An analysis of Quitting and how to prevent it

Games Other Halo
1

Foreword

Is it possible to stop the plague of quitting? Good Connections, CSR/VIGR, Ranked Playlists and a refined JiP system in combination with some more persuasive penalties could diminish the amount of quitting considerably.

Before you continue I should warn you that the following is the epitome of TL;DR. I have gone through it and highlighted a few items that I feel are important as well as strong points on interest that will hopefully interest you enough to read more.

Items that are discussed below include the following

  • Join in Progress
  • Quitting
  • Network Conditions, Lag and Host Changes
  • Penalties for Quitting (Existing and Theoretical)
  • Competitive Skill Rank
  • Competitive & Casual Playlist segregation

JiP: Trying to fight smoke with fire

<mark>JiP is a system that has been put in place to try and reduce the negative impact of quitting. It attempts to achieve this by giving some players the false impression that it’s OK to quit while forcing others into the types of situations that cause quitting in the first place.</mark>

From The point of view of the person being joined
Pros:

  • JiP sometimes finds you teammates (occasionally of a similar skill level or higher)
    Cons:
  • JiP doesn’t always find you team mates

From The point of view of the person being forced to join
Pros:

  • none
    Cons:
  • <mark>Being put on the losing team is not fair</mark>
  • <mark>Joining a laggy game is not fun</mark>
  • <mark>Often the game is nearing its end</mark>
  • <mark>JiP sometimes splits up your party onto different teams</mark>
  • The possibility of finding and existing game means you are less likely to find a ‘new’ one
  • I suspect finding a new game takes longer (as some priority is probably given to existing games)
  • The lack of ‘good connection’ searching already results in too many matchups between people in countries thousands of kilometers (hundreds of milliseconds) apart and JiP seems even more likely do to this because it appears to have even less restrictions on good connections than the default search does

I think it’s obvious that in its current state JiP is more of a burden than a benefit.

Some of my own experiences that come to mind where JiP has failed in one way or another
Example 1:

2 friends and I were put in a game the other night (on the losing team of course) but the winning team had also lost 4 players. Their 4 missing players were never replaced and so instead of the game continuing as a 4v5 (where the team of 4 was dominating anyway) it became a 4v8 and stayed like that. To add insult to injury my friends and I were much better than everyone else already in the game and so the other team unfairly became outnumbered and outgunned which ultimately resulted in their lossExample 2:

On another occasion a friend, myself and 1 other person squared of against a full team of 8 (on their host and from a different country to us). Not a single person joined in progress. We lost of course but we stayed till the end and put up a pretty good fight (800 to 1000 or something like that)JiP: What can be done about it?

[/li]- Leave it as is
Considerations: The ‘cons’ listed above

  • JiP needs to be fixed
    Considerations: The ‘cons’ listed above but what can be tweaked to minimize their disadvantages?
    The following is a list of possible ideas to improve JiP (may or may not be applicable in conjunction with one another)

  • Place heavier (or complete) restrictions on good connections. You should never have to join a laggy game

  • <mark>JiP should never split up your party</mark>

  • <mark>Restrict JiP to games where there is at least xx% of the total time left remaining.</mark>

  • <mark>Games that are joined are not counted towards your service record stats</mark>

  • If the number of people joining account for 25% of the total players in the match or more, Reset everyone and everything back to their initial spawn keeping only the current score.

  • Allow the joining players to choose to spawn on a specific teammate

  • Give the joining players immediate access to personal ordinance if the game-type permits it (perhaps dependent on the difference in score)

  • JiP should be made a non compulsory search option
    Considerations: <mark>No one would ever choose to search with this enabled.</mark> (Which would simply be evidence that no one actually wants it at all)

  • JiP should only allow you to join your friends teams
    (Even if JiP was to be removed, I think the ability to join your friends in game (pending an available placement) should remain, rather than waiting for their game to end.)
    Considerations: May prompt people to try and get their teammates to quit so that their own friends may join

  • JiP should be removed
    Considerations: People who quit will not be replaced

  • Quitting*

<mark>There are (and always has been) a few major reasons that account for 99% of all quitting and all of them relate to losing</mark>

