Season Roll

As you’ve noticed by now, we rolled the season March 1st. We also adjusted the skill boundaries this time around to be a bit more forgiving. The net effect is that in most ranked lists, Onyx will be around 10% of the players instead of the usual 2-3%. For the curious, this also corresponds to Onyx being about the same as a “50” in Halo 3.



Yes, this does water down the skill of Onyx players, but those Diamond players who will now get into Onyx are better than Diamond players a year ago, so it’s not too much of a stretch. In addition, from an intuition point of view, if Diamond players play against Onyx fairly often, we might as well call them Onyx.



Keep in mind, this will NOT change your ranking compared to other players. You will still have a lower CSR than previous Onyx players. CSR gaps in skill get significant after around 300. So an 1800 will “feel” significantly better than a 1500.



Playlist Popularity

Here’s an update on playlist popularity using the last week. The Halo 3 list has pulled some folks away from Super Fiesta, so Super Fiesta and Slayer are neck and neck right now.



We’ve gotten a few questions about the future of the Halo 3 list. It’s too early to say anything based on its current performance. It takes awhile to judge a list. If it follows its previous performance, it would remain a solid rotational.



Of course, this begs the question of why so many even less popular lists have not been changed to rotational status. This is a valid question and I’ll try and explain.



First, data suggests that many rotationals are popular because they are rotationals. Very few rotational playlists maintain a consistent popularity outside of a week or so. So making them permanent would just replace less popular lists with different less popular lists.



On the other hand, by the same token, we could probably increase the weekly ranking of many lists by making them rotationals instead of permanents. This would be great because many lists that currently struggle because of lower popularity could have bursts of great matchmaking during their rotations.



So we agree with the basic principle that it would be better if underperforming lists became rotationals. The reason we haven’t done this yet is that while we are comfortable in our current cadence of changing one rotational every few weeks, it would require a significant amount of planning to do the same with a large set of lists. It would also require precise messaging so players are clear on when their favorite lists are up to play. It’s something we are actively evaluating.



Super Fiesta

Slayer

Heroic Warzone Firefight

Warzone

Quick Play

Halo 3 Classic Throwback

Big Team Battle

Infection

Legendary Warzone Firefight

SWAT

HaloWC 2018

Team Arena

Doubles

Action Sack

Mythic Warzone Firefight

Breakout

HaloWC FFA

Shotty Snipers

Snipers

Warzone Assault

Grifball