This took a long time to compile but this is EVERYTHING you need to know about Skill Based Matchmaking on Halo. I've even linked the Microsoft Trueskill 2 SBMM pdf in the description :)

Crazy how this makes both good and bad players leave matches

Thank you Remy, never stop calling 343 out for this

I miss those 100-99 games in BTB. Those were definitely fun

The system is the reason why so many won't comeback, be nice if they changed it but I doubt it.

frustrating that it is 2024 and most multi-player games still have dogshit matchmaking. I can't believe no one in the industry hasn't figured out and established a standard for it yet.

I have literally gone on 13 loss streaks in Infinite while going positive in the majority of my games and always being in the top 2 spots. SBMM in Infinite is completely insane, I love Infinite but genuinely keep putting the game down because just constantly losing while trying to play at my best is demoralizing and not fun. At least BTB doesn't seem as bad and now there's firefight.

Games can range from close to absolute slaughter. I'm only slightly above average and I have been on the receiving ends of getting crushed from bad teammates or destroying an enemy team of bad players. There needs to be a new balance to bring back players.

Every single influencer from every single game needs to cover this paper

I don’t play halo infinite too often, but when I do I will get into lobbies where my teammates are actually brand new players, level 1, mk 7 armor and everything (I’m platinum btw).

Infinite's season 5 matchmaking really killed the game for me. I've always been *bad* at video games, but I've still always had a blast with my friends. Now? I miss my friends, and I wish they would fix it.

Just goes to show that 343 still doesn't understand what made Halo great to begin with. It's more than a great story, it's more than beautiful music, it's more than a competitive multiplayer scene, and it's more than a robust forge mode. It's greater than a sum of its parts. It's about giving the player the most fun experience they can have, and usually, that's done by giving them an amazing sandbox to let the player and their friends make their own fun, or a way to let people have a good time together and make new friends. And to this day, that still goes over 343's head.

I just want Melee to fucking work.

Staggering odds with SBMM along with dealing with Desync in the middle of games definitely makes me wanna play something else. And I’ve been playing Halo since 2005

This is why I pretty much only play firefight. There was a very long time where I just completely stopped playing when firefight wasn't released. Im just trying to chill and play some halo. Not get obliterated if im not on the edge of my seat ignoring my family.

I'm 34 years old now; when I was younger and I had all the time in the world, Halo CE was the magical experience that made me love co-op gameplay and doing things with my friends. I'm pretty sure I speak for the majority of people here when I say that having a full time job, dealing with personal matters and sharing what little time off I have with friends and family doesn't give me all that much time to play video games. If it's not fun, I'm out. This perfectly describes the reason I don't play these kinds of multiplayer games anymore. If I want the play something based on skill and ability, I'll go play paintball.

5:35 This is why the customs browser and forge are so important in halo infinite. I bet they’ll keep the game alive once everyone calls BS and just stops playing Multiplayer. Also the HCS is gonna have a lot of people hyped, myself included.

As a statistician, it never ceases to amaze me that people confuse the mathematical average (mean) with the average (median). Median =/= Mean, and having matchmaking based on one and not the other will drastically change outcomes of matches.

I started a new job and don’t have as much time to play anymore. I don’t have time to practice, and I just want to relax, but even btb is hyper competitive. The new firefight mode is fun sometimes at least.

All 343 has to do is announce a halo 3 style matchmaking matching system and players would flock to it. Just the name halo 3 makes anything god tier

I just straight up stopped playing Halo Infinite PvP, mostly due to University but also because of how sweaty the game is. If I do play Halo Infinite it's either Campaign or Firefight.

My halo cycle: come back to the game with average skill, improve up to a higher tier and have fun for awhile, then get constantly stomped on and have sweat dripping on my keyboard. Then I stop playing. You're completely right about the current system making people DISengage from the game

The struggle in modern games is real. I do find myself only playing 5 games then having to take a break because of exactly this issue. Sad I can't truly just enjoy Halo for longer than just an hour.