  • Their getting raped and losing horribly
  • The Game is no fun because it’s unbelievably laggy (and most likely resulting in them getting raped and losing horribly)
  • Their losing and there’s not enough time left in the game to turn it around

<mark>Because this is why most people quit it means that 9 times out of 10 when you join a game in progress you’re going to be put on the losing team of a laggy game.</mark> You’re going to be put in a game where the other team all has power weapons and complete vehicle control but you have neither. You’re going to be put in a game that is unwinnable because not only is it laggy, the other team all has power weapons and all the vehicles but to top it off the other team is leading by 60 kills and there’s only 3 minutes left.

<mark>If quitting is a disease then JiP is just an inadequate treatment and certainly not a cure. Surely a better solution would be to discourage people from quitting in the first place.</mark>

Furthermore, in addition to its primary role, JiP has also allowed other changes to take place in the Halo experience. With the implementation of JiP came the ability for players to back out of the pre game lobby as long as they haven’t voted yet. I believe this was a terrible idea because it results in a large number of games starting off even more unbalanced than they already are.

And although you can choose to back out at this time, you have no choice in the matter when your search finds you a game in progress, you must join the game. My 4 friends and I are allowed to leave our 3 teammates to fend for themselves against a team of 8 before the game even starts, but we can’t choose to not join the losing team of a laggy game. The ‘logic’ behind this decision is simple, if people had the choice to not join in progress, they wouldn’t.

As the ability to leave the pre-game lobby is only possible because of JiP, I can’t stress enough that <mark>if JiP is to be removed then the ability to leave the pre-game lobby must also be removed</mark>

2

The Prevention of Quitting

My first thought would be to increase the penalties for quitting but before that can be done I believe the networking conditions must be addressed because <mark>a person should not be penalized for quitting a game that is so laggy that they can’t actually play.</mark>

Network Conditions and Consistency
<mark>A search for good connection filter is essential and would make the game more enjoyable for everyone.</mark>
Yes, Halo 4 prioritizes good connections but unlike the ‘search good connection’ filter of its predecessors it does not enforce it. No matter how much it’s ‘tweaked’ it will never have the same result as a boolean search option.
Prioritizing good connections is a far cry from enforcing them just like prioritizing match ups based on True Skill is a far cry from enforcing them.
To my knowledge most XBL games including Halo 4, Halo: Reach and Halo 3’s (social) playlists try to match people based on true skill, but the permitted skill gap is much greater and is often ignored completely. By comparison Halo 3’s ranked playlists are restricted to matching people to within 10 levels of the highest ranked person in a party and the difference that restriction makes is extraordinary to say the least. The same level of difference applies to prioritizing good connections Vs enforcing them. We should not have to play in matches where people teleport at times or seem indestructible or able to shoot through solid objects at others. We need the ability to enforce a restriction on good connection match ups only.

Halo 4’s lack of ‘good connection’ filter can be further discussed here: NO ‘REGIONAL FILTER’ - OR ‘GOOD CONNECTION’!!

I don’t want to stray from the topic at hand two much so I will quickly point out two more things regarding the network conditions.

  • A ‘good connection’ filter would not be a complete solution because I believe there is another underlying problem. This is evident in the fact that it’s not just matches where the host is on the other side of the world. Even when matches consist entirely of players from the same country, networking issues still occur much more frequently and with more severity than they ever did in previous titles.
  • Host Change (or more precisely, the lack of host changes). I have been in many games where the connection to the host is atrocious. Some to the point where the packet flow between myself and the host is only slightly higher (if at all) than between myself and any other player in the game. Yet the host does not change or on occasion attempts to select a new host but fails to do so.

