For those who haven't seen it, THIS ARTICLE explains the Arena ranking system in its entirety, including the entire formula if you read far enough.

Bring a calculator suckers...

And psy's more detailed (albeit late) post...

H3WM Psyfireman wrote:

Todays Bungie news story highlights the Rating System in Arena. This topic has been widely discussed and this story gives us a lot of answers. It still leaves a little in question such as what is teh exact breakdown of percentages of players in any given division, but this will definitely satisfy some curiosity for the time being. This explanation might just help a lot of change our game play accordingly as well. Happy hunting!

http://www.bungie.net/projects/reach/article.aspx?ucc=variants&cid=25865

I would try to explain this further, but I would be getting into a lesson in statistical analysis and bore a lot of people within the first few sentences. Feel free to discuss.

There are a few items I would like to quick reference here:

1) Kills are worth as much as assists
2) Deaths will lower your rating half as much as what a kill will
3) It is impossible to score anything over 2,000
4) Only 5% of players will be accepted into Onyx rating

Kills and Assists count the same towards your rating... Interesting.

EuroFox77 wrote:

Kills and Assists count the same towards your rating... Interesting.

Seeing how hard it is to get assists, i see no problem with this

I actually love that part. It's a simple solution to a complicated problem (as most are). It discourages hanging back and picking off your teammates' hard work, as well as providing an accurate ranking for a pure team player. Overall I believe that arena (over time) will become my favorite playlist. I don't care if I'm not Onyx, but by having this season setup it discourages restarts from ruining the experience for those of us legitimately less talented AND credits assists for mid-long range players who tend to avoid direct confrontation (due to above mentioned lack of 1v1 talent). I firmly believe that this system could create a new standard for online gaming. Bungie have, as usual, outdone themselves. For all the faults that the Halo series admittedly has, when they get it right, they certainly set the bar.

do these ratings count the same as the ones in softcore, if so:
i like the fact that wheelmen count as assists therefore get the proper recognition.

onyx is gonna be tough louie you think you can do it?

Arena is serious business. Reminds me of the MLG playlist in Halo 3. People don't screw around in it and are mad if you go slightly negative in the old k/D Ratio.

Th Arena system is genius. No more "boosting a buddy to a higher rank" because after a month, the thing resets and you'd have to do it all again. No more point in buying a 50 so no more d-bags creating accounts to boost to 50 and then sell them. No more restarts who want to have "fun" playing against weaker opponents because after 3 games, you're rated and placed where you belong and you just won't be matched up against noobs anymore.

If this system is what I think it is matchmaking is from now on going to be the delight I knew it could be. Especially for medium skilled players like me. Love it.

Van Hengel wrote:

Th Arena system is genius. No more "boosting a buddy to a higher rank" because after a month, the thing resets and you'd have to do it all again. No more point in buying a 50 so no more d-bags creating accounts to boost to 50 and then sell them. No more restarts who want to have "fun" playing against weaker opponents because after 3 games, you're rated and placed where you belong and you just won't be matched up against noobs anymore.

If this system is what I think it is matchmaking is from now on going to be the delight I knew it could be. Especially for medium skilled players like me. Love it.

youve sold it to me van, i was going to avoid arena for a while, but im going in!

Trueskill is still there which is the system that matches you against players. This is the same as Halo3.
The arena number is just for personal gain. The ranks go by trueskill by consistently winning.

The only thing the number is for is for deciding who and who doesn't win. The top 4 players with the highest rating are counted as winners. So you could have 3 players on the winning team with 1600's and another on the losing team with 1600 and all the rest of the players in the 1500's. That player on the losing team with 1600 will be counted as a win. The player with 1500 on the winning team will be counted as a loss.

IMO that is greatly flawed. The assist system as needs to be fixed as it's too strict.

So top 5% is onyx which would be at the top of the trueskill curve. So a "50" in Halo3 as a comparison.
Next tier is gold which would be again close to the top of the trueskill curve so 45+ in Halo3 as a comparison etc..

Trueskill is a MS system and is a part of every matchmaking playlist.

Onyx wheelmen is linear. You can't lose a rank so as long as you drive/play a lot you're going to get it.

Right now there are no wheelman in Arena because it's all small maps. But one day Bungie promised us Arena BTB and then the Wheelmen will flow like wine...

...and I'll just take the sniper and sneak off to kill the laser guy for you.

I actually haven't touched arena yet, I plan to this weekend. I'm glad assist are worth just as much as kills now, but assist now are very rare. You have to do at least 60% damage, which is breaking shields and then hurting their health at least 1/5 of the bar.

Well starting today there is only 6 days left for this season, and it requires 7 days of gameplay (play at least 3 games each day) to give u a division...I got my division

...but its the 4th one (bronze) (Team 215 aint real big on teamwork )

H3WM Discreet wrote:

I actually haven't touched arena yet, I plan to this weekend. I'm glad assist are worth just as much as kills now, but assist now are very rare. You have to do at least 60% damage, which is breaking shields and then hurting their health at least 1/5 of the bar.

It's 40%

This is really the only playlist i intend on playing until new maps/dlc is introduced with playable maps.

This is by far one of my favorite playlist now. Purely for the competition, play a few Arena matches then jump into Team Slayer and you will notice the difference. Most times every one is pretty serious unfortunately if you don’t play with one or two friends that have mic’s you can go quite a few games without communication. Also because of the top 4 are considered winners I have been fragged by my own team more times than I can count.