A Word on Halo 5's Leave Punishing System

Games Other Halo
1

I wanted to take a moment to vent my righteous and controller shattering fury onto this message board. Tonight while enjoying a 3 almost 4 game win streak on swat, your servers crashed or bugged or whatever the $$$$ they did. Resulting in a respawn that lasted no less than 8 spawns and then proceeded to drop me entirely from a match I was winning 45 to 24 with a positive KDA of 4+.

Needlessly to say I immediately shut down my Halo 5 game and decided if you, were going to literally steal a win from me I would just be done for the night. Then being the ‘go getter’ I like to color myself as, after ditching my friend in a fit of anger I decided I would try to recover the night.

So I pop the game back in load up my profile and find to my COMPLETE AND UTTER HORROR that you’re backwards hillbilly-holier-than-thou leave punishing system had docketed me -2 losses on my rank.

I’ve been playing Halo games since the original Xbox. I was terrified as a small child of the first flood level, I played endless hours of split screen co-op on Combat Evolved, I even played CE on locally networked computers in the computer lab during grade school. I opened Halo 2 the Christmas it was released and discovered Xbox Live multiplayer for the very first time.

I was there with Chief when he defeated the Covenant for the very last time in Halo 3, which included my personal favorite moment in my online Halo career picking up a double kill with one Spartan laser shot. I wept when Kat died on Reach, a game that in addition to bringing emotion to a series that severely lacked it also included the best multiplayer experience of the entire run.

When Microsoft handed the Halo series off to 343 despite the fact that I knew with an untested and inexperienced development team Halo 4 would be deeply flawed, I still pushed for all my friends to pick it up so we could play. Hell! I convinced my best friend to buy an Xbox One just to play Halo 5 with me on it.
All of which is to say I love this game, I love this series, warts and all.

To the point, I don’t mind the rank system, when I was first introduced to it, it made it hard to casually play the game. If I went on a losing streak and lost rank after rank, my controller sometimes decided all on its own to commit suicide on the floor. I’ve personally heard the sound of 8 different controllers flying out of the hands of my best friend and meeting a rocky death on his brick fireplace. Seemingly animating themselves long enough to fly head first into the brick of their own accord simply because they too can’t believe how much god awful emphasis has been placed on competitiveness this time around.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand 343, you made Call of Halo for the multiplayer on Halo 4 and everyone hated it. Your knee jerk reaction was naturally to go completely in the opposite direction and hire a freaking in house professional halo team to help direct and test maps to give them that -Yoink!-, -Yoink!- competitive edge you think gamers crave. You can shoot down people from so many angles on Halo 5 maps it makes me wonder if you started with a ^^^^ heptagon, made it 3D and then added ledges to taste. Every ranked mode is crafted for maximum professional impact which isn’t always a bad thing.

But let’s get real here 343 hardcore professional gamers do not keep this series alive. Its every guy in-between hard core and casual. Halo 4 didn’t hit that sweet spot and frankly Halo 5 doesn’t either.

To bring it back to my original point you know what happened after I realized you had STOLEN diamond 3 +1 from me? I decided to get it back. Out of sheer frustration I played 5 grueling matches and lost every. Single. One. I am now diamond 1 again, joy.

I didn’t quit that game, I didn’t ruin my own night, but you sure as hell punished me like I did and for WHAT?! Honestly. As a neutral observer I get what you are trying to accomplish here, people quitting games is a huuuuuuuuge problem in Halo, in any Halo. Especially in a sub type like Swat you knock the other team down to 3 people vs 4 and someone just got an unfair advantage. The team of three if they are good, the team of four if the three suck.

So look I get it really I do, you want to discourage it, you want people to stop quitting. That’s why I accept every ban I get when I quit multiple times. Its why I’ve even defended the ban system to others because I GET how much it truly sucks for people to leave games early.

You know what though? Taking away ranks is a step too far. Forget for a minute that you’ve changed it so we can actually drop out of one bracket into another. Or the fact that every few months you reset the ranks, I mean what the actual #### 343? Do you know how hard I worked to get Onyx when Halo 5 first came out? And then guess what, I quit for a YEAR when you took Onyx away from me.