The only reason I can think of for why the host does not change is due to NAT and the host is the only person in the game who is able to connect to every other player. I think this is irrelevant, if the connection is that bad for all players then the host change should be forced regardless and anyone who loses their connection to the game as a result should be considered acceptable losses.
I’ve never designed a online multiplayer game so I don’t know how it works exactly but surely the following is not beyond the realm of possibility.
All XBOX’s in a game monitor (by whatever means) how good their current connection to the host is
Every x seconds, the XBOX reports to the host if its connection is good or bad.
If the Host receives too many reports of ‘bad’ connections from the other players or if it fails to receive any good or bad reports at all then a Host change is forced, even if it results in the host and/or others being removed from the game.
Or instead of consistently reporting back to the host, the XBOX reports its bad connection status to the XBL server which initially set up the match. And if the server receives too many reports of bad connections from all/most of the players in the match then it initiates the forced change of host.

Disclaimer: I am not some kid running Cain and Abel, packets are monitored in my home network by means of hardware based port mirroring. My Xbox is connected directly to a switch which is connected directly to my modem/router which is connected directly to the internet. The network is not manipulated in any way shape or form.

Improved Network Conditions Pros:

  • Lag can not be used as an excuse for quitting
  • Better games and a more enjoyable experience for everyone
  • More enjoyment means more players in general
    Improved Network Conditions Cons:
  • Searching based on Good Connection increases overall search times

<mark>If the networking conditions are flawless then players have no valid reason to quit and can be fairly penalized for doing so.</mark>
Note: If a player is disconnected due to a forced host change as described above then the server should know not to penalize the player for it. However should a player be disconnected for any other reason (even legitimate ones such as a complete dropout of their broadband connection), then the penalty will still apply because from the server side there is no way to technically tell the difference between a broadband dropout or an xbox being turned off or ‘dashboarding’.

[EDIT]
No matter what measures are put in place, there’s no way to completely eliminate lag from every single game. If you find yourself constantly quitting due to lag then be aware that there is a good chance you will be penalized for it.

Try the following if you are experiencing lots of laggy games or constant dropouts:

Perhaps more people from your general location are searching elsewhere, why not try another playlist? Or take a short break, check if your housemate has a bit torrent client running which is hogging all the bandwidth or power off your modem for a few minutes then turn it back on (You’d be surprised how often this actually works).

If you keep getting disconnected then the same applies. If you just keep playing and getting disconnected then not only will you frustrate your self and the teams you keep leaving but eventually you’ll receive an unwanted visit from the banhammer. Take a break, turn your modem off for 5 minutes then switch it back on and see if it’s any better.

[/EDIT]

3

Possible penalties to discourage quitting.

It would be naive of anyone to believe that it’s possible stop people quitting all together. The fact is you can’t, at least not 100% but you can certainly reduce the amount of quitting that occurs by discouraging and persuading people in the right way.

Quit Bans
There is already a system in place to do this but I am unaware of the mechanics. So I will simply say this, I believe that the current quit bans (that inhibit you from playing matchmaking at all) should be an option of last resort if initial attempts to discourage bad behavior and encourage good behavior fail.

[EDIT]
More immediate bans with lighter penalties would be more effective. IE: quit one game and receive a 10 minute ban from that playlist only. 10 minutes is not a harsh penalty, it’s only about the length of 1 game but it would be enough to encourage people to start searching in another playlist.

As discussed earlier, quitting is usually caused by lag or losing, both of which may be reduced by playing another playlist. Changing playlists may reduce lag because it’s possible that a certain playlist contains more people from distant locations and others closer to have already moved on to another. If you follow their example you just might find them and be able to enjoy lag free games together.

Changing playlists can also be a good idea if you keep losing. Perhaps SWAT just isn’t for you right now or perhaps you’ve bitten off more than you can chew by searching in Team Throwdown by yourself. Instead of trying, failing and quitting over and over why not play something else where you might have more success.

