Leavers Penalty


  • Thanks for the replies

    I think my main point is that determining whether someone has left out of ill intent is extremely difficult, yet a Leavers Penalty punishes EVERYONE who leaves. It's guaranteed to target the wrong players.

    It's easy to say that all leavers matchmaking with other leavers will get them a taste of their own medicine etc but a large percentage of people stuck in those games will be those who have A) left because someone else left, B) disconnected, or C) can't finish the game for external reasons, rather than D) angry. There's so many variables to a player leaving.

    From MY experience playing a shit ton of hours in the last Beta, I am going to find myself in 3v4's, 2v4's, 1v4's with no one backfilling and I'll have to just go AFK and wait until a defeat screen slaps me in the face OR I'll be unfairly punished in the next Beta. With the last Beta, I was easily in this position 20+ matches.

    They have said that they have improved general connection quality, whilst I don't doubt that at all, it's extremely difficult to provide EVERY SINGLE PLAYER a 100% smooth connection 100% of the time. Especially still in a Beta phase. Disconnects WILL happen to innocent players.

    Again it's more likely to not even be on their end. It's super easy to say that you should just contact your ISP or "get better internet xd" but there's not a single ISP that provides guaranteed smooth quality 100% of the time. I haven't done extensive market research but I'd imagine a higher demographic of players have ordinary lower priced internet that is more likely to produce outages or down spikes in internet connection than those with slightly more reliable high speed internet that is way more expensive.

    Then comes the question...what does a Leavers Penalty actually achieve? There will always be Leavers. So if a Leavers Penalty is introduced to counteract Leavers, it just seems like adding fuel to the fire? Players will still be unhappy that people are leaving. Then they'll be even more unhappy when they end up with a Leavers Penalty due to another leaver or other reasons out of their hands as discussed.

    I don't even think a Leavers Penalty deters many people anyway. If you're frustrated, you're not suddenly gonna have a self reflective epiphany mid-game. In the heat of the moment, players will react selfishly, that's not necessarily a bad trait either, it's just human nature, lol. Again, in a backwards way, the whole system just creates more toxicity, more frustrating games and more leavers. You take into consideration how many NEW players there will be as well, it could easily be something that discourages them from continuing to play.


  • @x-AmberPrice

    So this is one of those semi-passionate topics, so I'll try my best to not sound like a dick because this just a casual debate and you're making good points. Just making sure you know it's nothing personal. 🙂 I'll try to address every point you make, but will only be quoting the main topics of interest.

    yet a Leavers Penalty punishes EVERYONE who leaves. It's guaranteed to target the wrong players.

    It's also guaranteed to target the correct players, so, unless we can say over 50% of instances of leaving are innocent with hard data, I'm unconvinced why that's a problem (maybe NT will release that data some day?). It's ironic because if the game IS full of innocent leavers, because it certainly sounds like you're saying the majority of them are, then leaver queue is also mostly filled with people who are trying not to leave and the penalty itself stops being problematic entirely because everyone will have a reasonably low leave rate.

    I understand what your point is, but if you leave the match intentionally then in no way are you being targeted unfairly, ever. Again, I sympathize as a player who has experienced the same issues, but that's why I'm in full support of the forfeit option. End the match, don't leave it.

    Again, all the matches you experienced with leavers will decrease with this penalty, and it's not just because of the incentive to stay. If you don't leave matches, then you won't be grouped with leavers, it's just that simple. So the majority of leavers will play with each other and make each other miserable. They taste their own medicine and can deal with it.

    Not to mention it usually takes a few minutes to even confirm that a match is hopeless, you can't just give up the moment someone else leaves first and expect that to be justifiable just because you didn't do it first. In Bleeding Edge, a hopeless match is going to be over pretty soon anyway, because the only reason you'd think it's hopeless is if they're just that close to winning and you're not. If the score is 100-200 on objective control, then it doesn't matter how long its been a 3v4, you can wait for a backfill and make a comeback until it's just too bad to deal with, like 100-500. At that point you can just mess around, pick fights, do whatever, just practice until the match is over in the 2-3 minutes it'll take at worst. Hell go feed them kills and try to nab some yourself for fun, I've gotten a kill before dying in 1v2's before and it was super fun.

