December Ranked Updates | Halo

The next update for Halo Infinite will release including two new features for Ranked play that have been highly requested by players; Rank Demotion Protection and Ranked Quit Penalty Adjustments. Let’s dive into the details and talk about how it’ll work!

Ranked Demotion Protection: You just leveled up from
Gold into Platinum – nice work, that wasn’t easy. Unfortunately, in your next
game you didn’t play too hot, or maybe you got a phone call and were
distracted, or maybe one of your teammates quit – welp, back to Gold you go.
Well, not anymore with the introduction of Rank Demotion Protection. Whenever
you rank up into a new division (Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, or Onyx) you
will get a grace period of three games, win or lose, as a bit of safety net and
you won’t get demoted into the prior division.

Example scenario: You level up into Onyx and your CSR
is 1503. If you lose a game, disconnect, or quit – your new CSR will be 1500
which will keep you in Onyx. If the same thing happens two more times, you will
stay 1500.

Winning a game will count as one of the three protection
games – it’s not 3 losses, it’s 3 games no matter what happens.

Ranked Quit Penalty Adjustments: So, you’re in the
middle of a game and someone on your team just quit – great, now you’ve got no
real shot of winning and you’re just going to lose points anyway for quitting.
Well, that’s going to change as well. If someone in your game but not on your
fireteam quits, they will still receive the max penalty, but you will not lose any
CSR.

Ok very cool but we’ve got some questions, Tashi:

• If someone on the other team quits, can I quit
  with no penalty? Yes!

• If someone on my fireteam quits, and then I quit, what’s the penalty? You will lose up to 5 CSR, just like it is today.

• If someone not on my fireteam quits, but we stay
  and lose the game, how much CSR would I lose? 0 CSR. Ranked games are not
  meant to be played out with uneven teams – players should be able to leave with
  no penalty and just start searching again for another match.

• What happens if a teammate quits/crashes while loading in? The first quit after the match starts will still receive a full penalty, but after that all players will be able to leave without any penalty.

• If someone in my game quits, and then I decide
  to quit for no penalty, will I still get hit with the banhammer? No.
  Quitting in these instances is safe from the banhammer.

Based on feedback we’ve heard from players we’ve also made a couple key updates to Ranked Extraction (you will NOT see these updates in the Extraction featured in social playlists).

Audio changes: At the moment, you can hear that your Extraction point is being converted by the enemy team from anywhere on the map. This meant players were able to leave the area around the Extraction device and use the global audio queue to tell them when to peek back out. With this upcoming audio change, the device itself will emit the audio – meaning you’ll have to be in a close vicinity to hear it’s being converted. As a result, teams will need to play closer attention the Extraction device much more than they need to today.

UI changes: Right now, you can see in your UI when the Extraction point is being converted. Similar to above, this allowed players to leave the area near the Extraction device and only peek out when the UI showed it was being converted. With our upcoming change, this will go away almost entirely. The UI will no longer indicate to you when the Extraction point is actively being converted, and it will also no longer indicate to you how much time is remaining. It’s going to play a bit old school and hardcore, as players/coaches will be needing to time the Extractions like timing weapons/powerups in the older Halo titles.

We hope these quality-of-life updates make your ranked
experience more enjoyable and best of luck on your grind to the top.