So how about the team that's down a man gets an extra scoring multiplier? It could even be, if the team has a player with 0 points, they get bonus points per kill until that player scores points of any kind. I don't think it should be enough to be exploitable, but I think it could be manageably balanced. At least this could be a starting point for discussion.

How bout ratio of players on each team? In 6v6 down a man would give the smaller team a 1.2x (6/5) score multiplier. 6v4 okay you get a 1.5x, 6v3 = 2x. You get the drift. It seems like it would be relatively easy to implement in code.

It would have to be much less. Like +15 points for a 5v6, +10 for each player down beyond. 5v6 is still very winnable; it would also have to go away as soon as a new player was in, or scored any points. If bungie implemented any sort of comeback mechanic based on players dropping, they'd have to fine tune it over numerous patches.

***Also: I wouldn't mind seeing some kind of comeback mechanic built in to super energy gain when you're down players, to compensate for less orbs dropped. That would be really tough to nail down, but it's the biggest cause of snowballing in the crux, and it's not something JIP really can fix, as a new player contributes zero orbs for at least a couple of minutes. Nobody like joining a game late and never getting a super. Imagine if players entering any game on a team down +5k points have super immediately? You'd be way happier about joining late!

I don't have to like that to say Join in Progress as implemented is good and worth the occasional instance of that happening--it might be different if a medallion really was the worst thing ever and didn't also coincide with the easiest chance you've ever gotten at earning some good gear.

Respectfully, stop focusing on the medallion and rewards. Trust me, I'm very sorry I spoke of the loot at all!

Instead, I want you to focus on the system as a whole and on how it might affect me and you. Because I was stuck loading into a game that ended before I got there, I was not available to potentially replace a member of your team in a game that had plenty of time left. The Join in Progress system, as implemented, would have let both me and you down, but it might have given us both what we wanted if there was a simple check in place to prevent players from being joined into games that will end "too soon."

I see this as the same as people complaining about the RNG. Getting mad at the game for this (and for most other things) seems overwrought to me. I say that respectfully.

I (respectfully again) disagree. The RNG system, for better or worse, is deliberate and should not be compared to the things I brought up in this topic. I doubt the matchmaking system trying to join me into a game that ended before I got to play is something that is supposed to happen. Instead, what happened to me was likely an unintended failure of the matchmaking and join in progress systems. I think if such failures can be avoided with no or even minimal impact on the rest of Destiny's players then it should be avoided.

I think the system works exactly the way you described it to Cruel above. Any fix I imagine to the problems you describe regarding Join in Progress I see as potentially introducing other problems. Sometimes the system yields suboptimal results, but I'm pretty sure it's working as intended.

Join in Progress is always going to be joining you into a game where your team is either behind or ahead, that won't ever change and that's not a bad thing. I've certainly come from behind once I get more people filling out my team. What is bad is that there is apparently no basic check that tries to judge whether there is enough time left to join new players into a game.

I think that's actually the crux of the discussion here - I don't think ANYONE is arguing with you that being dropped into a game that's about to end is an IDEAL situation. (Most of us on my side of the issue are saying that the negatives involved with that situation are outweighed by the positives that an extra player can bring, overall.)

Well, except I've gotten two so far who started off by saying they disagreed with everything I said. :/ That's frustrating even considering my initial post had a pretty big flaw regarding the initial JiP cutoff. (I meant the half game cutoff as a starting point for discussion... except that's not what my post says. My bad. Don't post when you're angry kids!)

Coming up with the point of no return is HARD. I don't think I've ever seen a post that picks a time that's made me say "yeah, that works, across the board." You started with "after 5 minutes" - and then conceded that that might be too short. But what's NOT too short? 10 minutes? 7 minutes? A certain score range before the end? A score range with a max delta? Something even MORE complicated?

I don't think you can just pick "3 minutes" or "4 minutes 28 seconds" or whatever. What makes sense to me is some combination of looking at time remaining and the difference in score with a sanity check that never allows JiP if there isn't enough time to actually load the map. From there I'd look at historical data. What's the biggest score delta that was ever over come in two minutes? Three minutes? Four minutes? I'd work out some formula that says something like "at x time left a score difference of y points is too large to come back from" and disable JiP once a game has crossed that moving line. And maybe reenable it if the game crosses back! But that formula wouldn't be some guess, it'd be backed by actual data and then tweaked to allow some reasonable leeway. On top of that, surely there is some minimum amount of time that most players feel is long enough to make a contribution to the match instead of feeling like the match ends just when they're getting started. What is that amount of time? I don't know. My gut feeling says three-ish minutes based around how long it takes a Super to charge, but it could be much better pinned down with good discussion and play testing.

Lump all that together and you get a set of rules that try and match every player into a good game. Not every player is going to have a good game. Sometimes your team is terrible. Sometime you are terrible. Sometimes there's lag. Etc. Etc. But right now Destiny really does seem to just throw players into ANY game without even basic checks to see if that game will likely be satisfying.

