response to join in progress multiplayer structure

Games Other Halo
1

To business.

Why are we all moaning about the join in progress structure? First off, with proper implementation it works fine. Impose a quit penalty within the last 5 minutes of the match, for instance, and don’t add new players from outside the game within that time period. That instantly solves the problem of spawning into a hopeless match and being screwed over.

There are numerous ways to make it work, and at the end of the day all it does is mean that teams don’t get screwed over by quitters.

I’d also like to point out that Halo CE had join in progress multiplayer. CE worked fine, although the population is dwindling now.

2

I take it this is in reply to the post I made earlier; but for the sake of discussion, I’ll elaborate here.

> To business.
> Impose a quit penalty within the last 5 minutes of the match, for instance, and don’t add new players from outside the game within that time period. That instantly solves the problem of spawning into a hopeless match and being screwed over.

This is the first problem; automatically assuming that all “screw overs” happen within the last five minutes of the game - this is not always the case, and it varies from match to match.

> There are numerous ways to make it work, and at the end of the day all it does is mean that teams don’t get screwed over by quitters.

This is the primary problem I have with this idea; in that it doesn’t solve the problem of quitting at all, all it does is hide the problem - sweep it under the rug - if you will. Quitters quit because there is currently no negative incentive if they do quit; all that eventually happens is that they receive some minor matchmaking ban which is as long as hopping off to take a toilet break. This needs to change: the more you quit, the longer the time-out you have accumulates (and with the possible implementation of a day-long or week-long matchmaking ban for habitual quitters?). It should be enough to discourage quitting without the need to make players feel dreary about playing.

Basically: if you enjoy a joining in progress way to play, then implement a selection option which allows one to select “yes to join in progress”, so long as one can choose no to such a feature, too. In the end, it should be up to the player to decide how they want to play, and a selection option is the only way I see this feature being implemented appropriately.

3

The point of it is to balance, not to fix a problem. Balancing counteracts a problem, it doesn’t fix it. You can’t ‘fix’ quitting without removing the quit button entirely and forcing one to turn off his Xbox to quit.

Otherwise I see your point.

4

As far as I am concerned this is a fantastic feature to add. I can’t tell you how many games of 1flag was a complete blowout because of quitters.
However, I would still like a penalty implemented for people quitting matches on a regular basis. A 10 min ban is pointless. I would like to a see a ban increase every sequential quit you do within. I would also add a drop in xp, and credits or whatever currency they implement as well. Anything to help keep people from quitting in the first place would be greatly welcomed.

5

> the more you quit, the longer the time-out you have accumulates (and with the possible implementation of a day-long or week-long matchmaking ban for habitual quitters?).

Positive reinforcement teaches better than negative reinforcement. You’ll never solve or even hope to deter quitting by banning people from their Xboxes. It was in Halo 3, and it was made harsher in Reach, but did that make people quit less? I didn’t notice any tangible difference.

What we need to think about with DIDO (drop-in, drop-out) is what kind of game Halo is. TF2 has DIDO and it works just fine, there are no quitting issues and it’s not just “sweeping it under the rug”. It’s a non-problem because the game builds itself around the player’s habits, as all games should (unlike Halo, where players have to adapt themselves to the game).

On the other hand, LoL is not DIDO because it is a lot more competitive, matches last very long, and even having one player down is a huge disadvantage. Two similar game styles, yet two completely different solutions.

6

How to make it work:

  1. Add a quit penalty for quitting.
  2. Ranking system so if someone quits an equally skilled player joins.
7

Join in progress doesnt work and ruins the competitive spirit of a game of Halo. What happens with join in progress games is personal stats > team stats. People drop in and out and come into a game kill a few people have a death streak and say meh i’ll just find another game where I wont ruin my KD. This happens in other Join in progress games alllllll the time. I dont want to see Halo turn into that type of game.

Also games that are join in progress consist of lobbies where players tend to stay for multiple matches. In Halo this option is available but almost no one does it. Why? Because everyone wants to play new people. If that is the case (which it is) you will run into joining games that are out of hand having the game end with you losing and instead of then being in a full lobby ready for the next match, you are back to searching again with the potential of being thrown back into the exact same situation.

The people advocating this have no idea the detrimental effect this will have on Halo as you know it. What I have described will be a forum topic on day 1 if something like this was implemented across the board. FFA is the only area where join in progress is at least tolerable.

8

> The point of it is to balance, not to fix a problem. Balancing counteracts a problem, it doesn’t fix it. You can’t ‘fix’ quitting without removing the quit button entirely and forcing one to turn off his Xbox to quit.
>
> Otherwise I see your point.

Agreed, to an extent.

Balancing only works so long as everything fits into place i.e. assuming that everyone who does join mid-game won’t quit because of the matches condition. This might be the case some of the time, but it might not be the case other times, and this increases the negative.

