I’m not entirely sure how Blizz didn’t see this coming, but the new penalty system for QP leavers just turned one form of toxicity into another. I mean, backfill exists for a reason and I have never waited more than a second or two for someone else to join the match. How dare you then have the audacity to say that their penalty system “is working really well and we are seeing the leaver numbers go down fast”? (J. Neuss, lead design exec ?.. saw him on a podcast spewing the usual Blizzard exec BS)
I have seen the leavers stop leaving and just start underperforming, which you can’t really report them for. I mean you can try, but as long as they are doing something that isn’t feeding, they don’t fall out of TOS.
Top marks, Blizz. Your foresight on this matter gives me so much hope for the already withering future of this game.
ADDENDUM SHORTLY AFTER POSTING THIS, MY IN-GAME ACCOUNT WAS INEXPLICABLY SILENCED FOR TWO WEEKS. I don’t talk to anyone; ever! All of my chats are turned off as I only play QP. I do this specifically to avoid the other gargantuan issue… the auto-ban system.
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I keep saying they just need to go to a “player performance rating” system. Dont want no money for it. Just a simple 1-50 scoring system.
Start a person at 10 points.
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Leave a match. -2 points.
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Leave a match within the last 60 seconds. -3 points
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Complete a Match +1
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Backfill and complete a match +2
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Idle ejected from a Match -4 .
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why? The developers are doing a good job of dealing with player exodus without your suggestion.
Oh you can report. Like the rein the other day that finished with 8,000 mitigated and 123 damage done. He literally just shield botted and made friends with the enemy tank.
“Were doing a pretty good job so far”.
If they are doing a “pretty gud job so fahr” than why are there more streamers on youtube calling Overwatch “T-rash” and Acti-blizz for such a lame AF idea. including plenty of reddit threads posting up about how “IQ5000” the idea is???
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Because our community is toxic and eat those videos like it’s their job. A community is get likes hating will live watching videos that hate Overwatch.
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You know what I say? Looooool you all deserve the throwers for wanting this harsh leaver penalty. You reap what you sow!
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You ever stop to think why games suddenly have a massive uptick in Leavers, when all along leaving was really rare, few and far if at all?
I can remember when playing this game, NOBODY wanted to leave matches at all.
Suddenly after Overwatch 2 launches. the same people I use to play the game with are like “i just want outta this match there’s nothing I can do here to win” and then they just alt-f4 the game or leave.
I think just observing that behavior alone. shows there is a game design problem that surfaced after the Creation of “2”. and its a chunk of reality that leaves many people here with the feelings of “hopeless” and “lost cause”.
So we gotta ask ourselves, “What’d they mess up at Acti-blizz”? 
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My queue times fluctuate from 1-4 minutes for all roles. Maybe the pc community is dropping off. But consoles have had steady queues all year. And outside of queues how else can you tell if a population dropped?
So your friends can’t have fun when they lose. And instead of trying to figure out they’re out of a situation they quit? Quitters aren’t players and I couldn’t care less if players that demand wins leave a game.
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And there has been an influx of “unfair bans” lately since the leaver penalty…
…and self admissions of throwing/AFK-ing in protest.
Silencing is usually a temp action, even if you appeal and are found innocent they’ll just make you wait out the action.
Would be interesting to see what they say though.
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The only real way to check is by people’s profiles and if they are competitive players acquiring skill ratings and publicly showing the information.
The other tell-all is the scoreboards showing the dif between teams. If I see a match that is equally mixed of “high and low” numbers on both sides. You can tell that the match was evenly balanced and the server got it right. but if one side has really low scores and the other side has really high scores. Its a bad match-up.
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That’s not always the case. Sometimes you’re evenly matched and still get stomped. Because human error is a thing. The matchmaking can do whatever it wants to find a perfect match in paper. Doesn’t mean the match is perfectly even because humans are machines. We make mistakes and a lot of them.
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I am one of these people you speak of. I don’t afk but I 100% change up how I play. We are all stuck with each other because of the penalties. Before I would just leave because I wasn’t having fun, now I just want the match to end asap so I can move onto the next.
Having said this, I really loath the penalty thing. I earned enough coins to get the current BP for free but once I unlock everything I’m going to take a break for awhile from Overwatch.
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I mostly agree with you. and I will say you draw some really good points there. 
But for the most part. I do feel like more of my matches I am fighting someone 100 times greater my skill rating than in Overwatch 1. which felt more “at my level”.
Im not going to run around here and brag im a good player. because I AM NOT.
But I do want to play against opponents that dont feel as though I am not ready for.
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Leavers have been an issue for Overwatch since 2016, usually noted here as backfill complaints. If you’ve noticed an uptick, it’s probably because the penalty when OW2 launched was ineffective.
The XP penalty was a mild deterrent in OW1 where people cared about earning lootboxes. When the penalty applied to battle passes that many weren’t buying, they lost any incentive to stay in games. Hence the need for a penalty that would effect everyone.
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You’re probably a good player. Remember you he community doesn’t believe in good. You’re either top 500 good or trash. We apparently don’t have an in between.
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It really was never bad when my room mate and I played this game and even in 2017 when I picked up my own copy of the game. it was few and far.
I think with Competitive. I would say I fully support absolute PENALTIES beyond conventional belief, especially when the system isn’t going to backfill. CROSS SEASON bans for Comp.
As for Quickplay its purely stupid. There’s no skill rating we are working towards and we aren’t expected to play in informational comps that require specific positioning, working with hard-counters, and building compositional metas along with the required team coordination in comms.
I guess me. I find the leaver penalties offensive. because I dont run out and create a new account, I play by the rules. I dont try and circumvent the match maker by creating new accounts.
but I have to put up with the giant (Redacted) that does this over and over again.and then they come here and complain that THEY are the ones being stolen from.
It feels like people that steal our time from US, say they are being stolen from, and yet we are not the victims here.
At least they should ask 30-40 bucks to create a new account each time.
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This is why the lag of a solid PVE being the focus first was a mistake, How they are stuck in a never ending loop of always changing the game every season, This really for the players? Or is all just a way to have power over us and being to arrogant to think of what happens when players stop playing their game.
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I’ve certainly noticed many less leavers, and only a few people actively throwing once they started losing.
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