Here’s the schedule of events leading up to the release of the Castle Map pack on Monday, April 8.Being that the bulletin came out last night, we’re already halfway into the events. I can’t wait to see the Perdition video. That’s the map I’m looking forward to the most. The live-stream on Sunday sounds like a very good opportunity to get acquainted with the maps before the release.

Next up, something that MANY people have been salivating for…Competitive Skill Rank or CSR.

First off, one cool little note, if you reach level 35 or higher between 4/8 through 4/22 you’ll be awarded an exclusive Avatar t-shirt.

Now getting to the meat of the bulletin. I’m going to repost the text from this portion as it’s important to note.

CSR, or Competitive Skill Rank, launches on all screens of Halo Waypoint (web, console and mobile) next Monday. You will be given a unique rank for each playlist within Halo 4, and the system will use the familiar 1-50 scale. We have been closely monitoring the match results and progression of players behind the scenes to ensure that this new system presents a challenge while still providing an optimal Matchmaking experience. As this is a brand new feature, everyone’s CSR will be set to 0 when it launches. This will allow all players to start on equal footing and enjoy the progression of the 1-50 system.
There are two different ways we calculate your CSR. CSR is closely based on your TrueSkill rank, which ensures that you’ll be ranked – and matched – against opponents of comparable skill. Your CSR is dependent upon your personal performance as well as the rank of those you play with. While several playlists will use a win/loss system to determine whether or not you rank up, others will use individual scoring, which will rank you based on your performance against everyone in the match, teammates included. In some playlists, you’ll rank up faster than others – these vary in order to create the most optimal experience for each playlist.

HFFL: Hmm, this is interesting. I can’t wait to see how this plays out. I just hope that I don’t get rank locked like I did in Halo 3… Below is a look at how CSR will look in your online profile on HaloWaypoint.com.

The following playlists will use individual scoring and measure your performance against all others in the game. This ensures that the players who play the best in each match will have their CSR adjusted accordingly. Players who win consistently in these playlists will rank up faster than they will in the playlists that use team scoring.

Playlists that use individual scoring:
• Infinity Slayer
• Big Team Infinity Slayer
• Rumble Pit
• Multi-Team
• Team Action Sack
• Flood
• Team Snipers
• Regicide
• SWAT

The following playlists will use team scoring, and your CSR will be based off wins and losses. This system rewards players who work towards the objective and win the match. It will take longer to rank up in these playlists.

Playlists that will use team scoring:
• Castle Team DLC
• Team Objective
• Capture the Flag
• Dominion
• Team Throwdown
• Team Doubles
• Grifball

HFFL: Okay, I like the idea of the two systems. Hopefully with objective matches, actually performing the objective is taken into account, ala holding the ball, flag running time, capturing bases, etc. I doubt it though as it hasn’t happened in previous Halo titles. Also, yes, there will be those who will seek to take advantage of the system there…

Here is additional information about these two systems:

In the mainstream playlists, we sort players by their performance (score) after every match, regardless of whether their team won or lost. The system will expect the players with the highest CSR values to rank consistently higher in the match. So if you bring all your awesome friends into those playlists and they dominate while you end up at the bottom of the scoreboard, your rating will NOT be carried by them; it will decrease instead. Your friends’ CSRs won’t change much since the system already expects them to do well. For these playlists, it will be very hard for friends to carry another player without bringing down their own CSRs and risking losing a lot of matches.

We use this in the mainstream playlists because it is incomparably faster at finding the skill of the players and making sure better players get into challenging matches in a timely fashion (and newer players get into fun matches in a reasonable timeframe as well). Our priority on these main playlists is on fast, fair Matchmaking instead of having a pure skill measure. It is also for this reason that we would not consider these playlists as competitive, and the resulting CSRs more of a fun, skill-related value than a pure skill measure.

In select playlists, instead of updating CSR based on the rank of every player, we will update based on the total skill in each team and who won the match. This makes teamwork as important as your solo play. The CSR on these playlists will be technically more pure from a competitive point of view. It will also take longer for these CSRs to converge but when they do, they will more accurately represent a player’s ability to help their team win. To get a 50 in the more prestigious playlists will require players skilled enough to consistently bring the win to their entire team so that they can be matched against better and better players.

Now, can you then carry a worse player? In a sense, yes, but only as high as the average skill of the group. Two 40s won’t bring a 10 up to a 40, but instead they will all end up around 30. Does that accurately represent that 10’s skill? Well, if that 10 plays alone, then no, it is grossly overestimating that player’s skill. However, if that player ALWAYS plays with two 40 CSR friends, then 20 of that player’s skill is playing with the right friends.

HFFL: This nest part is extremely important to those who QUIT games:

If you leave early once a match has started, it treats it as if you were the lowest rank in the match for the individual-scored playlists and as a loss on the team-scored playlists. Players that join in progress are currently treated as if they had played the entire match. That said, in our selected, more competitive playlists, there will be rules in place to mitigate the effect. Namely:

1. You can only join in progress during a small window of time in the beginning of the match, so those players will still have time to contribute meaningfully to the match.
2. Friends are not allowed to join a game in progress. Only random players searching through Matchmaking can join during that 60-second window.

The rules for these playlists restrict the amount of noise from Join-in-Progress since that feature is only possible during the first few moments of the match. They also help improve the purity of CSR in these playlists. We plan on putting in these Join-in-Progress parameters as close to CSR launch as possible.

HFFL: Ouch, so as much as I hate Join In Progress, not allowing friends to join in after 60 seconds kind of sucks… But at least there won’t be any more JIPs during late portions of the game (if I’m reading this correctly).

We are actively investigating occasional CSR resets, both globally and for certain playlists. Reasons for resetting ranks include overhauls to CSR calculation, Halo 4 game updates, and events and promotions centered on CSR. Resetting CSR is not something we’re taking lightly so when we do reset it, we’ll be sure to provide ample messaging describing the reasons for doing so.

When we listed the playlists above, you might have noticed a few of them are not currently available in Matchmaking. Here to talk about their impending arrival, along with a few other changes that are coming on Monday, is Bravo.

With the Castle Map Pack comes a brand new playlist: Castle Team DLC. This 6 vs. 6 playlist will feature the following:

Also, these maps will be integrated into many of our existing playlists. DLC maps will appear in a playlist if all players in the match have downloaded the content.

If the words “Multi-Team” got your attention, read on. Monday will also feature the premiere of the aforementioned popular playlist, which pits 6 teams of 2 against one another. We are still finalizing the specific maps and game types that will be offered in this playlist at launch – be on the lookout for Monday’s Matchmaking update for the full details of this playlist.

Also, as if the above wasn’t enough to keep you busy for the next two weeks, Rumble Pit will be replacing the temporary Community Forge FFA playlist on Monday and will premiere with both Infinity Rumble and Rumble Pro in the voting options. Here are the maps that the playlist will launch with:

• Skyline
• Landfall
• Monolith
• Haven
• Solace
• Adrift
• Abandon
• Shutout
• Simplex
• Dispatch