Posted by: kraigeous
Quitting would happen less often if the seeding engine was better at avoiding bad mismatches. Getting humiliated by a death squad slayer team is not fun. No one improves from it, either. Victims never even know what hit 'em. Sportsmanship would dictate holding some sort of clinic for the poor saps instead of kill-farming off 'em.
Halo 3's seeding avoided mismatches a little better. In Reach, I can't tell what my team or opponents will be like until we've played a few minutes, because rank means little. Soon enough, tho', futility and rage and disgust and...
Yeah. What options, then?
I rarely quit, even when it appears futile. Every now and then, the game somehow turns around. Plus, there's always the option of watching the game film to learn the traps I kept walking into. But sometimes... sometimes... The rage is too much. Quitting is a much better option than throwing the controller at the cat.
If they won't improve the seeding engine and/or rank system, maybe Reach should use a skunk system. 11 kills to 0, the death squad wins and everyone moves on.
Yeah, the mismatches thing is really annoying. Also, I think there must be some way of exploiting it. Ever notice how the full teams of forerunner and up never seem to get pitched against teams of similar rank?
That Gamesagers guy made a thread earlier today, and I looked at his game history. Totally full of horrendous match ups. Getting like commanders and below versus his team of inheritor, reclaimer, forerunner etc.
One thing that people never seem to do though is set a preference of "prefer skill" as in, prefer matches where skill is equal. Reach still uses a skill system outside the rank system, and it uses this to match people up.
If you dont tick any option, then Reach just tries to find you any game asap, and will try where possible to make it fair. If you say prefer skill though, it will spend a while making a fair match.
I hate quitters though. In my personal opinion, it's mostly Americans who quit. It's always been that way since Halo 2. I think it might have something to do with the whole "you must win or you're a failure" attitude that seems to be so prevalent in society there (like Jocks are the most idolised guys in school society). I guess there is such a massive pressure to win and not lose at something, that maybe that is too much. Whereas other countries in the world, people are more likely to be able to play for the fun of the game and not care so much about win or loss.
I have no firm fact to link that to, it's just my opinion, but I would definitely say that about 95% of the people I see quitting (and I always check) have the US listed as their location on their profile, which accounts for more than the game population balance which goes in favour of US players.
Applying credit reductions wont work though. We'll just be left with what we had in Halo 2 with people deliberately de-ranking to get matched up against actual newbies so they can feel better about themselves.