343, you guys didn’t even add a little in game bar, you know maybe something hovering above each game type that lists all the ranks you’ve held for every season you played in. Nope just you suck again welcome back to gold, or plat or freaking diamond.

But forget all that, now to punish people leaving which by the way, you already did with gratuitous bans and guess what.

Its. Not. Working.

People still leave games like they just finished eating and it’s time to pay but they left their money at home, and would you like to know why?
Because Halo online multiplayer is FRUSTRATING it is a beautiful and deeply FLAWED creation. For %%%%% sake 343, do you know how many matches I have lost because you paired me with teammates that go -13 when I go 24 and 6? Do you know how many times the other team’s kill sink leaves and suddenly a +9 point lead turns into a complete loss? Not to mention glitches, people that warp out of headshots like freaking Neo in The Matrix. Even worse, when you do put the ban hammer down you are effectively, stealing bought and paid for content from customers, for gods sake why? Because the professional Halo team wanted you to? Do we all suddenly want the same thing from the multiplayer that a professional Halo team does? I really doubt it.

And when the game decides that it’s had enough of you playing and boots you for no reason, you probably just want to move on with your life. Oops you can’t because now you’ve lost a ton of rank because the game thinks you are prematurely leaving a match that you might have had a perfectly good reason to leave in the first place. Like what if the other team is up by 30 to 5 and you just want it to end? I should get punished for that?

No.

You overcompensated and I can sincerely hope you will find the sweet, sweet middle ground in Halo 6.

See I won’t make any sweeping statements about quitting Halo forever, 343, baby, darling, we both know I can’t quit you for long. I’m addicted to that deep baritone ringing in my killing frenzy or triple kill.

What I am saying is this; I hope you can see from my explanation here that perhaps taking rank away for people leaving matches is a step too far. Perhaps you are alienating the moderate and casual gamer with the overly competitive nature of this particular multiplayer.

All of which is my rational and reasoned way of saying this:

I blame you. I blame you for ruining my night gaming with my friend. I blame you for the spectacular reverse phoenix I’ve just pulled with my rank. I blame you for it all.

So for just for tonight I can only say this;

!!! !!! and anyone that had a hand in this terrible. Terrible. TERRIBLE. Leave punishing system coming into existence.

2

redacted

3

I’m just letting you know not many people are going to want to read all that. Waayy too many details that just don’t needs to be there. I browsed over like 10 paragraphs of what seemed to include how long you’ve loved halo, something about a fireplace. Like seriously I know the rankings suck, I know the bannhammer sucks. I fact most people recgnie halo 5 as having one of if not the worst ranking system in halo. Just a heads up is all. Dunno what you’re expecting from that long of a rant but don’t expect too many people to red the whole thing

4

I don’t expect anything, I was just really frustrated. Thank you for slogging through a much as you did haha. Hopefully my rage was good for a laugh or two.

5

It’s still just a game at th me of the day. I was playing CTF a couple of days ago where two players on the opposite team were destroying everyone and had no desire to play the objective. Two players from their team left and three from my team did.

They sent me a message to cap their flag which I did. I won’t they lost. But they were CLEARLY not unranked/Bronze players which they were.

other games were fun though :slight_smile:

6

I truly support your message here OP. everyone has this problem in which its a main problem here. it is totally not fair to get a horrible loss due to some people who cant handle the pressure and extremely broken servers. so 343 thinks its ok to punish people who get lagged out due to server problems and drop a nuclear ban and a whole rank tier. i believe the only thing that 343 cares about is MONEY. all this paid req packs its their priority and even more the HCS is their number one priority. they treat the community like complete horse $$$$.

now i made a test yesterday using a new account. i was NOT smurfing as i was trying to see what it was ranking in a new account. i was recently introcued to halo so i had a nightmare aiming and getting better. overtime i began to get to a competitive state but due to my past history its hard to get a good match. so now with way better skills i tried a new account on team arena but guess what? a complete nightmare with people lagged out and getting matched with high diamond near onyx players. i lost 6 out of 10 games due to people lagged out. i had asked people why they left and several responses come to a server issues and some people were honest to say that it was an unfair match. at the same time i ask myself why my team consisted of very low bronze and low silver players against high platinum/diamond players. i must say its due to my skill and early rank but i shouldn’t be with a low rank team against a high level tier. you call this balanced 343?

moving on to the point. i lost 6 games due to people leaving and server problems. i bet 343 makes alot of money on micro transactions and never made an effort to invest on server maintenance. this is something they will never fix and i guess we need to start getting used to it.

thank you 343.

sincerely, your forgotten community.

