In my opinion, the banning system is so freaking broken in this game it’s pathetic. It was actually okay at first, and now it’s gone way too far! I got banned in GRIFBALL - for team killing, I legit killed roughly 2-3 teammates - but guess what? That’s what happens in grifball when you’re swinging hammers when a guy is about to score and you just spawned WITH YOUR HAMMER OUT.
Having a banning system is great, truly, it is. It forces people to actually finish games regardless of whether or not they are losing, it prevents excessive team killing (which by the way should definitely be adjusted in Grifball; it’s pretty obvious to know if someone kills intentionally in grifball NUMEROUS times [7+ times or so]). But the saddest part of all? It claims to boot people for inactivity - cool, awesome, glad Halo 5 has that down. Oh wait, it doesn’t. Know why? Because people have been doing this since the beginning of Halo - especially in Halo: Reach - there’s this marvelous invention called tape, or even a rubber band, in which your controller registers you moving even though you really aren’t controlling your player - even better than that, you can just leave your controller upside-down on your couch. People can’t get banned for inactivity if the system is that flawed sadly, based on ONLY movement - you’d have an even better chance at the entire team voting to kick the person, and then, if the person does not hit the randomized button that pops up on their screen within 30 seconds, they get kicked.
But let’s not groan and moan about how about the simple things - after all, people do get kicked and banned for legitimate reasons. There certainly are people that rage quit 500 games, but let’s be honest, kicking them and banning them most likely is not going to deter people from rage quitting. If it did, it would’ve worked in about ten other games that are trying to implement the same system. You can’t change people’s gaming habits (for the most part) simply by saying “there’s punishment if you do it” - people do exactly what they want whenever they want, which is why simply punishing people has roughly a 25% success rate without some other form of reinforcement, such as a strong bond to the individual enforcing the punishment, or some other aspect that makes the punishment seem justified, or actually removes something good (i.e, if you leave 5 matches, you get no xp for your next 5 matches). If my teammates are good, great, and if they’re bad, oh well - it’s a video game, I don’t really care.
However, What I DO care about is actually being able to play my game. The banning system acts like a 5 year old’s babysitter - “you done goofed, so, you no play game no more.” - What’s worse than that is the fact that your punishment (at least according to the 343 forums and other sources) increases with each offense that you get. So, for example, you get banned once, you get 10 minutes, the next ban may be any amount of time past 10 minutes now. Whether or not it’s true, I don’t know, but supposedly some people have been banned for 24+ hours - bit ridiculous huh?
Now, for all the people who are going to go against me, bare with me, I am not saying remove the system, I am saying improve it. Here are the following reasons why this needs to be improved:
- Banning rarely works; if anything, it acts as a band aid on a bullet wound - sure, it’s going to help temporarily, but it won’t stop the bleeding forever. - The banning system is very inconsistent - I can leave one match (yes I’ve left matches before; VERY rarely, but I have - mostly due to spawn camping [aka I can’t get out of spawn, due to the players abusing the way spawns work in the game by relocating their teammates to certain spots of the map, forcing you to spawn in one corner every single time while they have all the power weapons]) - and then, get banned for it. Ok, great, I got banned for leaving a match, I deserved it right? Well, I would normally agree with that, but my friend leaves the match as well, before I did, making myself the only player left in the lobby, and he does not get banned. In fact, he leaves 3 more games afterwards (which I don’t leave, since he rage quits more than I do) and still does not get banned. Plus, as mentioned above, the times are random for how long you get banned for. - You can get banned for getting disconnected from the terrible servers on this game. No matter how good your internet is, you still can get punished for leaving a game even when it’s not your fault - that’s completely fair, right? It’s a problem with our game, but we’ll punish you for playing it, because it’s your fault for risking it. - People that do get disconnected because of their own internet … that’s fair, right? Well, if you enjoy telling people how much they should pay for their internet, sure, it’s fair. If you can only afford lower-grade internet because the internet companies around you do not exist, except for one, which can set his own prices, then of course the internet provider can choose how high the speed actually is (to an extent), let alone how much it costs. - A subpoint to the above point, if you live in the middle of nowhere you likely are going to have poor internet, due to the difficulty to provide good internet in the middle of nowhere. So, to an extent, I emphasize, TO AN EXTENT, we are discriminating against people based on where they live by implementing this banning system. A solution? Perhaps make it so when a person leaves a match manually, it leaves an imprint on the game history - that actually has been shown to work well in other games, believe it or not. Of course, one could argue “they can just unplug their internet” - sure, they could, but the fact of the matter is no system is ever going to be perfect, and the odds of someone doing that are probably lower than someone leaving the game, especially if they’re unaware of this. - What about people that don’t try at all, and in fact, sit in the corner with their teammate and giggle to each other like little school girls as their teammates fail miserably? This usually happens in grifball more than any other game mode, but since they’re moving, they can’t get kicked, right? They’re not technically breaking any rules, so, there’s no reason to punish them I guess - but it’s actually worse than being inactive, since nobody can fill that spot (assuming you’re in grifball). - Warzone and Arena are separate banning systems - sure, I see the logic in that, if you get banned in one at least you can still play the other while you wait for the ban to get removed, but, isn’t that kind of hypocritical on the banning system? "We ban to punish … but you can go play this other game mode because we really want you to play our game still."Trust me when I say I could make this post longer, but I’m approaching the maximum character limit - if anyone supports this fixing/removing this system, please leave a comment below and/or like my post. If not, then agree to disagree, and leave a constructive post below - we all have opinions of course.