Developer 343 Industries has released first details of Halo 4’s Competitive Skill Rank system, which goes live early next year and matches up players online with opponents of comparable skill levels.
Each player will have their own unique Skill Rank per game type, depending on their skill, which is viewable in Halo Waypoint. For example, your Slayer Pro Skill Rank will differ from your King of the Hill Skill Rank.
The Competitive Skill Rank (or CSR) is currently planned to range from a scale of 1 to 50, and will go up and down based on match outcomes.
343 says it has been tracking and analysing data since Halo 4’s launch, and when the final settings for CSR are in place, it will choose whether to use existing data to work out your Skill Rank, or to start everyone fresh in brand new playlists, which will then start tracking your skill level from scratch, regardless of how you’ve been performing in online multiplayer matches so far.
The Halo 4 Competitive Skill Rank system will feature Halo Waypoint Web, Halo Waypoint Console and Smartglass integration.
“We know how important skill rank is, and we take skill integrity very seriously – we want to make sure we’ve taken the time to test, tune, and balance the CSR system in a live environment, and identify problems and potential exploits before launching the system publicly,” read a statement from 343.
“Taking the time to test and tune the system ensures we can deliver a very accurate and meaningful skill rank, and gives our competitive playlists time to mature for a wide range of playlist and game settings.
“We see this announcement as just one of many new experiences and features coming post-launch to Halo 4 and are excited to share more with you in the future.”
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
