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Halo 5: Guardians kicks off February season with matchmaking hotfix

Halo 5: Guardians is ready to move forward with the new month of the competitive Arena season, but 343 is making a minor fix to its matchmaking first.

Ozzie Mejia

February 1, 2016 9:33 AM

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Halo 5: Guardians is ready to kick off its February season, but the folks at 343 Industries have noticed something is amiss in regards to matchmaking. Apparently, those Arena players that have made it into Onyx and Champions rankings have been able to exploit a few aspects of the matchmaking system. The developer is now looking to fix that up with a quick update.

"Based on feedback from the community, we are making some tweaks to the Onyx and Champion CSR," states the latest Halo: Waypoint post. "Players noticed that it was possible to place into Champion (at least temporarily) simply by being the first 200 people in Onyx to complete their placement matches in a season. We are doing two things to increase the competitiveness for Champions. First, the new minimum CSR to earn a Champion rank will be 1800 rather than 1500. Additionally, we've placed a cap on the highest CSR you can earn after your placement matches at 1700. These changes will make Champions a more elite group and reward players that prove they're amongst the top in the world."

This should only affect the higher percentage of Halo 5 players and will not affect the average player's experience. In fact, no download is even necessary to implement this server-side hotfix.

Halo 5's February season will be the first to include the Infinity's Armory update, which debuts the Riptide map in Arena mode, among other major additions. For a reminder of what that includes, check out the video below.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?