Due to how the sweaty the matches always are for me, I've basically quit matchmaking altogether in Infinite. The only things I play are firefight and custom games. The only time I even TRY matchmaking is if I have a full squad of friends who are itching to play some slayer. But even then, we're more likely to find an enjoyable slayer map in the customs browser...

Just lost a slayer 30-50. Our team had a combined 830 games with one new player, the other team had a combined 7,400 games with one new player. The team skill thing was 956 and 990, I don't know how spaghetti the matchmaking is for this to happen.

Let me explain in husky raid terms. You spawn with a plasma pistol while the enemy spawns with a spnkr

After watching Mints video I was reminded of the machinmas that blew up during halo 3. I went down a KZfaq rabbit hole and found Pregame Lobby again. I laughed at the antics and it took me back to when Halo was everything Mint is talking about. Appreciate you Mint. Helping to keep the community together, all of it, the sweaters and the socials, just finding something that binds us.

This is why I mainly play single player/co-op games now, its not fun playing online games for an hour with these kind of systems compared to rd2 , dark souls and the halo campaigns where I am always guaranteed to have a good time.

We are gamers. We are *people.* We *aren't* numbers.

At times it feels like this game has a hit detection system in place as well. I can solo queue and constantly have 60% or higher accuracy with a 2+ K/D ratio. As soon as I team up with friends that are also good my accuracy drops to around 40%. I have hours of footage on my computer of me shooting people with 7 BR headshots straight before they die. Solo queue and it immediately goes back to the aforementioned 60%. What better way could 343 prevent a stacked team from rolling over another than by artificially lowering the accuracy of their weapons? Food for thought.

I feel a whole series of videos could be done analyzing this article. And interesting feature of TrueSkill2 I found is "When a player quits or drops out in the middle of a game, it is treated as a surrender and their skill is updated as if they lost a game (regardless of actual outcome)." Which doesn't sound bad in most cases, but it's also a green light to just quit every single you get a bad team, and that will increase your chances at a good team, which I think only encourages quitters. If I misunderstood this one please let me know

This is probably the best Halo SBMM video you have made so far. I just want to play social playlists with my friends and not have to guess if I am even going to find a match in the first place.

I can’t imagine how they think prescribing me a 50% win rate no matter how I grow as a player, is enjoyable. I find it so boring that all my matches end 50-49 , even if I m having a good game or a bad game. I never get dominated, never dominate. Just feels so bland

I'm a hardcore Halo fan and I quit Halo Infinite after playing daily for season 1-3, I have close to 3k games. The main reason I quit was this. I always said when I see a Mint vid saying they finally socialized the main playlist I'll come back. I can't believe after all this time it's still a thing, kinda sad because mechanics and gameplay wise - it's one of the best Halos I have ever played.

This is why i'm glad firefight was added. I can play with my friends and don't have to care about doing my best. We can just dick around and have fun.

I never comment on any videos, but these past weeks playing halo are driving me crazy. I think I win 1 out of 10 matches even in social, I don't know if playing firefight is affecting me by making me seem like I get a lot of kills per match. Every match has became really sweaty to the point is unenjoyable. Thank you for pointing out these problems and keep making this videos

I've noticed this for a long time, getting blueberries in all modes worst of wish is Heroic/Legendary Firefight and actually all the way down to worse RNG for good power weapons in fiesta modes, i can go hours before i spawn with rockets, hammers, or literally anything that's an actual power weapon in those modes

casino based matchmaking, ive been saying it since launch, its a trash system

Huge thank you for covering this again, you worded it so perfectly.

Same thing with Apex I think, the SBMM's goal isn't to give all the players fair matches, it's to keep them playing. We'd probably be better off with just fully random matches.

It gets so bad in Firefight that I'm singlehandedly capping the hill, and the people I'm teamed with have only basic armor and I swear are like 2 years old. They don't even know how to shoot.