Nobody's come up with an answer that really works yet - including Bungie. So they just say "join ANY game in progress where the rest of the parameters are a close match". Which works for me, but clearly not for you. ;)

I think I'm looking at it from a different angle. Like most, I think the system works pretty well. I'm not bringing up my example of not getting to play a match because it happens to me all the time. (I believe it's only happened once!) I'm bringing it up because I don't think it should happen at all. Then I'm trying to look a little further to see if there are other situations we can all agree upon where JiP doesn't make any sense. I just don't like looking at it from a "there's no solution yet so it's good enough as it." perspective. Should Bungie have done that with Destiny's color blind options? Or the way upgrading a weapon worked in The Dark Below? Sure, maybe improving JiP is something that would cost far too much in terms of server load or matchmaking times or development time. Or maybe it's something like fireteam chat that can be "easily" added and would work well... if only enough people make it an issue.

Either way, though, I'm okay with stiffer penalties for quitters - I've ALWAYS been an advocate for the "wait 5 minutes before being allowed back" plan, going back to Reach days. It's never been implemented, but I think it mostly works. If you quit because something came up (phone call, door bell, kid puking, whatever), those 5 minutes won't bug you at all. If you quit because the game bumped you, it'll probably take SOME time to get back online and ready to play - so the remaining penalty won't be a HUGE hardship (though I will grant that it will be annoying, since you ALREADY got screwed by a server error - the only mitigating circumstance is that most of these happen because YOUR connection isn't perfect, and the server can't keep up, so a short timeout is probably a good idea ;) ). If you quit because that last guy who killed you made you rage - you NEED the 5 minutes. :) But clearly Bungie has never seen it this way, because they've never implemented this. ::shrug::

Agreed.

And, though I can't prove it, I do think Destiny probably does try to get you playing as soon as possible when you first log on. It feels like I often get joined into an ongoing game the first time I play Crucible each day and from then on the likelihood of that happening is much smaller.

So how about the team that's down a man gets an extra scoring multiplier? It could even be, if the team has a player with 0 points, they get bonus points per kill until that player scores points of any kind. I don't think it should be enough to be exploitable, but I think it could be manageably balanced. At least this could be a starting point for discussion.

How bout ratio of players on each team? In 6v6 down a man would give the smaller team a 1.2x (6/5) score multiplier. 6v4 okay you get a 1.5x, 6v3 = 2x. You get the drift. It seems like it would be relatively easy to implement in code.

The JIP issue really is a tough nut to crack. One interesting solution I've seen proposed would involve a bit of a change in Bungie's approach to mixing and matching groups of players.

In some other multiplayer games, groups are not shuffled around between games. Unless you go out of your way to leave a group/lobby, you will continue to get matched with the same group of players game after game (swapping team configurations around when possible). In Destiny, it is certainly possible to get matched with the same group of players several games in a row, but the systems seems to be quite fluid. I believe the matchmaking system is actively trying to get you matched up with new players as often as possible.

How does JIP fit in to this? Well the idea is that a matchmaking system built around putting together groups and the keeping them together for as long as possible could prioritize "new" players to be selected for JIP. In other words, when I first log in, I might get pulled into a match that is already in progress, but once I'm in that group, I'm in. I'm not going to be forced into another JIP situation unless my group completely disbands.

The great thing about this proposal is that it automatically adds incentive to NOT quit. If I quit a match early, I'm bumping myself to the top of the pool of players selected to fill other games already in progress.

Either way, though, I'm okay with stiffer penalties for quitters - I've ALWAYS been an advocate for the "wait 5 minutes before being allowed back" plan

Last night I was playing Iron banner alone, got an invite, and accepted it. I left the game I was in, to start playing with a group. I'd have hated to wait 5 minutes before we could start.

I'd hope the system was smarter than that. Leaving a matchmade team once a session to play with friends should be detected and not punished. Similarly, things like having your internet die or having your power go out should be forgiven assuming they can be properly detected. Penalties would come into play when someone backs out of a game perhaps with less tolerance and more bite when they build up a history of backing out of games.

So your friends got to play with you a few minutes early - but you totally fucked 5 random people.

Usually I'm the one who speaks in hyperbole! Yes, leaving an Iron Banner game that had been going for all of 45 seconds, where nothing is on the line really, totally fucked over 5 people.

I'm sure a random was put in to replace me.

I don't feel bad at all about doing that.

Heh. Fair enough - I was hyperbolic. But I still think you were being selfish, and "I'm sure a random was put in to replace me" is nothing but a rationalization. :)

So your friends got to play with you a few minutes early - but you totally fucked 5 random people.

Usually I'm the one who speaks in hyperbole! Yes, leaving an Iron Banner game that had been going for all of 45 seconds, where nothing is on the line really, totally fucked over 5 people.

I'm sure a random was put in to replace me.

I don't feel bad at all about doing that.

Claude, you're right about the Halo:Reach quitting ban--that was, at least in my opinion, a really good idea that Bungie implemented. And you were right about that too--if you have to quit for real reasons, those 5 minutes won't matter. And the system was foolproof--to me, I'd say. I've only been put on time-out when I knew what I was doing was unproductive. (I used to plug in multiple controllers and boost people needing help on multiplayer achievements, and I got AFK timeouts.)

