Below, we wanted to re post something on this subject. Jeff Kaplan had a post on the old version of the forums. Since those forums have been retired, we’ve quoted the original philosophy here.
Former Game Director Jeff Kaplan:
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
3 Likes