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Halo 5 CSR explained


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Halo 5 CSR explained, commendations and medals revealed

 

csr-module-69a63296c2d44bf9848fd3bc67c97

 

In a recent blog by Josh Holmes, we get educated on the new and improved CSR ranking.

 

The Competetive Skill Ranking, or CSR for short, is your rank within the Arena experience and determines who you'll be pitched against. If everything goes right that should be opponents within your skill range and this ensures you that you and your team won't be annihilated by higher levels and that you won't stomp on lower levels.

Just like we saw in the beta you'll have to complete 10 placement matches that determine what rank you'll start off as. Since the beta there have been a couple additions to the ranking though. Below you'll find all the ranks through which you can progress (or drop).

 

 

BRONZE

 

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SILVER

 

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GOLD

 

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PLATINUM

 

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DIAMOND

 

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ONYX

 

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CHAMPION

 

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The ranks Bronze through Diamond are pretty straight forward. Win a couple of matches and you'll progress in ranks. Notice that I said 'win matches' and not 'be on the top of the leaderboard' as being the top player on your team doesn't mean a thing to your CSR, only winning does.

There is the chance that you'll drop a rank after losing too many matches but we are assured that you won't drop an entire rank by going on a bit of a losing spree. For example, if you've been working towards that Silver rank for who knows how long you won't be dropped back down to Bronze just because you weren't having a good day.

The Onyx and Chapion ranks behave in a different way. Once you reach Onyx, your CSR score will be shown to allow better comparison between players. Winning no longer increases your tier, your CSR score does. Once you reach the top 200 within a playlist you'll be placed in the highest tier, the Champion tier. All shall quiver before thee!

 

Later in Halo 5's lifespan seasons will be introduced. It looks somewhat like the seasons we had back in the Halo Reach days. When a season starts your CSR will be reset and you'll have to play your placement matches again to be ranked. This allows you jump start your ranking and prevents you from being stuck in an what seems to be endless progression through the rankings. Of course, you can also fall a bit short but do not fret as there is always next season.

Reaching a CSR ranking within a season also makes you eligable for a neat cosmetic award, no matter if your Bronze or Onyx. Think of it as a souvenir. First thing we'll get is this emblem:

 

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Each time a season ends 343i will update the game based on your feedback. So don't stop complaining!

 

Join in progress is disabled in Arena to prevent you from being placed in losing games and losing a rank as a result from that. Quitting is frowned upon and if you decide to be a bum you'll not only suffer a loss and forfeit any EXP or REQ points earned that match, you'll also recieve a temporary ban to think about what you just did. Betrayals, idling, intentional suicides and excessive disconnects will also earn you a ban of which the length is determined by how heavy the offense is. Each successive infraction will increase the timeout exponantially so don't you even think about it Spartan!

 

What are your thoughts on this ranking system?

Let us know down below!

Thank you for reading! :D


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The only concern here is the mention of quit penalties returning: let's hope that it takes into account things like whether your teammates are AFK or have already quit, or are suffering extremely bad lag, because once we get past the initial few days of release both of these things will become a problem. I had more than a few quit bans in Reach simply because I didn't want to play in a game where half my team had already left or I was faced with literally unplayable lag thanks to Bungie's pathetic matchmaking system, and while I expect dedicated servers to fix some of this UK players inevitably get paired up with Americans, so I'll probably be at a latency disadvantage compared to my fellow players in most games.

 

Also of concern is the mention that things like betrayals and suicides will earn bans: anyone who player Haemorrhage on Reach will remember the problems with other players deliberately shooting you to drop your shields or descope you, or just standing in front of you so you couldn't get a shot off as soon as you got the sniper rifle, and if we're bringing back penalties for that I can see thjis becoming a real problem again. All it takes is one selfish idiot on your team deciding they want your weapon, and they can completely ruin your experience of a match safe in the knowledge that you're the one who'll be punished if you try to do anything about it. I'm not kidding when I say these things happened so frequently that they're a big part of the reason I eventually stopped playing matchmaking, and I really hope that 343i will at least ensure that the system accounts for things like provocation or poor behaviour on the part of the betrayee when assigning punishments or offering a kick, but somehow I can't see it.

