<mark>Do not make nonconstructive posts or flame/attack others.</mark>
Of all the things that shock me about the decline of Halo, and all the things I find sad and offensive about its community, This recent pogrom conducted against quitters has to be the most vile of all. If you are one of the people demanding quit bans, or harsher quit bans, you are childish and ignorant in the extreme. That the hacks who make this game agree with you, that this is somehow the best “solution” to the problem of quitting, is just one more piece of evidence that it is, in fact, an insane solution.
So let me see if I understand 343’s logic here. Somebody wanted to play your game. You spent years, supposedly pouring your hearts and souls into this product (let’s pretend for the sake of argument). As a creator of content, this is everything you work for. Someone wants to play your game. They presumably payed for it, or were at the very least interested enough to try a friend’s copy. You as a developer are fighting tooth-and-nail for your player population, against substantial competition, and this person has chosen to try to play your game over the competition. Here is a paying customer, or at least a potential one.
So let’s start with the assumption that anyone playing your game wants to play your game. This seems idiotically self-evident, but apparently it has to be said. There was some experience they were hoping to have. When they subsequently quit, as a developer, I would give these potential customers the benefit of the doubt and assume that they did NOT go to the trouble of starting up my game just to quit and ruin someone else’s experience. I would go ahead and assume that the majority of them quit because I, as a developer, failed to provide them the experience they wanted or expected.
But no. It turns out, these paying customers deserve to be PUNISHED for their failure to enjoy my product. Punished with a vengeance. “Oh you’re a paying customer who is clearly unsatisfied with our service? Well here, have even less of our crappy product. Oh yeah we’re keeping your money.”
One of the many ironies of this forum is the recent prevalent use of the word “entitled”. I notice that this is the latest buzzword for idiots who have no original supporting arguments for anything they believe. Anyone who presents valid criticisms of your sacred game is “entitled”. Anyone who quits out of matchmade games is “entitled”.
The irony, of course, is that the position that could best be described as “entitled” is the one that expects strangers on the internet to waste 10 minutes doing something they don’t want to do just to entertain YOU. And it is frankly pathetic that you would derive satisfaction from beating someone at a game who doesn’t even want to play said game. Of course this is all that is left of the Halo “community”. If you still like this horrible, dumbed-down game you probably have little sense of sportsmanship or fair play anyway. If you did, you would want to play games against other people who WANTED to play the same game as you, and wanted to win, the same as you. That’s what sportsmanship is really about. Not some ridiculous code of honor that says you have to waste some portion of your life doing something you PAID to do, but that you find pointless or boring.
People also describe quitting out of games as “childish”. Again, I would suggest that it is more “adult” to know the value of your time. Anyone who has 15 minutes to waste on a game that they aren’t having any fun in is probably not a “real adult” in terms of how much free time they have. Forcing people you don’t even know, who owe you NOTHING, to play a game with you because they will be ripped off by the developer if they don’t is beyond childish.
The most truly insane thing about quit bans, though, is that since the Halo 3 days the game has been almost intentionally designed to PROMOTE quitting. Quitting can never be truly eliminated, but the “correct” way to mitigate or reduce quitting is through good playlist design, and most importantly, A FUNCTIONING RANKING SYSTEM. Oh yeah, and you have to have a good game to begin with, which this isn’t.
The only Halo game to feature any sort of real match quality was Halo 2. H3’s system was superficially similar but in reality worked totally differently, and didn’t really work at all. None of you remember this, but in Halo 2 your rank was not “just a number” to brag about. It really, truly did affect your match quality, and the hard work of grinding (and winning) your way to a higher rank carried actual rewards to your game-play experience. Higher ranks meant more players who knew the maps and strategies, more team players with mics, less team-killers, AND LESS QUITTERS. Way, way less quitters. Were there still quitters? Of course. But it was never the “epidemic” so many of you now lament. Ranks provided a disincentive to quit in ranked playlists. And unranked playlists provided a less intense experience for those who wanted it.
Quitting is an inevitable plague in Halo, and I guarantee it will only get worse due to the game’s schizophrenic nature. Halo 2 had wonderful map variety, but there wasn’t a single map that I hated in that game. Different as they were, they all followed some core design philosophy that made them all good. That all went out the window with H3. There were only a couple decent maps, and the rest were garbage. That’s been the case with every game since. And it’s not just that they were garbage, it’s that the game now contained at least 2 totally different types of maps, driven by 2 totally different design philosophies, and appealing to 2 totally different types of players. So even if you don’t agree with me as to WHICH maps were garbage and which were good, it is unlikely that everyone in a game is going to be happy. This can only promote quitting.
Even worse is the playlist design philosophy, which since Halo 3 has been so stupid I truly can’t comprehend it. A playlist should, as much as possible, be built around a single game type, or where necessary, consolidate similar gametypes. The only variety within a playlist should come from the map rotation. If you want gametype variety beyond that, THAT’S WHAT OTHER PLAYLISTS ARE FOR. Matchmaking will always be somewhat random, but you should be aiming to give players as much control over their gametype selection as possible.
Instead you intentionally and repeatedly (and maliciously?) do the opposite. Over and over and over again. Social slayer with snipers mixed in? Incomprehensibly stupid. If I just want to play Snipers, I’m obviously going to have to go into that playlist. And guess what I’m going to do EVERY SINGLE TIME I DON’T GET SNIPERS? Oh my god you guessed it I’m going to quit. Oh, and guess what I’m going to do if I wanted to play regular social slayer (a reasonable expectation when you enter that playlist) and get snipers instead? I’M GOING TO QUIT. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
So there you go. Congratulations, you’ve just “engineered” a playlist explicitly designed to make half the players quit out of every game the moment it starts. And what’s the solution? Oh let’s just go ahead and punish those players for your own massive, gross, mind-boggling incompetence as a developer. Because it’s somehow THEIR fault they are not enjoying your amazing product? So you take their money then ban them? -Yoink- YOU.
Learn to make a decent game and quit banning people for your failures you -Yoinking!- hacks.