And for the unfortunate few who do receive such a penalty unfairly (Internet dropout for example), then having to stop playing in only 1 playlist for only 10 minutes is not going to be the end of the world. Would it be annoying? sure, but hopefully you’d agree that its acceptable if you understand that the system is their for the greater good and benefits you in every other game that they play.
[/EDIT]

Quit Ban Pros:

  • Discourages quitting
    Quit Ban Cons:
  • Possibility of innocent victims (It may affect people who legitimately quit due to lag or loss of internet connection)

Loadout Penalties
Unlike a quit ban which simply stops a player from playing, a Loadout Penalty could be used to discourage quitting and at the same time encourage good behavior in future games.
Eg: Quitting 5 games in a row or 24 hours results in the inability to use any precision utility weapon in any of their loadouts until they play and complete 5 additional games.
To prevent bias the loss should be broad spectrum. ie: all precision utility weapons, all pistols, all grenades or all AA’s etc
To regain the items lost, the player must complete a certain number of games in a playlist that features personal loadouts (such as infinity slayer) but the penalty can still be applied for quitting a game in a playlist that uses pre-set loadouts (such as SWAT).
If the conditions required to trigger a Loadout Penalty are encountered again before the player has recovered their loadout items then the number of games required to do so increases.

Loadout Penalty Pros:

  • <mark>Discourages quitting by taking away something that will really be missed</mark>
  • <mark>Encourages Good Behavior to recover from the penalty</mark>
    Loadout Penalty Cons:
  • Possibility of innocent victims
  • Would not penalize players who play exclusively in playlists that use pre-set loadouts

Experience Penalties.
Currently if you don’t finish a game you don’t get any XP for it but this does little to discourage people from quitting because experience is too easy to get and reaching SR130 doesn’t take long, plus once at SR130 experience is no longer accumulated so the threat of not receiving XP is null and void because you’re not going to get it anyway.
Considering how easy it is to get to SR130 I think a single act of quitting should invoke the loss of 1 full SR or a severe amount of XP (the amount dependent on your current SR). Furthermore if the loss of XP reduces your total to below the requirement for your current SR then you should also go down in rank and lose any perks obtained from that rank.

<mark>Quitting a single game should lose you 1 SR or the amount of XP that it takes 20 games (or more) to earn.</mark> By doing this you reduce the likelihood of most players quitting to a minimum of 1 in 20 games. Also, you encourage them to play more games through to completion to regain their XP/SR

Experience Penalty Pros:

  • Discourages quitting
  • Encourages Good Behavior to recover from the penalty
    Experience Penalty Cons:
  • none (considering the relative ease and speed at which XP is gained in Halo 4)

<mark>Thinking back, the XP system in Halo 3 was very effective in discouraging me from quitting (while Halo 4’s by comparison does absolutely nothing).</mark>

I currently don’t have the time (or characters remaining) to break down the differences between the two into pros and cons so for now I will simply share with you how the Halo 3 system worked and how it deterred me from quitting.

In Halo 3 a win got you 1 xp for that playlist (and your total) and quitting deducted a single xp point. Now I realize that this penalty was meaningless to a lot of people just as not receiving xp for a match due to quitting is meaningless to many in halo 4.

Losing 1 XP for quitting in Halo 3 was a big deal to me and if you ask my friends I basically refused to quit any game, ever. (99% of my DNF’s are due to being legitimately disconnected or bringing booted by some BK who really didn’t want to lose) I didn’t like to quit because your experience was view-able by everyone and double XP weekends aside your XP and games played were effectively your win loss ratio.

Plus I was proud of my 4000+ social slayer XP (yes you read correctly, over four thousand) and at the same time jealous of my friend who had a few hundred more, I knew quitting was not an option If I was ever going catch up (I still haven’t… yet). I was more competitive when it came to my Halo 3 playlist (and overall) experience than I ever could be with the current XP system and competitiveness drives a person to win and hence prevents them from quitting.

4

CSR / CSR Penalties / Visual In Game Rank (VIGR)

Simply having a CSR (be it visual in game or not) will do little to deter people from quitting if the matches are not created based on that rank.

Because most quitting is a result of losing, the best way to avoid it is to have evenly matched opponents. <mark>If opponents are well matched then games will be extremely close and if both teams think they have a chance of winning then neither team will quit. The only quitting that you’ll see is those weird kids who quit in the last 2 seconds of the game (or just after it’s finished)</mark>.

