Join in progress is unfair to one, potentially two, kinds of people.
There are three types of players in a Halo game in which one or more players is/are missing:
- Those who are on a full team
- Those who are on the team lacking players
- Those searching and eventually joining in progress
Originally, without join in progress, the players in group 2 would seemingly always be at a disadvantage. 343i attempted to fix this by implementing join in progress, but it didn’t/doesn’t work.
If join in progress starts a game before the adequate number of players has joined the lobby, then the group 2 players are at a disadvantage immediately (vs. later in the match, after somebody eventually quits or gets booted).
Therefore, join in progress is still unfair to those players, because it actually creates unbalanced games in its nature. Rather than waiting for 30 seconds, it starts the game with uneven teams. You don’t have to be a programming major to understand why this doesn’t make sense.
So if join in progress fails to work properly from the get-go, as it does very often, group 2 is at a disadvantage. But what if join in progress works as intended?
If someone quits, gets booted, or the game starts with uneven teams, join in progress tries to add players to the game. If this happens, group 3 are at a disadvantage. Unlike Call of Duty, where there are no weapons on the map, vehicles to control, or choke points that are actually helpful, Halo revolves around these things in its nature. Without these things, Halo isn’t Halo.
So when players join a game mid-way through, they are at a disadvantage because they cannot take those vehicles, choke points, or weapons. More likely, the enemy already has control of more than half of them, seeing as how group 3 would be joining a team lacking players, giving better chances to the other team to control items.
Where does this leave us? One team has most of the weapons, vehicles, and map control, while the other team has nothing but poor spawns. Unless the skill gap is significant, which 343i says it isn’t, the game will end with the team who started with more players winning.
Additionally, join in progress has the ability to put two groups at a disadvantage. If the players in group 3 are terrible, then group 2 is immediately hindered in their ability to win the game.
Ultimately, you cannot justify join in progress without first admitting that something else doesn’t work right (i.e. the skill-based searching system, the host migrations, etc.). If you don’t want to admit those don’t work, then admit join in progress doesn’t make logical sense.
Please leave comments below. I will respond to any logical arguments put forth. I’m eager to see anyone counter these claims, as the only argument for join in progress I’ve seen is “it helps the losing team”, which I countered above.
TL;DR: Join in progress is unfair to somebody in every game, whether it’s the players starting the game or joining. Please don’t respond below saying “I like it because now I never have uneven teams like I did all the time in Halo 3” because we all know that uneven teams were rare.