 definitely needs to relax it quite a bit especially with squad battle. I tried playing squad battle a few times when it was first added and haven’t played since because it just wasn’t fun for me.

I haven't played Infinite in over a year thanks to this. Makes the game completely unfun when the matchmaking is actively forcing you to lose half of your games making everything a sweat fest if you want to win even in so called "social" unranked playlists.

Completely agree with your analysis in this video! This is really important and I can say first hand it has made some of my friends and even myself at times avoid multiplayer matches like the plague! It’s almost impossible for me to get a group of my friends together nowadays to play halo multiplayer matches. They only want to play custom games! Which btw, custom games are a ton of fun rn, but it shouldn’t feel like a daunting task to play multiplayer. Very important video and great analysis!

Definitely agree. This SBMM is one of the few major issues left to address in this game now, IMO it would be a huge mistake for 343 to ignore it.

To put a positive spin on things, so much outcry about these kind of systems goes to show how much better the raw gameplay content of the game is now, so people can turn their attention to these things

We don’t need it

You really nailed that point about Halo being sweatier than it was in 2008. Everyone wants to be a professional gamer nowadays.

That stick at the end was gold

All that’s left for me personally with Halo Infinite is lobbies returning, getting rid of/toning down SBMM in social and a map veto system like Reach had. These three things would make multiplayer pretty perfect imo

Squad Battle getting its SBMM increased would explain why I’ve been getting ass blasted and subsequently pissed off the last few times I’ve been playing that mode.

I caught myself getting pissed off during a game even tho my team was winning and I was ontop of the board I was sweating so hard just to compete I wasn’t having fun

Thaaaaank you mint!!!! I've been dealing with this in ranked since launch. I play CONSISTENTLY better every match and the game CONTINUALLY makes every subsequent match HARDER by giving me even WORSE teammates. My stats are ridiculous but so are all my losses. Unless you roll with a fireteam, good play results in punishment.

Thank you for bringing attention to this issue! This is precisely why I can't fully enjoy this game. If my friends want to play with me, they *have* to go up against people absolutely shitting on them, and I have to carry the team. Pretty much everyone gets sick of this within 30 minutes and many don't return.

I swear I’ll get teammates who legitimately don’t know how to play. They’ll wonder around aimlessly, completely ignoring objectives and enemies. I can’t even be mad at them because I’m pretty sure it’s someone’s 5yo kid. It’s like me and maybe another person against the entire enemy team almost every match

Glad you're talking about this, we've been trying to enjoy ranked but it just has not been a good experience.

Still way better than Overwatch. I feel like I win the vast majority of my matches in more kill-based modes as long as I'm consistently going +10 to +20 elims higher than anybody else in the lobby, whereas when I do the same in Overwatch I still lose around 45% of my matches due to some garbage teammate who isn't properly fulfilling their role. Capture The Flag and Oddball are rough though with nobody playing the objective to take advantage of all your kills, and social modes should be more casual. Besides that though Halo matches are almost always fun, whereas Overwatch ones are almost always stressful.

Thanks!!! 343 has to change this, ASAP!!!

Whatever bungie did, prime time halo 3 big team. I know all the dlcs were out, at least sandbox. It was so social and fun and great for a Friday night. Infinite does feel like another job

I love how Blitz casually talks about Infinite's issues while showing millionaires and landing that ridiculous spike-nade stick at the end. Content is crazy.

Yeah skill based matchmaking has completely ruined my experience with season 5. I've been playing a lot since season 5 launched and I've only ever been paired up with incredibly sweaty people. I am not very good and I don't take the game very seriously so to get curb stomped 20 matches in a row just really sucks. Especially since the few matches I did win was because my teammates carried me which made me feel bad cause I felt like dead weight. This all changed when I started playing with my friend. For the first time not only was I performing well going 20/2 but I was having a lot of fun with the multiplayer. But that was also short lived cause later I felt like I was a part of the problem ruining the game for other people. The friend I was playing with was very new to the game and incredibly inexperienced and so were probably the people on the other team and I could have ruined several peoples experience with the game. I just wish it could go back to the way it was at the start of season 4. The games felt well balanced and the matches were always neck and neck. Well hopefully if I play long enough the system will realize I don't belong in that skill bracket and knock me down a few pegs and I can start having fun again.

This is deja vu from Destiny’s PVP experience

I see this a lot. I win 2 games, lose 2 to 4, then get a stupid win streak where my team and I OBLITERATE the other team 2 to 4 games in a row.

I had a game where the matchmaking expected me to go slightly negative in kd. And it was bang on with its prediction. Issue is: I was on top of my team's leaderboard and i performed as it expected. The enemy team completed trashed us. That basically concludes that the matchmaker literally put me in an unwinnable match where we were supposed to be trashed. Normally i wouldn't have an issue with this, but that is what sbmm is supposed to stop. I only had a few hours into halo infinite multiplayer at that point and just quit.