The current system for matching opponents is more about speed than it is about skill which is fine in casual playlists because the difference in skill is not as apparent. However, in a competitive playlist you need to match opponents based on a competitive skill rank (matches should be made with no more than +/- 10 between the highest ranked person in each party), because the skill range varies so greatly in competitive playlists and is multiplied by the fact that people usually search in teams, it’s much more important that the players of different skill be separate from each other or you can be guaranteed that 1 in every 2 matches will end in people quitting.

A Team of 50,48,47,45 vs a Team of 50,30,15,6 is going to result in quitting no matter what. Dropping in rank from quitting (visual or not) will not stop people from quitting if the match ups are uneven. If the ranks are visual then the players of lower skill (and their team mates of high skill) know their going to lose anyway so they may as well quit at the get go. Similarly if the ranks are not visual they may not quit straight away but it wont take long before they realize that there’s no way they can win and end up quitting.

Simply having a CSR/VIGR alone without using it to create the matches is useless and will not prevent anyone from quitting. <mark>Not to mention any kind of rank would be completely inaccurate if players of widely varying skills are always matched up against each other.</mark>

Quitting should also have a significant negative impact on a players CSR. Assuming that the CSR system is based on the TrueSkill system, quitting a match should result in a static decrease to ones mu (skill level), and also a decrease in sigma (their ‘uncertainty factor’ which is a value that acts as a multiplier for how much their mu increases or decreases after a win/loss). By decreasing their sigma it makes it harder for them to regain their lost mu (for cases where they simply quit because their losing) and also makes it harder for them to lose skill (for cases where they are trying to derank).

Furthermore CSR simply works better when its viewable in game because the constant visual reminder of it is what inspires people to win. Does this promote boosting, icmp flooding, de-ranking and the like? yes, but only by a small percentage of the population and hopefully they all receive enough complaints filed against them to have their XBL accounts completely disabled.
Plus there is a simple solution to stopping a lot of that negative activity in the first place. <mark>CSR should decrease in periods of inactivity.</mark> I can not stress this enough.
In Halo 3 you could quickly cheat your way to a 50 and that was that, your highest skill was forever cemented in place on your service record. By forcing players to constantly play to keep their 50’s you decrease the chances of people trying to sell accounts, you encourage players to keep on playing and as for people who cheat for their rank, well you force them to keep cheating and therefore greatly increase their chances of getting caught.

Edit: The main reason why I stress that the CSR should decrease in periods of inactivity is because I want the VIGR to return but without the cheating it creates. Bungie removed it after Halo 3 due to the negative behavior that it created (343 didn’t/wont implement it in Halo 4 for the same reason). If its ever going to return then a compromise is required. Something must be done to lessen the negative impact of the behavior that accompanies it or we’ll never see it again. Give and Take my friends.

You can discuss the CSR further in this thread: 1-50 COMPETITIVE SKILL RANK OFFICIAL THREAD

CSR Penalty Pros:

  • Discourages quitting
    CSR Penalty Cons:
  • none

CSR/VIGR Pros:

  • Promotes competitive play
  • Attracts competitive players
  • Provides a constant visual reminder of why you want to win and don’t want to quit
    VIGR Cons:
  • Increases the likelihood of cheating
  • Casual Players get unfairly judged by a meaningless number

Playlist Segregation
While alot of players want if not need a CSR, there are of course those that find the entire idea of it quite meaningless. But even so it does not take away from the fact that having a low CSR can be viewed as a label of inadequacy, and players who play for fun rather than to win should not need to feel bad about a arbitrary number which doesn’t reflect the reasons for why they play the game. For this reason the population should be segregated to competitive playlists that record and show your CSR and casual ones that do not. Let those who want it have it, but don’t force it on others who don’t (want it).

Segregating the population like this would attract and benefit both competitive and causal players alike. Because (generally speaking) competitive players are more skilled than casual ones, allowing them to compete against each other removes them from the casual environment and hence decreases the skill gap within each allowing for more evenly matched games to be made. Also, by reducing the chances of a skilled competitive team facing off against a causal team you also reduce the chances of said casual team from quitting an unwinnable battle.

