With the recent release of BTB, which I was really excited for, I really noticed how unfair the placement matches can be. Normally I play a lot of FFA and ranked in onyx in that play list. Now with BTB out my friend and I decided to give it a shot since it was our favorite playlist in past halo games. First off I want to say that BTB is very fun, the maps are great, and the vehicle play is a blast! However we noticed that during the placement matches you can get easily screwed over by your teammates, namely quitters. We had 2 games where half the team left within a couple minutes of the beginning of the match leaving everyone at a huge disadvantage. This makes winning CTF, and the capture the control points pretty much impossible and naturally we lost those matches. There were also a couple of other games where a couple of team mates quit early but we managed to pull through for the win but just barely.
I honestly feel like mine and my friends ranks were negatively affected by these variables that are outside our control and its unfair that our ranks are basically punished because of these people leaving. Now I like the idea of placement matches but 343i is going to have to overhaul how their system calculates your placement. I know winning or losing should be a factor in determining your rank but it should be a pretty small factor though. I believe the system should take individual skill more into consideration instead with things like wins/losses adding a minor bonus/penalty to your overall calculated rank adjustment at the end of the match. Your individual performance during the game would then be your greatest determining factor in ranking up or down. This would alleviate some of the unjust penalty that is dealt to you when teammates quit or get disconnected. Also the addition of a surrender option for teams that have lost at least half of their players should be added. Surrendering would not count as a loss and no skill rank change positive or negative would be calculated for the surrendering team.
Now for the quitters themselves. We need a return of the prompt where when you leave a game it warns you that your rank is going to be VERY negatively affected. Leaving a match right from the start should incur severe penalties to ones rank but leaving later in the match would be less severe. Also there is increasing penalty added on for leaving multiple matches in a certain time frame along with temporary bans being handed out. Before this happens though 343i is going to have to teach the ban hammer the difference between someone leaving a match and someone that is unintentionally disconnected from the match because as we all know the internet and our ISP’s are unpredictable beast.