Hey Josh,



Thanks for posting again as always. I wanted to respond to a few of the questions you asked and the statements you made. When addressing my post below, this can apply to both Halo 5, and any future titles you may work on while at 343i considering your statement about viability in Halo 5's current state.



Surrender

As far as surrender goes, only allow a surrender when there is 50% or less of the team left. Quitting has a penalty attached, so it would force the team to continue playing unless they wanted to actually quit. If half the team quit, don't punish the remaining two players. Allow them to surrender if they both agree.



Leaving

The next question was why do players leave? In my experience it's due to the map/gametype combo. This is also why I think veto is a must. There were multiple tournaments in the HCS when every single team vetoed Stasis. The fact that 343i tries to force players to play terrible maps and gametypes is the cause for leavers. The other cause for leavers is when a party of 4 is matched against all solo players. There's two common ways to fix the solo vs team dynamic. You can increase the elo being matched for the solo players since a team of 4 should elevate themselves to a higher skill level. League of Legends uses this approach. If you search as a full team of platinum players, you match a team of solo diamond players for instance. The idea is that as a team your skill level should be equivalent to that of 4 solo players of a higher elo. The other option is party restrictions. If you search as a team of 4, you match a team of 4. If you search as a team of 3, you match a team of 3. This is the system Halo 3 used and it is quite liked by the majority of players. Either solution works to an extent, but at least one of these or a mixture of these systems needs to be implemented. For instance when searching as a team of 4, for the first 60 seconds in queue you are only looking for another team of 4 inside the parameters of your skill level. 60 seconds is up and no team is available? Now we search for a team 4 solo players in a slightly higher elo than you. Some sort of combination like this would work well.



Forcing players back into the same match

This would just get me to hit the power button on my xbox and go do something else. I don't quit often if at all, but this would get me off the console.



Partying up post-game

A big part of post-game lobby is looking at stats, talking crap to the other team, and partying up. This needs to come back in future titles. Play 2-3 games of Halo 3 on the 360 and if it's anything like it used to be you'll see exactly how to build post-game lobby for future titles.



Party Chat pre-game lobby

Another addition for a future title. Write these down somewhere because with 343i it's always the details that fall off. For example in Halo 4 they brought back the "x" on death, but it was white. Simple little details can really make or break a mechanic, and lobby's are no exception.



Map Vetoes

The community is split because they want variety. You don't lose variety with map vetoes. If a map is constantly vetoed you still have plenty of other maps that will get chosen, just leave it to one veto. The fact that 343i tries to force terrible map/gametypes makes this a basic requirement nowadays. Please implement this and you'll see the leave rate go down drastically.



Smurfs

Level 25 as a requirement would be fine. Just simply have a popup explain this when the player tries to click team arena at level 10.



Ranked Distribution

I'm not sure why, but the ranked distribution seems to be very off. I always think ranking systems like the one implemented in LoL, Halo 5, etc. need to aim for a bellcurve distribution of players. The majority of players should be sitting near Gold 1-4. Obviously you know what a bellcurve is, but I highly doubt that our population currently looks that way. Very few in Champion/Bronze. Slightly more in Silver/Onyx. Majority in the Gold-Plat level. Make it actually mean something to hit Onyx. And show the elo values for all Champion players. I should see that I'm an Onyx 1686 and that Champion 200 is at 1724. I should be able to see all of that. We should also work to keep the Champion slots from simply becoming a grind game. Champion being above elo 2000 isn't healthy for the ranking system in my honest opinion. If nothing I've stated can be worked on for Halo 5, please make note of it for the next title. The devil is in the details.



Thanks again for the transparency Josh. If you have time swing by the sandbox department and tell them we'd like a post as well regarding the Radar/ARs in my playlist. Thanks for all the hard work you do, have a good one :)



edit: Forgot to bring up the below:



Seasonal rewards - Champion pistol skins that are blue for top 200 champs and red for top 50 champs. Ideas like this.



In-Game Leaderboard - I should easily be able to see the leaderboard for any given playlist. At a minimum I should be able to see the top 200 players, and how much LP/mmr they have. Just because they are Champion doesn't mean their elo should be hidden.