Lol. They just cut all the ban times in half. They’re starting to (slowly) figure out what we knew from the beginning. You can’t ban your way out of this problem.
Cutting the penalties in half is a start of acknowledging that fact. It’s also proof that their system was having an adverse affect on que times (which I called happening in a now locked thread) and likely was resulting in far more throwers.
Letting people leave and reque alleviates both of these issues. Good job blizzard. You’re starting to finally figure out what I’ve known and mentioned for the last 15 years.
I feel like they would scale back the number of games you need to leave to be penalized if that was their goal. To me, reducing the time of the punishment is a way to reduce the impact for those who leave for legitimate reasons or unintentionally DC.
Its possible their data shows that the penalties have been working, so the punishments could be relaxed and therefore have less impact on innocent players, while still being an effective deterrent against lobby shoppers and people who get mad and leave when the enemy team has the NERVE to kill them.
I don’t know where people ever got this idea that leavers ruined any game. You get backfilled immediately, and often times with better than you had. We’ve all had plenty of winning games that had plenty of leavers. People need to stop complaining. I don’t care if you lost quickplay a few times cuz of a leaver. You literally play hundreds of games.
It’s very easy Sean. They don’t know why they lose games (which is hero choice, lack of awareness, lack of ability, lack of mechanics, bad positioning), but it DEFINITELY must be the leaver that raged and left and got replaced by a teammate that contributed. Yep.
If that were the case, that would be even more of an indicator it’s not working as intended. If there is such a problem by unintentional DC/Legit Quits that they need to overhaul their ban system to account for it, then it means it wasn’t preventing habitual leavers so much as it was punishing innocent players.
While not exactly the most scientific, my own observation at least on Reddit and here suggests people who would quit prior to the penalties now just pick heros they’re really bad at and “practice”. Maybe support goes full Battle Mercy. DPS picks Genji against Mei/Symm/Zarya comps. Tank goes Ball and spends most of his time meat shielding, or Rein relentlessly charges in.
So many ways players do it so that the game ends as quickly as possible since leaving the game meant a ban that lasts longer than the duration of the game. Its quicker to just force the game to end early for everyone than it is to sit out the ban timer.
It’s possible, but quite unlikely. Look at the history of gaming. No successful shooter/competitive game has lasted that bans quitters this way. It just doesn’t happen. Not while keeping the level of engagement that is important to OW and games like it.