Over my years of Halo, I have encountered MANY games where one or two people are “AFK” or idle. Just standing in their spawn location, doing nothing. It’s almost as if the player started matchmaking and walked off to let the game do it’s thing. While this may be an advantage if players on the opposing team are idle, it takes the fun out of the game by making it too easy to get kills. There never seems to be a way to deal with idling players, and it always sucks to lose because of them.
I have also seen a few situations where the opposing team uses their idle player to their advantage. Hiding in flanking corners or picking off opponents hoping to get an assassination.
I have heard of some people purposely leaving their game idling as a form of “idle boosting”. Let your team mates do the work while you are off doing something else, gaining points without participating. I feel that this idea is very wrong. It breaks the definition of what a team is, everyone SHOULD be working together.
In most situations, victory is dependent upon team cooperation. If one or two of those team members are doing nothing, then they will fail.
What I ask for is that something be programmed in, where after a certain amount of time being idle, a player is ejected from the game. This could actually be beneficial to a team, they lose a bullet magnet on their side, and it opens up a slot for another player to jump into.
In the work place, if someone is not doing their job, they get fired. Why not put a similar element into the game?
Possibly go as far as to penalize those idling for multiple games.
“Spartan Suspension” if you will, not allowed to play matchmaking for a certain amount of time.
I could see implementing something like this discouraging players from idle boosting, as well as to make them actually work for their experience. On the other side, the possibility of being suspended would encourage people to quit the game if they have to leave the room for any reason/amount of time.
Maybe add a prompt message similar to the betrayal boot option. When an active player dies, ask if they want to boot the idle player. Voting yes will eject them.
To at least add a level of fairness to ejecting idle players, there should be some kind of prerequisite for being kicked. Maybe after a certain number of deaths or after an amount of time passing.
Share your thoughts.