Here's how 'Halo 5: Guardians' multiplayer rankings work
Halo 5: Guardians is almost upon us, and once the campaign credits roll (or the game itself finishes installing on your Xbox One, depending on your style) you might be curious how multiplayer ranking works. Wonder no more because it's similar to League of Legends according to a post on Halo Waypoint. Your starting placement in matchmade Arena games is determined by how you fare in your first ten games. That "Competitive Skill Rating" breaks down into seven categories: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Onyx and Champion. The post stresses that the only way to increase your rank after those initial ten matches are set is by winning.
"Whether you drop 30 kills in a game of Slayer or single-handedly capture every flag in a CTF match, wins are the only way to improve your CSR," it says. "If you are skilled enough to continue winning at tier 6 [the highest per rank], you will advance to the next rank."
And doing the opposite? It'll cause your progress to drop, but not at the expense of your current rank. League of Legends isn't quite so kind in that regard. So, say you have a bad night and you're losing matches left and right in the Diamond rank. That won't drop you back to Gold. In theory, this'll help you keep in that sweet spot of consistently grouping with folks of your skill level regardless of a nasty cold streak.
Oh, and in ranked Arena matches you don't have to worry about joining a game that's already in progress and getting dumped onto the losing team, hurting your CSR. How's that? Every match starts from the beginning and there isn't such a thing as joining one halfway through. That feature still lives in Warzone and Custom Games, though. You'll be penalized for dropping out of matches too. What's more, Arena plays out in "seasons" now. They'll debut sometime later this year and from the sounds of it, only live within specific playlists. Seasons last a month each, and your CSR resets with each successive season. Should you earn some of those points in the playlist, you'll be rewarded with cosmetic items like an in-game banner for your Gamertag.
Sounds good, yeah? Well, I don't know about you folks, but I'm pretty sure that I'm gonna be stuck in Bronze for quite awhile come October 27th -- no eSports stardom for this guy.
