Fix disconnect penalty

kiwi-19768 · December 28, 2018, 6:53pm

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!

SteezOD-1895 · December 28, 2018, 8:53pm

Is it just an Overwatch problem or does your internet affect your other online services as well?

LTNine-11402 · December 28, 2018, 9:30pm

I almost never disconnect. If I do it’s a server issue, or some sort of external issue withe the ISP - which is rare. If you start dropping packets (which makes you disconnect) it means you have a bad modem, router, or both. Modems and routers have to be replaced every 2-3 years. They generate heat and don’t have the proper cooling. They are designed to fail. When a modem or router starts to fail, you get dropped packets and disconnects. Sadly there isn’t a good solution in the consumer market - unless you buy enterprise gear which is expensive. Cheaper just to buy a new one every few years.

kiwi-19768 · December 28, 2018, 10:16pm

I just recently got a new router and my internet connection is pretty good, just not flawless or anything. My game will be running completely fine and then suddenly disconnects.

XtinXionZ-1977 · December 28, 2018, 10:50pm

If they don’t penalize you then what would stop someone from unplugging their internet if they’re losing?

I think people in-game shouldn’t be penalized with a loss of someone with bad connection leaves.

Kaedi-11739 · December 28, 2018, 11:14pm

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:

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.

-----------------------------------------------

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

LTNine-11402 · December 29, 2018, 5:54pm

How old is your modem? Sometimes you need to replace one, or both.

A good way to test this is run cmd. Then “ping -n 1000 google.com” (press Ctrl-C to stop it). It will continually send very small packets (up to 1000 of them) to google.com. You are looking or two things: A consistent ping ms number and no packet drops. The number should be under 100 and should be within 5ms of each other. When a problem occurs you end up spiking up 100+ additional ms between pings, and sometimes outright dropping packets.

For example, I am currently getting around 30 ms on my downstairs wireless router. It is between 25 and 30 ms. I sometimes get 50 ms. Pretty standard when my router is upstairs. On a wired, I would probably get 20 ms constant. If you start seeing consistent jumps to to 150, 300, 500 ms, you got a problem. When you do the test, make sure you are hardwired. That rules out wireless interference.

SneakyPanda-12124 · December 29, 2018, 7:35pm

Fix disconnect penalty

No fix your damn internet

pyah-11375 · December 29, 2018, 10:20pm

How about stop being selfish and queueing for comp when you know there’s a good chance you’ll ruin the game for ELEVEN OTHER PEOPLE.

If anything they need to make it stricter so people like you get banned sooner.

Noon-11581 · December 30, 2018, 12:06am

If you disconnect a lot and don’t have stable internet please do not play competitive game modes!
Blizzard cannot see the difference, and even if they tried it can be exploited so intentional leavers would still leave.

Jerry31417-1339 · December 30, 2018, 4:03am

WHAT IS WITH YOU PPL AND BEING A**HOLES TO PPL WITH DISCONNECT ISSUES!?!?!?! If you don’t want ppl with internet issues to affect your games, maybe you should advocate for an actual solution, instead of asking them to not play a game that they spent money on, and enjoy playing! Making punishments stricter wont help with people who don’t disconnect on purpose. It’ll just make them come to the forums more often. What’ll help is giving people time rejoin the game without it affect the game too much. Like, I dunno, PAUSING THE GAME. If you don’t want ppl who disconnect on purpose, then just ban them from QP for the 10 minutes, or give them really long queue times so they can’t just leave a game on purpose, and go play QP while waiting out their 10 minutes.

LTNine-11402 · December 30, 2018, 4:14am

Because in most cases it’s fixable problem. The punishment exists to encourage people to do something about it. In most cases disconnection issues are caused by an old router, old modem, or poor WiFi reception.

Routers and modems are supposed to be replaced every 3-4 years or so. You can get away with 5-6 if you are browsing the internet, but not when playing competitive games.

WiFi reception is also a fixable: Set the modem to use a non-competing channel, put the WiFi router in a better spot, get one with a stronger signal, or upgrade to a mesh. Or used a wired connection - most competitive players do this.

Sometimes it is bad wiring and you need to call the cable company to run new cable.

This covers the majority. There are some who live in the boonies who have truly bad internet. I have a friend in that situation, and during certain times of day it is so bad the game isn’t playable (everyone in the area is on). His solution is to not play during peek internet hours. Not the best thing in the world, but a solution none the less.

The advice to not play competitive is simply: Do not play competitive until you fix the problem. People who simply refuse to figure out what’s wrong will get punished and eventually banned from competitive unless they decide to fix an (often) simple problem.

pyah-11375 · December 30, 2018, 4:36am

Yeah the solution is people with crappy hardware get out of my games

You’re selfish on a narcissistic level if you think WE are the bad guys for not wanting you in our games. Stop playing on WiFi or get better internet.

GeVooM-21829 · December 30, 2018, 5:54pm

Its impossible to know if you had a disc or just pulled the plug. So… there is no way to “fix” it since you simply could be a leaver aswell and if they half or even remove the penelity then just leaving a comp match wouldnt be that bad/punishing.

People not knowing this in 2018 omegalul…

GhostVenom-11924 · December 30, 2018, 6:26pm

Well who knows why you’re disconnecting from these games? You could easily disconnect your router/gateway just to keep from leaving a game and having a penalty. Try getting a better internet connection if you can. Do some chores, earn some extra cash and chip in on the bill.