The state of Halo Infinite ranked in 2025

Catering to the High-Tier Playerbase is Not the Solution

Halo Infinite’s ranked experience is an absolute mess for anyone below high Diamond. Smurfing, boosting, and a flawed ranking system make mid-to-low ranks miserable. Recent updates, particularly nerfing the GA'd weapons, show how Infinite is focusing on issues that only affect the top 0.1% of players while completely ignoring the brutal, glaring issues plaguing the majority of the playerbase. This leaves the casual community to suffer. Halo pros and content creators, though influential, represent a minority of the playerbase, yet they tend to dominate discussions. Most of these pros and creators will only address issues that directly affect them, and when these complaints are echoed by their fanbase, they sometimes receive priority fixes over other, more widespread issues.

Let me state that I personally like the recent changes, but I believe they shouldn’t have been the priority. As fun as it might be to hopefully watch HCS players use more than five guns, it’s still frustrating to see the devs ignore major problems that affect the majority of players. It’s especially disheartening when the devs prioritize responding to complaints from a minority that represents such a small portion of the playerbase. At the end of the day, those affected by these issues are the majority, and without them, Halo Infinite would have even fewer players and less support than it already does. If you truly care about the game, you should be advocating for the community as a whole—helping to solve the problems that affect the majority, not just the small issues impacting the top players.

The Rampant Issue of Smurfing

Smurfing is out of control, and Infinite’s free-to-play model makes it a paradise for people abusing the system. Sure, you have to play 50 social matches before you can enter ranked, but that’s nothing—anyone can knock that out in one night by playing the right targeted gamemodes and get straight to farming lower ranks.

Smurfing can happen at high Diamond and low Onyx, but the higher you go, the less common it is—because there simply aren’t as many players above you to smurf. The worst of it happens in the middle ranks, where the player pool is bigger and smurfs have plenty of easy targets. I promise, if you guys were running into the amount of smurfs/boosters as the more common ranks, you'd probably quit playing too.

The Boosting Problem and Its Excuses

Then there’s boosting—where Diamonds queue with Golds to exploit matchmaking and get easier games. And let’s be real: they are winning most of the time. The argument that “it’s not free wins because my teammates are bad” is complete nonsense. The whole point of boosting is that the enemies are worse than you, and it works. Other competitive games don’t allow this, and somehow, players survive and the world keeps spinning.

If you want to play with your lower-ranked friend, go play literally any other mode. Ranked is supposed to be competitive, not your personal playground to stomp weaker players. There is no excuse for this, and I don't want to hear yours.

Flawed Ranking System and Stat-Padding Incentives

Infinite’s ranking system isn’t built to reward winning—it’s built to reward stat padding. It tracks kills per minute, deaths per minute, and other metrics instead of just focusing on wins. Because of this, players quickly learn that playing the objective is a waste of time.

If you play to win but don’t rack up enough kills, you barely gain rank. If you lose but farm kills, you hardly get punished. The result? People are incentivized to play every mode like it’s Slayer, because that’s what the system rewards. It’s not just bad design—it’s actively teaching new players the wrong way to play, encouraging them to focus on personal stats instead of teamwork and objectives.

This isn’t just a problem for Infinite. If this system carries over to future Halo games, instead of learning how to play as a team and win, players are being trained to chase personal stats. It’s a terrible foundation for any competitive game. Players like Lunchbox—who focused on the win above all else—are going to majorly thin out. Under this ranking system, those who excel at intangible, team-supporting playstyles that don’t show up on the stat sheet will slowly disappear, even in Onyx. The system discourages that kind of play, and that’s a huge loss for ranked Halo.

Potential Consequences of Not Fixing the Issues

With rumors of Infinite potentially coming to other consoles, these kinds of issues need to be addressed before that happens. The influx of new players could be a chance to reinvigorate the playerbase, but if the game is still plagued with a flawed ranking system and frustrating mechanics, it risks driving them away rather than retaining them. Fixing these fundamental issues now will help ensure the game holds onto that initial boost of new players and keeps the momentum going when it finally expands to other platforms.

If we want more support for Infinite, then we need a bigger playerbase. Ignoring these issues will guarantee that we will continue to see the playerbase dropping instead of increasing. The more people playing the game, the more people spending money on it, and that increased revenue could translate into possibly more resources for the game—ultimately allowing Infinite to get the support it desperately needs to improve. While I understand that the majority of Halo Studios is focusing on the newer titles, fixing these problems is our only hope of letting Halo Infinite live up to more of its potential before it loses all support entirely. The core gameplay of Infinite is great, but everything surrounding it really holds it back.

How to Actually Fix This

  • Require a phone number for ranked: It’s 2025—if you don’t have a phone, that’s your problem and I don't care. This would instantly slash the number of smurfs abusing the system. And I believe Halo Infinite would ultimately gain more players from this than it loses.
  • Stop allowing massive rank disparities in parties: Golds should not be queuing with Diamonds. Other games enforce this, and players deal with it just fine without crying.
  • Make the ranking system the same for all ranks: Winning should be the only thing that matters, not how many kills someone farms while ignoring the objective.

Conclusion

If nothing changes, the mid ranks will keep bleeding players until only the top-tier players are left, at which point ranked will turn into an endless sweatfest with an even smaller population—an even more exclusive experience than it already is.