Blizzard is about to find out what most gamers already knew:
You cannot stop leavers by banning them. Period. Full Stop. All you do is change the method in which they stop participating in the match.
The only way you stop people from leaving a match, is by making the reward for finishing the match stronger than their desire to no longer play it. Any competent game developer knows this.
Now, instead of having people leave and simply getting a back-filled player almost immediately, matches will see a massive influx of players throwing and putting in just enough effort to avoid the auto-kick.
Blizzard will find out soon enough why you don’t try to ban your way out of leavers. I guarantee this change will be reverted before the new season’s end.
88 Likes
Ranked only players looking at whatever is happening in QP like
“what da heck dey doin over there?”
29 Likes
The only people affected by this are people that leave all the time…why would a normal player be worried by this…
66 Likes
I very rarely leave, and that’s for technical issues. Never even got the exp penalty. But what happens on the 10th?
3 Likes
Alhonesty I see adding this especially in QP where players can pick the game modes they want to queue for. Also, does the penalty apply when at the hero selection screen before the match is starting up.
Because normal players have these same people in their lobbies…? Yes, only leavers will see the ban. However, non-leavers will now have to deal with a massive amount of throwing by leavers who don’t leave the match to avoid the ban. Instead, they’ll just pick Ball and zip around the map all game doing nothing productive. Or Doomfist just jumping everywhere.
It impacts literally the entire quality of the match when a team has no tank participating because they can’t leave the match now.
19 Likes
Look on the brightside, there’s a possibility that matchmaking will be at least a little better now that people can’t lobby dodge.
1 Like
So you report them for gameplay sabotage and they get a worse ban…sounds like a win to me
27 Likes
It’s nuts if you’re leaving 4 out of 20 games. WTF?
8 Likes
its so easy to hide throwing. so long as they are participating the report wont matter.
“let me just pick the most off meta hero and hold w at their tank”
“time to practice my widow jumpshots”
“i wonder how flank hanzo works”
plus if they dont like the map off the rip or the team comp off the rip guess what? now they just look like a bad player cause they dont care.
this does nothing but create a worse problem
12 Likes
Being bad at a hero isn’t a bannable offense (yet). Its very easy to look like you don’t know what you’re doing on a hero.
How so? The lobbies you do find yourself in will see a lot more throwing.
4 Likes
Meh…leavers usually ruin the match anyway…as people don’t like to backfill (less of that also by the way - BIG WIN)…it usually snowballs and the match is a waste of time
Now the leaver gets to waste their time as well
15 Likes
so long as youre okay with a huge influx of thrown games i guess thats your prerogative to feel that way.
1 Like
Less backfill = longer que times. Even though DPS times routinely say >7 mins, I can often backfill into one in under 2. Over the course of 5 matches, that saves me nearly 25 minutes of que time on average by backfilling.
4 Likes
I was a bit disappointed about the leaver penalty being removed…
…until the replacement made the penalties so much better.
I see nothing wrong 
2 Likes
Like I said leavers usually ruin matches anyway…so if this discourages someof then from doing so it’s a win….and also the less backfill part
2 Likes
What I figure is that the mm can more accurately create and analyze games instead of having moments where its constantly scrambling to fill in empty slots with who ever it finds.
It reminds me the same problem in dead by daylight. A functioning MM doesn’t really matter when players can circumvent it by just leaving and re-queueing.
1 Like
The problem with the match-maker is that it doesn’t base its match-making on skill level or balanced matches. Blizzard, like many online competitive games, uses a system called EOMM, Engagement Optimization Match Making, in which the goal is to try to maximize engagement in the game. Not the match. The game. Better player retention in the game means they’re more likely to spend money in game, thus generate more revenue.
You see it all the time. That’s why you can go 2 or 3 lobbies stomping, and then the next 4 or 5 are you being stomped. The match maker isn’t designed around balance. It’s designed around engagement.
4 Likes
Yup, I agree. This is such a risky change.
Only risky for people who leave and ruin games. It makes no sense that they go then in the next games to “throw”, because they could just play normal. Because its just 4 out of 20 games, it will only affect people who leave more than every 5th game.
2 Likes