I think a way we start to reduce this always sweat mindset can be something as simple as removal of the win x matches challenges. I feel like the past 2 events have been loaded with win matches challenges, thus creating more reasons for lobbies to be sweaty. I know for myself that I don’t play more big/social modes (even though I want to) for the reason that I have more control in getting a win in the 4v4 playlists

The amount of content and support you bring to this game is unmatched and truly inspiring. It seems to be a reoccurring issue in recent gaming history where Devs don’t ask creators like you to Play test so this stuff never happens. I feel like if they had someone as passionate as Mint, we would’ve had everything we have now at launch and maybe more

thank you for breaking down all this info into a video homie. keep up the grind!!

Great work covering this topic bud 💯 Have to share this with my community.

I love that so many people are upset with the sbmm and 343 chooses to ignore it.

Up till season 5 I had around 55% win rate, during season 5 I had a 37% win rate, but my kills per game assists per game, score per game and accuracy were all the highest they have been in any season. Now that we have firefight until SBMM is fixed that's all I play. When I'm not 4 stacking firefight it feels like that even has SBMM, I constantly get teammates who have less than 50 matches played who do less damage than bots and die more often.

“Well we’re not machines Chief”

This system sucks it needs to change, now.

Glad you’re talking about this Mint. So many people complaining about the shop but this and the networking are the real issues

Player Performance Data analysis can only go so far for decision making when there are so many inconsistencies in the actual stability of server performance. Through every game there are multiple server errors that completely change the outcome of player stats/performance as well as game outcomes (particularly in ranked playlists)

Every match of infinite is a struggle

I agree just stopping yourself mid game and reassuring yourself its just the system they have as well as desync...it does make it a little more tolerable but at the same time we should be past this by now. Love the info regardless just recently stumbled upon your channel. Side note as i am guilty of getting frustrated at my teamates as well and wondering whats going on i gotta remind myself of the system im dealing with. So what i think needs to happen and ill try to be one of the few that does this going forward but im going to start messaging my teammates in these games and just offer to teach or show certain tricks or jumps anything to make them play at a better level and may even help them enjoy the game more. We need more comradery these days everyones so quick to get heated myself included, but i truly believe we can change the way people interact or play this game. Food for thought is all... try being that guy next time you're in that situation where youre the one going 20+ and 6 and everyone else is 5 and 19. Whatever the case is...

They won’t change it until the next game and that’s a long shot 😂 We do need to keep up the pressure though because this SBMM is the worst version I’ve ever seen in any game

It would be nice to actually have a trash lobby to play in. I can maybe stand to play 1 or 2 matches at best due to it being so sweaty every fucking match. Out ranked in every game mode. Nothing is casual about any of the game modes on infinite

Every game, I swear, is me on top of my teams scoreboard going 20~ kills and 5 deaths, while the rest of my team are in the negative KD. The enemy team is sweating hard and my team almost always loses. I get those 2-3 teammates that are AFK all game and at least 1 teammate that just starts teamkilling when we start losing.

The question I have then is how do you decondition the player base? maybe with whatever they launch next if they take a hard stance to making the SBMM less strict per match they can set the tone for the player base from the get go?

This explains why btb heavies feels like a warzone match

It feels worse in Halo Infinite than it ever did in 5.

Is it me or every time where a steaktacular happens, the losing team has a ton of players with the "1" emblem? Either they lose or they are hard carried in a very narrow win.

I can't usually tell in Halo but holy cow Gears is horrendous. Is why I always played Horde mode

Sometimes I lead the team by a large margin, sometimes I’m the bottom and it sucks I feel like dead weight. This now being why I spend most my time in Firefight. Sucks cause I enjoy Squad Battle and H3R

Please continue covering this issue. It's why every single person in my player group dropped Infinite within months and the few that do still play only hop on for a day or two at the start of each season before getting fed up by the SBMM and leaving again.

“You don’t know”…everyone knew on day one? Everybody felt it.

I miss being able to join rumble pit WITH my friends. It was always a laugh, we never teamed up to have the upper hand, we often ended up being goofy with random people and causing a ceasefire in the lobby. I miss those more casual experiences.

