[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Realnoyb I appreciate the difficulty in calculating the individual skill of a player from wins alone if he always plays with the same teammates, but the end result hurts everyone. Take a hypothetical team of 4 that always plays with each other and has a high (say, 80%) win rate. They will be winning consistently, but since they aren't playing with other players, their skill has a higher uncertainty, so they level up slower. They are punished by remaining at a low level for much longer than their "true" skill would imply (as opposed to TrueSkill), while their opponents are punished by being forced to play such a miscategorized team for much longer than they should. It doesn't quite say how strong this random party effect is. I'd guess that a significant number of Halo players, when it comes to competitive ranked games, like playing with a small group of the same people over many games. Granted, it likely isn't as exaggerated as my above example, but it's still something to think about. It might even account for why people are reporting hitting a brick wall in team doubles, a playlist where you only have one teammate, who is more likely to remain constant over many games.[/quote]Here is the thing though. That "hypothetical" team of 4 actually exists. There is a team of 4 who only play together, [url=http://www.bungie.net/Stats/PlayerStatsHalo3.aspx?player=vDo%20Tanzer]won 145 in a row last time I counted[/url], and are stuck at 15. I would consider this an extreme example but they brought the issue to our attention and it has gone a long way to explaining why people get stuck. There have been a few discussions in the last few months in the Optimatch forum about this flaw. H3 encourages players to party up and makes it easy so it is safe to assume a lot of players play together. The part I (we) are unsure of is whether playing in parties drastically slows your progression. In other words not just the same 4 guys all the time but constantly playing in parties and never playing with randoms. Oh, and yes, TD is the same way. If you play with the same partner all the time, it will make your progression very slow or not at all and it is far more likely when you only have a team of 2.