Should you lose SR for Server side problems?

General Discussion
#1

Hey,

Just had a game where the all players on both teams got disconnected from the game just as we were about to full hold first point on Junkertown.

Just before disconnecting other players were complaining about the lag and then the game was gone. Couldent reconnect, did not even have the option.

Through no fault of my own or anyone on either team we all lost 50SR each, endorsements and I was personally banned from playing for 9 mins but I am sure others were affected by this.

So the question becomes… If all players are affected by the same issue proving its server side and not client side should we all drop SR and get banned when it is clearly outside of our control?

I understand its an automatic system so there is no malice here but I just wanted to post something and hear what people have to say.

#2

No, absolutely not - but as a development company they tend to be pretty lazy when it comes to technical solutions. A lot of non-technical people in the community have utterly gobbled up the “there’s no way of telling whether its your fault or not” lie, so sadly we’re stuck with them getting away with an attitude of “always punish the player”.

We had a massive issue during the World Cup last year where Aussies were getting dropped from games constantly. Thousands of users reported issues on various ISPs in various cities, but they just stuck to their guns, and those penalties stuck. It was hilarious, you had situations where Twitch streamers were getting dropped from matches with their feed on twitch showing them unable to reconnect… live streaming the whole thing. Clearly the users connection/route was to blame! /s

I mean hell, they have a secondary client running on the players device in the Bnet launcher. If their devs are really incapable of utilising that for later reporting data back polling from multiple endpoints, we really don’t have much hope.

Once upon a time I used to work on satellite communications. Can you imagine if I just wrote my code to say “well, we can’t figure out where the link has been lost between the ground and space… ah, we’ll just assume we lost the user on the ground. No need to check if another endpoint can still see that node, or the node that uplinks to it.”.

It’s not rocket science to write systems that enable them to troubleshoot these connection issues in realtime. One problem is though, Blizzard aren’t exactly known in the industry for hiring the cream of the crop in technical talent. Buit their attitude towards not fixing things like this… to call it disappointing would be kind.

#3

You shouldn’t. But at the same time, what’s stopping people from unplugging their router if they were going to lose?

2 Likes
#4

I mean it should be the normal SR that you’d lose from simply losing the match, which is 20-30. The flat 50 even for a random disconnect is just idiotic. Why dock someone’s rank over an internet issue? It’s too easy for derankers to abuse this.

#5

I mean, sure. But that also means derankers would be throwing twice as many games to lose their rank…

#6

Blizzard have a secondary client running on every players system which they can use to determine whether the route issues are within the local network or external. In reality you could do it from the game client - but using the bnet client as an anti-cheat mechanism is a more sensible implementation. Use it to stop this kind of rubbish excuse for their laziness and trying to disguise their own poor level of service and service interruptions on their end.

2 Likes
#7

Well, they could make it so that you get one freebie a day. Where if you disconnect, you only lose the SR you’d lose for losing the game, and if you reconnect you don’t lose any SR.

But any more than that, it’s a flat -50SR.

#8

Should you? No.

But then again…

You should also be playing against people of your own skill level.

You should be encouraged to team up as a group in a team based game.

You should be encouraged to switch characters.

Instead, we have smurfs, solo-queuing, and one-tricking. Sever side SR loss is the least of comp’s issues.

#9

But why? If it’s their server constantly (and randomly) dropping people, why is it any more fair when it’s once or numerous times?
When we had the issues in Aus QuickPlay was fine. So you’d get dropped, get dropped again, figure “okay I’ll play QP until it’s fixed”, play an hour or so of QP and think the problem has gone away, join comp any immediately get dropped. I remember playing a game that was 3v4 because so many people got dropped.

Why should this be the users fault because it occurred multiple times?

#10

UPDATE:::

just happened again. All the players were complaining about lag, multiple disconnects before mine, very provable it is not my side or the side of any of the players.

I can see how people can abuse it but then again those people would also get banned if they do it to much.

I just think the 9 min ban and 50 SR penalty for SERVER SIDE issues is really odd.

Especially when EVERYONE in the game suffered the same

#11

In this case, it appears that the server their game was being hosted on died. That should be detectable by blizzard and clearly differentiated from client-side disconnect.

#12

THIS IS WHAT BLIZZARD SENT ME WHEN I REPORTED THE TICKET AND EXPLAINED IT
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Hey there

If an Overwatch account has been banned, suspended, or lost rating from competitive mode due to a disconnect, crash or being unable to connect to a match, Game Masters cannot reverse those in any way, as those are an intentional thing for any disconnect or leave. Customer support has no ability to see competitive penalty status or skill rating at all, which means we cannot assist with SR loss or leaver suspensions in any way.

There is a good post on the reasoning behind the leaver penalty being so strict here: Overwatch Forums and here: Overwatch Technical Issues, SR Loss, and Leaver Penalties Long story short for that, even if the disconnect is not the fault of an intentional disconnect, if a disconnect from a match occurs it is still inconveniencing up to 11 other players, and so any reason for disconnecting is treated the same. If the PC has connection, freezing, or crashing issues it is highly recommended not to enter any competitive matches until that is resolved.

If you wish for assistance in troubleshooting any connection or crashing issues, definitely let us know, and we can assist you with troubleshooting to find the cause of that issue! I would highly recommend checking the more common troubleshooting steps beforehand though just to make sure you’ve covered the major reasons for disconnections or crashes.

Console connection troubleshooting: Blizzard Support - Troubleshooting Overwatch 2 Connection Problems on Consoles
PC connection troubleshooting: Blizzard Support - Diagnosing Overwatch Network Problems
PC crash troubleshooting: Blizzard Support - Overwatch 2 Lockups and Crash Errors
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The thing is…

It mentions that my disconnect would affect 11 other players but thats not the issue I was facing. All the players got disconnected. Obviously If it was only me I would take the ban and move on.

But this is a server side issue. All players were equally effected and all lost SR and all got a 10 min ban.

This simply is not the best way to solve the issue. It suggests I fix the issues but its not my issue to fix…