On the topic of shooters in general, this is why I love TF2. I've put thousands of hours into it, and it can really deliver a casual experience. For a long time there was no matchmaking at all, and even the system that exists now is fairly light I believe (and also optional as you can still use the server browser). It's a normal experience to end up in matches where the skill level across players is random. Sure you sometimes get games where one team is absolutely stomping the other, but you get a lot of silly moments too. There's no penalty for leaving either, so if you're not having fun then find a different server. When Overwatch first released I was watching a tonne of it since all the TF2 KZfaqrs were playing it, and eventually I decided to buy it. I played maybe a few hours before I dropped it, it just wasn't fun. I was able to win matches, sure, but the general atmosphere among the players just wasn't the same, even the casual mode felt too "esports-ish" with how everyone treated it compared to TF2. This seems to have only gotten worse over the years from what I've seen, that shooters all seem to want to be the next big esport, and that true casual experience seems much rarer now. It feels like a lot of people think the only way you can have fun is by winning. Look at how the TF2 community sees maps like 2Fort or Hightower. People usually don't play the objective, sometimes even discouraging others from doing so, because everyone's just having fun screwing around. I haven't actually played any Halo PvP, I'm just in love with the campaigns, but from everything I hear about the original games in the old days it sounds like they could be true casual experiences too. I definitely understand the fondness I see that people have for those days.

Keep preaching, Mint. Love your work.

That is so true about the conditioning, the vibe is completely different to gaming less than 10 yrs ago

Hopefully one day we get trueskill 3 and it's basically just trueskill 1

Firefight is my new favourite game mode now bc of this

Hadn’t played an FPS in a while, still love halo. Hard to get back into playing multiplayer when I know I’ll have a headache trying too hard to match an expectation of skill rather than fun

the screenshots of end games you posted looks exactly like every swat match I have. I am forced to carry or I lose

This would explain a lot how I feel like in some games I’m better than average then all of a sudden I’m below average, like I’d do well one day then the next I’m dying all the time and I can’t play for more than a hour or two max cuz I have to try so hard

oh trust me dude i know. every game, me 30/5 teammates 2/19 2/20 1/15

This is Exactly how I beat the system. Half the time I play, I am laying down in bed on my steam deck and just having fun/ not trying hard. And the other half I am trying hard. This allows me to either win when I try, or have random results when I don't. And I have fun and never sweat. This system has made me do this. I used to just hop between social and ranked back in the day. Now, I feel like there's no point to play ranked, so I don't. I just play the top most fun playlists

SBMM is the reason I don’t play multiplayer on shooters anymore. I come back home to play social modes and BTB, not a full team of onyx no lifes

I've just stopped playing any playlist that has the [CORE] tag on it. [SOCIAL] is the way to go, Firefight is the way to go. It makes the game actually fun and bearable to play.

thank you mint blitz for being are voice!

this makes so much sense now, playing the game recently has been demoralizing because I keep getting awful lobbies, I understand why now.

As someone who jumps on Ranked maybe 2-3 times week for an hour or 2 with some friends (all Plat 5-D5 range) its crazy how one session we can go 5-1 or win all of them, and then jump on the next night (no social matches played) and go the complete opposite.. 1-5 or 0-6... I would prefer it just be even 3-3 if its pre-determined instead of the constant yoyo-ing. Whats even worse is quick play (the only real insta match playlist here in ANZ) is MUCH sweatier than ranked.. so sweaty in fact that I stopped even bothering to play it..

Okay, this makes sense. I've noticed my matches have been very wave-like. I'll do good a few matches and then get matched into matches where I have to try-hard because my teammates are basically or literally bots vs the other team being fairly skilled, and it goes in cycles. I don't typically have a lot of fun on infinite, i just play to grind for customization. Custom games is fun though.

this is why i only play firefight now

This was a very important Mint video. I sincerely hope Microsoft and 343 take this to heart. We can’t allow this to continue to become normal.

