Maybe, but how often do leavers (on your team) affect your specific games. And among those that leave on your team, is suspected to have a technical malfunction. I am smack dab in the heart of the Overwatch community as a Gold rank player and I have many 1 game out of 20 where there is a leaver on my team and not too many on the opposite side either.
Having a leaver (on either side) makes for an unfortunate game of Overwatch, but it will always be a persistant and uncontrollable factor no matter what changes they make to the leaver rules (unless they put leavers in matches with other leavers, which I think with Role Queue coming, that is extremely unlikely to happen anytime soon). Uncontrollable games (leavers, alledged “smurfs”, toxic players, cheaters, anything you can’t control yourself) will happen. I am just glad that Role Queue eliminated one uncontrollable factor which was dsyfunctional team comps. Before role queue, I believe 4 out 5 games are uncontrollable games, leaving about 40% of games being absolute wins, 40% being absolute losses, and 20% having the perspective actually being competitive. And while you should try to do your absolute best and take advantage of every situation in every match, its the 20% of competitive games that truly define how good of a player you are.
Now I want the percentage of competitive games to increase. Role queue is one key step in that goal from my perspective. I wish there was more ways to minimize the impact of leavers. Hell, I even wrote a topic about having a low-priority queue. Last year I wrote out ideas to enhance the game’s UI to prevent accidental leavers. But really, when a leaver happens, the damage is often irreversible for that given match. Focusing on making sure a leaver works to prevent from leaving future matches to me is more important.
In any case, I think I will conclude here tonight. I hope the information I have provided at least provides insight to why the current policy are the way they are. They could change, yes, and do try to come up with ideas, but just keep all parties (the leaver, the team of the leaver, the other team) in mind. I have been the observer of the endless leaver debate since getting myself nearly banned in Season 1, so I tend to come up with a lot of counter-arguments, but I do so to challenge your ideas and hopefully make them good enough to where Blizzard may find them useful one day.