7

I can understand your frustration. Lag can be infuriating but I have to say that I don’t experience it that often. And I rarely lag out of games.

Having said that I almost never play by myself, so I don’t have people quitting on me. I wouldn’t say that I experience connection issues more on halo than any other game I play.

Not sure what they can do here. You don’t want people to quit so you implement a punishment. But you make it slack enough to not punish people who have to leave a game for a good reason or get kicked due to a server hiccup. In my experience 343’s system does this fairly successfully. Your mileage may vary though.

8

i just read the matchmaking update for February 13 and i still don’t see changes coming soon. they claim its going to be fixed soon but i honestly think they make this “updates” just to calm people down. quitters and server issues will still be a problem according to what i read. and making the team arena only exclusive ranking its just a horrible idea in my opinion.

9

Wow that got pretty off original topic. But on the ban hammer, I think it is pretty terrible. But it hasn’t given me a bs ban in awhile so I think I’m good. Although recently my game has just been crashing out of the blue.

10

One of the best, most well thought out rants I’ve read in a long time.

“Do we all suddenly want the same thing from the multiplayer that a professional Halo team does?”

This is something every single Halo player needs to be asking every single time they play a match.

“People still leave games like they just finished eating and it’s time to pay but they left their money at home, and would you like to know why?
Because Halo online multiplayer is FRUSTRATING it is a beautiful and deeply FLAWED creation. For %%%%% sake 343, do you know how many matches I have lost because you paired me with teammates that go -13 when I go 24 and 6? Do you know how many times the other team’s kill sink leaves and suddenly a +9 point lead turns into a complete loss? Not to mention glitches, people that warp out of headshots like freaking Neo in The Matrix.”

As a description of the problems with matchmaking this is very nearly flawless. What it fails to acknowledge though is that this has been the state of affairs since the day Halo 2 launched. I think that if anyone knew how to make matchmaking work then they’d have done it by now. Maybe not. Who can say?

Still a great rant. Please keep ranting.

11

Hey Everyone,

Let me start by saying thank you to everyone who took the time to leave a like or reply. This got a lot more of a response then I was expecting so thank you.

I’m going to try to respond to everyone so if you don’t want to read every single reply just CTRL+F (your name) as I put this in sections starting with each person’s tag.

@SolidusIzBack

and

@HYv47

SolidusIzBack: “Waayy too many details that just don’t needs to be there.”

HYv47: “Wow that got pretty off original topic.”

Whats pretty funny here is that the topic actually was, “I’m PO’d” so I would argue I needed every gratuitous detail I listed to make my original point. Plus I wanted to make it clear that this wasn’t about Halo bashing which brings me to my next point.

@ recon Z 3 R 0

recon Z 3 R 0: “What it fails to acknowledge though is that this has been the state of affairs since the day Halo 2 launched. I think that if anyone knew how to make matchmaking work then they’d have done it by now”

The problems that I am point out are nothing new, this series had issues before it went to 343, Bungie wasn’t perfect. So Halo bashing or 343 bashing I think its counter to the point which is we can have a constructive conversation about how to improve this game without hating on anyone. The trap that I really think 343 is falling into which Bungie eventually learned and perfected how to get out of goes to recon Z 3 R 0’s second sentence there. There isn’t really a way to fix these problems jumping from a multiplayer that is too focused on the casual to one too focused on the competitive doesn’t help anyone. Instead you should focus on mitigating the problems instead of solving the problems.

Bungie did this so so well because they stopped trying to make everything work and started trying to make everything that did work, work better. For instance with Halo: Reach’s multiplayer which for me I’ve said before and will say again is the gold standard. They didn’t try to get all ban happy for their last run or innovate what did they do? They gave you an never-ending rank quest to fight through with increasing cosmetic (this is key) rewards. So even if a bunch of people leave, you still get rank up points and you can still fight toward the inclement weather augment which, lets be honest, is all anyone really wanted in that game. Which leads me to my further point.

