Removing leaver penalties in specific cases

Asanagi-11663 · July 13, 2019, 10:42pm

In a few cases, the game can detect how or why you got disconnected from the game. I am almost 100% certain the game can detect the ‘Render device lost’ error and should be able to not penalize me for when I get that error at the beginning of a comp match, thus crashing my game and canceling the match. It should also be able to see when ping is spiking and possibly not penalize you for leaving when at extraordinarily high ping. I think there are other cases where the game should be able to detect why the player left the match and not penalize them if they aren’t at fault but this is just a few I can think of.

Ashyy-1210 · July 13, 2019, 10:44pm

If you are experiencing technical issues, do not play competitive. I would recommend troubleshooting the issues you are experiencing.

Tonusu-21199 · July 13, 2019, 10:52pm

The “render device lost” caused me SR drops several times.

Thing is, that it happens in the start of a game, where a simple relaunch would literally make this have zero negative impact on the match, but the current timer makes it impossible .

While removing the SR penalty in this situation is debatable, id like to see a larger timer for crashing in start of the game. 20s would be nice, at least we’d have an actual chance for restarting the game.

Kaedi-11739 · July 13, 2019, 10:58pm

The important reason why penalties are applied to users who have technical issues is to get them to stop playing competitive. Its also why penalties start small at only a 10 minute suspension. In short please take whatever steps are necessary to correct an issue before going back into a high-stakes mode like Competitive.

Game Director Jeff Kaplan | September 14 2016:

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

Source: Overwatch Forums

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Asanagi-11663 · July 14, 2019, 1:03am

I understand not being able to tell if WiFi went out, or the player turned off their WiFi, etc etc, but if the game can tell me specifically what error I am getting, it should be able to also not give me a penalty for said issue. Obviously, you are right and I should get it fixed, but this stuff leaves a bad taste in my mouth and there is no way to know if I fixed it. Only time will tell if the issue is fixed, and this time I was just unlucky.