Servers disconnected me from a comp match and penalized me?!

I queued into a Comp match as Support, and it placed me into a game of Oasis. As soon as the “Assemble Comp” countdown ended, the server crashed and stopped sending me packets. I was then disconnected from the round and stuck on a black screen with the loading picture in the bottom right corner.

I waited 3 minutes, then I decided I needed to force-close the game (unresponsive for 3 mins usually means waiting any longer is a mute point). I was hoping I could still get into the game and help my team, but on relog I was informed I am suspended from competitive play for 10 mins and 50 SR was taken from me.

I am NOT being punished for a server issue. Please revert this account strike, I did nothing wrong and I’d like the SR restored.

Thank you.

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hey there disconnections can happen for any reasons especially even if you do not disconnect from your own internet connection. All leaver violations must be penalized and you can learn about this policy here:

So essentially, it is my fault the game server crashed while booting up and kicked me out?

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There is no telling if it was the game server or not, usually game server issues involve hundreds of players getting disconnected at the same time. The technical support forum is dead quiet today, so more than likely it was something between you and the game server.

What is important for you is to try playing several games in a non-competitive mode (like Quick Play) and see if you are continuing to disconnect. If so try connection troubleshooting or post a WinMTR here in the tech support forum. If the problem does not repeat itself, or you have corrected any issues that you may discover, then try playing Competitive again.

The SR lost is not a big deal because your hidden matchmaking rating will be out of alignment from your displayed skill rating. This means as long as you can complete Competitive games without leaving them, your skill rating will correct itself very quickly.

I played several more games since and there has been no issues. I have not had a single connection issue since.

I’m an IT graduate, I’m very aware of how this stuff works. I’m not some rando whining about lost SR. I’m a player who enjoys the game and has some interest in ranking up (not ranking down outside my control). Penalizing me and the rest of the players afflicted by this is not going to keep us playing. I’m not touching my support rank this season until the SR gets corrected, I was already borderline of being sent back into Gold. I lose enough games due to the ELO issues, so I’m not going to let server connection issues screw me over too.

Session/game servers can make mistakes; in fact this is the only time this has ever happened to me (besides the 1 in 6 chance of the game not starting and telling me in chat with red text it couldn’t start). I have a feeling they could check my account comp history and see I have never force-disconnected from a comp match before. I’ve already wrote into the support team to ask for clarification on what went wrong and if they could restore the SR.

I have had issues in the past where packets are dropped, but (as mentioned before) I was able to regain packet control quickly. In this case, my Internet browser could still open pages and my Discord was still online the entire time.

It is not possible at all for Blizzard Customer Support to change anything on record about your Overwatch account.

Again, don’t stress, if you play games the SR will correct itself to where your hidden MMR will be. Since it sounds like you already have verified you don’t have a persistant technical issue, then you already have everything you need to know.

Nah, I’m not risking deranking again. I have enough against me with ELO mismatching and such. I’ll just stay off that role until the season ends.

Thanks for conveying the bad news, I guess. I’ll still check in the the support team to get a reply as well. If you do have the power, please relay that this issue is unacceptable to whoever needs to hear it. Don’t punish the honest players like me for the dishonesty of the rest.

You are welcome to post feedback in the general discussion and competitive discussion forums. However, I would point out that a majority of the community tends to be more on the side of finding more ways to deter leavers and increase penalties. I myself have had my fair share of technical issues (I nearly banned myself in Season 2) and since then I work to understand the balance between finding fair measures to deter leavers in Competitive Play and giving players who have the occasional disconnect a fair chance to recover and get back to playing.

Nono I am all for punishing “true” leavers. I’ve been deranked so many times due to leavers/throwers. It just hurts to win 3 games in a row, then find out a server issue has removed those three Ws from my SR. :confused:

I’ve written small blog posts about how leavers are the weakest part of the competitive experience. You can’t just end a game, someone could “take a bullet” and bail their team out of the lost game. But at the same time, forcing a 5v6 to continue is like nails on a chalkboard for the remainder of the team.

There is no simple solution, but I’m not being paid to find one. I’d imagine this should be on their immediate bucket list if the devs are also attempting to solve some of the cheating problems as well.

I also don’t bother “writing feedback” cause it will just get drained out in a sea of other “witticisms.”