Hmm Destiny doesn't have Crucible ranks right? If so, then it's a bummer. If it did I think a mix of Halo 2 and Halo 3 ranks would be the best. If players progressively play poorly then they can drop in ranks and if they progressively improve, then they move up. It's a delicate thing and its best to provide players with a visual tool on their performance. Also ranks shouldn't be based on pure Wins and Loses. Individual performance is important and so is team work. A team with a bunch of well rounded players playing well but ultimately losing to a team that relies on one or two extremely good players shouldn't have to worry about their individual ranks being affected. A lot of complex algorithms have to be written for a good ranking system. And I feel Bungie is too lazy to create balanced ranking system. Everyone's going with the awful XP accumulation system these day.

I know this won't be popular but Halo reach's ranking system almost nailed competitive match making. Everyone simply hated it because it worked SO well that it was not possible to boost the ever precious K/D. People's egos were destroyed so they rage quit. It's pretty much as simple as that. It wasn't perfect but certainly the best of them all (Halos). The best competitive matchmaking I've seen out of a game yet would have to be Starcraft 2's system. I'm hoping something like that gets implimented. Getting to see the top teams as well as a rough percentage based on the whole player base is pretty sweet.

I explained in depth, my view of Halo 3's ranking system. Now I will go in depth as to what I think would be a good ranking system, or at the very least promote a competitive environment without the flaws of rank manipulation. Okay, so the main goal is to promote competitive games, easiest way to do this is to have an emphasis on winning. The way Halo 3 incentivized winning is with bragging rights, an easily showable way to say "I'm the best". What you want to avoid is locking anyone into their rank forever. So how would you show you're awesome in Destiny that can be temporary and doesn't mess with player style? There are a couple ways, but each have undesirable effects. In game leaderboards, odds are you're not going to look at that and say "WOW, this random player is rank 2637, that's pretty good." It's really only going to exalt a handful of players. You can't really brag when you say "check the mid 2000's on the leaderboards". Better solution would be have that number above your player. Though that could be confusing. Segregate the leaderboards into sections. Top 100 have 3 gold stars, 101-500 have 2 gold stars, 501-1000 have one gold star. 1001-2000, have 3 silver, etc. Gold, silver, bronze, red, purple, blue, green, white. Whatever colour scheme is good as long as there are enough options, they are discernable from each other and it's based on W/L ratio. The stars would go above player level, and the leaderboards would reset every month. The problems with this are I can't account for different playlists. FFA would be dead as it's harder to win. You wouldn't be able to discern where that player plays. When leaderboards reset, top players may feel cheated as they would have to do it all over again, but this mechanism stops boosting as getting top rank once doesn't mean shit. Another problem that arises from a purely W/L based ranking system is people who stop playing after their ratio is great. I don't exactly know how to rank players, and it can't purely be based on W/L ratio, but it does have to be a big part of it. Resetting ranks every so often fixes the boosting issues, the symbolic rank should be shown above the player so they have that worth fighting for, and rank must be present in all or at least a majority of modes. Everytime I try to wrap my head around it, the more and more problems arise, and each time I try to fix a problem a new one arises from the "fix".

Most experience with Halo 3's, so I'll talk about that. Halo's ranking system did one thing exceptionally well. It made players strive for the win. Most games would be neck and neck because team's were working together. A win was the only thing that mattered. Because ranking up was majorly dependant upon Win/Loss ratio. People weren't padding stats, ignoring objectives, they were going for the win no matter what. Sometimes this proved to be a bad thing with tactics that didn't promote a fun game. Ex: Getting ahead in the score and hiding. Aside from making the game hyper competitive, the rank system was flawed. Players constantly want to progress. There was a point in Halo 3's ranking system that you got essentially locked in to your rank. Sometimes that was where you belonged, as it was hou true skill level, other times players who got naturally better over time would be stuck at a low rank because of past performances. This single problem of players being told they are only "this good", led to the multitude of problems. Alternate accounts. I will admit I started a new account in Halo 3 based on my rank. Halo 3 was my first online game. While I played LAN with friends, I sucked majorly online. Over time I got better. Learnt how to be better, watch radar, grenade trap, etc. I was locked in around 28-32, I forget. No matter how many games I won, I would not rank up, but a single loss could de-rank me. So I made an alt and got 44, what I consider to be my trueskill. However not all alt accounts were for how I used mine. A lot of players would boost to 50. There were a couple methods, pay a good player to play your account for you. Play with 3 rank 50's not exactly against any rules. Get a group of friends, change your Xbox's country to some random place and you would always matchmake with the same people. Win until you're a 50, then there was another way... never found out the secret. But with 30 or so custom games and around 10 or so ranked games, you could boost to 50 fast. With a high demand for a level 50 account, and an easy way to manufacture 50's, noobs would buy the 50 accounts and throw off MM. It became to the point where I was more scared of fighting a rank 45-49 then a 50, because I would wipe the floor with half the 50's I came across. So games soon became really not even. Not close. Not neck and neck because there were so many ways to boost. Another problem was de-ranking. A portion of good players started to de-rank, so they could pad their stats with noobs. Once you get 50 once or twice or are locked in at a high rank, and you're constantly getting battles that you seemed to be doing mediocre in, you want to show you're better than the 1.9 K/D you have, especially since K/D meant everything to the hardcore community, especially when someone could question whether you bought your 50. K/D is something you couldn't buy. Besides, what's more fun than getting a running riot/perfection/multi kills left and right, feeling like a superior god among mice as you win a 3v1 encounter? So good players de-ranked by quitting the game near the end, or if they were playing good players that wouldn't pad their stats, they would quit right away. Many played objective games and never went for the objective. Much easier to kill someone focused on an objective than someone focused on you. This combo of noobs with 50's and good players de-ranking to slaughter noobs left MM and ranked in shambles, to a point where rank was almost meaningless.

I liked Halo 2/3's ranking system because it was based solely on winning. Good players win, bad players lose. Simple as that. Reach was lame because it valued selfish play for arena. Arena was a snooze fest. Getting a 50 was so much fun in Halo 3, I really hope Destiny has a 1-50 told ranking system.

Halo 2

I don't care, as long as armour can be unlocked by a Reach/ 4 system.

Bungie should use halo 3's Bungie most likely won't use any at all

CE's was God tier.