@PeterAK91

and

@Viper22390

PeterAK91: “i believe the only thing that 343 cares about is MONEY. all this paid req packs its their priority and even more the HCS is their number one priority”

And

“i had asked people why they left and several responses come to a server issues and some people were honest to say that it was an unfair match. at the same time i ask myself why my team consisted of very low bronze and low silver players against high platinum/diamond players. i must say its due to my skill and early rank but i shouldn’t be with a low rank team against a high level tier.”

Viper22390: “Not sure what they can do here. You don’t want people to quit so you implement a punishment. But you make it slack enough to not punish people who have to leave a game for a good reason or get kicked due to a server hiccup. In my experience 343’s system does this fairly successfully.”

343 isn’t too far off on some of the things they need to do to reach Bungie status or satisfy a longtime fan/critic of this series. I don’t hate on the REQ packs or micro-transactions because I understand their purpose. In Halo 5 you don’t have to pay for a single DLC map or update to firefight, competitive play, or warzones. Because the bill is being footed by gamers that pay for the micro-transactions allowing everyone to stay on even footing. In previous Halo games what you have are people eventually getting separated into 2 camps. People with all the DLC maps and people without, this damages the overall community by separating people. So if the net result of micro-transactions is that 343 and Microsoft make a little extra money but we the players get content for free im ok with that.

Particularly because they keep it strictly to cosmetics, there is no pay to win here because every pack is randomized. You can’t claim even without paying money that you don’t get the same value everyone else does especially when there are free packs (daily in some cases) that are available to players and each pack has the same chance of getting something good as any other, paid or otherwise.

Now am I a huge fan of some of the psychological games they play in pursuit of this? No. If you notice they don’t let you sell multiple cards at once and opening REQ packs takes a god awful amount of time. They are trying to get you frustrated so you spend real money instead of in game money. I don’t really think that is needed at all.
Further however to Viper22390’s point I actually don’t care if people quit and I don’t want a punishment implemented for that. As recon Z 3 R 0 stated before these problems have been around forever. What I want is to be rewarded for being a good player with awesome cosmetics or higher rank. Give me an extra REQ pack every once in a while for good tenure, (not leaving matches) stop stealing my hard earned rank when I leave due to some !!!.

Even further my all time best two games (both of which are uploaded on different profiles for proof). Happened after my entire team left. One I came back single handed from a -14 point lead to win against 4 players with an end of like 38 kills 14 deaths. Another i went 41 and 9. Sometimes its fun when everyone leaves you just don’t know until you get into that situation. See MaxPowerG81’s comment for another kind of proof on that.

What 343 did wrong here when Bungie did it right was use the Stick over the Carrot. If you want me to keep coming back, if you want anyone to keep coming back, give us a reason to. Don’t keep hitting us with a giant stick like an angry parent who doesn’t know how to deal with children and expect us to come back for more.

@ MaxPowerG81

MaxPowerG81: “It’s still just a game at th me of the day…… other games were fun though :)”

You are right, it is just a game and it can be a lot of fun but at the end of the day I pay for this content and I agitate for others to do so as well. So in return for that service and my money I feel I get a stake in the faults and things done right. And I’ll keep complaining until I’m blue in the face or they get it right.

As a side note some of the inspiration for part of my rant and answers here come from this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb-Igsmk9-I

I don’t actually know this guy, and I don’t get a single thing for plugging his video. I’m just really not a fan of plagiarism. You should always cite your source, it doesn’t make you dumb to pull ideas from others. Just have something fresh to expand and flesh out the original idea.

Further side note about the video, I don’t actually agree with everything he says and not everything I’ve said links directly back to his content. But he makes some really valid points. If you like to think about your games this is a good video to watch on Halo 5.