Playlist Segregation Pros:

  • More even matches
  • A more enjoyable matchmaking experience
  • More players in general
  • Less quitting
    Playlist Segregation Cons:
  • Playlist populations drop due to duplication of game types.

Conclusion
Quitting is a major problem that needs to be dealt with. JiP is a good idea in theory but in its current state it brings more problems to the table and solves few.
There are better solutions, some more obvious than others, some harder to implement than others. But if all the deciding factors are properly ballanced then the halo experience of all (well behaved) players will benefit.

TL;DR?
<mark>If you actually managed to read it all then well done!. If you saw the length of the post(s) and decided to skip it then then maybe you should consider reading it some time, I honestly think there’s some good stuff in there somewhere :P</mark>

<mark>And as a final thought: I know that JiP has been (thankfully) disabled in the competitive playlist. Because of this it is imperative that other methods be put in place to stop or prevent the act of quitting.</mark> If not then the plethora of negative comments regarding it will continue forever.

5

Thank you for reading! and Thank me for writing? :wink:
Don’t forget to show your thanks for the posts above if you agree with me or at least believe in what I’m trying to achieve (instigate changes that will benefit all of us who are well behaved)

Afterthoughts
(These require further expansion and possible integration into the main posts pending my time and available characters)
[/li]- <mark>CSR should decrease due to inactivity, a possible compromise;</mark>

Periods of inactivity should reduce your ‘mu’ (actual skill representation) and therefore lower your rank as it is seen by everyone else on your service record. However it should at the same time increase your ‘sigma’ (uncertainty factor) which means it will be easier and faster to re-gain your rank when you start playing again but only if you actually win. If you were to loose then unfortunately it would decrease just as easily/quickly because that’s how the TrueSkill system is designed to work.- Being able to leave the pre-game lobby gives players the false impression that it’s OK to leave.

Many players leave at this point simply because they can. Removing this functionality may not stop people who are truly determined to quit but it would deter many others from leaving if they had to dashboard in order to do so.- Penalties for quitting should be more severe for those who quit first…

and less severe for those who have already lost teammates. (If you are the last remaining person on your team then you should not receive any penalty for quitting because no one likes to wait out the remaining 8 minutes of a 4v1 game)- <mark>Reward good behavior with a special weekend playlist for people who don’t quit.</mark>

Have special weekend playlists like Rocket Race, Team Fiesta or Team Sumo etc that are only available to players who have not quit (or have only quit a few times) during that week.

6

I skimmed, but I’ll come back and read all of it later. For me the most effective deterrent against quitting was the experience penalty in H3.

7

> I skimmed, but I’ll come back and read all of it later. <mark>For me the most effective deterrent against quitting was the experience penalty in H3.</mark>

id like to see this again as well.

8

Good job Shadow Nemesis. I agree a lot with you.

9

I started to read this, then got to one part that was full of crap or assumption, and decided to quit.

Good try though.

10

Well said OP. What if instead of dropping persistant quitters 1 SR they were dropped 1 whole specialisation?

11

> > I skimmed, but I’ll come back and read all of it later. <mark>For me the most effective deterrent against quitting was the experience penalty in H3.</mark>
>
> id like to see this again as well.

ahem :wink:

> Thinking back, the XP system in Halo 3 did more to discourage me from quitting than Halo 4’s does
>
>
>
> In Halo 3 a win got you 1 xp for that playlist (and your total) and quitting deducted a single xp point. Now I realize that this penalty was meaningless to a lot of people just as not receiving xp for the match due to quitting is meaningless to many in halo 4.
>
> Loosing 1 XP for quitting in Halo 3 was a big deal to me and if you ask my friends I basically refused to quit any game, ever. (99% of my DNF’s are due to being legitimately disconnected or bringing booted by some BK who really didn’t want to lose) I didn’t like to quit because your experience was view-able by everyone and double XP weekends aside your XP and games played were effectively your win loss ratio.
>
> Plus I was proud of my 4000+ social slayer XP (yes you read correctly, over four thousand) and at the same time jealous of my friend who had a few hundred more, I knew quitting was not an option If I was ever going catch up (I still haven’t… yet). I was more competitive when it came to my Halo 3 playlist experience than I ever could be with the current XP system and competitiveness drives a person to win and hence prevents them from quitting.
>

