GUIDE: Competitive Mode Frequently Asked Questions

Competitive Discussion
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Note: I do not have plans at this time to release this topic as a Wiki. This is because I limit content to official questions and don't want to see edits that may leave an improper perception of the competitive system. Thank you for your understanding.

This thread is designed to be a handy reference for everyone who may have a question about Competitive Play in Overwatch. There have been many developer responses and updates about the state of Competitive Play and I have compiled all the important ones which are still relevant to the game in its current state. If you have a question that you do not see here, post below and I will see if there is a statement on it.

Updated March 29th, 2018: New information has been revealed about how matchmaking waits to que if you leave your previous match during the post-game screens.

To keep things organized and not overwhelming for you guys, all questions now have spoiler tags applied. Simply click on any question to reveal the answer!

Why does a player lose SR and get Suspended when their game disconnects or crashes even though they did not intentionally leave the game?

Because the game server has no way to detect a legitimate disconnection or crash from one that is forcefully created, the system treats all disconnections or crashes as leaving the match. Regardless, when you leave (intentional or not) it leaves your team at a number disadvantage. Jeff Kaplan explains this to a user in this post.

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

 
I disconnected/crashed/left a match, but was able to return and complete the match, but I was still penalized. Why does this happen?

If you disconnect/crash/leave and take more than 2 minutes to return to the match, you are automatically penalized regardless of the match result. Whenever you are not present in the match it harms your team's chances of winning and this rule ensures players who leave deliberately don’t attempt to return when they think the match is about to end so that they can avoid the suspension. Also, players who leave and return three or more times are automatically penalized even if they returned within two minutes each time. Details on why all technical malfunctions are penalized can be found in this guide on the older forums:

There are two different reasons for this, excessive disconnections, or disconnecting for too long. You can reconnect at any point during a match you have left as long as you don't have a leaver penalty. However, spending too much time outside of the game still puts your team at a disadvantage, and there's a risk that others will leave in your absence. If you disconnect during a competitive match, try to reconnect as quickly as possible and finish the match.

Similarly, disconnecting multiple times in one competitive match may trigger penalties. If you have these problems regularly, you should troubleshoot the problem to avoid penalties.


I was suspended from Competitive Play but there is no timer on the locked Competitive Play option. When will I be unsuspended?

A locked Competitive Play menu option with no timer indicates that you have been season banned. This means you are no longer eligible to play Competitive Play for the remainder of the season, and your end-of-season rewards are forfeit. Furthermore, players who have been banned from Competitive Play for three or more seasons will receive a PERMANENT ban from Competitive Play.

Example of a seasonal ban from Competitive Play looks like (simulated image)
Example of a permanent ban from Competitive Play looks like (simulated image)

19 Likes
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Haven’t read the whole post yes but it is well structured and will help players out a lot! Good work, keep it up!

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Thank you for the kind comments, since you have posted, I have now also converted the topic from markdown to HTML which allows me to use the details tag to hide the contents of each question until clicked. Looks a lot cleaner at this point.

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a like for your work.

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Thanks for the link and thanks for all your contributions.

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Scott Mercer doesn’t actually answer this question.

Why does the game consider the match invalid when progress has already been made and one team has already captured the first objective before the person left?

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Overwatch competitive mode uses a time based system instead of a progress based system. Most likely whenever a team quickly captures an objective. It is because they were already fighting a 6 V 5. The sixth player before he left was most likely idle in spawn before the AFK kicked in.

On a side note to everyone, I added in the question that details why players are sometimes penalized if they disconnect/leave but return and complete the match.

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That doesn’t answer the question of why the game only uses a time based system instead of both a time based and progress based system. And this player was not AFK. We saw all 6 players. And just to update you on how AFK kicking works, AFK players are kicked (at hero selection screen) before a match starts.

If progress has already been made, it should cancel out the time based system. How is it fair to the team that’s made progress after the match has already started that a match can simply be cancelled?

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Once again, as I detailed above, if you are so quick to make significant progress on an objective, did you even fight against all 6 team members? If a player disconnects, the server has to take several seconds to figure out if that player is still there or not. During that time, the team capturing is having it easy already.

There is no current Blizzard response on this, but I personally believe the system is already fair when it comes to this specific rule. Since there is no blue post on the subject, that is why it is not in the F.A.Q.

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This is a very good guide. Thank you for your effort.

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Great post! Thank you for organizing all these info from official sources into one easy-to-read piece!

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I keep dropping in and out of diamond but will I still get season rewards? I know the thread is old but I have been looking everywhere in the forums and can’t find anything.

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You earn end-of-season rewards based on the highest skill rating that you reach at any given time throughout the season.

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Can you get this posted as a sticky? comp forum seems pretty much ignored by the devs, be nice to actually see worthwhile information (in the correct category) not lost into the void.