Skill

Skill is awarded to players of Halo 3’s Matchmaking, along with experience points. This can only be obtained on ranked playlists, such as Lone Wolves or Team Slayer.

Gaining Skill
Skill does not have a set process to gain it, but is your skill relative relative to other players currently playing Halo 3. You do not gain skill unless you become appreciably and significantly better. If you develop a greater headshot ability, your skill level should rise commensurately, unlike with EXP, that only changes if you win a match.

Experience and Rating Points (RP)
The Halo 2 skill system has been rebuilt to build a good, accurate, and fair system that will ensure even more balance, better matching and less cheating and abuse than that of Halo 2.

Skill level and experience are measured in the Matchmaking system. Every player will be rewarded with experience Rating Points (RP) earned for winning a game in Halo 3 Matchmaking. Progress from recruit to officer is a reward for many wins and another way for games to be evenly matched.

Wherever a gamertag is seen, your experience "RPs" and their associated rank status (Sergeant, for example) will be exposed. They’ll have an instant feel for how long you’ve been playing – and how that compares to your relative skill level in a given playlist. Someone with lots of RPs and a low Matchmaking skill level, might simply be new to that specific matchmaking playlist. Knowing that is the key to knowing your enemy. The layers of complexity Bungie has built into the system should make it better and less prone to abuse than ever, while simultaneously enriching the player experience.

Stats, medals and other data will all be displayed right in the game, highlighting top performing players in the postgame carnage report, and visible to anyone who highlights your Gamertag. And yet with all this emphasis on progress, behind the scenes we’re making huge strides in making the act and the consequences of cheating and grieving, less rewarding for those who tend to do that kind of thing.

As with Halo 2, your stats will also be available online, through Bungie.net. They are now live on Bungie.net with more detail, more information and more flexibility than ever before. It is a massively feature-rich environment for stat-watchers everywhere.