12

> <mark>CSR should decrease in periods of inactivity.</mark> I can not stress this enough.
> In Halo 3 you could quickly cheat your way to a 50 and that was that, your highest skill was forever cemented in place on your service record. By forcing players to constantly play to keep their 50’s you decrease the chances of people trying to sell accounts, you encourage players to keep on playing and as for people who cheat for their rank, well you force them to keep cheating and therefore greatly increase their chances of getting caught.

I agree with the majority of your post except for this. If VIGR were to ever come back, I wouldn’t want this mechanism in place. I had multiple 50s on my main and some of them I didn’t play on after I acquired them. I like a challenge, but having to constantly regain 50s that were hard for me to obtain (MLG, Snipers, SWAT) would depress me.

13

> I started to read this, then got to one part that was full of crap or assumption, and decided to quit.
>
> Good try though.

I have never designed nor developed an online multiplayer game (or implied that I have) so I don’t know everything about it. I do however aid in the design, development, risk assessment and testing of multi-node applications and the management of the systems that run them, plus i’ve played a hell of a lot more Halo than you my good friend.

Everything I have written is based on logical reasoning that draws from a combination of what I know as well as my own personal (extensive) halo experience as well as the experience of others.

I’m sorry you feel that my words have no merit and if you can not accept that other people may actually have opinions then I find my self wondering why you read this board at all…

14

> > <mark>CSR should decrease in periods of inactivity.</mark> I can not stress this enough.
> > In Halo 3 you could quickly cheat your way to a 50 and that was that, your highest skill was forever cemented in place on your service record. By forcing players to constantly play to keep their 50’s you decrease the chances of people trying to sell accounts, you encourage players to keep on playing and as for people who cheat for their rank, well you force them to keep cheating and therefore greatly increase their chances of getting caught.
>
> I agree with the majority of your post except for this. If VIGR were to ever come back, I wouldn’t want this mechanism in place. I had multiple 50s on my main and some of them I didn’t play on after I acquired them. I like a challenge, but having to constantly regain 50s that were hard for me to obtain (MLG, Snipers, SWAT) would depress me.

A VIGR should be a representation of your skill not a representation of the best you’ve managed to achieve in the past.

Im not trying to belittle your achievement (I can’t, it’s something I never obtained) But there were so many 50’s in Halo 3 that were simply not that good that it got to the point where it really didn’t mean that much at all.

If you have to constantly play as well as a 50 to have your 50 then it will mean so much more. Plus I doubt it would be every day or even every week, just some activity every now and then to prove your 50 is a true representation of your actual skill

That being said, I do understand where you’re coming from and if I may elaborate, The reason I ‘stress’ that point is because the VIGR was removed after Halo 3 for the reasons I stated regarding cheating.

It will never return unless the problems it creates can be resolved (or at least minimized)

As a personal example, I was not the greatest Halo 3 player. I was a 44 by choice for a long time (Because it was amusing to see the reactions of 50’s when they were beaten by a Force Colonel) and a 50 would have been possible but most likely would have required a bit of luck. One day I hit 45 my mistake (playing Team Snipers by myself on american hosts mind you :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: [Im Australian]) and after a while figured why not give the 50 a shot.

I started playing team slayer with a few friends and it was appalling how often we played on the other teams bridged host and even more appalling how often we were icmp-flooded by a team of 50’s who didn’t want to loose (Network Engineering is apart of my occupation, I knew for a fact when a host was bridged or when I was booted via flooding)

Not only would I have received a lot of penalties (had they existed) for quitting due to being booted but I have first hand experience in the reasons why Bungie did not have a VIGR in reach and why 343 did not put it in 4

Give and Take my friend. If people want a VIGR then they are going to have to compromise because unless something is done about the cheating, there will never be a VIGR in halo ever again