    Bleeding Edge's design means that early advantages don't translate into power spikes, they'll just have more points than you. I've started matches as a 2v4 and won because I just did what I could until I had a team backfill me. There was no reason to leave because it wasn't hopeless yet. It's not ideal, but as long as it doesn't happen every match it's fine. As long as we lower the odds of it happening, it's fine.

    Disconnects WILL happen to innocent players.

    Obviously, sometimes the situation won't seem fair, but that doesn't justify risking the rest of the game for it by doing nothing about it. It's very likely going to be the viewpoint of an innocent player that the penalty mainly hurts innocent players, because that's the only time they are punished. It's a cognitive bias.

    If my internet fails me, I go fix it then I have a few matches with flakes and then I'm free, whatever. Again, a 5% leaver rate or less isn't hard to achieve, including accidents and d/c's. 100% connectivity isn't achievable, but lower than 90% and it starts to become unacceptable for everyone involved. Notify ninja theory, contact your ISP, do anything to solve the problem. I'm not going to tell people to just buy better things, but obviously if your router or something is so outdated it can't even support the basics of online play then you need to get something better. Games have technical requirements to play them, that's just unavoidable. Games are not like water or shelter or food, it's no one's responsibility to make sure you get to be able to play.

    But let me step back and say that maybe if once every so often we have to leave or disconnect, it's kind of weird to have to go for 3 whole games in leaver queue. I think I'd prefer more of a progressive system, which counts how many times you've left in the past 20 or so games, and increases your leaver game count appropriately based on that instead of just a flat 3, with the first offense involving no penalty besides the loss and no rewards (I mean you left, what did you expect to get - a win?). Just a thought on how we could allow fewer "innocent" leavers from being overly punished. If they keep playing games knowing they'll be disconnecting every other match, they're no longer innocent by any means.

    Then comes the question...what does a Leavers Penalty actually achieve? There will always be Leavers.

    It puts repeat offenders in their own queue, so those who don't care about leaving are at worst going to be in 25% of games we could be in, but most likely it'll be much less and I'll rarely if ever have to see them because they're always leaving with the rest of the leavers. It provides an incentive to not leave, so those who aren't so bad as to be apathetic jerks will be just a little more careful - including people like me, on the rare match I feel too tilted to want to continue but decide to push through anyway. If I decide to act selfishly anyway, then I'm no longer an innocent player and deserve this meager punishment.

    Like I said above, if even 2/3's of my games have no leavers and the rest have a chance to be backfilled, I will be more than happy. It's a fine ratio to work with for me, and I can have fun even if it's a little uneven sometimes. But without any of that I'm looking at some serious BS every single game until whatever MMR or queue ranking system shines mercy down on me and puts me with players who actually care, or I guess I can refuse to play unless I've got my friends online with me. I'm not trying to get rid of leavers, I'm trying to lower the odds that good players will have leavers in their games.

    This setup is mathematically guaranteed to lower (or in a perfect world maintain) the number of leavers in regular matches - I've already proven that. What I don't get is that you clearly dislike leavers, some of your points are that they ruined games for you, but you're also defending their existence like there's nothing that can be done about it. This is what can be done, and it will work.


  • @Evade-This5965

    I would never take anything personally mate, I'd imagine a debate is the best case scenario for any of the devs if they happen to read this thread so thank you! 🙂

    It's also guaranteed to target the correct players

    It is, but it's not an efficient way to deal with them at all as this method actively messes with those who shouldn't be targeted. It's impossible to pinpoint the percentage of those punished rightfully vs wrongfully but I would say it's very much Hung Parliament-esque in the sense there's no clear majority either way, I think taking into account the sheer amount of variables in a player leaving strongly suggests that. When it affects that many players, or at least has a strong potential to, I don't think it's at all the best approach to take.

