FORFEIT: Solution to throwers

Competitive Discussion
1

Here’s an idea to solve the throwing problem in Overwatch.

If a match is not 50% completed a team could opt for a forfeit, requiring 4/6 votes. As a result, the winning team would gain a reduced amount of SR and the losing team would lose a reduced amount of SR.

A forfeit could occur no later than:

Assault Maps: The hero select/ countdown after the first round.
Escort Maps: The hero select/ countdown after the first round.
Hybrid Maps: The hero select/ countdown after the first round.
Control Maps: The hero select/ countdown after the first round.

Having an option for a forfeit would greatly reduce the frustration players get when matched with other players who are not trying to win the game. Shorter games due to forfeit means less frustration, less of a penalty, a fair disbursement of SR, and the ability to avoid a player sooner. Additionally, it will help Blizzard Support by identifying games in which forfeits occur and helping them to figure out why the game resulted this way, thus banning/ punishing the individual(s) responsible.

Note: Forfeits will not be possible if there is a stack of more than 3 people on your team.

I think it’s a cool idea. If you have a better idea drop it down in the comments.

1 Like
2

Sounds like you’re providing an expresslane for people to throw, rather than actually combatting the practice of throwing, imo.

8 Likes
3

How is that? If anything it would make throwers easier to identify and they’ll get banned quicker.

4

I’m not sure. I feel that it could be abused, especially with groups of 4-6. If they start losing, they can just forfeit. Also, its a bit unfair if you don’t want to forfeit but 4 other team members do. It should require 6 votes to forfeit. But still, a 6 stack could easily abuse it.

And I don’t see the reason of punishing the winning team. This feature would just be used as a rage option where triggered people would vote to forfeit just to reduce the amount of SR the enemy team gains.

5

If the winning team doesn’t get a reduced amount of SR, then it would be abused completely.

You bring up a good point. Forfeits shouldn’t be possible if there is a stack of more than 2 or 3 players in game.

1 Like
6

A group of 4 could hijack a series of games as a group. People would instinctively use the forfeit option when losing just so they could get a lower SR lost penalty in a game they don’t think they could win (which is a collective act of throwing). Etc.

It’s an easy tool that would be abused to no end.

7

I think it would be abused less if the winning team didn’t receive less SR. I mean, my whole team could just be so triggered and decide we are gonna forfeit just to stop the enemy gaining as much SR.

8

@Sheevah Please reread my post. There is a time restriction for this feature to actually be used and also it would not be possible if there is a group of 3 people or more on your team.

@Hanqz I suppose I would be worried about win-trading. But it’s a good point. Curious to see what other people think. Thanks for your input! :slight_smile:

9

I’ve read your edit. I just think it’s a terrible idea. It doesn’t reduce toxicity nearly as much as it would actively reward people for refusing to participate in matches while punishing teams that have a strong start.

1 Like
10

@Sheevah There’s nothing punishing either team. The winning team still gets SR, but it’s just reduced due to the fact that the match would be very very quick.

The goal of this is to not reduce toxicity… because let’s be real that’s a whole different issue. The goal of this is to limit competitive frustration due to players who want to sabotage games.

Would you rather spend 5 minutes in a game with a thrower and have him get a temp Ban right after? Or would you rather spend 20 minutes in a game and have nothing happen to that player?

11

Blizzard is absolutely NEVER going to give out SR for anything other than winning a complete match. ANY scenario that allows for free SR to be given out just because you didn’t abandon the match will be abused. Someone, somewhere, among the 40-million odd Overwatch players will figure out a way to take advantage. Some odd combination of friends and alt accounts that allows them to net positive SR without any matches actually being played all the way through.

At least, I’m pretty sure that’s the mindset that Blizzard is operating with. I appreciate you offering suggestions to fix it, but honestly, I don’t believe Blizzard has the slightest bit of interest in changing how SR gain works.

Know when they’ll fix it? When they’re down to about 500K players, worldwide. And maybe not even then.

12

Thanks for your feedback MetalHead!

You’re right, I don’t think anything will ever be done. But even bad ideas are ideas after all. If it will ever get solved it will get solved by us putting our heads together. :slight_smile:

I just want to stir the pot a little and see if anyone has a better solution.

1 Like
13

It’s robbing them of SR they likely would’ve gotten for finishing out a relatively easy match. That is, clearly, a punishment of a kind.

