Ranked matches: Make players ready up before the match starts. Players who are idle will be replaced.
Slayer Modes: not really an issue
Team Arena: one AFK player can cost you the game in CTF/Strongholds. Obviously this depends on the skill level of those matched. You can win a 3 v. 4 slayer match easily. Winning a CTF match is doable with an AFK, but much harder. It just depends on skill level and if there’s any communication involved. If you quit to avoid a loss or negative k/d, it’s a strike against you.
Furthermore, it’s annoying to get matched against AFK players. It creates a false positive. You can easily pad your stats with an AFK on the opposing team (wins, K/D, accuracy), but this does not reflect your true skill level.
AFKs can swing you in both directions (positive or negative). Maybe a ready button can be implemented in Halo 6.
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> 1. Of course this is an issue in slayer. You may be able to “easily” win slayer matches 3v4 but I can assure you that most players can’t.
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> 2. What does “ready up” mean?
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> 3. If these players were truly afk then the system would boot them. (Automatic 60 or 90 second afk boot in arena is in place and has been since launch). If they’re not getting booted then they’re choosing not to play, which is not the same as walking away from the controller. They’re consciously choosing to lose, or to not participate, or to de-rank, or whatever.
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> 4. Are you saying that the afk boot needs to look for more than just random thumbstick nudges or menu button pushes? Are you suggesting a minimun number of shots fired per minute, or kills per game, or what exactly? And whatever it is, do you really think that non-playing players won’t find a way around whatever it is you can come up with?
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You must hit a ready button prior to match start. Some FPS games require you to hit the ‘A’ button so their servers know to launch a game.
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These players are truly AFK. An opposing team can cap the flag twice by the time an idle player is kicked.
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Im suggesting a ready button on the front end of matchmaking.
Does this fully eliminate AFKs? No. People will put their controller down and walk away. Does this weed out players who got up to answer the door, use the restroom, or opened the YouTube app and didn’t realize halo was still running in the background? Yes.
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> > 2533274873843883;2:
> >
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> 2. You must hit a ready button prior to match start. Some FPS games require you to hit the ‘A’ button so their servers know to launch a game.
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> 3. These players are truly AFK. An opposing team can cap the flag twice by the time an idle player is kicked.
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> 4. Im suggesting a ready button on the front end of matchmaking.
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> Does this fully eliminate AFKs? No. People will put their controller down and walk away. Does this weed out players who got up to answer the door, use the restroom, or opened the YouTube app and didn’t realize halo was still running in the background? Yes.
Ready button: I don’t know about this. I mean, by definition I’ve already hit the button that says “put me in matchmaking,” and usually all of about a minute passes between that time and the time the match loads. I’m not convinced one button strike in the space of one minute is really gonna weed out anybody - in fact all I can really picture happening is that a player could hold up the lobby by however much time you give players to fail to respond, and then by however much time it takes to replace them. If it happens after the map and gametype load then you’re giving people a de facto veto system.
I guess it boils down to guess work: You seem to be guessing that most afk players are genuine afks - taking a phone call, forgot about the game, what have you. I’m guessing that most of them are people who are afking after the start of the match, not before, because they’ve lost confidence that the game has put them in a balanced match, or that they’re attempting to de-rank. At my rank level I see a lot of players finishing games with no kills, and to me that means they did what they needed to do to not play and to not get booted. That’s intentional behavior and those people will have no problem hitting a ready button before the game starts.
A ready button would at least have the virtue of proving one or the other of us right, but until they do it I guess we’ll never know for sure.
Their policy is specifically to remove any sort of human made delay from the pregame lobby (hence why no veto or vote) because they found it lead to longer play sessions, so they would never use a ready up feature.
Awesome. So people who want to play need to be on a team, or just suffer the consequences of an AFK because waiting 10 seconds too long.
Maybe they should do what the majority of players already do - backout of the playlist and reconnect. A lot of players will do this in the hopes of finding a better server, not getting matched with the same players, and/or lessen the chances of playing the same map/game type.
Unfortunately, there already is a veto system. Players quit at the start of the game.
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> Awesome. So people who want to play need to be on a team, or just suffer the consequences of an AFK because waiting 10 seconds too long.
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> Maybe they should do what the majority of players already do - backout of the playlist and reconnect. A lot of players will do this in the hopes of finding a better server, not getting matched with the same players, and/or lessen the chances of playing the same map/game type.
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> Unfortunately, there already is a veto system. Players quit at the start of the game.
Exactly. I’m not a fan of voting for maps or even the veto typically, but I would much rather have them involved if it means that 343 will actually take a step against quitters and AFK. Losing some rank and sometimes getting locked out are not enough punishment for players that completely ruin games for others. It is really not that hard to just have the game go back to the playlist selection screen to have to re-enter a playlist. You press one button and you’re back in. It won’t fix all AFK problems like you said earlier but I have to imagine the bulk of AFK happens because people get up after a game and leave it running. It should have been an easy fix years ago.
I’ve had this issue quite a bit. I think 343 should up the punishment on early quitters, because in most cases they are ruining the game for the other 7 players in the lobby. I think a ~10 minute ban for ruining everyone else’s ~10 minute match is very fair.
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> I’ve had this issue quite a bit. I think 343 should up the punishment on early quitters, because in most cases they are ruining the game for the other 7 players in the lobby. I think a ~10 minute ban for ruining everyone else’s ~10 minute match is very fair.
Yep. I like the idea of not being able to use matchmaking until the game you quit is concluded. Maybe temporary playlist bans for players who habitually quit as well.