    I'm not saying my Vote to Forfeit system is the perfect saviour, but I can't see how it doesn't eliminate rightful Leavers much more efficiently than this method.

    I think there would be a slightly greater argument if this was solely in place for a Competitive playlist. At least in that regard there is a certain standard that players should be aware of before queuing for that playlist. In just the one playlist we have currently, in a Beta AND serving as the first playable opportunity for a large base of players, I think it's very unfair.

    if the game IS full of innocent leavers, because it certainly sounds like you're saying the majority of them are, then leaver queue is also mostly filled with people who are trying not to leave and the penalty itself stops being problematic entirely because everyone will have a reasonably low leave rate.

    I think it will do the opposite of what a Leavers Penalty intends to do and just make people even more apathetic to staying in games until the end. They've already been punished, people continue to ruin games for them by leaving, so why not just maximise full lobby game time by searching for new games until you find the right lobby? I don't agree with that mindset but I can see a lot of people following that.

    Not forgetting that there are considerable XP/Reward penalties as well. I'd say a large appeal to the game is the charm of the characters and a lot of Casual players (who would be more likely to leave a game and incur a penatly) will be focused on buying cosmetics for their characters.

    Not to mention it usually takes a few minutes to even confirm that a match is hopeless, you can't just give up the moment someone else leaves first and expect that to be justifiable just because you didn't do it first.

    Absolutely, but a new player doesn't just instantly spawn in. I certainly wouldn't leave the exact moment someone leaves. It takes easily 2+ minutes minimum for a new player to join, connect and group up. 2+ minutes where you're likely to take a beating, lose your lead or extend the opposition's lead. Then you've got to take into account whether someone else will just get impatient and leave so you have to wait for more than 1 player to join. And then hope the backfillers don't frown at the scoreboard and instantly leave themselves. These aren't rare examples, at least from my experience in the last Beta.

    It's not impossible to make comebacks in these situations though like you said, and they can be great games as I've experienced some myself. But they are a lot less common than a match just fizzling out because your team was constantly half broken. I'd much rather make a comeback in a consistent 4v4 game.

    At that point you can just mess around, pick fights, do whatever, just practice until the match is over in the 2-3 minutes it'll take at worst.

    Again I was happy doing this, but when I played for 30+ hours and this was happening around 1 in 3-4 matches, it was getting extremely tiring and I ended up just leaving in impossible situations when we were down players just so I could search for a new game. If I do that in the next Beta, I am going to be punished. Or I'm just going to be unnecessarily bored/frustrated just so I don't get a Penalty. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong by leaving in impossible situations where we're down by ~400 points with a 1+ player down.

    If my internet fails me, I go fix it then I have a few matches with flakes and then I'm free, whatever.

    I'd love to know your ISP because that is unheard of for me hahaha. If I have internet troubles, I've just got to deal with it for however long it takes for them to sort out. I don't think it's as simple as flicking a switch on and off for most. Even if it is, that initial disconnect is going to land you with the punishment whether you fix it afterwards or not.

    People complained about latency issues and crashes on Day 1 of the Alpha. People still complained about latency/crashes in the first Beta. Despite a lot of priority work put into improving that aspect. It's not exclusive to Bleeding Edge, it's the same for every game. There will always be crashes and disconnects. I've actually been fortunate enough to very very rarely have any latency or crash issues since playing the game but I know many others have, it's just the way it goes. I'm sure those people wouldn't be happy to be punished for things out of their hands. And that's where Support usually gets bombarded with requests to revert their punishments. I can just see the potential of similar happening here.

    Games have technical requirements to play them, that's just unavoidable

    They do but our set ups vary so much, again there's so many variables that go into it. Things are bound to go wrong for a large portion of us at some stage. I do agree that it's a problem when it happens on the regular, but the Leavers Penalty punishes us all equally whilst being unforgiving in not giving us 2nd chances where disconnects may happen.