Dropping you in at the end of the game is a real dick move. I've already expressed my feelings on that. But sometimes, JIP can also be helpful. I don't think anyone disagrees with that, but I think it still had to be said. So I think a quitting penalty+a more objective join policy can really help with Crucible.

Either way, though, I'm okay with stiffer penalties for quitters - I've ALWAYS been an advocate for the "wait 5 minutes before being allowed back" plan

Last night I was playing Iron banner alone, got an invite, and accepted it. I left the game I was in, to start playing with a group. I'd have hated to wait 5 minutes before we could start.

So your friends got to play with you a few minutes early - but you totally fucked 5 random people.

I'd say that's pretty selfish. Never done that, never will.

To each his own, though.

Either way, though, I'm okay with stiffer penalties for quitters - I've ALWAYS been an advocate for the "wait 5 minutes before being allowed back" plan

Last night I was playing Iron banner alone, got an invite, and accepted it. I left the game I was in, to start playing with a group. I'd have hated to wait 5 minutes before we could start.

Join in Progress is always going to be joining you into a game where your team is either behind or ahead, that won't ever change and that's not a bad thing. I've certainly come from behind once I get more people filling out my team. What is bad is that there is apparently no basic check that tries to judge whether there is enough time left to join new players into a game.

I think that's actually the crux of the discussion here - I don't think ANYONE is arguing with you that being dropped into a game that's about to end is an IDEAL situation. (Most of us on my side of the issue are saying that the negatives involved with that situation are outweighed by the positives that an extra player can bring, overall.)

Coming up with the point of no return is HARD. I don't think I've ever seen a post that picks a time that's made me say "yeah, that works, across the board." You started with "after 5 minutes" - and then conceded that that might be too short. But what's NOT too short? 10 minutes? 7 minutes? A certain score range before the end? A score range with a max delta? Something even MORE complicated?

Nobody's come up with an answer that really works yet - including Bungie. So they just say "join ANY game in progress where the rest of the parameters are a close match". Which works for me, but clearly not for you. ;)

To address CyberKN's issue of Join in Progress being thwarted by players continually backing out, I would recommend stiffer penalties to those that choose to back out rather than a complete disabling of the Join in Progress system.

Okay, so as another data point (as anecdotal as Cyber's) - this almost never happens to me. He says it happens to him all the time. It's not unheard of - but it's FAR more common (in the games I've played) for someone to join - and stick it out.

Maybe that's random chance. Maybe it's a function of the competitiveness of the pools we're in, respectively. Maybe it's a combination of both of those, or maybe it's something else entirely. Until Bungie posts a white paper explaining how the JIP matching works (which will never, ever happen), we won't really know. ;) (I don't know which of us has a more representative experience.)

Either way, though, I'm okay with stiffer penalties for quitters - I've ALWAYS been an advocate for the "wait 5 minutes before being allowed back" plan, going back to Reach days. It's never been implemented, but I think it mostly works. If you quit because something came up (phone call, door bell, kid puking, whatever), those 5 minutes won't bug you at all. If you quit because the game bumped you, it'll probably take SOME time to get back online and ready to play - so the remaining penalty won't be a HUGE hardship (though I will grant that it will be annoying, since you ALREADY got screwed by a server error - the only mitigating circumstance is that most of these happen because YOUR connection isn't perfect, and the server can't keep up, so a short timeout is probably a good idea ;) ). If you quit because that last guy who killed you made you rage - you NEED the 5 minutes. :) But clearly Bungie has never seen it this way, because they've never implemented this. ::shrug::

To address CyberKN's issue of Join in Progress being thwarted by players continually backing out, I would recommend stiffer penalties to those that choose to back out rather than a complete disabling of the Join in Progress system.

I don't have to like that to say Join in Progress as implemented is good and worth the occasional instance of that happening--it might be different if a medallion really was the worst thing ever and didn't also coincide with the easiest chance you've ever gotten at earning some good gear.

Respectfully, stop focusing on the medallion and rewards. Trust me, I'm very sorry I spoke of the loot at all!

Instead, I want you to focus on the system as a whole and on how it might affect me and you. Because I was stuck loading into a game that ended before I got there, I was not available to potentially replace a member of your team in a game that had plenty of time left. The Join in Progress system, as implemented, would have let both me and you down, but it might have given us both what we wanted if there was a simple check in place to prevent players from being joined into games that will end "too soon."

I see this as the same as people complaining about the RNG. Getting mad at the game for this (and for most other things) seems overwrought to me. I say that respectfully.

I (respectfully again) disagree. The RNG system, for better or worse, is deliberate and should not be compared to the things I brought up in this topic. I doubt the matchmaking system trying to join me into a game that ended before I got to play is something that is supposed to happen. Instead, what happened to me was likely an unintended failure of the matchmaking and join in progress systems. I think if such failures can be avoided with no or even minimal impact on the rest of Destiny's players then it should be avoided.