12

> 2533274812738130;1:
> I wanted to take a moment to vent my righteous and controller shattering fury onto this message board. Tonight while enjoying a 3 almost 4 game win streak on swat, your servers crashed or bugged or whatever the $$$$ they did. Resulting in a respawn that lasted no less than 8 spawns and then proceeded to drop me entirely from a match I was winning 45 to 24 with a positive KDA of 4+.
>
> Needlessly to say I immediately shut down my Halo 5 game and decided if you, were going to literally steal a win from me I would just be done for the night. Then being the ‘go getter’ I like to color myself as, after ditching my friend in a fit of anger I decided I would try to recover the night.
>
> So I pop the game back in load up my profile and find to my COMPLETE AND UTTER HORROR that you’re backwards hillbilly-holier-than-thou leave punishing system had docketed me -2 losses on my rank.
>
> I’ve been playing Halo games since the original Xbox. I was terrified as a small child of the first flood level, I played endless hours of split screen co-op on Combat Evolved, I even played CE on locally networked computers in the computer lab during grade school. I opened Halo 2 the Christmas it was released and discovered Xbox Live multiplayer for the very first time.
>
> I was there with Chief when he defeated the Covenant for the very last time in Halo 3, which included my personal favorite moment in my online Halo career picking up a double kill with one Spartan laser shot. I wept when Kat died on Reach, a game that in addition to bringing emotion to a series that severely lacked it also included the best multiplayer experience of the entire run.
>
> When Microsoft handed the Halo series off to 343 despite the fact that I knew with an untested and inexperienced development team Halo 4 would be deeply flawed, I still pushed for all my friends to pick it up so we could play. Hell! I convinced my best friend to buy an Xbox One just to play Halo 5 with me on it.
> All of which is to say I love this game, I love this series, warts and all.
>
> To the point, I don’t mind the rank system, when I was first introduced to it, it made it hard to casually play the game. If I went on a losing streak and lost rank after rank, my controller sometimes decided all on its own to commit suicide on the floor. I’ve personally heard the sound of 8 different controllers flying out of the hands of my best friend and meeting a rocky death on his brick fireplace. Seemingly animating themselves long enough to fly head first into the brick of their own accord simply because they too can’t believe how much god awful emphasis has been placed on competitiveness this time around.
>
> Don’t get me wrong, I understand 343, you made Call of Halo for the multiplayer on Halo 4 and everyone hated it. Your knee jerk reaction was naturally to go completely in the opposite direction and hire a freaking in house professional halo team to help direct and test maps to give them that -Yoink!-, -Yoink!- competitive edge you think gamers crave. You can shoot down people from so many angles on Halo 5 maps it makes me wonder if you started with a ^^^^ heptagon, made it 3D and then added ledges to taste. Every ranked mode is crafted for maximum professional impact which isn’t always a bad thing.
>
> But let’s get real here 343 hardcore professional gamers do not keep this series alive. Its every guy in-between hard core and casual. Halo 4 didn’t hit that sweet spot and frankly Halo 5 doesn’t either.
>
> To bring it back to my original point you know what happened after I realized you had STOLEN diamond 3 +1 from me? I decided to get it back. Out of sheer frustration I played 5 grueling matches and lost every. Single. One. I am now diamond 1 again, joy.
>
> I didn’t quit that game, I didn’t ruin my own night, but you sure as hell punished me like I did and for WHAT?! Honestly. As a neutral observer I get what you are trying to accomplish here, people quitting games is a huuuuuuuuge problem in Halo, in any Halo. Especially in a sub type like Swat you knock the other team down to 3 people vs 4 and someone just got an unfair advantage. The team of three if they are good, the team of four if the three suck.
>
> So look I get it really I do, you want to discourage it, you want people to stop quitting. That’s why I accept every ban I get when I quit multiple times. Its why I’ve even defended the ban system to others because I GET how much it truly sucks for people to leave games early.
>
> You know what though? Taking away ranks is a step too far. Forget for a minute that you’ve changed it so we can actually drop out of one bracket into another. Or the fact that every few months you reset the ranks, I mean what the actual #### 343? Do you know how hard I worked to get Onyx when Halo 5 first came out? And then guess what, I quit for a YEAR when you took Onyx away from me.
>
> 343, you guys didn’t even add a little in game bar, you know maybe something hovering above each game type that lists all the ranks you’ve held for every season you played in. Nope just you suck again welcome back to gold, or plat or freaking diamond.
>
> But forget all that, now to punish people leaving which by the way, you already did with gratuitous bans and guess what.
>
> Its. Not. Working.
>
> People still leave games like they just finished eating and it’s time to pay but they left their money at home, and would you like to know why?
> Because Halo online multiplayer is FRUSTRATING it is a beautiful and deeply FLAWED creation. For %%%%% sake 343, do you know how many matches I have lost because you paired me with teammates that go -13 when I go 24 and 6? Do you know how many times the other team’s kill sink leaves and suddenly a +9 point lead turns into a complete loss? Not to mention glitches, people that warp out of headshots like freaking Neo in The Matrix. Even worse, when you do put the ban hammer down you are effectively, stealing bought and paid for content from customers, for gods sake why? Because the professional Halo team wanted you to? Do we all suddenly want the same thing from the multiplayer that a professional Halo team does? I really doubt it.
>
> And when the game decides that it’s had enough of you playing and boots you for no reason, you probably just want to move on with your life. Oops you can’t because now you’ve lost a ton of rank because the game thinks you are prematurely leaving a match that you might have had a perfectly good reason to leave in the first place. Like what if the other team is up by 30 to 5 and you just want it to end? I should get punished for that?
>
> No.
>
> You overcompensated and I can sincerely hope you will find the sweet, sweet middle ground in Halo 6.
>
> See I won’t make any sweeping statements about quitting Halo forever, 343, baby, darling, we both know I can’t quit you for long. I’m addicted to that deep baritone ringing in my killing frenzy or triple kill.
>
>
>
> All of which is my rational and reasoned way of saying this:
>
> I blame you. I blame you for ruining my night gaming with my friend. I blame you for the spectacular reverse phoenix I’ve just pulled with my rank. I blame you for it all.
>
> So for just for tonight I can only say this;
>
> !!! !!! and anyone that had a hand in this terrible. Terrible. TERRIBLE. Leave punishing system coming into existence.