    I think I'd prefer more of a progressive system, which counts how many times you've left in the past 20 or so games, and increases your leaver game count appropriately based on that instead of just a flat 3, with the first offense involving no penalty besides the loss and no rewards (I mean you left, what did you expect to get - a win?). Just a thought on how we could allow fewer "innocent" leavers from being overly punished.

    I think rather than trying to build a system that tries to judge whether a player is intentionally leaving out of ill intent, a Vote to Forfeit in worst case scenarios as well as providing an initial period where the leaver can re-join gives a lot more flexibility. You can end a game early without being punished. Most disconnections have a good opportunity to rejoin faster than a backfiller would and without punishment, even people that leave in the heat of the moment get a second chance to rejoin and commit this time.

    It puts repeat offenders in their own queue,

    It's not targeted at repeat offenders though. It's targeted towards absolutely anyone and everyone that leaves 1 match. That's all it takes. Then you join this counterproductive queue of what is likely to be toxic games, and if you make it out without pulling your hair out, you're likely to have many more games ruined by other Leavers anyway because Leavers will leave with or without a penalty.


  • @x-AmberPrice

    I'm not saying my Vote to Forfeit system is the perfect saviour

    Saved me a bunch of times in LoL though. Seriously I'm 110% down for this - on top of the penalty.

    I think it will do the opposite of what a Leavers Penalty intends to do and just make people even more apathetic to staying in games until the end. They've already been punished, people continue to ruin games for them by leaving, so why not just maximise full lobby game time by searching for new games until you find the right lobby? I don't agree with that mindset but I can see a lot of people following that.

    Okay that explains your reasoning a bit better, but... what do I say to that? I've certainly seen people believe much dumber things, so it's not unreasonable to suspect others will follow this line of thinking. But is that sort of person truly deserving of the title "innocent leaver"? I'm obviously against demoralizing elements, but I'm convinced doing something rather than nothing will do more to minimize it. I'll be less demoralized if people don't leave my matches, and not having the patience to last a few matches to get back to normal queue sounds like a personal problem - the kind of problem that creates the vile repeat leavers with or without a penalty system.

    It takes easily 2+ minutes minimum for a new player to join

    If that's true, that needs to be fixed. Anything needs to be done to fix that as its a separate problem that'll make the experience worse for everyone. The penalty already applies to backfill players who leave, but its a systematic issue if there's no backfills at all.

    Again I was happy doing this, but when I played for 30+ hours and this was happening around 1 in 3-4 matches

    If 1/4 of my games just kind of fall off and go away mid-match it's not too bad... I'd prefer a little less though and the new penalty will lower it at least. Again if you're not one of the leavers, the ones leaving all the time stop being your problem. Presumably in that situation, our team gets hard stomped early, then people leave and all morale is gone anyway - that's usually why that stuff happens. And that's the thing, not every single match is going to be this fun, competitive, close call. Sometimes you just lose, and that sucks but it's an aspect of competitive games. It's the difficult moments that make the triumphs so much more satisfying, you can't take one without the other.

    I'd love to know your ISP because that is unheard of for me hahaha.

    The vast majority of internet problems can be solved by power cycling, so it is kind of like flipping a switch, but that's not really the point. The point is if connection is horrible or non-existent, it's better to stop playing anyway for your own sanity regardless of leaver penalty. Once its fixed, I can then go back and do my time and move on.

    Latency and connection issues are a separate problem. They impact this problem, but that's a moot point because they impact the entire game period. The solution and considerations are separate. No amount of or lack of a leaver penalty will make a constantly buggy game playable for anyone. If NT can't fix problems on their end, it'll be over one way or another. Thankfully, it appears that they are able to.

    a Vote to Forfeit in worst case scenarios as well as providing an initial period where the leaver can re-join gives a lot more flexibility.

