I don’t want to ruin my rank by playing in an Arena playlist by myself when no friends are around. It’s pretty much guaranteed to be filled with losses and a bunch of quitters. Unlike days of past, when I have free time I don’t think “Hmm, maybe I can get a few matches of Halo in!” This is what happens when you have a competitive ranking system for core Halo game modes. I don’t want to casually play the game anymore. I don’t want to make it even harder to rank up when I eventually play with friends later in the day or week. My only option is Warzone, which imo is a half-baked MOBA that got old really quickly. It’s okay if you enjoy it, but having that as the only unranked online option is awful. Just duplicate all the available playlists in an unranked section.
You could kill two birds with one stone and solve the quitting issue here too. You can ease up on banning people who quick the unranked games, but make it very strict for ranked arena matches. In ranked arena, you shouldn’t ever have the option to quit the match. Your only option should be to close the game or turn off your console, which is a system lots of games do nowadays. If this type of quit occurs though, that person should be instant banned. As long as you can differentiate between a disconnect and a quit, the system should work. But I am tired of losing Arena matches because of quitters. Then wasting the next 15 minutes just sitting and waiting for the match to end.