Man, I never knew that we were having an essay contest here.

13

Its not a contest, its the primary problem we have in halo 5 in which takes very little attention. in the other hand I respect our OP Daer to take the time to explain this in detail. many people have complain alot and 343 has actually said a word on in but its something not as easy to fix. i know there is a way to fix this but until then we are stuck on this unfortunate matchmaking.

14

Great Rant!

Now imagine what it’s like for a Level 100 who played Firefight entirely walking into a Warzone or Arena game. You would be so screwed. I know. That’s what I did. To say the matchmaking algorithm is broken is an extreme understatement.

Every time I play, I ask why I’m put in with people who are so ridiculously more skilled than I am. It blows so bad.

So let’s say I just suck, which is fair. Why am I not matched with other players who suck? There seems to be no parameters whatsoever to make this happen.

The answer is simple. There is no spoon here Neo. There is no matchmaking algorithm. At least not one that makes matches based on skill.

15

> 2535416646700910;3:
> I’m just letting you know not many people are going to want to read all that. Waayy too many details that just don’t needs to be there. I browsed over like 10 paragraphs of what seemed to include how long you’ve loved halo, something about a fireplace. Like seriously I know the rankings suck, I know the bannhammer sucks. I fact most people recgnie halo 5 as having one of if not the worst ranking system in halo. Just a heads up is all. Dunno what you’re expecting from that long of a rant but don’t expect too many people to red the whole thing

I read it all :slight_smile:

16

> 2535419905163263;15:
> > 2535416646700910;3:
> > I’m just letting you know not many people are going to want to read all that. Waayy too many details that just don’t needs to be there. I browsed over like 10 paragraphs of what seemed to include how long you’ve loved halo, something about a fireplace. Like seriously I know the rankings suck, I know the bannhammer sucks. I fact most people recgnie halo 5 as having one of if not the worst ranking system in halo. Just a heads up is all. Dunno what you’re expecting from that long of a rant but don’t expect too many people to red the whole thing
>
> I read it all :slight_smile:

I didn’t say nobody would read it all, but people don’t like to wait and read about your life story on forums

17

I read it all and have the same problems I hate the latancey issues most of all if someone is having problems killing the other team when you shoot someone and hit them so many time you need to reload before they get killed it sucks you and your team get recked and lose csr because of bad servers and connection issues