This makes a lot of sense, as a veterinary student I don’t get a lot of time to play so I’m pretty casual. I have noticed as time has gone on the games feel less and less balanced. I’m by no means a good player but BTB especially there’s a few people at the top who are amazing then everyone else is way behind, myself included. It just makes it a slog to play sometimes. The lack of a matchmaking lobby Like reach and Halo 3 make it hard to get a game going when you happen upon a group of players you have fun. I really miss those games and the multiplayer structure. I also feel like there’s other balance issues in the multiplayer combat especially with vehicles that make some maps/matches absolutely impossible to win or lose depending on which way the chips fall for you.

I've only played Infinite for a year upon release and decided to go back to the Master Chief Collection. The campaign (the main reason why I play any Halo game) was sorta okay, but with it fully focused on a competitive multiplayer scene it kinda threw everything myself and my friends loved about playing Halo just into our faces. If they'd at least continue the social aspect from past Halo games it'd definitely feel like a more fun game to jump in and play, but infinite wasn't built around social play it was built around monetization like Fortnight's BR. As an aspiring game dev I understand the business decisions, but it also kills off most of the core players who played casually like myself

So many great points Remy. Keep letting them hear it. Its exhausting and all players hate it

3:24 and I around 60 something… then I started playing Firefight when it released… a week or so later I found a game of it with infinite ammo… I want it back.

Crazy when the cod patents say that this style of system is to be limited in scope or application. And I believe that the desync issu that plagued this game wasn't a issu but part of the system

Imagine if all that effort was put into making better, more meaningful content like game modes, weapons, maps, singleplayer/coop campaigns, or even just better handling and management against cheaters. If the devs behind HALO and Gears are doing it, it won't surprise me if it's a normal thing for other developers out there with their own versions of algorithmic manipulation of player interactions. It's a big reason why a lot of modern multiplayer games have such long queuing times even at their peak schedules where a lot of players are in-game.

I feel like I never really noticed this in Halo 5 as much because there were game modes I could go into that were just for fun and then others where I sweated hard, but it just seemed balanced somehow. With Infinite, there were just games where I couldn't even no matter how hard I tried.

I don’t know if it’s just me but on Illusion, the AR is actually broken. It’ll shred you from any distance, and up close the damage rivals the SAW from H4/5. Many instances where I’ll melee someone first, then they’ll do the same but I’ll get one shotted by their AR while I put at least 15 into them.

Why can’t you be in charge of 343’s matchmaking

There's literally nothing stopping them from bringing back the system they used back in 2007 for Halo 3 or 2010 for Reach. Well, nothing except bean counters who just see money and dollar signs. Fuck this industry man

The epitome of getting the wrong info out of your data. Remember data scientists, context is key.

I'll live and die by this quote "If it's not fun, why bother?" - Reggie

Thank you, Mint. Please 343, please, do something about this!!

"To me" what this all boils down to is that you aren't allowed to have any fun anymore in games.

Regarding the commentary stating that the system expects you to perform at peak performance each game: I'm gonna project a ton into this take, but this model honestly just seems like the reflection of a common mentality which governs large studios. I had a job in the CG field (before layoffs) and it just seems so on-brand for a large studio run by investors and their marketing/statistics teams. If you've ever had a boss that just treats you like a robot, it's the same thing.

The current system is why I only play firefight now lol. I hate having to play sweaty games all the time, it doesn't help that I usually feel like I am carrying the teams I play with. I'll only usually play multiplayer if I get the chance to play with another friend but that doesn't usually happen.

I’m a diamond/onyx player and this checks out. I play ranked and I go against a team of 4 who the game expects me to slaughter. I typically get teammates with similar rank but who do really poorly. The game expects me to carry when I play with friends who aren’t high rank either and social becomes just as bad. Play a team of decent players and get paired with below average players on my team. It’s a system designed to attempt to create balance but it just makes it harder for me even if I go crazy positive while the friends I want to play with are having a really bad time.