What bothers me more is that if your game crashes in a match especially in ranked that you can’t join back even if you are with a fireteam

100% agree with everything you said. Halo should be fun first, the competitive side will be driven by the community the game attracts.

im honestly sick of crushing the enemy or getting destryed by the oposite team every game

Having bad teammates comes and goes when the system is more sporadic, that is fine but not every single game. Social matches are there to bring the community together, play with your friends, play with your viewers, etc. The current SBMM does not really accommodate to the current player base for Halo Infinite, it needs to be weaker. For a mode where you are not playing for a rank or for any gains whatsoever, it sure does feel like it. I would love to play swat with my friends, and that goes with all the viewers I have when I stream or even when I just encounter random people. It sucks I have to shoot everyone down because I know I can't play with friends in a few social game modes. Some of the closest people I know online has been me randomly matching them and then partying up together, the fact I can't do this is social swat goes to show why some modes have issues with the community trying to connect to each other. Another big thing is queue times. The game tries to hand pick people one by one to which will result in a long queue time if you are good or if you reside outside North America. Being good outside of America is just a double whammy of long queue times resulting in people straight up not being able to play the game. In the middle of February 2021, 343 pushed an update that prioritized connection more than anything, this was when people were connecting to EU server while from NA and so on. This update had connection override SBMM, and for the one and only day on Halo Infinite, people of all skill, people at any time, people of any party size were able to queue in any playlist they wanted and found games within a minute. I know because I was one of those people. Sadly, this update broke ranked and was reverted back the next day, but this update goes to show that the reason why people sit in queues for a long time, can't find matches, or can't play with friends is clearly due to SBMM. I would love to see Mint do a deep dive into SBMM as I am honestly doing the same thing. I do think SBMM should exist but not to the current extent. A looser, more random system would be more beneficial for all of the community such as your content creators, sweats, casuals, and even players that are just getting into gaming today. I really want this game to thrive as I think it has potential, it just needs tweaks. I also fail to understand why some modes are getting SBMM changed to making it more strict or making it less strict, it's social, don't change things where it prevents people from playing the game with friends or making it into a social ranked mode with no ranked rewards.

I've been playing since CE but am primarily a campaign guy. Each game over the years, my K/D has been like 1.05. I am just naturally volatile, sometimes going 25-10, sometimes going 10-25. So I am usually pretty oblivious to SBMM 😅

Sbmm in social gamemodes never made sense to me since cod started it years ago, shouldn’t be in casual gamemodes so everyone can just have fun constantly, and if they don’t, then they can leave and find a different match rather than leaving and finding the same match because your “skill” is still high up

I encountered this bad last week. Won 3 games in a row only to the lose the next 7 in a row. I will say though I have previously liked the matchmaking as I like when the games are close and they usually are quite close. What gets me peeved is when I'm in a game and carrying the team for the most part only to lose anyway. I imagine as you have previously described that it is easier to place a single great player on a team with mediocre players than to find a handful of good players all evenly ranked. Regardless I do advocate for sbmm.

This season is the season I have the worst stats, sometimes it's a skill issue but it feels like most of the time I just get screwed over by the matchmaking

The competitive gaming scene is really the greatest threat to fun in modern multiplayer gaming. Non-ranked modes really shouldn’t be forced into this type of restrictive match making. I understand ranked and E Sports, but I just want to have fun in Halo when I’m playing casually (which is how I play exclusively). I don’t even care if I lose, its just not fun if I go from dominating completely in one game to getting absolutely destroyed while my team stands there.

I've pretty much walked away from Halo for this reason. Solo queuing in Arena is the most painful experience ever. Since the start of the new season, I was placed D3, and it has been the most painful grind to Onyx I've ever experienced. Not only am I getting matched with solo's on my team against 4 stacks, the teammates I'm getting have no mics and are almost always incompetent to the point where I wonder how they're actually in the same skill group. The game's ranked experience leaves so much to be desired. It's not fun, it's not rewarding and it places you into unwinnable games almost always. I'll be taking a break from Halo until they address this issue. Oh - and extraction is the worst, most broken game type I've ever played.

I still say desync is a worse problem. It keeps getting worse too. Desync in season 5 is the worst it's ever been. It's ridiculous that I live in Oregon, have a sub 30ms ping, gig speed internet and still deal with obvious Desync in as much as HALF of my games.

I can have a 20 to 30 kills / 10-15 deaths game and the next I’m sweating trying to even get one, this is really annoying..