    This... this is a hard one. See in games where there's no backfill, reconnection can occur whenever. I think that's pretty nice when the event was totally unintentional. The problem is I don't think backfill and reconnect opportunities are compatible mechanics. I'd like them to be, but I'm not sure how. A 1 min window is often hardly enough time to reconnect, and I'd rather get a backfill in that period instead if I want the hope of a win.

    It's not targeted at repeat offenders though. It's targeted towards absolutely anyone and everyone that leaves 1 match. That's all it takes.

    It does target repeat offenders, that's the queue they will be in where they leave every game, forever and ever if they keep doing it. Being stuck there for a few matches isn't great, but its better than having the ones always in that queue in my normal queue. A lack of patience to get out of leaver queue proves to me that someone doesn't deserve to get out of leaver queue at all. They're selfish, that's it. There's definitely times I've been selfish like that too, and I'm glad a system is in place to curb that instinct.

    I was suggesting a progressive penalty because I can somewhat agree being instant punished with 3 matches in leave queue when you almost never leave may be a bit much, but I'm also willing to just deal with it myself in order to keep normal queue as pure as I can.


  • I've only briefly skimmed through the gist of the conversations above, but I'm seeing some good stuff talked about in here. I'll share my thoughts.

    A vote to forfeit system would be welcomed.

    I am strongly in favor of strict quitter penalties. I wish more games took a hard stance in this area. Yes, inevitably there will be cases of innocent disconnects, crashes, or real-life emergencies that will consequently punish otherwise 'non-leaving' players. However, as mentioned above, this is an outlier whereas all intentional leavers will ALWAYS be punished. I believe a level of personal accountability and understanding needs to be emphasized here. I can personally live with a 5-minute penalty, being backfilled, or what have you if I happen to leave unintentionally from time to time. If my Internet stability is shaky that day then it's on me to decide whether it's actually worth playing a cooperative/competitive game and risk being a detriment to my team or taking a penalty. If a real life emergency were to arise, then any penalties received in a video game because I had to run to the door or answer a phone call is the least of my concern.

    I think there are many fair ways to enforce leaving penalties. Daily/weekly 3-strike systems, separating queues based on a 'leaver track record', only backfilling leavers, a vote to forfeit system being in place, xp/money rewards/penalties, 5+ minute temporary bans, and so on.


  • @x-AmberPrice said in Leavers Penalty:

    Why should I then have to stay in a match getting obliterated because someone else on my team left?

    first of all. personally i dont relate to this problem, although im competetive i still have fun even if im losing. i still have fun fighting 3v4s 2v4s and 1v4s because its just quickplay im not losing that much by losing, i just accept the loss and have fun fighting or attempting to win a legendary 2v4 or watever. im still gonna get the points, the experience the watever else. so really what have i lost by losing?

    when comp comes out will you still care about losing quickplay games??

    in comp, like in overwatch it would be good if, when one player leaves your losses are reduces or completely gone. cause thats comp where it really does matter if you win or lose.

    other than that i feel like in quickplay, if you are gonna punish leaving why stop after one person left. cause then you know one person at least will stay to fight the enemy and now not only is the experience for the enemy ruined but also for the poor teammate who has to fight a 1v4. otherwise dont have it at all but then same scenario where it might just make it kinda boring for the enemy who doesnt really have to do anything to win.

    overall i think punishing players for leaving the way the devs are doing it sounds great.