Which is a type of toxicity. And it would be openly abused by the player base. You’d be providing a sanctioned method of letting people “cut their losses” whenever they get a team they don’t like. “Oh, look we have a torb one trick. Forfeit ASAP”.

You live in a fairy tale world if you think these are the two options that must exist. This is a textbook representation of a false dichotomy.

1 Like
14

@Sheevah And you think that it’s fair for the team to spend 20 minutes with a thrower? Ok dude. :slight_smile: That’s not even a challenge for the other team, so why do they deserve the full amount of SR for a very easy match?

15

pretty bad when you don’t even have to open the thread and read the post to know it’s a bad idea.

matches would never start and people would always be trying to bail out.

1 Like
16

It’s fair in the sense that it happens to everyone over the course of playing. It’s unfair in regards to the specific match, but your system doesn’t fix that problem. It’s a good-intentioned suggestion that has more cons than pros, unfortunately.

They get the full amount now. To reduce it would be to levy a penalty against people without reason. Having an easy game, when you had no expectation of it being easy, isn’t a reason to reduce the spoils for the victors anymore than getting trashed should constitute a reason to lose less SR.

Match quality can be volatile, but it’s volatile in a uniform fashion for the playerbase as a whole. The matchmaker needs improved and punishments need to be handed out more swiftly in some instances, but neither of those problems are addressed by your system, which is part of why I don’t like it.

17

you should be allowed to dump SR with a click of a button. This would stop people from throwing.

18

Simple solution to groups being able to autoforfeit screwing over solo queuers: make group forfeits only have one vote, and a team has to have more than 50% votes to forfeit. So if a 5 stack all votes to forfeit and the random votes no, then it will not cancel because the forfeit vote is 1-1 which is not more than 50%.

And of course they’ll have to keep track of who comes in as a group so they can’t disband and then count their votes separately, but they do this for SR gains already anyway.

To prevent it from being abused for dropping purposes, a player may only call a vote to forfeit once every 10 games. You shouldn’t need more than that. If you’re in a group, then if anyone in the group cannot call the vote, then no one can.

19

Ok, I’m gonna pretend that this topic deserves this attention… because this is by far the worst idea I have ever heard of… This will pretty much ruin every single game of overwatch.

Just think about it. How many great memories do you have of the game being into overtime… after having a very rough start and just about to lose the game… only to get a key pick (or get picked) and the whole game turns around. This would basically make just about every game last one round and turn into quickplay.

How many games have you seen start out badly on defense, only to find out both teams have no defense and your team has the better offense. Game deleted.

Play quickplay if you want the one and done thing with (basically) no penalties for dropping the game. People play competitive, as a mode, to play both sides. If you end up on the winning side of the first round and the other team forfiets… be it if you get full SR for a win, or not… it will be a bad experience. You’ll basically be returning to the coin flip days of old ties.

Like, be honest with me… did you think of what will really happen if this went through? Like how the community would actually use it with how toxic they are when the game doesn’t go their way.

Do you realize that the community’s definition of a “thrower” isn’t really someone out to purposefully lose? It is basically someone that doesn’t conform to the accuser’s definition of how to play the game… which ends up with a loss. People give up way too easily.

With only about 1% of losing games has it that everyone is on the same page and in agreement with the strategy… do you think that the majority of losing teams don’t think someone is so bad that they are “throwing” the game?

Even if you have a utopean view of the game where over half the games don’t have throwers and we’re just trying to make it better for the fraction of games where you’re stuck with a bad teammate. This idea won’t solve it. Because human nature is that if you are given a safer out for self preservation, you are going to take it.

The ONLY way a forfiet option should be made available is if there is a leaver and the timer expired for them to return. But we already know that is in the game already (if it wasn’t bugged).

So in conclusion, a forfiet option would pretty much make comp unplayable… just like allowing people to leave before the gates open would make it so half the matches made would be canceled.

People have to be forced to finish the game together. Otherwise there is no point in the rank system.

20

I’d say make it an option below 3k and have it be like a default 25 sr lost if its forfeited, having any adjustments on it gives an incentive to try to find ways to exploit it. Or even like 30 if people know they will lose a set 30 when if they play it out it has a potential for less gains they are probably more willing to play the games out and the forfeit can just be there to end really bad games for people if everyone hates each other and they all think it’s worth the extra sr loss.