Just played three games in a row. Players left in all three games. Watched the replays.
The first game, a played on my team left after 48 seconds. The game kept going and the message popped up saying you’ve gotta wait 2 minutes before you can leave or else it’s a penalty.
Second game a player left minutes into the game so it obviously kept going.
But the third game, a played on the opposing team left after 41 seconds and the match was canceled.
Why did that third game not keep going? From what I’ve read after 30 seconds the game is underway and can’t be canceled. Why was one game canceled and the game my teammate left, we were forced to keep playing when there was a difference of 7 seconds?
I am copy/pasting this answer from 2018… They changes the 1 minute up to 2 minutes I believe but everything else should be the same: (quoted from a dev… I forget his name… you can probably track this post down by copy/pasting back to google if you wish)
I wanted to take this opportunity to briefly explain some of the systems we have in place regarding leaves and losses in competitive play, and why they’re there and why they work the way they do.
When we determine someone has quit a competitive match before the first 30 seconds of game time has completed, we note that the match is now invalid and it collapses after 30 seconds. The person who left receives BOTH a loss and a leave, while everyone else can then leave without penalty or loss.
After the first 30 seconds of game time, how we handle someone leaving a competitive match changes. After determining that someone has quit, we begin a 1 minute timer. The missing player can return during that timer, but if they do not then the remaining team members are now given a choice. Depending on the match situation when the player left, that team might want to play on since they still have a chance to win. If the situation is hopeless, we don’t want to force players to stick around while the other team finishes the match. So we allow the rest of the team to quit the match without a leave penalty, but they still do receive a loss.
Why do the remaining team members still receive a loss? How is this fair? The unfortunate answer is that the alternative would be worse. We don’t want to create an awful situation where players who think they’re losing are now encouraged to do whatever it takes to get someone else on their team to leave. By removing any possible incentive for anyone to “tactically” leave, it also means that more matches will complete normally. When someone leaves, Overwatch is less fun to play for everyone.
To further discourage someone from leaving a match, competitive play has a different leave penalty system than a quick play game. Leaving won’t simply reduce your XP gain, instead you can be suspended from playing competitive play. The time a player is suspended time increases on repeated leaves, and in extreme cases a player will earn a ban from competitive play for the current season. Banned players also forfeit any rewards granted at the end of the season.
could it be the gamemode? some gamemodes have a longer pre-round timer in spawn
idk
These were all after the pre game timer. I didn’t count those. If I did the times would be much longer which still wouldn’t make sense.
BrakinBadger- both people left well after 30 seconds though so why did the game where the opposing team left get canceled?
Did they pick a hero in each game? Exit spawn? I’m pretty sure if a player idles out of the game without picking a hero, the game should always cancel. However they made some change a few years ago that prevents people from forcing the match to cancel if it already started and they picked a hero and exited spawn. Though sometimes the match seems to cancel regardless.
I’ve seen matches continue after only 30s and cancel well after a minute and the first point was capped. It’s also dumb how someone might leave and reconnect before the match even starts yet the game is still cancelled despite both sides having a full team.
Like everything else in this game nobody knows how it works or even how it’s supposed to work.
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The latest I have seen is that if the person takes any part in the match the game continues. It only cancels if they have done nothing.
In both games the players who left picked hero’s and joined in on the fight before leaving
Yesterday I got kicked from a match that had already begun, we’d all already picked hero’s and I got kicked some time right when the first fight started.
The weird thing is I didn’t get penalized at all - It didn’t count as a loss and I was able to just jump back into que… It wasn’t like the lobby shut down either I was like kicked all the way to the log in screen like it signed me out of my account. I had to close OW and relaunch battle.net launcher then launch OW again but yeah - no penalty, no loss, and I could re-que with no issue. - To be clear though it would not let me re-enter that game.
Just adding to the mystery lol.