To make it as full-proof as possible, one should be able to view and select which match they wish to enter (much like Halo CE did for PC). In it should show the score, the time remaining, and the number of players in the match. This enables one to choose which experience they’d enjoy most and allow them to enter a match they themselves wanted to join, which is perhaps the most critically important thing. It should not happen randomly.

This would also enable one to choose whether they want to go into a game which has already started; or matchmake on-line and start a new match.

9

> > the more you quit, the longer the time-out you have accumulates (and with the possible implementation of a day-long or week-long matchmaking ban for habitual quitters?).
>
> Positive reinforcement teaches better than negative reinforcement. You’ll never solve or even hope to deter quitting by banning people from their Xboxes. It was in Halo 3, and it was made harsher in Reach, but did that make people quit less? I didn’t notice any tangible difference.

That’s provided you can actually find something positive which deters quitting. Positive reinforcement is the key option (and I wholeheartedly agree) as it promotes a response which not only works better, but allows the two sides (quitters and non-quitters) to focus on the positive aspects of the situation. But if nothing is found to give something positive which works on most of the habitual quitters, then you have to go on negative reinforcement, and use prior experiences of it to alter the negative to give an optimum response. Use the punishments of quitting in Halo 3 or Reach to formulate an appropriate negative incentive if positive reinforcement isn’t found.

10

Well off the top of my head, the game could be good enough that it doesn’t make people rage quit (I.e. Unbalanced map and weapon sandbox that was Reach). Either that or give more credits/Spartan points/exp for those who remained until the end. It really isn’t hard to find positive reinforcement ideas.

> > > the more you quit, the longer the time-out you have accumulates (and with the possible implementation of a day-long or week-long matchmaking ban for habitual quitters?).
> >
> > Positive reinforcement teaches better than negative reinforcement. You’ll never solve or even hope to deter quitting by banning people from their Xboxes. It was in Halo 3, and it was made harsher in Reach, but did that make people quit less? I didn’t notice any tangible difference.
>
> That’s provided you can actually find something positive which deters quitting. Positive reinforcement is the key option (and I wholeheartedly agree) as it promotes a response which not only works better, but allows the two sides (quitters and non-quitters) to focus on the positive aspects of the situation. But if nothing is found to give something positive which works on most of the habitual quitters, then you have to go on negative reinforcement, and use prior experiences of it to alter the negative to give an optimum response. Use the punishments of quitting in Halo 3 or Reach to formulate an appropriate negative incentive if positive reinforcement isn’t found.

11

> The point of it is to balance, not to fix the problem. Balancing counteracts the problem, it doesn’t fix it. You can’t ‘fix’ quitting…

Agree.

> You can’t ‘fix’ quitting… …without removing the quit button entirely and forcing one to turn off his Xbox to quit.

Ummm… removing the quit button still wouldn’t “Fix” the problem of quitting and for the exact reason you state… turning the Xbox off or simply Dashboarding is still a form of quitting.

Therefore, quitting will never be cured it can only be addressed and that’s why a “Join-Active Session” is important. Halo’s traditional matchmaking system caused to many moments of wasted time for players when a teammate or opponent quit a match. Many people cannot stand wasting their time in games where a player quits and throws the team balance out the proverbial window. Now, I understand people’s concerns with a “Join Active Session” system. I also don’t enjoy being dropped into active matches where I’m being spawn trapped or where the game is clearly out of reach for my team to win and when I’ve joined only to witness the very end of the match. I don’t think it’s fair to incur a loss on my record just because I’ve been dropped into an impossible situation or where I’m not even given the chance to make a difference. Heck, one could even argue that a “Join Active Session” system does little to discourage a player from quitting a game and might even simply re-enforce the bad habit, but still regardless to this issue and those previous problems that I pointed out a properly implemented “Join Active Session” system will undoubtedly provide the best flexibility and enjoyment to the overall Halo player base as it’s the best way to gloss over the quitting problem.

Bungie tried to dis-sway habitual quitters by introducing temporary bans, but the fundamental problem with this method is that most of those who quit did’t really care about the consequence of a temporary ban. If they are penalized by this ban then they’ll just switch to another game. I’m guessing most of you will be like, that’s a good thing and good-riddance to them, but honestly Halo needs to maintain a healthy dose of online players, especially the casual players, so that there isn’t a great divide between good veteran players and beginners. Therefore, interest in their game needs to be maintained and anything that would push a “would-be” player away from the game is actually not a good thing for Halo.

As for what I think a properly implemented “Join Active Session” system would be in Halo…

I believe the MM should be a split system where for a Social playlist there would be the (limited) “Join Active Session” system and for a Ranked playlist there would be a more traditional “Non-Join Active Session” system.

