I will be the first to criticize the hundreds of problems I see in Halo 4, however, people need to think about the things they’re complaining about with join in progress:
Halo DID need join in progress because players quitting has been a problem since Halo 2, and generally, if matches are close and someone on your team quits you lose.
JIP IS however messed up in Halo 4 because it often does not even drop in one more player on teams missing many players, and constantly drops players into impossible-to-win games that are about to end.
So the thing is, 343 was right to put in JIP in Halo 4. They just implemented it wrongly. Its like they just thought its an all or nothing thing, like it can just be a simple, crude system that looks for matches missing players, and then just drops players in. It is NOT that simple, yet that’s what 343 apparently did.
Here’s how JIP SHOULD work:
JIP needs to be more effective filling in teams with new players because it seems like to me, about 6-9 out of 10 times it does not replace missing players when a player(s) on my team have quit out.
On the flip side, it does seem to drop players into near-finished games and/or impossible to win games about 8 or 9 out of 10 times. It should only drop players into games that are still close and also no further than halfway finished.
JIP should be optional so that players who hate even being dropped into games less than halfway done that are still possible to win can simply turn off JIP.
Ranked playlists should not have JIP since it is unfair to be put in a match you were not part of the entire time. OH WAIT WHAT’S RANKED?!?!?! That’s right this is 343 INDUSTRIES HALO 4!
There should be an option to join a game already in progress from the matchmaking menu so that if someone wants to join a game already happening that is missing a player they can do so. I don’t know why anyone would want to, but this would encourage more players being dropped in into games missing players.
JIP should replace players that quit with players around their skill level, so that good players who quit are replaced with good players, and bad with bad. I know that JIP does not look at skill at all right now because I have joined teams that were WAY down before and then won the game for that team, which is unfair to the other team because that means me dropping in gave my team an extra good player. In other words, JIP unbalances teams because it pays no attention to skill, unlike the game does when it finds players to set up the two teams.