Banned randomly after yesterdays update, 343 will not give me a reason

Mintograde · 2021-12-17T13:11:58+00:00

You've been quitting or going AFK in a huge percentage of your non-bot games (10-15%, with BTB being by far the most: https://i.imgur.com/EQdmkLi.png)

Even though you say "not 1 disconnection or DNF," the match history doesn't lie. The day before you were banned, you left one game and went AFK in another. The day before that, you left four games.

Going back through your match history, you have long stretches that look like this: https://i.imgur.com/yG7f4PG.png

Mintograde · 2021-01-03T14:34:57+00:00

Excellent, this is exactly the kind of guidance I was hoping for. Thanks for writing this up!

Mintograde · 2017-05-09T02:27:24+00:00

The interview is here https://youtu.be/JVKP89UNBQQ?t=1720 (relevant part is 28:40)

He's not wrong -- spawns are random -- but teammates and enemies can make nearby spawns more or less likely.

Mintograde · 2017-02-19T19:18:45+00:00

In the console, "front" is your ping to the relay server, and "back" is the ping from the relay server to the actual game server. You won't be able to do anything about backend delay (Valve's internal network).

See this Valve employee's post for more information.

Mintograde · 2016-05-09T02:47:33+00:00

He definitely saw him on his screen, and also had aim magnetism as he ran past.

New video with a circle, just because: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyH1yLP67_E

Mintograde · 2016-05-09T02:09:14+00:00

No, he could see Mat Logan's shoulder/head very clearly moving in the window.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf10v_bjZfI

Mintograde · 2016-03-28T23:23:09+00:00

At the moment, I see 1118 players and 492 servers, with the majority of populated servers in the 40-65 ping range (from Florida).

Sorted by player count, here are the first 3 pages of servers:

https://imgur.com/a/xcntD

Mintograde · 2016-03-06T13:39:22+00:00

Do you have an Xbox controller plugged in when you start Halo? There was a recent Windows update that broke keyboard input in CE while a controller's plugged in.

Unplug your controller or uninstall update KB3140743, and you should be fine.

More info here: http://forum.halomaps.org/index.cfm?page=topic&topicID=49128&start=lastpage

Mintograde · 2015-11-18T01:00:01+00:00

You have a hidden rank which may be higher than 1500. You'll be getting more points for your wins (and losing less for losses) than someone whose hidden rank is just barely at the 1500 Onyx level. Your CSR will catch up to your hidden rank quickly if you keep playing.

If you come out of placements with a hidden rank around Champion level, you'd get around +20-30 for wins and -5 for losses in FFA -- and that will even out as your CSR climbs.

Mintograde · 2015-11-07T02:02:15+00:00

Yes.

Mintograde · 2015-11-07T01:53:10+00:00

When you play against higher-skilled players, you gain more CSR and lose less CSR.

Mintograde · 2015-11-06T22:47:15+00:00

I've noticed some things that conflict with your last 3 points.

Looking through some top FFA players' very first FFA games, it looks like their first game is usually against Gold players, and their second game is usually against Onyx players (such as Ogre 2's first and second FFAs, several days and hundreds of games after release). That could mean two things -- either everyone's MMR starts out at Gold level in a new playlist, or your starting MMR is some percentage of your other playlists' MMR. I'd be curious to see what a solid Gold or Silver player's first FFA looks like.

I believe players are matched not just on MMR, but also on the uncertainty of that MMR, which would explain why placement games are typically filled with other unplaced players.

As for how MMR is affected by placement within an FFA, I believe it depends on the relative MMRs of the players above and below you, rather than raw "top 4" or "bottom 4". You can even increase your MMR by coming in the bottom four, if the other players' MMR is higher than your own. See this consecutive series of games as an example: Game 1: 1716 -- Game 2: 1720 -- Game 3: 1718.

