A letter to Blizzard regarding the "Leaver Penalty" system

General Discussion
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Blizzard,

I’m going to be unapologetically blunt when I say that this new Leaver Penalty system is the dumbest thing I’ve seen in a while. This is going to absolutely destroy the integrity of your game.

Below is some evidence to help you understand just how massive in scope the damage will be to the long-term health of your game. No compensation required! I implore you to give it a read and ask yourself if this is the sort of thing you’d want for the future of Overwatch.

Dead by Daylight. Behavior Interactive’s asymmetric multiplayer survival-horror game. Commonly known for being “casual” and more of a “party game.” Since the game’s shift to become more “competitive” they have implemented a Leaver Penalty system that has caused a massive rise in the amount of players going AFK, griefing, unaliving themselves on hook, throwing the game, and overall being more toxic to avoid the Leaver Penalty system. It has gotten to the point in which you can expect a good 50% of your matches to have somebody give up and ruin the match for everyone else, wasting everyone’s time in the process. Yet — SHOCKER! The players affected are forced to stay in the game and play it out knowing they will lose and will have a bad time. This is going to be ~15min in which you will be stuck in a game that is already lost which is arguably EVEN WORSE and LONGER than a Leaver Penalty would have been.

Are you starting to see the issue?

What this means for Overwatch is that over the course of the next year you will slowly start to see more and more players going AFK, throwing the game, and/or being EXTREMELY toxic as they realize that they are forced to stay in a game that they don’t want to be in. This ruins every player’s experience, not just the person having a bad time. This is already an issue we’re seeing today, but it will be exacerbated by an even stricter policy on the Leaver Penalty system. Not to mention the fact that Overwatch has double the amount of players in a match compared to Dead by Daylight, considerably increasing the chances of this happening.

How would you feel if half of the games you played—or even just a third—were spent locked into a 10-15min waiting game where you could either wait it out or incur a 5-20min penalty for leaving? Personally, I don’t think there’s a world in which ANYONE would enjoy that. Because either way, everyone loses. That is the direction this game will go and it will be on your head.

What the “improved” Leaver Penalty system does is offer a BAND-AID fix, not solve the problem. If players want to leave, they will leave. End of story. Forcing players to stick around will only encourage more toxicity (THAT YOU WILL HAVE CAUSED) and result in a horrible game experience from match-to-match. I have seen this time and time again and it has always caused the exact same problems. Quote me on it.

What SHOULD be done? Reward the behavior you want to see, not punish what you don’t. If you encourage and reward players to stick around and try their best then players will naturally hold out even if the match is an uphill battle. Make the reward outweigh leaving the match! Something universal for everyone, NOT just Battle Pass owners. This is a much more positive and player-friendly way of getting exactly what you want without punishing those who have busy lives or can’t handle the stress of the match.

With that being said I wish you luck and hope that you employ a more proactive approach to the health of your game. If this is really the future of Overwatch that you have in mind then so be it. But I doubt many people will want to stick around.

I certainly won’t.

56 Likes
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Because so many people are auto leaving when they see sombra just dumping on the lobby. Why suffer and boost their fragiler ego’s as they play an unfair and unfun to fight against character.

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Solution for everyone:

New gamemode called: “Quick Leave”.
-You can leave anytime you want, even right after you get killed, doesnt matter, no penalties at all

CONDITIONS:
-No BP exp progress
-No weekly challenge progress
-No achievements progress
-No hero progress
-Basically, no progress at all

14 Likes
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nah I still think they should just have an unannounced leavers queue

If you leave more than X amount of games in the last 20, you get put into the leavers queue and are only matched with other players who have left at least X games. But the player should never know they’re in this queue.

23 Likes
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I disagree. I welcome the change.

Leavers are the biggest pains in the backside I have with OW2.

I have heroes I hate playing against.
I have heroes I think are OP or just incredibly unfun to play against.

I also have the patience to play the match through before leaving my team a player short for potentially several minutes.

Then they’re gonna get reported and get bans that are much longer than just playing the game through.

Also reportable

Also reportable.

Frankly I’m really excited for this change to both qp and comp and look forward to more actual full 5v5 matches going forward.

10 Likes
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I’m going to say this once and that’s it.

Creating a system that promotes bad behavior and then punishing said bad behavior THAT YOU CAUSED is absolutely abhorrent and people siding with it are either uninformed or just as bad.

It doesn’t matter whether any of this is reportable or not. There are ways to bypass reportable offenses for doing this as well. It’s called soft throwing, all you have to do is the bare minimum (shoot at the enemy a couple times every so often, sit in your backline and let your team die, etc.) to avoid a ban. If people are forced to play in a game they want to leave they will naturally make it everyone else’s problem.

Humans LOVE to break things. People will find a way to work around leaver penalties or getting banned. It’s going to happen. It’s absurd to think that it won’t.

In Dead by Daylight’s case, players realized that instead of leaving they could just run at the killer and unalive themselves on hook in 30sec. You don’t think players will find a way to ruin the game for everyone else without punishment in a game like Overwatch?

News flash: THEY WILL.

And what if they DO get banned? Do you realize JUST HOW MANY PEOPLE have alt accounts in this game? They could do the same thing on a dozen accounts per person after any of their accounts get banned.

This system does NOTHING but promote bad behavior and punish good behavior.

You’ll realize it eventually. I promise you. Once your games turn into an absolute mess of players giving up, throwing, going AFK, and being toxic you’ll realize just how much damage the system caused. And once you do you’ll start to talk about it like I’m doing. And people will dismiss what you’re saying like you’re doing to me.

