Halo Infinite’s long-awaited ranked reset will finally take place next week. Here’s what’s changing next Tuesday, and when.
After promising an update to ranked play since the game's launch, Halo Infinite is finally ready to rip back the curtain on what they've been up to.
We've previously covered some of the philosophies that the devs at 343 Industries were looking to implement in their upcoming rank reset. They've now elaborated on that, just in time for the February 22, Tuesday afternoon, reset. The upshot of all of this is that your rank should be even more indicative of your skill moving forward. However, you might be a full rank lower than currently displayed.
What's changing in Halo Infinite's Competitive Skill Rating (CSR) system?
"We saw that the CSR system was being overly generous since launch, these changes are being rolled out to help bring things closer in line to where they should be," 343's John Junyszek said on their blog. "This period led to a full tier inflation of ranks and, as a result, most players should expect to be placed a full tier lower (Diamond players will find themselves in Platinum, Platinum players will find themselves in Gold, etc.) after this rank reset."
Here are a few aspects of the Competitive Skill Rating that they will be changing:
- As mentioned above, since the system was placing players too high, every player will likely find themselves one tier lower after this update. Please keep in mind that this is not due to an error in the new system, but an error in the old one.
- Typically, after you complete your placement matches, your CSR is a little lower than where the system thinks you'll end up after playing for a while. This happened in Halo 5 as well because it helps start each rank reset (typically during a Season rollover) off fresh and provides players room to progress their CSR rank. Since ranks are being reset in the middle of the season, this will be reduced to help make sure you have a shorter climb after your placement matches.
- At launch, Diamond 1 was the highest CSR players could land at after completing their 10 placement matches. Much like above, since we’re resetting ranks in the middle of the season, we want to reduce the disruption it may cause by raising this to Diamond 5. This will not affect most players, but it will mean Onyx players will spend less time in Diamond since the system already knows that they are likely an Onyx player.
These changes are welcome to the Halo Infinite community, who had said that the ranked system was a bit busted at launch. Indeed, progression in general, especially on the game's Battle Pass, had been a bit janky and needed to be adjusted. Given that 343's general plan for Infinite seems to be to support it in the long term, these sorts of changes were almost expected as the game picked up steam after launch.
What else is changing?
These ranked changes were previously hinted at in the previous update on January 26, which removed Behemoth Capture the Flag from the rotation. At the time, here's what 343 had to say about their reasoning behind that.
We’ve seen enough data to show us that the map is not performing in ranked as intended. Most of this data revolves around spawning and effective cover around the map.
Spawning on the perimeter of the bases with a direct line of sight to the flag stand, in addition to BR 75 starts, is creating a more frenetic match pace than desired. This leaves players feeling that even a well-coordinated team push into the enemy base can fall apart quickly; resulting in flag pulls being much more difficult than they should be.
Similarly, players seem to be respawning in places that can often feel unpredictable and therefore frustrating to deal with. This goes for both attacking and defending teams.
There also appears to be a lack of viable cover opportunities throughout the map, which is exacerbated when all players are wielding a BR 75. As a result, players often find themselves engaged in firefights with limited options from the outside of the map.
Overall, we want to improve the Ranked CTF experience on the map before reintroducing it to these playlists.
If you're out of the loop on Halo's rank system, be sure to check out our guide. Get in there Spartan!
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