kiwi:
I’ve had a problem with disconnecting on Overwatch for a while now and it’s already very frustrating on its own. But just about every time I’ve disconnected I’ve gotten a penalty, like less xp and my endorsement level going down. I don’t have the best internet connection but it’s not the worst. It’s annoying that I get the same punishment as someone who willingly leaves a game when I lost connection from the game and had no control over it. Please find a way to fix this soon, Blizzard!
JokerAkira, in every online game, a player is considered responsible for their own Internet connection. Game Director Jeff Kaplan has stated on this policy before:
Game Director Jeff Kaplan:
Hi ChapterFive,
We’re really sorry you had a bad experience due to a disconnect. Personally, I hate when that happens myself so I can relate.
Unfortunately, we’re in a really tricky spot with Competitive Play in regards to players leaving matches. If you read through these forums, we get a lot of complaints that players leaving matches is a huge point of frustration for our players.
There is no reliable way that we can discern if you disconnected because of a connection issue, or you forced a disconnect. Because of that, we need to treat anyone who leaves a match in the same way.
We’re way more lenient in quick play. And it feels like we’re generally in a good spot in Quick Play. However, in Competitive Play, if anything, we hear from our player base that we should be increasing the leaver penalties and making them more harsh.
For Season 2, we added a 10 minute delay to your first “leave” to make you aware that leaving is bad and there are in fact penalties for leaving. We also wanted to put in increasing penalties to help dissuade people who were having connection issues from repeatedly trying to reconnect to Competitive Play games. We know that sometimes the connection issues are not your fault. And that really is a shame. But also, when those moments are happening, it’s not a good time to jump into a team game and subject your teammates to the mercy of an unstable internet connection.
My advice for people who are having connection issues is to play modes like the Brawl or Play vs. AI until their connection stabilizes. Again, I know this isn’t the answer you want to hear, but hopefully you can understand the situation from the other side. It’s very likely that someone who was on your team in that match posted in one of the many angry “leaver” threads on these forums.
Hopefully this sheds some light on our thought process.
Again, apologies you had a bad experience.
-jeffrey
Source: Overwatch Forums
Also Blizzard Support Agent Drakuloth has a more comprehensive guide explaining this policy further here:
Hey everybody,
I wanted to take some time today to discuss Leaver Penalties and how they relate to Technical issues. We understand that leaver penalties are an annoying thing to experience. Technical issues can be complicated to troubleshoot. To add penalties to your account can seem like adding insult to injury. This isn’t our intent. The competitive penalty system may not be perfect, but there is reason behind it.
When we created the leaver penalty system, we took in a lot of player feedbac…
Now that being said, there is very good troubleshooting for resolving your specific disconnection issues to Overwatch (click here) and additional help can be provided from Blizzard or players like myself in the technical support forum . I hope this explains things for you.
Unfortunately, this is also addressed, remaining teammates in a competitive match when there is a leaver still takes the result of the match including the appropriate skill rating adjustment. Former Community Manager Lylirra gives details about this:
Community Manager Lylirra:
We’ve recently implemented a change on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One so that, if a player leaves mid-match, it will no longer affect how Skill Rating is adjusted at the end of a match.
Some context behind this change:
When you are you placed into a Competitive Play match, the game calculates each team’s probability of winning. This calculation helps identify how evenly matched two teams are, which in turn informs how your Skill Rating will be adjusted following a win or loss. Right now, the way system works is that if your team is favored to win, you will gain less Skill Rating for a win and lose more Skill Rating for a loss. And if your team is NOT favored to win, you will gain more Skill Rating for a win and lose less Skill Rating for a loss.
Previously, if a player from either team left mid-match, the game would automatically recalculate each team’s probability of winning, taking a look at not only who left the match, but also when they left. The assumption was that if a team was a person down, the odds of them winning would go down, too, and that the most accurate thing we could do was account for this when adjusting each player’s Skill Rating at the end of the match.
Despite being more accurate, we received a lot of feedback that this recalculation just didn’t feel great and that it incentivized bad leaver behavior—which is last thing we want to do in Competitive Play. As a result, the game will no longer recalculate each team’s probability of winning whenever one or more people leave. This means that your Skill Rating will always be adjusted based on your team’s odds at the beginning of the match, even if there are leavers on your or the enemy’s team.
From a technical perspective, this will make Skill Rating adjustments a little less accurate for that specific match, but it should ultimately feel better for the players who stay and finish it out (plus, your Skill Rating will correct itself the next time you complete a match with no leavers). We also hope this will remove the incentive to “troll” a winning team by leaving, since it will no longer have an impact on anyone’s Skill Rating.
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As always, we’ll continue to keep an eye on Competitive Play and make quick improvements whenever possible. Thank you so much for your feedback and helping us make Overwatch better!
Source: Overwatch Forums