  • @x-AmberPrice said in Leavers Penalty:

    It's not targeted at repeat offenders though. It's targeted towards absolutely anyone and everyone that leaves 1 match. That's all it takes. Then you join this counterproductive queue of what is likely to be toxic games, and if you make it out without pulling your hair out, you're likely to have many more games ruined by other Leavers anyway because Leavers will leave with or without a penalty.

    so then you better learn not to leave.

    plus there are 2 types of gamers in this world... those who leave and those who dont. lol. nah but everyone is diferent, although i dont ever leave games because i think im gonna lose, and none of my friends do either, i dont really know anyone who does get that way, so im left to believe the minority of people get that way when losing.

    it sounds like a great system for comp. putting leavers in a leavers bracket is an amazing way to stop people from leaving imo. like i said "better learn not to leave"

    oh yea and i just read it again and btw it says the penalty will only last 3 matches. idk bro if you cant handle not leaving for 3 matches i think you kinda do deserve to be stuck in that leavers bracket. i mean why should non leavers have to deal with people who cant stop themselves from leaving for 3 games. honestly if its to the point that this is an issue for people then they deserve to have this issue, no offence.


  • Again thanks for the feedback. The general consensus here is that I'm in the minority and most of you approve of the Leaver Penalty proposed.

    In my experience in the Beta so far and scrolling through the Discord, it's apparent that Leavers are once again plaguing the game. Disconnects and crashes have been extremely common as well, only putting those people into Leavers lobbies where the cycle begins. I've seen people already exit the game because "they are tired of leavers" having been victim to an innocent leavers penalty themselves (therefore joining a queue of Leavers, lol). A thread has appeared in the Bug subforum complaining about unfair Leavers Penalties already too.

    Conclusion:

    I'd rather scrap backfilling entirely and just have a reconnect option OR vote to forfeit if the player who has left does not join back in a certain amount of time.


  • @x-AmberPrice

    "I'd rather scrap backfilling entirely and just have a reconnect option OR vote to forfeit if the player who has left does not join back in a certain amount of time."

    good ideas.

    and you dont have to approve of the leaver penalty lol.

    so far i havent seen any leavers in this beta, it seems to happen way less now. or maybe its just because im not in the leavers bracket and you are???

    what i suggest is, dont leave any of your games for 3 rounds and you should be good. the penalty really isnt bad at all. the penalty for this kind of thing in other games is usually hey you cant play anymore for this amount of time, wich will only go up if you keep re offending.

    i dont see the problem with this leavers penalty. like bro if you are in a leavers bracket and 3 teamates leave, stay and fight for 3 games and you will be out of the leavers bracket. if you cant handle that, then you probs shouldnt be playing these types of games and should look for more chill, animal crossing type games. you get me?


  • @D4m0R3d

    If that's true then you're massively in the minority but I'm glad you've been able to play smooth 4v4 matches. I was lucky enough to do so for the most part in the last Beta but not in this one.

    I haven't left a single game by choice tonight, yet I've crashed or disconnected around 5-6 times. All on Bleeding Edge's side as predicted and expected in a Beta especially considering feedback on the last.

    There was a bug that has only just been fixed (edit: apparently not fixed for some) where the Leaver Penalty was stuck on 3 games remaining. So the majority of the player base was matchmaking unwillingly into a Leavers queue. Didn't affect progression because that's bugged for everyone right now. But it sure increased the amount of Leavers.

    Once again the penalty is penalising people that are not hitting leave intentionally. That's the issue - in this case it's a vast majority of the playerbase.


  • @x-AmberPrice

    i have had 1 leaver in maybe 7 hours plus of gameplay. at least only 1 that i recall but i have been trying to pay attention to it. i also havent crashed once, or disconnected but im on pc.

    i seen someone on twitter suggest that rather than leavers penalty just buff other teamates when a player leaves that way it is still somewhat even. i think that could be cool for quickplay but maybe hard to ballance. and right now the leavers penalty is bugged so we cant really accurately look at it and its effect and if its good or bad. its supposed to only be 3 games wich really isnt much.

    like i said. other games punish you by blocking you from even playing for a certain amount of time. and what i would suggest for the devs is to not punish people who disconnect or crash. now in comp still punish these people cause ofcoarse in comp people might do that just to avoid losing. but if people are gonna do that in quickplay then watever they deserve not to lose shit cause fuck me they are insane to want to restart there game just so they can leave one match.