Despite its scintillating gameplay, Halo Infinite’s multiplayer has been hit with criticism surrounding things like giving too little XP. It’s matchmaking system – particularly in Halo Infinite’s ranked mode – has also come under fire, and a Redditor has now uncovered that your MMR in ranked may be affected by your performance in casual game modes.
Using a fresh test account, ‘RealSonZoo’ went through a meticulous process that seems to prove that tanking games in unranked playlists can alter the MMR used in ranked, which could potentially be abused to give players an easier ride while climbing all the way to Onyx.
The process to test this involved losing ten casual matches in a row, horrifically; not getting a single kill and dying over and over again to get as rock bottom as possible. Then, the Reddit user played their ten ranked placement matches while actually playing to win. They then played some more ranked matches to see how their MMR was getting moved around. Subsequently, they went into casual play and repeated the previous step of losing ten matches in unranked modes.
Hopping back into ranked play, RealSonZoo noticed that they were immediately placed into matches below where they should be placed. “I had a ranked and placed account, I then threw a dozen social games, and I’m playing in lobbies 400 MMR lower where I’m fragging like I’m playing bots,” they say.
It seems, then, that Halo Infinite keeps track of your performance regardless of which mode you’re actually playing. This means if you’re a good player and you regularly play social modes, then you could have a harder time in ranked matches.
On the other side of the coin, those performing poorly in social modes could then see their MMR drop to give them less challenging opponents or stronger teammates when they switch over to ranked play.
This issue hasn’t been acknowledged by developer 343 at the time of writing, but RealSonZoo’s evidence is pretty compelling and appears to confirm this is happening.