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New Season Onyx Boundary: 3.4 (54 in Halo 3, 1% of HCS last season)







2.5% of players have 50 or higher

2.5% is within the target for Diamond level (anything above 2% is Diamond) and not Onyx

50 is now mapped to 1400 or Diamond 4 because it’s too many people

The new Onyx boundary is 54, reached by 1% last season, and now more exclusive than “50”

Many of you have noticed that Onyx is more difficult to get into this season than last. At the end of every season, we look at how many players are in each Rank and then shift the boundaries to try and hit a target percentile for each.The goal for Onyx is roughly the top 2%. At the end of last season, however, many playlists had near 10% in Onyx, meaning many Onyx players were Diamond players in disguise. The change we made this season reduces that amount to be closer to our target.The reason we have a target of 2% is to maintain and not dilute the skill perception of Onyx players. The same goes for every Rank, but I’m using Onyx as an example.Also, remember that we start you 100 CSR back from your target after placement. This is roughly 6 games back. Players that place in, e.g. Diamond 4 may actually be Onyx players, but are close enough to the boundary that we put them in Diamond at first just in case.For HCS players who like numbers, here are the actual boundary changes using MMR:For those who grew up on 1-50 and want to know the conversions this season for HCS:Note: The original intention in H3 for 50 was to only include the top 0.1%. The population inflated over time and wasn’t corrected in H3 like we do in H5, so eventually much more than 0.1% of players in H3 got to 50. Similarly, for the first few seasons of HCS, only 0.1% of HCS players had a 50 or higher. Now, however, more than 2.5% of players are at 50 or higher, diluting that boundary point over time making it less exclusive than Onyx (currently only 1%). This is another example of why we move boundaries over time to maintain the same exclusivity and skill expectation for Onyx players and higher.