- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Posted by: AnalogWeapon
Posted by: I Call Rockets
I said it last week and I'll say it again - this is completely ridiculous. You are really trying to dictate behavior to the point that you will ban people for quitting too much? How exactly do you know when it is "valid" to quit and it isn't? How do you know what real life circumstances surround my needing to quit? Are you going to ban people that play Halo 3 on military bases because they have to quit out of a game to do something important? Are you going to ban people that have biological problems and have to run to the bathroom frequently? Are you going to ask me what real life circumstances surrounded me needing to quit before you ban me, or are you just going to ban me without warning, without bothering to check if there could have been some other problem?
I can already predict the answer to this post -
"No, we ban for behavior. Our mystical banhammer is able to use it's mighty powers of clairvoyance to determine exactly what you are doing when you quit out of Halo 3. You have been warned."
And I can already predict the response of the community to this change -
People will simply go away from their controller instead of quitting, leaving their xbox in the game while they go do whatever they were going to do anyway.
Great, so now instead of getting a quitter in Team Slayer, I'm going to get some jackass who stands still the whole game getting killed by the enemy team and making it even harder for our team to win than it would have been if he had just quit.
Personally, I will continue quitting whenever the hell I feel like it. If you want to ban me for it, go right ahead. I'd rather not play this game than have some high and mighty game developers try to tell me that I HAVE to play it and that I HAVE to finish games, even if they are terrible garbage like splockets or half my team quits.
Fallout 3 will be out soon anyway.
I think you're missing the point slightly. It's pretty easy to determine if someone is quitting many times in a row.
I totally concur with your assertion that there are many valid reasons to quit (i.e. Anything immediately more important than a video game). However, one needs to bear in mind the fact that quitting negatively affects the game of everyone else involved in that game. When starting a game, the player has a pretty good idea of how long it will take (Give or take a few minutes). So that throws out all excuses based on events that the player knew would (Or were likely to) occur within that time frame.
In my experience (And from anecdotal information received here in the forums) people aren't getting banned if their patterns of quitting are natural. People are getting banned who have a perpetual problem with quitting. These patterns are pretty simple to identify and the available responses are really simple as well. Since video game developers spend a lot of their time creating code to recognize complex patterns and respond in the context of complex behaviors, I actually do trust that the ban hammer is a pretty smart little thing. :)
With that in mind, please let us know if you get banned for your natural quitting patterns. I would be as upset as you if people were getting banned who weren't making attempts to do anything wrong.
Ah, but the question then becomes "What is a natural pattern for quitting?" What parameters are used to determine if you are quitting too much?
If it is a simple quits over time equation, then what about the person who just happens to get unlucky and get several games in a row where his teammates quit, or he gets griefers on his team, or the opponents are using some form of cheating to win? Should he be banned because he just happened to get a bad streak of games? Even if he doesn't get banned for it, he now has more quitting on his record than he would have had had he happened to get lucky and get some awesome teammates / opponents for a few games in a row. Is it fair to punish this person because of events that are completely out of his control? Is it fair to punish someone that happens to play in a playlist that has a high instance of crappy games (for example, multi team, where you often get split up from your party members or the teams become wildly uneven because of other quitters or DLC FFA, where games are often completely sidetracked by people trying to get achievements)
If it isn't a simple quits over time equation, then some sort of discretion is being used. If so, then what is the criteria for discretion? What determines when it is "okay" to quit and when it isn't? Bungie should outline these criteria instead of throwing out nebulous threats. Again, I don't think that any automated system can be perfect enough to exercise discretion and be able to tell the difference between a "perpetual quitter" and "someone who quits with valid reasons." I don't think the system can, for example, tell the difference between a guy who just quits in DLC FFA whenever he wants to and a guy who happens to get achievement boosting morons 5 games in a row. Should the latter person be punished becuse he doesn't want to have to finish a game with people who aren't playing? His quitting isn't detracting from the other players experiences in any way - in fact, they are detracting from his.
Cheating, Boosting, and other miscreant behavious are easily detectable - there is no way you can justify boosting yourself to general, for example. Quitting is a much more nebulous area. And since we have already seen many people crying foul over the current rash of bannings (whether they really are being banned unfairly or not), I'm not exactly inclined to trust the automated system that they are using. And considering all of the arrogance with which they have been displaying lately by making threads to laugh at banned people and telling us that the only valid reason to quit is in an emergency (implied by the "on fire" comments), I'm not inclined to believe that they are going to behave reasonably when the hammer drops on someone who was quitting for legitimate reasons.
But don't worry and have faith. Bungie is all knowing and all powerful - they can't make mistakes.