Mundus Vult Decipi. Know it. Use it. Love it. False truth, the anti-sanity.
Are blue screens bearable? Yes. Are they also unnecessary? Yes. Will I quit playing because of them? Of course not. I love Halo and nearly everything about it, which is why I endure the bullpucky. Because the overall gaming experience is second to none. But I know I'm not the only one who feels that Bungie and Microsoft should have devoted servers for game hosting. But if they're going to stick with having users host, how about an added penalty if you quit AND you're the host? And speaking of penalties, yes, you get a betrayal penalty for team killing and then can be booted. But I was in a game of CTF on Midship where I was about to score the flag at the end of the game and my teammate killed me at our base at the last second and we ended up tying. Why? Because of immaturity.The boot option didn't help here and the betrayal penalty only hurts the team, not the player. Its like a team gets doubly screwed because there's a jackoff who gets matched with them. Bungie COULD impose harsher penalties to users who teamkill or quit. They just choose not to. They could, for example, bust a person down a rank or two for quitting during a ranked match. Maybe less people would do it then. Maybe not, but at least it would be doing SOMETHING instead of nothing. That would also help those of us who get stuck with deranking teammates. If they joined and quit three games and went down six ranks, they'd be down more quickly and screw over far less people in the long run. Or how about blacklisting people who quit during ranked matches? Ban them from playlists that are ranked for a period of time for quitting during a game. Or if you get booted from a game for betraying, then how about a further penalty like a day or two ban from Live? We've all betrayed people accidentally, but there are people who do it habitually. They get their jollies from it. And the average gamer shouldn't have to endure their immaturity.
And to all those who say people take the game too seriously: then why have a ranking system at all? If it can be affected so easily and so often by immature players or people who quit, obviously its not performing like it should. So why keep it? Sure, I get on all the time just to play without caring too much about whether I win or lose. But everyone likes winning, and when you don't win simply because of an idiot, then it takes away from the fun.
I don't get on Live and play Halo to get my rank up or because the game is my life. Sure, there are people who are like that and honestly, that's fine. Everyone has those things in life that they love. Do I love playing? Yeah. I love it. Playing Halo is the most fun I've had with a video game since the glory days of Quake. But do I think the system in place for players could be fine tuned? Of course.
But I'll keep playing because there are people who keep it a worthwhile experience. But here's one last question that's been bugging me for years now.
How come Bungie never developed bots? They obviously already have AI in place to do something like this since there's campaign mode. If they allowed bots in custom games, people could not only fine tune skills, but also team kill all they want without p!ss!ng off everyone they're playing with. So maybe then those same people would get it out of their system and only come to ranked matches for a real game. Just a thought.