OPINION: I formally disagree with the idea of the "Your team won without you" pop-up

General Discussion
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Hello everyone.

First off let’s get the formality out of the way, I am a forum MVP but the following post is of my opinion only, I do not represent Blizzard, and the views of this thread are not reflecting of their own.

Trending on Reddit was a user’s idea to have a pop-up appearing if a match that player left during a Competitive match that they get a pop-up if their team successfully won the match playing 5-versus-6 against the opposing team. There has been a lot of praise regarding this concept, but I am rather disgusted by the thought. Let me lay out a few points…

It’s demoralizing

The whole idea is to make the player feel bad. This already goes against one of their core values:

Source: About - Blizzard Entertainment

Players want to be treated fairly, but we all often forget too much that we deserve to be treated nicely. If Blizzard works in their game a message that is intended to make the player feel bad about a decision they made, then they are trying to destroy the chance to build good moral values for each player.

Not all players deliberately leave

Most players who leave a Competitive match, often disconnect from the game. They will already feel pretty bad about a technical issue, but this would just make them feel worse about it, amplifying the problem overall.

Some players leave because others in that team were toxic/disruptive

I myself have deliberately left competitive matches before where I felt harassed to the point of frustration. I know at that point it is better to leave and take the standing penalties, than subject myself to disruptive behavior to the extent of potentially real life threats. Yeah I can mute/block offending players, but I won’t hesitate to leave if I feel my own mental health and well being has been compromised. On a personal note, in my entire history of playing thousands of Competitive games, I only left about 5 competitive games deliberately.

There is better solutions to deterring leavers.

I wrote another opinion thread back in the Summer of 2018 about leavers and what Blizzard can do to deter bad leaver behavior. I do think there needs to be more direct changes to UI but it should be done in a way that addresses the bad leaver behavior directly and constructively. See these mock-ups as an example:

Warning for the player when they log into the game again after leaving a match:
https://www.mystgraphics.com/OverwatchForumImages/SampleCompetitivePlayWarning1.jpg

A second warning for the player before they attempt to queue for another Competitive match:
https://www.mystgraphics.com/OverwatchForumImages/SampleCompetitivePlayWarning2.jpg

Understand, I know everyone’s frustrations about leavers, but I also know the frustrations of disconnections and dangerous situations in the game where leaving is unavoidable. Should all causes of leaving a game be penalized? Yes, and I think Blizzard’s current system is as close to being balanced as possible now. Should a player be shunned for leaving? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Thanks for your time.

106 Likes
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Sometimes feeling bad is what builds good moral values for each player. Sometimes you should feel guilty.

Only reason I don’t think they should or would do it.

Mute, report, block, vent about it here. No reason to leave the game. Players are already punished for leaving anyway.

You aren’t being shunned by a message letting you know the team won lol.

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I really don’t think it’s needed. Leavers will leave and that will always happen.

The only way to fix it is to increase penalties instead of -75% XP.

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Increasing penalties has to be approached carefully, again you have to consider those who occasionally suffer a one-time malfunction, like a disconnection. I would say Quick Play could use more “barriers” implemented to slow down leaving and immediately re-entering, but if penalties like the Competitive Suspension is increased, that would deter legitimate players from playing.

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If you leave a QP match I don’t think you should be able to join until your current one finished. Kind of like Comp in a sense.

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Honestly though QP shouldn’t have stiff results for leaving. It’s supposed to be a bit more casual than comp. They obviously don’t want people leaving a lot of games, but a few games is supposed to be normal.

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This is my biggest argument against it. The game cannot tell what happened and lambasting you ON TOP of you getting invountarily kicked out for whatever reason is insult on top of injury.

I do understand peoples desire to lash back at those who left them to struggle and there is a little evil part of me that supports the “lol even though you deserted us we won” snapback… However It really isn’t in the spirit of OW or worth catching “innocents” in the net.

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What about a place to check the results from matches you took part in, without anything popping up? You’d have to go look at it, it wouldn’t bombard you or anything. Sometimes I’m just curious how a match went if I disconnected, but I agree that I don’t need a big banner alert, lol.

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The thing is, they destroy this chance to begin with. The second you leave a competitive game, it’s marked as a loss. You take a 50 SR penalty. If it was a server error, or a disconnect caused by wonky internet issues, the timeframe to return to the game is only like 90 seconds and isn’t long enough for Overwatch to even boot up for some people.
Even if you come back, and help your team win, that game will always be a loss, and you don’t gain any SR back. There is no reason to return to a competitive match after you’ve left, because there’s no benefit for the person who left.

