How does Halo Reach matchmaking work?

How does it work? How am I matched with other players? Is there a difference between the cooperative modes (ie firefight) and the competitive modes (ie slayer)? How can I improve who I'm matched against/with?

Last time I seriously played Halo multiplayer was Halo 2. The system gave you a number that ranked your skill and it tried to match you with people of that number. One common jerky thing skilled players did was get themselves downranked back to a 1 and beat up on new players for a while.

Now in Reach I have some sort of military insignia by my name. Is this similar to the ranking number in Halo 2? Does it mean the same thing as the rank number in Halo 2?

Solution 1:

How does it work? How am I matched with other players?

Here is Microsoft's article for the match making system of XBox Live (So contrary to other answers, yes, there is an answer to this, but you wont get the math specifics)

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/trueskill.aspx

Is there a difference between the cooperative modes (ie firefight) and the competitive modes (ie slayer)?

While I play the game, I can not be sure.. This would depend if they set up the play modes as separate comparisons within the TrueSkill system. I would say this was Not done however, and a players skill is regardless of game type.

How can I improve who I'm matched against/with?

I am not sure entirely what you mean by Improve, but in general just playing more games will settle your TrueSkill score pairing you up with people who are equally skilled as you. As the article reads, it does not try to pick dead match team games, but will try to pair dead matched players and put them into opposite teams.

FYI, This is the match making of all XBox Live games since Halo 2, as according to the article. From RobV in the comments though, the insignia represents how much/how long you have played the game as opposed to a graphical representation of your match making ranking.

Solution 2:

As @Alex stated, I doubt you'll get an exact answer. However, here is my (limited) understanding.

One aspect of matchmaking is the Connection Options you've set. This includes things like matching based on player ability, speaking language, and connection quality. Also, if you look in the Options, you can set additional preferences there (I think - been a while since I looked). This includes things like team player, talkative, etc. These options are all taken into account when finding a match.

If you match on player skill, then your skill in the current play list is taken into account. So if you are horrible at Team Slayer, but really good at Team Objective, you'll be matched with better players in Objective than in Team Slayer. If you're in a party, then I think that the skill level of each player is averaged, but I'm not positive on that.

Regarding your rank, this is not like the rank in Halo 2. It basically indicates how long you've been playing Halo Reach. Most anything you do in game gives you credits (killing enemies, getting medals or commendations, etc.). Eventually you will earn enough credits to get the next rank. All your rank gets you is new items to purchase in the armory (which are all purely cosmetic).