Griff0rd

Rom gameinformer.com... about the new ranks

GI: I noticed something in the settings—can you explain how the Spartan rankings are going to work?

Jarrard: Yeah. In Halo 2, we just had a ranking system that was a numeric value assigned for each playlist that you played in. So the more games you win in Rumble Pit, the higher your rank would go. One of the problems we had with that was that the ranks were only assigned to one playlist. So you could be in level 50 in Rumble Pit but never played Team Slayer once, and go into Team Slayer and rank against legitimate people who were new to the game. It really wasn’t a fair system at all. So we’ve added what we’re tentatively calling right now a Rating Point, which is kind of like your aggregate lifetime experience playing the game. It not only applies to ranked games, but also unranked social games as well. So every game you play, if it’s a team game you win or a free-for-all game that you finish in the top half, you get a rating point. Essentially, it’s like a military rank system—you’ll progress. Initially, you’re an apprentice. And then you’ll become a sergeant and then a general. And the ultimate top cap is that you’ll eventually become a Spartan. It’s cool, because now when you jump into a game, no matter what rank you are, you can immediately see by somebody’s name, if they have three stars, you’ll know right away that these guys are very seasoned players and they’re going to be difficult to play against. And you can click on their name in the UI and it will immediately pull up their record and see how many games they’ve played and what their experience level is. It’s really just about leveling the playing field. It also gives us another metric to use to match players together. So, if we want to have an offering only for new players, we can say, “OK, only guys who have an experience rating of X and below can join this playlist.” It’s going to give us more flexibility, I think.

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