Frankly, that’s just as if not more demoralizing than “your team won without you.” Because it robs you of any chance or motivation to go back and help.

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I was under the impression there was a chance to not incur this if you reconnected within a couple minutes or so… I know the window is often missed because it usually takes longer than that for say a wonked router to reboot or the whole computer to boot again… but I remember hearing there was a grace period.

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I disagree as well. I feel like if you leave a match that’s it. You don’t need anything else from that match.

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This is what I like to call a false issue: The real problem is the fact you lose SR regardless of whether you join back or not. If you weren’t penalized if you rejoined, a lot of accidental disconnects would likely join back. As it is now, there is no reason to join back, after you disconnect.

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If that’s true, it definitely needs to be changed.

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Not necessarily. If I end up not finishing a game, seeing a message like that would be a point of relief - I didn’t ruin it for the other 5 players on my team, or they were skilled enough that they were able to pull through. If a player leaves for reason outside of their control, it’s affirmation that it didn’t hurt the other people they were matched up with.

If, for example (this example being the vast majority of leavers in the last month), an individual leaves because they’re either a smurf or haughty player that’s angry that their team didn’t specifically play around their desires, then it’s a healthy reminder that sometimes you’re wrong, and that sometime’s other people’s opinions are valid even if you personally disagree with them.

I get it - I’ve left games before where the majority of people were explicitly calling me aggressively homophobic things. But in that case, I would see that and realize that hey, the other people in that match that maybe didn’t agree with the rest of the team / didn’t want to speak up for reasons didn’t have their game ruined by my choice. I’d be fine with this.

I feel like 90% of this is personal perspective. I look at something like this and see it as a net positive, but I’m someone who in the entire history of playing Overwatch since opening day has only intentionally left around 4 times (dcs not counted, spectrum internet sucks).

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I think in the hundreds of hours that I invested into Overwatch - I’ve probably only left like one match deliberately whilst all the others have been out of my control - eg. Internet dying or the game servers glitching out on me.

The game can clearly tell if there is a ping/latency issue as the game responds to those issues through the player and the players in the match. I think that some detector for pings that go over a certain threshold over x amount of time should be able to find that there is a connection issue.

Otherwise, someone cutting their internet or the application, it will shut the game instantly.

I like to know that my team won even when I’ve disconnected as I’d hate to be the reason for the loss (and have been a couple of times unfortunately). But I think rubbing it in the face of the player isn’t okay.

1 Like
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I agree.

Had a match where I was disconnected - came back into the game and helped to secure the win only for me to still have lost 50SR.

I never abandon my matches if I can prevent it as I don’t want to mess with other people’s ranks. But this is a issue within itself

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And let’s be real: this might only happen 10% of the time, and it would be in very specific situations. Such as being on the last point of 2cp on attack and everyone on your team has ults to spare. 90% of the time people are going to leave when they realize the player is not coming back. 5v6 is not worth the effort in any other situation.

The warning message for leavers is probably better. Even considering the fact that people will leave if they have to (or want to) with or without realizing there are penalties. At least this might curb new players from leaving too many games…

But that’s what the 10 minute suspension is there for.

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I wish that you atleast kept your ult charge and etc on the hero you were playing - like it automatically loads you back in as the hero that you were playing prior to the disconnect.

There is no real motive. You’ve already taken the penalty - 50SR loss and the ban timer after the match, you’ve disadvantaged the team and pushed the enemy towards winning, and also lost all or any resources you had.

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I disagree; it is a data point. It is the player who feels bad in response to it.

For example this:

I’d be happy to know that my team was able to soldier on to victory without me and that I didn’t cost my team the win.

Given that there isn’t an easy way to mute/block/squelch everything with one button press I can support leaving because of this, but if there was such a thing I would want to know if doing so would be worth it vs leaving, and I need feedback for that.

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I think the popularity of the idea just highlights how many people are frustrated and want nothing more than the people they’re playing with to know they’re frustrated. It feels like a lot of people don’t care if they win the match, they only care if they make someone on the enemy team angrier than them. (or rather, they care about the latter equally as much if not more than the former.)

1 Like