15

> > > I skimmed, but I’ll come back and read all of it later. <mark>For me the most effective deterrent against quitting was the experience penalty in H3.</mark>
> >
> > id like to see this again as well.
>
> ahem :wink:
>
>
> > Thinking back, the XP system in Halo 3 did more to discourage me from quitting than Halo 4’s does
> >
> >
> >
> > In Halo 3 a win got you 1 xp for that playlist (and your total) and quitting deducted a single xp point. Now I realize that this penalty was meaningless to a lot of people just as not receiving xp for the match due to quitting is meaningless to many in halo 4.
> >
> > Loosing 1 XP for quitting in Halo 3 was a big deal to me and if you ask my friends I basically refused to quit any game, ever. (99% of my DNF’s are due to being legitimately disconnected or bringing booted by some BK who really didn’t want to lose) I didn’t like to quit because your experience was view-able by everyone and double XP weekends aside your XP and games played were effectively your win loss ratio.
> >
> > Plus I was proud of my 4000+ social slayer XP (yes you read correctly, over four thousand) and at the same time jealous of my friend who had a few hundred more, I knew quitting was not an option If I was ever going catch up (I still haven’t… yet). I was more competitive when it came to my Halo 3 playlist experience than I ever could be with the current XP system and competitiveness drives a person to win and hence prevents them from quitting.
> >

IMO an experience penalty in H4 wouldn’t work as well as it did in H3.

H3 service record comprised of:
Exp(Wins)…Highest Skill Achieved
Ranked Games Played
Social Games Played
Custom Games Played

In H3 when you lost exp it would make your w/l ratio look more worse than it actually was. People who were self-conscious about their service record would normally refrain from quitting unless they cared about their k/d on b.net.

SR is meaningless and losing it probably wouldn’t bother many people.

16

Awesome post Shadow, completely agree!

17

> A VIGR should be a representation of your skill not a representation of the best you’ve managed to achieve in the past.

That’s an opinion. If it were to return I would prefer for it to be static.

> there were so many 50’s in Halo 3 that were simply not that good that it got to the point where it really didn’t mean that much at all.

I don’t agree. I could easily discriminate between the varying diversity of 50’s. I’m sure you could too. The people who couldn’t were either at the bottom end of the skill spectrum or didn’t care.

> I started playing team slayer with a few friends and it was appalling how often we played on the other teams bridged host and even more appalling how often we were icmp-flooded by a team of 50’s who didn’t want to loose (Network Engineering is apart of my occupation, I knew for a fact when a host was bridged or when I was booted via flooding)

I’ve been standbyed, host booted, DDOSed, and had players derank on my team many times throughout my time playing ranked. What I would’ve liked back then was a more efficient system to report/ban these players to mitigate the damage they inflict. Also, only a small minority of players (lvls 39-50) encountered the worse forms of cheating. It seems silly to me to throw out a system that worked fine for most people.

> VIGR was removed after Halo 3 for the reasons I stated regarding cheating. It will never return unless the problems it creates can be resolved (or at least minimized). <mark>Give and Take my friend. If people want a VIGR then they are going to have to compromise because unless something is done about the cheating, there will never be a VIGR in halo ever again.</mark>

If that’s the case, I would shut my mouth and refrain from criticizing once it came back.

18

The campaign and firefight or something that develops mic use and friendship is how you stop randoms from quitting because they will form friends who will then form teams or clans and will go in laughing and having a good time as a team . Right now you have nothing on the PVE side that grows this behavior.

19

jiP never works as i want it to, i search full teams all the time and when i go into btb i want to be able to statwhore on all 8 people instead once we have a 10 kill lead everyone but one guy quits and their team never gets replacements

I don’t search alone in matchmaking mainly because of JiP, i tried doing it twice in Dominion this week and both times the word “defeat” was on my screen the moment i spawned

20

> Well said OP. What if instead of dropping persistant quitters 1 SR they were dropped 1 whole specialisation?

A whole specialization per quit is too much because if your internet drops out then it counts as a quit and loosing an entire specialization would make a lot of people very, very unhappy.