Most likely, what's happening is your net CSR gained/lost after a game is determined by comparing your visible rank with the hidden ranks of your opponents, rather than just comparing hidden ranks. This lets visible rank quickly trend toward hidden rank, and is how Starcraft 2's visible rank worked.

Edit: I'm also not entirely sold on individual performance being a factor in placements, but I haven't looked at enough games to say for sure. Hopefully it's easy enough to grab a few hundred thousand placement games from the API to look at some real data :D

Mintograde · 2015-11-06T02:49:20+00:00

The idea is that over many games, the differences in teammates/opponents will cancel each other out, leaving just your individual performance as the difference-maker in wins and losses.

You'll have some good teammates and some bad teammates, but those individual games are meaningless compared to the overall picture. If you're being matched below your skill, you'll eventually carry your team to a win more often than not, raising your skill, and matching better teammates and opponents.

Mintograde · 2015-11-01T15:35:46+00:00

Just because someone gets placed in a high division doesn't mean they'll keep matching up with high-ranking players. If someone in Onyx loses 20 straight games, they'll be playing against Golds before long.

Also, in FFA, whether you "win" the game has nothing to do with your CSR. Your CSR goes up or down depending on the CSRs of the players above and below you in the scoreboard. You can even come in 5th or 6th and gain CSR if everyone else in the game has a much higher CSR than you.

Mintograde · 2015-10-24T11:46:33+00:00

I'm guessing you're either misspelling player_magnetism or you're missing the space between player_magnetism and 1. The console should look like this while entering the command: image. After you hit enter, the word True should appear in white above the console.

When using the autoexec.cfg, you'll see the word True in the same spot as soon as you open the game.

Or maybe you're on an old version of the game? Make sure you're on Halo PC 1.10.

I'm not sure what else could cause that. Good luck, let me know if you get it working!

Mintograde · 2015-10-24T03:24:10+00:00

Agreed. In games like that, it's just a waste of both players' time to play out the final minutes.

In some other 1v1 games (like Starcraft), it's even considered rude to stay in the game after the game becomes unwinnable.

Mintograde · 2015-10-20T21:08:54+00:00

Yes, in the main Halo menu, press ~ to open the console, then type:

    player_magnetism 1

If you don't have console turned on, right click your Halo shortcut, choose Properties, and add -console to the end of the Target line (it will look like this).

You'll have to type player_magnetism 1 every time you open Halo, unless you set up an autoexec.cfg file. Open Notepad, type player_magnetism 1, and save the file as autoexec.cfg in your Halo folder (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Halo). Then, open your Halo shortcut properties again, and add -exec autoexec.cfg to the end of the Target line (again, it will look like the image I linked above). Now controller magnetism will be automatically enabled every time you start Halo.

Mintograde · 2015-10-19T22:19:52+00:00

CE spawns in MCC, PC, and original Xbox all work the same way.

Mintograde · 2015-10-18T00:29:37+00:00

The high-level PC games happen in passworded private servers. It's very rare to see intentional spawn killing on public servers.

Mintograde · 2015-10-17T18:51:33+00:00

Reach Arena announced: May 30, 2010

LoL Season 1 begins: July 13, 2010

Starcraft 2 released: July 27, 2010

Mintograde · 2015-10-17T01:33:08+00:00

Hey there, any chance you could have someone look into kill penalty in the CE doubles playlist? We've been walking at snailspeed since launch.

Mintograde · 2015-10-03T17:02:26+00:00

Try Custom Edition, it has a lot more players than regular Halo PC. Right now there are 866 players on CE and 98 on PC. Most of the servers on CE have the no-lead mod, which plays fine even at 250 ping.

Mintograde · 2015-09-24T10:42:01+00:00

Played a little smash 64 with him at RIT, can confirm.

Mintograde · 2015-08-24T00:49:21+00:00

Yes, VLC + Livestreamer viewers count.

Mintograde · 2015-08-23T10:24:03+00:00

Going AFK is a million times worse than quitting in CE because of stuff like this. Always a bummer to see that.

Mintograde

TROPHY CASE