- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
I've just started to play Live after a seven month absence, and have noticed a marked difference in how things were when Halo 2 was first released, and how it is now. Cheating is rampant--e.g. floating people, and the standby hack. I think the quitting thing was present even many months before, and is a separate issue.
A temporary workaround for both problems, is to go through matchmaking in a party--with people whom you know don't cheat, or quit. With each additional person in your party, the probability of getting a cheater or a quitter is reduced.
Have I quitted before? of course. 1 flag CTF 4 players per team. We failed to score. Then they scored. Then they owned us big time. In the 3rd round, 3 out of my 4 people quit. What was I supposed to do? Stay solo and walk around the map for 5 minutes+another round? I didn't buy Halo to be sanctimonious--I wanted to join other games and have fun.
Personally I don't see a long term Bungie solution to the Halo 2 cheating problems. Microsoft already has your $ from Halo 2 sales. The XBox 360 is around the corner, as is a new version of Live, as is Halo 3. Is there much financial incentive to identify cheaters, ban cheaters, and fix the underlying cheating problems? Unlikely.
I think a better solution is:
1. for players to be able to highlight recent players they do not want to be matchmade with (for whatever reason), and MatchMaking no longer puts those players together in a game.
2. for non-cheaters themselves to form clans or friends or parties, so that non-cheaters can stick together.
A third "solution" would be getting rid of the annual subscription thing, and instead making all our subscriptions monthly or weekly only. In which case players who have misgivings about Bungie/Microsoft's (in)actions can vote with their dollars, and stop playing on Live for a while. <-- this is not going to happen of course.
Just my personal opinion.
[Edited on 7/11/2005]