Halo 4: Games are decided by matchmaking not skill

[exaltedvanguard]

Join in progress is possibly the worst mechanic brought to Halo... ever. Worse than Reach-bloom. Games are literally won before they start.

For example, a game starts 5v2. Three more join/spawn 5 seconds after first spawn. Nothing wrong with that, right? NOPE. This is Halo, not CoD. The game is over. The team that started with 5 just won.

Why? Power weapons. Map control. The game starts and one team has 5 players up front and fighting against the enemy 2. The three who are on their way make no difference in this fight. The 2 quickly die to (or retreat from) the overwhelming firepower.

We're assuming players are roughly equally skilled. You probably won't be seeing an epic overkill or something.

If they died, it's an early 2 kill lead and a 3v5. If they managed to run to cover, it's now a 5v5. A 5v5 where one team has their desired spot (map control) AND all the power weapons. You can guess how that's going to play out. So now we've got something like a 10-point lead, having smashed the enemies into the dirt with power weapons.

Now we fight it out normally for a while... and get our ordnance. Now we have power weapons, but they do too- oh wait... no they don't. We got more points, which means we got the first ordnance. Time for more face-destruction. They'll get some ordnance shortly, but we'll have ours ready and waiting to counter (and possibly even steal) it.

And the game just cascades....

And skill never really even came into the equation here. There wasn't any outplaying done. One team was basically given free map control and power weapons. The game was literally decided before it started because the game relies on join-in-progress to balance the teams.

[wittyscorpion]

Agree. A 5v2 game's outcome is largely decided before the game even starts.

However, join-in-progress does make the game more fun for the 2 poor players who were short handed. They will still lose the game, but it is now much more playable for them.

As long as the join-in-progress does not happen too often, I guess it is OK.

[exaltedvanguard]

Problem is, I'm seeing it happen in more than 50% of the games I play. It's even worse in big team where it's not just power weapons, but vehicles too (or they use the laser to blow up all your vehicles and proceed to surround your base).

If they must keep JiP, switch to the same system as League of Legends. If you quit, you have to rejoin that game or wait till it's finished before playing another. Punishes actually quitters, let's people reconnect after a D/C, and doesn't affect people who need to just get up and leave.

[Z3R0FLAME]

Do they even have matchmaking pnealties in this game for leaving? I've quit at least 5 times in a row from JiP matches and nothing happened.

I agree completely on the game-finishing wait time. You're always going to get those foxtrotting nubcakes who look at the lobby SRs and are like "BEJESUS IMA GET ONE UP THE TOOSHIE" and immediately leave when they die 10 seconds after the match starts out of pessimism. If they had to stick it out and wait every time before starting the cycle again, that would be good.

Alternatively, if you find that all your team-mates are entirely incompetent and you've tried your best with half the match completed, you can leave and chill for a couple minutes before they all get decimated without you and move on.

Now, if someone dashboards, they'd better impose even larger penalties. You know how in Reach they had the Jackpot lottery? And you needed to stay in matchmaking to get it? They should just remove any Victory bonus you might obtain otherwise. That way ,people would be a hell of a lot less concerned about winning every game, and instead just need to (again) stick it out and learn how to be an effective player, not depending on other people.

Or should we be meaner? (:<

[eLantern]

This issue should not be directly pointed at the JIP system. This issue has more to do with the 343i's decision to have loose game start-up parameters in their matchmaking system... maybe they thought the JIP system would be able to cover-up the problems inherent with choosing to have loose matchmaking parameters, but as we've seen thus far that's not necessarily the case. I believe the reason they chose to give the game the loose parameters was to allow players to find games faster as nobody appreciates long matchmaking searches.

I believe the matchmaking system should require an equal number of players for each team before beginning matches... however, if this delays finding matches too significantly then allow the system to begin matches for the bigger team games... 5v5, 6v6, 8v8 with a team being off by one player. Like I said, this is not a JIP issue as much as it's a matchmaking system parameter issue. The JIP system should be there for filling player gaps if or when they occur within a match.