Hey guys I’ve been on these forums for while; ever since Bnet stopped being the place to talk about Halo specifically and I finally decided to post here. This my take on how I hope join in progress is or needs to be. Don’t worry about a wall; here’s the TL;DR:
-In Team Slayer Pro join in progress should allow a team of 4 i.e(players that always play and practice together or just a party of 4) to either :
A) Vote on who gets to join their team based on stats that pop-up on the hud displaying the joinee’s stats such as K/D ratio and skill rank; if team vetoes first vote, second person in the que of players lined up to join will automatically join without onscreen vote.
B)Give priority over a party member who lagged out first, so he can just rejoin the same game in progress.
C)Allow the party to restrict themselves(controlled obviously by party leader) from anyone joining their team but players that were originally in their party when the game began i.e.(their own team members) or friends list first. After a certain time limit, the game will automatically pull someone line up in the que of players ready to join without a onscreen vote.
-If the score at 75% no joining is allowed
-if the game is ending in 3 minutes no joining is allowed.
-These settings should just apply to Team Slayer Pro playlist.
If you reply it needs to be an educated response with a valid point that is not biased based on if you are casual or competitive. Keep it clean please.
Ok so here is the mini-wall.
People always talked about joining in progress on Halo 4 and how it can be detrimental to competitive play. Some say its awesome. But what if you get a player that joins who sucks? I am not saying I’m the best, but there is a possibility of someone who joins who is less skilled than your party. He may actually hurt your team rather than help. He may not know the callouts or formations or weapon spawns or whatever, the point is he may just be dead weight. In order to prevent this there should be some failsafes.
1)Voting. So you are playing a game on Haven and a teammate has a power outage and now you are down a man. Luckily, you don’t have worry too long because another player is joining the party. Only problem is that his k/d is .7 and he a 35 in Slayer Pro, even though his SR-Rank is 49. You and your team should have an incoming message on your HUD displaying “Player B wants to join with a k/d of .7 and Waypoint Level 35, press X to allow.” Since you and your buddies average level 43, you don’t allow Player B to join, so instead the next player in the que of players lined up to join will automatically join without anyone seeing his k/d or rank. This is fair. Your team had a choice: choose player B or take our chances and get somebody who could be better(or worse). Obviously the game tries to match you up with people around your skill, but giving the team some type of leverage in choosing would be satisfying. Not all randoms are bad, this just seems fair to a team of four who would like to ensure that they keep playing with people of similar skill.
2)Prioity. If you guys a playing a game as a team of four and your buddy lags out it would suck that he can’t just rejoin. You risk getting a player that does not know how to play with your team and may not work well with your team or your team may not work well with him/her. To eliminate this, simply allow the same member that lagged out or got booted accidentally to rejoin. Or at least give hime priority for the first 2-3 minutes, if he doesn’t come back the game will then automatically grab from the que of players and then the onscreen vote will begin. If bobby lags out, I’m sorry but I would rather just have bobby rejoin. If people go in as a team of 4 they don’t want to play team of 3 and a random just because one member lagged out. They want to keep playing as a team of 4; and this will ensure this. This is slayer pro, not infinity; lets try to take out random elements as much as possible.
3)Restrictions. Allow the party leader to set restrictions on which players can join. Friends only, party members only, or anybody. Once again we need to element random elements when it comes to this playlist in ensuring we get the fairest matches possible. If Billy lags out, no problem; we got John who just signed on who is just as good as Billy. He can just join since he is on my friends list. He already knows how I play. I know FOR SURE he is of similar skill. Obviously the system will determine if he can join or not. Unfortunately John is level 3 and if he joins this would be considered boosting, so he is not eligible to join. But Mike is a 43 so he can join instead. The game should take the average rank of the game and choose a person who is 3 levels higher or lower to join. If the average rank of the game is 45, then only 42’s and 48’s can join. Seems fair to me.
It’s not that I don’t want to play with anybody but my friends, its just the fact that I go in with a team of 4 specifically to play with these people that I play with everyday. I understand that wait times could be longer due to this system, but good players wait for a good game. I want to win. That’s it. If I want a casual experience I will play in a casual playlist. In fact I really want to play Flood Mode secretly :). But what I usually want an extremely hyper competitive experience with the least amount of random elements as possible. Having fun to me is winning in a fair and challenging environment working together with my team to win. I love every aspect of of how Halo 4 is turning out and I’m thanking God everyday that I am blessed to have this opportunity to play with people around the world no matter when. I can’t wait for this game to come out and I appreciate you for taking the time to read my post.