**NERD ALERT**

There seems to be a great deal of confusion among the million(s) or so gamers currently engaged in the pass time know as matchmaking on Halo 3. I must admit, I’ve been a bit baffled by how ranks, and skills and experience seem to work. Imagine hearing someone say to you (over live) and I quote:

“So if I’ve got 36 exp points, and a skill of 11 in social team doubles games what rank would that give me in a ranked slayer match?”

I don’t know, to be honest don’t really care, but for all you stat whores out there - you probably do.

So here it is (as best I understand it):

You get 1 EXP or RP (Ranking Point) point for being on the winning team in any type of game (social or ranked) or if you place in the top 49% in a free for all match. - so if you were playing lone wolves and there were 16 players, you would need to place 8th or higher to gain any EXP. It is possible to get more than 1 EXP point for being on the winning side of a team, several people have reporting jumping 2 points in CTF, but this is most likely due to a high skill, high kill count and several flags captured / dropped.

You can play ANY type of game and gain EXP be that social or ranked.

Skill is only obtained from ranked games, and is based on a number of factors - badges earned, people killed, kill vs death ration, killing streaks team awareness, life expectancy etc. Skill can go up as well as down and you can’t achieve officer ranks (explained in a bit) unless your skill is over 10!

Ranks are the badges that appear next to your name in matchmaking (recruit / sergeant / general etc). All of the lower ranks (apprentice / recruit / corporal / sergeant / gunnery sergeant) need no skill to attain, they are purely based on EXP points gained. Once you hit the required EXP, you get that rank - applies to all game types and modes.

Officer ratings require skill to get, if you don’t have a skill rating of 10 or higher you could have 5000 EXP points but you would never progress past the rank of gunnery sergeant. Officers need both a high skill rating and a good amount of EXP.

Finally, the little numbers that appear when in matchmaking next to your rank represent your usefulness at that type of game, you’ll notice if you change the gametype the number changes depending on how much you have played that type of game.

EXP can’t be lost unless you quit a match in which case you can wave bye bye to a little chunk of EXP. Skill is lost when you lose a match or perform badly (like team killing, getting your arse kicked excessively, short life expectancy etc).

That should clear it up for most people I hope - and no I’m not saying this is exactly how it works, but that does seem to be the general consensus across the web at large!