The “Join Active Session” system I envision in more detail…
A capping or locking of any social game would kick in when one team stretches it’s lead to such a point where it’s likely futile for anyone to join and make any real difference. Also, there should be a hard time cap too, meaning that if a match has less then 30 seconds to go it will become locked too. This locking or capping would essentially prevent further online members from being able to join the game. Obviously, a game mechanic would have to be developed to determine when is the appropriate time for a match to become locked. In any case, at the point of time when the match does become locked, where nobody new will be able to join, the team which is getting hammered should be given opportunities during each losing player’s re-spawn to choose whether or not they’d like to raise a white flag as an indicator of surrender. This white flag would also replace the quit option in the menu system. If the majority of the (remaining) team decides to raise the white flag the game will end early by forfeit. Preventing continuous wasted time by either team’s players. (To note: a white flag option should also be included into the Ranked games too, but it should be available at any time during the match simply through the menu system, it would basically replace any quit or leave match option)

Further important details on the “Join Active Session” matchmaking system…
Anytime a player automatically joins a game “in progress” where the team that was joined is currently losing, then that player’s account will not be credited or at risk of acquiring the loss on their statistical record. However, if the team that player joined managed to take the lead at some point after their joining but went on to still lose the game, then their account would indeed get credited with the loss. On the other hand, for those players who join a game in which the team they joined was winning and went on to win, the factor for determining whether they should be credited with the win should be based off of the time they spent on the team in reference to the total match’s play length. For example: If the game ended within a specific amount of time, lets say “X” amount of time, then that player had to have been playing with that team for at least… 1/3, or maybe 1/4, of the total match time (“X” time). Otherwise, they will not be credited with the win, but all of the other game stats, such as kills, deaths, assists, experience points, credits, and whatever else, will still count towards that player’s overall statistics.

Final notes on a well implemented matchmaking system…
Also, regardless of whether someone is playing a Ranked or Social game, if a player quits an active game, by whatever means, they should be penalized. That penalty should be that they are given a strike against their account… if that player accumulates 3 penalties, or strikes, then those should turn into 3 losses on their record. Yet, when a player has garnered one of these penalties there should also be a way to wipe the slate clean by demonstrating that the issue isn’t habitual because there are odd things that can occur, things out of their control. The way this should work is that after 20 to 25 clean games, meaning games with no quitting, a strike should be removed if one exists. One other thing, if Halo 4 does decide that the quit ban is indeed a good punishment to continue to have then it should only affect quitters of Ranked matches and block them from the Ranked playlist for a temporary amount of time that increases with every incurred ban.

12

Do like Gears 3 did (or Halo 3). Have Social games and Ranked games. Ranked games are skill based matchmaking for full teams with a quitting penalty (true Halo).

Social games are drop in/drop out just for fun.

It’s not that hard guys and it won’t mean the end of the world.

13

> Do like Gears 3 did (or Halo 3). Have Social games and Ranked games. Ranked games are skill based matchmaking for full teams with a quitting penalty (true Halo).
>
> Social games are drop in/drop out just for fun.
>
>
>
> It’s not that hard guys and it won’t mean the end of the world.

This would be perfectly sufficient. Another reason of many why so many fires could be put out by having ranked and social.

14

> To business.
>
> Why are we all moaning about the join in progress structure? First off, with proper implementation it works fine. Impose a quit penalty within the last 5 minutes of the match, for instance, and don’t add new players from outside the game within that time period. That instantly solves the problem of spawning into a hopeless match and being screwed over.
>
> There are numerous ways to make it work, and at the end of the day all it does is mean that teams don’t get screwed over by quitters.
>
> I’d also like to point out that Halo CE had join in progress multiplayer. CE worked fine, although the population is dwindling now.

Your specifics might need tweaking. But you’re right, there are certainly ways to make it work.

15

I hate being the only person that doesn’t quit on my team then I have to fight 4 or 3 people. Hopfully it’s not based on winning and loosing like in Halo 3. Because I got to 11 Seargent grade 2 then I started a game my mom calls me for dinner I quit. Then the next day I come on and see i’m a 10 :open_mouth: I hate penalizing it should not happen. Join in progress is fine filling out the slots is awesome.

16

Let me start of by saying join in progress will be great for social playlists, but I think it should not be in competetive playlists. What we need is an actual ranking system similar to that of halo 2 or 3. This alone would stop the quitting problem as there weren’t many quitters in those games, but in reach there was no incentive to play because all you were doing was credit grinding. With a ranking system you have want to raise your skill level by completeing the game and not lower it yourself by quitting.

17

ranked no
social maby
ffa idc

18

Or 343 could just make a solid game with a good matchmaking system so people wouldn’t feel the need to quit out.