Seriously, thank you for finally addressing this. Tve sbmm pisses me off so much

I’ve just lost five games in a row in the featured playlist because every time a teammate either goes AFK or leaves and is replaced by a useless bot. Every. Single. Time.

Its gotten even way worse for me this season. I know I'm able to compete at a Diamond level but right now I'm stuck in Plat 2-3 in ranked because it only matches me up with plat5-diamond4s. I'm able to win some of those matches and keep my position but it feels like the game is ACTIVELY puting up a wall and not letting me progress through the ranks. Like its forcing a 50/50 winrate by upscaling my opponents. Social also feels just as sweaty as ranked, but with even worse teamates.

Modern gaming does not use SBMM (skill based matchmaking); Modern Gaming uses EOMM (Engagement Optimized MatchMaking) designed to force wins and losses to create frustration to continue playing the game more. It is used a a player retention tool instead of using fun as a player retention tool.

Glad you keep bringing this up Mint. This is Infinites #1 issue ATM imo. As other issues get fixed this issue start to be more and more glaring. Imo the ranked MM seems way too strict and to difficult and the social MM seems way too lax and/or punishing you too greatly by giving you bad teammates. Seems their MM is at both ends of the spectrum instead of finding a fair balanced match in the middle.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve even been able to load into any btb matches, pretty much the only game modes I’ve been able to actually load into are infection and the current two new maps matches.

They need to bring back the system that worked since the older halo games up until they changed it after reach/halo 4

I played a ridiculously good set of Husky Raid matches where I out performed my expected number of kills, and every game since then I've been straight garbage

Completely agree with your points but holy shit man those last few clips were wild, had to rewatch those parts again just to actually listen to your points since I was so invested in the gameplay lmao

Personally, I can deal with hard lobbies. What I can’t deal with is a terrible map selection, like the one squad battle has rn. Absolutely awful, one one good map, and it’s like CTF is the only mode sometimes.

I feel it recently. It feels like whenever I log in I get smoked like 3 games in a row or so before it starts to level out

Thank you Mintz for keeping this subject alive. Never let it die until Halo is cured from this SBMM bullshit. MAKE SOCIAL PLAYLISTS CASUAL AGAIN

This is very true. I can never play a game of squad battle that isn't insanely sweaty.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who started to notice this after returning

It’s like losing isn’t enough. If you lose but still perform, they’ll make you lose till you barely go positive (or worse)

Finally someone will talk about it I lost 7 ranked slayer matches in a row and I’m usually an onyx 1800 in regular ranked it’s insane

Me and my friend have been playing Husky Raid a lot lately. One game we will do exceptionally well and then the next game we get completely destroyed

Does the setting in gameplay that lets you chose between expanded or local do anything about Sbmm ?

SBMM has definitely ruined my experience. Doesnt help that I took a break after Season 1, playing the same 4 maps, BTB being broken, and game match fails. Now its just straight sweatfests

Had a fiesta game a few days ago where our lowest scoring player went 3/20. It was absolutely frustrating.

I remember one night where I played 10 Team Slayer matches, and lost all 10. I was 1st on my team in every match with the most kills/points and most objective points, but was paired with 3 teammates who were nowhere near my skill level, against decently average players or 4-stacks each match. I've mostly stopped playing 4v4 and play Squad Battle/BTB now because the SBMM feels a lot less punishing in these playlists, but it still happens. The most frustrating part is how artificial the system feels. I will know within seconds of a match starting if the game has decreed that I will lose this time, because everyone on my team is a new player with the "1" emblem, while the enemy team is filled with regular players and squads. I'm not expecting to win every match I play, that's fine and I get that. But the way the system artificially forces losses on players (and often at the expense of new players being used as cannon fodder), is such an awful system.

All of that sounds messed up; what really stands out to me is the game restricting who you can play with. That's bizarre. Thanks for your coverage, Mint!

I redownload Infinite when season 5 first came and played it for the first time in idk, 6+ months. First match on I ended up being the best player in the lobby, and I literally thought to myself "Oh boy, how badly am I going to be punished by having a single good game". Second match was closer, third was a match of slayer we won by 5 kills, and the fourth match I quit out of because we were getting our assholes turned inside out by the other team. It really is THAT quick and aggressive. Halo's gameplay is deep enough and has a high enough learning curve and skill ceiling that you can still have fun without doing super well (unlike other games with severe and predatory SBMM like CoD), but still, it's not fun feeling like I'm being punished for having a couple good matches every once in a blue moon. Put that shit in ranked and keep it out of pubs.

I'm just tired of getting challenges to win games, then getting matched against Optic in the off season and getting teammates who seemingly play with their feet

Can't tell you how many 0-3 CTF games i've played. I always get a team that act like they've never played CTF before.