 

Anyway, on a more cheerful note: I quite like the way that this system is done, although I hope there's also some sort of numerical indicator (Bronze 2, Silver 5, Gold 1 or whatever) next to a player's rank as a lot of these symbols look quite similar and so it could be quite difficult to work out exactly what rank someone is. It'll also be very interesting to see whether matches immediately after placement count for more than others, so if you're placed too high or too low you can more quickly get back to your appropriate skill levels, and what the distribution of players is in each tier - are they going to be evenly weighted, or is bronze going to make up 40% of players, silver 30%, gold 20%, etc.

 

Anyway, best of luck to everyone during their placements!

 

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The only concern here is the mention of quit penalties returning: let's hope that it takes into account things like whether your teammates are AFK or have already quit, or are suffering extremely bad lag, because once we get past the initial few days of release both of these things will become a problem. I had more than a few quit bans in Reach simply because I didn't want to play in a game where half my team had already left or I was faced with literally unplayable lag thanks to Bungie's pathetic matchmaking system, and while I expect dedicated servers to fix some of this UK players inevitably get paired up with Americans, so I'll probably be at a latency disadvantage compared to my fellow players in most games.

 

Also of concern is the mention that things like betrayals and suicides will earn bans: anyone who player Haemorrhage on Reach will remember the problems with other players deliberately shooting you to drop your shields or descope you, or just standing in front of you so you couldn't get a shot off as soon as you got the sniper rifle, and if we're bringing back penalties for that I can see thjis becoming a real problem again. All it takes is one selfish idiot on your team deciding they want your weapon, and they can completely ruin your experience of a match safe in the knowledge that you're the one who'll be punished if you try to do anything about it. I'm not kidding when I say these things happened so frequently that they're a big part of the reason I eventually stopped playing matchmaking, and I really hope that 343i will at least ensure that the system accounts for things like provocation or poor behaviour on the part of the betrayee when assigning punishments or offering a kick, but somehow I can't see it.

 

Anyway, on a more cheerful note: I quite like the way that this system is done, although I hope there's also some sort of numerical indicator (Bronze 2, Silver 5, Gold 1 or whatever) next to a player's rank as a lot of these symbols look quite similar and so it could be quite difficult to work out exactly what rank someone is. It'll also be very interesting to see whether matches immediately after placement count for more than others, so if you're placed too high or too low you can more quickly get back to your appropriate skill levels, and what the distribution of players is in each tier - are they going to be evenly weighted, or is bronze going to make up 40% of players, silver 30%, gold 20%, etc.

 

Anyway, best of luck to everyone during their placements!

 

Trolls will be trolls and will always find a way to troll. Sadly there's no real countermeasure to the kind of trolling that doesn't involve actual teamkilling. I don't think you'll get bans right away from just accidentally killing your teammates a few times, it has to stand out. Just like with quitting or lagging out, a few times won't matter. I get your feeling of having to finish a game with only half a team which is just a chore. I think they should take another example from CSGO and give the team that has players that left the option to surrender. A general voting system on kicking would also be beneficial as the team can vote out annoying trolls.

 

The matchmaking system is build up in a way that the lobby will start out with searching for players that are just about equal your rank and will slowly expand this parameter. You will not be matched up with higher or lower players across the globe untill absolutely necessary.

 

The ranks look destinctive enough to me. I think it just takes some time getting used to them.

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Only winning ranks you up?! That's completely unfair to any good players with terrible teammates.

 

*sigh* Well at least all the complicated ranking I'd something I couldn't care about.

 

Scoring does weigh in, only not nearly as much as winning. Just try to get a team together to play with. If that doesn't work there's alsways Rumble.

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I really hope everything mentioned goes smoothly. If so I think it will be better then the traditional ranking system of Halo 2, Halo 3 and MCC, simply because of the fact that skill does not always equal rank. I wasn't around for Reach or Halo 4 so I can't comment on that.

 

In Reach there was a similair system with the seasons, but that was limited to a gametype called "Arena" only and was only visible on the Bungie.net site back then so it wasn't all that popular. Halo 4 didn't have any skill ranking at all at start and got CSR ranking later on which was again only visible on the internet, this time Waypoint.

 

So yeah, this is a huge improvement if it goes well.

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