Originally Posted by
Bungie.net
After the AU is released, will the Halo 2 leaderboards be reset?
Yes, though not immediately. Our current plans are to reset the existing leaderboards within the next few weeks, once the AU and the first wave of maps has been released. We can't yet say with 100% certainty when that date will be, but we will give as much notice as possible once we have a confirmed date. For now, plan on this happening within a few weeks.
The leaderboards are being reset as a way to level the playing field and give all players a fresh start with Halo 2. In recent months, cheating and exploits have become rampant, eroding the credibility of the leaderboards. Ultimately rankings are intended to be used as a means for matching players of similar skill into competitive games. However, we realize that for people in tat every level of play, considerable time and effort was put into playing to achieve a high rank as a sign of your skill and status in the Halo 2 online community. While having to start from scratch will be upsetting to folks who have invested so much time into elevating their ranks, we are confident it's the right thing to do. Whether you have have cheated or not, the entire ranking system is suspect now and nobody trusts the rankings that appear next to anyone else's name. Secondly, with the addition of our new gameplay balance enhancements, the actual game itself has changed slightly since you first started playing it last November. Now consider we have 9 new maps coming out and what we're left with is essentially a very different online experience. In light of all that, we felt it was the best course of action to wipe the slate clean and give everyone a fresh start.
There is one additional reason for resetting the leaderboards - we're making some changes to the way the level system works. As we evaluated all of the players and games taking place on Live, we've noticed that the actual skill difference between players getting matchmade together is higher than we intended. We've also noticed that players have peaked out sooner than expected and the level distribution amongst all players isn't as broad as we intended. We will be updating the detailed experience chart on our site before these changes are made but the gist of it is this - players will now actually move through all levels faster than before, and players at the highest levels will have less restrictions for matching (making it easier to get into games), the potential point loss for games with high level differences is being reduced and ultimately the level distribution will be stretched out, causing players to match against other players who are closer in skill than they were previously. All in all we feel this will lead to a better experience when playing Halo 2 matchmaking.
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