Well Halo 4 has gone one worse than Halo Reach even, and launched without any kind of skill-based ranking system, and now has a gameplay affecting grind exploitationware system too rather than a purely cosmetic one. These are absolutely horrible decisions for competitive gamers everywhere and make me wish I could go back in time to Halo 2’s release again! Reach eventually got some semblance of a working ranking system, but it was too little too late, confined to one game mode that the majority of players didn’t understand. These systems have to be the main mode of play (as per StarCraft II and Yomi) for them to work properly. At least Halo usually have extremely good matchmaking though, so that’s the one card left it still holds.
There’s still some hope for the future too, as they have announced some kind of skill-based ranking system is in use, and they will make it available to players in a post-launch patch. Read that link for the full details / list of weak excuses…. but seriously it does sound like 343 understand the problem, unlike Bungie’s snail-like response to the well-intentioned, but failing, Reach skill ranking systems
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