And then everyone will start to wonder how the game could’ve POSSIBLY gotten so much worse.

22 Likes
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When unranked leaver penalty was first introduced didn’t they say it’s ok to leave games if your teammates are harassing you?

Now they are punishing cyberbullying victims who were just trying to avoid harassment.

I’m fine with the penalties for leaving 6+ games, but the earlier tiers of penalties are just dumb and ridiculous.

12 Likes
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They can’t reward us, that goes against the philosophy of being abusive with your time and money. Why do you think they keep the game so bad on purpose anyways? They won’t go back to 6v6 because they know the majority would have fun and tolerate the game and leave that much less(since leaving wasn’t this much of an issue during OW1 days btw).

6 Likes
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Having people not rage quit from matches will destroy the integrity of the game is a new one on me.

I mean, if they decide to rage by throwing, they will get reported, and STILL end up banned. They are just two paths up the same mountain.

Yeah, Blizzard is absolutely going to your house, and holding a gun to your head and saying “rage quit…”

Oh wait, they are not. That is just on you.

Yes, but I also realize that starting new accounts is a pain in the booty.

Seriously, the amount of people screaming about the penalties because they hate that they will apply, says to me that they will work.

Obviously they are going to be painful, or people wouldn’t be getting worked up over them.

Which is, you know, a sign they have them right. They are meant to hurt.

They will get banned enough that they move on to games which don’t punish this as hard.

Then you will have less people who throw tantrums and rage quit, throw games etc. Blizzard is literally counting on people who rage quit, throw games etc getting REAL mad at this. Because real mad is a step towards leaving.

6 Likes
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Yeah, there was already competitive mode for a serious match. But people somehow don’t play comp and come to qp and wanted to make qp another competitive.

Blizz could then make a real casual mode like classic QP perhaps? People who want to exercise for the whole match without being harassed or just want to play for some time and leave could enjoy it.

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It’s quick play… you will find another match very, very quickly

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I am hoping that the leaver penalties will be increased in severity

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Rename it Casual and remove all the conditions and we have a deal.

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you’re hoping for the game to die but sure go ahead lol fine with me. they ruined this IP i can’t wait til it is Paladins level of user base.

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Although I agree with you, I think they’re going too far with this.

The servers in OW2 are so bad, way worse than OW1. I don’t know if that’s the case for everyone, but especially is in OCE. Whenever I have lag issues, and get booted out of games, it’s never just me. I see complaints in most games people talking about lag, I see people DC’ing and dropping out (including myself)…

Leaving 10 comp games within a whole season, completely locking us out of the rest of the season… That’s bad for my region. A season is what 3 months? Or is it 2 months? Regardless, I am likely to be completely locked out of comp completely because of the horrible OCE servers booting me.

The likelihood of that happening only drastically increases the more often I play the game.

I will have to wait and see if my concerns end up becoming actuality or not… But still. That’s harsh when their servers are so junk.

4 Likes
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there are many problems with this game that each contribute towards its decline

I dont see the leaver penalty as one of them

I see it as a good thing

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The issue is this is going to lead to a lot of soft throwing.

Cause there is going to more report ban people won’t hard throw.

I rarely ever leave games unless like it was some irl stuff.

The thing is the game kicks you out in the time i could go to the door to get a takeout and comeback.

Or someone suddenly rings the bell or your pet is doing something etc

I preferred qp for this.

In this last season i think i would have left 10 qp games in total at most.

I also don’t want players unhappy staying and soft throwing games i would much rather get a backfill that has intent to play.

1 Like
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And the person drops to a rank where their “soft throwing” is just normal play.

They are making it easier to report people, and give more slots. It is pretty obvious they are looking at dropping “problem players” from the game.

I expect they will say that they are going to use hardware bans more often soon.

With the rise of players, Blizzard can be choosy of which ones they want, and it seems like that is what they are doing.

“firing customers” is the industry term for it.

Sure, which is why the first couple don’t throw anything big at you. It is only if you keep doing this.

2 Likes
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I get it if you have no understanding of what I’m saying and don’t see the long-term side effects that this system presents, but please don’t come in here acting like you do. Especially with no evidence besides a measly “hunch.”

Saying “People getting mad about the system is a sign that it’ll work” is the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard and you have zero evidence to back it up. Maybe—now hear me out—MAYBE… a lot of people are upset because it is a very bad idea!

I’ve seen hundreds of different strategies utilized by developers over the years that were both successful and unsuccessful. This is one of those strategies that was ultimately unsuccessful and devastating for the health of many different games and their respective playerbases. It’s not just Dead by Daylight, it’s EVERY game that uses this approach to deal with DC’s.

Heck, even HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY will tell you this is a bad idea. Look up the Negative Punishment method of Operant Conditioning. It is a relatively ineffective method of getting what you want that have massive side effects including increasing subject aggression, anxiety, etc. What do you think happens when players are more aggressive or anxious? They get angry, they get toxic. The exact thing that Blizzard is trying to prevent.

I don’t leave games early. I always think there’s a chance to turn things around even if we’re losing by a landslide. I’m not saying any of this simply because I want to leave games without punishment, in fact I think people rage quitting is a massive issue…

But it’s how you go about dealing with the issue that matters.

What you want is a short term BAND-AID fix. And yeah, I understand why! But you forget that it might also have long term ramifications. I’ve seen this happen over, and over, and over again. It’s great for a bit but over time things slowly get worse until the game is left even worse than before.

You do not want that, even if you think you do.

6 Likes
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We are talking qp are we on the same page

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